The Beyond

by Jeffrey Ford

Cley, in his thoughts, walked with Arla Beaton along the night streets of Anamasobia. Bataldo waved hello from across the lane, and they passed the open doors of the tavern wherein Frod Geeble could be seen pouring drinks behind the bar.

  “I heard that you were killed in the Beyond,” she said to him.

  “Mere rumor,” said Cley, and when he looked at her she was now wearing the green veil.

  “What exactly happened?” she asked.

  Clay looked away. “I was trapped in a block of unmelting ice at the bottom of a ship,” he said. “No, wait, that wasn’t me.” When he turned to her this time, she had become Anotine. “That was you,” he said.

  “No, Cley, it was me,” said Willa Olsen, who took him by the arm and led him out of town, into a meadow where a log house sat by a lake.

  Shkchl reached the inland ocean and was greeted by his fellow Water Beings.

  “Is there hope?” asked their leader.

  The weary traveler lifted his shoulders and momentarily looked up to where the waves rolled a half-mile above. “Let’s eat,” he said.

  And now the snow fell, a light flurry that powdered the meadow and left traces on the bare branches of the trees at the edge of the forest. The sight of it was beautiful, but it filled Willa with a paralyzing dread as if it were a sign that Death was on its way.

  Vasthasha, brown-leafed and showing great patches of bare thatch, moved along, bent at the waist, traversing a glacier, the last obstacle to his destination.

  The Sirimon slithered through the opening where the blue membrane had always been and curled itself into a coil defined by the edge of the pool. Over the course of three days, it fell into a heavy sleep that would last until spring.

  The crow gathered berries and insects enough to last for weeks and huddled inside the hole beneath the roof in a nest made of dead meadow grass. Its mind was addled with disease and it believed that the small wooden object (a miniature carved man) it had found in the field was its young.

  Vasthasha limped through the valley of Paradise at the heart of the Beyond. His right foot was missing; his left hand had cracked and fallen off. Both lay in a scatter of sticks out on the glacier that ringed the mythical place. Disembodied lights flew through the perfect trees. He wanted so desperately to lie down and sleep forever, but, after having traveled through the enchanted place all night, he saw with the first light of morning, the one true flower. Its blinding petals were spread outward in a vast radius from a center that was an eye of utter darkness. The stem that held the blossom was bent beneath its weight at a right angle to the ground. Its yawning middle appeared to the foliate to be a wide tunnel.

  He gathered his strength, and even though he had only one foot, he attained the speed he had at the very beginning of his journey. As Vasthasha dashed toward the flower, dry and rotted branches flew from him. The flames in his eyes died out, and tiny streams of smoke whipped away from the empty eyeholes and trailed behind him. He leaped as his life left him, and while propelled through the air, he came apart in a rattling of dry vines and dead leaves. His head and neck flew forward into the open center of the blossom, and the tiny bubble of Cley descended into the womb of the plant.

  There was a knocking at the door, and Willa screamed with the suddenness of it. She put the baby down and lifted the pistol, which she always kept loaded.

  “Cley?” she called. “Cley?”

  “A visitor,” said a strange voice.

  Wood left Wraith and went to the door. He wagged his tail and barked.

  “Who are you?” she called, thinking of the snow.

  “A friend,” said the voice.

  “Come in,” she said, and cocked the hammer.

  The door opened, and the body scribe entered.

  The wilderness slumbered inside its shell of snow and ice. Also asleep were the great serpent, the crow, the demons of the forest, and Cley. Even the Beshanti dreamt peacefully now. Misnotishul had made one last appearance during the mushroom ceremony in the last hours of autumn, and as his spirit hovered near the ceiling of the longhouse, he spoke only Beshanti. The tribe rejoiced that they had been able to save his soul.

  From the moment she first saw the old man’s face she knew there was nothing to fear. He was a great help with Wraith, and though bent and slow-moving, he could hunt and did not seem to mind the bitter winds and deep snow. She was amazed that he spoke to her in the language of the realm. But what was more astonishing was that he also seemed capable of communicating with the baby in a babbling tongue and with the dog in a pattern of high-pitched whines. Sometimes, when she saw him standing outside in the swirling powder, she believed he was talking to the very earth itself.

  Each night after dinner he asked her to please read more of her life story from the empty book. At times he would amuse them all by tossing small pinches of powder from a little pouch he carried into the fireplace. Then smoke images trailed out of the flames and came to life in the room. On one night he produced a pink cat that engaged Wood in a wrestling match before dissipating into thin air. He had drawn the first true laughter out of the child, and eased Willa’s anxiety. She wanted to ask him about Cley, but she didn’t, afraid of what he would tell her.

  The body scribe convinced Willa that it would be in the child’s best interest for him to tattoo Wraith’s forehead. When she finally nodded, he took out his tools and set to work. Even though blood ran in rivulets across the baby’s face, he smiled through the entire operation. When the work was done, there was a minute image of a crow in flight over the left eyebrow.

  “Your boy will know the language of the birds,” he said when he was finished.

  Snow blew in great gusts across the meadow. It covered over the charred remains of Fort Vordor and blocked the cave entrance wherein lay the great serpent. A long stretch of boring white underscored by the distant howling of the wind only momentarily interrupted by a glimpse of the one true flower in the heart of the Beyond. Then more white, on and on, until I almost lose the vision as the guard down the hall coughs and clears his throat. When I turn back, the snow has stopped, the wind now whispers, and there are patches of earth showing through the frozen crust. There, growing up through Curaswani’s rib cage, is a blade of grass, and I know that, in an instant, spring has come.

  In the forests to the south, the demons flapped their wings and snapped their tails, driven from sleep by hunger.

  The serpent laid her eggs, and eighteen survived the birth.

  The crow under the roof, though insane, and having lost nearly all of its feathers, still lived, having forced itself not to die so that it might care for its weak, silent offspring.

  Wraith said his first word, “Woo,” meaning the dog.

  The last of the vine holding closed the hardened dead flower encasing the hunter’s body broke off and floated away. The petals sprang open and launched the silver-slicked corpse into the underground current.

  In the Earthly Paradise, the one true flower spewed forth a cloud of pollen like a smoker coughing out a huge drag that tickled the throat. Amidst this sparkling gossamer flock of seed flew the morsel of Cley. Inside the boundary of his infinitesimal prison he was awakened by the voice of Pa-ni-ta. “The time is near,” she told him, as he was lifted by the wind high up over the rim of the glacier and sent floating southward.

  The snail in Cley’s heart was almost completely dissolved, and the muscle twitched with its absorbed energy as his body was carried along in the swift flow.

  “… And that,” said Willa, “was how I came to the Beyond.”

  The rotted hull of the wrecked ship that had drifted upon the inland ocean for years finally split open, and a block of unmelting ice drifted down to the sandy bottom.

  After a day in the forest, the body scribe returned with a handful of thin, twisted roots. Willa watched as he, methodically and meticulously, cut them into a fine powder with his stone knife.

  The moving water had almost entirely washed away the silver goo from Cley’s form. Only a very thin fi
lm remained, covering his nostrils, and a tenuous bubble guarded his open mouth. Slowly, the hunter rose toward the faint sunlight above.

  The wind rushed from the north, carrying with it the particle of Cley. It met in its flight a piece of green fabric. The veil twisted, gathered into a ball, and then snapped outward like a whip. With its very tip it struck the seed, which lost its lift and plummeted toward the earth.

  Moving the high-backed chair into the corner of the house, the old man climbed upon it. He lifted his pipe to his mouth, the bowl of which held the powdered root he had chopped the previous day. “Now,” he said to Willa, who walked forward with a short branch she had lit in the fire. She got up on her toes and dipped the flame into the bowl of the pipe. The body scribe toked at the mouthpiece, and a small cloud soon encircled his head. He drew in a huge lungful of it, and, aiming his lips at the small crack in the corner of the ceiling, he released the smoke in a thin stream.

  The body breached the surface of the lake and drifted toward the bank.

  Eighteen broken eggshells and as many slithery trails through the soft dirt snaked out of the cave and into the wilderness.

  The crow feared the smoke. Gathering up its young in its mushy beak, it pushed through dried grass that had been its comfort all winter. It flew away weak unto death and circled erratically before it dropped its charge and spiraled into the lake.

  The seed from the one true flower drifted slowly down and was passed in its descent by the falling wooden man. The miniature struck the blue tattoo of the coiled snake directly at the center of Cley’s forehead. This collision vibrated outward through the body, settling the wildly pulsing heart into a steady rhythm. The chest heaved for air, bursting inward the remaining bubble of silver, and the seed was drawn down into the hunter’s right nostril.

  “Go to the door,” said the old man, stepping down from the chair.

  Willa walked across the room and did as she was told. She went out onto the porch. Across the meadow, the green grass was sprouting all around stubborn patches of old snow. Down by the edge of the lake was Cley, standing naked, shivering with new life and the shock of being born.

  “It’s him,” she cried, and ran to the bedroom to get a blanket. Wood darted out of the house. The old man lifted the child off his blanket on the floor and, smiling, headed toward the lake. Willa rushed past the body scribe and reached the hunter first.

  “Where have you been?” she asked, throwing the warm cover over him and wrapping her arm around his shoulders to keep it in place. She suspected from the distant look in his eyes that he had been to Paradise.

  He grunted but could not yet speak the word, Dead.

  consumed by the wilderness

  The last two days have been a whirlwind of activity, not all good, some actually dreadful, but to my delight, swirling around a central axis that is yours truly. Ladies and gentlemen of the jury, I have been to court, and seeing as how tomorrow they will pronounce my guilt or innocence as concerns the murder of Cley, I thought I had better get back to work and make one more trip to the Beyond. Feskin has told me he believes that the prosecution has built a good case, although much of their evidence is circumstantial. It is our hope that I will walk out of the courtroom tomorrow a free man.

  The guard down the hallway is snoring like a warthog, and I have just administered my remaining dose of the beauty. What a respite it will be after such frantic goings-on. Before I leave myself behind here in my cell and go to find Cley in the wilderness, I will take a few minutes to record for you the events that have transpired in the court of Constable Spencer.

  Feskin had assured them that I would not need to be handcuffed, and they accepted his promise. Still, they sent no fewer than ten men with rifles to chaperone me down the short hallway into the court. My usual lethargic guard came the morning following my pitiful first day of incarceration and turned his big key in the lock of my cell. Stepping free of the confines of the barred cubicle reminded me of Cley being reborn into the wilderness. When I stretched my wings, all of the ten guns came up in alarm. Had they fired, I think they most likely would have shot each other.

  Feskin was to act as my attorney, and he had begged me to wear my outfit, so I did. I felt I was looking rather good as I strode down the aisle between the two rows of benches facing the constable. I wondered which of the people of the gallery I passed were among the crowd outside my window through the night, calling for my immediate execution. I turned and smiled to one and all. Emilia and her mother were seated in the back. The girl waved to me and I to her.

  The prosecutor was a true believer, if you know what I mean—a rancorous rail of a fellow named Jasweth Frabone, a name I can’t believe any mother would have given her son. He wore a brown suit that shimmered in its cheapness. His hair was failing mightily, though a few wispy strands were overtaxed in an attempt to suggest otherwise. It was obvious that he was too righteous even to eat. Yellow nails, yellow teeth, and skin the color of toadstools. When the constable called him forward to make some preliminary remarks, he bombastically lambasted me personally with religious quotation. I, in turn, corrected his botched recitation of a line from Saint Ilfus, and both Spencer and Feskin told me to keep quiet. So I did.

  As was the law in the court at Wenau, the prosecution was given the first day in which to lay out its case, and on the following day the defense had the opportunity to rebut the charges. On the morning of the third day, a decision would be rendered by the constable. Frabone began by first introducing Semla Hood and again getting her story about the stone knife. The old woman had a self-satisfied smile on her face as she stood in front of the room, holding the weapon up for all to see. While she was speaking, Feskin leaned over to me and whispered that he planned to demand her arrest for theft. I had to laugh. Spencer admonished me with a glance, and I heard whispers roll through the sea of onlookers.

  Semla Hood was followed by her compatriots, the three wise men, dullards all, who in turn gave their meandering testimonies. The court was in a doze by the time they were done. But when Frabone next brought forth the small red-covered book that was supposedly Cley’s diary, I could feel the tension begin to build. He also produced a page from one of Cley’s famous manuscripts and laid it beside the book on Spencer’s desk.

  “Notice,” said the prosecutor, “the overall similarity of writing styles.”

  Spencer looked and looked and then nodded. “Can you be more specific?” he asked.

  “Certainly,” said Frabone, and launched into a painstaking comparison of i dots and the tails of y’s. “The M in Misrix, most fittingly, Your Honor, has these points like the horns of a demon,” he said and, as Spencer bent forward, the prosecutor glared back at me in a show of arrogance. In response to him, I lifted my tail and curled the end into a perfect likeness of a question mark. I heard laughter come from the gallery of citizens behind me.

  “If you would, Constable, please read this passage, here,” said the prosecutor, pointing to the open diary.

  “As you wish,” said Spencer. He cleared his throat and then proceeded to recite in his gruff voice: “‘The black dog has been missing now for two days, and I fear the demon has devoured him. I woke last night and found the creature standing over me with a ravenous look in his yellow eyes. Saliva dripped from his lips, and I am quite sure that if I had not come to in time and quickly pulled my knife, he would have dined on me also. As it is, I think it will be only a matter of days before he does me in. The Beyond has a powerful hold on him, and he has told me on more than one occasion that he longs to be one with it. I have suggested that we split up, but he assures me that I will come to no harm. Through the course of the days, though, I see him sizing me up the way I might the caribou steaks I have longed for since entering this damnable Hell.’”

  “Very good, Your Honor,” said Frabone, when the constable paused. “And there are two more entries in which Cley’s suspicions turn to certainties and he says his good-byes to the world … If I may, I will read the longer of
the two.” As the prosecutor took the diary from the desk, Spencer nodded. Frabone began reading and took a step toward me.

  “‘I have been hiding from Misrix in this cave for the past week. Wood has never returned. I write only to relieve my anxiety. As I sit, knife in hand, always waiting for the sound of his hooves on the rocks outside, the sweep of his wings from above, I wonder if I ever really returned from Below’s memory. Last night I dreamt of Anotine and Arla and another woman on the streets of Anamasobia. The past is flooding in, brimming with suggestion but utterly pointless. To be consumed by the wilderness, is that not what I wanted all along?’”

  The prosecutor snapped the diary shut in front of my face, then turned on his heels and walked back to Spencer. “Now that you have heard these, you must want to know the last,” said Frabone.

  “Well?” said the constable.

  The prosecutor paged slowly through the book toward the end. When he arrived, he shook his head sadly. “Cley’s last written words, his last communication to us was, ‘I don’t understand.’”

  There was a moment of silence before Frabone said, “I don’t understand. I don’t understand why we are trying a creature. This is better settled out of doors, somewhere off in the woods outside the town. This is an insult to Justice itself.”

  “Conserve your energy, Jasweth,” said Spencer, then called a recess for lunch.

  I was taken back to my cell, and the guard asked me what I would have to eat. Eventually I ordered my usual meal of vegetables and fruit, but before I gave my real order, I said, “How about Frabone, with a baked apple in every orifice?” The ten gunmen laughed heartily.

  It was only while sitting in my cell that the morning’s performance by the prosecutor began to irritate me. All lies, as if he were talking about some other reality. I admonished myself by thinking, “You were there with Cley, you know what has happened to him. Don’t let their trumpery confuse you.”