Burying the Shadow (68 page)

I fell into a
restless sleep and dreamed of Avirzah’e Tartaruchi. I dreamed of
his face, frowning at me. ‘You were advised to leave the city,’ he
said, ‘but not this way.’

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 flinging 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.