by Jeffrey Ford
“But it’s true,” I said, my voice lost amid the storm of jeers.
Spencer quieted the room, then turned to me. “I also find this hard to believe,” he said. “Is there any way that you can prove this special ability of yours?”
“I can enter your memory by simply placing my hand on your head,” I told him. There came more tittering from the crowd.
“Prove it,” he said.
His command made me lose my nerve. In my head were spinning all of the horrible masks of derision in the gallery.
“Tell me something about me only I could know,” said Spencer.
As I stepped over to him and reached out my hand to cover his head, one of the gunmen stepped forward and raised his rifle to aim at my chest.
“It’s all right,” said the constable, and the man backed away.
There was sweat on my hand and my thoughts were unfocused. My nervousness was making it impossible for me to initiate what I have come to call “the dreaming wind.” Instead, I was visited again by those flashes of a disemboweled Cley lying beneath me. I shook my head and tried to catch some minor stirring of the breeze that would carry my mind into Spencer’s memory. Many moments passed. In my mind’s eye, I saw Anotine in the block of ice, Wood howling by the lake, Misnotishul’s tortured corpse.
“Well?” said Spencer, looking impatient to have my clawed hand off his head.
Just then I caught a spark of what I believed to be a fragment of his memory. I was certain I had something and stepped away from the constable. “Your wife,” I said, turning toward the audience so as better to see their reaction to my revelation, “is a woman with dark hair and green eyes. Her name is Lilith Marnes.”
There was total silence.
I began to smile, and then Spencer said, “I have never been married.”
I spun around to face him, and a wave of shouts broke against my back. The constable slammed his hand repeatedly on the desk.
“Now,” he said, not unfriendly, “what else have you for us?”
“These are the writings,” I said wearily, “of my insights into the Beyond.”
“Inadmissible,” he said.
I was in shock. Feskin had to come and fetch me. As he ushered me back to my cell, he turned, and told Spencer, “We are finished for the day.”
All was a blur to me as we passed through the throng of people crowding out of their seats. I felt I was drowning in a sea of voices, shouting, “Murderer!” and far fewer proclaiming, “Free the demon!” Somewhere in the crush of people, Emilia appeared. I leaned down to hear what she was saying, but I couldn’t make out a word of it. She reached her hand up to mine and pressed a scrap of paper into it. I closed my fist around her message, and then she was whisked away in the swiftly moving human current.
Feskin did not accompany me inside the cell this time. “Don’t worry, Misrix,” he said. “Things may work out without your having to read your tale of Cley. We have to trust Spencer.”
“I was ready to read,” I said to him from what seemed a great distance.
“I know,” he said. Then he shook his head and walked away down the hall.
It was only later tonight that I read Emilia’s message. Written in her neat hand were the words: There is something I know that might help you.
Now, through the filter of the drug, I see all of this clearly in perspective. I was truly a man earlier today, shaken by language and logic, and this pleases me. Tomorrow, should I be found guilty, even that will please me. There is no trail emanating from the corners of this cell that defies Time and Distance. I leave myself no alternative but to carry on with dignity.
square of paradise
Cley’s hair and beard were streaked with gray and the look of determination with which he had begun his journey had softened considerably. He lifted himself from the high-backed chair before the fireplace and crossed the room for his hat and bow.
Leaving the house, he went down to the edge of the lake, where Willa was picking onion grass for salad. She watched him approach and straightened, brushing the back of her hand across her forehead.
Cley drew close and kissed her on the cheek. “I’m going hunting,” he said.
“Get a rabbit if you can,” she said.
He nodded.
“Do you need Wraith to go with you today?” she asked.
“No, I’ll go alone today,” he said.
“He’ll be disappointed,” she said.
“I’ll explain it to him,” said Cley.
“Be back before sundown,” she said, and bent over to pick some more of the bright green spirals.
The hunter passed the house. Fifty yards away, there was a huge pen made of long, thin tree trunks. Inside it moved eight “oxen,” as Cley called the behemoths that came out of the forest every year at the end of autumn to eat the golden grass of the meadow. The cows gave milk and the meat of one was worth ten hunting trips.
As he neared the pen, he saw Wraith wielding a pitchfork fashioned from branches. The boy dug into the pile of meadow grass and shoveled the load over the side of the pen where four of the oxen had gathered to eat.
Wraith, for all of the troubles of his early years, had grown up tall for his age and was very thin, with blond hair. “Only six more years and he’ll be a man,” thought Cley, and shook his head.
The hunter watched as the boy lifted another pile of hay over the side of the pen. There was a slight rippling of muscle down the slender left arm and a distant look in his eyes. For some reason, this one glance at the boy filled Cley with great satisfaction.
“I’m going hunting,” he said.
“I’ll go,” said Wraith, dropping the rake.
“Not today,” said Cley.
“Why not?” asked the boy.
“I’m going far, and you have too much to do.”
“All right,” said Wraith. He walked over and hugged Cley. The hunter wrapped his arm tightly around the boy.
“Tomorrow,” said Wraith, taking a step back.
“Tomorrow,” said Cley, as he turned and headed for the tree line.
It was late spring, and the day was mild. The forest was brimming with life. Birds and squirrels moved through the new foliage, and the scent of deer was everywhere.
On his way into the heart of the forest Cley stopped at a small clearing circled by shemel trees. A tall pile of brown stones sat in the middle of it. The hunter approached the marker and stood quietly. He thought about the black dog, remembering its brutal death in the jaws of the Sirimon.
They had taken Wraith along and gone out hunting in the forest. It was early autumn in the sixth year of their stay at Pierce’s cabin. Cley was preoccupied, aiming at a deer off in the distance, when the pink column of monster rose up from behind some bracken. If Wood had not leaped, the Sirimon would have taken Wraith. By the time the hunter felled the great serpent, with one perfect shot (the last of the rifle bullets) to the head, Wood was lifeless. It had been the boy’s idea to bury him with the cover of the empty book.
For years after the tragedy, Cley had wondered if this had been his repayment for saving the Beyond. The body scribe, who came back to visit from time to time, had suggested one summer night that perhaps something else would have happened if the dog had not been killed by the serpent.
“Like what?” asked Cley.
“The boy,” whispered the old artisan.
Now the anger was behind him, and he was left with only a longing to see his hunting companion again. Sometimes, when he was deep in the forest, he heard a very distant sound like barking. The first time he heard it, he tracked it for five miles before he realized that it never grew any closer. On other occasions he might feel something brush lightly against his leg. When he was alone in some unknown tract of the wilderness, he still found himself whistling to call the dog to his side.
For the past few nights, he had been dreaming of hunting a strange creature through the forest. Wood was with him, and they traveled through an unfamiliar landscape, tr
acking the thing that always, at the last minute, eluded them. When the hunter woke, he tried to remember what the animal had been, but the image was jumbled in his mind, a winged whirl of feather, fur, beak, and claw in myriad colors. The sounds that came from it were sometimes high-pitched squeals, sometimes the huffing of a pig, and once it rumbled in a human bass voice from behind the undergrowth, “I don’t understand.”
The dreams were so vivid that Cley had come to believe that he would actually find this creature out in the real forest of his waking days. There was something portentous about it, and it was for this reason that he left Wraith safely behind. He had the sense that if he were able to succeed in felling the enigmatic prey, many things would become clear to him.
So the day passed as Cley hunted the dream creature, listening carefully for its cry and peering long and hard at any rustling of leaves. In the afternoon, he missed twice trying to get a rabbit for Willa. As he had told her from time to time, “My shot is not worth a word from Brisden anymore.” He fetched the arrows and continued on his way.
As the sun descended, he realized he must turn back to the house. He now had two rabbits strung over his shoulder, so the day had not been a total loss. Traveling down the gently sloping side of a hill, between the trunks of birches, he noticed that at the bottom there was a tall bush whose branches were swaying. There was something within, behind the leaves.
Cley stood still, and at the same moment the bush stopped moving. The hunter raised his bow and nocked an arrow. Cautiously, he advanced, waiting for the thing to dart out in either direction. When he was five paces away, he pulled the bowstring back, aiming for the spot where the commotion had been. An instant before he decided to release the arrow, something rushed from the back of the bush in a blur of color and disappeared behind trees a hundred yards away.
The hunter could not believe how fast the creature moved. He could have sworn it made a sound as it fled, a quiet screech that still echoed in his memory. Cley started after it, moving slowly toward the stand of trees. He tried to remember if he was really hunting the creature or dreaming he was hunting it. He had a vague sense that he had done this before, more than once.
All was silent within the trees. The creature had not moved. As he approached with great stealth, Cley expected the thing to either fly or run. Even after having seen it, he had no idea how it traveled. Now he wished he had the boy with him to help flush it out. He lost his concentration for a moment and pictured himself presenting the carcass of the exotic creature to Wraith.
“It takes many, many years of hunting to be able to fell a beast like this,” he said in his daydream.
“Why?” asked the boy.
“You have to learn to understand the wilderness,” he said.
He was pulled back into the here and now by a low croaking coming from the thicket. Cley focused again, and worrying that he might have been distracted too long, charged. As he plunged into the trees, something flew above him in the opposite direction.
Only a crow.
Cley felt as though he was sinking into his own chest, and then laughed.
Night was close by, the moon already shining. The hunter looked back over his shoulder at the thicket. He squinted and peered into where light failed and shadows brewed. For the first time in years, he felt lost.
On his way back to the house, with night a heartbeat away, Cley noticed a movement, like a wing flapping, off to his left. He raised the bow and quickly released. The arrow struck the side of a fallen tree. As he went to fetch it, he cursed. When he drew close, he saw the wing again slowly lifting. The sight of it surprised him and he reared back, afraid it was the dream creature poised to strike.
When the wing deflated, he saw it was not a wing at all. He walked over to the fallen tree and lifted the green veil off the end of a broken branch. Muttering to himself, he stuffed the scrap of material into his pocket.
The hunter broke through the tree line at the edge of the forest and out into the meadow. The moon was shining full, directly over the house. Willa was calling to him from the porch, as she did when he was late. He ran slowly, short of breath, beneath the stars, while from behind him, deep in the forest, came the sound of a dog barking.
In the days that followed, Cley said nothing to Willa about finding the veil. She did not know of his earlier life, and he did not want that to change. He thought often of getting rid of the green scrap, perhaps burning it in the fireplace late at night when the others were asleep. When he was in the forest, alone, he took it from his pocket and studied it. The wind of the Beyond had worn the fabric so thin that no face could now hide behind it. It was badly torn, and the entire edge was frayed. Every time he gathered it up to shove in his pocket, he feared it would crumble like a dead leaf.
Cley, Willa, and Wraith were sitting on the porch, their legs hanging over the side. It was midday, and the view out past the lake was incredible. Flowers of every color filled the meadow, and the clouds moved in the still water. Cley was telling a story about Misrix to the boy.
“That’s right,” said the hunter, “an island in the sky. It was all in Below’s mind.”
“And you flew in the demon’s arms?” asked Wraith.
“Over the Beyond, to the Palishize, a vast spiral of hollowed-out mounds, where I met a ghost who told me about dancing with his ghostly wife by the seashore,” said Cley, smiling.
“Were you afraid of the demon?” asked Wraith.
“Yes, but he saved my life more times than I can count,” said Cley.
“Where do you get this fluff, Cley?” asked Willa, leaning forward.
The hunter laughed. “I make it up to amuse myself.”
“None of it is true?” asked Wraith.
“It’s all true,” said Cley.
“I see a story coming right now,” said Willa.
“No, I’m done for today,” said Cley.
“I mean, out there,” said Willa, as she pointed toward the meadow.
Coming along the northern shore of the lake was a figure that was too far off to see clearly.
“The body scribe?” asked Cley.
“Too tall,” said the boy.
“Besides,” said the hunter, “he has not come for years now. I’d better go and get the pistol.”
“Get in the house, Wraith,” said Willa.
The hunter started out toward the lake. The Traveler kept advancing with long strides. By the time Cley reached the shore, he knew that the visitor was Ea.
Cley stood still as his old friend closed. He lifted his arm and waved. Ea waved back, smiling.
“Have you found Paradise, here?” asked the Traveler.
“I’ve been to Paradise, and now I’m back,” said Cley.
“I heard the wilderness thinking your adventure,” said Ea.
“Arla?” asked the hunter. “What has become of Arla Beaton?”
“She is as she is,” said the Traveler.
“Jarek, Cyn?” said Cley.
“They are very strong,” said Ea.
Walking back to the house, Cley told the Traveler that he had seen Below again. Ea laughed and slapped himself in the side.
“One time, in my conjuring pool, I saw you having tea with a demon,” he said.
“Conjuring pool,” said Cley, and laughed. “You’re full of tricks.”
Creepers sang in the meadow, and a night bird called from out of the forest. Cley lit his pipe with leaves from Ea’s pouch. The Traveler sat in the high-backed chair before the fireplace, and Willa and Cley were sitting on the floor with their backs to the flames. Curaswani’s screaming woman spewed green smoke. They did not know that Wraith was still awake in his bed in the corner.
When the bowl was empty, Ea handed the pipe to Cley, and said, “I came for a reason.”
“I know,” said Cley.
“Arla is not well. She will not live through the next winter,” said the Traveler.
“Is this my chance to reach Wenau?” asked Cley.
“It would
seem,” said Ea. “We heard from an old man, a member of the Word, that you were here. The trip to Wenau will take you six months there and back. But I will guide you, and my son Jarek will return you.”
“I found the veil the other day,” said Cley.
“Good,” said the Traveler.
“You aren’t going away again, are you, Cley?” asked Willa.
“I may have to,” he said.
“I wish you wouldn’t,” she said.
“This is important, though. It is the reason I came to the Beyond. I’ve got to finish it,” he said.
“I don’t understand,” said Willa. She rose from the floor and left the room.
“There will not be another chance, Cley,” said Ea.
“Dad?” said Wraith from the corner.
“Yes,” said Cley.
“Don’t go away.”
“Go to sleep,” said Cley.
The hunter then got to his feet and went into the bedroom. The weary Traveler smiled, searching the flames for the face of Arla Beaton. Wraith eyed the huge man in the chair through lowered lids.
“Please turn over and let me speak to you,” said Cley, as he lay on the bed beside Willa.
He rested his hand lightly on her shoulder. She turned to face him.
“What is it you are going to find?” she asked, a hint of anger in her voice.
“It is a very old debt,” said Cley. “I don’t want to leave you two here, but this will be my last chance to set things right. I will find out who I am,” he said.
“Where do you know this woman from?” asked Willa.
“The past,” he said.
“Why do you need to see her?” she asked.
“Listen to me,” said Cley. “Just listen, and I will tell you everything …”
The next morning at breakfast, Ea told Cley, “We must leave soon if we are going to make the mountain pass before it becomes choked with snow.”
Cley looked over at Willa. “What do you say?” he asked, secretly hoping she would tell him not to go. Since telling her the entire saga of his life as the Physiognomist, he felt free of it.