by Mark Hodder
“We are not injured,” Clarissa said. “Forest, you say? Where is it located?”
“It is where it is. Where else could it be?”
Another of the loathsome things scuttled over. It bore a jagged gouge running down the left side of its body—an old wound.
Yazziz Yozkulu turned to it. “Have we gathered enough Dar’sayn, Tsillanda Ma’ara?”
“We have. I will be glad to depart. I find the forest repellent.”
“As do I. I always feel a sense of trespass when we come here. However, the Saviour demands it, and the Ptoollan trees have served us well, so I suppose the diversion was worth the effort. Look at these misshapen things, though!” The creature gestured at Clarissa and me. “I don’t know what to make of them!”
“I think we have encountered a potential dissonance, my Yazziz.”
“Perhaps so. You have greater sensitivity to such matters than I. Should we withdraw from the Ritual of Immersion?”
“If you will it.”
“Do you advise it?”
“No. I recommend we proceed as normal. These new ones are curious but the dissonance I sense is fledgling. Let us take them with us. When we return to Yatsillat, we can present them to our fellow Wise Ones.”
“Very well. Saviour’s Eyes, but they are peculiarities, though!”
The Yazziz—it appeared to be a title rather than a name—lifted the hollow rod it held and very gently prodded Clarissa with the blunt end. “The other ones will feed you if you require it.”
“The other ones?” my friend asked.
One of the Koluwaian women leaned forward and touched my companion’s shoulder. “Us. Do not be concerned. We are children of the Saviour, and the gods are kind.”
“That is true,” Yazziz Yozkulu said, then addressed the woman. “Take your people back to the Ptall’kor. We will join you presently.” The beast scurried away with the one called Tsillanda Ma’ara following behind.
A shrill giggle escaped me, and I heard a sharp edge of madness in it.
Clarissa reached out, groped for my hand, and held it tightly. “Aiden, what’s wrong? I don’t know where we are, but at least we’re not with Iriputiz, and the people seem well disposed toward us.”
“People!” I screeched. “They’re not people, Clarissa! They are—they are—monsters! And this place—it’s a nightmare! A nightmare!”
The islander who’d spoken before said, “My name is Kata. This is Ptallaya. Those with us are the Wise Ones. Come. I will lead you to the Ptall’kor.”
She stood, as did the other islanders. I helped Clarissa to her feet and we followed the group through the trees.
“How far are we from Koluwai?” Clarissa asked.
“As far as can be,” Kata responded. “Ptallaya is where the gods dwell.”
A few moments later we came to the edge of the forest, and here I was confronted by yet another paralysing sight. It was a living thing, floating in the air, but whether animal or vegetable I couldn’t say. In shape, it was similar to a mermaid’s purse—the egg case of a shark or skate, dried examples of which I’d seen in bric-a-brac shops—but a powdery brown, and massive, at least a hundred feet long and thirty wide. Seaweed-like ribbons rose high into the sky from its corners, buoyed up by gas-filled sacs, and from the thing’s underside a great many tendrils dangled to the ground, about twenty feet below. Each of these had finger-like appendages at its end, which gripped the grass, appearing to hold the thing down.
“It is a Ptall’kor,” Kata explained. She emitted a trilling whistle and the thing responded by sinking down. There were Koluwaians and more of the mollusc creatures sitting on its back.
Following the islanders, I guided Clarissa up onto it and we settled on its chitinous hide. My companion let go of my hand and pressed her palms against her eyes. “It won’t do. It won’t do at all. I need my goggles. You must detail everything, Aiden. I must know our circumstance. Tell me! What is around us?”
Feeling drunk and remote, I started to speak mechanically, my emotions disengaged. I described the weird forest and its mumbling fruits, the Ptall’kor, and the landscape beyond the trees.
“The sky is pale yellow, Clarissa. There are four moons overhead and two small suns close together and very low, just above the horizon, which, incidentally, is too far away.”
“Atmospheric illusions?”
“I don’t think so.”
“What else?”
I looked down at my limbs and, at last, emotions registered—embarrassment and humiliation! I was naked! Completely naked! But my exposure also revealed that my body was covered from head to toe in small, thin white scars—Iriputiz and his knife, but healed already? How could that be possible?
“Reverend Fleischer!” my companion barked.
“I—I can’t. It’s too—too—”
She gripped my arm, almost viciously. “Be my eyes!”
Her voice was sharp and assertive, but I suddenly became aware that she was trembling, too.
I gave a deep, shuddering sigh. “The forest is at the mouth of a valley, which opens onto a wide savannah. I see a narrow river winding through it. There are mountains on one side of the valley and low hills on the other. All the colours are of a soft hue. There are exotic plants and giant trees, and herds of—of—I don’t know what they are.”
“Antelope, like in Africa?”
“No—similar, but not antelope. And a lot of flying things. They don’t look like birds. More like sea life, but floating in the air with—um—buoyancy sacs, I suppose. Here come the—the—” My voice failed me as the “Wise Ones” scuttled into view and clambered aboard the Ptall’kor. They placed bulging and sloshing skins into a pile and the one called Yazziz Yozkulu announced, “Only two new ones delivered to us—and strange ones at that—but at least we have plenty of Dar’sayn and can now leave this accursed place. On with our journey, and Saviour protect us!”
Our “vehicle” rose into the air and pulled itself past one of the colossal trees. At my companion’s request, I described it in greater detail: the raised roots, so tall a man could easily walk among them; the trunk, silvery grey, at least thirty feet wide but proportionately short; and the feathery fern-like leaves that arched outward from its top. They were of a soft pinkish hue and comprised of ever-thinning filaments that became so slight as to be almost invisible, causing the edges of the fronds to melt into the air. This was common to much of the flora that I subsequently observed—the thinning of foliage to the point where it became a nimbus around its parent plant. Together with the dominant pastel shades, it gave the landscape such a lack of definition that it might have been a dream.
Perhaps it was!
Wake up, Fleischer! Wake up!
“I’m so drowsy,” I mumbled as the Ptall’kor glided out over the grassy plain.
“Probably shock,” Clarissa said. “I daresay I’d be the same if I could see. Apart from that, how are you—your health, I mean?”
“I feel heavy and lethargic but—but I’m all right.”
“No traces of fever?”
“No! Apart from this dragging weight and tiredness, I feel physically fine.”
“Perhaps gravity is a little more powerful here, and that’s why you feel so sluggish. But the kichyomachyoma is cured?”
“I’d forgotten about that! Yes, it appears to be. Gravity? What do you mean?”
“Isn’t it obvious, Aiden? This isn’t Earth.”
“I have to sleep now.”
I lay down, closed my eyes, and shut it all out.
° °
When I awoke, Kata, the Koluwaian woman, pushed an object into my hand and said, “Eat.”
The thing, which was the size of a grapefruit, looked like a perfectly spherical nut with a single groove running around its circumference. It was green, and firm to the touch. Following Kata’s lead, I bit into it. It had the texture of an apple but tasted like a cross between a melon and pear. It was delicious.
“For how long did I slee
p?”
Clarissa answered. “It’s hard to say, but I’d estimate three or four hours. What time of day is it?”
I looked at the twin suns. They hadn’t moved at all. Our shadows were still long.
Kata said, “We are early in the sight of the Saviour.”
I examined her more closely. She was a short, fat woman of indeterminate age with a very broad and flat forehead, a crooked nose, and a protuberant jaw.
“Kata has been telling me about Ptallaya,” Clarissa said. I saw that she now had a cloth wound about her head, like a blindfold, to protect her eyes. “The things you called monsters are Yatsill. They are divided into the Wise Ones and the Shunned.”
Kata gestured toward the front of the Ptall’kor, where the six creatures who’d been in the forest with us stood. “The Wise Ones,” she said, and then pointed to the rear where nine more squatted, “Those are children. We are taking them to Immersion, where some will be made Wise and others Shunned. All the newly born Yatsill make this journey when the Eyes of the Saviour open. The rest are on other Ptall’kors, which are far ahead of us. We will be last to Immersion, for we travelled first to the forest to collect Dar’sayn.”
I didn’t comprehend any of this.
I took another bite of the fruit and chewed it, the sweet juice quenching my thirst. We were drifting past a slow-moving river. I watched as little cone-shaped animals with long spidery legs and flat circular feet scampered across its surface. They looked comical. They looked like nothing on Earth.
The rising suns were directly ahead of us, in what I instinctively considered to be the East, even though the points of a compass may have been meaningless on this world. There were low hills to either side of us. At our rear, at the edge of the now distant Forest of Indistinct Murmurings, a range of jagged mountains rose up and stretched away “southward.”
Kata saw me looking at them and said, “They are the Mountains That Gaze Upon Phenadoor.” She passed a strip of material to me. I put the fruit aside, stood up, and wound the cloth around my hips. My goodness, what comfort I gained from that simple rag! Adam’s fig leaf!
“What is Phenadoor?” I asked.
“It is the sea. Phenadoor: the Place of No Sorrow or Pain, of Indescribable Joy, of Eternal Bliss. The Shunned enter it when it is time to die. It is their recompense.”
“For what?”
“For not being Wise.”
“And the ones who are Wise?”
“They are denied Phenadoor.”
“Why?”
“Because the Saviour is not the only god.”
“I don’t understand.”
Kata shrugged.
I examined the so-called “children.” They looked identical to the other Yatsill except they lacked the little bumps above their upper eyes, were not armed with spears, and were very quiet, squatting motionlessly but for the constant movement of their fingers.
Clarissa asked, “So it’s decided at Immersion which of the creatures will enter Phenadoor and which won’t? Where does this ritual occur?”
“In the Shrouded Mountains. The children will go into a pool there. It is tradition.”
As the seemingly interminable journey went on, I continued to describe the scenery to my friend. Gradually, I began to feel a little more in the “here and now.”
“It’s actually quite beautiful,” I said. “Can you imagine, Clarissa, the subject matters of Hieronymus Bosch but painted, instead, by J. M. Turner?”
“Frankly, no. And I would hardly classify Bosch as beautiful,” she responded.
“True, but there is so much to take in, and all of it so queer, that the effect is the same. I feel overwhelmed and mesmerised by it; my eyes can barely make sense of it; yet, undeniably, there is an allure in its softness and luminosity.”
“Unfortunately, I can neither corroborate nor refute your impressions, Aiden. But I’m pleased to hear you sounding more yourself.”
“You’re right! A little sleep has done me a world of good!”
“An interesting choice of words,” she responded.
I glanced at the group of Yatsill standing at the “prow” of our bizarre vessel. “Then we really are on another planet?”
“Can you doubt it?”
I watched a creature float through the air nearby. It was a hollow, transparent ball, about twelve feet across with a hole on opposite sides. The opening at the rear expanded, moved forward, enveloped the creature, then, having moved to the front, shrank, while the opening that was now at the back started the process all over again. The thing thus moved along by turning itself inside out.
“No,” I said. “I don’t doubt it at all. But how are we here?”
“A more pertinent question might be why.”
“You think there’s a reason?”
“If Iriputiz wanted to get rid of us, he could have killed us with impunity. Instead, he caused us to be transported to this place.”
“Or—or—” I struggled with the idea that had just occurred to me.
“What?”
“Or he did kill us, Clarissa. He killed us, and we are in Heaven—or Hell.”
“As a priest, surely you’d recognise which?”
“The landscape might be Paradise, but its inhabitants—” My voice trailed away.
Clarissa massaged the calf muscle of her right leg. “Why would Heaven have a heavier gravity? Why would the atmosphere of Hell have a citrus tang? If this is the afterlife, why do my legs still pain me? No, Aiden, this is undoubtedly a world of the flesh rather than of the spirit, and I suppose the reason for us being here will emerge in due course.”
° °
In Earthly terms, day after day must have passed as the Ptall’kor pulled itself over the rolling grasslands, but on Ptallaya the twin suns barely moved at all. I ate, I slept, I examined the extraordinary flora and fauna, I even became bored, and still the journey went on.
Eventually, when I shaded my eyes and peered ahead, I saw, rising from the horizon, a wall of white vapour bubbling high into the air. The Ptall’kor, making straight for it, entered a valley and pulled itself alongside a wide river, gliding over an ever-thickening forest of purple-leafed trees, transferring its gripping fingers from the grassy ground to the upper canopy and disturbing flocks of weird flying—or floating—creatures as it passed. It was becoming plainly apparent to me that many of this world’s animals were tremendously buoyant, and used their long tendril-like limbs not to take to the air, but to hold themselves down. A large number of smaller animals, dislodged by the groping hands of the Ptall’kor, slipped out of the foliage behind us and shot upward before jerking to a halt at the end of silken threads, which they’d obviously attached to twigs and branches. Looking back the way we’d come, I could see hundreds of them, like oddly shaped balloons marking our passage, slowly drawing their bodies back down into the leaves.
“Soon we will stop so the Wise Ones can hunt Yarkeen,” Kata told us. “After we have eaten, we’ll travel through the Valley of Reflections to the Shrouded Mountains and the Cavern of Immersion.”
“What is Yarkeen?” I asked.
“That is.”
I followed her pointing finger and saw, between us and the wall of steam, a huge balloon-like gas sac floating high in the air. It was semi-transparent—which is why I hadn’t noticed it before—and resembled an upside-down teardrop in shape. From its base, a long cord descended and, about thirty feet above the ground, flared outward like the mouth of a trumpet, forming into a broad disk, which—as became evident when we drew closer to it—was at least a mile in diameter. Multiple translucent tentacles extended from the edges of this and were probing about in the foliage below.
“How can something that size be hunted?” I exclaimed.
“What, Aiden? What is it?” Clarissa interjected.
I told her about the creature. She banged the palms of her hands against her blindfold in frustration.
“Hunting a Yarkeen is dangerous,” Kata said. “When the Eyes of t
he Saviour are upon it, it will not purposely attack, but if it realises that it’s in danger, it will defend itself, and it is very powerful.”
“But why bother hunting it?” I asked. “It’s gigantic! We couldn’t possibly eat it all, and I see plenty of smaller creatures all around us, not to mention fruit-heavy trees and bushes filled with berries.”
The Koluwaian nodded. “Only a small part of the Yarkeen is edible but traditions must be followed.”
I don’t know how long it took us to reach the massive creature. Time was stuck. Perhaps I slept again, I’m not certain.
Awareness returned to me when we drew close to the beast. Its vast disk lay off to our right, above low, forested hills. I saw that, high above, around the thing’s buoyancy sac, a cloud of smaller things were flying. They were at such an altitude that I couldn’t make out any details, but I guessed the individual creatures to be about the size of a man. They swooped and turned about each other the way starlings do, forming complex patterns of light and shade, somehow—almost inconceivably—avoiding collisions.
“They are Zull,” Kata told me. “Usually there are more of them. They come to the Shrouded Mountains to die. Look.” She pointed at the ground and I saw there the hollowed and desiccated remains of something that had once been rather humanoid in shape, though multi-limbed. It was lying beside a stream, partially obscured by a dried flap of skin. Tiny maggoty things were crawling from the carcass and disappearing into the fast-flowing water.
The corpse, I realised, belonged to the same order of being as the one I’d discovered in the glade on Koluwai.
“Are Zull dangerous?”
“No. They won’t approach us.”
By means that escaped me, the Yatsill caused the Ptall’kor to pull itself down to ground level, where it settled in a grassy clearing. They then took up their spears, and Yazziz Yozkulu stepped over to us. “You will remain here with the young ones. We will return with Yarkeen meat for you.”
“We shall keep them safe,” Kata answered. “May the Saviour grant you success in the hunt.”