by Erron Adams
They followed corridors that grew dark, wet and rank. Whenever the way opened out they disturbed bats, squeaking and flapping high overhead.
Oyen crouched at the far end of one such opening. He turned around in the same position and slowly extended his upper body into a cavity Bowman could not see. A few scraping sounds ensued as he groped for a hold, then his large frame ascended bit by bit till it paused with both legs dangling. A moment later he grunted and one leg, followed by the other, swung up out of sight.
“Come on. I’ll hand you up.”
Bowman entered the shaft in the same corkscrewing manner Oyen had, his smaller frame negotiating the constricted space with greater ease. He looked up into light that framed the Rory’s face.
“Oyen, where are we? Where in Hell are we going?”
“We’re in the Origins.” Oyen waggled his hand impatiently at Bowman. “C’mon!”
When he found his feet on a level with Oyen, Bowman looked around. They stood on a flat-topped rock spine that petered out as often as it provided a path. It led away into dark, a jagged line that blackness swallowed where the feeble light finally gave out.
Bowman toed some rubble into the gloom. There was the sound of rock and dust colliding with the side for several moments. Then nothing. He held his breath, straining to hear. Blood pounded through his head. Nothing.
“Oyen, I hope this is worth it!”
“Oh, it will be. Now follow close, always look at my back, never down.”
They inched across the chasm, their toes feeling the way through the thin soles of their Rory boots. Fear stretched time for Bowman. His concentration staggered between the Rory’s back and the placement of his own feet. Every muscle tensed and the effort wrung sweat from him. Back. Feet. Shuffle. Back. Feet. Shuffle. So it went.
“Alright.” Bowman heard the Rory say. He looked up. Oyen had stopped and turned around. He looked relaxed now. He gestured to each side. Bowman looked.
Though still dark, he could make out the walls of the cave close by, close enough to touch. Better, he could see where they curved down, right under his feet as they made a floor. He exhaled for what seemed the first time in hours.
Then Oyen stooped to a little hollow in the wall, reached in and retrieved a small wooden box. He flipped its damp-warped lid up and took out an oilskin. In the creased oilskin lay some dark, punky material, small stones, and several wooden bowls, hollowed shallowly, with a concave, raised platform in their middle. They looked like nut bowls, with the centrepiece providing a platform for cracking the nuts, except that they’d been hewn in some haste, to provide some immediate purpose that was unconcerned with appearance.
“Here, hold this.” Oyen passed him one of the bowls, and placed some of the material – it looked like dried moss or sponge - on its centre dais. Oyen heaped more pieces of moulded punk into the hollow of the bowl. Next, he took two pieces of stone and struck them towards the little pile. A shower of sparks leapt from the stones with each strike. He breathed on the punk and it soon smouldered, then glowed: a brilliant coal in that dark space, an impossible sun in a buried world.
Bowman smiled. “Is that the best light you’ve got?”
“It’ll do.”
Oyen rose and walked on, carrying the bowl in front. Air fanned over the coal as he did and it soon lit several paces before them.
They’d only gone a short way when they turned into another passage and the sound began, and its vibrations: the thrumming, throbbing presence of something barely out of sight.
Bowman’s first thoughts flew to an earthquake: he crouched instinctively and brought his hands up ready.
“Shit, Oyen, what's that?” He shouted.
Oyen turned around. His face was drum-taut; he bore the look of a hunted animal. He had to shout too. “Soul Gate, come!”
As they drew closer to the source, the cold increased. Even the little rivulet that ran down the centre of the passage gave off a chill. The noise and vibration built until speech became pointless.
Moisture reigned supreme here: dripping from overhead, sheeting down on either side. They breathed fine mist that made their torch sputter. Bowman reached a hand to the limestone wall and ice-water lizards skittered down his arm.
He guessed what they were about to see was a waterfall: a massive, thunderously powerful colonnade of water pounding the base of the cavern they would enter. Whenever he grasped rock for support it quivered with the energy of the unseen engine, and every other moment the floor underneath them spasmed.
Oyen lowered the torch to negotiate a crossing of the rivulet. Here, near what must be its headwater, before it fragmented and fanned out through the mountain’s veins, it made a small torrent a few feet across, and inches deep. It swept across its freestone bottom like a black serpent, tumbling loose stones that flashed like scales along its belly.
And suddenly they were there. Bowman knew, not because the tunnel widened into a cavern, nor because Oyen grabbed his arm and steered him alongside. It wasn’t even the din, so assaulting his ears hurt.
It was the wind. A fury flayed the black space before him and wind screeched along whatever edges it found. Bowman thought of coastal storms, when air endlessly tore its guts on jagged rocks and died, writhing and shrill.
Oyen released his arm and went down on to one careful knee, then the other. He bent forward in the dark and held the torch bowl down and out from him. Bowman crouched alongside, straining to see. When Oyen’s arm fully extended he let the bowl go. It fell, inches only, landing with an unheard splat on water.
Then it drifted to their right.
It went smoothly at first, gently bobbing where currents swirled it. Drifting further, it’s flickering point of light defied the cacophony and swirling blackness.
As it reached the distant side of the cavern it began a slow arc to the left. Approaching the point opposite its launch, it disappeared, only to reappear, long, dead seconds later, further again to the left. Bobbing a little more often now, and turning slowly round its centre, it came past Oyen and Bowman faster than before, and further out.
More long minutes of the light’s journey followed, and another eclipse as it reached its apogee, followed by rebirth. Again it came past them, even further out this time; even rockier its circuit.
Inside Bowman something woke and fluttered, with a breath he stomped it back.
The light’s orbits became sharper, shorter; so too the periods of eclipse until, as it came into view one last time, it illuminated the thing that cyclically swallowed it, in which it was about to die. An urgent smoothness replaced the rocking as it whirled into the inner rings of a whirlpool.
Fine mist rose in a spiralling column above the light, swirling up from the vortex’s throat. Several times the bowl crested the roiling coils, only to plunge behind oily blackness. When it last showed, it burned a shooting-star path down the far side of the whirlpool.
In the near-complete dark Oyen kindled another light and led Bowman back the way they’d come.
***
Bowman eyed the vial Oyen pushed in front of him. This time no cup had been supplied, the gesture implying that to partake of the Herb was now at the sole discretion of the guest.
He scratched around for a clean cup.
When he’d had his fill of Herb, he sat back, relaxing into the drug’s fuzzy warmth. So that’s the famed Soul Gate that cagey bastard Argilan talked about. He shuddered at the thought of actually setting out for the thing’s centre. You’d have to be desperate to choose that way out of a dream. Desperate indeed.
He looked over at Oyen. “What keeps this place so light?” he asked.
“No one knows,” Oyen said. He pointed overhead “How do the stars stick up there? No one knows.”
“Must be somewhere light gets in?”
But Oyen was sullen now. Either that or on the counter slope of drinking-to-excess’s glorious ascent. He wrinkled his nose and waved his meaty hand like a courtier's lace handkerchief. “Shut up and drink.” He said and dow
ned the Herb. Bowman blinked, shrugged and followed suit.
As his cup came down from the swill it uncovered the figure of Argilan. Bowman stumbled to his feet, spluttering. “Look, look, there he is!”
Oyen and the Rory seated close by followed Bowman’s finger. After a moment their eyes came back.
“Can’t you see him?” Then Bowman realized he’d been made a fool of by a dream and laughed out like his wits had gone. The Rory edged closer and looked concerned. Bowman backed away from them, and as he did he heard a ringing start and a tremor passed through the picture.
He'd stood on legs that weren’t his and a stranger had spoken through his stunned mouth. Journey Herb and exhaustion from a day of trial had broken him down. Passing out, he thought and fell back.
He was vaguely aware of the swirl around him, a continuum of sensations as faces bent over and were swept aside by sound: inquiries, exhortations, admonitions. These in turn were replaced by the touch and shake of hands on shoulders, face, through hair, all blending into the seamless band that held and buffeted and suspended him.
He could no longer feel his legs. His breathing continued in another dimension. In terror he recognized the numbness in his hands: the too-fat fingers of childhood nightmare as anaesthetic deadness began inexorable ascent along his spine. The screaming that was his mind tumbled wide-armed through eternity. Soundless lights flashed and filled his vision.
In the spinning wreckage the ringing sound became more distinct as it re-formed into light: the soft, beckoning ball he'd seen before somewhere, that seemed to have the universe of answers in it, that called like a puddle mirror's endless sky for him to reach out and end the struggle with a fall.
From his desert of options he clawed for it with both hands.
***
Part II
Homecoming
Chapter 4
Landing
Darkness.
As he lay on his back in the field he ran through a check of body functions, like a pilot powering down the plane's systems at flight's end.
A rough trip. The path had been an indistinct tube that squeezed, scraped, prodded and caught him, then shook violently to dislodge the irritant and send it on its way. He'd been crunched, wrung, rolled and finally defecated into this grassy nowhere.
Once he was sure he was okay he laughed. He had presumably landed somewhere in his old world; it was good to be back.
Though back from what remained a mystery. He could feel the coarse Rory clothing against his skin, and on his left hand, the black ring Argilan had insisted he wear. These discoveries jolted him. Was he still dreaming, or had Animarl been real? He’d thought on the way here he’d been waking from some sort of nightmare. The sort that’s just about to pounce with killing claws when you burst into wakefulness, sweaty, pumping, every filamentary nerve a firehose whipping round its snake of water.
If the only way out of a dream was to dream, if he could only dream himself someplace else, if dreams peeled away from one another onion-like, would he find at the dead centre he himself, dead? It didn’t really bear thinking about. Dream or non-dream, what he sensed was as real as it got. As long as there was sense, there was no death, surely? Well, the only way to ever answer questions like that was action. Lying on his back in a field at night solved nothing. He got up.
As he rose he began to realize the darkness was not a result of impaired vision, it was twilight here, either false dawn or late evening. The prospect of being plunged into a country night from which he could take no bearings impelled his legs. He had to find a road. Fast.
Since the dark was so nearly complete, it wasn't possible to navigate by the patch of light sky a setting or rising sun might indicate. He cursed the lack of a compass, at the same time realizing it would be of no use, since not knowing where he was, how could he know which way to go? What did he want to head for?
He walked a few paces, wondering whether to use the ring. Would it help? Argilan had said as much. But could the old man he'd dreamt in a mine shaft be trusted? Could he even trust his own mind at the moment? It was too hard to be definite about anything really, and too easy to put things off, as he’d always done. And anyway, though this might be the perfect situation in which to put the ring to the test, it would most likely lead him back ‘home’ to the cave. No thanks...
This was what he'd wanted after all. To be back in his world, with its familiarity, its acceptance, its lounge-chair feel. Even if it turned out night was falling; even though he was lost. Better to be lost in a world whose edges were known, with daylight an eventual certainty.
But he was also cold. Very cold. And quite wet from the patch of dewy grass he'd landed in. Then there was hunger. He had to eat soon, dammit, travel builds an appetite, he tried to laugh.
Okay, okay, he'd use the ring.
Slowly he raised his left hand in front, holding it parallel to the ground. Even in the poor light’s anonymity he felt ridiculous.
Nothing.
He tried to remember if there were magic, activating words, but no, all Argilan had said was, “it will show the way home.” As he thought the word 'home' the image of his Dyall's Ford house formed in his mind, and he sensed something else, a primal urge or pull that he could only guess to be some kind of homing instinct. Feeling ever more foolish, he made to lower his arm but found he couldn’t. It froze signpost-fashion and his body swung to face the direction he'd come from. He cursed softly, and with great effort managed to get the arm back down.
The ring knew. It was the ring's homing instincts, and they were strong, it knew its home. He turned a half circle and strode on, hoping the rings misdirection indicated the path to his own home.
As he walked his see-sawing legs told of change. Here the grass was tall and soft. Quite unburnt. Even in the dark he could feel its green swell swirling past his legs, he could hear the lush swishing of its wake.
Soon, light began to sift in at one edge of the blackness. The night melted to reveal trees from which birds called. Dawn optimism filled Bowman and, as his eyes became more able to paint in detail, his stride lengthened. Coming to a sturdy wire fence, he stopped to take stock in the growing light.
He first examined his hands, discovering the expected scrapes and cuts. His face felt raw; he smarted touching it. Alright, so he looked a little rough; that'd pass okay in the logging town he called home. Might even get a sympathetic smile. But there was one thing that couldn't be changed: his clothes. Dirty, wet and somewhat ragged all the way from toe to neck, for sure. But worse, the look.
Bowman surveyed the dismal beacon of his Rory attire: the moccasined, fringed, roughly-laced, red-shirted image that would screech alien-ness wherever he went.
Dream be damned! he thought, and the notion he'd been dreaming, itself quit like a dream, the last cloud flecks of doubt dissolving to express undeniable blue sky.
He slipped through the fence's wire strands and found a road thirty paces on. It was sealed and cambered, and the grass between the evenly spaced trees on either side was freshly mown. He recognized the road. Town was close.
As the sun rose it lit a million worlds of dew. A fox slipped past and looked at him, its tongue lolling and tail low, a long night's hunt about to lay its head down in a world where, perhaps, a fox dreamed it was a man. Bowman laughed out loud, despite lingering misgivings about his appearance. God, YES YES YES, it was good to be back!
When the dissipating fog gave up the first of the tourist signs he broke into a jog, idiot-grinning all the way towards town. He felt like a marathon winner running to the tape. The old-war Victory avenue of trees that lined the road into town seemed to bend overhead in a new tribute.
It started to go bad just before the first intersection. The intersection with the flashing amber traffic signals that hadn't been there yesterday.
At first, his dauntless mood didn’t even take in the warning. When the shock did hit, it belted him sideways. All the sights, sounds and smells that had grown one on another began to s
hake loose, the surface began to craze and crack. He plunged between two Victory chestnuts and took to the fields again.
But even here, the comfort of grass was transient and illusory. Coming to a meadow that he knew by the shape of the rolling hills that framed it and by the small grove of oaks at the bottom of a spur, he looked for the footbridge across the creek where people came to pump spa-water. If the bridge was still there, his view of it was obscured by a kiosk, one of those fake Tyrolean chalets that serve over-priced food to tourists. Along one side of it, garish advertisements for ice-cream jangled in the pretty meadow.
Bowman slumped, freshly defeated. His mind tripped over the facts it was trying to piece together, getting lost in detail. He took a deep breath and lay back on the mown grass outside the kiosk.
The two worlds were real. He thumped his hand on the ground for confirmation, finding a small piece of rock. He yelped as the sharp sensation grounded him. There’s nothing more substantial than pain, he thought. So what had gone wrong? This was meant to be a triumph of return, but the triumph belonged to the place he'd come back to. Like the places of childhood it had moved on, evolving independently of the children who'd left.
He sat up. Some things, at least, hadn’t changed. He could see the track that followed the creek, the track he and Caylen walked last week, stopping to spy trout in the lazy summer current. It petered out half a mile from home in a series of disowned fields, but he knew the way from there. In his mind he could see the sloping roof of the house, nestled against the hillside.
He stood and swung off in the direction of home, navigating by the terrain that remained familiar. Whenever he encountered something that shouldn't be there or a missed landmark, he'd blank it out and walk around, picking up the path again. His map grew full of holes, his journey circuitous.
When he finally entered his home street, he was in a rattled state. Time had evidently moved on - or sideways or backwards, whatever – and he was innately unsure of all the re-assembling parts that constituted a man now known as John Bowman.
