Zurvan struggled to understand them at first also, but has reverted to using English exclusively when communicating with them and places the burden squarely on their shoulders to do the work of understanding him. For the most part, they’ve risen to the challenge, working hard to get their thoughts and concerns out in complete sentences that have improved greatly in comprehensibility over the few days they’ve been working.
They built the altar and erected a metal basket to put a fire inside. Annie did most of the heavy lifting of moving blocks and materials, while Leonard took on the role of supervisor. He also assisted with fire tending, being sure to keep the blaze fed so that Zurvan would be pleased. Zurvan himself underwent a different type of preparation. He painted the area around the fire pit with various symbols and built himself a sort of chair to sit on and, once comfortable, proceeded to stare into the fire and hum.
I’ve never been a practitioner of yoga or eastern religion, but I know enough about the concept to recognize meditation. Zurvan has made repeated attempts in this position, trying to accomplish something in particular, but despite his best efforts, can’t seem to achieve his desired state. I watch him become increasingly aggravated after each session. He makes Leonard rebuild the fire and starts over.
Over and over again, he fails.
Cursing the fire after his last attempt, Zurvan puts a hand to his head, probing the recently tended wound on his skull. He frowns and pulls the bandage away from the injury, his fingers brushing the now closed up gash.
“Is healed, yes?” Annie says. She hovers over her patient, checking up on him. He brushes her hands away.
“The wounds I’ve suffered won’t be healed with your herbs.”
“We have medsin,” Annie replies. “Good medsin. From the old ways.”
Zurvan puts both of his hands to his head. “No. You don’t see. There is too much missing now. Too many memories lost. I can’t remember like I should anymore. If I can’t remember, I can’t go back. If I can’t go back, we can’t escape this. I can’t stop it.”
He stares at the ship, its blue lights pulsing long slow bursts into the fading twilight. The heat from the back of the ship has increased to the point that the back of the ship itself glows—a throbbing red sore just under its surface.
“It won’t hold,” Zurvan says. “It’s going to destroy itself. And all of us with it.”
Annie takes her eyes off of Zurvan and lets them linger on the back of the ship with new suspicion. “Do we nee ta kill it? Or do we nee ta run?”
Zurvan frowns. “Neither. It can’t be killed. And it can’t be outrun.”
“We have a bus by the lake,” Leonard says. “Ol’ Blue. We made it work. Sunny days it’ll go fifty mile on a clear way.”
“No!” Zurvan declares. “No running. No . . . buses. This thing is going to—Even if you had a real ship buried in this heap of refuse you call a city, you’d need a craft that could—” He sputters to a stop and looks up at the rear of the spacecraft. “You’d need to contain it.” His mind is clearly working hard, wrestling with a new idea.
He turns to Leonard. “We could use another ship. If we had another one we could harness the power, drive the reactor from the first into the second. We could still save it.”
“What ship, sir? We have no ship,” Leonard says.
“No. You wouldn’t have a ship like this, but there are more.”
“They be ships in the way back east,” Annie declares. “Old way ships in the water. Tall ones out past the long marsh. Spaceport it was. Port Nyongo and Port Ken Dee. Old old ways.”
Zurvan’s eyes flicker to Annie’s face. “Kennedy? No. Kennedy is too far back. That was the beginning. But what’s this other one? Nyongo? Where’s that?”
“South way. Long way over the water.” She gestures toward the south, past the shattered solar array and the ruins of downtown.
“How long since the ships flew?” Zurvan says. “Who flew them?”
“Those are just old tales,” Leonard moans. “Ancient history. And that was them that took ’em. The others. We don’t have no business in those places. Never have.”
Zurvan frowns. “But they had ships. How long? How long ago?”
“Honred years,” Annie replies. “Seven honred. Nine honred. We don’t know. No one tells us.”
Zurvan faces the ship, the heat of it radiating around him. He must be feeling its intensity because he shrugs out of his outer robe and tosses it aside. He rolls up his loose shirtsleeves and turns back to his companions. “We can go another way.” He grabs the arms of Annie and Leonard and drags them toward the altar they’ve erected. “You two will do it. You will bring me a ship.”
Annie and Leonard both look confused but don’t attempt to shake his grasp.
“But we don’t have no boat,” Annie complains. “Them ships long way and they heavy. Ain’t no way they—”
“Shut up,” Zurvan says, dragging them faster. When they reach the stone platform he has them sit, facing the fire, and he takes a position on one knee behind them. “Now listen to me,” he hisses. “I am going to teach you. I’ll teach you the way to go. You’re going to take the message for me. There is a ship like this one.” He stabs a finger at the glowing sphere behind him. “You are going to find it. You’ll bring it to me and we can still stop this.”
“How we gon—” Annie protests.
“I told you. Just listen. Look at the fire.” He grabs both of their heads and points them to the fire. “For now you just look, and you let the fire be all you see. You will clear your mind of everything but the flames. Let them burn away all that is inessential.”
He stands up and leaves the two staring into the fire. “When your minds have been purified, we’ll begin.” Annie and Leonard look hesitant, but they obey, settling into place and staring hard into the flames.
The Zurvan in the Neverwhere lets the vision fade and change. He moves on to a later memory. His two disciples, for that is what they seem to be now, have advanced from merely staring into the fire and are now adding various chants and humming into their practice. Other times he has them reciting stories, memories from their own past, seemingly inconsequential moments, but he asks them to relive them in excruciating detail. It doesn’t seem to matter what the memories are about. He takes just as much interest in Leonard’s recollection of an all black fish he once caught in the river as he does in Annie’s lurid description of one of her early sexual experiences. Zurvan is intently concentrated on detail. The moment he suspects that one or the other of his pupils is exaggerating a fact or making up fanciful details, he berates them and cuffs them on the head.
It seems as though days pass this way. The memories the two disciples recite are often similar, and they loop back to certain ones over and over again, attempting to glean more detail, or mine some forgotten snippet of the memory previously overlooked.
But through them all, the repetition and recounting of childhood stories, I can see the gradual change in the ship. The glow at the rear of the ship has gone from a dull glow, to an angry, volatile sunspot. There are parts of the ship that glow white hot and vaporize the moisture in the air around them. The ground at the back of the ship has turned black, baked by the extreme heat, and no one goes inside anymore, not even Zurvan.
Zurvan has finally made a decision regarding his pupils’ memories. Each one sits across from the other on opposite sides of the fire, doing their chanting rituals and getting into their meditative positions, then fixating on their memories the way he instructs them. I’ve heard his instructions so many times, I feel like one of his students. “Stare into the fire. It consumes what you are, leaving only what you were. Now take yourself there. Find yourself. You are inside the memory. You are the memory.”
It’s clear that Annie is his favorite. He spends more time coaching her, guiding her toward her past. Her memory of being a teenage girl in an overly large family growing up in the southern marshes does not seem especially fascinating, but her level of det
ail regarding the memories has pleased him. She’s recounted textures of the reeds on the marshes, the feel of the burn she got when branded by a roving gang of outlaws, and the smell of the dead bodies after a flash flood washed through the city and drowned most of her neighbors. Zurvan doesn’t dwell on the emotions related to these events, and only takes a passing interest in what became of her after each occurrence, but continues to push her back into those memories. Instructing her to find herself there and to take control.
The taking control concept bothers me on a personal level. It bothers me because I know what they’re up to, and I’ve been in their same position. These are the methods of the Eternals. Having only heard about them in passing during the chronothon, I have no first-hand experience with their methods, but after watching Annie and Leonard repeatedly travel back to their pasts in their own minds, it’s become clear what they are trying to do. Zurvan is sending them back in time.
Despite my discomfort with the idea of taking over one’s own mind, especially since I’ve been considering doing the same thing to myself, I can’t seem to disconnect from this scene. Zurvan is intent on reliving it, and I am insanely curious to see the results. I stay that way until the day Annie starts screaming.
The two disciples are in their usual positions on opposite sides of the fire. Annie has been dwelling on the past the longest, having gotten a head start that morning. She’s spent longer and longer in her mind each day, smoothly feeling her way back inside her memories, but today she erupts in a fit of terror.
“She’s goon kill me! No! Get her out! She knows about me. She knows who I be!”
Zurvan rushes to her side, attempting to grab her flailing arms and calm her. Annie keeps swiping at her sides, brushing off the invisible threat that has ahold of her. Annie is inconsolable. She continues to shriek until Zurvan clamps his hands on both sides of her head and closes his eyes.
Annie goes rigid. Her shrieking stops and her eyes roll back in her head— flickering white orbs as her eyelids flutter. Finally her body relaxes and she slumps forward, collapsing to the stone platform in a heap.
Zurvan stays standing. Looking down on the fallen form of Annie, his lip curls into a disappointed scowl. Then he steps over her and moves to Leonard. The old man is staring wide-eyed at his fallen companion.
“What . . . What happened to . . .”
“She was weak,” Zurvan spits back. “Her younger self was the stronger mind. She lost the fight. You mustn’t let that happen. You must remember the weaknesses of your former self and exploit them. Tunnel into the recesses of his mind where you know he has no foundation. Use his insecurities, his fears, and replace them with only your will.
“You must be assured where he is weak. You will be confident in place of his timidity and move boldly to counter his inaction. You will prove to him that you are the stronger mind and the rightful owner of your body. If you leave yourself vulnerable, he will sense the weakening of your resolve and reject you. Never let him think he can beat you. Destroy him.”
Leonard looks less than assured after seeing Annie crumble, but he sets his jaw and dutifully goes back to staring into the fire, concentrating on his mission in the past.
After a while Annie stirs, but when she rises to her knees, she finds Zurvan no longer attentive to her. His favor is now on Leonard and, when she makes her way down the platform, pausing once to look back, Zurvan doesn’t even give her a second glance. She shuffles over the edge of the crater, arms held tightly across her chest, and disappears.
The next day, Zurvan gets an early start with Leonard. Annie returns too, only to find them already deep in mediation. She takes her place near the fire again, cautiously, and Zurvan doesn’t reprimand her. When she makes subtle attempts to question him about the events of the day before, he simply doesn’t respond. He instead devotes all of his time to Leonard and, while he doesn’t actively discourage Annie from attending, she no longer receives his tutoring. She instead assumes the role of fire tender, spending more of her time gathering wood and combustible materials to keep the fire on the altar burning. She keeps this up for a couple more days, but then eventually stops coming altogether.
It’s on the second day of Annie’s absence that Leonard has his breakthrough, with Zurvan feeding the fire and continuing to assist in his meditation. They’ve been at it for over twelve hours, far later into the evening than they’ve attempted before, and finally Leonard lapses into a state of absolute calm. His body visibly relaxes, arms fallen to his sides, fingers flopped loosely to the stone platform, and his mouth hanging open. His eyes flicker in the half light. They glow faintly with the light from the fire, but also the red glow from the back of the ship. Beads of sweat have pooled on his forehead from the heat, but he pays no attention, even when they drip into his eyes.
Zurvan takes a position in front of Leonard and holds his hands out alongside Leonard’s head. Not touching him, but there nonetheless. He speaks softly, but firmly. “Yes. Remember him. Be him.
“You are no longer Leonard. You are the gnomon, the center, the tool of my will. You will cast your shadow back in time as far as you need to. You will take your knowledge back with you. Generations if you need to. Bring me the Lost Star. You will remember this place and you will return to this moment. You will return, and you will save me. Once you do, we will begin again. You too will be eternal.”
Leonard shivers. His lips quiver as if he’s speaking, but no sound comes out. His eyelids flicker faster, the rapidity of their movement increasing to a crescendo and then stopping suddenly. Leonard slumps forward, collapsing into the arms of Zurvan, who catches him gently and lays his body on the stones. He stares down at the man and places a hand to his throat, feeling for a pulse.
The old man is gone.
Standing up, Zurvan tilts his head back and searches the sky. He spins in place, checking each of the cardinal directions before stepping off the platform and away from the bright flames. Once out of the immediate glow of firelight, he lifts his head again, his face alight with anticipation, expectant, hopeful. He climbs the embankment at the side of the crater, stopping at its highest point and keeping his eyes aloft. He waits.
The ship groans.
A red hot section of the sphere finally gives way on the bottom of the craft, dropping with a thud to the dirt and spilling a torrent of liquid-hot metal in the process. The metal hisses and pops as it flows over the rocky ground. Chunks of stone and cement burst from the heat, splitting apart in fragments and slowly melting into the growing pool. Farther from the ship the metal lake finally begins to cool, pressing up against bits of rubble and forming a wall to stop its own progress.
Zurvan watches the metal ooze its way nearly to the edge of his altar before stopping. He pulls his eyes away and goes back to searching the sky. He begins to mutter, growing more and more impatient. He storms back down into the crater and scoops up his folded external robes. He disregards the heat and dons them again, climbing once again to the top of the crater and tilting his head skyward. His fingers twitch. He is impatient, a man not long for this world.
Something inside the ship shrieks and snaps. A deafening bang echoes from the interior. The sound is followed by a low continuous moan of metal and a hissing, crackling sound.
Seated in my favorite hiding place, a few yards from the crater’s edge, I have to remind myself that it isn’t real. I’m not in danger here, even though every instinct in me is telling me to run. The Neverwhere Zurvan—Zurvan the ghost—has remained in position through all of this, calmly meditating it into existence, despite the destruction going on inside the memory.
Destruction is the clear result now. The ship is shrinking. The top of the ship, once taller than a four story building, has been collapsed now at the top. The ship is no longer a sphere, but a dented, pockmarked bowl, now more closely resembling a ball of crushed aluminum foil than the smooth aerodynamic shape it once boasted.
Zurvan’s face has fallen.
His ride is not com
ing.
As the ship slowly consumes itself, some of the brilliance inside begins leaking out. Brilliance is leaking in as well. Wisps of colorful cloud and fog swirl around the ship, as if the Neverwhere itself is aggravated by this memory. Looking at the interaction of the fog, I’m perplexed as to how a memory could be bridging the gap between the real world and mine, but it’s only then that I realize the wisps of fog are not in The Neverwhere, but were really swirling around the ship in this memory of Zurvan’s. Whatever disaster this ship has created, it’s pulling at threads of things not normally seen in the real world. The structure and fabric of time.
Zurvan finally ceases his glances skyward. He fixes his eyes instead on the throbbing, pulsing form of the ship. Hardly anything is left of it now. It’s begun consuming dirt and stone around itself. Colored fog is oozing from the ground around it and obscuring the landscape. Perhaps the strangest spectacle is the firelight. The fire on the altar is still burning, but the light no longer extends as far. Instead, the flames are all leaning toward the brilliance of the glow inside the ship, stretching and arching toward it. The very light from the fire is bending and flowing into the ship.
The rest happens quickly. The ground around the ship erupts, including the crater wall I’m hidden behind. The dirt and stone hurtles into the air in an explosion of movement, instantly eradicating my view of the ship. Buildings behind me go too. An ocean made of concrete, glass, and even the wild and growing plants from the overgrown farm tower goes hurtling toward the glowing hole in the world. Much of the debris passes straight through my ghostly form, increasing in volume until I can no longer even make out the details of individual pieces. It’s just one continuous stream of matter. I close my eyes against the visual onslaught, unable to handle the rush of colors and the continuous, endless roar of sound. I run, staggering blindly against the wave of memory.
In Times Like These: eBook Boxed Set: Books 1-3 Page 134