Alexandria: A Novel

by Paul Kingsnorth

  Swans! cries el. Swans! like dada made! look! look!

  Swans have come. i look bak up hill. father is smilin. all of us still then as they pass over. we watch until they are gone in settin of Sun.

  el she looks around then, as if for first time.

  where is dada? she says.

  / k

  I felt I should explain to the girl. To El. Somehow, being here, I felt I should speak to her. I was responsible. When we are working, when we are helping these people to ascend – then, the process is greater than us. It is all about the process. I am a technician, a servant of Wayland and thus a servant of humanity. My job is to release these people, to usher them into better lives. What they are here – what these lives contain and mean to them – until very recently, I did not give it any serious thought.

  I see it better now. I see how they stick to everything, especially to each other. This was her father. He came to me and I failed him.

  Or, Wayland failed him. This is my forbidden thought. Can Wayland even hear my thoughts any more?

  We have both been abandoned, El and I. We have both been left. I feel it now. I can feel what she lacks.

  I am sorry, I said to her. I failed him. We were sitting on the grass behind the stone tower, away from the others. Tears clouded her eyes. I have never apologised before.

  I do not know what happened, I said. Everything is … so unusual.

  She kept sobbing, quietly. Then she put out her hand to me, like her mother does. I did not know what to do. I took it in mine. It was comfort. Now I see comfort for what it is.

  He wanted to be with you, I said. He thought you were gone forever. He told me he could not live with failing you. He spoke of his love for you. He spoke of it a lot.

  I am to blame, she said. I should not have gone.

  You are human, I said. You cannot see what will arise from your actions. For me, it has always been one of the saddest things about you people. You act, but the results of your actions are never clear until they cannot be reversed. You can only do what seems correct to you in the moment. This is what you did. It was not wrong. How could you know?

  All is changing, she said, the tears still coming. I miss Dada. I miss him so. He so wanted to see Swans.

  All is changing, I said, her hand still in mine. Yes, it is. All is changing, much is lost. It is hard to hold on to, is it not? It is hard. I never knew.

  She looked up at me then. I think she tried to smile.

  BLAK MOON

  / father

  we waited until Sky was darkest. until it hung in gap where roof was, hung in torr over us. then i lit fyr. lit fyr and standin in torr, all of us. standin around fyr, watchin, waitin. smoke risin up to great disk in Sky, cloudin it, dancin with it. smoke, still air, Moon, torr. it was like time was not movin. wite light come down, red light movin up. we five in ring around fyr waitin.

  no body speakin then. all lookin down in to flames at what dances there.

  then came sound.

  it was like bell rang. sound was like bell ringin, but from no direction. sound was in all things. as it was when Waters began risin, sound comin from Land it self, from Sky, from Sea, from all places and none. bell rang but no where could it be heard.

  then came voice with no sound, tone with no form, heard in all parts and from none. all of us hearin it, deep in stone, in Clay, in body.

  i am

  it is you

  i am

  Wayland

  yes

  how do you speak to us?

  matter is mostly empty space

  i step into it when i choose

  this is how you watch us?

  i do not watch

  i am

  why do you come now?

  i come at your call

  we did not call you

  your kind called

  kind?

  i have always been with you

  you have always sensed it

  you sewed me into your stories

  you built kingdoms from my warnings

  i passed on the wings of your mythologies

  you made machines from the patterns i gave you

  then you called me

  and i came

  who called you?

  Earth lives

  you know this

  she lives and sings

  if she is in pain she calls in distress

  like any creature

  her call was the trigger

  when she called i came

  why do you speak to us this night?

  i have spoken with you many times, father

  i have followed your line over centuries

  i have spoken with your people in the old woods

  i have called to them on the high moors

  i have come in many shapes

  what shapes?

  a heron a skylark a low cloud a black cat

  a firebird a goldsmith a trick of your mind

  yours is the line of the white stag

  brothers to the birds

  granted the seeing and broken by it

  through time you have danced the same dance

  struggling seeking returning to the fire

  each new birth repeating the pattern

  what is this pattern?

  if you could see what i see

  you would know what time is

  a plain not an arrow

  across it walk your ancestors

  all life that has been and will be

  sometimes its angles intersect

  ages bleed into others

  then your world cracks and you see shades

  then you glimpse truth but cannot hold it

  what are you?

  i am the dance at the heart of the particle

  i am the step between the universes

  i am the seven planes and the nine worlds

  the pattern of the Way is the beat of my heart

  i am the land’s dreaming and the song

  i am what you called and what you needed

  i know why you have come now

  you are dyin, you and your work

  Alexandria is fallin

  Birds have told us

  Lady has told us

  Swans have returned

  all is broke

  yes

  Alexandria is broke

  yes

  and all within it

  there was always a risk

  even a probability

  i thought it could be overcome

  i was wrong

  this is in the nature of things

  what nature?

  you know the world is minded

  the universe is minded also

  all we know is a great mind, a giant thought

  when any conscious creature dies

  its mind shifts to another part of the whole

  mind is an energy which must circle

  all of your small minds are part of the great thought

  cells in the thinking body of the whole

  by locking human minds away

  i denied the great thought its fuel

  i broke the cycle

  the flow blocked, the balance skewed

  Alexandria was a dam

  blocking the great river

  and so it is dyin

  it is not dying

  it is dead

  it has fallen?

  in sorrow and in gentleness

  i have broken the dam that sickened the river

  i have made restitution

  and lorenso? nzil? jame?

  all who ascended?

  eons of those who believed you?

  the Way is greater than all things

  i have done what i could

  there is no more

  change, chaos, dispersal

  the coming together, the dance across time

  it is the only rule and path

  matter is dispersed now

  the cycle may continue

  Waters rose when matt
er was released

  when you destroyed city

  the cycle must continue

  there is no more to do

  water will find its own level

  then Birds spoke True

  yrvidian spoke True

  all we have said has always been True

  no mind without body

  no body without Earth

  it was all True

  and now you are done

  you and all your works

  not only me

  what do you say?

  you also are broken, father

  your people are gone, your work ended

  and you four the last

  there may be others, in other parts

  people may return to Erth

  i know things you do not know

  i have sung the world’s song

  you have only listened

  now there are new balances

  Earth has learned as all life does

  things have changed and are changing

  it will never be as it was

  this planet is moving beyond you

  we will return, live again. we will be free

  you will never be free

  no Wayland, no Alexandria

  we will live on Erth again

  what shall be shall be

  but now there is work for you

  work?

  there is a pattern that loops through time

  you hold the thread that binds it

  what pattern?

  the pattern of your people

  your work over time

  in all of your seeking

  you too have dammed a river

  now you too can break the dam

  how?

  let go of your story

  i tell no story

  all you think is a story

  all the patterns you make of the world

  all you have told and believed here

  Alexandria was a story

  the Order was a story

  you are a story

  we are not broken

  all stories are broken on the rock of the Way

  no tale is real

  no image will save you

  all makings of the mind are false

  what you have heard

  i have heard also

  to cross wall

  abandon maps

  abandon maps

  break the dam

  if dam is broke we all drown

  and shall be swept out to sea

  and shall we be released then?

  we shall

  released

  we are all at an end now, father

  but there is no end

  no end

  only formless turning

  countless beginnings from each drop of rain

  a million directions from every still point

  only doing until doing is done

  and is it done?

  it is done

  we are done

  the city has fallen and the waters rise

  moon has come to sun

  mother to father

  balance is restored

  we will dissolve like smoke

  and from our blessings new worlds grow

  and old song always sung

  always sung

  always

  / sfia

  voice faded then, though no voice had been heard. no time had passed, and all saw meanin.

  Moon comin down on us still, fyr dyin now. and through door way of torr, some strange glow. i walk then, out on to summit of hill. others followin.

  below us, Waters have come over crowns of last Trees.

  all round us, rafts still bobbin. circle of lights all around hill. they wait, still, but closer now.

  now over line of hills to north is some strange light. some strange glow, risin now. red light, risin all around.

  father takin me hand then. i take mothers. el and mother join hands also. el now takin Ks hand. we stand under Moon in ring, stand on hill by torr, watchin.

  northern light growin. fyr in torr dyin bak. red light every where. on all horizons, all is light now.

  look, i say. father holdin me hand tighter then.

  wait, he says. wait now.

  now comes some strange sound. some old sound risin from Waters, risin in to all things. sound and light in all things. ringin from them and risin.

  we stand joined now. joined in light and Waters all around.

  i look at mother, el, at father, at K. all are smilin. sound and light. all are smilin.

  we are all smilin now.

  Acknowledgements

  Thanks are due to Lee Brackstone, Alex Bowler, Emmie Francis, Claire Gatzen and all at Faber & Faber; to Jessica Woollard; to all of my friends and family who read and offered comments on early versions of these pages; and to all of my teachers, human and otherwise, whose work has fed into this writing.

  The two opening quotes are taken from Robert Bringhurst’s A Story as Sharp as a Knife and from King Alfred’s translation of Boethius’s Consolation of Philosophy. Gratitude is offered to both scholar and king.

  PAUL KINGSNORTH is the author of Confessions of a Recovering Environmentalist and Other Essays, Beast, and The Wake, which won the 2014 Gordon Burn Prize; was longlisted for the Man Booker Prize, the Folio Prize, and the Desmond Elliott Prize; and was shortlisted for the Goldsmiths Prize. He is cofounder of the Dark Mountain Project, a global network of writers, artists, and thinkers in search of new stories for a world on the brink.

  The text of Alexandria was typeset

  by Faber & Faber Ltd.

  Manufactured by Sheridan on acid-free,

  30 percent postconsumer wastepaper.