The Paradise War

Chapter 39 The Return

The interior of the mound was dark as a womb, and suffocatingly close. I could not see Simon, nor could I hear him or sense his presence. He had already crossed over. Fearing the portal would close at any moment, and that I would miss my chance to return-and, having missed it, that I would not be able to make myself go through with it the next time-I took a deep breath and stepped into the Fiowling void that separates the two worlds.

A wild blast of wind tore at me, and I teetered upon that narrow span-the sword bridge. I flung out my arms for balance, and slid my foot forward over the blade's edge, ignoring the wind's heart-tearing scream and the dizzying sensation of balancing above an infinite and invisible void.

The sword-blade bridge beneath me bit into the soles of my feet as I slid them carefully along. The merciless wind ripped at me from every direction. I fought to breathe, fought against the paralyzing fear swimming at me out of the wind-blasted darkness. Gathering the last of my quickly-failing nerve, I took two more sliding steps along the sword bridge.

It felt as if my clothing was being rent to shreds and stripped from my body, as if my flesh was being pared to the bone by the searing wind. Courage, I told myself, it is soon over.

I took another step.

My foot trod empty space and I fell.., weightless, stomach-wrenching, plunging into endless night, my lower lip clamped between my teeth to keep from screaming… falling through time and space, spinning through multilayered realms of possibility, through Earth ages that never were and potential futures that never would be, plunging through that unspeakably rich, elemental reservoir of the transcendent universe. I fell, landing hard on my left side. I lay on the packed dirt floor for a moment-until my head stopped spinning-and then opened my eyes on a dim, gray limestone interior.

I flexed my arms and legs experimentally, but detected no broken bones. I raised myself up slowly and climbed to my feet. A thin, cold light entered the hive-shaped interior of the cairn. Simon was nowhere to be seen. Stepping to the low entrance, I gripped the cold stones at the edge of the hole and pulled myself out into the manifest world once more.

It was a winter dawn, and freezing. The sun was new risen in the east. A grainy pall of snow covered the ground. The sky through the trees above the glen showed ashen and pale. I emerged from the cairn into a world immeasurably forlorn and futile. My first thought was that I had come to the wrong place, that I had crossed over into a shadowland, a slight, sickly reflection of the world I had left behind. But then I saw it… the canvas tent of the Society of Metaphysical Archaeologists.

And there, sitting on a camp stool drinking steaming coffee over a small fire before the tent was a man I recognized-in the way one recognizes someone from a dream-his name… his name… Weston. It was Weston, the director of the excavations, and, across from him: Professor Neuleton. I saw them, and knew I had come home.

The realization settled on my shoulders like a dead weight.

For the world was no longer the same. Frail, colorless, weary, the world before me displayed a tentative, temporary appearance. Everything-trees, rocks, earth and sky and dull winter sun-seemed not to exist as much as merely to linger-like a fast-fading memory. There was no feeling of import or solidity, nothing at all substantial about the world I saw. Ephemeral, impermanent, it looked as if it were a transitory phenomenon-a mirage that might dissolve at any moment.

And I could see that Weston and Professor Nettleton had changed as well, subtly but perceptibly: their features were coarser, their bodies smaller and more ungainly. They appeared slighter, less physically present somehow. There was a peculiar ghostlike quality to them, as if they clung to corporeal existence by the slenderest of threads, as if the atoms making up their bodies might relinquish their cohesive attraction and go flying apart at the least provocation.

Even as I stood looking on, the man Weston rose abruptly ~nd ducked into the tent. As soon as he was out of sight I Lurched forward and the movement caught Nettleton's eye. Elis gaze shifted. An expression of frank amazement ippeared on his owlish face.

«Oh, my God!» he whispered sharply.

He clearly did not recognize me. Why should he? I was iressed like something out of the Mabinogion-from the iilver torc at my throat to the leather buskins on my feet, breecs, siarc, and bright-checked cloak. He was waiting, yes; but he was obviously not expecting a Celtic warrior to come shuffling out of the cairn.

I stepped cautiously forward, aware of the disturbing effect my appearance was having on him. «Do not be afraid,» I said.

Nettles gaped at me in uncomprehending shock. Thinking he had not heard me, I repeated myself, and only then realized that I was speaking ancient Celt. It took me a moment, and not a little effort, to find the English words.

«Please,» I said, «do not be afraid.» My voice sounded harsh and clumsy in my ears.

If my Celtic speech puzzled him, my native tongue terrified him. Professor Nettleton, trembling like a terrier, put out his hands as if to hold me at arm's length away from him.

«It-it's all right,» I said. «I have returned.»

The professor peered at me through his round-rimmed spectacles in the wan, uncertain light. «Who are you?»

I cannot describe the devastation wrought by those three innocent words. Sharper than spears, they stabbed me through. The gorge rose in my throat. I gasped and pressed the heels of my hands to my eyes.

«Who.., are.., you?» the professor repeated slowly, adopting the carefully exaggerated speech one would use in speaking to a foreigner, or a madman. Then he said the same words again, in Welsh, which only made me feel more of an alien being.

It was a moment before I could utter a sound. «I-I am… I am. . . ,» I stammered. The words clotted on my tongue. I could not make myself speak my name.

In dawning realization, the professor edged forward.

«Lewis?» he asked softly. «Is that you?»

Indeed, the professor's question was better than he knew.

Who was I? Was I Lewis, the Oxford graduate student who had been sucked into an impossible Otherworldly adventure? Or was I Liew, the changeling who stood with a foot in both worlds?

Nettles crept closer, darting a quick glance to the tent behind him. «Lewis?»

«Y-yes… it is Lew-Lewis,» I said thickly, stumbling over my own name. Wrapping my tongue around the language was an effort.

«I have been watching,» Nettles said. He stepped closer, his eyes taking in my appearance-he gazed at me as if at a wonder. «I have been waiting.»

«I've returned,» I told him. «I've come back.»

«Look at you,» he breathed in an awed voice. His eyes slowed like a child's at Christmas. «Look at you!» He raised a trembling hand to touch my cloak. «Why… it-it's miraculous!»

I had encountered astonishment before, and the same expression of awestricken disbelief-on the faces of the warriors on the wall, and in the eyes of the gathering in Meldryn Mawr's hail. I knew my sojourn in the Otherworld had changed me; and, to judge from the reactions of so many, my contact with the Singing Stones in the Phantarch's chamber had changed me still more. But, standing in the chili, thin light of this shabby, pathetic world, I understood at last: I was not simply changed, I was transformed.

I spread my arms and looked down the length of my body. My hands were hard, my arms muscled and strong; my legs were straight, powerful, my torso lean, tight, and my chest broader, my shoulders heavier. I reached a hand to my face, and felt a straighter nose, a stronger chin, and more forceful jaw. But the change was more than physical. There was the aura, the glory reflected from my encounter with the Song.

Lewis was gone. Liew stood in his place.

«What has happened?» Nettles asked, an eager light animating his face. «Did you fmd Simon? Did you stop him? What was it like?»

How could I tell him what I knew? How could I even begin to describe the Otherworid, let alone put words to all that had happened?

I stood gazing at my friend, a welter of emotions swirling inside me. He looked so weak, so fragile, and so insignificant. Embarrassed by the visible poverty of his crabbed, miserable existence, I wanted to raise him up, to make him see what I had seen, to know what I knew. I wanted him to sleep under Albion's undimmed stars, and to feel the fresh wind of virginal green valleys on his face; I wanted him to hear the soul-stirring melody of a True Bard's harp, to smell the salt sea air of Ynys Sci, and savor the exquisite sweetness of honey mead; I wanted him to feel the firm rock of Prydain's matchless mountains under his feet, to see the bright fire-glint on a king's golden torc, to exult in the glory of the good fight. I wanted to show him all these things and more. I wanted him to breathe deep of the higher, richer life of the Otherworld, to drink from the cup that I had tasted… to hear the incomparable Song.

I longed to show him the paradise I had discovered in Albion, but I knew that I could not. Try as I might, I could never make him understand. The gulf between us was too great. Words alone could never span the distance, nor describe the cruel destruction yet threatening that fair world.

But I was spared the need to answer, for Professor Nettleton laid his hand to my arm and leaned close, «Unfortunately, we do not have much time. The others,» he jerked his head in the direction of the tent, and I knew who he meant, «will return at any moment. They are very close to a breakthrough-they know about the portal here. I have contrived to join their excavations so that I can stay close at hand. But we cannot let them find you here like this.»

«Where is Simon?» I asked, my tongue awkward and clumsy in my mouth.

«Simon?» The professor seemed mystified. «But I have not seen Simon. Only you have returned.»

Even as I stood there, struggling to understand, I noticed that the feeble light had dimmed yet further; it was darker now than just a few moments ago. . . odd.

I glanced over my shoulder toward the cairn.., the glen was sinking into darkness, shadows deepening. A crow circled slowly overhead, silently watching…. Then I realized that it was not dawn at all-but dusk. In this world the day was rapidly approaching twilight and the time-between-times. Soon the portal inside Carnwood Cairn would open.

And if Simon had not returned…

I saw the signs and felt the elemental tidepull of the moment in my blood and in my bones. And I heard the Song-streaming across the blinding distance between the worlds. I heard the Song and knew that the war for paradise extended to this world and to this very moment. And I had, now, to choose.

Nettles was watching me. I swung towards him and raised my hand in a simple farewell. Then I turned and walked to the ancient cairn. I heard Professor Nettleton call out behind me: «Good-bye, Lewis! God go with you!»

And then another voice-Weston's voice, excited, alarmed, shouting, «Wait! Stop! Stop him, quick!» I heard frantic footsteps on the frozen earth behind me. «No! Please!

Turn back!»

But I did not stop. I did not turn back. For I had heard the Song of Albion, and my life was no longer my own.