A Step Beyond

by Nancy M Bell

  The quiet of the night was split wide open by the wild battle screams of Ailim and Eldon, and Alain’s voice raised in alarm. Gawain rolled quickly to his feet, coming up with his sword held at the ready, the blue blade flashing scarlet in the firelight. The Lady Nuina stood at his back with his short sword in her hands. Alain faced the darkness in front of them, and they waited.

  It came seconds later, the battle cry of one warrior broken off abruptly as Ailim cut him down in the dark with his iron shod forefeet. In the next instance, the ring of firelight was filled with the dark visages of six well-armed warriors. The fire flared in the night wind, and Prince Tristam’s cold, furious face showed itself to Gawain. The shadows threw his face into a contorted mask, and Gawain thought inconsequentially Tristam looked like the devil incarnate with blood lust coloring his eyes. Gawain calculated the odds and found himself decidedly on the losing end. Six to two, four if you counted the Lady Nuina and Lancelot, but even then it was two to one.

  Gawain sighed. This is not going to end well, and just when I have found her, I must lose her. I must get Lancelot back safely to Arthur, and Alain is no fighter yet. Gawain was torn between his love for the Lady Nuina and his sworn pledge to defend his fellow knights to the death. He loved Lancelot like a brother, and Gawain owed him his life on more than one occasion. Alain and the Lady Nuina looked to him to protect them as well, the choice was too hard. Gawain prayed it wasn’t one which would need to be made.

  Gawain called Ailim to him. The stallion burst out of the darkness and managed to trample one of Prince Tristam’s men. The furious horse knocked another screaming into the fire. Eldon followed hot on his heels screaming in rage at the man who was standing over Lancelot. The man barely had time to realize there was danger before the huge front hooves of Eldon caught him squarely in the chest and bore him to the ground, where the enraged stallion pounded his body until there was nothing recognizable as human. Lancelot dragged himself to his feet and managed to clamber up on Eldon’s back. Gawain shoved the Lady Nuina toward him and yelled at Lancelot to lift her up behind him.

  “Go, Lance, take the Lady Nuina and get you back to Cadbury. Tell Arthur of this treason. Alain and I will follow as soon as we take care of this nest of vipers.” Gawain shouted to be heard over the melee of clashing swords and the screams of the man in the fire.

  Lancelot hesitated for a moment and then grasped the protesting Lady Nuina and swung her up in front of him. Before she was fully astride and before she could leap off again, Eldon bolted into the night in a thunder of hooves. Gawain breathed a sigh of relief. At least now the Lady Nuina is safe, and she can care for Lance’s wounds.

  Alain and Gawain fought back to back, and Ailim did as much damage as either of them with his wicked teeth and well-placed hooves. Alain fought well, but lacked the strength to last long against hardened soldiers. Gawain’s head ached, and spots danced in his vision, but finally there were only two men opposing them. Prince Tristam and one other. Gawain felt Alain stagger under the heavy blow from the much older and heavier man opposite him. Ailim’s scream of rage tore the night a brief second before the grey war horse took the man who injured Alain to the ground.

  In that brief instance, Prince Tristam took his opportunity and landed a blow with his sword which opened Gawain’s arm from shoulder to elbow, following the strike with a smash to Gawain’s head with the hilt of his short sword. Gawain was aware of the white flash of pain and a brief moment of anger at his stupidity before the blow from the short sword exploded in his head. Dropping him swiftly down through blackness filled with flashing colored lightning and white globes of light that hurt his already screaming head.

  He was dimly aware of Ailim’s explosive scream of rage and the image of his grey belly as the great war horse leaped over Gawain’s prone body on his hind legs and smashed Prince Tristam to the ground in a welter of flying hooves and snapping teeth. The noise shattered Gawain’s head into a million small painful pieces. In desperation, he dived deeper into the comforting darkness and curled himself into a ball with his screaming head cradled in his arms.

  Chapter Fourteen

  Gawain stayed there for what might have been minutes or years. There was no marking of time in his safe cocoon of darkness. The painful strobe of the white and colored lights faded gradually. Venturing to open his eyes and raise his head from his hands, there was nothing familiar to him, but somehow it felt like there was a whisper of a memory.

  Which is clearly impossible. Gawain tried to muddle it out in his barely functioning brain.

  Through the veils of darkness and grey light, Gawain heard someone calling his name, very faintly as if from a great distance. With less effort than anticipated, Gawain got to his feet and cocked his head to see what direction the sound was coming from. He thought briefly of Lancelot, the Lady Nuina, and Alain and was unnerved to feel distanced from them, like people known once a very long time ago.

  “They are no longer your concern or responsibility.” Ailim’s deep-timbered voice sounded in his inner ear.

  “Ailim,” Gawain spoke aloud just to be certain, “are you here?”

  Ailim poked Gawain with his big nose. “Right here, idiot man.” The big horse’s mind voice was filled with amusement.

  “What happened? Is Alain safe?” Gawain rested his hand on Ailim’s grey neck to assure himself the horse was actually present.

  “Alain is fine, and Lancelot and the Lady Nuina have returned to fetch him, and Arthur sends help as well,” Ailim reassured him. “Your fate is no longer woven with theirs, and it is time to return from where you were to where you are.”

  “I am here,” Gawain said confused.

  “Are you?” Ailim fixed Gawain with his huge dark eyes. “Think hard on how you came to this place before.”

  Gawain opened his mouth to protest and then shut it caught up the fathomless depths of Ailim’s eyes. Scenes from places he should know, but did not, swirled there, and the faces of the Lady Nuina and the girl who was not the Lady Nuina but was somehow the same, came and went from his sight.

  He saw in place of Ailim, a huge stallion that glistened brighter than the finest of Arthur’s jewels and with more colors. He allowed himself to fall further into the stallion’s eyes and the sound of a voice calling his name grew louder. Gawain took a hesitant step toward the sound before moving forward with more confidence. The great crystal stallion paced at his side.

  Gawain walked but didn’t seem to get any nearer to the person calling his name so insistently. Ailim’s pale grey shape shimmered in the semi-twilight, and his hand jerked back from the stallion’s neck in surprise. The stallion was no longer the huge grey war horse Gawain was accustomed to seeing. In his stead, was a larger horse Gawain could only describe as being made of flowing crystal, more brilliant than diamonds or rubies. This was the horse from the vision in Ailim’s eyes. The horse stopped when Gawain removed his hand from his shoulder and turned his magnificent head toward him. The colors flowed and coalesced through the stallion’s body, and Gawain fought against the movement’s mesmerizing effect on his senses.

  “This is who I am in this in place between the worlds, the essence of what I am.” Ailim’s voice was crystal ice breaking in Gawain’s head.

  “Between what worlds.” Gawain’s voice was edged with fear and uncertainty.

  “The worlds of what we were, and what we are now,” Ailim said gently. “Let go of worry and fear and allow all. Allow what will come and everything will be clear.”

  “Who is calling to me, who is it that draws me forward when I have no wish to go there?” Gawain searched the huge whirling crystal eyes.

  “It is one who has loved you before and loves you now. Our lives are circles and cycles that turn through the ages. We follow patterns that we have walked in other ages with no remembered knowledge of those journeys while we walk them again and hopefully make better choices as we go.” Ailim touched Gawain’s face with his nose.

  “She is the one I keep seeing
when my senses are askew,” Gawain said in amazement. “The one who is the Lady Nuina and yet is not her at all.”

  “That is so,” Ailim affirmed. “Nuina is the name you knew her by in the long ago life you found your way to, out of the darkness of your pain. Just as Ailim, the silver fir is the name you knew me by in that far away time. Search your heart and know who you are and who I am.”

  Gawain answered the command in Ailim’s voice without question and allowed the images to come at him as they would. Before him was the being which gave life to the beloved war horse, and he knew him as GogMagog, his anam cara. Gawain saw himself, Sir Gawain Knight of King Arthur’s Round Table, confidant of the great King Arthur, the High King of All Britain.

  The image was over-ridden by a series of images Gawain knew represented himself in different cycles of his life and finally his vision hovered over a bundle of rags lying on the floor of a dismal dark shack. Leaning over him was the girl from his delirium, and she was holding his head in her lap, her tears raining down on his slack face.

  Gawain’s head exploded behind his eyes with a flash of light brighter than lightning and suddenly he knew. The girl was Aisling. The body on the floor was him, and his name was Gort. GogMagog leaned his head into his shoulder, and the boy-man leaned on him for comfort. Dimly the pain and terror beat like a faint echo in the space between where his spirit stood with GogMagog and the inert figure on the floor.

  “You have a choice, you may step from this life now, or you may rejoin it and take up where you left off. Pain and all,” GogMagog told him gently.

  “I don’t know if I can…if I am strong enough to bear all that sorrow and still survive.”

  The girl, Aisling, raised her head, and her tear-stained eyes searched the dirty cobwebbed rafters above her. Gort looked down into her face, and lightening shot through him as his eyes met hers. The connection was so strong his spirit body reached out a hand across the shadowy distance separating them.

  “Don’t leave me, please live. Coll has gone for help, and Sarie and Emily will be here soon,” the girl, Aisling, pleaded with him, heart to heart.

  “You must choose soon, you have been gone from that body too long already,” GogMagog prompted and breathed his warm comforting breath down his collar.

  The pathetic figure prostrate on the ground below him with its pale bruised face held his spirit in a strange thrall. The bond with that scrawny body strengthened with each passing moment.

  His Uncle Daniel’s face loomed in his mind’s eye, and all the sorrows and pains that sent him running from this reality, back to his life as Gawain. A strong, proud man who could protect those in danger. Including himself. A strange, gnawing pull gathered in the center of his chest, silvery threads floated outward from the boy’s body, who still lay with his head on Aisling’s lap. The threads gathered into a ball, like a skein of wool, and the girl sobbed in desperation as the boy’s breathing grew shallower. A small brown man sat beside Aisling stroking her arm and whispering to her. The words were too soft to hear, but the piskie kept looking up at him. Recognition flared white hot in his mind. The little man was Aisling’s friend, Gwin Scawen. Gwin raised his arm toward the dark corner of the roof and crooked his forefinger at the hovering spirits with a calling motion, entreating the spirit to come back the tortured body that lay in Aisling’s lap.

  “You must choose, or the fates will choose for you, and you will have to live with their decision.” GogMagog turned his luminescent eyes on his anam cara.

  “Are you with me in this life?” Gort asked too confused to remember, existing in two planes of being and not fully in either.

  “I am, and you know me as myself. You are not alone. You will never be alone again. Not when we both remember who we are,” GogMagog assured him.

  The door burst open as three people rushed in and fell to their knees by the girl with his head in her lap. A uniformed constable trailed in the door behind them. The pull in his chest became more insistent. He watched objectively as the taller woman thumped on the thin chest of the boy and started to resuscitate him.

  Chapter Fifteen

  He threw his arms around GogMagog’s neck and buried his face in the crystal mane. His hands trembled with fear, and Gort shook violently, still half in the comforting darkness. He raised his head and looked straight into the face of Aisling who was staring up at him in the shadows over her head.

  “Come back,” she whispered.

  His heart leapt out to her summons, and it was as easy as gathering the silver ball of threads in his hand and swallowing them. Slipping back into the frail, thin, beaten body, his spirit immediately wished on one level he had not. The pain was overwhelming, and it was all Gort could do not to bolt right back out, into the safety of the shifting veils of darkness. Aisling’s hands on his face and her voice in his ears pushed back the agony; his mind followed her voice up out of the pain-filled void. The body that stirred under his will felt strange and alien, inconsequential after the great strong body of Sir Gawain.

  He forced his lungs to raise his chest and breathe in and out, listened as his heart stuttered, hesitated, and then picked up a reassuringly steady beat. His eyes opened, and his battered face managed a weak smile for Aisling, who cried even harder. Sarie took his hand in hers, felt for his pulse, and smiled down at him.

  “Who did this? Who did this?” Coll’s voice was harsh with his effort to suppress the tears threatening to spill over.

  “Uncle Daniel. Grabbed me, dragged me here and started beating on me.” The voice was faint and distorted by the damage done to his face.

  “I told you it was Daniel, you worthless excuse of a man.” Emily turned like a tiger on Ted, the chief constable of Penzance.

  Ted held up his hands and backed away from her wrath. “How was I to know, no one in town had seen the man.”

  “And you defended the jackass, bleating about you’d talked to him and how he’d changed. Learned his lesson and gone clean,” Emily spat at Ted.

  “Where is he?” Coll’s voice was dangerously calm.

  “Leave off, Coll, he’s not worth your trouble,” Gort said softly from his spot on the ground with his head still in Aisling’s lap. His heart turned over in his chest as she smiled down at him and stroked his forehead. Almost worth getting the stuffing kicked out of me. The thought floated in his muzzy brain.

  “Where is that doctor? You did call Doc Ellerly didn’t you, Ted?” Emily fretted by the door of the shed looking out into the darkness.

  “He should be on his way. I told him where to find us.” Ted used the excuse to go out into the alley and look for the doctor. Anything to get away from the accusation in Emily’s face when she spared him a look.

  Gort dragged himself into a sitting position, wincing as his body objected to moving at all. The boy leaned back against the rotting boards of the side of the shed and waited for the world to settle down and stop spinning. The roaring in his ears faded gradually as the world ceased pirouetting around him.

  Instinctively, he shrank back against the wood as the door of the shed burst open suddenly. Coll spun toward the door with a stout piece of wood clutched in his hands. Careful laughter spilled from Gort’s mouth as the black head of his pony Gog thrust through the opening. The pony gave the door another great nudge and daintily pushed his way into the shed.

  Emily moved out of his way as the pony made a beeline for the thin figure, shoving his nose against him. The pony’s eyes were level and in their liquid depths lived the shining crystal of GogMagog’s eyes.

  “I promised I would be here, and I am, and you are. That is all that matters,” Gog said succinctly.

  A new warmth and strength ran through his body; his heart would never be alone again. His train of thought was broken by the arrival of Doc Ellerly, who pushed the pony out of his way without ceremony and winced in sympathy at the state of the damaged face.

  “Did a right proper job, he did,” Doc remarked conversationally.

  “Seems he did
,” Gort agreed.

  Aisling got to her feet and moved back to give Doc more room to work, and Sarie held her torch to give him light.

  “Well, son, you have a broken arm and three fingers on this hand,” Doc Ellerly remarked, casually fashioning a temporary splint on the right arm. “I think you may have a fracture in your right ankle or shin from the swelling, but I won’t know for sure until we get some x-rays done. I’m pretty sure you have some broken ribs, but we’ll need more x-rays to be certain of how many.”

  Aisling turned her face into Emily’s shoulder, and her shoulders shook with her sobs. Gort wanted to tell her it was okay; it didn’t really feel bad at all, but the stuff in the needle Doc inserted in his arm didn’t seem to want his tongue to form the words.

  Gort gave up trying and let the drug wrap him in warm, dark, cotton wool. GogMagog’s presence in his mind helped him to stay in his body and not drift off somewhere. Reaching out in the drug-induced darkness, the boy wrapped his fingers firmly into the glistening crystal mane and held on.

  He opened his eyes briefly as the pain of the ambulance medics moving him onto a stretcher dragged him out of the safe darkness but drifted away again as Doc Ellerly slid another silver needle into his skin. For a moment his vision shifted and it was Alain who tended to him. Satisfied, he was indeed safe, Gort slid into the dark warm sea of unconsciousness.

  The next time his eyes opened was in a hospital, and a motherly-looking nurse was gathering supplies for the doctor to put a real cast on his arm to hold the break immobile. It was far too much effort to keep his eyes open, and the pain was only faintly gnawing. His mind slid back into the comforting darkness and let life go on without him for the moment.

  * * *

  He felt a gentle hand on his face and followed the sound of voices up out of the blackness and opened his eyes. The rain was hissing against the hospital window beside him. Turning his head toward the hand resting on his cheek, his gaze found Aisling’s worried eyes. She smiled in relief and took his less-damaged hand in hers.