Between

by Barbara Gaskell Denvil

  Primo woke up. He sat, and looked at the harpy. She was awake too, and preening, crest high, one wing raised like a sail, nibbling at the under fringes of her elegant plumage. Her beak was as lethal as a butcher’s hook and far more intelligent. She looked up at him, saucers gilded, the huge round black pupils reflected his own contracted regard.

  He had been seeing a lot of his reflection lately. When something kept happening, he knew enough to recognise a lesson, though this time he still wasn’t sure what it was. But he knew what the dream had been about and he had remembered his name.

  From the harpy’s nesting site, he flew and quickly approached the soaring dark of the cliffs. The boundary with the third was a blazing white snow peak, flanked by grey fogs. Where the sun caught the ice, the refraction was blinding. For those coming up for the first time from the third, this was Heaven indeed.

  Between the crags the snows melted in the sunshine and flung themselves downwards in the shining clouded silk of cascading water, falls as deep as the mountains themselves. Their exultant thunder masked their music, but to someone who lived there, the song could be heard day and occasional night and was as pure as joy.

  There were shelves lower along the cliffs. Some were constant shelters from the water mist, others sheltered from the fogbanks. One was where Primo had chosen to build when he had first risen from the third. He could still see his hut. No one had altered it and it hadn’t faded or tumbled down as it sometimes had when he’d lived there. He’d needed to rebuild several times. Now it huddled a little, four wooden clinker-planked walls and a tip-tilted roof with no chimney, clinging to bare rock. Its windows watched the constant passing beauty of sky and water and precipice. Primo landed by the little front door, which was open as it usually had been when he’d lived there. Doors could be difficult to shut in the Summerlands.

  Daisy was sitting in the doorway, chin in cupped hands, wind in her curls. Primo thought she looked deliciously pretty. She had seen him coming but so had Sam and they were both waiting for him. Primo said, “I just want to talk to Daisy. I don’t want trouble.”

  “Well,” grinned Sam, “it’s your house, or isn’t it?”

  Primo could smell cooking. It smelled like cheese. He frowned and talked only to Daisy. He said, “Last time I saw you, when you came to find me, you talked about karma. I don’t believe in karma. It’s crap. What do you know about it?”

  Sam leaned against the outer wall and listened. Primo wished he’d go away. His irritation roused the harpy, who had taken up her old accustomed roost on a rock nearby, but he shook his head and calmed her until she narrowed her eyes to yellow slits and lowered her head into her neck again.

  Daisy patted the doorstep beside her. “It’s nice to have you back here, Primo.”

  “So tell me,” said Primo, sitting obediently. The door’s step didn’t feel as welcoming as it had when he’d lived there. It had taken on someone else’s colours. “About this karma rubbish?”

  “I don’t know much,” said Daisy, making knots with her ringlets. “When I was stuck on the third, one of those do-gooders came by. She was nice though, not like some of them, not all superior. She said she was my guide and one day when I moved right up, we’d be proper friends. She told me a few things. It was because of her I was able to come into the fourth.”

  “Go on,” said Primo.

  “Boring lies,” interrupted Sam. “You don’t want to go listening to those people. They tell you any old dick-shit, just to get you moving on. You’d think space down below was scarce or something.”

  “Take no notice of him,” insisted Primo. “Just talk to me. So – karma.”

  “Oh just that it’s not like they used to think when we were alive,” said Daisy. “It’s not an eye for an eye type of thing. But here, especially on the third and fourth and fifth, we get tied up with people we used to know. People we did things to sometimes, or old lovers or something. Good and bad – it works both ways – stuck together. Then you have to work it out. Unravel past things. Pay your debts.”

  “And how the hell do you do that?” Primo demanded. “I mean, you can’t buy them off can you? Or build them a house or take them on a holiday. So what the hell do you do? Just say sorry?”

  “Oh, maybe.” Daisy shifted, uncomfortable. “Really be sorry I suppose. Understand. Remember old lovers and start living together again, like we did. Or learn to love the person you once hated.”

  Sam giggled. “So - learn to love me, slime-face. It’s me you hate, isn’t it? Or is it just pissing jealousy, then?”

  “Stupid kid,” said Primo, though he’d meant to ignore the remark. “Go on, stick your tongue out, why don’t you? Like the little baby you are.”

  Primo started to get up but Daisy clung to him, eyes pleading. “So, is that the way it was?” she said. “I feel tied to you Primo, I really do. When you moved on without me it felt like a big hole inside. So is it karma? Were we really lovers when we were alive? I’d like to think that.”

  Primo stared down at her, pulling his arm away. “I thought you remembered your life? You said you remembered your name, and how old you were.”

  Daisy shook her head. “I do. Little things like that. I remember things about my childhood, and odd snatches later. But most of it’s so blurred. I do sort of feel I knew you, but I can’t remember who you were.”

  Primo moved away and stared out over her head towards the mountains. “Well, that’s just as well.”

  “So, dick-head,” said Sam, bustling loudly up behind, “is that what the trouble is? You were Daisy’s old man were you? And now you’re all pissed off ‘cos I’m screwing your little lady-friend. Well, too bad, turd-face. Go stick it up your bloody bird’s arse if you’re lonely. Daisy’s mine now. And so’s your miserable little slum hut. Shabby as it is. Better than nothing I suppose.”

  Primo held his breath, then exhaled very slowly. “Better than the nothing you could build,” he said softly. “I don’t think you even belong on the fourth. I think you crept over under the fogs, and now you’re just clinging to the border by your dirty little finger nails. Live in my house, steal your way into Daisy’s bed? It’s because you can’t build. And you know why, don’t you. Any home anyone builds here has to be an expression of their present state of grace. And that’s something you just don’t have. I don’t reckon you’ve even got a soul.”

  As Primo spoke, Sam was puffing crimson, working himself up into a temper. As soon as Primo paused, Sam flew. Daisy squealed and scuttled back into the house. Sam leapt on Primo’s back, and the harpy rose up from her roost and shrieked.

  The eagle shriek cut the frosted air, parting the currents like the blade of a knife. She flew straight to the struggling men and stretched out her claws, bringing back both wings as balance. Her head bent down as her claws curved out, hooked beak stabbing into flesh. She rent Sam’s ear from one side, clasped his shoulder on the other, and lifted him. Sam howled and then went silent. The harpy carried him up and out, his limbs flailing, the old instinct of hunting still strong in her. She came above the tallest water-fall, and there into the icy water she dropped him. The dumpling body was caught and drenched. Sam tried to fly, but the weight of the torrents pulled him down.

  As Sam disappeared, the harpy came back for Primo. At first he had not seemed badly injured, and then she saw the hole in his chest. He was on the ground and he had fainted. She swooped, grasping him, wings beating steadily until, even with the man’s bulk below her, she gained height. She scooped him up like a kitten and paused neither to land nor to look around. With Primo held fast and safe, she flew on and then down and passed through the first wandering fingers of cloud into the infinite azure of the Summerland’s sky beyond. From there, as swift as she had ever flown, she carried her man back down into the forests and brought him to his own home by the pool and the beautiful high trees she loved. There she laid him down and stood over him, waiting until he opened his eyes.

  A harpy’s parcel bears the holes of her claws
. Primo shifted, and rubbed his wounded arms. The greater wound in his chest that Sam had made was already closing. Harpy love can do many things. Slowly, Primo sat up and leaned against his own house doorway. He managed to nod.

  “Thank you. I’m alright now.”

  “You should not go back again,” the harpy’s thoughts indicated.

  “I won’t,” said Primo. “I don’t need to. I found out what I wanted to know.”

  The eagle didn’t ask, not having the dubious skill of human curiosity. But Primo’s discovery had come from the dream he’d had in her nest as well as his visit to the cliffs, corroborated by the knowledge gained during his short unconsciousness.

  Karma meant something after all, but it wasn’t a lover it was linking him to from the past. He had realised, whether he wanted to remember or not, that the woman in the battered car, with the skinny old hands and the very sweet bossy smile, who had given him the sour lemonade and the nice moist ham sandwiches, and whom he now recognised from when he’d been alive, was quite definitely Daisy. And now, for what it was worth which probably wasn’t much, he believed in karma of a sort after all.

  Chapter Eighteen

  “They don’t have volcanoes in Heaven,” said Ethel. “This doesn’t make the slightest sense.”

  The lava spread in a green and black vomit with a mighty cascade of metallic flame. The heat was unpleasant, though somehow not as impossibly intense as might have been expected.

  “Well, we’re standing fairly close,” Ron pointed out, “but it hasn’t blown us away.”

  “You think it might kill us?” demanded Francesco.

  “Okay, very clever,” said Wilhelm. “But surely we ought to be feeling it more than we are. More uncomfortable. That snivelling little wretch of a terrorist felt you alright, didn’t he, when you punched him around? Well, why aren’t we flat on our faces with this thing exploding? Why aren’t we burning?”

  “Half of them are,” Ron pointed out.

  Father Martin had not yet risen from his knees and both the bus driver and Ayakis were prone on the ground. Ethel was tight to Ron’s protecting arm. “It’s hot enough for me,” said Ethel. “I don’t want it any hotter thank you. It’s quite scary. But what on earth is it doing here?”

  “Well, that’s the point isn’t it,” said Wilhelm. “We’re not on earth.”

  “Do we know that for sure?” insisted Ethel.

  “Oh, come on,” said Francesco. “We’re bloody dead, woman. Use your common sense. We’re in purgatory. I can accept volcanoes in purgatory. Who says there can’t be? You’ve got a tourist map or something? A guide book? Someone’s been here before and sent back a list of what to expect? No volcanoes maybe? So it just can’t be here?”

  “Oh do shut up,” said Ethel. “You’re getting damned boring.”

  “Whatever else, I do not believe it is Hellfire,” said Father Martin, rising from his prayer. “The destiny of this murderer amongst us may lead him into hell indeed, but it cannot consume the rest of us. I am a God-fearing man, dedicating my past years to good works and abstinence. I await the glories of Heaven.”

  “It’s not burning us,” Wilhelm pointed out. “If we want, we can just walk past. We certainly don’t have to stay here grovelling. I for one, am going on.”

  He went first, while the others hesitated. The mouth of the volcano stretched wide to his side and the spitting, sparking embers caught in his hair, sizzled, and went out. Ethel watched him go, then looked down to the roots of the raging mountain far below. Its light showed them all a bridge of fog bound archways upon which they travelled. The furnace then soared to a height beyond their sight, but the pathway continued past, and the mist fingers, although they parted for the fires, did not diminish afterwards. The road did not burn and its fragile balustrade did not singe. At the base of the volcano was nothing else, neither ground nor haze. It merely sat in space.

  “Well, there’s no point being scared,” decided Ethel. She leaned over the balustrade then stamped her feet, testing the strength of the bridge’s support. “I always used to be frightened of dying, or of getting hurt,” she said, “but I can’t die again can I, and getting hurt here seems to be a fairly insubstantial, transient sort of thing.” She moved away from her husband and stretched out her hand. The embers caught at her fingers. “Yes,” she said, “it burns a bit. It certainly stings. But not much more.”

  “Try jumping in, why don’t you?” suggested Francesco. “That should be a good experiment.”

  “I believe,” said Father Martin, “that it is an illusion. To test our strength and faith.”

  “If you’re talking illusions,” said Ron, “putting his arm around his wife again, “then I reckon this is symbolic. Anger. That’s what fire usually symbolises, isn’t it? And what have we all been feeling so much of? Anger of course.”

  “And some of us more than others,” said Father Martin with an exaggerated sigh which bounced the tangle of his beard.

  “Look,” said Ethel.

  The logical man, marching doggedly on his own, had reached the other side of the burning mountain and had stopped there. He was laughing and talking to someone that no one else could see, but a small spangle of lights centred in the haze before him. He stretched out into the golden dance, and within seconds, was gone. Once again Father Martin sighed.

  “Well, someone’s got things wrong,” roared Francesco in sudden frustration. “If you’re talking anger, then that man was as riled up as the rest of us over being murdered. And that silly young lad who was taken away before, I mean he didn’t even believe in anything. An atheist, porco Dio! And here’s me the only true believer, still waiting. Even this grubby old monk is still here, and he may have got his denominations wrong, but at least he’s a religious man and spent his life in prayer. So where’s the sense of it all I’d like to know?”

  “Never mind hon,” said Ethel. “I suppose you’re missing your wife.”

  “I don’t think it’s got anything to do with religion,” said Ron suddenly. “Certainly not with wasting time praying for your own salvation or arguing over dogma. Doesn’t all that seem rather trivial, now we’re actually here?”

  “Fool,” spat Francesco. “If you’re not concerned with religion once you’re dead, then when? It’s more relevant now than ever. This volcano’s clearly the expression of God’s righteous judgement and it’s come for that evil bastard on the ground there. Throw him in, that’s what I say. Throw him in to burn, and then we can all move on.”

  Ayakis squealed and crawled further away. He decided it had been easier when he couldn’t understand a word that all these infidel swine were saying.

  “Oh leave the poor little kid alone,” said Ethel. “Can’t you see he’s been brain-washed? He’s more confused than we are.”

  “Hush, honey,” Ron whispered, pulling her close. “There’s someone coming.”

  The lights had become dizzy, a whirling, deliciously scented swarm of sparks. The dazzle took shape and made voices. Ethel moved into the lights. “It’s all of them Ron, look, all of them.”

  “Your mother and my grandmother, I can see them both,” said Ron. “And your grandfather and Amy and Johnny and Terrence.”

  “Oh come on,” said Ethel, “let’s hurry.”

  They entered the spangled gold and blue like long lost refugees from happiness, and in two steps they were no longer visible to those left behind.

  Father Martin stood very still and watched and his eyes looked old and tired and sad. Then he started to cry. “I never did anything,” he sobbed quietly to himself. “It wasn’t me. It was their fault. They made me. Why do you reject me, Lord, when it was their fault?”

  “Oh, fine,” said Francesco with venom. “So I get left with the crazies.”

  The volcano’s intermittent explosions still raged in wild ejaculations of flame. The noise now overpowered everything else though it mattered very little, since everybody was speaking only to themselves, each following the one who walked before.
It was in single file that they trudged the only path open to them, climbing up and over the narrow bridge of fogbound arches.

  “Bridge of Sighs,” muttered Francesco.

  Francesco led, ignoring all else. Gregorio the bus driver came next, chanting softly to himself, reciting prayers. The monk shuffled behind. His sandals were scorched and his feet were sore. He remained silent. Even slower was Ayakis, who was careful to keep away from Father Martin’s swinging robes, the dirty hem kicking up the dust, the long tassel of his hessian belt like the pendulum of a clock. Minutes ticking, like a time bomb.

  As they passed the fire tamed a little and its blaze shuddered and faded into its own echo, as if ashamed once faced directly. By the time they had scaled the bridge, the volcano had quite gone. There below, like the spread of a massive aerial photograph, was a landscape of great beauty. Serene and greenly golden, the stretch of valley was placid under a gentle sunshine. The path’s mists had drifted apart and the sky now seemed cloudless. Father Martin gasped and smiled.

  “Heaven, at last,” he said.

  “Dear God be praised,” muttered Gregorio.

  “Well, that’s better,” said Francesco.

  But it was a long, long way down. Suspended high on a thread of road that took them into nothingness, they could see the placid wonder below but they could not reach it. The four men grouped together, staring down at what attracted them all below.

  “So, who jumps first?” laughed Francesco.

  “We seem to be on a sort of aqueduct,” said Father Martin. “A conduit. Up in the sky. A passageway, or a carriage for new souls arriving.”

  “So we’re part of the irrigation system?” said Francesco, “or the sewerage perhaps?”

  “You’ve cheered up remarkably,” said Father Martin, more cheerful himself.

  “True,” admitted Francesco. “Looks like I’ll be getting away from you lot at last. There’ll be a way down soon, a staircase or something. I expect Cinzia’s already down there waiting, getting the house cleaned up maybe. Putting dinner on.”