The Day of the Nefilim

by David L. Major

  * *

  But all that was then. This was now, and here we were, again.

  The Princess stood before the water, which was exactly as we had left it, all those years ago — just as dark and impenetrable as when the door was sealed; also exactly as we had left it was the diving vessel. What a wondrous machine it had been when we had first encountered it, and what a wondrous machine it still was now.

  The Princess and I — for she had sent the others away now, and it was only her and I who stood in the pale light of the winter sun that struggled through the dust-encrusted windows high above us, washing the color from everything, so that she, and I know I must have as well, took on the appearance of a ghost, standing there, the shade of a smile haunting her pale lips — we paused.

  ‘I will enter the bell, Bernardo,’ she said, using my Danish name, rather than that Norwegian slur they use to degrade me, and which I shall not mention here.

  And she did, and I helped her.

  She waited until I had recrossed to what this strange room provided by way of a shore to this even stranger lake, and then she closed the hatch of the bell, as she called it, and indeed, there was something of a ringing sound as it was shut up;

  — and then I could see that pieces of the device began to move, as though some train of events has been set in motion, which it most clearly was, as you shall see;

  — and as for what happened next, I cannot tell from having seen it myself, from having been there, but I do have it from her own lips, and I can assure you that her account is to be trusted, for of all the people in this castle, the Princess Aslauga is the one who is truthful to her core, in whose heart there is no crevice or flaw in which the angel of deceit might find a foothold (I think it has to do with her provenance);

  — so, if she says that this is how it happened, then yes, this is how it happened…

  * *

  The Princess descends into the water, past the point where I can no longer see the bell because darkness has swallowed it, and the sound of it, the ticking and grinding of its gears and the hiss of something that I do not understand has ceased, and I stand there and look, feeling helpless now, at the only trace of what has just happened — the settling disturbance of the water, the eddies of pale reflections, the memory of crimson, that dissipates even as I think to notice it…

  As the vessel, this bell, takes her into the black depths, light spills from its portholes, illuminating the creatures that live here. Her breath gasps first, and then her heart and her mind gasp as well; the creatures here are so many and so fearsome, some of them; out of the darkness they swim toward her, they bare their teeth, huge and curved like the sabres of the King’s housecarls, some of them — some even brush their hoary scales against the side of the bell, and the sound of it is like names to her, heady names, of things that want to take form and that almost make her swoon. Crystals of ice form on the windows, and her flesh thrills with the cold as she wipes them away, so that she can see out to where the light dispels the darkness and she can see great hides and long, scaled backs. Eyes the size of cart wheels gaze back at her. She has said nothing. She says nothing.

  — and then past a great tear, a fissure in the water, a window; through which, illuminated by a sun which never sets or dies under an eclipse, and which calls for no blood, she sees a great open field upon which a godchild plays endless games with tortoises, and kangaroos, and lizards, and Grey Silent Ibolons from the desert worlds of N53-1y57#; all of these playmates being infinite in number, and twenty seven light years long, except for the Ibolons, which are especially large;

  — and from there the Princess travels down through the gathering and frozen sea, to where the things in the sea become thin and insubstantial and far apart, and they float like sheets of gossamer and forget first each others’ names and then their own;

  — and past the male and female gods and deities, past even the very point where the Goddess is enveloping the God, and He is entering Her, past the point of so many of their arms intertwined in love, and so many bodies and legs intertwined in love, that Aslauga blushes, for prudence and on behalf of the sight of others, but also for eagerness and desire…

  — and she arrives, her craft in perfect repair, despite the pressures of the deep which would collapse the world to the size of a pinprick, if only the world could survive there long enough for that to happen; the weight of the water here is infinite; yet every piece and cog and gear is still functioning, in perfect accord with its intended role;

  — she is at the place where things that exist slide up against the things that do not exist, and they whisper together, all curious as to whether their true nature is to be known, or unknown, or unknowable (which would mean so much less to think about), or what lies on the other side of the plain that is the ocean floor, below its sheer and opaline surface, or what will happen after dinner, and whether dried apricots will ruin anyone’s appetite…

  The Princess navigates her vessel toward a spot on this surface where existence and non-existence meet, where they slide over each other like lovers, and she feels herself flicker, most deliciously and agreeably, she agrees, and she smiles at the joy of this, because it is very deep down here, and not many bother to attempt the journey, and even fewer make it to the plane where existence and non-existence meet, where they do indeed, yes, she sees that now, slide over each other like wet, sweat-soaked lovers, who gasp and look and come, and the Princess smiles because she sees a great whale in the impeccable half-light of the distance, swimming near a ridge of doubt and curiosity, and a pool of light that paints pictures on the deep spills from the eyes of the beast, and on its great hide are scars which are shaped like words such as might be in a book, if only books could contain words that large, or even if books could just exist down here, but then they do not, and so she feels thankful that whales can — if only she had paid even more attention to her books and her reading, especially the volumes on whales! — and then her smile becomes wide, so wide, and she laughs with such joy that all the deities come diving and flying to see, and far above the God and the Goddess hear her, and pause, and lift their teeth from each others’ skin, and look into each others’ eyes, She into His and He into Hers, and they laugh, and create several new universes, one of which, reader, is the one you are sitting in right now.

  * *

  So I was told. It was a week later that she returned, in the same manner that she had left, although she swore it was only a few minutes.

  She has never been the same since. And now sometimes she disappears, for days at a time, and I know where she is, of course. Her secret is safe with me, for I have no agenda, and can be trusted implicitly. And every time she comes out of that room, I see that she has grown more, and says less, and every day she looks at the Moon or where the Moon would be if it was there, and she composes verses, but still she does not write them down.

  But she does tell them to me, and as for that; perhaps another time.

  * * *