by Leena Maria
For some reason Grandma wanted to join the motorway as soon as she could, when she could have chosen pretty back roads with barely any traffic where she might have had fun with her small car. She also seemed disinclined to talk. I didn't comment, though, as we drove along in the midst of other traffic, following the speed limits, heading towards an attractive campus university on the edge of the urban sprawl of the midlands.
That is also why we were at the museum's door a few minutes before the museum even opened.
"I have some things to attend to," she said, "so you might as well have a look round the museum, if you like. We could meet the professor in an hour or so. I'm not sure where his office is located on the campus now, but you can ask from the info desk. It's close by, in the building at the back of the museum. I'll meet you at his office in an hour, OK?"
Grandma zoomed away before I had even time to answer.
This whole thing seemed so irrational I looked at my hands. Four fingers and a thumb. Everything as it should be. I sighed. Sometimes it would be good if reality turned out to be a dream and you could wake up from a particularly scary or sad bit.
Once Grandma had disappeared, I considered whether to take a look round the museum, which did look interesting, but then turned on my heel and hurried past the building to the gates of the campus. I went straight to the university information desk, which was in the building right next to the gates just as Grandma had said.
"Yes, can I help you?" a young woman was sitting behind the counter. I had expected older people and was a bit surprised – this one did not look much older than I was. Then I got it. Summer job, of course.
I told her who I was looking for, and she gave me a printed map of the campus area. She circled the right building for me. I thanked her and went on my way. There was no point looking around the museum - my mind was worrying over the message hidden in the dream book to such an extent that none of the objects in the collection would have registered. I would go and wait by the professor's office until Grandma came.
I don't quite know what I expected, but his office didn't look too impressive to me from the outside – an ordinary door with his nameplate on it. I stopped in front of it, and for the first time felt nervous. So far the momentum had just carried me along, but now I had to decide what exactly I was going to say to him about the dream book - if anything. "Hello, have you heard of the buffer zone? I was given this interesting book that tells me that you do - I have no idea where it came from - but I was told to meet you in a dream?"
Yeah, right... If the whole book was a hoax, the professor would most likely consider I had bats in the belfry.
Thinking that I probably had half an hour or so till Grandma appeared, I was musing on the book and its curious message when the door suddenly opened and an elderly, tall man hurried out, almost knocking me over.
"I am so sorry, miss!" he exclaimed, "a bad habit of mine, reading while I walk!"
He was standing there with his glasses perilously near the tip of his nose and a thick book pressed against his chest.
"That's quite all right," I said. "Are you... Professor Reginald Rowan?"
"Indeed I am - ah - sorry, I don't seem to recall your name? Do we have an appointment? I am sure my secretary has forgotten to inform me... or I have forgotten to check my appointments. Probably the latter one... can't blame the secretary, dear heart, a very efficient lady as she is, and probably rather desperate to be stuck with me."
"Well, yes, we have a meeting, sort of. Or rather my Grandma has, and she brought me along. She isn't here yet, though..." I interrupted when he had to stop talking for a second and catch his breath. Then, deciding this was as good a time as any, I inhaled deeply and asked: "But if I said yours was the fifth name on a list, would that mean anything to you?"
He looked at me straight in the eye (he was quite tall), and suddenly his somewhat scatterbrained demeanor changed. There was a very sharp intellect there staring at me over his glasses.
"Fifth, you say... Where is this list, if I may ask?"
"In an old book..." I said.
"Now this wouldn't be a book about... gates?" he whispered.
I stared at him for a few seconds before answering, as if his looks would reveal whether he was trustworthy or not. The knowing look in his eyes convinced me to answer honestly.
"It would..."
"Are you sure you were not followed?"
"I don't know. Probably not..."
"You haven't seen odd...shadows?" his voice was so low I almost did not hear it.
He clearly knew.
"No, I haven't seen any here. At home I did, once. And then there is this odd young man who pops up out of nowhere and..."
He straightened and suddenly I wasn't sure anymore that he was old at all.
"In here, quick."
He opened the door and practically pushed me inside, while already talking on his cell phone, canceling some appointment. Then he closed the door and took off his glasses. I noticed there were no wrinkles around his eyes.
"Now. You and I need to have a serious talk. But first, show me the book so I know you are the real thing. And to convince you, here is my signature, so you may compare it to the fifth name."
He scribbled his name on a piece of paper. I could immediately see the signature was similar. He used quite extensive loops for his R's. My dream had led me to the right person.
CHAPTER SIXTEEN
16. Timeless Realms
Professor Rowan gave me a look that revealed he had a keen intelligence behind the slightly nutty-professor-like appearance.
Then he navigated his computer with a few clicks, and strange music filled the room. It was loud and sonorous and seemed to resonate in my spine in an unpleasant way. I squirmed involuntarily with discomfort for a few seconds, wondering how any music could have had this effect on me. I felt as though I was developing a high fever and had to force myself to sit still.
The professor saw me frown and smiled reassuringly.
"Don't worry; the room is sound-proofed. The other staff know my hobby is primitive singing and bells and bowls, and they kindly allowed me to sound-proof this room. At my own expense of course, and after I gave permission for the little faculty choir to have their weekly practise here - there's plenty of room for them as you can see. What they don't know is why I want to play this kind of music - it prevents the shadows and their masters from hearing us."
I was not sure that knowing we were sitting in a sound-proofed room improved things at all. Nor the knowledge that there were shadows around us. Not to mention the "shadow masters", who must be way scarier than the shadows. I glanced quickly at the clock in the room, away again, and back. Nothing had changed. Fingers - one, two, three, four, thumb. Normal. Dammit, normal!
I didn't know for sure whether I could trust the professor or not. Still, I had come too far to shrink away now. I took the book out of my bag and showed it to him. To my surprise he did not reach for it, but instead just leaned back on his chair, nodded, and sighed.
"Yes, that's the book. Now, I need to know who told you about it. How did you get it?"
"I was in a bookstore and this young man almost knocked me over. He came out of nowhere. I fell down, and it was only later that I noticed this book was in my bag. I believe he put it there."
"What did he look like?" Suddenly I realized of whom the professor reminded me. He was just like the professor from the film "Back to the future", only his hair showed evidence of being combed earlier that day, and it was chestnut colored, streaked with grey. I got the feeling that somehow he was not as old as he tried to look, though as I could not stare at him openly, I couldn't pin down his age with certainty.
"He was blonde. Very blue eyes. Very tall. And hot."
"Hot as in body heat?"
"Er, yes," I felt myself blushing again at the memory of the young man.
"Quite, quite..." the professor nodded to himself as is he was pleased with something. "Good, very good..."
/> He continued to mumble to himself and I waited.
Finally I coughed and the professor almost jumped. Even though the small voice I managed to make was almost buried in the strange metallic music, the professor obviously had very good hearing.
"I do beg your pardon... I suppose you need explanations now. But first: who told you to find me, and how did they tell you who, and where, I was?"
"To cut a long story short - I had a dream. A lucid dream. In it, a lady told me to find the fifth name on the list at the back of this book, someone that lived in this city. And by chance... " I didn't get any further because as soon as I said the word "chance" Professor Rowan interrupted me.
"No such things as chance, my dear, no such thing... I shall explain this to you now. The story will seem incredible, but I suppose you have already crossed the line of incredulity, having read what is in the book, and having seen one of the shadows. Not to mention having had the experience of a lucid dream."
He said "the book" in almost reverent tones, as though it was a personality that he knew and admired. Then he lifted his eyebrows, which made his forehead crease, and looked at me as if asking my permission. I nodded, and he continued.
"Very well then. So the book tells us that there is a buffer zone between our physical world and the Unseen Worlds, where time does not exist for anyone who gets there. Does this sound believable to you?"
"Well... not really. I mean I suppose we would know about it."
"And indeed we have known about it, always," the professor beamed as if I had been a good student and given the right answer. "There are so many stories in which someone falls asleep and wakes up years later – time has passed and they enter a changed world when they awaken. You must have heard some of them. These narratives have their roots in reality. One of the oldest is the story of HoniM'agel. He was a Jewish scholar, who according to the tale, fell asleep one day..." The professor switched to the historic present, as though he was seeing the story unfold in front of him. "Prior to falling asleep, he sees a man planting a carob tree, and asks him why he would do such a thing, when it was of no benefit to him. It would take 70 years for the tree to mature and carry fruit, and the man who planted it would be dead. When HoniM'agel awakens, he realizes he is under the very same carob tree, which has now fully matured. Big branches are reaching for the sky above him. Time has passed, and he discovers that he even has a grandson now."
"I have never heard of HoniM'agel..." I admitted
The music made an especially loud howling noise. I cringed. I would describe it as just like toothache in my back. Was I getting ill? Sounds didn't have this effect on me normally...
"Bronze singing bowls," the professor explained, "but moving on: have you ever heard of the seven wise men who fell asleep for two hundred years?"
I vaguely remembered hearing something of the sort, and nodded.
"The seven sleepers of Ephesus, as they were called. Early Christians, who hid in a cave and fell asleep for 200 years. This supposedly happened around the year 250 CE. Another old story is the legend of Ranka – a young Chinese man who ventured deep into a forest and met two old men playing a board game. He accepted some food from them and munched away on it while he watched their game. He dozed off and when he came to, he was alone. The axe handle he was holding had rotted, the axe head had fallen to the ground, and he had a long beard. He returned home and his family had disappeared and no one remembered him anymore."
"Reminds me of Rip van Winkle," I said.
"His story was fiction, but it was based on these folk legends," the professor dismissed Rip van Winkle with a wave of his hand, "and there are many more... Take for example the eighth-century Japanese story of Urashima Taro. As a young man he saved a tiny turtle that was tortured by children. He took it back to sea and would probably have forgotten all about the episode, if a huge turtle had not approached him the next day.
"The big turtle told him that the little turtle had actually been Otohime, the daughter of the Emperor of the Sea. The Emperor wished to thank Urashima Taro, and the big turtle used his magical powers to give him gills. Then they swam to the bottom of the sea." Professor Rowan made a turtle swimming gesture with his hands. Once again he was there in his mind, you could tell. "He spends a few days there, but then wishes to return to his own village. The princess lets him go, but gives him a box as a departing gift, asking him not to open it.
"When he gets back to the surface, everything in his village has changed, and when he asks if anyone remembers a man with his name, they do. They tell him a man with his name vanished at sea long ago. Three hundred years had passed since then.
"He opens the box and - this is a fascinating bit - there are many variations as to what is in it. One version reveals that white smoke coming from the box turns him into an old man, and Otohime's voice comes from the sea, telling him his old age was in the box. In another version he turns into a crane, in yet another he is given a magic pill that makes it possible for him to breathe underwater. "
"Nice story..." I was trying hard to be polite, when in fact all these legends one after another were making my head spin.
"Did you know they actually have a shrine in Japan, UrashimaJinja, where an old text tells of a man, Urashimako, who left in the year 478 to visit a land where people never die? He returned in the year 825, and he too carried a box with him. He opened this one, and again a cloud of white smoke came out and turned him into an old man."
I opened my mouth to say something, but by now the professor was well into his lecture.
"In Ireland a story of Oisin tells how he falls in love with beautiful Niamh, and together they ride to the land of the ever-young. After a while he begins to miss his family. Niamh lends him her horse, and warns him not to dismount. When he gets back home, three hundred years have passed, and everyone he knew is dead. Oisin falls from his horse and turns immediately into an old man."
The professor, in his enthusiasm, began to pace the floor.
"In the story of Muchukunda, in the Bhagavatam," he nodded over his glasses in my direction as if he expected me to know what the Bhagavatam was, "the king Muchukunda helps the gods to fight demons. In the divine realm almost no time passed, and he was told that one year in heaven equaled three hundred and sixty years."
He stopped and turned towards me.
"So you see – there are plenty of stories of people visiting a place where time does not pass. In many cases, after returning, they turn old in a matter of moments or days, often as a result of some magic falling apart. And here's what's true about these stories and how they relate to the Book of Gates..."
A red light lit up by the door, warning that someone had pressed the silent doorbell. The professor clicked on his computer and looked at the security image provided by the hallway camera.
"Ah, my old friend!" he exclaimed, looking at the screen.
Just as things were beginning to get interesting... I sighed and waited patiently while the professor walked to the door and opened it. A voice came from the corridor.
"Quickly – shadows are gathering around the university. We need to leave now!"
It was Grandma.
CHAPTER SEVENTEEN
17. A Safe Place
"I knew you were involved in all of this," I yelled at Grandma. Not because I was angry, but because there was no other way to make her hear what I said. "And could you please turn that horrible noise down?"
We were speeding in her sports car on the motorway, once again weaving our way in and out of the slower traffic. This time she did not stick to the speed limits but drove like someone possessed, despite the speed cameras staring down at us from nearly every bridge. I sat in the middle, and Professor Rowan was on my other side, looking like a big spider with his long legs folded into the small space available. He was holding a small loudspeaker in his hands and from it the brass bowls music was howling at full volume. It really resonated in my whole body in a horrible way and my spine especially, which was something I
did not understand. Toothache of the spine I kept telling myself, wincing at the sensation.
"Sorry, no!" Professor Rowan yelled back, "the vibrations keep the shadows at a distance, if they are following us!"
I rolled my eyes. Grandma was going to have some explaining to do once we finally stopped.
The fact that no police car was around was a miracle. Grandma really stepped on the gas and the little red car responded instantly. I tried to see what was written on the road signs flashing by, and it did not take long for me to realise we were not heading homewards.
"Where are we going?" I yelled.
"To a safe place!" Grandma yelled back, and after that said nothing. Probably because saying anything required just that - yelling.
The professor opened the window for a while.
To my surprise, Grandma shouted angrily "Close that, now!"
The professor mumbled something (I did not hear it, but saw his lips move), looked embarrassed, and closed the window.
It took us two hours to reach our destination. Two hours that almost drove me crazy, listening to the singing bronze bowls, their howling sound resonating in my bones. We did not talk during the drive, for obvious reasons. Covering my ears did not help either. The last part of the route headed off into the hills along minor roads. I guessed from the journey time that we were probably somewhere in Yorkshire.
The safe place turned out to be an old manor of some kind – the year on the wrought iron gate announced it was established two hundred years ago, and everything about it and the surroundings spoke of old money. A discreet metal plate announced the place was called the Magellan Spa. Some people were walking around the grounds - most seemed to be middle aged or older. A few who were sitting on elegant wooden loungers outside the building wore very luxurious-looking bathrobes.
"Ahh... safe at last," Professor Rowan said and the music stopped the second we were inside the gates.
