by Jeffrey Ford
“Does he understand?” Cley asked of Vasthasha.
“No,” said the foliate.
“Go,” said Cley, and Wood turned and walked away with his head lowered.
“Come, we must hurry,” said the foliate.
They walked a few more yards, and then the hunter said, “Wait for me.” He put down his pack and gun and ran back toward the house, passing the dog on the way.
As he approached the structure, the door opened, and Willa stepped quickly across the porch. When Cley saw her, he stopped running and walked slowly up to her. He put his arms around her. They stood together, in silence, for a long time. When their embrace ended, and they each turned away, neither uttered a word.
Like diminutive carved figures traversing a huge miniature in a box crafted by Christof Olsen, where the trees are dwarfed with tortured roots and the streams are real water that miraculously flows, Vasthasha and Cley journeyed through forests of oak, of pine, of shemel, of demons, across marshes and wastelands and meadows, down into valleys of flesh-eating plants, through ruins of lost cities, up steep hills and the sides of cliffs.
It was the very apex of summer, when the days were longest and the nights offered a cool respite from the blazing sun. The two wayfarers sat by a fire beneath the stars and smoked the pipe. Vasthasha was in full flower, and there was a large, shiny black fruit growing from a stem at the nape of his neck. Cley no longer needed the leaf beneath his tongue to understand the foliate, and he asked his companion the purpose of the dark plum.
“Tomorrow, we will arrive at our destination,” said the foliate, “and then I will reveal everything to you.”
“Very well,” said Cley.
“You have brought the crystal given to you by the old man of the Word as I have instructed?” asked Vasthasha.
“It is in my pocket, here,” said Cley.
“We will need that,” said the foliate.
“And when I am finished with this task, I am guaranteed passage to Wenau?” asked the hunter.
The foliate said nothing, but looked overhead at the moon.
“Yes?” asked Cley.
“You will finally find Paradise,” said Vasthasha.
The foliate closed his eyes, folded his arms in, his head down, changing his posture from green man to shrub, and slept. Cley tried to think about what he would say to Arla Beaton when he finally was reunited with her, but his thoughts always drifted back to Pierce’s house by the lake. He missed Wood, and although the foliate was good company, a fine friend, the hunter felt as if he had left a piece of himself back by the lake in the meadow.
He put his hand in his pocket to check that the crystal was there. His fingers touched its hard smoothness, but he noticed there were other things in this pocket that he did not remember putting there—two very small objects along with the stone. He gathered them up in his hand and pulled them out. The Carrols, not all of them, just the woman and the little boy, rested in his open palm.
“Willa,” said Cley, knowing this had been her work. He smiled and closed his fingers around the miniatures.
In the afternoon, they came to the foot of a mountain that had loomed on the horizon, appearing to grow bigger each day for the past week of their journey. Vasthasha led Cley through the trees that surrounded the base of the stone giant to the head of an old trail that angled upward along the southern face. The hunter marveled at the work it must have taken to carve the path into solid rock.
“Who was responsible for this?” he asked the foliate when stopping to catch his breath.
“Those from the inland sea. They created it in a single day. The inside of the mountain is hollow, and the peak that we cannot see has been removed so that the sun may shine down inside on the world they have made there. Their machines made light work of the impossible on more than one occasion,” said Vasthasha.
“What were these machines?” asked Cley.
“Not the simple gear-work of men,” said the foliate. “The Water People have an organic technology that can manipulate the very particles that constitute reality.”
“I’m lost,” said Cley.
“Actually,” said Vasthasha, “in being here, you are found.”
“What is it, a hiding place for them?” asked the hunter.
“Not for them,” said the foliate.
Before Cley could question the green man further, Vasthasha moved on ahead, continuing along the steep trail. The hunter shook his head and thought, “He’s starting to sound like Brisden.” As he hoisted his pack, he looked back over his shoulder and saw how far they had already climbed. Spread out below him, to the south, was the wide plain they had crossed in the last three days. He took a few deep breaths and followed his guide.
A half-hour later, and a few hundred feet farther up, they came upon what appeared to be the entrance to a cave. On closer inspection, though, Cley could see that the opening in the rock was too uniform along its edges, too perfectly engineered an archway to have been made naturally. Vasthasha stopped outside the gaping hole.
“We have arrived,” he said. “You may rest, and I will now tell you everything.”
Cley took off his pack and sat down. The foliate sat across from him, and they passed the waterskin, each drinking great draughts.
“This is the entrance to the garden inside the mountain. As I said, it was created by those from the inland ocean …”
“Do they have a name?” asked Cley.
“They do, but it is so long and complicated I could never remember it,” said Vasthasha. “We will call them the O or Water People or those from the inland ocean.”
“Agreed,” he said, smiling.
“Inside the mountain there is a lush landscape that was created to hold the last remaining great serpent of the wilderness. Once these creatures roamed the entirety of the vast width and breadth of the Beyond. You could not travel a mile without encountering one. They were fearsome creatures, pink-scaled, with horns, and they slithered like snakes along the ground …”
“I have seen their remains,” said Cley. “I call them Sirimon after the star constellation.”
“Very good,” said Vasthasha, annoyed at the interruption. “Now, these Sirimon, as you call them, were more than just death dealers, more than just the greatest fear of the peoples of the wilderness. They embodied the ability to transfer, to project the very mind of the Beyond itself. The distance between the points that were the Sirimon collectively created a web or a net through which the consciousness of the Beyond flowed. It was through them that the wilderness could be aware of its own awareness.”
“The wilderness thinks?” asked Cley.
“It did. It directed the course of its own existence. It had a will, and it was good,” said Vasthasha. “It was the war between Pa-ni-ta and the Water People that destroyed the Sirimon and depleted the will of the Beyond, so that now it is contained in only the one creature that has been kept alive inside the mountain. The wilderness is dying.”
“How did the war destroy the species?” asked the hunter.
“Pa-ni-ta circumvented the will of the Beyond and sent the Sirimon against those from the inland ocean. In defense, the Water People destroyed them with a disease in the same way they killed off my brethren. When we were defeated, and Pa-ni-ta was killed in her physical body, the Water People understood too late what they had done. They could smell the wilderness dying. They saved the life of the last Sirimon and trapped it here, in the mountain, for a time when they could decide how to regenerate the species. When they decided to expand their civilization to the land, they had never wanted to inhabit a dying world.”
“But the wilderness seems very alive to me,” said Cley.
“To you, because you are not from it,” said Vasthasha. “You cannot notice all of the small complex ways in which it is perishing just as you will not notice when it is revived.”
“I understand what you are saying, although it sounds like a fairy tale, but what is my part in this?” asked the hunter.
Cley laughed. “It’s been a long time since I have made love, but, still, I don’t think I can generate the passion to join with a dragon.”
Vasthasha turned his back to Cley. “Pick the fruit that grows at my back. Take it in your hands and do not let it go. This contains the seed that will cause the serpent eventually to spawn offspring.”
The hunter reached out and grasped the dark fruit. When he pulled it away from the foliate there was a distinct snapping noise followed hard by a deafening scream that echoed across the mountainside. The cry was so unexpected, he almost dropped the large plum. When Vasthasha turned back to face him, Cley could see the green man sobbing.
“This is madness,” said the hunter. “I’m sorry.”
“Now,” said Vasthasha, heaving, “you must tempt the serpent.”
Inside the cave, there was a pool, and it reminded Cley of the water that was in the cave where he had discovered Pa-ni-ta’s physical remains. A few yards beyond it there was another opening, covered by a very thin, blue membrane. Through this rippling blue window, he saw a beautiful landscape of trees and flowers and ferns. It was how he had pictured Paradise since the idea first presented itself to him years ago in Anamasobia.
His clothes lay in a pile on the floor, the black hat resting atop them. Cley was completely naked, holding the fruit in one hand and the crystal given to him by the body scribe in the other.
“Explain to me one more time why this is necessary,” said Cley.
“The serpent distrusts anything from the Beyond, because the wilderness has become infected against it. That is why it is sealed in this garden chamber. The fruit has been in your hand long enough now to have taken on your scent. Also, that which has brought you so far, the desire that burns in you to rectify a great wrong, to achieve an equilibrium of peace with your conscience, recommends you for this task. The wilderness must reacquire that same balance. You will find the sleeping Sirimon and tempt it to open its mouth. Then, throw the fruit into its maw,” said Vasthasha.
“What if I miss?” asked Cley.
The foliate did not answer.
“It might kill me, though,” said the hunter.
Again, there was no comment.
“I see,” said Cley.
“The crystal will give you passage through the blue entrance. Don’t lose it, or you will never get out. Once you have delivered the seed, run as fast as you can. Do not look back. I will be waiting for you,” said Vasthasha.
Cley stepped up to the blue membrane. It was like a window made of water. He passed one hand through it, then brought it back.
“This is the only way that you can complete your own journey,” said the foliate.
The hunter held his breath as if he were about to dive into a wave, and stepped forward through the portal. He felt an intense cold and lost consciousness for a split second. Then he heard birds singing, felt the warmth of the sun, and opened his eyes, knowing he had been born into Paradise.
Vasthasha stood in the cave, watching through the membrane as Cley walked off through the trees. Behind the foliate, from within the pool, two webbed hands appeared at its edge. A red-scaled being with the bubble eyes of a fish and fanlike fins at the sides of its head pulled itself up onto the dry rock of the cave. Water dripped off it, and its rasping, gilled breaths echoed through the cave. Barnacles grew on its arms and stomach, and its wide mouth was rimmed at the top lip by two long feelers that formed a kind of mustache. Hair, like yards of seaweed, flowed down its spiked back and tail, undulating as if still below the surface of the pool.
The creature slithered up next to Vasthasha in time to see Cley disappear around a flowering hedge.
“How did you convince him to come?” asked Shkchl, the scaled being.
“I told him a story,” said Vasthasha.
“You lied,” said the other.
“As you wish,” said the foliate.
“Does he know we are all now joining together to revive the Beyond?”
“I didn’t bother. Things were complex enough. Besides, as I understand his species’ concept of a story, there must be a villain,” said Vasthasha.
Shkchl’s rasping increased, and the foliate knew he was laughing.
“Does he understand the sacrifice he must make—the other ingredient besides the fruit?”
The foliate shook his head.
“What if he escapes before the serpent tastes his blood?”
“He won’t,” said Vasthasha.
“don’t be afraid.”
I am certain that the use of sheer beauty is illegal in the town of Wenau, but I hid two vials of it and a syringe in the fold where my right wing meets my back. The only other belongings I brought with me were my pen and ink and the manuscript of the hunter’s journey. What choice did I have, seeing as where I had last left Cley, about to encounter the great serpent? I knew I would be staying here for a few days, and I could not, in that time, forestall the story, which is now, I feel, at the point of some apotheosis. The tale had left my mind in great turmoil, which was probably a blessing in that it distracted me somewhat from concerns at facing Semla Hood and my other detractors.
I sit now, in a second-floor apartment, overlooking the main street of the flourishing town. This place that Feskin has arranged for me is very fine, even though the furniture has not been adapted for my idiosyncratic physiognomy. Now that it is late, and Wenau is asleep, I have taken the beauty. I am impatiently waiting, as usual, for signs of the Beyond to slither through my mind. In the meantime, allow me to describe for you the events of my own encounter with a serpent perhaps as dangerous as Cley’s, namely the prejudice and ingrained suspicion of humanity.
I arrived this morning, as had been arranged, dressed in my suit and hat, trembling with a very real fear of being rejected. Feskin said I looked fine, but I went to the mirror in the small bathroom at the back of the schoolhouse no fewer than three times to check my attire and to do some last-minute practice at smiling without showing my fangs. Once I had remembered the exact facial contortion that was necessary for a convincing closed-mouth grin, I told the teacher that I was ready.
We left the sanctuary of the school and started down the street. The day was clear and very mild. Citizens of the town were out and about, shopping in the stores and standing on the corners engaged in conversation. I tried to pay no attention to the stares I was receiving, nor to the voiced insults. Some people moved to the other side of the street when they saw us coming, and a very brave few called out wishes of good luck and waved, albeit from a distance.
“We are going before Constable Spencer,” said Feskin. “He is the sole proprietor of law and order in this town. I have always known him to be a fair and honest man, not given to rampant emotion but always working from the empirical evidence of any given case.”
“And what will happen when we arrive?” I asked.
“There will be quite a few people there I suspect,” said the teacher. “Do not be alarmed by the armed guards. Spencer will make sure that the spectators remain silent. Your detractors will enter and make their case against you. You will then have a chance to answer their charges. The constable will render the final verdict. I have already spoken to him, and he is greatly impressed that you are coming to stand up for yourself.”
We turned into a side street and arrived at a large building that houses the court, the jail, and Spencer’s office. There was a mob of people outside, two of whom carried rifles. My heart began to pound. Then Emilia broke away from the crowd and came running up to greet me. She put her hand out and I took it in mine and held it for a moment.
“Don’t be afraid, Misrix,” she said.
Of all those present, the child was the only one who could understand what it might be like to be me.
As we approached the crowd, the two armed guards ordered everyone to step aside and make way for us to enter. In passing through their ranks,
I was reminded of Cley passing through the Beshanti lines when he left Fort Vordor, and it struck me that there was nothing that could prevent a disgruntled citizen from pulling out a hidden weapon and putting a slug into my head. At the last moment, before we could pass through the entrance, one angry-looking large fellow moved into Feskin’s way, and the thin, bespectacled schoolteacher reached out and nonchalantly shoved the man out of our path.
“Step aside,” said Feskin, and I was mightily impressed with his courage. I had been so wrapped up in my own fear I had not considered the chance that my friend was also taking by being my representative.
I whispered a word of thanks to him as I followed, but I’m sure it was drowned out by the sounds of voices cheering me while many more yelled, “Death to the Demon!”
My mind was literally swirling like a whirlpool, and it was all I could do to stand straight and not walk like I was drunk. We moved inside and across a spacious room. To the right there were rows of seats that were already filled with townspeople, and to the left was a large desk at which sat a man dressed completely in black. I realized that this must be Constable Spencer. He was much shorter than I had imagined but powerful-looking, with a wide chest and shoulders. His hair was thinning and gray, and he had a bushy mustache of the same color. His expression was the lack of an expression, his mouth a straight line across a large, red face.
Upon seeing us, Spencer stood and lifted his hand high to bring it down hard on the desktop. The sound made me jump, and at the same time quieted those gathered behind us.
“Silence,” he said to all. “If anyone interferes with these proceedings, he or she can expect to spend some time in jail.”
Feskin walked forward and shook hands with the constable. “This,” said the teacher, “is Misrix,” and swept his arm back toward me.
“Step forward,” said Spencer.
I did and as I approached him he put his hand out. I, in turn, offered mine. He grabbed it, not seeming to fear the claws, and pumped my arm up and down. “I know you did not have to come, and this will be considered when I decide the outcome,” he said.