The Elder Man

by Katherine Wyvern

  When the path finally stopped descending, they were almost in pitch-dark. The ground was moist and soft underfoot, and Armin realized they must be near the bottom of the valley, at the mouth of the deep wild ravine where the little stream ran out and fed the roots of that huge elder tree.

  “You are as drunk as I am, man,” he said in Van’s ear. “I already saw that tree.”

  “Not like this you haven’t. But if you would like to stay, I would like you to know.”

  “Know what?” asked Armin, a bit alarmed now by Van‘s tone, which was serious, definitely at odds with Armin’s lusty playfulness.

  Van stepped away from him, and Armin hurried to catch up, worried to be stuck here at the bottom of the dark forest by himself with no light. He put a hand on Van’s shoulder—seriously, when had Van become so tall?—and felt Van lifting his hands, slowly, first waist high, then a little higher, and something, something that was neither light nor current, traveled through the ground and along Van’s body and rippled down his arms and out to his fingertips. Then Van opened his arms suddenly, and a sonic boom, which was not made of sound, shook the earth and echoed in Armin’s bones like an ancient memory of collapsing continents.

  What the fuck was that? thought Armin, too freaked out to speak the words.

  And then he felt the valley open. It was not a movement in this world. It was nothing as crude as geology. It was an unfolding of dimensions, as if time and space in the valley were like a rose in bud or one of Van’s more complex designs, knotted and twisted and layered with figure upon figure upon figure concealed and enclosed within. There was no human sense that could experience this, and yet Armin felt it, like a lapse of air in the lungs and then a different pressure, as the universe, or universes, expanded around him.

  Did the others feel it too, he wondered, or are they all asleep in their cottages, oblivious? What on earth is happening?

  And at the center and core of the unfolding valley was the Tree, and as the valley breathed out again and settled, wider, wilder than before, the tree suddenly shuddered a little and lit up. Not the sparkles and candles of a Christmas tree but a fluid phosphorescence that gleamed and spread upwards from wherever the arms of the tree touched the ground, pale blue-green, unearthly. It rose a little into the air like coiling swirls of mist or smoke, caught and twisted by the faintest breeze.

  Van stepped away from him again and bowed to enter the deep cavernous embrace of the tree.

  Inside, he was now faintly lit by the pale luminescence. “Come with me,” he said and turned, beckoning Armin to follow.

  Van looked suddenly taller, much taller. His shoulders seemed broader, and his voice sounded both younger and older, like an echo of seasons long gone and come again. The spreading branches of the elder tree rose behind his head, almost like antlers, as if he and the tree were one great being, rooted in the earth and thrown wide into the black night.

  But, were they?

  When he bowed to Armin with a sort of ancient solemn grace, Armin saw that Van’s head was indeed crowned with immense antlers like a venerable stag.

  And when he looked down, the tree roots had gone, and Armin saw that the elder was standing over a chasm, which was neither dark nor luminous but infinitely deep, like the Milky Way twinkling far, far up in the indigo sky between the elder branches, and Van’s antlers.

  Wherever the tree’s branches bowed low and touched the ground, they now kissed their own reflection, which melted and flowed down like a great ring of phosphorescent falling waters disappearing in deep misty blue-black. The chasm became a pool of night sky, the perfect reflection of the sky above, or maybe a continuation of it, or maybe a different sky entirely, in another world, an Otherworld or an Underworld, and Van stood in the center of it all. He was part of the twisting organic geometry of the tree, trunk and chest, arms and limbs, branches and antlers. And when he moved toward Armin, his bare feet stepped on the empty sky.

  Armin was rooted on the spot, his jaw literally slack with shock.

  Wait. Wait. This can’t be real, can it? I must be tripping.

  Think, man. Let’s think. This is a forest. There must be mushrooms, right? Magic mushrooms as likely as not. I must have stepped on one. Can you trip by stumbling on a magic mushroom?

  He gave a nervous little tittering laugh and almost pissed himself with embarrassment, and something else. For a long moment he pressed both his fists on his lips, staring in pure terror.

  Because every nerve and sense in his body told him that this was not a vision, a dream, or a hallucination, and that there, right before his feet, lay indeed a gateway to a different world, dimension, or universe. Here. Not in Greenland. Not at the bottom of a plundered impact crater, under a mile of ice, but right here, right now, in front of his feet.

  “Fuck me,” he said, which was articulate enough, considering the circumstances. Fuck me. It’s real. It’s all real. The Otherworld, the gate and its keeper. The forest Lord. The Antlered God.

  “Fuck me,” he repeated faintly.

  “All right, I will, if you insist,” said the god, and Armin burst into a tense laughter that turned almost into weeping.

  Magical and immortal beings could be lurking all around you, pretending to be perfectly ordinary. He said that. And he was there all the time, hiding in plain sight, right before our noses. Except he doesn’t even hide, really… He’s always saying those silly things, and they were not silly after all. They were not lies. He needs only our skepticism to cloak himself.

  “Who are you?” he asked.

  “Don’t you know? Didn’t I tell you my name?”

  Armin swallowed. “Er… was it… Cernunnos? Or Silvano?”

  The antlered god smiled. “They are both good names. Do you see? Do you see now?” said Van’s new older voice. “This is where the world ends. And begins. This is the gate. And I am its keeper.” He spread his arms wide, and the valley breathed out again, and the tree flared brighter.

  My God, thought Armin.

  My God.

  Oh—my—God.

  “Come,” said Van, Silvano, or whatever his name was, and held a hand out to him.

  Armin stood rooted on the steaming edge of that gulf of night sky.

  “Come, don’t be afraid. I won’t let you through. Not yet,” said Van gently. Armin stepped into it.

  He could walk on the void.

  He stepped into nothingness. There was nothing under the soles of his feet.

  He bowed under the canopy of the tree and crossed the gulf, into Van’s arms. He clung to him convulsively for a minute before his heartbeat settled. He looked down to where his feet stood on starlit nothing and then up, at Van. He had never, never had to look up into a lover’s face.

  Van was both himself and not himself. He looked both younger and more craggy. He looked older, and smoother, as if different, conflicting images were showing one through the other, transparently.

  And Armin realized that he was seeing Van in all ages. Van, the young laughing man, beardless and impishly joyful, and a man in the fullness of his manhood, darkly bearded and muscular, brooding, and the Van he knew, graying and mellow, smiling, and another one, also, a white-haired wise man, in the winter of his life, slowly vanishing, remote, and yet still stately. And all these men existed in each other, now, upon this night. They were all one, returning or eternal, Armin could not say, but perhaps it was all the same, a cycle of times repeating, again and again, or one eternal time, always, two aspects of time that were not, after all, mutually exclusive.

  Armin, who had spent his life scrutinizing things rationally, suddenly reeled, as he understood that he might never be able to explain this. And perhaps there was really no point trying to cut it and piece it into neat constructs of words, charts, and graphics. Van was above words. He could not be categorized or explained. He was the limestone under the clay and the clay, rising into sentience. He was the nerve of the trees and the time of the seasons always coming back, always existing into one another,
the seeds of summer sleeping in the dark of winter, the promise of spring, fruiting in the fall. It was all one, and he was all this. There were no words to say it. Not really. There was no need to say it. Van just … was.

  And then he saw that the circle of light and falling waters at the foot of the spilling tree was also infinite, that the reflections of the worlds was limitless, that this world and that world were one and the same, eternally entwined, interpenetrating and transparent. There was no boundary, no hard edge. The inside was outside, time and eternity were one, life and death were one.

  And then his vision shifted so abruptly that he thought, I’ve fallen through. I have gone through the gate, I am under, and my world is upper. I am lost, but no, no, he saw it in a flash, that perception, his perception, albeit a funnel, still went both ways, that as he looked at the universe, the universe had always looked back at him. Indeed it was looking at him now, through Van’s brown liquid eyes. He felt himself disappearing into a dark tunnel down his own eyeballs and then flaring up, a vision, the world’s vision, Van’s vision, of himself, not a pimply youth with a few bad life choices behind him, but a tall young creature half in shadow, half crowned with branch-broken moonlight, with beauty and power, or the promise of power, a latent greatness that waited to rise and unfold and blossom wildly in the spreading worlds.

  “Do you see now?” whispered Van. “Do you see what you are, what you will be?”

  And Armin staggered in this revelation and hung on to Van’s shoulders and was held, securely held, and gently put back onto his feet.

  “If you stay with me, Armin, you must know. I can never leave. Not for long at least. The tree is both my master and my ward. Through space and time and all the worlds, I must always return here. This is my task. This, and protecting the earth around it, that is, all the earth of this Earth.”

  Armin nodded and held him tighter. “I understand. I will stay with you. Help you. If I can. Can I?”

  “Yes,” murmured Van.

  “How?” asked Armin, looking into Van’s face.

  Van smiled softly and bowed to kiss his lips. “Love me. Please? Eternity becomes a lonely thing in time.”

  “I love you,” whispered Armin. “You know I do.”

  Van smiled again.

  “Then do what you do best. Write your article. Write many articles. A book. Make a website. Whatever it is that can reach the men and women of this age. Help me teach them. Help me find a new way to teach them the old ways. They must learn, Armin. They must learn again, now, before it’s too late.”

  Armin nodded. “I will.”

  Van kissed him again, between his eyes, smoothing his hair back from his forehead.

  “And do you really want to be fucked by a god?” he asked with a rather more mischievous tone than a god should use, certainly?

  “Would hardly be the first, would I?”

  Van laughed, and the laugh echoed between worlds, young and old, like spring and autumn and spring again.

  “Take care then,” he said and bent down a little to undress Armin, who stood petrified on the void, not daring to move for fear of falling through in the sky under him and also terrified of the sharp prongs of those huge antlers. As Van kneeled to draw his jeans down, they grazed against his chest and stomach once or twice, and Armin was reminded of the dangers of provoking a stag in rut. Madness. He’s too dangerous a creature for any mortal man to love. What am I doing? He swallowed painfully and was infinitely relieved when Van stood again in front of him, face to face. Safely underneath the spread of those deadly antlers, away from their murderous tips, it was easier to breathe, once and twice and three times, and then almost normally. And he realized that those deadly spears were aimed at the sky, not him, and spread like the arms of a great sheltering tree, under whose mighty boughs he would be entirely safe from harm.

  His lips opened of their own accord to Van’s kiss, and his hands moved of their own accord to search Van’s hands and weave their fingers together, as they stood face to face, cock to cock, on the door between worlds under the spreading tree. This is it, isn’t it? The tree and the stags, except I have no antlers. Just a head full of thoughts that won’t shut up.

  When Van gently pushed him to his knees and then down on all fours, Armin found himself facing that starlit abyss and reeling with vertigo. He closed his eyes and let himself forget the vision and just concentrate on the solid presence of Van’s firm hands on his hips and his buttocks and then wet fingers searching…

  He felt his ring stretch with one finger, then two, then three, and then, a cock was eased among the fingers, and part of him thought, This is not anatomically possible, is it? And part of him thought, What part of this strikes you as possible, then? And part of him thought, Stop thinking, you fucking idiot.

  And he did—he stopped thinking, if only for a moment—and he just took it in, the length and girth and fearsome hardness of it, and he was filled with it and anchored to it, body and soul, so that he dared open his eyes again and look into the void, swayed by Van’s thrusts in an aching, screaming, naked ecstasy that he had never experienced before. He was face to face with the flaming heart of both pleasure and pain, howling, burning from the inside out, in the moment, an eternal moment, as Van, or Cernunnos, thrust faster and deeper and rocked to climax inside him.

  Gosh, I wanted to be taken hard? Oh, I’m getting my wish and then some.

  And then he thought, he, the staunchly rational atheist, Fuck it, a god just came inside my ass. What the fuck, universe?

  And then finally, truly, he thought no more, as something surged in strings of wondrous fire along his whole being and along his belly and shaft and glans, and then he spilled his seed down in the sky, again and again, string after broken string of glistening pearls, a new fleeting milky way, which gleamed white for a moment and was gone.

  Chapter Eleven

  Monday

  Armin

  Armin came to with a groan, rising from sleep like a man emerging from a coma, disoriented, unsure of where and when he was.

  He groaned again. He was both thirsty and ravenous. It must be already nine or so, judging by the bright sun that shone in the window. What window though? He finally sat up, rubbing his eyes. He was in Van’s bed, naked, and he was alone.

  It seems that I missed the morning chores again. Hell of a helper I am, poor Van. Am I late for breakfast?

  And then the memory of last night slammed into his groggy brain like a speeding bus. Wait, wait a minute, what? W-what? What the fuck?

  Did I seriously have unprotected sex with a man I barely know under a tree in the forest?

  Hey, but wait! That was not a man. It was a … What—the—fuck? What the fucking fuck was that?

  He jumped out of bed, oblivious to a certain soreness in his nethers, and looked around for his jeans and t-shirt. He could find neither, but Van’s jeans and black t-shirt, the ones he had worn that evening they had all been invited to his house for evening drinks, were folded on a trunk under a window, and Armin put them on in a tearing hurry before rushing out.

  He dashed down the hill to the breakfast table, where the first arrivals were already pouring coffee and tea and buttering slices of the bread that had been baked last night. Frederic was deep in conversation with Van about sourdough bread, traditional baking techniques, yeast and wild starters and whatever.

  Van looked somewhat tired and sleepy.

  He also looked, very distinctly, like a man without antlers on his head.

  Armin crashed into the kitchen, out of breath and disheveled, causing a fair amount of amusement.

  “Had a hard night, lad?” asked Mark.

  “Have some breakfast, dear,” said Edith, passing him a slice of bread.

  Armin poured himself coffee and ate the bread without even tasting it.

  It was a messy meal, as people came and went somewhat at random while preparing to leave, and after some minutes, Armin managed to pull Van aside near the coffee pot.

  “
What the fuck was that last night? What happened?”

  Van looked at him with an arched eyebrow.

  “Don’t look at me like that. Under that tree… what the hell happened?”

  “Er… I believe it is technically known as sex?”

  “What? Yes—no … oh come on! That was … astounding.”

  Van put a hand over his heart and gave him a theatrical bow. “You are not the first one to say that, but it’s nice of you to remark on it. Thank you,” he said, grinning.

  “Oh stop it! You said—I saw—you showed me… Fuck, Van, you had antlers on your head!”

  “Antlers?” said Van, making big eyes. Then he shook his head, quite kindly, and passed him another mug of coffee. “Drink this, kiddo. My, my. Antlers. Indeed.” He chuckled quietly. “No more homemade liquors for you, duckling.”

  Armin frowned. “I wasn’t drunk!” he said. Then, because, despite his years as a journalist, he still preserved a certain lingering regard for the truth, he added, “Er… well, yes, I was. But I know what I saw. I didn’t imagine that stuff. I don’t have that sort of imagination.”

  But Van just looked at him with a thoughtful look, shook his head, and turned to Ella and Frederic, who were coming up for more coffee.

  “This is the most amazing bread, Van,” said Frederic, and Armin wanted to scream.

  “When we make our cottage, I would love to have an oven like this. Would you build one for us?”

  “No. But I’d be glad and honored to teach you how to build it yourself,” said Van, smiling.

  “Even better,” said Frederic.

  Ella turned to Armin, who stood there rather morosely, drinking coffee, munching bread, and tasting nothing.

  “Will I see you again soon?” she asked. “We’ll be around for some weeks. We are staying in Brive, with Frederic’s father, until the end of June. The advantage of home-schooling the children.”