Time Knot

by M. C. Morison

  A little way beyond the stairway he found a ladder that he could climb down. He had to place his feet with care on the rungs. The next circle down also reached the full circumference of the vast chimney with its liquid walls. Everywhere he stopped he could see activity within the glassy depths. People getting on with their lives; armies marching; families going to church. He recognised one place as Gamla Stan in Stockholm, where the royal palace stood. A bishop led a procession with a flower-festooned statue of Mary, surrounded by priests and choirboys swinging censers.

  He walked on more quickly. Images flickered past. Ships at sea; great cities thronged with people; battles raging with men on horseback and soldiers with long pikes. Something pulled him forward. He wanted to get to the beginning. Where did this place start? Stairways and ladders appeared with greater frequency and he descended fast. In fact he hardly had to move his legs, just to think clearly about going down and he would be much deeper and further away from where he could re-enter the stone circle.

  Håkan stopped. Someone had spoken. A voice loud within him and silent without. A woman’s voice, full of resonance and kindness.

  ‘Look now,’ said the voice.

  He did. He was standing by a filament of bright glass that had its origin far below him and stretched in a branching shape high above. He could see a bustling city lit by a brighter sun than Sweden ever managed. Tall thin trees of amazing height lined wide boulevards. Huge houses or palaces with columns and red-tiled roofs sat alongside squares bathed in sharp sunlight. Soldiers moved in squads, wearing helms that caught the sun and shone like gold, slashed with bright red plumes. Beyond the thriving buzz of the city the sea glittered with sunlight flashing from countless wavelets. Ships with brightly coloured striped sails moved into the several harbours. Some craft, with oars moving like the legs of a vast insect, pulled away from the city.

  On an isle close to the harbour wall stood an impressive palace, its roof dazzling red in the sunlight. As Håkan studied the building he drew closer. He didn’t move from the walkway, but his interest pulled the building closer to his vision. A woman stood at the gate to this palace. She wore long flowing light robes that moved gently in the breeze. He’d never seen clothes like this, so light and graceful. The woman carried something in her hand. A tube of wood, bound with a ribbon. She opened the tube and drew out a scroll which she unrolled a little way and read. Now Håkan approached so close he could see her face. Her hair, held by combs and pins of tortoiseshell, was a lustrous brown; her eyes looked towards him and she had such dignity and grace Håkan felt tears forcing their way to his eyes. He knew her in some way he couldn’t explain.

  ‘We will be reunited soon,’ she said. ‘In Alexandria.’

  If he pressed through he’d be standing with her on the steps. But she turned away abruptly, and in a flicker of an eyelash he could see the whole city once more. The palace, set on an isle in the harbour, became barely discernible.

  ‘Come,’ said a different woman’s voice. ‘Descend a little more and we can meet. There is something you must see.’

  The Mirror

  Rhory’s story

  The tall grey stones faded and expanded. Of the trees I could see nothing. We were standing on a kind of platform within a huge tube of glassy rock of enormous proportions. I reached out to grab the railing in front of me, to avoid toppling right over, and promptly released the brooch into the void. For a moment it caught some light, flashing before it vanished. Sheer panic swept through me. My only way to get back to the real world had fallen into some bottomless pit. I wanted to puke. I tried to speak to Håkan but words wouldn’t form. He stood with his eyes closed. I had to descend and at least try to get hold of the precious stone that would allow me out of this place, whatever it was.

  I stumbled off to my right, leaving Håkan standing stock-still. I kept the awful void on my left as far away as I could. My right hand, thickly gloved, slid along the glassy smoothness of the wall. An arc of light ran just in front of me; where I touched the wall a glowing ripple ran ahead. I stopped and studied the surface of the glassy barrier that surrounded me. I could pick out blurred shapes on the far side. At first I could make no sense of what I could see; it looked like a photo badly out of focus, studied through distorting glass. But as I watched, the shapes resolved and sharpened.

  A road, snow-covered and tree-lined, gradually appeared. Still at first and then with movement, a troop of soldiers emerged. They carried a red pennant with a white cross. The man leading them held up his hand. He cocked his head to one side as though listening. He drew closer, moving without actually moving, and I could make out his face. He wore a helm that reflected the dull light. His horse, a dappled grey colour, tossed its head and he leant forward and whispered something to it. A soldier riding slightly behind him spoke but he shook his head and made a dismissive gesture with his hand. If I didn’t know that Lucian remained in Hammerford in some other fork in time and history, I’d have sworn he led a troop of horse on this snow-swept road, somewhere nearby. But I’d seen this blond-haired officer before; he’d confronted me in the dark vision brought on by the Ouija board.

  His eyes searched for mine once again. I pulled away and the scene faded into greyness as the glassy wall became opaque.

  I pressed on and found a stairway going up. That wouldn’t work. Some metres further on a stairway descended. I went down two steps at a time. Panic threatened to overwhelm me every moment that I glanced down into the void. I stopped when I reached the bottom of the stairs, dizzy and nauseous.

  I’d no idea what realm I’d entered by coming into this stone circle. By descending I moved in time in some way. Had the brooch dropped down to the beginning of time? Would I find Eve puzzling over it in some overgrown but rather lovely garden? I didn’t feel the least like giggling but I could see the ridiculousness of walking back to the beginning of time. I needed some guidance. I turned my attention inside and listened. I needed assistance. ‘Help me.’ The words clarified inside me. ‘I think I’m lost.’

  ‘Not really,’ said a voice distant and yet clear inside my mind at the same time. Not my voice. The voice of a woman. I half recognised it.

  ‘Nothing in the tree of time occurs by chance. Look carefully around you. Follow your heart. Be cautious. We’ll meet soon if we can.’

  A deep silence welled up inside me, comforting and lonely. I knew I wouldn’t hear the voice again, not until I’d looked as she suggested. The wall at the base of the stairs I’d descended glowed red, the warm colour of a setting sun. I pressed my hands against the wall. At first I could only sense the reddish glow. Gradually, the walls of a wide room appeared, extending out towards a balcony. A woman sat at the far end, her back towards me. She wore a white gown embroidered with pale gold fleur-de-lys. The setting sun gave her dark hair a reddish hue. Beyond her, the turquoise of the sea echoed the blue-green of the sky at dusk. The woman half-turned her head as though she sensed my presence. She held something on her lap.

  I pulled off my thick gloves and stuffed them into the inside of my jacket. Feeling a little bit like the roly-poly Michelin Man, I entered the room. I knew the woman connected in some way to ancient Egypt and I found myself near her without my legs really moving. Her hair hid her face and she held something in her right hand, close to her body. Her gold-coloured slippers peeked out beneath the folds of her gown.

  At last, her voice sounded inside me. ‘You are close.’

  Still she didn’t raise her eyes.

  ‘I’ve waited ages for this moment.’

  I longed for her to look up. I remembered the love in the eyes of Shoshan’s Egyptian teacher, the priestess Katesch. Something magnetic drew me closer. Now I felt—

  ‘Here, boy, look!’

  She held up the object in her right hand, still averting her face. It flashed in the sunlight, a bright slash of coppery light. She moved her hand so that I’d be able to see into its polished surface. A copper mirror. What was it about a copper mirror? What had someo
ne said?

  I looked, but the mirror shifted as she stood up. Even in that fraction of a moment, I sensed a shard of icy coldness, enough to freeze the hearts of all who loved me.

  Aunt Bridget had told me not to look in the copper mirror. She’d said this in the hospital. I slashed my fist at the woman’s wrist as she tried to grab at me with her left hand. Her face turned towards me as I struck the hand holding the mirror. The flashing copper span away into space, tumbling from the balcony. Her eyes, glinting daggers of pure hatred, were framed with red hair. Emerald. I recognised her at once. The bad priestess; the fat woman from the theatre in London.

  But already she’d drifted far away. I stood back within the relative safety of the glassy walls.

  Next to me stood a woman I could trust.

  ‘Welcome once again, Red King.’

  The Heart of Time

  A huge sense of relief flooded through me. ‘Ha–si–na’. I recognised the graceful and very tall woman who’d once been my guide across the Plain of Time. I’d only been able to actually see her when we were near to the early days of Ancient Egypt. I assumed that must be so now.

  ‘Yes, Red King. You are right. We stand once more near the beginning of things, even as you, our sacred brother, stand near the end. Come, there is something you should now see.’

  I followed her as we walked by the wall that gently glowed with a soothing light. I caught blurred shapes as we passed, of great courtyards of stone and a mighty river flanked by palm trees. She stopped and indicated to me an archway made of hieroglyphs that moved slightly as though the glassy wall here was alive. Within the boundary of the arch, the wall thinned to something as slight as one of Mum’s silk scarves. The tall priestess held out her hand and together we passed through. The passageway we entered also shimmered and glistened like vibrant water. The floor, dark and soft, revealed nothing. Above my head glowed hundreds of five-pointed stars.

  ‘We move in the sacred realm of the Goddess here, Red King. You’ve earned the right. For within time, whatever passes, however dire, however blessed, is embraced by the healing perfection of She who Watches All. It is truly said, All Will Be Well. But how that outcome will be reached and over how many aeons, that is the mystery of time.’

  I loved the sound of her voice bubbling up through the ideas within my mind. She walked ahead of me, leading me with her hand. I wasn’t at all sure what she meant. Sounded cool though.

  We came out into a large circular space. Above us a dome extended, higher than the one in St Paul’s in London, decorated with a painting of a woman who seemed to be dressed in stars and doing a handstand at the same time, except her feet were on the ground. Her body made a great hoop in the painted sky above us.

  ‘We’re in the Sanctuary of the Mother.’ Hasina smiled at me.

  I nodded, as I didn’t know how to respond to that piece of info.

  ‘The Mother is the Heart of Time.’

  Hasina let go of my hand and I folded my arms. I hoped I wouldn’t be tested on all she beamed into my mind, as I couldn’t quite get the relevance. The priestess smiled.

  ‘No, Red King. No examinations. Your big exam is your life. That is true for all of us.’

  I’d forgotten my inner thoughts would be broadcast as though I shouted into a loud-speaker.

  ‘Look around you.’

  The chamber, with many archways, was made of the same glassy material as the huge tube we’d just left. It pulsed with soft light but I could make out no forms within or behind the semitransparent walls. We’d entered through an archway that had different coloured columns on either side; or rather one column had been hewn from a dull black stone and the other from one that remained pure and pearly white. Each doorway into the chamber differed. One, red on both sides, seemed to flow like red wax as it melts down the side of a candle. It gave me the creeps, like the entrance to a particularly foul ghost train at the fun fair. Only with real ghosts. Far away from this arch stood another, where light played in the softest of hues. I couldn’t even name the colours they were of such delicacy and beauty.

  ‘Look up, Red King.’

  I did as asked and found that the painted goddess who moments before had watched over us, and indeed the whole dome, had faded. We stood on a platform suspended between great Time Trees. They flowed with light, now dark, now bright, sometimes bruised with dull colours and sometimes radiant with joyful hues. Yet they weren’t trees. They would join and then separate again above our heads, weaving around one another like a great plait. Some thick trunks would split and split again, only to come back close to one another and then re-join.

  To one side with the arch of great beauty, the tree of light grew straight and unfolded into a blaze of coloured aromatic flowers. To the other, a misshapen ugly shape ended as though blasted by lightning. Yet from both, branches extended towards each other, joined and continued skywards.

  In less than an eye-blink, the great twisting trunks vanished and the dome, with its long-legged goddess fresco, had returned.

  The priestess looked over at me.

  ‘No two people ever see the same, Red King. For time is a mystery and the way it unfolds is not for us mere mortals to fully comprehend.’

  I gathered my thoughts as best I could.

  ‘So what did I see then?’

  ‘You saw how what is merely possible becomes actual.’

  She pointed to the black and white archway through which we had passed.

  ‘Here you see how the great act of betrayal, the murder of our most blessed Pharaoh and his wife by the priests of Set, has made a black stain that flows ever onwards towards the time of the Great Decision. Your time, Red King.’

  I swallowed. I’d enough trouble deciding what game to buy to play on the family Xbox. A Great Decision sounded rather too difficult.

  ‘The way time will flow is determined moment by moment by all our decisions. Yours, Shoshan’s, Dimitris’s, Håkan’s and all of the Life Seeds. Time responds. Courage matters, and facing the Chaos released by the Servants of Set is something the Mother of us all requires.’

  ‘Oh, so that’s why it’s okay for people to shoot at me when I climb trees?’

  The priestess frowned slightly and then nodded a little.

  ‘Come, my young friend, the hours pass even within the Chambers and Passageways of Time. There is something you must see before you return.’

  Once more, she took my hand, and we went through the archway with the black and white columns. The soft darkness embraced us. A familiarity returned. My time and my history is what it felt like.

  ‘Younger brother, if I may call you that, this is where we must once more part. I cannot follow you where you now go. For this is a moment where your decision will be paramount and you must decide alone.’

  I nodded. I felt a bit like those times at Scrivener’s when we had exams in the hall, with all the desks set in rows, but I hadn’t done any preparation.

  She held out her hand. There, in her palm, lay the brooch given me by Håkan’s mother. So I would be able to get back after all.

  ‘Don’t lose this. You may not be so lucky twice. Hold it, Red King, and ask to see the point of the Great Decision. After that you’ll be able to return as though you’d taken no time at all.’

  I took the brooch and clasped it tightly in my hand. She watched me, her eyes soft and deep and getting farther and farther away. I closed my eyes for a moment, wondering how to wish correctly. I wanted to get the words right. When I opened them Hasina had entirely vanished. I stood at the bottom of a tall ravine. Jagged rocks rose above my head up towards a cleft of blue sky. Trees clung to the rocks, but only just. The floor of the ravine, where I stood, had partly filled with rocks that had crashed down the steep sides. No way could I climb.

  Ahead of me the ravine split into two. Each side had a pathway, rock-strewn and matted with spiky shrubs. Rocks, with smooth sides, stood at each entranceway. On one a huge white comma had been painted with a black dot in the centre. On
the other a black comma held a white dot.

  Time to decide. Apparently.

  Return Home

  I chose the white comma with the black dot – I think. It may have been the other way around because it all happened so fast. I went towards one, then switched to the other. I thought I would walk a few metres in and see what it looked like. “You take the high road and I’ll take the low road…” as my dad likes to sing. One gets to Scotland quicker, the song said.

  Anyway, I’d entered a few metres and looked behind me only to find solid rock. The gully now extended back the length of a football pitch. Carved stone steps mounted towards a blank cliff-face of rock. No point going back that way. I went forwards. As I did so darkness descended so suddenly I blundered about for a few moments while my eyes adjusted.

  Streetlights cast a mournful glow on the grubby pavement. The low cloud cover, a murky grey, flared a jaundiced yellow as it caught the headlights of a distant car. A police vehicle or ambulance wailed its two-tone cry.

  I recognised where I stood: I’d stumbled into North Street in Hammerford. Outside of several closed shops, black rubbish sacks lay like huge, sedentary slugs. Maybe the dustbin people were on strike? Most of the shops had metal shutters down, displaying crude graffiti. I couldn’t remember any shops needing protection like this on our high street.

  Two policemen walked steadily my way. They were chatting quietly to each other and headed straight at me. I pressed myself against a shop window, one that had no shutters. The officers passed by without a glance in my direction. One had a half-smoked cigarette in one hand. The other hadn’t shaved for two days. Both carried machine guns. It was like being in France.