Through Caverns Measureless to Man

by D G Rose

  And sure enough, I soon found myself within the pilot’s boat. However, a whirlpool was formed by the sinking of the ship and the little boat was caught up in the swirling water and sped round and round. I felt sure that this was the ironic ending to this play, the villain drowns in sight of land.

  “I moved my lips—the Pilot shrieked And fell down in a fit; The holy Hermit raised his eyes, And prayed where he did sit.” That seemed like a glitch in the story, since there was no hermit, holy or otherwise. But I knew what I had to do, so I did move my lips and the pilot shrieked and fell down in a fit.

  “I took the oars: the Pilot's boy, Who now doth crazy go, Laughed loud and long, and all the while His eyes went to and fro. 'Ha! ha!' quoth he, 'full plain I see, The Devil knows how to row.'”

  So, I took the oars, afraid the boat would be sucked down the whirlpool to our destruction. And the pilot’s boy seeming to have lost his wits, laughed long and loud. “Ha ha! Full plain, I see the devil knows how to row!” I thought that was unduly harsh. I was more puppet than devil.

  I don’t, of course, know how to row a boat, let alone a boat on the sea trapped in a whirlpool, but nevertheless row I did. I pulled as hard as I could and slowly, slowly we left the whirlpool’s orbit and I took us in to land. As the boat grounded on the shore, I threw myself into the shallow water and dragged the little boat safe upon the sand and collapsed on the narrow strip of beach.

  CHAPTER 18 - Not enough to make up a full father, let alone multiple fathers.

  Shakespeare says, ‘To sleep, perchance to dream.’ Even a high school dropout like me knows that. But I slept a dreamless sleep and it was glorious! I was tired of dreams and visions and horrors. If this dreamless sleep be death, bring it on.

  But it wasn’t death. And so, I woke. The feeling of crisp clean sheets made it clear that I was no longer on the beach. I took a moment to savor the pleasure of being in a bed again. If this journey has taught me nothing else, it’s taught me to appreciate a bed. I resolved, when I got back, to upgrade my mattress. Assuming that I had any money left after I fixed the hole in the ceiling. Assuming I got back.

  It was clear to me that something was guiding my experience and keeping me alive. Keeping me alive to torture. To force me to wander through this world, made by a bored god. The Mad Dreamer, whatever else he might be, was a son of a bitch. I think that this may be the fundamental relationship between gods and men, we suffer for their purposes. I wouldn't mind suffering for a purpose, but I don’t want to suffer for a whim; and I’m not sure I know how to tell the difference.

  I tried to stand and failed. It’s a particularly strange experience, the inability to do something so basic. But the noise I made, as I fell back onto the bed must have roused someone because the door opened. A woman entered, middle-aged and wearing a wimple.

  “Awake, I see.” She noted as if it would be better in her opinion if I had kept on sleeping. Maybe until forever.

  “Where am I?” I asked. It’s a cliché, but it’s exactly what you ask when you wake up someplace other than where you started to sleep.

  She sniffed and wrinkled her nose. “Castle Leoline. The principle keep of Sir Leoline, Baron of Porlock.”

  “How did I get here?” Another cliché, but the next thing you feel compelled to ask under the circumstances.

  Another sniff, another wrinkle. “The Lady of the castle’s always coming home with strays and what not. She found you and had you brought back here, just like always and she says to me, ‘Nursey, clean him up and look after him.’ Just like always. And just like always everyone will be going on for days and days about how good and kind and noble she is, when I’m the one what’s got to do all the hard work, just like always.”

  “Well, I appreciate all your hard work. I expected to die on the beach, so I guess I have you to thank for the fact that I’m still alive.” I told her.

  She slapped my hand. “Don’t you go thanking me.” She murmured. “It’s the Lady Christabel you’’ll needs to be thanking. She’s the one what’s found you. She’s the one what’s ordered the men to collect you and bring you back to the castle. You’ll be thanking her and her father, the Baron Sir Leoline! Is what’s you’ll be doing if you know what’s good for you.” Still, I could see her blush.

  So, here is what I was thinking at the time: ‘How odd that a name like Christabel would be so common here.’

  On reflection maybe it isn’t so odd. I mean, if we really are swimming in the dreams of the Mad Dreamer (and what other explanation is there?) then it only seems reasonable that things would reflect the interests of the Mad Dreamer. So, yeah – if he likes the name Christabel, I guess it might pop up every now and then. It’s not like I’m the only Nick in the world.

  “I guess you’ll be wanting some soup now?” The nurse interrupted my reverie on the topic of names.

  “Just a little water, if I could.” I responded, because I really wasn’t very hungry.

  “Water? Of course not!” She scoffed. “You’ll be wanting soup and a nice glass of wine. You’ve got to get your strength back. Now, don’t sass me! I’m the nurse and I’m the one what’s in charge of your care and feeding.” And she walked out of the room.

  She returned a little later with a steaming tureen of soup and a large flagon of wine. It turns out I was hungry after all and I ate two bowls and drank a glass of wine. The nurse watched me eat and drink with satisfaction as if each mouthful was proving the rightness of her position regarding my needs. But when I moved to get up, she pushed me back down. “Just you rest there. The Lady will be up to see you shortly and it won’t do for her to find you sprawled face down on the floor.

  And so, I was lying on the bed, not sprawled face down on the floor when the door opened again and in bounded a giant toothless old mastiff. She ran straight at me and flopped her giant head down on my chest, expelling the breath I was about to take with a rush. Then in walked Christabel!

  “Christabel!” I struggled to push the drooling dog off of me, but it was a losing struggle. “How are you here?”

  She gave a little laugh and gently tugged the dog into a sitting position. “Well, of course I’m here. Didn’t the nurse tell you? I found you on the beach and brought you back to the castle to recover.”

  “She told me that the Lady of the castle, Christabel, found me, but I figured it must just be a common name because she also told me that Christabel is the daughter of Sir Leoline, and I’ve already met your father, Neb.”

  “A person can have more than one father.” She said.

  “No.” I replied, “Actually a person can’t.”

  She shrugged. “I do. Some good, some bad, some indifferent. How many fathers do you have?”

  And it was like a blow. “Zero. I guess. Maybe a half or a quarter. Definitely not enough to make up a full father, let alone multiple fathers.”

  She shrugged again. “You should do something about that. I know Neb wouldn’t mind having a son.”

  “Where’s Amy?” I asked suddenly gripped by a terrible fear that something had happened to her.

  “Amy’s fine. I sent her out to do some shopping so that she would stop moping around here bothering Nurse.”

  I took a deep breath, relieved. “And Miranda? You told me that Miranda would meet me here.”

  She gave yet another shrug, this one, maybe, a little guiltier than the others. “Unavoidably delayed.”

  Unavoidably delayed? Like my sister, missing and long presumed dead, was a bus that just happened to be running late.

  “How did you know where to find me?” I asked.

  This shrug was even guiltier than the last. “That beach is where The Wedding Guest passengers always wash up.”

  I jabbed my finger at her. “Ah Ha!” I shouted. “I knew it! It was all a set up! A performance! A horrible horrible performance!” Then I stopped for a moment and continued in a quiet voice. “I didn’t want to believe it. I didn’t want to believe that you sen
t me on that ship knowing what would happen.”

  She at least had the good graces to look miserable.

  “Did you know?” I pressed.

  She nodded, ‘Yes’.

  Yes? Yes?? Yes??? She knew?

  “Have you, have you… You know? Been on it?” I asked, tears coming to my eyes and my throat closing up so that I could barely get the words out.

  She shook her head, ‘No’.

  And I leapt out of the bed and wrapped her in my arms. If she’d never been on it, then she didn’t know. Not really. If she’d never seen the horror up close and personal, she couldn’t know and then I didn’t have to hate her. Not completely. And I was getting tired of losing people.

  “I hate you so much.” I whispered into her ear as I hugged her closer.

  “I know.” She whispered back, clamping down on me even harder. Then she added, “The man hath penance done, And penance more will do.”

  I shook my head weakly against her back, “No more. Please. No more. This man hath done enough.”

  She pushed me back and looked at me with eyes so sad I thought that she might cry or that she might break, “A little more.”

  And I sighed. Who was I to argue? This man hath penance done and penance more will do, if at the end of it is… Miranda.

  Then she held me at arm’s length to look me up and down. “Well, you look healthy enough to me. I’ll send up some hot water and clean clothes and you and your girlfriend can have some fun before we set out again.”

  “She’s not my girlfriend.” I objected, just to object.

  “But you hope, right?” She winked at me.

  “I do hope.” I said, and I winked back, just to show that I didn’t hate her completely. But winking is not a skill for the uninitiated. It looks so easy in the movies, but it’s surprisingly hard to actually pull off in real life. So I botched it. I over winked.

  “Don’t do that.” She said, shaking her head.

  “I won’t.” I promised.

  The exertions with Christabel had sapped me of all the energy I had, so I slept and when I awoke, Amy.

  I held her for a long time without speaking and then she lay down beside me and we talked. I told her everything that had passed. Maybe not every detail, but enough that she could imagine how it must have been. Having heard my story, here is what she said: “Some gods are darker than others, indeed.” And then she held me and soothed me and tried to make me feel better, and I did feel better, but nothing will ever wash away the experience.

  Then she told me about her voyage with Christabel on their ship and how it was smooth sailing and fair weather all the way. She told me, with a little look of guilt, how the dolphins had followed the ship for days, and how the cook on the ship had been head chef for some king or other before he’d gotten the bug to go to sea, and so each meal was more splendid than the last. And she told me about coming to Porlock and meeting the Baron, Sir Leoline, and the grand welcome he had prepared for the return of his daughter.

  And even though it was a pain to me, I let her go on about how easy and wonderful her trip had been because she was excited about these new experiences and sights and I loved her.

  Of course, her own time was not without its trauma. What group of days swimming in the Dreams of the Mad Dreamer could be?

  “I was in the market.” She told me. “To buy some supplies for tonight’s dinner. Apparently, Sir Leoline is hosting his old friend, Lord Roland de Vaux of Tryermaine (she struggled admirably with the pronunciation), and the chef wants to prepare something extra special. They were friends a long time ago, but had some kind of falling out and have only just reconciled.” She confided to me. “Anyway, Christabel asked me to go to the market, I think mostly to get me out of everybody’s hair, so I went. The market is fabulous. It’s alive with swirling colors and there are hundreds of stalls where merchants trade camphor, spices, silks, ivory, sandalwood, opium, exotic feathers, and precious stones. I was tempted to try a little opium, but I wanted to be fully alert when you woke up. So, I’d already done most of the shopping and the various merchants were going to deliver everything to the castle when I saw a small crowd gathered and I thought I’d check it out. I know, I know, live and don’t learn, right? So, I wandered over and saw a man and a boy with a carpet spread out and in the center was a large wooden box. It was elegant and carved all over with markings and pictures of fruits and animals. And the man told the assembled crowd, which seemed mostly made up of rich merchants, judging from their clothing, ‘With what’s in this box, I can fetch any fruit, save only it must be a fruit that is not sold today in the market.’ And the crowd began to shout out various fruits and the man rejected them all, saying that each was available in the market and he could only produce a fruit that was out of season and not available. Finally, an old man shouted out, ‘Winter melon!’ and the whole crowd agreed that winter melon was out of season and not available at any stall in the market. So, the man agreed and he opened his box and bent over it to rummage around. I thought that he would just pull out a melon, which would be pretty dull, but no, he pulled out a length of rope, more like cord, thin and silky. And he kept pulling and pulling until he had pulled out hundreds of feet of cord. Then the man took the cord and threw it high into the sky, but instead of falling back down it rose up and up, uncoiling until the top disappeared in the distance and the bottom just dangled off the ground.

  “Then the man turned to the crowd and said, ‘Winter melon, as you have so rightly noted, is out of season here and not available in this grand market. But above in the heavens where it is always springtime, all fruits are always in season in the Garden of Heaven. I will ascend to heaven and return with a winter melon direct from the Garden of Heaven. It’s a long and dangerous trip and if the guards catch me stealing a melon from the Immortals themselves, well, I don’t like to think on the consequences. Who will offer me a single gold talent for this miraculous melon, one guaranteed to be the best melon you have ever tasted and which might even make you an immortal as well?’ Well, the crowd almost fell over themselves to offer and outbid each other and finally, the man agreed to sell the melon to one merchant for 30 gold talents. Which I gathered was an enormous sum for a melon. So the man put his hands on the cord and with a little jump, he started to climb the rope. It was clear, right from the very start that he was in trouble, huffing and puffing and making almost no progress. After a couple of minutes had passed, when the man was only about 6 feet from the ground, he let go of the rope and fell back in the dirt. ‘Well,’ the man said, after he had gotten his breath back, ‘it looks like I’m too old and fat to climb to heaven.’ Then he turned to the boy. ‘You’ll have to go, my son.’

  “And the boy’s face turned white with fear. ‘But papa, you know that the last time I went, the guards almost caught me. And if they catch me this time I’m afraid what they might do.’ But the man replied. ‘My son, you know that your mother is sick and the medicine is so expensive. The 30 gold talents that this great merchant has offered for the melon will almost cover the cost. How can you refuse her, the mother who bore you and loves you?’ So, the boy agreed. And with a running jump, he grabbed the cord, immediately higher than the highest point that his father had reached. The boy shimmied up the cord like a lizard, swaying side to side, but not showing any sign that it was hard work. At last the boy disappeared out of sight. We waited and waited for the boy to return, the man stood the whole time with his neck craned as if he didn’t want to miss the first sight of the boy. We heard it before we saw it, the melon falling down with a whistling sound and the man caught it as if it was the simplest thing in the world, to catch a melon thrown down from Heaven.

  “The man showed the crowd the melon and all agreed that it was, in fact, a winter melon and as fine a specimen as anyone had ever seen. The man offered the melon to the merchant and took, in exchange, the 30 talents of gold. And just as the crowd was about to disperse, figuring that there was nothing more to see, we
heard a whistling sound again and the man held out his arms to catch the next melon, although everyone knew that only one melon had been ordered. And he caught this one, as easily as the last then, to everybody’s surprise he dropped it on the ground and began to scream. And I saw that instead of a melon it was the boy’s head! So, of course, I began to scream too! And then more and more body parts of the poor boy showered down all around us. A hand here, and a leg there and finally his torso. Well, everybody was screaming and crying, to think that that poor boy had been caught and dismembered by the guards of the Garden of Heaven! So, the old man, in shock at his loss, began to gather up the body parts and place them, reverently, one by one in the box, all the while tears streaming down his face and muttering about how he didn’t know how he would tell the poor boy’s sick mother. So, one of the merchants, not the one who bought the melon, another one, said ‘Here! Take this. At least the boy should have a decent burial.’ And he pressed a coin into the man’s hand. Soon all the merchants were pressing coins into the man’s hands, as if a little bit of gold could make up for the loss of his son! And the man, who now looked quite old and broken, took each offering with a sob of thanks through his tears. I wondered if I should make an offering too, even though it wasn’t my money. I figured Christabel wouldn’t mind and Sir Leoline is fabulously wealthy, so I pressed a couple of gold coins into his hands and heard his teary thanks through my own crying. I must have been the last in the crowd to make an offering, since almost as soon as I’d given him the coins, the box began to shake and rock and eventually it rocked so violently that it fell over on its side and the top fell off and the boy’s parts all spilled out. But not individually, all together and the boy sprang up as good as new.

  “I know it was some kind of a trick. But I saw those body parts, all bloody and torn. It wasn’t a fake. That poor boy. Someone really did tear him to pieces.”