The Shifting Pools

by The Shifting Pools (epub)

  I nodded.

  “Can you ride?” he asked, as another man rode up the slope towards us, leading a spare saddled horse with him.

  “A little.”

  I swung myself up on to the horse, acutely aware of several sets of eyes on me. Men and women, dressed in tawny furs and leather, all astride horses – about eight or so. I felt shut down, simply going through the motions until something started to make sense again. The movement of the horse beneath me was a comfort. It felt familiar, real, a rhythm that I knew.

  As we rode along, the others talking sparingly to each other, I gathered that the man who had spoken to me was called Raul. He seemed to be their leader, though this was more implied than stated. He wasn’t a tall man, or as obviously strong as the other men, but he didn’t need to dominate physically; an air of authority hung from his shoulders with the furs that were fastened there, held with a wolf brooch. He was darker, smaller, quieter.

  Suddenly, he pulled his horse up, and jumped down, his eyes scanning the area. He walked with the grace of a wild animal, setting his feet down with intent. It was hard to believe that someone so quietly powerful could be elegant, but he was. When he walked it hinted at something being held back, power coiled tight; ready, always ready. He threw back the heavy furs that were fastened at his chest, freeing his right arm, that hovered now over a sword at his side.

  He was staring off into the distance; assessing the risk. Then he turned and strode back to the others. They all looked as if they lived their lives outdoors, fully of the woods, several with scars visible on their faces, but he was the king here; it was clear. The leader of this pack. His voice when he spoke was clear and direct – quieter than I had anticipated, given the obvious tension coming off him. But I had the unsettling feeling that I would not like to be on the receiving end of his anger.

  “There could be Craven ahead. I sense something, but the wind is in the wrong direction, and I can’t get anything. Two of us should go up and take a look. Anyone fancy it?”

  A large man stepped forward.

  “I’ll come.”

  “Good. We’ll have to stay very low, Silas. I don’t want to risk them seeing us above the canopy if they are out in the open. If it’s anything, it will probably be just some small scouting party. Stay low, close to the trees,” Raul said.

  Silas nodded. Then my grip on reality shifted again as I watched the two men shrug off their furs, to their leather clothing underneath. I watched transfixed as an enormous set of wings sprouted majestically on the shoulders of each man. A minute ago I had been standing in a clearing with a rough band of men, women and horses, and now I was standing with what looked like avenging angels. Their wings were huge and powerful-looking, umber browns speckled though with flecks of gold and ochre, the flight feathers large and edged with sepia.

  “You stay here, Eve,” Raul ordered, as he started to beat his wings. He had wings.

  I just nodded, my mouth probably open. It wasn’t as if I had many other appealing options.

  I stared as Raul and Silas left the ground and moved swiftly up into the trees. I lost sight of them as they cleared the canopy and moved west.

  The remaining men and women turned to their horses, checking straps and fastenings, as if this sort of event were an everyday occurrence. Maybe it was, here. Their nonchalance actually helped, as seeing them all being so casual allowed my own pulse rate to start to steady. To fit in here, I thought, I just need to carry on as normal, not show any shock at realities such as people with wings. And I wanted to fit in. The pattern that usually ran me, with its compulsion to remain under the radar, was screaming at me, so I bent my head and busied myself with the girth on my own horse. But I couldn’t fit in here, either, I thought, as my fingers moved blindly at their work. I didn’t have an incredible set of wings.

  Within 20 minutes, Raul and Silas were back, landing lightly in the clearing, and folding their magnificent wings away.

  “Nothing,” Raul said. “False alarm. We keep going to camp.”

  And with that, they all mounted their horses again, and looked impatiently at me as I struggled to keep up with events.

  I sensed rather than saw the eyes of the men on me as we rode silently back to their camp. I felt as prey must feel being brought back injured to feed the cubs – a hollow acceptance, a surrender, a hopelessness?

  The thick tree cover eventually gave way to a large open clearing, and I saw the encampment ahead. Its lack of permanence was evident in its abundance of cloth and animal hide for building, rather than any more durable structures. A rough smudge of tents arced around to the right and back, while, on the left side, an open area held the site for a great fire, with some large felled tree trunks around it by way of seating.

  Raul had dismounted, and came over to help me down from my own horse.

  “This way,” he said.

  He led me around to the gaggle of tents at the right, nodding greetings to people as we passed.

  He ducked through the flap into one of the tents, and I followed him in. As my eyes adjusted to the candle-lit glow inside, I looked around. There was a bed, low to the floor and covered in more furs and woven quilts. A little table to the side seemed inlaid with tiny pieces of shell or stone that caught the light, and in the open space between the bed and the side wall, there was a large metal tub that steamed gently. A long mirror was propped against the tent canvas on the other side of the bed. The bench next to it was covered in furs, trousers and woven cloaks, all in the same earthy browns and creams.

  Within the tent, Raul appeared too large. Whatever he was felt constrained by the gloom of the tent, and he seemed less at ease in there.

  “This will be your tent while we are here,” he said. “There is some hot water in that bath there for you. There are some dry clothes for you to change into, and soon there will be something to eat at the fireside. It’s being prepared now.”

  “You’ve got wings,” was all I managed to say.

  Raul smiled down at me, his eyes gleaming in the candlelight. I glimpsed something untamed there, something of the woods outside. I took a step back.

  “You’ll see that a lot here. I’d forgotten that that would be a little odd for you to see,” he said.

  “A little odd, yes.”

  “It’s not a trick Eve, it is just how we are. It is how life is here. You will get used to it.” He then continued more softly. “There is a lot more here to throw a person than a simple set of wings.”

  He scanned the room quickly, checking, I think, that I had everything I needed. Had he organised everything? Then he turned to go. “Get washed, get dry, and get something warm on, and then I’ll see you out by the fire.”

  He strode back out, towards the large fire and log seating area that they had passed on the way into the camp. I followed him, unsure what else to do. If he was king here, there was no point in trying to hide. Far better to stay close enough to observe.

  When he heard me behind him, he stopped abruptly and took a few paces back towards me. Outside the tent, I didn’t feel the need to back up. He took hold of my shoulders, gently but firmly.

  “Eve, you are quite safe here. No one here is going to hurt you. You really need to get washed and dry and changed – or you won’t warm up again properly. Please.” He nodded towards my tent. I nodded back at him, and turned away.

  I caught up with him later by the fire. Watching him before I approached, I saw him talking quietly with his closest band. His stillness held an almost palpable power. It was in stark contrast to the more overtly physical actions and mannerisms of the men and women with him. But they naturally looked to him for their lead. Every time they raised something, they automatically looked straight to him first, for his reaction. I could see why. He was far more inscrutable, his dark eyes showing keen intelligence and a fathomless stillness. In his eyes I caught a glimpse of someone who could wait f
or an eternity, who knew the secrets of patience. A man who saw a far greater picture than most of us ever do. He was nodding slowly at something one of the other riders had said.

  He unnerved me. Far more than the powerful men who surrounded him. I was used to masculine force: I never let it go so far as to intimidate me before popping its ego like a balloon. But I felt a different male energy from him. I felt as if he alone was able to see through to the core of things, and I wasn’t sure I wanted him to. His hawk-like, tawny gaze seemed to notice everything, every nuanced look, every unconscious movement. Anyone would be unnerved.

  As I sat down beside him at the huge communal fire, I didn’t wait for pleasantries. “I have to go back,” I said. “My cousin needs me – my nephew – they are at the pool. Please help me get back to them.”

  “I will. I am helping you to get back to them. But that might be in a way that doesn’t make sense to you. I’m sorry for that. But don’t worry about them missing you. The time you are here will count as nothing with your loved ones – they won’t notice you’re gone.”

  “Why do you think you are here?” He looked at me searchingly.

  “Does there have to be a reason? A lot happens in life for no reason at all.”

  “That is true,” he nodded, “but there are some things that happen only for a reason, things that can only happen to us, things we are responsible for.”

  “And how are you meant to tell them apart?” I asked, exhaustion catching up with me now.

  “You can’t always, but it doesn’t mean that you shouldn’t ask the question. And sometimes, if there is a reason, you can only see it much later. But again, that shouldn’t stop you asking the question.”

  “Well, if you can’t figure it out half the time, then why does it even matter?” I snapped, frustrated now, and only half-listening.

  “Why do you ask a question simply to make a point? If you are not ready to listen to an answer, then you are not ready to ask a question.”

  I looked up at him then, embarrassed.

  “Sorry.”

  He let out an exasperated sigh. “Do you think I care about you being rude? Eve, we can all be rude. I just want you to be real. I’d be a lot ruder than you are being if I were in your position. I know you are tired, too. We can leave this for another day.”

  “No,” I spoke more vehemently than I had intended, and held onto his arm. He looked back at me, and smiled.

  “Good. That’s more like it. A little more of what we mean can go a long way.”

  He paused then, and looked into the fire for a time. He stared into it for so long that I began to worry that he really wasn’t going to continue. But then…

  “Do you know that feeling you have when you see something in a dream, that you know is personal to you, a sign that only you have the key for?” He spoke low and soft, urgently.

  “It is like that, Eve, with you being here. You may not yet see it, but believe me when I tell you. It is only you who could be here; only you can play out this particular act.”

  “So you think that everything follows a pre-determined path, that all is set already for us?” I felt hugely disappointed. My whole being rejected that idea.

  “No, not at all. Your being here has a reason, yes, a fundamental reason, but how it all unfolds is up to you. Through every tiny choice you make, a different path opens up. An unfathomable number of paths. Some of the paths link together, and some never come together again. On those paths, you either need to accept the resolution you are heading towards, or trace your steps back to another junction. At many points, Eve, you will feel as if you are in a maze with no solution. An endless maze.”

  My head swung around to him, astonished.

  “What! You don’t know, do you..?”

  “Know what?” he asked.

  “Nothing. It doesn’t matter.”

  I sat silently for a moment, then his words broke in gently: “We all carry reasons for things within us, wherever we go. This isn’t happening to you because of some outside force that you can’t comprehend, Eve, this is happening for a reason that you have brought in yourself, within you. When you break an arm, there is a reason to seek out help for that breakage. This is similar.

  “None of us can control everything, control events, but we can all choose our own response to those events. And you can also control a lot more than you realise you can.”

  “Is this real, or is this a dream, too? This is just a dream isn’t it?” I asked.

  “Why do you doubt the reality of your dreams? They are just as much a part of you as your waking life: a vital communication between parts of yourself. There is much you can learn from listening to them. When you dream, you are sometimes more awake than when you are awake. Here we give great importance to them. Below the threshold of consciousness, everything seethes with life. Within you, under all the defences you have put up, everything seethes with life.”

  “That’s what Claire would say,” I muttered, then louder: “I don’t understand. I’m trying to, but I don’t.”

  “I know.” He sounded sad. “But my hope is that you will get there.”

  Enanti: the present

  Firelight

  My upper back was sore, and felt hot and uncomfortable. A dark-haired woman of about my own age saw me shifting around by the fire and trying to scratch it. She quietly came over and sat next to me.

  “Can I see?” she asked. “I think I might know what is troubling you. I’m Lara – I’m the healer here.”

  “I don’t know how I did it, I must have scratched myself in the cave when I arrived, and I think it’s infected now. I have scars there from before. It’s been feeling really hot and sore.”

  “Come with me,” she said, and rose to standing, extending her hand to me. I took it, and followed her into one of the numerous tents. She was slight and graceful, her dark hair captured loosely in a long braid down her back. I had the strangest sense that I had met her before. She pushed back the soft folds of the entrance, and led me inside.

  She was extremely careful and gentle with me, and I sensed an unexpected sadness in her as she looked at the wounds on my back. She didn’t say a word, but I could feel the genuine emotion that she offered me.

  As she washed the cuts, she seemed to administer to them as if they were the most tender things she had ever seen, dabbing them carefully and lovingly, taking her time. Her tenderness caught me off-guard, and I felt deeply moved.

  “Are they bad?” I asked, using words to cut the emotion off.

  “No, they will be incredible. If you let them be.”

  It wasn’t the response I had expected, but I was so exhausted now that I didn’t even try to ask her what she meant. Nothing had been what I had expected, so why should this be any different?

  When she had finished strapping up the wounds, she made me promise to let her take a look at them in a few days. Wandering back out to the fire, I sat down heavily, greedily sucking in the warmth. I used a stick to push a few embers back into the fire, and sat back to watch the flames.

  I thought about home. Not my home in London – my temporary encampment – but real home.

  It has been said that the past is a foreign country. But I see it differently. The past is my own country, my home, and I have been exiled. And now I walk restlessly through the days, trying to find my way home. My childhood has been encapsulated in a snow-shaker toy and set up upon a pinnacle. Steep cliffs fall away around it, and a vast chasm aches between it and me – a chasm filled with soldiers and death. I can see a tantalising glimpse, but I can never get there.

  Had Claire been right about my being drawn to war? How war can set up a futile, life-long search in those who have lost so much to it. We are forever unable to go back to that exact arena of war, but we can go to others, endlessly searching for some of the things we have had stripped away. A heartbreaking sear
ch; a search with no end. It made a little more sense now, the drive I felt to get back to the remote snow-shaker toy on that precipice – wading through those trenches of death.

  And I was tired, so tired. I wanted to go home. I wanted to curl up once again in my home; feel safe, feel connected. Perhaps the answer lay in reaching certain parts of my childhood, but I didn’t know how. I could never go back there again, yet I also had a new awareness, stuttering to life in me, that vital parts of my old life are carried forward within me; they’ve always been there.

  I pushed my stick further into the fire, disturbing the glowing embers. The flames flared brighter. This new thought was exciting, but, if anything, it just added to my restlessness, as it lacked clarity. I didn’t understand what it meant, yet I felt the enormity of its potential, throbbing under the surface of my conscious mind.

  I allowed the warmth of the fire to seep into me, to tempt my eyelids down, to nudge me towards sleep. My body ached and needed rest. For once, my mind allowed it without a struggle. I slept there that night, by the fire; the movement and spark of the fire before me, the unseen mass of the darkness pressing up into me from behind.

  We came to a meadow full of flowers.

  We saw and realised that they were there, but we had no feelings about them.

  The first spark of joy came when we saw a rooster with a tail of multicolored feathers.

  But it remained only a spark; we did not yet belong to this world…

  Everything appeared unreal, unlikely, as in a dream…

  Step for step I progressed, until I again became a human being.

  Viktor Frankl

  Enanti: the present

  Little Bear

  There were many children running around in the camp. Some seemed to have no parents, and were looked after communally, sharing the food around the campfire, and sleeping in a few dormitory tents nestled among the others. So many people here, in this temporary encampment – and I had no idea what their story was.