The Bone House be-2

by Stephen Lawhead

  And in the precise centre of the clearing: the Bone House.

  Kit recognised it at once as the dwelling made of bone that En-Ul had pictured for him-a simple, mound-shaped hut formed of the interlocked skeletons of all manner of animals. There were no windows as such, and but a single low tunnel for a door, over which hung the entire skull of a giant elk with splayed antlers big as palm branches. The lintels of this door were solid ivory in the form of two enormous curving mammoth tusks. More elephant tusks lined the foundation of the house, whose framework was made up of the most fantastical conglomeration of skeletal fragments: pelvises, spines, leg bones, vertebrae, and rib bones by the score; there were skulls from more than a dozen different creatures-deer of several kinds, as well as bison, aurochs, and horses, sheep and antelope, what looked like dog or wolf, and even that of a horned rhinoceros. These were the ones Kit thought he recognised, but there were as many more that he could not readily identify.

  Taken as a whole, the bizarre structure possessed a distinctly eerie, alien air. The work party began untying their bundles and fitting the bones they had brought into chinks and gaps in the structure, and Kit imitated their example, finding places to work in what he had brought. They laboured with purpose and in silence. When one or the other got thirsty, he would go outside the clearing to eat handfuls of snow, then return to continue working. When the last bone from the bundles had been placed, it was back to the kill zone for another load.

  Three more trips to the bone heap for materials brought them to the end of their labours. The short winter day was hastening on, and the workers were growing hungry-at least Kit was starving, and he imagined the clansmen, who appeared to require more than twice as much to keep them going, must have been ready to eat the trees.

  Thag stood back, coiling his hemp rope and regarding the Bone House, his big shaggy head held to one side in the precise manner of a carpenter inspecting his handiwork. It was such a classic pose, Kit smiled to see it. Thag gave a grunt that signified satisfaction and turned away. Now that the official verdict had been received, the others grunted too, and the group departed, making their long way back through the forest. The returning labourers ate a hearty meal and, exhausted with the good fatigue of useful work, went to sleep. Kit drifted off too; but if he imagined a restful day to follow, he was mistaken.

  For just before sunrise he was awakened by a touch on his shoulder. He opened his eyes to see En-Ul crouching beside him. Into his mind came a possessive urging he understood as: Attend me.

  The old chief turned away and Kit followed, moving silently through the sleeping camp. The night’s fire had burned to embers, and the sky still held a sprinkling of stars sharp as ice crystals in the cold, cold heavens. They picked their way carefully down from the ledge and found the well-marked trail leading up out of the valley. Within a few minutes of leaving the settlement, Kit realised their destination was the Bone House, and for one who had been carried into the camp, the aged En-Ul surprised Kit with his stamina. They paused only twice to rest and catch their breath-once halfway up the trail and once at the top of the gorge-and arrived in the forest clearing as the sun rose above the trees.

  In the thin winter light the strange edifice glowed with a pale and alien pallor-a white mound set in a snow-white field-taking on a ghostly, almost ethereal aspect as if constructed not of bones but of the mammalian spirits of the creatures themselves. A profound apprehension crept like the stealthy cold into Kit’s soul. This curious shelter had been erected for a purpose, and it was for that purpose they had come.

  En-Ul turned to him and, gazing into Kit’s eyes, willed him to understand. Kit received an impression of immense importance, of an unfathomable weight of consequence, a significance of unimaginable magnitude-as if whole worlds of significance converged in this place. There was no single word for it, but the force of the concept struck him with an urgency that was as powerful as hunger and thirst.

  Kit, trying hard to understand, was overwhelmed by the thought that had been conveyed. “Why have we come here?” he asked aloud.

  The old one tilted back his head and looked at the pale white sky for a moment. Then, returning his gaze to Kit, breathed into Kit’s mind the image of living things of many kinds-the creatures of the forest, the entire forest itself, whole Stone Age tribes-combined with a feeling of swimming against the strong flow of the river, or struggling against a powerful grinding, uncompromising force bent on mindless destruction: survival.

  Their presence at the Bone House had something to do with the survival of themselves and their world, was how Kit explained it to himself; and although he could not see how this was so, he did not doubt En-Ul’s sincerity.

  As soon as this thought had passed through Kit’s mind, the ancient chieftain turned and walked to the entrance of the Bone House. He paused at the low doorway and stood for a moment, then raised his hand and placed the palm on the forehead of the skull of the giant elk, and bowed his own head in a gesture Kit had never seen one of them make before. Then, bending low, he entered the bone hut, beckoning Kit to follow.

  Inside, the bones formed a dome-shaped room of weird, undulating design lit only by the watery winter daylight that found its way through the chinks and crevices of the interlocking bones. The floor was packed snow over which pine branches had been spread, and these piled with skins and furs. Kit saw that a small cache of food-dried meat and berries-and little heaps of snow for water had been set aside.

  En-Ul crawled in and sat himself cross-legged in the centre of the room. He looked around and gave a grunt of satisfaction, as if approving of the finished product. Then, when Kit had sat down across from him, he addressed himself to conveying what was about to happen.

  In imitation of the old one, Kit crossed his legs and pulled furs around him as into his mind came the image of himself asleep-as seen by one of the clan, perhaps-and then immediately, a sort of curious sensation of flying, of actually having wings and soaring high on the wind… dreaming?

  This thought met with a satisfied grunt, and instantly Kit felt once again the immense, bottomless ocean of consequence-only this time it was an ocean, a vast tidal stream in endless flux… time?

  “Dreaming time,” Kit said aloud, although strictly speaking, this did not make any sense to him at all.

  The mental contact faded, evaporating into the ether, and En-Ul closed his eyes. His breathing altered, his body relaxed, and soon Kit realised that the old one was asleep.

  He waited.

  When nothing more happened, Kit crept from the Bone House and went out to the perimeter of the circle to relieve himself. The day was growing blustery; a sharp wind, rising out of the north, was soughing through the tall pines all around. The pale sky was darker now with heavy, snow-laden clouds. There was a storm on the way; he could smell the metallic tang on the air. They would have to go back to the shelter of the rock ledge soon, but he was reluctant to disturb the Ancient One’s sleep. Kit did not know what to do, but one thing was certain-he did not care to be out in the forest alone. It was not safe.

  Kit returned to the Bone House. En-Ul was, if possible, even more deeply asleep than before. Kit settled down to wait, but after what seemed like an age of doing nothing more than listening to the old chieftain’s deep and regular breathing, he grew too anxious to put off leaving any longer. He took the furs he had been using and wrapped those around En-Ul’s body. Wishing his sleeping companion well, he departed.

  Running, jogging, floundering through the snow, Kit scrambled back to the safety of the valley encampment, arriving as the last light faded into twilight mist. The River City Clan greeted his return with grunts of recognition and seemed to accept his absence as a matter of little interest. Kit sought out Dardok, thinking to gain an explanation of what had taken place that day. Holding an image of the Bone House firmly in mind, he said, “En-Ul sleeps there.”

  This appeared to be understood-as least so far as Kit could discern-for it met with a snort of gruff acknowledgement.
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  “He says he is dreaming time,” Kit continued, pushing his luck. “Is that so?”

  Dardok’s expression grew opaque, and he grumbled low in his throat-a sign of dissatisfaction. And that was that. The discussion went no further. It confirmed what Kit already knew: whatever faculty En-Ul possessed that allowed him to communicate with Kit, the others did not have it, or at least not to the same degree.

  Later Kit ate and, unaccountably tired from his exertions, crawled off to sleep in his customary place. But sleep eluded him. For a long time, he lay pondering the possible meaning of the concept dreaming time. What could it mean?

  Wrapped in fur against the cold, Kit stared past the glowing red embers of the dying fire into the fathomless sea of darkness beyond as into a daunting future. His mind, filled with the strangeness and wonder of the Bone House, conjured a vision.

  He saw a full moon rising over a high windswept plain, its silvery light illuminating a curving slice of river cradled in a shallow bowl of a valley. The great round moon poured down its light as it passed overhead, and the stars wheeled slowly in the sky until it sank again below the western horizon.

  All was dark then… but only for a moment. Before Kit could blink, the moon rose again, faster this time, passing over the bend in the river once more. The moon soared and sank, only to repeat the process again and yet again. With every repetition the moon flew faster, its rising and setting merging into a single fluid tracery of light, a shining arc across the limitless star field. This bright arc widened, expanding into a luminous band encircling the wandering earth.

  Out on the plain he saw a mountain rising in the distance, white and ghostly in the silver moonlight. The mountain rose higher, and Kit saw that it was moving, slowly, inexorably, following the course of the river, which now ran with chunks of ice. With the mountain came snow. Kit could see the drifts deepening over the landscape, spreading, merging, covering the land, covering the rocks and trees, filling the valley, covering everything. And still the snow fell-as if the inexhaustible vaults of winter had opened and poured out their unending store upon the world below.

  And all the while the mountain lurched nearer, a glacier on the move, growing even as it came, driving all before it: trees, rocks, boulders, entire hills. On and on it came, tearing, grinding with the low rumble of constant thunder, annihilating everything that fell beneath the massive wall of its leading edge, gouging the land, carving deep into the soft soil of the river valley, its stupendous weight forming new hills on either side, shaping landscapes as it passed.

  And still the ice mountain grew, spreading as it came; it stretched now from horizon to horizon, gathering cold, draining the rivers, lowering the seas, leaching moisture from all it touched, from the very atmosphere until the air became dry and brittle, and still it grew, shimmering with a terrible majesty beneath the brilliant band of light that was the ever-racing moon: a continent of ice on the move, pushing up mountains, slicing out canyons, tilting the earth with its passing.

  More images wheeled before Kit’s unblinking eyes: an endless line of enormous woolly mammoths staggering across a plain drifted high with wind-whipped snow… fire falling from the sky in burning chunks the size of boulders, setting the hills ablaze… an ocean locked tight, its waves thrashed into hard, motionless peaks… bony carcasses of starved creatures piled in a frozen bog… a bear on its hind legs gnawing at the bark of a tree… a man, woman, and two infant children dressed in wolf skin and forever huddled in a frozen embrace… a high mountain pass leading down to lands yet green, lands that had not felt the bitter sting of killing cold… and more, faster and faster until one image could not be distinguished from another.

  Reeling from what he had seen, Kit closed his eyes, but the images persisted, flickering through his consciousness in a mist of motion and light: fusing, swirling, all detail muted and lost, merging into a dense, luminous fog that resolved into the Milky Way, the measureless star path of the galaxy. The shining mist slowly dissipated until at last it was swallowed in the end by the eternal darkness of empty space.

  CHAPTER 35

  In Which a Remedy Is Pursued

  D azed and drained, Kit waited for the dawn to lighten the sky to return to the Bone House. If the remedy for his bewildered state could be found, he imagined it might be there. When the first faint traces of daylight gave texture to the winter landscape below the rock shelter, Kit rose, stepped carefully over the sleeping bodies around him, and stole down the narrow trail leading into the valley and, ultimately, up to the high woodland above.

  Fresh snow had fallen in the night, and he ploughed through the drifts, moving with an urgency born of a dream-troubled night. He reached the woodland on the plateau above the valley and, alert to lurking predators, hurried through the frigid, winter-bound forest to the clearing. It was farther than he remembered; impatience drove him to greater haste until he burst into the circle of standing trees to see the tangled mound of chalky, snow-covered bones standing in the centre of the clearing, pale and spectral in the dead winter light. The renewed sight of that singular structure, woven of ivory, horn, and bone, brought Kit up short. He halted, then approached more slowly, circling the Bone House to reach the low entrance, now almost hidden by snow.

  Kit dropped to his knees and crawled inside. En-Ul was there, and in much the same position as Kit had left him the previous day: so still and silent he might have been dead. Kit held his breath until he heard the long, low sigh of the sleeper, then relaxed and settled into his place. In the thin light filtering through the latticework of interwoven bones, he saw that some of the food had been eaten and two of the little piles of snow were gone. En-Ul had taken nourishment at least once, then. Kit took comfort from that. Whatever the old chieftain was doing, it did not involve starving to death. Thinking of this, he wished he had brought along something for himself to eat; he considered helping himself to some of the sleeper’s cache, but immediately decided against it, restrained by the potent feeling that doing so would violate some taboo.

  He pulled some of the furs around him and made himself comfortable. Now that he was here, he wondered why he had rushed so; it had seemed important, but now he could not think why. He settled back to wait. Some while later-it might have been a few hours, it might have been only a moment-he could no longer be certain how to measure time’s elapse. In the presence of En-Ul and his dreaming, time took on an elastic quality and seemed not to behave properly. Then again, since coming to the valley Kit’s internal clock had ceased to function in the usual way. However it was, Kit had the sensation of having sat in the Bone House for hours if not days, and was beginning to feel light-headed from hunger. He reached out for a handful of snow and filled his mouth, letting the frosty crystals melt and run down his throat. It felt good, and it was as he stretched for another handful that he felt a warmth begin to pulse near his heart.

  Placing a hand to his chest, he traced the smooth bulk of the ley lamp, then dug into the inner pocket of his rough-made robe and brought out the brass device, immediately dropping it in the snow where it shone a bright incandescent blue.

  Scooping it up, he brushed off the snow and gazed at the glowing instrument. The little row of lights on its face filled the dim interior of the Bone House with a brilliant indigo radiance brighter than ever before, and which pulsed slowly, rhythmically, steadily-like a long, slow heartbeat.

  His skin tingled with the telltale sign of a nearby ley. The small hairs on the back of his neck stood up. The air inside the house of bone crackled with pent energy, as if building to a lightning strike. Holding the ley lamp before him, Kit rose.

  He made to step over El-Ul in his dreaming trance, but as his raised foot touched down, he plunged through the floor of the Bone House. The snow-packed floor simply gave way, and Kit was suddenly tumbling through space. Down and down and down he plunged. Instinctively he curled himself into a ball and leaned sideways to take the force of the fall on his hip. But the expected impact did not come, and he continued
to fall.

  The shadowy light of the Bone House swiftly faded to a pale point far above, and darkness closed over and around him. The light of the ley lamp was all that he could see, and then that, too, slowly faded, leaving him in a darkness that was so close and pervasive it was more like a cloak or second skin than the emptiness of the void. The air condensed, becoming so thick and close it could be taken only in gulps. Oddly, Kit was not afraid. Or, if he had been, the fear shrivelled away so swiftly it left no impression. He did not seem to be falling anymore, but flying.

  Without any orienting markers, Kit could not tell where he was going, nor how fast, yet the sensation of moving at extreme speed over inexhaustible distances persisted. Again time shrank away to insignificance; Kit imagined he could actually feel it peeling away from him, layer by layer.

  How long this lasted he could not say. A moment? The length of time it took for the thought to enter his consciousness and leave again? An entire lifetime? More? An age? An eon? An eternity?

  Nothing seemed adequate to explain his current state. Past and future melted together, mingled, mixed, became one until there was only the unchanging present moment. So far as he could tell, he might exist like this forever, living in a timeless void-a never-ending now.

  Kit perceived that though this void might be empty of time, it was nevertheless full of possibility. Anything could happen, might happen, might have already happened-anything he could think might suddenly take form, might gain existence from his thought alone. This insight, if that is what it was, brought a sobering realisation that the merest whim might bring a whole world into existence, a world replete with living creatures whose lives were suddenly called into being by a single careless thought. Kit shrank from the horrific responsibility and instead turned his attention to his journey.