Chapter Fifteen

 

 

 

The others managed to grope their way to the boat and Sebastian and I pushed it out into the current. Then we scrambled aboard—which isn’t easy in absolute blackness—amid scratches and bruises and much swearing. We couldn’t see a damned thing, but there were oars in the boat, and instead of using them to move us along—the current was taking us at a nice, languid pace—we used them to keep us from hitting the cavern walls. And we bumped along like this, drifting, with no sense of what direction we were moving in or the passage of time. Ten minutes might have passed or it might have been half an hour or an hour. The fact is, when you can see nothing, it becomes almost impossible to gauge time. But eventually Ciara said what we had all probably been thinking, without daring to say it.

“The darkness is lessening. It isn’t so…black.”

I nodded, which was stupid because nobody could see me. “I think you’re right.”

We carried on like that for another good few minutes, each of us straining our eyes to try to pierce the gloom, bobbing to the gentle lapping of the stream with no real sense of movement or direction. Then I saw it, like a ghost through the grainy, dark air. It was mere feet away.

I said, “I can see bricks. The wall. It’s red brick. It isn’t stone.”

And Ciara was talking at the same time, saying, “Yes! You’re right. We’re in a tunnel. It’s not a cave anymore.”

Then there was light, filtering in from somewhere, dim and gray and dull. But it was light. And while Michael Fionn was thanking the good Lord and all the saints, I noticed up ahead, a small jetty, also made of brick, and beyond it some stone steps leading up through an arch. I pointed. “There! There! Row, row, row!”

And Sebastian and I began to haul on the oars, nosing the little boat toward the mooring. When we’d secured it and climbed out, I slung my sword and my bow over my shoulder. Fionn was babbling like he had verbal diarrhea, thanking us and preparing to say his and Cara’s goodbyes. I wasn’t really listening. I was thinking about how there was still one gold-tipped arrow left. I looked at Ciara. She was watching me. I said, “We’re not there yet.”

She nodded. “I know…”

I led the way up the stairs.

It was a narrow tunnel again, just wide enough for one person. The stairs were steep, made of limestone and worn down in the middle, as if they’d had centuries of use. We climbed in single file for maybe ten minutes, and finally up ahead, I saw the dim glow of filtered light. Another minute brought us to the head of the stairs. We were in a circular room with a dirt floor. It seemed to be some kind of a tower, with a high, domed ceiling supported by stone arches. The door was also arched, though this arch seemed more Tudor than Norman. It was made of heavy wood that might have been oak, but it was cracked and uncared for and the light of early dawn was filtering through it. There was a large iron key in the lock, and I thought at the time that this was strange. I took hold of the key, turned and pushed then stepped through into the light.

Only it wasn’t light. It was still night. We were in what appeared to be the ruins of an old abbey. The walls were broken and crumbling. There was no roof, and above us there was a clear, translucent sky with a full silver moon, gently raining light over rolling hills and hedgerows. I could hear an owl calling from somewhere across the dark fields, and there was the rich smell of honeysuckle and nocturnal roses on the air.

I noticed Ciara standing next to me. She gently slipped her arm through mine. Her father appeared by her side, mumbling. I glanced down at him and his eyes were drooping. He seemed half asleep. And just past him, I saw Sebastian. He didn’t seem much better. He was yawning hugely and struggling to keep his eyes open. He put an arm around Fionn and said, “Come on. Let’s find somewhere to sit down, old chap.”

Ciara pointed ahead of us and said, “Look. We can sit by that fire and keep warm for the night.”

Am I dreaming? But I knew I wasn’t, even though time seemed to have gone backward. In a dream you can see and you can hear, but you can’t feel. And I could feel everything perfectly.

I turned toward where she was pointing, and I saw that there was a ring of stones, maybe four feet across, and in the center, there was a fire burning, trailing a few sparks into the night air. I hadn’t seen it before, but that didn’t strike me as strange, given everything else.

We walked over to it and sat. Sebastian and Fionn lay down, curled up and were instantly in a deep asleep. I listened to the crackle of the flames consuming the wood for a while and enjoyed their warmth on my skin. I turned to Ciara. She was very close, watching me intently, and her eyes were alive with reflected flames.

“I know about the debate, Jake.”

I laughed, and there was a strange echo among the walls of the ancient abbey. “I don’t stand a chance. They’ll expel me, I’m sure. It will be hard on my dad, but I had to do what I did. I couldn’t let them take you.”

She smiled. The warm glow of the fire bathed her skin, and I had the strange feeling that the warmth was coming out from her, from her heart. She said, “There are things you still don’t understand. I didn’t understand myself until tonight. I want you to promise me something. Will you do something for me?”

I smiled. “What do you think?”

She took my hand in both of hers. “I want you to promise me that you will do the debate. I know you’ve prepared nothing, and that’s good, because I want you to speak from the heart. More than that, Jake, I want you to allow your heart to speak. Will you do that for me?”

“I would do anything for you, Ciara.”

She gave a small laugh, which I am not going to describe because I’d have to say things like the tinkling of silver bells, and I refuse to do that. But I will say it was a laugh that would make a skylark go weak at the knees—if skylarks have knees, that is.

Then she said, “Thank you, my Lord, and I will make my father come and listen to you, because he needs to hear what your heart has to say. Now”—I was about to speak, but she placed a finger on my lips and said—“I must sleep a while, and you must stay awake and alert. The biggest battle is yet to come.”

She closed her eyes, her head dropped forward and, in an instant, she was deeply asleep and I was alone.

It was a strange feeling, and that was what it was—a feeling. As I searched about me, I noticed that all the colors were more intense than I had ever seen them before. The orange and yellow of the fire were luminous. The black, charred logs from which the flames licked and reached up into the air were of a blackness I had never seen. The grass where I was sitting from which the crumbling walls of the abbey rose, was almost electric, shimmering, and the amber yellow of the sandstone walls seemed to glow with an inner light. I looked up and the depth of the blue of the night sky was like polished glass. The stars were tiny shards of ice, and against that backdrop, the moon seemed to be a living thing, with a radiance more intense than the sun. Yet it was dark, and the intensity of these colors radiated from that darkness so strongly that it was more than color. It was feeling. That is the only way I could explain it. Every color and every shape was a feeling. The sky and the stars were icy cold, the abbey walls were ancient and tired, the green of the grass was young and wild and mischievous and the silver light of the moon was secret and timeless—and maybe even amused.

I knew that there were questions I ought to be asking—like how the hell we had walked into an abbey at midnight when it was dawn as I was opening the door—but the strangest feeling of all was the one that said that those questions did not matter. Who questions what they do in a dream? Well, this was like being awake in a dream that was more real than reality.

I’m not sure when I first saw it… One minute it was not there, then it was. But it was there as though it had always been there. It’s really hard to explain. It was sitting across the fire from me, with the light from the flames reflecting in orange and green and purple off its scales and dancing in its huge eyes. It was human-shaped, more or less, sitting in a half-lotus position. Its face was long, with a pointed snout, like a goat with no ears, and though the face and body appeared quite masculine, it had two very feminine breasts. I must have seemed surprised, because it said, in a deep, masculine voice, “Did you think you were alone, Jay En?”

I looked around at Ciara, Michael Fionn and Sebastian, all sleeping. And it said, “They are not here.”

I turned back to face it, and it was like I’d held a magnifying glass over its eyes. They were vast and right there in front of me, two giant goat’s eyes staring right down deep inside me. I pushed the image back with my mind and said, “Who are you?”

It was reptilian. It had no face muscles, so it couldn’t smile, but there was real humor in its eyes. “I am Naga.”

I had a million questions I wanted to ask, but I couldn’t find words for any of them. I said, “Why are you here, Naga?”

It opened its mouth, like a Komodo Dragon, threw back its head and brayed loudly, like an ass. A huge, multicolored crest of spines and scales spread out from behind its neck, and its skin seemed to ripple with colors. It stopped, the crest sank back and it gazed at me, while its forked tongue licked the air.

“Why? An impossible question to answer, Jay En. The only answer to ‘why’ is ‘because’. How do I come to be here? This is my home, as it is yours. What is my purpose? To speak to you. Learn, young being, to ask good questions.”

“Why do you want to—?”

“Again?”

I stopped and drew breath. “What is it that you want to talk to me about?”

“You must speak about Earth, about our world.”

“I must?”

He watched me, like he was waiting for me to realize how stupid I was. Then the penny dropped. “Oh, you’re talking about the debate!”

“You must speak about Earth, about the world we share.”

The silence was suddenly intense. It was as though there was a furious noise just outside my range of hearing. Naga’s eyes became huge again.

I heard myself repeating in a monotone, “The world we share.”

“Did you think you were alone?”

I frowned, straining. Something was knocking at the door of my memory. I said, “Naga… Hindu mythology…”

Again, he asked, “Did you think you were alone? There are many rooms in the mansion of the world. If you stepped into the sky, Jay En, and surveyed the world with my eyes, you would see the many rivers and streams, and oceans of the mind, flowing from flower to butterfly, to lark to goat, to man, to elf to naga.”

And as he spoke, I realized that I was in space, looking down on our planet, but as I had never seen it in any photograph from NASA. It was a luminous ball, shrouded in the most fantastical mist of billions upon billions of colors. And each color was a stream or a river or a lake or an ocean, and they were all moving, entwining. And Naga was saying, “Each stream, Jay En, is a stream of conscious thought. Some are feeble and slow and sluggish, and they you see as gray or brown. Others are wild and furious, full of hunger and rage, and those you see in red or purple. Others are full of love and fertility, and those you see in pink and violet and green. Some, Jay En, are just feeling, like the yellows and greens of flowers, whose consciousness is simple, yet rich in feeling. Others crawl in the dark, like cockroaches seeking food, and these are also simple, blacks and grays and browns and shadow colors. Humans you will see in the whole, fantastic spectrum from black, murderous hatred to glorious, shining love and compassion but almost always tinged with the darkness of ignorance, believing themselves still to be masters—at best, caretakers—of this world.

“But open your eyes and see clearly, Jay En, and you will see more subtle streams of colors, and these are the thousands of lives that are not human but whose consciousness reaches far beyond human dreams. We share this world, Jay En, and we love it as humans do not yet know how to. We do not kill, torture and punish. We wait, and we try to teach. Sometimes we send a great teacher among the humans, to guide their steps, and sometimes we send a small teacher. Each teacher, great and small, has an equally important part to play.

“And so, Jay En, you must talk about Earth.”

We were sitting around the fire again. I could feel the warmth of the flames on my skin, and I could see the orange and yellow dancing on Naga’s scaly skin. There was a smile in its eyes.

I said, “What about Ar En?”

“One day, you will learn to ask questions that find answers. Ar En is your brother. He is your mirror. There are many forms of intelligent life in the world, young being. Some are motivated by love, like us. Others are motivated by confusion, like the humans. Yet others are motivated by anger and lust. You must be careful of them. But all are your brothers and sisters, and all are your mirrors, for they can teach you about yourself when you look into their hearts.”

I was beginning to feel a turmoil in my mind. I frowned at him and said, “Who are you?”

And in spite of its rigid, lizard face, it was smiling, and it seemed to be turning to smoke. Its voice came to me through the flames of the fire, which was growing and spreading. It said, “I told you, young being, I am Naga. Did you really think you were alone?

Quietly, the fire crackled. A few sparks drifted across the luminous green grass. The broken walls watched me, gently glowing amber in the moonlight. Naga was not there, and I wondered if I had dreamed it. In the stillness, I saw the broken arch of the main entrance to the abbey. A hooded figure in a black shroud stood watching me. By his side was a huge dog, which he held on a short chain.

A voice that I recognized, that I knew well, echoed around the abbey, strong in power and authority. “I have come to ask you a question, Jay.”

I got to my feet. My sheathed sword weighed on my back. I held the bow with the one remaining arrow in my left hand. The night air was suddenly cold on my skin and the fire burned low. I spoke, but it was more of a snarl. “Ask…”

“Do you support the dominion of man? Will you, as your father’s son, cower at their feet, feed them our blood and hold the torch while they scorch our world and drive us into the shadows? Or will you, as your mother’s son, fight them and drive them back into the frozen blackness of the night from which they came? Do you, Jay, my brother, support the dominion of man?”

He pushed back his hood. An icy wind blew and caught his shroud, blowing it like a black cape. He was my brother, my mirror, but as I had not seen him before. He was no high-school boy. He was ancient beyond measure, tall and proud and beautiful in a way that no human could understand. He was the earth, he was the trees and the grass and the rivers, and for a while, I felt the tug of his words. I understood him and felt a fury and a rage against this upstart species that was destroying our world, burning the air with their smog, murdering, raping, enslaving, spreading darkness over our home.

But even as I felt these things, the passion subsided and clarity came to me. I said, “It is not the dominion of man, Ar. It is the dominion of hate, and hate already has dominion over your heart. I do not support the dominion of hate, and so I will not fight them and drive them back into the dark. I will lend them what little light I have, to help them to see the beauty of their home, share it with us and grow from man to humanity. Will you, my brother, help me to bring them light?”

He seemed to freeze, to go rigid, then his whole body appeared to grow. His face blazed with a furious fire. The sky turned black with turbulent clouds. Lightning crackled and a furious wind tore through the abbey, whipping his hair across his face. He opened his mouth and roared, “Never by Dagda and Lugh! By Odin and Fjörgyn! May Vritra scorch the earth before I will be a friend to Manu!”

And so saying, he let slip his hound. It sprang from his grasp with burning eyes, baring its massive teeth. And in the same instant, he had a bow in his hand and he had loosed two flaming arrows straight at my heart.