I fancied I could hear a faint, distant call, like that of a mother calling her children home. ‘Rayo! Rayo!’ It was not my mother’s voice.
‘I can hear you,’ I answered, in my dream, but whoever called my name walked right past me, a shadow, because I was invisible.
I was woken just after dawn by a couple of children who thought I was dead. Their family was travelling to Sacramante with a wagon of corn, and the mother offered me food. I was grateful for the food, although eager not to be detained. I ate standing up, wondering how far my phantom had got ahead of me. Then, I saw her waiting on the road, some distance away. Just standing there, looking at me, tall and motionless. I don’t think anyone saw her but me.
Halfway through the morning, she disappeared. I had been thinking about my visit to the eloim library, trying to remember everything Keea had told me, and my concentration on the vision ahead of me had flagged a little. Perhaps it was my attention alone that kept her solid in this world. Soon after I noticed her absence, a carter returning from the city drove up behind me, and I was able to beg a ride. I already felt as if I’d been travelling for days; I felt dazed and exhausted. Sometimes, I thought I was back in Khalt, on the road with Keea. I could almost hear his voice. ‘You saw what happened to me in Ykhey. They are ghouls, monsters. They drink blood.’ And Salyon was sometimes with me. ‘Life loses all meaning but for the sup. They never kill an unwilling victim. Never.’
Lying back in the empty cart, on splintery boards that smelled of grapes, I fantasised a meeting with Gimel Metatronim. She comes running towards me on the road, her hair flying loose, her face creased into a mask of terror. ‘Help me, Rayo, help me! They are chasing me. They will kill me!’
‘You drink the blood of children, you are evil,’ I say, and she puts her hands over her face.
‘I was just living my life, that’s all. Would you condemn the she-wolf for slaying rabbits in the snow? Would you deny her her food? Help me!’
And I draw her towards me, wrap her in my coat, hide her, keep her safe.
I left the carter when we reached the farm where he worked, waved goodbye, as if I was just any traveller walking east, and continued my journey alone. Bochanegra became wild around me; desolate hill forests, where few people lived. As my journey progressed, all shreds of clarity left my mind, and it seemed a dark tunnel formed around me, with my unknown destination as a vague smoky light far ahead. I kept on walking towards it, without pausing, sometimes being scooped up by occasional compassionate travellers who let me ride in their carts for a while. No one but me could see the tall figure walking steadily ahead of us. I knew this, even though I never asked anyone about it.
At length, the blur of my passage solidified into recognisable shapes, and I knew I was back among the strange, contorted memories of the Strangeling. Of course, where else would my lady have led me to? New significance had come to the tumbled ruins; I walked a landscape of the past, along an avenue of spiritual fires. This was the way, then.
A scruffy young boy, leading a spindly mule, came out of a doorway by the side of the road. ‘A ride for you, lady,’ he said.
I thanked him and mounted the mule. ‘Have you seen anyone else travelling east this morning?’ I asked him.
He shook his head gravely. ‘No. Seen nothing. But I heard them.’
‘What did they say?’
‘Give the lady a ride to Ykhey, they said. So I do.’
‘What do I look like, to you?’
He squinted at me. ‘You are the voice’s hands,’ he replied.
Of course I am.
Ykhey is strangely quiet. There are no phantom men at the gates, no celebrating people, no illusions. A chill wind blows leaves and rags along the empty streets. It does not look as if anyone has been here for centuries. The boy leads his mule some way into the city and then stops. He does not ask me to dismount, but I know it is time that I do.
‘I cannot pay you,’ I say.
He says nothing, does not even look at me, but simply clicks his tongue at the mule and turns back the way we have come, leaving me alone. I walk onwards, into the heart of Ykhey, letting my instincts guide me.
I stumble onto a cracked and rubbish-strewn plaza, where many small fires are burning. I am surrounded on all sides by crumbling palaces that even in their dissolution look as if they were once the homes of princes. I realise, as I stand swaying on the splintered slabs, that I have lost the thread of real life. It is stretching to an infinite thinness. And I am losing the equally fragile thread of sanity; it will not be long. Here, among the broken stones, I am sure the climax of my life is about to unfold. Should I care? The events of the last few months have broken down into essential components in my mind: archetype, symbol, myth. I feel that everything is softly falling into focus: soon, my eyes will be clear; I shall see the whole picture. Such a pity that, now, it is irrelevant to me. Eloim, human, artisan, monster, beloved: all the same thing. Lives. They are lives. And the world is full of those, each one valid, each one different from any other. Why try to control the rich and complex variety of life? A cat may be a ruthless killer or a loving companion. The only importance is whether you’re a mouse or a human being. No, I cannot attempt to sort out the problems of the world, simply because they are integral to life. No one truly has that power, not even our gods. All that compels me now is a mindless quest to see the face of the one I have pursued. I am like a child; afraid, yet unable to resist the curiosity of looking at the monster. And I know the monster exists, and that it has no mercy.
I begin to walk across the plaza. My coat is hanging open, but I cannot feel the cold. Its damp hem brushes up sparks from the smouldering embers that dot the slabs. Their smoke fills the air with a pungent aroma I have never smelled before. And I am thinking, deep inside, ‘Is this worth it? Is it really worth it? Why am I here?’ At the last moment, will something else materialise to lead me back to my life?
Indistinct forms flicker at the corners of my vision, like the shadows of flames, and finally, from this chaos of motion and suggestion, a solid body manifests in front of me: a single figure. Motionless, tall, dark: the archetypal shape of the last gatherer. Can it be that the guardian-pursuer of my childhood, a dream, a desire made flesh, has come to mock me, lead me forward to destruction? No, she waits in Sacramante. No, she is here, now. The thirst for knowledge is folly. As we learn, we realise how little we know, and the tiniest fragment of our knowledge is the whole of creation. This nurturing succubus before me now: the whole of my creation. I can hear my own, ragged laughter as I scrabble towards her. Soon, she will retreat, as she always has. Gimel has become her own ghost. By linking herself to me so long ago, by making me obsessed with her, she has created a third creature; the guardian-pursuer I should have had, drawn from my own mind. Gimel gave me the idea for this phantom, but it was I who made her live. I know I will never reach her, my tantalising vision, my innermost aspiration, because she is only the product of a fevered mind that craves miracles. I cannot see her face for she is hooded, and covered by her purple cloak. She is an emblem for utter impenetrability. And yet, she seems so real. I am so close to her, I can see the details of her clothing, the smudges of moss and mud along the hem of her cloak. I can see the dark thread of veins beneath the pellucid skin of her long, pale hands.
I shout obscenities towards her; threats, pleas. She makes no response. Stinging smoke blows across my eyes, acrid yet sweet upon the tongue, and when it passes, my demon has vanished. Of course.
Now I am standing where she stood. Now I am weeping for my cracked mind, my injured soulscape that is leaking so badly. Cracks in the soul leaking light. If the eloim ever existed, they are long dead. The artisans, like me, look for the impossible, the mythic and, not finding it, invent it. This is the explanation, and I have travelled across two countries to find it. The phenomena were there because I wanted to find them. Illusion. Keea and I: the company of the deranged. Is he pursuing his own fantasy now? I stand here, with a smoky wind flingin
g hot ash into my eyes. There is nowhere for me to go. I have reached my destiny. Beneath my feet, the plaza is fracturing, breaking up. But really, this is only a symbol to show me that it is I who is fracturing. All that I see around me is symbolic of my own condition: rubbish and decay. Then, a final self semblance is revealed to me.
Just ahead of me, the ground has opened up, and I can see there are steps there, leading downwards. I move towards them and peer down. If the Strangeling is my Self, then I am permitted to enter into it, and witness its destruction from within. The steps do not disappear into darkness, as I expected, but into a dark red light. This must be a symbol of my own inner pit, my deepest fears and most selfish desires. It is the place where the unfaceable lurks. And then, just for one brief instant of clarity, I find myself thinking, ‘Well, maybe my beloved demon did not just vanish. Maybe, she took herself down these steps... Maybe...’ Perhaps she was hurrying, and giggling to herself, thinking, ‘I will run down here quickly, before the soulscaper notices. She will think I have winked out of existence.’ Is that a possibility? I have nothing to lose, so I put my feet on the uppermost step. I will go down to the dark, then. Down. Chasing phantoms.
The passages are peopled by the mummified bodies of the ancient dead, perhaps even old thoughts and deeds, which writhe in the light of burning torches along the walls. The dead hate time and I have brought it into their dreamless dust-vessels, bringing sequence and life and the power of dissolution. I walk between them, thinking, ‘This contorted shape was a failed healing, this a sour love affair. This...’ I see a beautiful dead child with a posy of summer flowers in its lifeless hands. ‘This, my love for Q’orveh...’ As I think that, the dim passageway is suddenly suffused with an intense and blinding white radiance, which has no source. The air has become light. I cannot see anything around me. I am blundering in this thick, painful light, feeling with my fingertips into the future, for I know there is no going back, no possible chance of going back. Then, there is a sound just behind me: a chuckling laugh, a voice.
‘Oh see, she can count all her fingers and toes!’
Ushas!
I turn round quickly but my eyes are blinded by the power of light. It is so bright, I cannot tell whether my eyes are open or closed. A feeling of arrested time is all around me, like when I was in Ykhey with Keea and saw the vision of the trefoil pool. I am sure that outside, overhead, somewhere in reality, the clouds are hurrying across the sky, dragging the seasons behind them. The moon is speeding like a comet from horizon to horizon, towing her train of silver light, and the seas heave biliously beneath. Dynasties rise and fall in the royal houses of the world. Birth, death, birth. The table mountain crumbles and the Taps disperse into other lands. While all this happens above, here below in the place of no time at all, I take only a single step.
Soon, the gods begin to walk. These I know are part of me, for they are silhouettes against the lightness. Triple goddesses, sacrificed kings, devourers, avengers, virgins, androgynes, hunters and huntresses, baalim, demons, qlippot; they troop by me, staring out at an existence up ahead. Here come the heroes, their shoulders bowed by the burdens of the world, carrying their totemic weapons; the axe, the great sword, the lance. And here, the dark heroines of the imagination with their subtler weapons of poison and cruelty. Behind them, pad the lions of valour, the horned beasts of magickal submission, the great birds who bear the gods, who carry messages between the realms of light and dark. Now, I must have truly entered the soulscape, in body and mind, the place where all dreams, nightmares and desires live out their shadow-life. I must have left the real world behind. There is no scaping-fume at work here, although I do recall the pungency of the smoke I walked through on the plaza. Are there scaping mixes, of which the Taps are unaware, that can transport flesh as well as spirit? I cannot step back from this soulscape into reality: I am trapped here. The work that has sustained me, lain down and offered its breast to me, has finally destroyed me, devoured me, assimilated my being into its fluid landscape. I am no longer separate from the fantasies I have explored.
As this thought brings me a certain melancholy comfort, the lightness dims abruptly, and I am left in an equally impenetrable darkness; lightlessness so intense, my eyes feel sucked back into my skull. I put my fingers against my face and press - hard.
There is cool air on my skin. I blink and someone, or something, places a reality in front of my eyes. I am back above ground, in the plaza, but it is not quite the same place that I left. Around its perimeter, the buildings are whole, and the plaza itself is an elaborate marble mosaic, swept clean, but for a dusting of white blossom from the nearby shrubs and trees. It seems as if I have surfaced into a summer evening; early summer, because it is not that warm. I can hear the music of flutes and strings in the distance, and the air is heavy with the scent of flowers. And yes, someone murmurs my name through this romantic evening and I turn around. Behind me is a soaring white palace; tiers of marble columns, terraces going up and up, a forest of collonades. It is a home of spirits, I am sure. An endless sweep of shallow steps is a frozen wave of white, rearing up from the plaza, cresting against the shadowed porticoes of the palace. Upon these steps, there is an indistinct figure, but I can see that it is beckoning me forwards.
My feet are on the lowest step. I sway as if on the lip of a great abyss.
‘Come, Rayojini, follow me.’
And then, I can see, as if a veil has been torn in two before my eyes, that it is Keea standing there, Keea wrapped in a long, dark cloak, his hair across his face. I say his name and he retreats up the steps, drawing me behind as if on an invisible tether. He leads me into the shadows of this great edifice.
Inside, the air is smoky with offertory fumes, some of them those of the exorcism, recognisable for they are bitter upon the tongue. Others are sweet: the smoke of visions and dreams. We are in a vast hall, thickly bordered by spinneys and copses of columns, some white and straight, others curling and garlanded with carvings of leaves and flowers. Some are stained ochre, red sienna, and the royal, mystic turquoise. They are crowned by the lotus of duality, whose petals are edged with gold, attracting the low, yellow light, making it shine more brightly. The boy is sublimely beautiful. He wears a crown of flowers and thorns; there is blood upon his soft cheek.
‘Keea, I do not believe this is you,’ I say. ‘Everything here is just a part of my mind. Perhaps finding you here means you are dead.’
He smiles and shakes his head. ‘Dead, am I? Come touch my skin, Rayojini.’
‘All feels real in the soulscape. Even shadows.’ But I reach out to touch him anyway, and his flesh is warm at the throat, trembling with life. Such is the intensity of our illusions.
‘Look,’ he says and lets the cloak fall away from him.
Beneath it, his body is naked. The skin is tawny gold, fitting like a tight sheath over his muscles and bones.
‘Yes, you are lovely,’ I say, and it is nothing more than a sigh. ‘A lovely illusion.’
‘I am no illusion, Rayo. Believe it. You think you are in your soulscape, but you are not. I have led you to the brink of the eloim soulscape and together we shall swim its depths and crests.’
He has such power. Is this the person who has been at my side since Khalt? Was it he who caused the birds and bats of Helat’s shrine to whirl around my head? If so, who is he? Keea? A mere boy? Somehow, I think not. I have felt his difference continually, but have ignored the frantic signals my intuition screamed into my head, although, to my credit, I have never trusted him completely. ‘What are you?’ I ask him. ‘Show me now. The time that you promised has come, when you said you would tell me everything.’
‘Look deep,’ he says, and his flesh becomes smoky. It is as if a hundred soul envelopes of the boy are separating away, peeling off like discarded skin. I wonder what he will show me: will I be able to stand the sight of it? The image of Keea vibrates so fast, he has become a blur, shaking his essential components apart. The sight is making me dizzy. I press m
y hands against my eyes, and through them, I can see the vibration abating, slowing down, revealing that my Keea has become something else. He has shaken himself into an expression of his spiritual polarity; female. For a second, maybe less time than that, I assimilate this, before realising that, with a thrill of anticipation and horror, I am looking at Gimel Metatronim. In this place, the truth of myself is revealed to me. Perhaps I should bow before her. ‘You are her,’ I say. ‘You have always been her.’
She nods. ‘On the road in Khalt, I breathed upon you. In Sacramante, I led you through the autumn festivals, and left you my coin of the dead. Always me, Rayojini, always. The Metatronim lady you believed me to be is but a simple child in comparison. She could not have drawn you to this place as I have done.’
‘But, if you are not Keea, and not Gimel, then who are you?’
She smiles. ‘Look deeper still,’ she replies and begins to vibrate again. Rays of light spin out, hurled like spears. The image of Gimel cracks like glass and splinters away. Something extraordinary rises up through the light. Now, I realise, I am truly mad. What I see before is a man, but more than a man. It can only be an eloim, but not an artisan of Sacramante, oh no. I am reminded of the wall paintings in Helat’s temple, the account that Keea read out to me in the eloim library. What I see can only be a creature from the dawn of creation, the spawn of Eloat.
If I thought I had visualised gods before I was wrong.
He spreads his wings and they fill my sight. He is immense. He is silver light, clad in silver scales, which are torn in one place: above the heart. His face is one of infinite kindness, yet terrible. He is too beautiful to behold, too strange, too big. In his hands, I would be nothing more than a kitten, a single bud, a mote of dust.
‘Come with me, Rayojini,’ he says, and enfolds me with his light. He puts me inside one of the feathers in the joint of his left wing. I can hear the tumult of his heart there. ‘Come with me.’