by Jeffrey Ford
I had sustained quite a few bites and scratches, and also wounded a good number of them, but near dawn, a shot rang out from the top of a nearby dune and the explosion chased off the dogs. I wasn’t sure at first if it was another apparition or really Corporal Matters and Silencio coming toward me. The corporal wore no wig, and through his closely cropped hair I could see a suture that cut a longitudinal hemisphere across his scalp. He carried two pistols, both of which were aimed at my heart. Silencio followed close behind, carrying a rope.
“You’ve got a mother lode of sulphur to dig, Cley,” said Matters. He looked down at Silencio and said, “Tie him up.”
The traitorous monkey tied my hands behind my back and then wound the rope three times around my neck, leaving a long leash in front by which he could lead me. When he was done with the job, he clapped and did a back flip. Matters ordered him to bring the cane, which was covered with dog blood. Silencio tugged me by the neck and brought the corporal his stick. I thought he was going to cry when he saw the condition it was in.
“I’d love more than life itself to beat you this very moment, Cley, but I’m saving you for something finer,” he said, controlling his obvious anger. He walked close behind me with one of the pistols trained on the back of my head. Silencio led the way, the end of my leash over his shoulder.
“The monkey tracked you for a case of Three Fingers,” said Matters. “After you’re gone, he’ll need it to console himself.”
19
“What was all the business with the wigs, and the night watch and day watch?” I asked. I had nothing to lose. We trudged along the shoreline back toward the maze of dunes that held the mine. Silencio pointed out to sea, and I caught a glimpse of a kraken’s tentacle as it curled beneath the waves.
“I’ll give you some business,” said Matters, and shoved the barrel of the gun up under my ear.
“Your head has been tampered with by the Master, hasn’t it?” I asked.
“If you consider a pound of brass gear-work tampering,” he said. “But tell me that your head hasn’t been tampered with.”
“I can’t,” I called over my shoulder.
“My brother’s got the same setup, springs and the like, but his runs counterclockwise to mine,” he said.
“What brother?” I asked.
He struck me across the back with the stick. “You think you’re so smart, Cley. My mind is going to eat you alive,” he said, and swung twice more.
Silencio led us through the dunes and, by some miracle route he knew, brought us to the opening of the mine in less than an hour.
“Now, Cley,” said Matters, coming up close behind me, “I’ve been having nightmares about demons and ice, and I expect not to have them this evening. By sundown you’ll have literally baked to death.”
I was going to plead for my life, but before the words could make their way out, the butt of the corporal’s gun smashed the back of my head, and I found I was already gone. In the dark distance where I was huddled, I felt my body being dragged and then the unbearable heat of the mine enveloped me.
I woke, screaming, to find my feet and hands bound and each roped tightly to metal cleats that had been pounded deep into the sulphur of the path. I lay outside my miserable tunnel, my head on the down slope, my eyes looking up to see, through the mist, the upper rim of the pit. Halfway to the top on the spiral path, I saw the doll-sized figure of the corporal across the abyss. He stopped in his ascent, turned to me, cupped his hand to his mouth, and yelled something. I thought he was going to yell, “The mine is the mind,” but he didn’t. It had more syllables than that, yet came across as a frantic grunting that he kept up until he had breached the top of the mine and disappeared.
Without the benefit of being able to keep moving, the mine was an oven. The heat built up in me quickly, and it was not long before I could feel my skin begin to lightly sizzle on the hot stone of the path. The sweat bubbled away in pools of evaporating steam. My tongue and throat soon became parched.
I tried to think what I could do, but all my plans gave way to an overwhelming weariness. I soon reached a point beyond pain where I felt nothing. The mine was cradling me in its warmth, but I fought to stay awake by trying to read the inscriptions above the tunnels on the opposite side of the hole. I located Barlow and went on from there.
Then I heard something, the sound of a voice far off. I searched all around before staring straight up. There was Silencio, dancing on the rim of the pit. He was screaming and waving as if trying to tell me something. “The damn monkey is more insane than Matters,” I thought to myself, and could not help but laugh, drawing in great clouds of the noxious mist.
I watched from a distance as the miniature Silencio crept near the very edge of the hole. He moved suddenly as if he were tossing something out into the mine. I caught with my glance the falling object, something like a white log. Then the updraft hit it and it blew apart into a hundred separate white birds that flapped and circled.
For the longest time I watched, enchanted, as the thin flock soared through the sulphur wind, rising and falling. One swept down and flew past my face before being carried out and up in a hellish gust. That is when I realized that what Silencio had tossed in had been the Fragments. I caught one last glimpse of the monkey, leaning over, looking down at me. He made a brushing motion with his hands, as if washing them of the scene, and then turned and was gone.
When I lost sight of the pages, the pain returned, instantly becoming unbearable. It was difficult to breathe, and I could no longer keep my eyes open but for short intervals. The hair on my arms and back began to singe. To avoid suffering, I journeyed inward, searching desperately for paradise, and soon caught sight of Beaton in my eye’s-mind.
Beaton walked alone now along a dry riverbed that wound through a willow wood. After the deaths of Ives and Moissac in snow country, he had given up all hope of ever reaching paradise or home. He had with him the rifle the young man had continuously aimed but had never had the courage to fire. This would help him to survive for a few more weeks in his wandering.
Harad Beaton was numb with adventures and oddities. He had no wonder left. The things he had witnessed in the Beyond had made an ardent believer of him. What he had come to believe in was the invisible energy that connected the trees, the plants, the creatures of the wilderness. Now that he was alone, he would catch the whisper of its low hum moving beneath the wind in the branches. It was definitely there in all its awesome power, but he could not see what good knowing about it had done him. He was an outsider to it, a germ to be eradicated.
That afternoon, he sat on a tree stump next to the dry riverbed and ate some venison from a deer he had killed two days earlier. He drank from his water skin and judged that he should do some hunting that day. When he was finished with his meal, he left his blankets and provisions, his helmet and pick by the stump and took along only the rifle.
He entered into the willow wood, parting the long branches. There were cool shadows under the whips of foliage, and he could hear small animals and birds moving about. He wanted a rabbit, even though in the Beyond they had the pink, fleshy faces of pigs. The taste of them was unusual too—earthy and birdlike. He was still not sure that he enjoyed it, but he was always happy to have one skinned and turning on a spit.
It wasn’t long before he spotted a pheasant, pecking around the base of a willow twenty or so yards ahead of him. He pulled the gun up and took aim. The shot would be difficult because of the layers of branches that separated them. He took his time, feeling for the drift of the breeze and calculating the location of the bird’s heart. That is when he felt a hand come down lightly on his shoulder.
“Are you looking for Wenau?” said a voice behind him.
He spun around and there stood the Traveler, full of life, as I had seen him back in Anamasobia. Beaton backed up three steps and turned the gun on the creature.
“No harm,” said the Traveler, holding up one of his webbed hands.
“You spe
ak?” Beaton said.
“I heard you moving through the Beyond. I saw, in the reflection of water, your friends die. At night, while you sleep, you cry like a child and none of the beasts of the Beyond will come near you,” he said.
“But how do you know the language of the realm?” asked the miner, unsure whether to lower his gun.
“The language was in me; I discovered it after having overheard your conversations in a seashell,” he said.
Beaton shrugged. “I’ve got no reason to doubt you,” he said, and lowered the gun.
The Traveler stepped forward and handed the miner a piece of wood with a picture etched in black on it. It was the portrait of a young girl with long hair. Beaton had no idea at the time, but I could see over his shoulder that it was a likeness of Arla.
There was something about the strange man that Beaton liked right away. It had something to do with the sense of calm he exuded, something about his smile and eyes. The miner reached in his pocket to find a gift to exchange. He came across the seed first, but as its thistle poked his finger, he remembered his pledge to Moissac that he, himself, would plant it. Down below the seed, he found the coin he had seen Joseph drop in the tunnels of Palishize. As he placed it in the large brown hand, he wondered why he had never given it back to Bataldo.
“The flower and the snake,” said the Traveler.
“Have you been to Palishize?” asked Beaton.
“People came out of the sea and built it,” he said. “They worshiped this flower, a yellow blossom from a certain tree that weeps when it is cut. This represented possibility. The coiled snake was forever. Palishize was abandoned before the forests of the Beyond had begun to grow.”
“What is Wenau?” asked the miner. “Is it the Earthly Paradise?”
The Traveler nodded.
“Is death there?” he asked.
“No death,” said the Traveler. “I will take you.” He put the coin away in a pouch he wore on a leather strap about his waist. Then he reached up to a large fruit pit he wore like a pendant on a necklace. Miraculously, the thing opened on tiny hinges that had been carved into it. From within the pit, he pulled out two red leaves that had been folded over many times in order to fit. When opened all the way, they were the size of a man’s hand and tissue thin.
He ate one of the leaves and handed the other to Beaton. “Eat it,” he said.
“What will it do?” asked the miner.
“Give you courage,” he said. Then he pulled the double-bladed knife from his belt and led the way.
Beaton began to feel asleep on his feet as he chewed the sweet red leaf. Things became visible to him that he had not noticed before. Small bright lights of various colors streamed down the path they took and passed right through them. Sparks of energy leaped off the ends of the Traveler’s hair and fingers. Ghostly creatures poked their heads through the undergrowth to watch them pass. I hid behind a tree for fear that I could now be seen by them.
“We found one of you in Mount Gronus,” Beaton tried to tell his guide, but the Traveler motioned for him to be quiet.
An instant later, Beaton perceived the Traveler was wrapped in deadly combat with a white phantom of a snake. Again and again, he plunged the double-bladed knife into its scaly back. White blood poured from the wounds, but still the creature kept tightening its stranglehold. The suddenness with which it happened shocked Beaton. It was almost as if the Traveler had always been fighting the snake.
Beaton finally came to his senses and lifted the rifle. He fired once, a direct hit through the jaw and into the brain of the monster. Then it was gone, disappearing like a memory forgotten, and they were walking calmly along again. The Traveler was smiling. His knife put away, he was smoking a long, hollow twig. How he had lit it, Beaton never saw. He passed it to the miner, who inhaled.
That day they forded streams and rivers, crossed vast barren tracts of snow and ice, climbed mountains, and walked along the shoreline of another inland sea. As the sun began to set, they came upon a village in a clearing in the woods. It was situated between two rivers, like an island.
“Wenau,” said the Traveler.
People came streaming out of the simple dwellings and over the earthen bridge to greet them. There were children and women and old men, all made like the Traveler. Beaton was brought into the center of the village and fed a dinner of fruit and boiled grain. Stories were told, some in another language, until the rest of the inhabitants of Wenau discovered the language of the visitor.
Beaton was told he was welcome in the village, and they helped him to build a shelter for himself. He soon came to know all of the children and men and women. In the days that followed, he traveled throughout the island between the rivers, taking samples of all the myriad strange plants and flowers that grew there. Wenau always had a beautiful scent of spring to it. The days were always clear and warm and peaceful. One night, when he wandered by himself just outside the perimeter of the village, he planted Moissac’s seed in a small stand of violet flowering trees.
He marked his time in Wenau by the progress of the tree that grew up from the spiny brown seed. It grew rapidly and by the end of a few weeks, it was the size of the Traveler himself. The miner brought his friend to see the growth of Moissac’s offspring one day. By then, it had brought forth on one single branch a white fruit like the one that had sat on the altar at Anamasobia.
“The fruit of paradise,” Beaton said to his companion.
“Where did you get this seed?” said the Traveler.
Beaton told the story of the foliate, and as he did the Traveler shook his head.
“But the fruit holds immortality,” said the miner.
“Come with me,” said the Traveler.
Beaton followed him back to the village and then to a particular hut. There, on the floor in the main living quarters lay an old emaciated woman, gasping for breath. Two young women sat by her side, holding her thin hands, the webs now cracked and brittle.
“But she’s dying,” said Beaton to the Traveler.
“No, she is changing,” he said. “The white fruit that grows from the seed of your friend disallows change.”
“But she is physically dying then,” said Beaton.
“I understand what you mean,” said the Traveler. “I wasn’t sure at first. This word death is a difficult idea. If you want to reach the land where there is no death, you must travel due north from here, a twelve-season journey. I will show you the path, but I will not go with you.”
“Then I haven’t reached paradise?” said Beaton.
“What is paradise?” asked the Traveler. “That white fruit is an unchanging dream. It is death, as you call it. Now I must take it back to the world of those like you. We cannot have it here.”
“You mean you will journey back with me to Anamasobia?” asked the miner.
“No, your people will discover me one day in a sealed chamber beneath a mountain, holding the white fruit,” he said.
“But we already have,” said Beaton.
“There are trails through the Beyond, if you know of them, that can take you back in time or ahead into the future. I will show you one to take that will return you to your town in two days’ journey. Now I must hurry so that I can get to the mountain before the slow buildup of blue mineral seals the chamber three thousand years ago. There I will wait to meet you again.”
Back out in the Beyond, I lost track of them, though I tried to stay close. I was exhausted and lay down on the ground beneath a bush whose tendrils curled and uncurled in the breeze like the arms of a kraken. As I closed my eyes on the wilderness, I opened them to see the face of Silencio. It was night and I was back in my room at the inn, lying on my bed. Every inch of me was in exquisite pain, and the monkey had just brought a glass of Rose Ear Sweet to my lips.
20
I sat up in the bed, extra pillows behind me. The sun streamed in the window, and the ocean breeze rolled through the room. I sipped at a cup of herbal tea. Silencio had applied his
leaves to me through the night and saved my skin from anything worse than blistering. The most dangerous of my afflictions was dehydration, which the monkey had also cured over a period of hours by administering water, cabbage juice, and Rose Ear Sweet.
Corporal Matters of the night watch, with his winning personality and long white hair, stood before me with a nervous look.
“You say your brother has run off?” I asked him.
“Yes, he came by my place yesterday afternoon. I was working in my garden on the veranda overlooking the sea, when he suddenly appeared from behind a potted shrub,” said the corporal.
“Was there violence?” I asked.
“None at all. He implored me to go to the mine to release you. He said his mind was full of paradise and that he must journey out into the wilderness. I think he has finally gone mad,” said Matters.
“He said he’d been tampered with by the Master,” I said.
“That’s what they all say,” said the corporal, sitting on the end of my bed.
“He told me that you too had been subject to some invention on Below’s part,” I said.
“Nonsense, Cley. It’s all lies. Why are you willing to believe a lunatic who tried to kill you?” he asked.
“I saw a scar,” I said.
“That scar,” he said, “was made by a saber blade on the fields of Harakun.”
“I had a suspicion that you and your brother were one and the same Corporal Matters,” I told him.
He laughed. “Forget about that oaf. He’s gone down the island. I doubt he will ever return. I’m in charge now, always. My first edict is no more mine. My second is, Silencio, go get us a bottle of Sweet and three glasses.”
We drank, but I did not drink a lot. How could I not be leery of the corporal? He seemed to be truly the affable fellow of the night in broad daylight, but I knew I would have to watch him closely. Where Silencio stood, as an enemy or friend or maybe even the instigator of my salvation, was hard to tell. He seemed to have some personal agenda I couldn’t yet figure out. Still, I was alive, and these two were the ones who had cut the ropes and dragged me from the mine. I gave myself up to the moment and conversed with the corporal about the fine weather.