The Memory Palace

by Gill Alderman

  He did not need to follow Polnisha and the Abbess: he could see it all in his mind.

  ‘And she won’t be bored,’ he said aloud, ‘because she will be singing to herself,

  Here we go round the mulberry bush,

  The mulberry bush, the mulberry bush,

  Here we go round the mulberry bush.’

  He got up from the table and left the nunnery in search of Githon.

  Nandje sat amongst the willow trees on the muddy ground outside Flaxberry to smoke the clay pipe which he always turned to when there was something to be considered. He was oblivious of the dirt beneath and about him as he watched the waters recede and flow away in a swift tide as if they were eager to be back between the banks of the river. There would be floods lower down – but what matter? The world was turned upside down. He welcomed the strange reversal, thought once of Gry and how her love of the newcomer must be disappointed, and returned to his problem: what next? Meditating on uncertainty he fell into a deep trance, so that when Parados found him at sunset he looked as still and grey as the trees which surrounded him.

  ‘Look,’ said Githon who, with Thidma, had accompanied Parados. ‘There are catkins on the trees.’

  The Imandi woke at once and jumped to his feet.

  ‘We must consult the shaman at Hijafoot,’ he said.

  ‘For what?’ said Githon. ‘I might just as well go up into the Altaish and seek out one of our wise men. Look how the willows flower!’

  ‘We must call a divining-woman with her crystals and birch twigs,’ said Thidma. ‘But meanwhile, let us all go in to Flaxberry and enjoy whatever meagre meal the Finder is able to set before us.’

  ‘No.’ Parados spoke quietly so that, at first, they did not hear him and went on talking amongst themselves. ‘No,’ he said, more loudly. ‘I must go alone. I know the direction, that way, about north-west.’

  ‘Back into the Plains,’ said Thidma. ‘I will guide you.’

  ‘No, it is not the Plains, but another country. I do not know what it is called.’

  ‘There is no other land in that direction!’

  ‘Hush,’ Nandje interjected. ‘He knows much more than we do.’

  ‘Of the Plains – where we have lived all our lives in the embrace of our forefathers?’

  ‘He did not say he was going to the Plains. What place is it, Parados, where you must go?’

  ‘A new land, very old – that neither you nor I have seen before. I must have no companions and I must go to it now.’

  ‘Go tomorrow,’ Githon said, laying a hand on Parados’s shoulder. ‘Go in the morning after rest and a meal.’

  Parados moved, so that Githon was forced to let his hand fall.

  ‘Good-bye Githon,’ he said, ‘Nandje, Thidma. Sleep well and may there be enough to eat.’

  Again, Githon attempted to detain him but Nandje pushed him aside and, without another word, they watched Parados walk away from them and wade out into the racing floodwater. Soon, it reached his waist.

  ‘Stop him!’ Githon cried.

  ‘He is well. Look – the water is already shallower. He is making for the alders over there, beyond the dark line that is the bank. Now, I have lost him – you are younger, Thidma, do you see him still?’

  ‘He walks into the sun – it is hard to make him out. There he goes, between the alder and the crooked willow and – I cannot see him.’

  Githon continued to protest, ‘We must find a boat and go after him,’ and Nandje and Thidma who had as much strength as the dwarf between them held his arms.

  ‘Come in, Githon,’ Nandje said. ‘In the morning, if need be, you shall have your boat. There are no wild beasts out there except the hares and the foxes which prey on them. He is not going to the Plains where the wolf-mother roams at night – I believe in him. So should you.’

  ‘I believe, Nandje; but I have seen the Duschma and you have not. Pray she has other business tonight.’

  ‘I must.’ The search had become imperative. He was becoming Parados, man of action not of words, and knew that when the apotheosis was complete, so he would be. He walked a long way, weaving between the wetland trees, the ground sucking and bubbling under him as the enthusiastic waters rushed back to the riverbed; he almost glided, his boots sinking only an inch or two into the boggy ground. Always, the light was red, that fading colour intermixed with the gold which fills the sky and senses as the sun goes down and, though there is warmth in it, prepares the body for the chill of night; but the sun did not go down, remaining balanced on the horizon close beyond the wood. He was travelling uphill. The ground dried out and the willows and alders gave way to hazel and then to open country. The skyline and its poised sun moved back as he advanced and he blinked rapidly to clear his eyes and mind of the strong red light. A wild beast howled not far away. He felt the fear of awful possibilities crawl along his spine and stopped to listen, not able to identify the animal; but what dread creature hunts at sunset in the peaceful fields of home, he thought? My England – Albion – has nothing more terrible than vixens wailing in the torments of desire. Here – what was that ahead, the untidy bush with wings? Surprised into immobility, he stood beside it in the unearthly glow and looked about him. Was it possible that one of these had howled?

  The grass of the hillside was covered in listening animals and birds. Some stood up on boulders, others crouched on fallen logs and they were made, every one, from sticks and odd-shaped pieces of wood and carefully arranged bundles of straw. If he moved again, they would surely come to life and start up from their watchful poses. Here was a wild cat, a cat-a-mountain with a mottled head of bark; there an eagle, wings spread wide, and there a rearing crocodile. That one, with its ridged and scaly back, had no original in life and there – narrow and straight, arms rigid by their sides – stood two men, much smaller than the surrounding beasts. Their eyes glistened but, he saw, were only glossy pebbles. Cautiously, he shifted a foot, pushing it softly forward through the grass. Nothing else moved and he continued across the grass and further up the hill, giving each creature a wide berth as he came to it and passed it. A ditch made horizontal lines across the slope, a wavy-backed serpent lying on its nearer bank, head down as if it drank and watched by a crowd of skeletal birds with wings upraised. When he reached the snake and stood by it, he saw that the ditch was no shallow trench but a rocky crevasse perhaps twenty or thirty feet deep, perhaps unplummable with lurking monsters far below, invisible in the shadowy depths. His fear grew and he held it tight so that it should not escape and overwhelm him.

  A plank bridge crossed the ravine. It was guarded by another of the strange animals. This one, though it had the jutting features of a huge gorilla, was less frightening for it seemed entirely made of straw and had toppled over into a bush grown up beside it. The guardians, he supposed, were powerless now, old tutelary spirits fallen into disuse but, since the bridge was there, he must cross it – or how would he know what lay beyond? And he must cross without a thought of the drop below; a man without hands would find it impossible to climb up once he had fallen, or if he broke a leg – The bush rustled under the straw gorilla. He thought of mice and then of serpents. The straw head moved, a great, dark head with a yellow mane, and then the legs, unfolding and projecting from the bush. Bunches of green leaves were stuck at random into the hairy body and a dense beard of them, thick as an ivy clump, grew about a terrible mouth which opened to show two rows of sharp, yellow teeth.

  ‘There are greater perils than the bridge,’ the beast said and stood up on its hind legs like a tower brought to life. ‘You are late, but I have enjoyed the long rest in my rustic bivouac.’

  Parados, poised in the moment between grovelling fear and flight, swallowed his panic but could not speak. He recognized the creature. Its mane was a straw rope wound round its neck and shoulders.

  ‘Am I such a shocking invention?’ the Om Ren continued. ‘Come, Master Storyteller, you know me. I am wearing my wedding-clothes, dressed all in leaves like Jack-in
-the-Green for I am ready to seek my mate.’

  ‘Was it you who roared as I came up the hill?’

  ‘I? I am a gentle fellow, unless roused.’ His hairy cheeks twitched in imitation of a smile. ‘And all for the general good. You should have come into Malthassa many months ago, before the Archmage – whom I admire, for he is an ambitious, fearless fellow – well before Koschei’s pain had bred so many terrors and apparitions.’

  ‘I could not get out of the place in which I was imprisoned.’

  ‘You let it detain you – loss is something to be overcome, not enjoyed. No matter, here you are. I will guide you over the bridge and up to the hilltop. But walk in the centre of the bridge, along the line where the two planks meet – who knows what trolls lurk beneath it? And do not heed the animals when you are on the bridge.’

  They crossed the bridge, which swayed and was much longer than it appeared from the safety of firm ground, Parados walking behind the Om Ren who paused now and then, reared up to his full and dreadful height, looked down into the chasm and growled. Parados did not look. He had an impression of coils, of tongues and teeth, but the din of the wooden creatures behind him and his perilous position itself made him unsteady. The animals rushed forward after him but could not, it seemed, venture on to the bridge, though the wooden eagle soared above him and the smaller birds flew close with angry shrieks.

  Parados walked up the hill beside the Om Ren certain he had not been here before although the place seemed familiar, the hills of his imagination and reality being, in this respect, much the same. It was a universal hill, well-shaped and not too steep. Sometimes a leafy twig dropped from the Om Ren’s hairy body and he paused to retrieve it and put it back in its place in his fantastic green garment.

  ‘She will expect nothing less of her groom than perfect sartorial elegance,’ he said, ‘when I have climbed the Altaish to find her. She is not like me, Parados, a gross, unlovely beast (albeit with a silver tongue and the mind of a philosopher). She is – but I do not know. I have not seen her yet. Perhaps she is a slender human she, the sort Nemione once was. Or she may look like a bear, or an ice-bird or yet a dancing spirit of the snow.’

  ‘I heard someone tell – it was Githon the Copper Dwarf. He said your bride is fair.’

  ‘I hope so, I trust. What will she make of me, the Wild Man of the Forest?’

  ‘She will love you, Om Ren, and make your climb to find her worthwhile.’

  ‘Then I will start my journey as soon as I have attended you. You will need all my strength and yours too, Parados, when we come to the top of the hill. We are nearly there. Already, I hear them singing.’

  Airy voices which might have been those of nightingales, or the wind plucking at a golden wire, sang and threads of vapour drifted towards Parados and the Om Ren, torn shreds of the mist which covered the hilltop and was at once grey and dense and lit eerily from afar by the ever-setting sun.

  ‘Do not open your mouth,’ said the Om Ren, ‘or you may suck one in. They are zracni vili, spirits of the air. I shall not speak again till we have passed them.’

  The spirits swirled about them, continuously shifting shape and beckoning with hands which dissolved to become eyes and lovely mouths open in song. The Om Ren held Parados’s shoulders in his iron grip and propelled him forward into the mist until the sun’s light was blotted out. There were no more zracni vili but, beneath their feet, the grass thinned out until they were walking over barren, rocky earth.

  ‘I can also help you here,’ the Om Ren said, ‘but put your arm through the crook of mine – just so. I have hold of you.’ He crushed Parados’s left arm against his body and pulled him close, so close that he appeared a shambling mat of black hair and green leaves. Huge whiskery lice crawled incuriously over his hide and the greenery. ‘Hush now, Silver Glance; sleep Adamantine, rest there Sulphur Eye!’ he said. ‘These are puvushi beneath our feet, the spirits of the earth. Tread carefully or they will trip you and, if one catches hold of your ankle, she will pull you under.’

  The earth looked like a roughly-ploughed field. Large stones lay trembling on its surface and some of them moved aside, pushed by knotty grey fingers which waved in the soil and groped for a foot to hold. They were hideous, carnivorous weeds, Parados thought. Avoiding one set, he staggered and trod on another, feeling them scrabble and try to grip before he forced up his foot and crushed them under the sole of his boot.

  ‘Have a care!’ the Om Ren cried, pulling him upright. ‘They can turn a man to metal. Do you want to be dug out by a prospecting dwarf?’

  The mist lifted, gradually at first but soon faster and higher as the sun broke through. They left the puvushi behind them and came to the edge of a wide land of lakes and interlacing streams whose waters were dark mirrors which reflected the setting sun.

  ‘Are you a strong man?’ the Om Ren asked Parados.

  ‘No more than most,’ he replied. ‘Especially since I lost my hands.’

  ‘Not strong in sinew and muscle, but in will: that is my meaning. The nivashi, which lie ahead and lie indeed in wait beneath the water there, will tempt and weaken you ere we pass. They are beautiful, sinuous creatures.’

  ‘More beautiful than Nemione?’

  ‘That is not possible – but lovely enough. You will see; or shall I bind a cloth about your eyes?’

  ‘I should like to see them.’

  ‘Many a man has died after saying that. I will tie my rope about you and keep you on dry land; then you can look your fill on each nivasha.’

  He fastened his rope of straw about Parados’s waist. The path wound between the glassy lakes, a thread of green turf, and nothing stirred but the Om Ren and Parados on his leash, who looked about him and wondered how this infinity of water could fit on the top of a hill. He did not believe that the rope would hold him, but was reluctant to test it with a wrench or pull since it appeared to be a thing the Om Ren valued.

  ‘Your rope is a curious object,’ he said. ‘I suppose the ply holds it together?’

  ‘I suppose blind men see visions,’ the Om Ren replied. ‘Be content, you will soon be given an opportunity to try its strength.’

  They walked a little further along the shore of the first lake. Reeds grew in thick clusters and there were kingcups in the muddy shallows; beyond them swam a woman whose wet hair trailed behind her in the water. She was a human, of Parados’s kind, who as he watched stopped swimming and rolled over to float in the very centre of the sun’s red reflection. He stepped forward.

  ‘She does not fear the nivashi: she has come here to swim in the warm evening,’ he said.

  ‘Look again! You see what you wish to see.’ The Om Ren spoke gently, like a patient teacher.

  ‘A woman who – ah!’ Her skin, which had been white and rose-coloured in the evening light, was the colour of lichen, or verdigris, and the long hair had grown and split into filaments like water weed. Her hands, which she raised to beckon him, had webbed fingers and the even teeth her ill-boding smile showed him were tiny, very white and sharp as an otter’s fangs. She had become herself, a nivasha, at once the negation and the archetype of womanliness, alike alluring and loathsome.

  ‘Let me go!’ he said.

  ‘That is not your true desire. But I give you a little rope so that you can discover what it is like to hang yourself.’ The Om Ren paid out two coils. Parados moved quickly away from him, splashing into the water, and the nivasha, which had waited for a sign from him, swam closer. When she was a yard away, she rested in the water and looked at him with eyes as luminous and overflowing as a seal’s but cold and dead as fish-scales on a marble slab. Her necklaces were made of finger-bones and knucklestones and her voice, when she spoke, hissed and coiled across the water to entrap him:

  ‘Come down to my garden, Knight. I have planted some new flowers there, those pretty goldicups from the bank. Their colour, underwater, is far finer than the gaudy yellow you see there.’

  ‘What will you give me if I come with you?’ />
  ‘My everlasting love, even when you are no more than bones and clay.’

  ‘I am afraid you already have a lover.’

  ‘I do, but neither of you will mind the other when you are both at peace. He is here with me, see. His name is Corydon. You do not need to fear him.’ She reached into the water and her fingers, when she brought her hand up again, were interlaced with the bony digits of a skeleton. It lay just under the surface, clearly to be seen, and the empty sockets where its eyes had been stared upwards in mute contentment.

  ‘I am afraid you will devour me.’

  ‘I? Oh no, gentle Knight, the fish will do that and my friend the otter bitch. I will only nibble at your sweet flesh and I will keep you by me a long time before I begin.’ She laughed and again showed him her sharp teeth. He imagined them biting into him and was surprised to find the prospect pleasurable. It would be worth any amount of riches or fame to swim beside her and kiss her once.

  ‘Let me kiss you first,’ he said, and the Om Ren tightened his hold on the rope.

  ‘That is a hard forfeit. What will you give me in return?’

  ‘Myself and the pictures that are in my head.’

  ‘Very well.’ She dropped the hand of the skeleton and swam to him, standing up when she reached the shallows. He leaned out until the rope was tight. Her skirt was woven of rushes and the feathers of drowned white birds; she had the breasts of a woman and a long red fin grew out of her breastbone and fell in spiny folds towards her waist. Wanting to touch her strangeness, he lamented the loss of his hands and contented himself with studying her for a long moment before he leaned still further forward against the pull of the rope and kissed her bloodless lips. They were wet and very cold but they did not taste of fish. She parted them and he felt an overwhelming desire to kiss her again and put his tongue into her mouth so that she could take a piece of it between her pointed teeth and bite. He had inhaled her muddy breath and opened his own mouth before the Om Ren’s rope jerked him violently backward and sent him spinning face-down on the bank. He got up at once, ready to fight the Om Ren, and saw the nivasha collapse into the water in a cascade of silver and vanish. A huge pike rose and broke the surface, clashed its teeth in its bony jaw, and was gone. He looked at his soaked and muddy legs and, sheepishly, at the Om Ren.