The One Who Is Two (Book 1 of White Rabbit)

by Stuart Oldfield

The smooth plastic blackness of the road arched in front of him like the back of a whale breaking through the waves, and the trees parted as he advanced, stepping aside like courtiers. The girl was ahead of him, his white-clad target, his goal. He knew he could reach her – just a few yards of tarmac separated them – but as he hurried towards her, he felt something begin to change. It was imperceptible at first, just a strange sense of threatened instability as of an ornament teetering on the edge of a mantelpiece, but then he noticed the colours that swirled around him becoming brighter still, absurdly bright, and then gradually melting away from the objects that gave them existence. Once liberated from the bonds of form, they flowed freely, first blending into one another then separating in a mad whirling dance, like the paints on a deranged artist's palette. Again he was alone, this time in a realm beyond existence, a realm of formless, flowing colour; he shivered, giddy with panic. But then, in the midst of the swirling mess, there was something solid, a firm blob of white that refused to blend, a whiteness that belonged to something, the whiteness of an object. He focussed on the girl's gown, anchoring his mind in the swirling maelstrom. And then, slowly coalescing around the rock of whiteness, the rest unmixed itself and swam back into place: the green returned to the grass, the black to the tarmac, and the blue to the brilliant sky that gave it birth. The road was back where he had left it and the girl was still there, far ahead of him, walking away.

  As his nascent panic ebbed quickly away, he stepped out of the shade and was immersed in light, dazzling and white. It blazed over him and through him, illuminating every atom in his body. With a sudden rush of excitement, he became light; he was light itself, a splinter of the sun shining across the surface of the earth. But then, as he sped forward at sunbeam velocity, he felt his feet thudding onto the warm tarmac, his body lurching forward with each step. He wasn't light at all, he was earth. His limbs became sacks of sand and his body filled with concrete. He took a step, hauling his leg forward, dragging the huge weight of his foot over the ground. Finally he stopped walking, for he must remain still to let the earth flow into him, to become one with the soil and the bedrock. As his petrifaction neared completeness, however, something flickered across the granite mass that was his brain: a dazzle of whiteness. The girl was standing at a gate at the top of the road, a beacon of brightness. The earth melted and flowed out of him like lava, releasing its grip.

  He was now between two fences which appeared to converge ahead of him, funnelling him towards the girl, the focussed angularity hard grey metal tearing into his fragile vision. A vague shadow scudded across his mind, possibly a memory. Of a bridge? No, he was on a bridge now; it wasn't a memory at all. He peered gingerly over one of the parapets; a river shimmered twenty miles below, a river of colours and shapes which flowed both ways at once, a river of sound that echoed through him in falling crescendos of noise, each throb and pulse perfectly in place as if played by a vast orchestra.

  He could have been lost forever in the endless flow of colour and sound, but again the girl pulled him back, an image of her coalescing in his mind to call him away. Starting forward again, he quickened his pace. Even as he walked, though, he could feel the river as it coursed by far beneath him. It wouldn't let him go, it was tugging at him, pulling him towards itself with a strange force. And there was nothing between him and it except for several miles of empty, free-fall space – and a flimsy little bridge. Suddenly he saw falling, a horrible plunging into the gaping chasm. Then the tarmac veered away from him and he was on a knife-edge with sheer drops on either side. For a moment he teetered, swaying wildly and fighting for balance with windmilling arms.

  But he did not fall. Forcing his eyes straight ahead, he nailed his vision to the whiteness of the girl's clothes, resisting the magnetic force of the abyss that pulled him to gaze into its terrible vertiginous eyes. His heart hammered in his throat and he ceased breathing – and gradually he regained his balance. Then, putting each foot in front of the other with a tightrope walker's care, he edged slowly forward, staying directly between the parapets.

  At last he reached firm ground. The solidity of the earth under his feet caressed him, enclosing him in a warm blanket of gravity. Relief washed through him and he breathed deeply, feeling suddenly light, like gossamer in the breeze. He laughed out loud, spinning around like a dancer.