Between

by Barbara Gaskell Denvil

  And there were old boots piled haphazard in a corner, ten pairs at least. His own were on top.

  The body twitched again. Pulled back in panic, opening eyes that prayed to be blind, Primo felt himself once more alive in an agony of stunned incomprehension. He could not focus, but he could feel everything.

  Each second an hour, time suspended in a welter of suffering convulsions, nightmare dragged into the madness of terror.

  Then, in utter confusion as the blood seeped away and slowly took his life with it, he felt something that he could not understand, being inexplicable, from somewhere beyond himself though invisible, strong arms supporting him with the sure sweetness of complete protection and a deep voice echoing not in his ears but in his mind, telling him he was not alone, and that he was, unbelievably but eternally, incalculably safe.

  Very weak and feeling very small, now in total trust he clung to the glorious comfort and listened to the voice he believed he had never heard before, though there was something strangely familiar about it, as if he remembered it from a long, long time ago when he was very young and all the terrible business of being himself had begun.

  “It will be slow,” said the soft voice which cradled him. “To die like this will take a long time, but if you hold to me I will help you through to the other side before it is over. Lean back into the circle of my arms and let your mind wander free. I can take the pain and feel it for you.”

  In a very tiny voice in his head, which was all the strength he had, Primo said, “No one else should have to feel this.”

  “It will be far easier for me than for you,” said Wilmot very gently. “Let go, my child. Let it all go. Letting go is always the answer to everything.”

  Because he could do very little else, Primo did as he was told. He let go.

  He floated, and felt he flew, though he was supported at all times by the arms of the being who flew with him away from the stench and the flies, the barn, the crazy old woman, and the twitching body on the rack which breathed its last as its life blood dripped away.

  Then there was no pain anymore. There were firm finger tips against his lids and at once his eyes cooled and the fires went out. The whole world went cobalt, like a wild sheen of lapis across the sky. The depths lightened and cobalt became cornflower. Then the cornflower became gold.

  Primo felt himself caressed by perfumes, breathed by music, and although his eyes were closed, his sight opened and he could see a fantasy of colours. The arms never let him go. He knew an ease so sweetly feather soft, he prayed he would never wake again.

  He did not believe in God. But he prayed to whatever was there, because he was dying, and whatever cradled him would be the last thing he ever felt, and that was how it should be. It would all be over at last.

  The arms held him and the gold held him and he was carried, so gently, into the soothing deep warmth of a tunnel. He was never alone. All his life he had been alone, but he was not alone now. He knew he was utterly protected, and somehow loved, even though he had done nothing, ever, to merit either love or comfort, but the love and the comfort were there and they nursed and eased all the passing aches of his body and his soul and took him into the wonderfully enveloping darkness.

  The darkness should have been the end of everything. When he saw the light at the end of the tunnel and knew there was something else to come, he began to cry very quietly. He did not want to go on. He turned his head into the nestling strength of the creature which cocooned him, and begged to be left in the dark. Then, although the bright whiteness at the far end of the shadows crawled closer, widening into an impossible brilliance, Primo felt, inexplicably, that his tears were kissed dry. A dying soul may pray, but should never cry.

  Chapter Forty-Two

  The new cottage was set amongst others, six or seven pretty places with roses around their porches and a marvellous view across the valley. The lifetime dream of everyone who now occupied the sunny houses and gardens. Rita had decided to enjoy having friends. Sven carried his girl over the threshold, no problems of weight here, no muscles needed, Rita giggling, young in her flowered muslin.

  Waving, laughing, and promising to return soon, Georgia left and headed back to her own vibration. Because she was now on the sixth plane and the discomfort of going down into denser atmospheres was less restrictive here, Georgia decided to walk awhile. Even with the optional charms of flying and the even greater magical possibility, recently mastered, of simply thinking oneself into a different place, she was still physical enough to enjoy walking. There was always so much to see.

  The Summerlands were never static. The scenery of a plane did not feel obliged to look the same as it had the last time one visited, nor identical to different eyes. The beauty of illusion is always relative. Although the sixth plane was a little more physical in its warmth than her own seventh, a little heavier in its colours and the music more distant, its magnificence seemed undiminished. Each blink dazzled with something new. So Georgia wandered.

  A plane can be crossed in a day, an hour, a thought or a breath. It can take a short forever, or very much longer. Georgia walked for what seemed like many hours, although she now understood that her concept of time depended solely upon her own appreciation of it. She also now understood that perhaps it always had.

  She saw many people and many creatures, the gentle souls of the sixth fleeting through the vibrancy of their after-lives. Then, eventually, she came on the borders to her own plane where the great lakes parted the vibrations and the shallows of the upper-sixth gazed across to the far banks of the lower-seventh. No rolling swirls of fog or creeping fingers of capturing mist, this boundary was marked by silvered reflections and the great sweep of the reedy marshlands.

  Then she flew, spinning up into the warmth, letting her toes scatter ripples across the mirrored surface and the darting flick of fish and fowl.

  It was in the first rise of the seventh that she found Norwen waiting for her. He was standing in the flower scattered valley, very tall and wide shouldered in his russet robes within the auric dazzle and broad smile. He held out his hand. “So your mother has moved into the sixth plane. You can feel both her joy of accomplishment and also your own. I feel it too.”

  “It was nice of you to come to meet me,” said Georgia. “Do you really know where I am and what I’m doing at any time?”

  “Time?” he said. “Do you still misunderstand time and space. Perhaps still a little. But I am always aware of you, exactly according to both our needs and wishes.”

  “I think of you so often,” nodded Georgia, “and you always come. Is time so malleable? I don’t want to usurp your energies. You must have so many needs of your own, and so many joys which could never include me.”

  “I am a spirit only of the ninth,” said Norwen, “and therefore far from perfection. I have a great deal yet to learn for myself, but I have reached a stage where my enjoyment is all in the living and the learning. I chose to be a guide, and that is both my schooling and my joy.”

  “I’m just glad you did choose to be a guide,” said Georgia, “and me you got assigned.”

  He smiled. “A coincidence, perhaps? A mistake? Or lucky chance?”

  “Alright. I learn slowly,” Georgia laughed. “Everything is as it has to be. But I still spend so long puzzling over things before I get to understanding. Romano for instance. Worrying over what I did. Did I do silly things? Was I wrong? Should I have married him? And now I’ve lost him and I regret the time we didn’t spent together. Then I remind myself that everything was exactly as it had to be, which means what happens is always right, whether it seems like it or not.”

  “You are meant to puzzle when alive,” said Norwen. “It is the learning process. But not now. Now you need only revert to the soul nestled within, which is already bursting with knowledge if you simply listen, instead of muddling the mind with worry, confusions and incessant streams of logical or illogical thought. Beneath the struggles of your growing personality you already know it
all, for God creates nothing that is not already perfect. Each life stretches your potential, and then fulfils it. But the kernel of knowledge remains the essence of your being.”

  “I thought perfection was the final arrival.”

  “You speak of a path,” Norwen said, “with a beginning and an end, both being subject to the passage of time. Forget time. Let go the strivings and the doubts. Return to the soul which knows.”

  She sighed. “I can’t dismiss time. Sequence, order, change. They’re all consequences of time. Perhaps when I get to the ninth plane I’ll understand. But that’s time too, isn’t it? To travel from the seventh to the eight and on to the ninth. Without time it can’t be done.”

  “You are using your brain to try and comprehend matters far beyond its scope, instead of reverting to your soul’s existing knowledge,” said Norwen, “which is the first step towards the eighth. Your common sense needs the concept of time. Your spirit does not.”

  “But banishing time would cancel out my past,” said Georgia. “Then I’d forget Romano and my daughter. I don’t ever want to do that.”

  Norwen shook his head. “Dismissing the tyranny of time never cancels love,” he said. “Nothing can ever cancel love, for it is what we breathe and is the stuff of our existence. Nor do you ever cancel what experience has taught you, even when the memory of the experience no longer remains. But you are still caught in regret, and that is something you must overcome. Remember, each person you left behind when you died has learned something from your passing. You touched their souls while living, you touch again as you leave. Both your life and your death altered everything and everyone who experienced it. How can you regret such a thing?”

  Georgia paused, took a deep mental breath, and laughed at herself. “I’m growing. But slowly. I’m learning because you teach me and I love listening and trying to take it in. But I’m still me. I’m bossy and impatient and I try very hard to think the right things, but then I’m still smug about knowing more than my mother and being able to tell her what to do. I regret, and yearn, and want more and more, and then fall into regrets all over again. And then I feel guilty about it all, which is wrong too. But I try. I’ll get better and better, won’t I?”

  Norwen was laughing too. “These are not spiritual faults. Simply the small habits of a physical life within a society that you chose to adapt to. You died exactly when you were ready to move on and up.”

  “I know death is never an accident and I know regrets are wrong,” said Georgia. “It doesn’t stop me feeling them.”

  Norwen took her hand, the delicious tingle of ninth plane essence rushing through her palm. “It is to progress beyond such feelings that you travel this seventh plane,” he said, “and I am here to help you do it. This is the greatest adventure of all, this progression back towards your own inner perfection.”

  Georgia stretched out on the grass and stared up at the infinity of colour above her. “Everything here is so amazing. Walking up from the sixth plane was beautiful, and there’s no tiredness, never a twinge of disappointment. On the lower planes perhaps, but not now.” She smiled, looking across at Norwen, his eyes reflecting the passage of a flock of geese above. It reminded her of something. “On the lower banks of the great lakes where the sixth plane ends, I saw something that seemed so strange, even for here. There was a man and a group of birds, with many more birds hovering above.”

  Norwen nodded. “The Wetlands attract the birds here as they do in life. Herons, spoonbills, skimmers.”

  Georgia grinned. “Oh, this was much more than that. There was a huge twittering of larks and finches in the air and a great flock of pelican, but beside the marshes were other birds which don’t usually live by the water. There was this massive hornbill asleep on a rock, and a cassowary standing on one leg like a stork. Then sitting on this gorgeous young man’s shoulder was an incredible eagle with amazing golden eyes and a ruff like a crown.”

  “A bird lover of renown, perhaps,” said Norwen.

  “I suppose so.” Georgia frowned. “But even more surprising was the other man sitting there. Not actually a man at all really, in an odd green suit and a big emerald hat and funny boots. And so small. I mean, you just don’t get odd looking people over here, but this was a teeny man with a crooked nose and the funniest clothes. More like a leprechaun actually, and I could have sworn he had a sack marked ‘gold and treasure’ hanging around his neck.”

  Norwen read the picture in her mind and laughed. “I think I know who that was,” he said. “Someone from the ninth.”

  “Oh come on,” Georgia accused. “I know the Summerlands are pure magic, but I don’t expect leprechauns. Where do you keep the unicorns then? And the mermaids and satyrs? And are the ogres and the vampires restricted to the lower planes?”

  “You should have gone over to ask,” smiled Norwen. “I am sure my leprechaun friend would have made a most suitable reply.”

  “I would never have interrupted,” said Georgia. “One man so handsome and the other so little and ugly, and then all those birds and that fearsome eagle. It was something out of an Arthur Rackham book.”

  “There is nothing mundane in these lands,” said Norwen, “and only curiosity will lead you to understand the mysteries.”

  “So I shouldn’t have been shy? I walked quite close, but they were engrossed in conversation and didn’t see me. Then I heard the man say something about God having a warped sense of humour and I know God isn’t going to get offended or send claps of thunder, but I admit that did sound rather odd.” Georgia saw Norwen laughing again, then shook her head and laughed as well. “Of course, there’s no such thing as blasphemy, is there?”

  “God is within us,” said Norwen. “We would only be insulting ourselves.”

  She walked again after Norwen left her, on through the seventh plane towards her home, sometimes running, sometimes flying, always with the same exhilaration of adventure that Norwen had spoken of. The sensation of breathing remained, but she knew it was love she breathed and its strength was her strength. She had intended to go home but she turned aside before reaching her own front door, thinking of the birds and the beauty and everything that had happened and everything that she had seen. On a higher rise beyond her house one tree stood alone, reaching up into the light. A banyan of enormous girth and magnificent height, its spread encompassed a million facetted and multiplied rainbows and a shimmering dizziness of dancing and reflecting colours. It seemed to be fashioned from the light itself and it held music in every turn, for its leaves were crystal. The giant branches and their striping of bark were the essence of any banyan proud of its physical heritage, but in the freedom of the Summerlands it had become a crystal fantasy, a myriad of chiffon light, transparency in song.

  Georgia sat in the tree. There was no need to climb for it welcomed her and no need to hold on for it would never let her fall. She curled into the nook of a stretching branch and gazed around, listening to the tinkling whisper of its secrets and the gentle shimmer of its cradle. Almost she became it, invited into its essence, and breathing deeply, knew the love and friendship of tree, and glass, and trembling reflection. The music grew louder until it pounded through her, the excitement of its own heart caught into hers.

  The crystal leaves rustled as leaves should, bent and waved in the breezes and surrounded Georgia in bathed sunbeams. They caressed her in curiosity, discovering her essence. She was still there, dreaming of leprechauns and birds, when the monkeys arrived. The crackle and snap of energy moved in-between the peaceful layers of her bed and she peered down to watch them scampering, maned in silk, elongated muzzles and bodies, prancing and leaping. They swung up into the lower branches beneath her, reaching up towards her with their long clever fingers and prehensile tails. The tree lapped at their high pitched chittering and included it into the leaf music, becoming a dance of melody enclosing them all.

  The monkeys did not speak to Georgia nor open their minds into the meaning of their language but even without
the introduction of telepathy, Georgia knew their delight and it was the same as her own. Adoring their infusion of existence within her, she lay back against the dancing glass and watched the glisten of leaf make patterns across her skin like spun spider-web taffeta on the wing. She knew she would lose her body altogether sometime soon, moving into the spiritual planes where the limitations of familiar physicality ended, but for now she still enjoyed her visible self and all the sensations it carried. The Summerlands brought many treats, on every level.

  Georgia watched the monkeys. Without the need for food, for sleep or defence, they were released into everlasting play. The crystal banyan tree smiled at them all, touched them, and continued with its song.

  Chapter Forty-Three

  Primo stared back at his spiritual guide’s wide leprechaun grin, smiled begrudgingly and said, “Well, I’ve got no fucking choice now, do I? I’ve got to believe. But if you ask me, God has a bloody warped sense of humour. And what’s more, you need a dentist.”

  “God isn’t A god,” said Wilmot, wriggling his loose front tooth. “There is God in the overall and general sense, which encompasses everything. Power both specific and non-specific, both personal and impersonal, God is the whole creative force. Not separate and contradicted by science, but the creator of science. Not negated by medical invention, but the creator of both the researcher and his discovery. He is as impersonal as the sweep of the entire universe and beyond, and as personally detailed as the way a smile creases into a woman’s dimples. The God energy is in everything and everyone. Since this encompasses even you, a warped sense of humour is inevitably included.”