Between

by Barbara Gaskell Denvil

  “Not exactly a tame deity though, is He?” said Primo, memories caught on a sigh. “Paternal perhaps, but hardly cuddly or sentimental.”

  “Am I expected to answer that?” said the leprechaun.

  “Don’t bother,” said Primo. “I already know the answer.”

  He had woken in the Summerlands hospital with an ease of self and sweet bathed understanding that was greater than anything he had ever known. The pleasure of it was as blinding as the light that welcomed him from the row of windows across the far wall. He sprang from the bed, leaping from shadow to topaz sunshine, feeling the delighted brush of feather from the harpy against his cheek as she flew to join him. They left the hospital together.

  Wilmot was standing directly outside. At first, and for the first few words, he stood immensely tall and exquisitely beautiful, a great spirit from the ninth plane in all his blazing glory, surrounded by an aura as white as it was iceberg blue.

  He said, “My dear friend, you are almost home. Welcome to the sixth plane.”

  Primo stood quite still for a moment, staring and grinning like an idiot. “The sixth? Fuck,” he said at last.

  “It is nice to know,” acknowledged the spiritual being with a faint quiver, “that you have not changed too much.”

  Primo stood and blinked. The sun shone, the birds sang. The green rolling scenery was as vivid as his eyes could absorb and the light was tingling with the shimmer of fresh life. Wilmot himself seemed utterly awe inspiring. “God! What I found out through all that sleeping! Spiritual stuff and what it’s all for. And then about me personally. The past. Well, you were there in my head, you know it all. Shit. No wonder I chose to forget. Poor Daisy. Poor bloody Primo. I was a right prick, wasn’t I? And now the sixth plane? I wasn’t expecting this at all. I do hope all that remembering has changed me a hell of a lot.”

  “Indeed?” smiled Wilmot. “Instead, I hope not. I would miss you.” The deep, deep smile of a ninth plane essence is a majestic delight, but it was at this point that Wilmot turned into a leprechaun. “Now then,” he continued briskly, “you may feel dutifully flattered by having arrived at the sixth, but as I said, you are not quite at home yet. Come with me.”

  “Is it far?” said Primo, who was bouncing excitedly but still barely awake.

  “There is no such thing as distance,” said Wilmot firmly, and took his hand. They rose together, directly into the air.

  Primo watched the passing magnificence below as they sailed like butterflies across the thermal warmth and landed, finally, beside a vast reed and lilied lake, silver and green shadowed, with shallow velvet banks. They sat there on the grass, which was as dry and gently welcoming as a cushioned nest. The lakes were thick with bird life and the harpy hooked herself to Primo’s shoulder, regarding the other creatures with a baleful jealousy. Primo said, “I believe it’s raining. That’s the first time I’ve felt rain, either dead or alive, for a very long time. I used to long for rain.”

  “You lived in desert lands,” nodded the leprechaun. “Scrub creatures enjoy the rain. Here on the sixth, you invariably get what you wish for.”

  The misty rain hung around them like gossamer, a golden shimmer of summer shower. “So it’s my rain,” grinned Primo. “I like that.”

  “Then get rid of it,” demanded the leprechaun. “It’s ruining my whiskers.” He had a very fine handlebar moustache in a gingery blonde, which curled impressively at both ends and nearly reached up into the brim of his hat.

  Primo got rid of the rain, though he wasn’t quite sure how he had done it. “So what’s in the sack?” he inquired, muffling a snigger and nodding towards the calico parcel hanging around the leprechaun’s stubby neck.

  The label ‘gold and treasure’ quickly appeared on the outside. “Now let us return to the point,” said Wilmot. “You have accepted all the memories you previously stifled. You have relinquished guilt, but accepted responsibility. You have my permission to feel thoroughly smug.”

  Primo couldn’t stop smiling. He said, “I do.”

  The leprechaun twirled his moustache and flicked a couple of errant raindrops from its waxed tips. Then he sighed. “Once you see your new home, being the current symbol of your state of progress, I am afraid you’ll become even more full of yourself. In fact, there’ll be no living with you.”

  Primo winked. “Why? Thinking of moving in? To share a little banter and buggery? Dance and debauchery?”

  “Ah,” replied Wilmot, unrepentant, “those were the days. However, I am glad to see you have left defecation off the itinerary. The fuck is definitely superior to the shit. And no, I have no intention of sharing your meagre hovel for I have my own spirit in which to reside, and find it strangely sufficient. But we deviate. I have brought you to the boarder separating the sixth plane from the seventh, and you must wait here until your vibrations have adjusted.”

  “Border lands?” said Primo, interested. “No fogs?”

  “Not here,” Wilmot said. “Seeing clearly is a prerequisite for all those who reach this level. Crossing this border is merely a small damp step.”

  “Well, the birds seem to have no problem.”

  “The adjustment of vibration is instinctive for animals and does not depend on spiritual advancement,” nodded Wilmot.

  Hearing herself indirectly mentioned, the harpy ruffled her feathers and began absently to clean inside Primo’s ear. Primo shook his head, dislodging her beak. “Perhaps it was instinct for me too,” he said. “While sleeping perhaps. I can’t see I’ve done much else. I’m really not sure how I suddenly got up this far. I went to bed on the fourth and climbed out onto the sixth.”

  “You underestimate both yourself and your inestimable guide,” said the leprechaun. “Not to mention the astonishing powers of sleep. However, you are also overlooking something even more powerful, which is courage. Your own courage in particular.”

  “Oh, that,” Primo dismissed it easily. “Besides, I thought you were busy inferring I was a fucking coward most of the time. All that refusing to remember business. Wasn’t that being scared?”

  “Being scared is not the same thing as cowardice,” Wilmot said. “Refusing to remember is not the same as cowardice. Choosing the utter vacuum in preference to the expectation of pain, is not cowardice.”

  “Well I suppose courage is just one more thing I don’t understand,” smiled Primo, “along with all the rest. But since I have a genius for a guide, no doubt he’ll explain it all in time. Like why the fuck I ended up living with Daisy for a while, and thinking I was in love with her.”

  “Why not?” The leprechaun raised a wiry eyebrow. “She fulfilled her destiny, as you did yours. Your paths crossed in precisely the manner you both agreed before your births. This previous life and death bound you with ties of need and dependence. It is not unusual.”

  “Karma?” suggested Primo.

  “If you insist on speaking to me in platitudes and clichés,” said Wilmot with hauteur, “I shall turn into a poison-dart frog, sit on that delightful lily pad in front of us, and croak at you. My teaching would then presumably have precisely the same effect.”

  Primo grinned. “Tell me one thing then. How did she die? I mean, poor Daisy, she’d gone as daft as a junkie. They didn’t haul her up on death’s row or something did they? Seems she came over about the same time as me or not long after, but it’s hard to tell. Time plays strange tricks over here.”

  “It is not my business to tell you how she died,” said Wilmot. “That is her business alone. However, the circumstances are fairly irrelevant and although not all humanity dies in joy, most do. In fact, the process of death, though there are no rules and each case is individual, is generally efficient, quick and exceptionally pleasant. The density of the body bursts aside as the spirit, vibrating at wavelengths far exceeding the speed of light, breaks free.”

  “Mine wouldn’t have been fucking quick or pleasant, if you hadn’t been there,” remembered Primo.

  “But I was there, wasn�
�t I,” said Wilmot. “No spirit is ever entirely abandoned, even those who wish it. It was not, of course, the manner of your dying that caused your misery. It was your state of mind. You rejected continuance.”

  Primo blushed slightly. “Alright. Forget blame and self-pity. I don’t feel like that really, they’re just old habits.” He looked up and smiled. “You carried me over. You took all the pain into yourself. That was an incredible gift.”

  “It was less nauseating for me to absorb your physical pain than it would have been for me to watch you feel it,” said Wilmot gently.

  Primo curled his legs up beneath him, watching his reflection float like a lily pad, though without any amphibious passengers, upon the lake. He noticed again that Wilmot left no reflection at all, neither leprechaun nor otherwise. “You do know, don’t you,” Primo said, staring down into his own watery eyes and their rippled frown, “that I am absolutely fucking paralysed with prick-shit gratitude. For everything you’ve done, right from the beginning. I may not know how to fucking say it or fucking show it, but I fucking mean it.”

  Wilmot smiled. “I know, dear child. Strangely enough, I once spoke your language myself. I am well aware how the translation works.”

  “You mean the stupid bastard inability to say either sorry or thank you, but meaning it all the same.”

  “That’s the one,” nodded Wilmot.

  “So being an idiot,” Primo went on grinning, “doesn’t preclude me from getting right up as high as the sixth. In one magic leap too.”

  “Although you have every reason to feel proud of your newly elevated status,” Wilmot remarked, giving his boot buckles a quick polish with his emerald cuffs, “your arrival here should also be seen as a just and righteous prerogative. You can only go where your proper state takes you. There is neither shame on the lower planes, nor vain-glory on the higher, for these are the natural steps of progress. On the living Earth, few would condemn humanity for its youth or insult a child for being young. Nor would they normally congratulate a man simply for having achieved middle age. These are the planes of the Summerlands, and they correspond in part to claiming the wisdom of the years.”

  “So I’m now middle aged,” nodded Primo, looking decidedly young and bubblingly pleased. “Then I reckon it’s time I started settling into my new plane and building my new home. Sounds like you have the place picked out yourself. I really want to see what you’ve chosen.”

  “I have not picked the place, merely recognised and marked it,” smiled Wilmot. “It stands, as it must, where your own essence properly belongs. As with everything else, there are no accidents, lucky or unlucky mistakes, and when your mind is a mud-hole of insignificant vulgarity, so your home will inevitably be a lop-sided slum dwelling on the third plane.”

  “Patronising bastard,” said Primo fondly. “So where do I build my hovel this time?”

  The leprechaun shook his head beneath the wide brimmed hat. “It is already built. It took shape as your own readiness took shape during your sleep therapy. Naturally I have added the finishing touches myself.”

  Primo jumped up, excited. “Well, it feels good not to be homeless for once. Can I see it?”

  “I believe you are sufficiently prepared,” nodded Wilmot, and stood. On the instant, the leprechaun faded and the man took back his natural shape. He was tall, strong jawed and his eyes were astonishingly beautiful, though it was hard to see features through the brilliance of his aura.

  Primo looked his guide up and down with appreciative admiration. “Gorgeous,” he muttered, “but I reckon I understand why you go in for disguises. I mean, the truth is pretty overwhelming, isn’t it?”

  “Shall we hop the lily pads?” Wilmot said, ignoring the glowing appraisal. “Or would you prefer to fly?”

  Primo looked around in surprise. “Is it far? I assumed it was somewhere near these banks.”

  “With me,” smiled Wilmot, “you should never assume anything,” and he took Primo’s hand and with the harpy close behind and slightly above, took the air. They flew right over the silvering wetlands, directly through a startled flock of pelican, and on into the rise of the greens ahead.

  “Shit,” said Primo, looking down, increasingly excited. “We’re on the seventh?”

  “With a guide such as myself,” answered Wilmot through the shiver of breeze, “did you expect anything more meagre? Naturally you now belong on the seventh.”

  After a pause during which no more satisfactory word occurred to him, Primo said, “Fuck.”

  “No doubt,” agreed Wilmot. “But I trust a few more salubrious exclamations will spring to your tongue before you get acquainted with your new neighbours. Otherwise you will shock the bourgeoisie.”

  “If I knew who they were, no doubt I’d enjoy shocking them,” said Primo. Then he had no more time to say anything because they had arrived. It was not what he had expected.

  The walls soared into white turrets, the sides vertical and smooth. The stone was dazzling and varied, a sandstone or lime, pale granite, quartz, alabaster and marble, all the pastels in rock which shimmered and shone together like a child’s wonderland of building bricks. It was a tower.

  “It’s an eyrie,” said Primo. “Fucking brilliant.”

  “I believe you will find it most comfortable both inside and out,” said Wilmot, coming down to land beside the open front doorway. “Not large, but ambitiously high, with a stacked precipice of rooms, a central pool on the ground floor and a garden of sorts on top. Indeed, were there any clouds, your roof would be in them.”

  The harpy folded her wings and dropped to the turreted peaks, strutting the heights. “Well, she approves her perch,” nodded Primo. “She’ll build her nest, and maybe sometimes I’ll sleep out there with her. This is - wonderful. Amazing. And I can see some of your artistic touches. Very nice.”

  Wilmot bowed humbly. “I’m delighted you deigned to notice.” There were gargoyles squatting on every turret, each a grinning infant devil. One was picking his nose. Another had his tongue out. A third was biting his toe nails.

  “You know,” said Primo, sitting on the doorstep and hugging his knees, “if this really represents my present state of spiritual progress, then I fucking love me. I’m an eccentric show off with guilt turned to narcissism, no practicality whatsoever, lots of imagination and plenty of individual determination. And what’s that other attribute you anointed me with earlier? Courage!”

  “You may need courage to live here,” grinned Wilmot. “You’ll be up and down stairs all day long.”

  “I’ll fly,” said Primo. “I think I’m half bird by now anyway.”

  So he flew, entering his home through its second floor window. Wilmot entered in a more dignified manner through the front door and a swirl of his own deep blue robes against the rich saffron silk curtains of the main living room. He sat and stretched on the long cushioned couch, listening to the busy and bustling explorations of his excited ward above. Finally he called. “I am under the illusion, since time is an illusion, that I am being kept waiting.”

  Reappearing instantly and still pink with pride and pleasure, Primo shrugged. “Bossy bastard,” he said with the consistent grin.

  “Since the house in every detail represents yourself,” Wilmot reminded him, “it would seem that you have finally reached a state of equilibrium between desire and fulfilment.”

  Primo nodded heartily. “I’m obviously fucking wonderful. You know, I sort of remember almost building this during one of those hospital dreams. After I’d dreamt through the dying and everything, then I dreamed on along strange paths and into odd murky shadows. I can’t remember all of it, but I have a sort of picture of building a tower, step by step upwards. And,” he frowned fiercely towards Wilmot, “I’m not forgetting on purpose anymore. Don’t you send me back to sleep, I’ve had enough. And that’s not cowardice either.”

  Wilmot sighed. “The ignorance of the newly unrepentant!” he said. “Cowardice is none of these things, it is simply the deni
al of courage. Courage is the natural state of the soul, which can be distorted by many acts of cowardice, such as blame, anger, procrastination, becoming the victim and blocking the mind from its intended progress. Although you chose guilt during life, it was simply to refuse the alternative title of victim. You are no coward, my friend. This is important, for spirit fear is the opposite of love.”

  “I was often scared,” admitted Primo, momentarily losing the grin.

  “Have I not already lectured you on this subject?” demanded Wilmot. “And already pointed out that being scared has nothing to do with spirit fear? No matter. I shall be endeavouring to instil a little understanding into that thick head of yours for many periods to come. You have not finished with me yet you know. The seventh plane does not ensure immunity from interfering guides.”

  “God,” exclaimed Primo with fervour, “I fucking hope not. If you fucking left me now, I’d be lost. I don’t even know anyone else on this plane.”

  “You may have moved into a tower,” smiled Wilmot, “but you are not Rapunzel. I trust you will eventually make friends.”

  “Well, there’s not another house in sight,” said Primo, with a vague wave towards the wide and gleaming window. Beyond the entering sunlight the great distances stretched, vales of rolling poppy pastures rising to the sudden green hills, then beyond to pinnacles and snowed peaks. Behind the tower was a forest of marching oaks, cut by a pool dipped river. There was no sign of other life except the geese flying overhead.

  “Your lower plane experiences may lead you to suppose otherwise,” smiled Wilmot, “but here the willingness to communicate will always unite you with souls akin to yourself, either because you think alike or because you have a similar wish for company.”

  “Well,” said Primo firmly, “I hadn’t thought there could be someone else who thought like me. Besides, I still need you. I still want you. Desperately want you.”

  “I am touched,” said Wilmot. “Certainly guides are apt to have a deep connection to their neophytes. I must warn you however, before you commit yourself too guilelessly, that this charming relationship is not likely to finish soon, either by whim or by design. It is probable that we will meet again in lives to come, unknowingly of course, though with that frustrating déjà vu which is rarely explained during physical incarnations.”