Best of British Fantasy 2018

by Jared Shurin

  “Who is this?” he asked.

  “That is our God,” said the woman, touching her forehead with her right index finger and bowing to the statuette. “It is Coruvorn, the Wanderer, Lord of the Hills.”

  At that moment, Dennis told me, he knew that he himself was Coruvorn, and that the image that they were worshipping was an image of himself. “It appeared at the time,” he said, “the most natural thing in the world. It was only later and on reflection that the implications seemed rather problematic.”

  He turned towards the elderly couple, a golden light shone from him and they fell on their knees in adoration.

  “This made me feel slightly awkward,” Dennis told me, “because, while I seemed perfectly confident that I was – or rather am – a god, I was still conscious of being myself, that is Dennis Marchbanks. It’s a complicated business. Since then, I have been subject to these visions almost every night. Time is different over there and weeks, months even seem to pass during the time that I am asleep in this world.”

  I asked him why he was confiding all this in me.

  “I couldn’t think of anyone else. You are the only person I know who might remotely understand. You are literary, after all: artistic, imaginative. You’ve even had a novel published.”

  “I gave you a copy, if you remember.”

  “Yes, I know. I actually read it. It’s really not at all bad, in its way. That’s why I thought you might be sympathetic.”

  “To tell the truth, I don’t know what to make of what you’ve told me.”

  “That’s all right. As long as you don’t dismiss it out of hand.”

  “‘I am a man; I count nothing human alien to me.’”

  “Nor nothing divine too, I hope!” He smiled rather complacently at this little joke.

  “But isn’t there some more ‘professional’ advice you could seek?”

  “Not really. I wanted a lay person. Someone without an idealogical axe to grind; someone with no real metaphysical opinions of their own. As you know, I am a Catholic, so this is very disturbing for me. I can’t exactly go to confession at the Oratory and tell Father O’Hare that I’m a sort of god. He’d be most offended. We’ve been friends for ages. I might even be excommunicated.”

  “Surely an exaggeration.”

  “Perhaps, but it would be very embarrassing for us both.”

  “Why not go and see a shrink?”

  “Well, you know my views about psychiatrists.” I didn’t. Dennis had a habit of assuming you knew all about his habits and opinions, most of which, it must be admitted, were extremely predictable. “They’d say it was all due to a mother fixation, or being taken off the breast too early or nonsense like that. It’s no such thing. I’m perfectly sane. It’s just a – a phenomenon, I suppose. I am an eminent Q.C in this life and a god in another.”

  I don’t think Dennis was a vain man but he was one of those people who, thanks to a trouble-free passage through public school to Oxford and beyond, had a calm and confident sense of his own worth and place in the world. A friend of mine once said of Dennis that he had in life ‘to take the smooth with the smooth’. But everyone has their own particular struggles and difficulties which most of us don’t appreciate, being preoccupied with our own. And I suppose you could regard being a god in another life as a peculiar problem: Dennis certainly did.

  It was very late, but I asked Dennis to go on with his story.

  Dennis, or rather Coruvorn, raised his hand in benediction and then pointed to the figurine in the shrine. It was turned on an instant from wood into gold except for the blue cloak was now of pure lapis lazuli. The ancient couple gazed at their new treasure in delighted astonishment. The next moment, Coruvorn was standing on the hillside in the moonlight. The moon was full and low, a pale peach colour. It was beginning to sink below a dun coloured belt of trees before Coruvorn stretched out his hand and raised it a few inches to see it better, then he let it fall into its original position. The Earth gave a little shudder, but otherwise there was no disturbance.

  Coruvorn took to the air and floated over hills, forests and cities. He visited many homes, answered many prayers, righted many wrongs until he descended once more upon a hillside and stretched himself under a great oak.

  “The next moment I was in Albany again in my own bed. My alarm was ringing and I was due for a conference in chambers in an hour. My experience hadn’t exhausted me: in fact I felt thoroughly refreshed.” He looked at his watch. “Good grief! It’s two in the morning! You’d better come back tomorrow and I’ll tell you the rest. It’s a Saturday. Would you be free for lunch?”

  During the course of that weekend Dennis told me much more about his life as a God. Some of it was not that interesting in the way that other people’s dreams are always less enthralling than your own. He seemed to spend his time wandering his world dispensing arbitrary and unsystematic benevolence and receiving homage in turn. Not everyone in his world believed in Coruvorn, but he seemed to bear no grudge against the unbelievers. If his acts of random kindness favoured those who acknowledged his existence that was only to be expected. I thought it was genuinely magnanimous of him that he expected no servitude towards him, nor even credence.

  I asked him if he regarded himself as omnipotent in his world. Dennis pondered this, genuinely intrigued by my question.

  “Well, I suppose in theory, yes,” he said. “That business with the moon for example. But I don’t exercise it. I want people to be free to worship me or not as the case may be. I must be adored by free spirits or there would be no point in being a god. The same, mutatis mutandis, I suppose applies to human relationships.”

  I agreed that this applied to human relationships as well.

  “I see myself, I suppose, as a tutelary deity in the old classical sense. One who stands guard over his people and his planet.”

  “So you don’t command a galaxy, or a universe?”

  “Well, I don’t think so. I may do, of course, but that understanding has not been vouchsafed me.” I found his complacency rather irritating and was beginning to feel that it was my duty to puncture his illusion. Because that was what it was, make no mistake about it. At least, I suppose so. You must judge for yourselves.

  I asked him for details of his planet and its people. Did they all speak the same language? Were they all of the same race? In what state of technological and political development did they exist? Were their animals and plants similar to ours? In this way I was hoping to convince him, and myself, that the world over which he presided was simply the product of his rather infertile imagination.

  In a way, I was proved right. The world that he described could have been dreamt up by him. Its culture and state of technological development was a mixture of classical and medieval, its language was a version of Latin that Dennis was well equipped to understand. There were cities and city states and kings. There was no established religion, but in small shrines on hillsides or in homes, people paid homage to Coruvorn, the Wanderer, Lord of the Hills. Libations of wine were poured to him and small cakes, not dissimilar to the madeleines so beloved of Proust, were placed before his statue in the shrines.

  The flora and fauna were similar to those in our world except that in his certain beasts existed which we regard as mythical. There were centaurs, hippogryphs and unicorns. There were also dragons, fire-breathing flying reptiles, but they were no bigger than ostriches and easily tamed.

  The world of men and women on his planet was, according to him, peaceable and mercantile. The city states and petty kingdoms rarely had disputes, so there were no wars to speak of. If a crisis threatened between two powers Coruvorn always contrived to have it stopped before it went too far. There was no printing and though there were some books in manuscript, literature was mostly disseminated orally, consisting in long epics or shorter lyrical pieces sung to the accompaniment of an instrument resembling a lyre. The visual arts were on the whole decorative and abstract.

  It all sounded very conventional and
a little dull, just the sort of world that Dennis’s rather staid imagination might have created. When I pointed this out to Dennis, he nodded as if he had considered this already.

  “Yes, of course,” he said, “I am quite aware that it might well be what you call an illusion, or is delusion the word you are looking for? But what exactly do you mean by delusion? If I were to say to you that I was a jar of marmalade, then you could quite easily say I was deluded. I am self-evidently not made of glass and filled with boiled-up Seville oranges; I am not an inanimate object. But when it comes to my experiences as Coruvorn, to which I have access mostly at night in some kind of trance-like state, you cannot either prove or disprove their reality. They might appear to you to be just a dream, but they are quite unlike any dream I have ever had. They seem to me to be real. Now of course it might be possible that I am suffering from an acute mental illness, but you must admit that I show no signs of it, other perhaps than my so-called ‘delusion’. I don’t drink to excess; I certainly don’t take drugs or imbibe strange herbal concoctions. I am at the top of my profession. You see? You might just as well apply the C. S. Lewis argument to me. You remember... Jesus claimed to be the son of God. To do so one must either be a lunatic, a knave or the real thing. He was self-evidently not the first two; ergo he must have been the latter.”

  “There are flaws in that argument. In the first place –”

  “But I am not really claiming to be a god; merely that I have experience of godhead.”

  “A distinction without a difference.”

  “Possibly. Possibly.” He lapsed into deep thought and seemed to be no longer in need of my company, so I left him.

  After that he would frequently phone me and tell me of his recent adventures as Coruvorn. I would occasionally take notes and once or twice recorded our conversations, even though what he had to say was not always very interesting. It was the concept that remained intriguing. I confess, I had thoughts of making my friend’s strange aberration into a book or a series of articles.

  According to Dennis, Coruvorn went about his business in his benign way, pardoning, resolving difficulties, often healing, generally looking after his planet. Dennis would occasionally ask my advice about whether he should intervene in some particular issue. I always told him that it was his decision: he was the god, after all, and ought to know better. On one occasion he contemplated resurrecting an infant girl from the dead for the sake of her distraught parents. After some discussion, we decided against it, but for what reason I forget. Then something of significance happened.

  He rang me at six one morning. My wife to whom I had said nothing about Dennis, other than that he confided in me, expressed understandable irritation and went back to sleep. I went down stairs in a dressing gown and took the call in my study.

  “What on Earth is all this about? Do you know what time it is?”

  “Jack, I’m most terribly sorry about the early hour, but this is important. And time really has no absolute meaning where I have come from. I have just woken up, so to speak, or returned to this world might be a more accurate way of putting it, and I must tell you while it is still fresh in my mind.”

  Coruvorn had been, as was his wont, wandering the hills towards dusk. The sun was setting in its usual luxuriant way behind a belt of pale violet-coloured cloud into the gilded tops of an oak forest. A nightingale was singing in a nearby brake and a faithful rustic was turning his flock homewards towards lower and safer pastures. The god was surveying this gentle crepuscular scene with satisfaction when his eye caught a gleam of bright orange through the oak woods that crowned the hills.

  Was it a fire? If it was, Coruvorn must hasten to contain it or warn his people in a dream to come and put it out. In an instant he had lifted himself above the trees in the guise of an eagle and was winging his way over the tree tops towards the blaze.

  He alighted on the topmost branch of a great elm tree at the edge of a large clearing, roughly oval in shape. Almost in the centre was a great bonfire of felled logs and around it was grouped a large number of men and women standing very still and solemn. In front of the fire at one apex of the oval was a raised wooden platform upon which stood about a dozen women dressed in long white robes. One of the women, older than the rest, appeared to be their leader. She stood in the middle holding a banner which fluttered in the ripples of heat emanating from the fire. On it in silver thread was embroidered the figure of a winged woman holding a sword.

  Coruvorn flew down from the branches and assumed the shape of an old man on the edge of the crowd. The white women on the platform began to sing and the congregation was enraptured.

  “The words,” said Dennis, “as far as I can remember went like this –” And he sang, somewhat tunelessly:

  Hail, Thora, our Lady of Wind!

  Harbinger of Change, bringer of Purity!

  Blow through our hearts, cleanse us with your breath!

  “The music sounded to me a little like one of those Soviet anthems that Shostakovich and Prokofiev were forced to produce, but I can’t really put my finger on it.”

  While this chorus was being repeated countless times, according to Dennis, first by the ladies in white then by the congregation, Coruvorn moved among them, picking up their thoughts and murmured conversations. This was a new cult, apparently, that had sprung up and the people were worshipping a deity called Thora, Goddess of Wind.

  “Thora, Goddess of Wind –?” I interjected. “Are you sure about this?”

  “Yes, of course I’m sure –!” said Dennis irritably. “I was there, wasn’t I? So there was another god being worshipped apart from me. It was rather strange that I wasn’t aware of it until now, and really I wouldn’t have minded... After all, I suppose, two gods are better than one. (Three even better, if you count the Trinity which you shouldn’t really.) The trouble was, the chief priestess was requiring exclusive adulation for Thora. Thou shalt have no gods other than Thora, that sort of thing. And I found that her devotees were actually going round and destroying my shrines. Well, naturally this sort of thing has to stop, but I can’t use force. Violence is simply not in my nature; besides I felt my powers subtly weakening. I still had plenty of devotees but they began to live in fear of these Thora fanatics who were taking over whole towns and cities, setting up their own political institutions and demanding exclusive allegiance to Thora. Severe penalties were being exacted from those who refused to comply. My faith went underground. I wanted, of course, to get in touch with this Thora but she proves elusive. Sometimes, standing on a hilltop, I felt her pass by in a gust of wind that nearly pushed me off my feet. I tried to stay her and speak to her but she ignored me. She must have known I was there but she would not stop. I am perfectly prepared to come to some sort of amicable arrangement with this goddess, but I am being swept aside. What am I to do?”

  Never having faced a remotely comparable situation myself I was unable to help. When I tried to make a joke of it and told him that I was sure ‘it would all blow over’, he slammed down the phone.

  I didn’t hear from Dennis for almost a fortnight, and I must admit I was rather relieved. I had begun to feel responsible for him. Should I alert some authority – the Bar Council? The Law Society? – that one of their most distinguished QCs was off his head? If Dennis had severed all communication, then it was someone else’s problem.

  Not wishing to burden her too much I had given my wife Jane a heavily expurgated version of the facts, merely telling her that he was subject to some ‘strange delusions’ and unburdening them on me. Jane suggested I had nothing more to do with him. I sighed as a friend, I obeyed as a husband.

  Then he rang again, at three o’clock one morning. Jane advised me to tell him to go to hell. I said I would do my best though I am not a great believer in hell and took the call in the study. Dennis was in a state of high excitement and spoke as if there had been no hiatus at all since our last conversation.

  “Jack, I know who she is!”

  “Who?” />
  “Thora, of course.”

  “Yes. You told me, the Goddess of Wind or something.”

  “No, no no! Don’t be an idiot. I know who she is in this world. Just as Coruvorn has an identity here, namely me, so does Thora. You’re not going to believe this.”

  “As you have strained my credulity to breaking point already, I don’t think I am going to be that surprised.”

  “It’s Dame Maggie Standish! You know, the Human Rights lawyer.”

  “Good grief! Really? How can you possibly know?”

  “I just do. It would take too long to explain in detail. Suffice it to say that there exist things called astral corridors which link different worlds in space –”

  “You mean like... black holes?”

  “Yes, something like that. Please don’t interrupt. Well, once on my planet I managed to catch sight of her goddess form as she streaked across the sky. Incidentally, the weather there has taken a marked turn for the worse since her arrival on the scene. Well, at once I set off in pursuit, hoping to have a conversation with her of some sort. She fled from me down an astral corridor but I was close behind. We travelled light years in a few Earthly seconds and several times I nearly caught her. The next moment I was standing, still in my divine form as Coruvorn, in a strange bedroom. I was just in time to see the faint silvery form of Thora fly through the open mouth of a sleeping female in the bed. There was enough light for me to see that the female in question was Dame Maggie Standish. The next moment I was in my own bed in Albany.”

  “I see.”

  “Well, now I know, I can do something about it.”

  “What do you propose?”

  “I shall just have to confront Dame Maggie with what I know and then we can have a reasonable discussion about it all. One just hopes she will prove to be amenable.”