Part One

 

- 1 -

The Thing in the Desert

 

           Tom awoke, like so many other times, on the belly of that fearsome Thing.  He was awakened by the shaking, which was followed shortly by the deep grumbling, like explosions in a vault far underground, through which, try as he might, he simply could not sleep.

As he awoke he knew that he would need to begin searching, like countless other times, for food for the Thing whose shaking and grumbling were becoming increasingly violent and foreboding.  Luckily for him, though, he saw a piece of unidentifiable stuff lying on the ground, a scrap left over from the night before (at least he thought of it as the night before, although he had no sense of day or night in this place).  As always, he had been exhausted, he thought as he bent hurriedly to pick up the stuff and toss it into the mouth.  Far from quelling the grumbling, the stuff summoned forth from the mouth a deafening damp roar, followed by a sticky thickness of a humid poof of wind, which he could only imagine to be a belch.  (This could also be called a miasma.)

            “On I go,” said Tom to himself, beginning to hop over the rippling, quaking belly beneath him.  The flesh was wet, and hairs wide as snakes lay matted upon it, making walking somewhat difficult – not to mention the motion underfoot.  He slid and stumbled his way down the side of the belly onto the ground, sometimes gliding on his backside.

            He knew it would be all right this time, for he had chanced upon a generous pile of stuff some distance to the right of the Thing the night before, which he had not been able to make away with completely (right, from the Thing’s point of view, of course, which was as good as his, which he liked to think of as the east).

            As Tom walked eastwards he always thought of himself walking across the desert, which indeed the landscape did resemble, in search of oases or, better, rivers, the Tigris and the Euphrates, of which he had yet to catch sight in his wanderings.  The riches, too, of the east he thought fondly to be awaiting him, but somehow he managed always to find a convenient pile of stuff before ever making it that far – convenient, in that he never found it too late, although when he returned to the Thing he returned often to the sound of a feverish mew, or a whimper, or a bark, or a roar – he didn’t know how to describe it, but some mammalian or possibly serpentine utterance at any rate.  Sometimes Tom swore he could hear the sound of people talking, a person talking rather, although the voice changed so much in pitch, tone, and speed that he could hardly attribute it to one set of vocal chords.  If indeed it was speaking voices, or a voice, as he liked to imagine, it was not speaking any language that he knew.  At this point he decided that he might be daydreaming.

            But Tom knew, deep in his heart, that even if he did reach that distant oasis, or that river, that many-gardened Babylon with its riches, he would still hear faintly though clearly the voice, as he liked to call it, harking him from across the desert, wavering between various tones of entreaty, frantic bursts of outrage, charming calls of song at times, and he could not but return with the riches of Babylon to the Thing.

            Tom mulled over this idea for a while, chuckling grimly to himself as he squinted into the dusty horizon, which was somehow shady though free of anything at all save himself, searching for that pile of stuff which he knew to be somewhere.  As he chuckled he began to remember his dream, which occupied his mind for a while as he treaded eastwards.  In his dream, he was walking through a seemingly endless maze of corridors.  It seemed to him a striking contrast to his present environment, which bored him beyond measure: something about its dark blankness disrupted him fundamentally, and stripped him of all sense of time and space.  In his dream the corridors had had a certain elegance, never winding but sometimes turning into stairs or opening into vestibules, which made his wanderings interesting.  It was true that he could not remember much of this dream besides the little just recounted, but he hoped to remember better in time.  He thus contented himself with wondering what it was about the dream that so pleased him, in contrast with his present situation.  Maybe it was that the corridors, with their contained and orderly layout, provided him with a reassuring sense of order.  No, he thought, there is nothing more orderly than sheer emptiness.  Maybe it was that the plenitude of being – of walls, ceilings, floors and the odd staircase – filled his dreaming soul with content.  Content is often enough, regardless of type, he realized with a feeling of slight revelation, at least it is better than nothing.  And content, he said to himself, is exactly what this desert is lacking.  He wondered if there were any such mazes in Babylon.  He seemed to remember having read or been told of great palaces there.  Surely he remembered it.  Great palaces would be more than enough content.

            Suddenly he was standing before the pile of stuff, an unlucky thing, because he liked to look away from the piles as much as possible.  How he contrived to find these piles without looking at them directly was always something of a feat in itself, but it was just doable as he had nothing against looking at the piles from a distance.  Closing his eyes, he proceeded to grasp with both hands at the pile, feeling with a unique mixture of disgust and relief the dry organic stuff between his palms and fingers.  The Thing, he thought to himself, will not want for much longer now.

           He stood upright and began walking back the way he had come.  Just as he began to anticipate the Thing’s growing hunger, he felt the earth begin to tremble, the prelude, he knew, to those perplexing noises described above.  There was a moment when he wasn’t sure if the trembling was real or if it was his anticipating imagination, but then he saw the trembling, in the dark air, the open gloom, a windy shiver, and there was no doubt that the Thing was getting hungry.  He thus picked up his pace as much as possible without losing any of the stuff and negating his efforts.

           “I’m coming, I’m coming,” he said, as if the Thing spoke his language, as if the Thing had ears, as if it would have any use for ears!  No, the Thing had no need of ears, as far as Tom could tell; all it needed was its mouth, gullet, stomach, and vocal chords (maybe a roomful of maniacs down there, among other things, to produce that assortment of noises).

           Right on cue, a bark of impatience echoed through the gloom and under the closed sky.  The bark was followed immediately by many barks of higher and lower pitches, overlapping, interweaving and interrupting, a cacophonous harmony of hounds, almost sophisticated were it not for its overriding feeling of vulgarity and malice.  It was terribly frightening!  Just when he thought his ears, his very soul could take no more, that he would never sleep soundly again, never again find himself the amused protagonist of some delightful content-filled dream, but permanently petrified, the sounds stopped short, falling over each other into an abyss of silence.  Naturally this silence was also quite disturbing.

           But the silence did not last.  As if only giving his ears brief respite to preserve his sanity for its own survival, the voice resumed its harangue, personally addressed to the only poor soul in this desert, Tom, this time with typical vulgar originality hitting a nasty note far below any healthy register, and holding it, thusly:

“Hummmmmmmmmmmmmm …” and onwards, until the ground began to vibrate and the gloom to shudder beneath the ever-collapsing, dark ceiling of sky.  Naturally this was quite horrible, but it was better in its predictability than its forerunner, that terrible, muddled, harrowingly irregular barking.  That, he simply could not take.  Indeed, who could?

He suddenly wondered whether or not the Thing had a mother.  How had it got here?  Had it always been here or had it started its life elsewhere and somehow ended up here?  Had it ever been self-sufficient?  (All this, while he trotted hurriedly towards it.)  Perhaps it had had an accident – fallen from the sky, maybe, or been beached like a whale when the waters receded (he had no evidence that there had ever been waters here, but nonetheless he speculated), presumably towards the Mediterranean, his Mediterranean, westwards.  Perhaps it was a sea-creature of some kind.  Or was it a part of the scenery, he wondered, like a tree, with its roots extended far into the ground?  But why would it need him, if it had roots?  Maybe they weren’t roots at all, but some sort of organic chains, tying it helplessly to the ground.  Objectively he often felt sorry for it, in those rare moments when he was not burdened with its horrific need as he was at this moment.  The thought of this Thing having a mother who once loved and cherished, cared for it, provided for it as he did, and now no more, was accompanied by a kind of melancholia which he felt might return to him at a more convenient time.  He wrenched himself from these speculations; but he did resolve to study the underside of the Thing, its back, he supposed, with the intention of discovering how exactly it met the ground beneath – was it attached or not, or what.

           He began to see the Thing on the horizon, blurry amid the dark wisps of gloom which flickered about it like a congregation of mourning spirits; and the humming began to hit him directly, a shockwave of discomfort.  He flinched and protested; the Thing, as if catching a glimpse of him or sensing his approach, suddenly changed its tune, or its note, and began booming out a randomly swerving melody, which was really quite charming.  Like a kite possessed by a terrific wind, the melody danced and bobbed, skidded over the air, never allowing its next move to be predicted, but always beautiful.  For a brief moment of what could only have been a sort of madness, due no doubt to his overflow of relief at being so close to feeding the Thing (always a time of great relief for him), he cried, “my Love!” but, as he spoke, as when a dreamer speaks aloud and thus realizes he is dreaming, the tune plummeted headlong into the kind of appalling, fluttery, inhuman chattering which he always found so disturbing.  This time it was like a flock of fretting gulls evacuating south for the winter.  “Ugh,” he shuddered, “it must have been the … ugh.”

As he came within its direct vicinity, the muttering stopped, and the Thing seemed poised upon the point of orgasmic release (or maybe it was the predator’s stillness when hovering over unwary prey?).  At any rate, it had stopped its noises.  Its sense of smell, Tom felt, must be stronger than his; it must smell the stuff, know that it has arrived, arrived for him, or her, or it. The Thing.  He knew that it would soon change its tune: this was an axiom, one of the most solid axioms of his existence.

He dropped the stuff next to the Thing’s heaving side and, after picking up a generous handful of the stuff, began improvising footholds and handholds (for no imprints ever remained) on the blubber, making his way up its side towards mid-belly.  From there he made his way up the chest to the throat, amid the tempestuous, ravenous shaking, until he was at a good vantage point to throw the stuff into the mouth.

            After he had thrown the stuff into the mouth, the voices died down and a strong calm came suddenly upon him.  Deciding not to fight it (it would be at least a few moments before the Thing would again become needful) he collapsed onto his hands and knees right where he was, on the throat of that fearsome Thing.  He slid and rolled down the chest, with the aid of the quaking, until he lay where he had awakened just earlier.  It was a kind of groove, a cradle, as he thought, where he was wont to regain his strength; certainly it was the most comfortable place that he had found on the Thing, the place where he was least likely to be thrown off by the shaking and the grumbling.  Indeed, it was even almost as if the Thing wanted him to make this place his bed: it seemed to direct him there after each feeding.

            The belly was now making the noises Tom had come to associate with what he called digestion, and these noises were of a strange assortment indeed: there were splashes, soft like the lick of calm lake waters on the wooden pillars of a dock; there were other splashes, seemingly in another compartment, louder and more violent, like the awesome claps and hisses of a stormy sea against the stubborn starlit cliffs of nighttime; there were thunder claps, again as from another compartment; behind these Tom thought he heard the voices mingling in approbatory guffaws; there were screams and whimpers, seemingly of pain; and beyond it all was a kind of hum, or purr, which seemed almost to drown out the rest and was very conducive to sleep (this may easily have come from Tom’s own brain, but the rest he felt sure was not his).  The belly rippled ecstatically, but this did not bother Tom as he took the brief opportunity to rest and, he hoped, possibly recover from his travails, which were always arduous and rather traumatic.  He sank further into his heap, himself, and felt the belly envelop him softly like a pile of pillows.  Its embrace was warm, loving, firm (perhaps too firm), and thankful; the voices seemed to coo and lullaby him and the vibrations were actually quite relaxing, when experienced horizontally.  Before he knew what was happening, he was falling asleep; and as he dozed off, he muttered, “Were this not my own dream, I don’t see why I would ever bother having it.”

 

- 2 -

The Castle by the Bay

 

            Tom was transported immediately into a room of some kind, and he was staring directly into a large bright window of gothic style: a large, sharply arched window divided into three medium-sized windows, which were in turn divided into several smaller windows.  He was blinded to the inside of the room by a sharp light in the sky beyond the window, presumably a sun of some kind, which left only the rich darkish blue of the sky beyond visible to him.  The light was not harsh enough to cause him to squint or shut his eyes as he would in real life (especially so for Tom, who had not seen the sun for some time); they remained wide open as he stared at the sky beyond the window.

            He was standing, and he continued to stand there for a long moment as he gazed contentedly at the window.  The sight gave him a powerful feeling of elation, and the rays of the sun made his nerves tingle happily.  Though he knew he was standing, he felt very much as though he were floating, or swaying effortlessly like a sail in a calm but steady wind.  Eventually he began to drift towards the window, out of a natural and unconscious urge to have more light, more sky.  He approached it slowly, surefooted, still oblivious to the room itself; he felt as though he was being pushed gently towards the window by a lukewarm wind.  As he approached the window, the sky beyond opened up to him.  There were soft white cumulus clouds, friendly plumy poofs not heavy enough to gather shadow in their bellies, drifting steadily across the sky.  The sun was fantastic, filling the sky with brilliance and wonder and promise.  It hovered low, but Tom had the strong impression that it was morning, for there was no hint of melancholy in the air – all was brightness and elation.

            After what felt like a long time of floating around, waywardly in every direction, basking in the gentle sheen, he got close enough to the window to see the horizon and, eventually, everything in between.  It was a fantastic scene: there were awesome tall mountains at the horizon, cutting darkly into the sky, over which the fresh sun peeked piercingly.  Beneath these mountains was a great expanse of dark blue water, a large bay whose waters were rippling in time with his own tingling nerves and reflecting in sparkles minute and innumerable the sun.  As for the immediate environs, he seemed to be in a large castle, or mansion, with wellkept grounds which stretched about a half-mile down to the bay; the grounds were irregular, with gardens of various shapes and sizes and structures of wood and stone.  Framing these grounds were tall woods, speckled with large fields and villages, which spread over round hills and small valleys.  The scene was not busy, but not dead either; Tom felt that things were going on, but not of a hurried or frenzied nature.  The whole thing was incredibly fantastic and profoundly impressive, and filled Tom’s breast with a heavy awe and made his heart palpitate urgently with elation.

            From this scene a movement caught his eye: it fixed upon a figure in the yard just below him.  Tom thought that it was a man from his hat, shoulders, hands, and clothes, and he was unhurriedly raking the grass around a small garden beneath a wall adjacent to the edifice in which Tom was.  Tom felt a strong desire to go and speak with this man, whom he decided was the gardener, in the hope of getting some kind of explanation from him.

            Tom turned from the window, and took a moment to let his eyes adjust to the light inside the room.  It was a large room, with a tall ceiling supported by smoothly carved wooden rafters.  The room was clean, and seemed full yet not cluttered.  There were several paintings of various kinds of landscapes hanging upon the four walls, between which were hung arabesque tapestries of tastefully sombre colours.  Whoever lived here obviously enjoyed landscapes, and knew how to fill a room without bloating it.  There were well-carved armchairs sitting about the room, and there were desks and chests of drawers upon which sat trinkets – a gold-coloured model of a leopard, a bronze statue of a samurai, a silver jewellery box, a little model aeroplane, and other things – and a carpet of the same arabesque style as the tapestries covered a blue-tiled floor.  A grey cat looked at him curiously from a blanket-covered armchair and, hanging upon a wall, a clock ticked quietly which Tom for some reason thought was also studying him curiously.  The room was very inviting, and Tom felt welcome to stay for as long as he liked.

            Driven by his urge to speak to the gardener, however, Tom found a heavy wooden door in the wall to the right of the window (to the south of the window, if Tom’s assertion that it was morning was correct) hung with large metal rings for handles, opened just enough to allow for the passage of a cat, the hinges of which worked smoothly as Tom pulled it open.  Before him was a large corridor, well-lit by a medium sized window in the left (the east) end of the corridor which let in the light of the same sun in which Tom had just been basking contentedly.  This corridor, though obviously not a chamber of the same importance as the one he had just left, seemed a very comfortable place in which one might spend a lot of time very happily.  There was another armchair set just under the window, upon which sat another cat, this one a tabby, and there were a couple desks adorned with the same kinds of trinkets as were in the other room.  Tom walked to the western end of the corridor, passing by other large wooden doors, and found a staircase leading down, back towards the eastern end of the building.  Leaping energetically down the stairs, Tom found them open into a little vestibule with coats and hats of a quaint, antiquated variety hanging on the wall.

            Finding the front door open, Tom walked out into the morning air, feeling his nerves rekindle in the sun’s rays.  Smells filled his lungs, of seasalt, flowers, forest, and woodbine.  The wind was strong, but warm and welcoming.  He knew that it was morning and, moreover, that it was springtime; he sensed even that the snow had only just vanished completely the day before.  He squinted, as the sun seemed much stronger now, and shading his eyes with his left hand he looked about for the gardener.  Seeing him raking some yards away from where he had seen him earlier, Tom walked towards him, slowly so as not to alarm him, for Tom inferred from his stiff gait that he was old and thus perhaps delicate of heart.  The man lifted his head and began turning casually as Tom approached, almost as though he had been aware of his presence from the start and had just been waiting for Tom to approach him.

            Tom spoke, “Excuse me, sir.”

            The man, now turned around completely, was indeed old.  His wrinkled face was tinged by a softness seemingly bestowed by some profound sort of peace of mind, and he looked at Tom knowingly and reassuringly, a smile growing slowly.  Wisps of white hair fell out from beneath his widebrimmed hat, and he wore a light blue shortsleeved shirt under brown overalls which looked old but clean.  His white beard seemed to wear the arrangement of a smile.

            “Yes, sir, how may I help you on this brandnew perfect morning?”

            Tom, suddenly realizing that he had not planned what to say to the old man, grabbed his jaw with his right hand and stared at the man’s feet for a few moments.  They were in green Wellington boots wet from the morning dew.  He registered the man’s growing smile.  Deciding to appeal to the man’s ingenuity, he turned and gestured towards the open doorway, trying to arrange his features into an expression of confusion, and began saying words which he thought might help, “I ... just ... this place?”

            “This is probably my favourite place,” said the old man; he stood back and looked up at the building behind Tom.  Tom turned and looked at the building.  It was a large, rectangular edifice with huge arched windows which didn’t make much of itself and exuded a calm aura of confident, welcoming serenity.  It gave the impression that within its walls rested peaceful dreams, blue skies of restful peace.

            “It’s very nice,” Tom said.

            “Don’t I know it?”  The old man looked at Tom and smiled as though he had just remembered a very funny, happy story.  “And the countryside ... the water, the mountains,” he looked up as into a corner of his brain where he was wont to store lists, “and the trees and whatnot.  Yes.”  He let his rake fall.  “And in this season, at this time of the day, with the sun just creeping up over the mountains.  I’d say you came at a good time.”

            Tom, reassured by the man’s mood, said, “I daresay you are correct.”

            The old man leaned back, as though decided upon something profound and good, and turned to Tom.  Closing his two hands behind his back he said, “I am the gardener, and you may call me Peter.”  He extended his right hand to Tom, which Tom accepted.  The old man’s grip was a good one: firm but not too firm.  “If you prefer, you may call me Peter Gardener, or even Mister Gardener if you prefer.”

            They began walking leisurely downwards towards the bay, weaving between gardens, trees, garden sheds, low brick walls, and fountains.  Their eyelids lowered to the rising sun, Peter began to talk.  “I’ll tell you something.  Don’t worry; it is not something sad.  That house behind you is a very happy house.  Nothing can really go wrong in there.  It is a sanctum, if you will, a stronghold against ill; its walls envelop an imperturbability.  Its design is an ancient one, and it has never suffered so much as a crack.  A truly amazing thing, wonderful entirely.”  He scratched his whitebearded cheek thoughtfully and said, “In fact, it would be wrong to say that it is a stronghold against ill or anything so silly of the kind, because ill or any thing related thereto does not exist in the context of this house.  You see, it is like speaking of colour to a blind person ... no, wait ... it is not quite like that,” – he looked suddenly at Tom as to assess something quickly – “but you get the picture.”

            Tom nodded, interested.  It truly was a splendid place, he thought.  “I didn’t explore it very much.  But what I saw was quite nice.”

            The old man nodded earnestly, looking up approvingly at Tom for a moment before continuing.  “It has been here for a very long time.  Nobody really knows how long, but that is of little importance.  I think you get the point; even though you may not realize it in its absolute fullness now, I feel that you grasp it innately, on a more fundamental level.”  His intonation was confident, wavering steadily between fifths and halftones, like one who was reciting well-tried knowledge, or even ancient lore.

            Suddenly Peter stopped and touched Tom briefly on the left shoulder, startling him a little, to get his full attention.  “But now, I must get serious with you.  There is this little fellow, about this high;” – he put his hand out to indicate a height a little above waist-level, just over three feet – “I needn’t describe him physically to you, because you must never go anywhere near him.  If you see him, run.  Do not let him stop you.  He will call out to you first, because he likes to cajole, but you must ignore him.  He will doubtless try to reassure you, and maybe make a promising, even irresistible offer, but you must turn and run as soon as you know who he is.”

            The old man looked so serious that Tom found it rather funny, so early in the morning, and thought perhaps the old man was playing a joke on him.  He crossed his arms and looked at Peter incredulously.  Peter returned his look with a reinforced gravity, and nodded once and continued.  “He has a kind of rambling croak of a voice, and he talks very excitedly and steadily, a constant croak.  He wears an old top-hat and a dirty brown tailcoat.  Don’t let him get anywhere near you.”  He looked hesitant for a moment and pursed his lips, then continued, “He has a kind of a big crayon, which he jabs people with.”  He looked at Tom seriously again, and Tom got a very uncomfortable feeling, which caused him to want to end the conversation immediately and leave.  There was something eerie about Peter’s change of manner: Tom got the impression, inexplicably but unmistakably, that Peter believed that Tom knew this person and had somehow forgotten of his existence; it seemed that Peter was reluctant to remind Tom of him, but felt it was necessary.  But Tom, to the best of his recollection, could not remember ever having met a dwarf, much less of this description.

            “Well, sir, I thank you, and I think I might move on now, taking the benefit of your advice with me.”  He extended a hand.  Peter’s features relaxed again, and he smiled, causing Tom to feel comfortable once more, and somewhat sorry for having felt uncomfortable with him.  But Tom had committed now, and Peter shook his hand, then gestured about at the countryside.

            “It is a beautiful place, you know: a beautiful world.  There’s no room for sad stories in a beautiful world like this.  Ah!  There’s no place for them.  The world will be beautiful no matter what kinds of stories we manage to tell ourselves; this is something I have learned from my time tending the garden.  Don’t forget what I told you!  Much depends upon it!”  He began strolling back up towards the house.  “There’s a little road just behind you; it will take you somewhere beautiful, I’m sure!”

 

- 3 -

The Group by the Stream

 

            Tom, wondering at Peter’s remarkable peace of mind, turned and began walking down the road upon which the old man had set him.  The road, of the cobbled variety, was gently winding, and bordered at either side by tall woods which threw shade upon parts of the road, and there was often a little house, set back into the woods, with a winding path leading to it through the trees.  For the first little bit of the path Tom could still see some of the bay and its surrounding landscape, but soon the trees of the forest hid the water and the horizon and all Tom could see was the blue sky and its unthreatening cumulus clouds.  The atmosphere was calm and quiet, and Tom felt that people came here to escape the bustle of the world.

            Tom did, in fact, consider at this time that it would perhaps be a better plan to remain in the house, or on its premises, for as long as possible, since Peter Gardener had spoken so highly of the place as a paradise of sorts.  The logical extension of Peter’s assertion, Tom reasoned, would be that other places, outside of the house’s premises, were not equally devoid of unpleasantness, and there might even be some danger lurking beyond, aside from the dwarf about whom Peter had warned him.  The foolproof, safe plan, therefore, would be to stay at the house – that is, if Peter would allow him.  However, Tom concluded that he would go on the way he was going, deciding that if there were any serious dangers lurking ahead of him, apart from the dwarf, Peter would have been good enough to have warned him about them too.

            Tom then reflected that the interaction he had just had would have been a very pleasant and reassuring one had it not been for that bizarre and somewhat disturbing warning which Peter had so seriously given him.  However, Tom thought, there is no kingdom in any world that has not its felons, and it is important to remember that.  Perhaps Peter did not want the extreme beauty and overwhelming wholesomeness of this place to cause Tom to let his guard down, or dare to think that everything in this place was perfection.  Perfection, Tom thought, like that house, for instance, if Peter Gardener can be believed.  Or perhaps it was just the gardener’s nigh senile fondness for a place whose garden he had tended for a long time?

            After passing by a few houses on either side of the road, half-concealed by the trees, Tom began to hear the unmistakeable sounds of a stream, to the left of the road about twenty yards along.  As he drew nearer to the sounds, he began to hear voices.  The speakers sounded youngish to him, and he wondered if it was a good idea to reveal his presence to them.  Deciding to leave it up to chance (for this had been his strategy so far) he continued down the road until he reached a point in the path where he could hear the stream clearly and make out the words of the strangers; he was separated from the group only by a handful of thickly grown pines.

            “I always find it ... remarkable when one turns up alone,” said a young boy’s voice.

            “Well, she’s had a hard time, Ronny,” a deeper voice replied.

            “She’s lucky to be alive,” said Ronny, in wonderment.

            Here a young female voice intervened, “I don’t like her.”

            “That is not at all important, Calpurnia, you know that,” said Ronny dismissively and authoritatively, although he sounded young, certainly younger than the other boy for his voice had not yet deepened.  “I have never yet known you to like another member of your gender.”  Ronny spoke confidently and intelligently, a little haughtily even, but the effect was sometimes undermined by a crack of the vocal chords which betrayed his prepubescence.  There was, however, an undertone of good-natured humour, even satire, in his reprimand, which made it seem as if his petulance was only in jest, and also made him seem mature.

            “That’s not true.  Oh, look, she’s crying!”

            Tom began to feel that this group was not likely to harm him, perhaps not even capable of doing so.  Leaned up against a tree he waited and listened harder, just to be sure.

            “It’s been a while since we’ve found someone.  There were those others, but ... that was different.”  The other male was older, a teen or young adult, and he sounded, if certainly not stupid, possibly simpleminded or shy; his voice had none of the assertiveness of the younger, and was also strangely devoid of guile.

            “Yes,” said Ronny, “I know.  I sometimes wonder if there are any at all ... but of course I know there are, all over the place probably.  Not that we want to meet any of them, of course.”

            There was a brief silence, then the older boy sighed.  “Well, let’s bring her to Mother.”

            “Why can’t I be Mother?” Calpurnia asked in a supplicant whine.

            “You already know why, Calpurnia, and we all know what you’d do if you were Mother.”

            There was a pause, and then the two boys laughed; there was a particularly unthreatening, almost comic counterpoint in the sound of the pompous, high-pitched voice and the guileless deep voice mingling in laughter.  “You can be Grandmother if you like,” said Ronny.

            “Shut up, Ronny,” said Calpurnia.  “I’m hungry.  Let’s go!”

            Tom, finally completely unafraid of the company by the stream, coughed loudly and began walking through the thick pine division.

            “Look out!”

            “Whoah!”

            “Who goes there!”

            The three cried out at once, and Tom heard shuffling.  By the time he made it through the pines, he met with a sight which he had not expected: a short, skinny boy pointing a revolver at him, and the other three, two of whom were much larger than the boy, huddled behind him.  Tom immediately put his hands up and cried, “Don’t shoot!  I’m harmless!”  Tom could not remember the last time he had seen a gun, and was sure he had never seen one from this daunting angle.  He added, “I’m lost!  Peter Gardener sent me here!”

            The mention of Peter Gardener seemed to calm the boy.  He lowered the revolver towards the ground, then looked quizzically at Tom and said, raising an eyebrow, “Peter Gardener, you say?”

            Tom nodded, relieved, “Peter Gardener, from just up the road, sent me down here.”

            Ronny studied Tom for a few moments.  Ronny’s appearance was comical: his messy black hair stuck out in tufts in all directions, and his clothes (a heavy plaid shirt and old jeans) were much too big for him.  He wore spectacles, also too big, and, judging by how his eyes never seemed to focus on Tom but rather on a point just behind, or inside Tom, their lenses seemed to be of the wrong prescription.  His lips toiled against each other tirelessly, the tongue at times peeking through and hastily retreating, as though he was exerting himself in extremely deep thought.  Although he was endearing and even interesting, it was altogether difficult to take the boy seriously.  Finally, after a long, tense moment during which Ronny studied Tom from head to foot many times over, Ronny finally said, “Is that so?” but this was clearly not a question.

            They all began taking their ease once it seemed that Ronny, who was apparently the leader of sorts, had decided that Tom was no threat.  The other boy seemed to be about on the threshold of manhood, about six feet tall and athletically built.  He wore a rather simple expression of puzzlement and seemed inherently good-natured.  He had short blonde hair which shone healthily in the sun, and his face was fresh and full; he wore a simple white T-shirt with a faded, unidentifiable picture on it, and faded blue jeans.  Calpurnia was much younger, still a child.  She had reddish hair which was tied back into a ponytail, and she wore a yellow shirt that danced brightly beneath overalls which were too large for her and accumulated at her feet.  The other girl seemed to be about the older boy’s age, but she was very dirty and shabbily dressed as though she had been living in the woods for some considerable time: her hair and face were dirty, muddying her features, and her clothes were tattered revealing scratched, dirty skin bronzed by the sun.

            “Well, if what you say is true,” said Ronny, “and I see no reason why it shouldn’t be,” – he shot a quick interrogative glance at Tom, as to assess the trustworthiness of his face – “then we have strict instructions to bring you to Mother.  I am Ronny; this is George; and this is Calpurnia.”  He gestured at the other two with whom he had been conversing; then, looking at the older, disheveled girl, he added, “She is having problems right now.  We just stumbled across her here.  She was crying.  I don’t think she speaks English.  I don’t know if we’ll be able to keep her.”  He sounded somewhat wistful.

            Tom, not displeased, was nonetheless confused.  He said, “I am Tom.”

            “However,” Ronny said sharply, his eyes lighting up behind his large spectacles, “we can’t keep you unless you have some use.  What do you do?”

            Tom had not been asked this recently; indeed, he did not think that he had ever been asked the question at all before.  But since it seemed important to Ronny that he be able do something, he answered quickly, “Forager,” since he had a distinct feeling that he had once been in charge of finding and collecting things, important things, for an important cause.  This answer, however, caused Ronny to squint disapprovingly, so Tom quickly corrected himself, “Hunting, er ... and fishing, and I’m a builder.  Exploring, too, I do very well ... or so I’ve been told,” he lied, but he felt sure that he was a superb explorer.

            This seemed to give Ronny some reassurance; he said, “All right.  We’ll head back to the house now.  Mother will be very glad to see you.  She had been told – Father told her – that Peter Gardener would send us someone very important around now ... unless there is some mistake ...” – he looked searchingly at Tom – “I think you are expected.”

            This last statement was rather surprising to Tom.  He was not accustomed, as far as he knew, to being expected, or accounted for, or accommodated.  He found it somewhat surreal and even a little unsettling.  He wanted to ask more about his being “expected” by Mother, but he thought it wise to hold his tongue and not test the goodwill of his newly acquired company.  They began making their way back to the road through the pines through which Tom had just penetrated, and then began going down in the direction of the bay in militant silence.  The revolver had disappeared into a small duffel bag carried by George, which seemed to contain other items.

            After walking a little way in silence, Ronny fell into step with Tom and began talking.  “You see, we are a very strict community – strict obedience to our rules, as set out by Father and his forebears, are what has preserved us for this long.  He learned them from his forebears, and they learned it from theirs,” – he made expansive gestures with his hands – “and they learned it from the great HP.”

            Tom, thinking perhaps that he had misheard, queried, “HP?”

            Ronny, looking somewhat pleased with himself, said, “Don’t tell me you’ve never heard of HP.”

            Tom began to feel unsettled again.  Something about the initials made him feel uneasy; the letters hung menacingly in the cobbles, empty symbols, casting malignant shadows in their arbitrariness.  “No, Ronny,” he gulped, “I’ve never heard of HP.”

            “Well,” beamed Ronny proudly, “That, my friend, is your problem.”

            Tom suddenly felt very relieved at this easy diagnosis, “I have been feeling quite confused lately.”

            “And no wonder!  Living in aporia all your life!  Can you even tell me where you were born?  What time it is?  Where are you now?  Peter Gardener – I’ve never met the man – must work for a relic of the Dark Ages.”  He stroked his smooth chin.  “Yes, a relic of the Dark Ages indeed.”

            Tom, reflecting anew upon his circumstances, was bound to admit to himself that he was very confused and wasn’t able to answer any of those questions Ronny had just posed.  Indeed, he was probably unable to answer any questions at all.  Although he had a strange sense of familiarity, even deja-vu, he felt as if he was unable to access a significant portion of his intellect.  And how, Tom wondered, did Ronny know where he had lived his whole life?    “This HP must be quite a wonder.  Will he be able to help me?”

            “Oh, he will help you all right,” Ronny nodded eagerly, smiling, “He will sort you out.”

            “I would appreciate it very much.  Are we going to see him now?”

            Ronny, suddenly serious again, said, “Well, you can’t meet him, per se ...” he paused, carefully constructing his next sentence, “You can more than benefit from his powers, as it were;” – he suddenly straightened his spine, and dropped his voice as low as it would go in an effort to achieve a tone of serious importance, the effect of which was somewhat ludicrous – “you can, through careful study, improve yourself, with the help of those of us who have had time with HP.” – Tom nodded, interested – “You see, HP’s time is running low, alas.  He sleeps unless he is absolutely, urgently needed.  He has only eleven minutes and forty-six point three two seconds left on his battery!  The anxiety, the panic, the horror that this fills us with, has filled our forefathers with, I can not hope to describe to you.  In fact, Tom,” Ronny looked somewhat downcast, “I myself have only had twenty-one seconds with him.  I watched him bestow some vital knowledge upon Father once, and ... I feel very fortunate to have done so.  Most people do not get to see HP – he is locked away in the house.  Even Father has only had twelve minutes and thirty two seconds with him, making an average of about one point one minute per ten years of his life – Father is one hundred and thirteen ...” Ronny trailed off, thinking about numbers; then, suddenly reanimated, he added, “That is the kind of thing HP could tell us, right down to the very last decimal point, but of course we would never waste his time with such trifles.  He is our treasure, our God, really ... indeed, we would never even know about or be able to question the notion of God were it not for HP and the tireless work of our forefathers, who used HP’s dwindling minutes to copy down sedulously the tomes of ancient lore – for the immeasurable benefit of our people – until the point was reached where it was decided that the last hour of HP’s time must be saved for only the most dire urgencies.  And as time passed, naturally, the criteria of urgency became narrower and narrower.  And to think of all the time that was wasted on questionable pieces of information ... it never ceases to nag at me ...” Ronny trailed off again, pinching his smooth chin between the pointer and middle fingers of his right hand and shaking his head in disapproval.  “You know, life is too short for Schopenhauer.”  Tom wasn’t sure who Schopenhauer was.  “If they had spent that time copying something better ... but on one point we are agreed: the musical scores.  They have enriched our people to no end.”  Then, as if suddenly snapping out of a revery, he looked apologetically at Tom, “You must forgive me.  Enough about HP.  We don’t even know if we are supposed to keep you, or send you away, or what.”

            “Or shoot you!” Calpurnia suddenly interjected.  Tom, though quite certain that the little girl was joking, felt a little put off by this remark; but he was put back at ease when all three of them (the disheveled girl was not engaged in the happenings, but was being supported by a concerned-looking George and staring listlessly at her feet) burst into laughter.

            “You must ignore Calpurnia.  She has a strange sense of humour,” said Ronny, chuckling.

            The road was straightening out, and the trees were becoming sparser and letting more light onto the ground.  Tom could now again see parts of the mountain-cut horizon through gaps in the trees, and he could tell that they were a good bit lower in altitude and probably almost at sea-level.  Soon the road ran into another, larger road, over which it appeared more vehicles had passed, for the cobbles were more worn.  Tom was a little surprised to see a Georgian carriage to the front of which were harnessed two large, healthy-looking horses.  They approached the carriage, then Ronny turned to Tom and said, “I wouldn’t expect you to remember this from anything, familiar as I am with the limited extent of your knowledge, but this kind of thing happens all the time in spy stories and things like that: we need to blindfold you before we take you any further.  Don’t be nervous – it is just for safety.  Rules, as I told you, are what have kept our society together all these generations!  We have to blindfold both of you,” he said, turning to the other girl whom George was in the process of putting into the carriage.  Whereupon he walked to the duffel bag which George had left on the cobbles and pulled out a blindfold and proceeded to go behind Tom and tie the blindfold snugly around his eyesockets.  The blindfold did not seem too dirty.  He led Tom to the carriage, into which Tom was able to climb with minimal difficulty.  Tom then felt the carriage crouch under the added weight of Ronny climbing up into the driver’s seat atop the carriage, followed by the greater weight of George climbing in through the opposite door, followed by the smallest weight of Calpurnia climbing into the seat across from him.  The horses took off at once, though Tom did not hear a command, verbal or otherwise, issued.

            They went uphill for a while at a steeper incline than that at which they had just been descending by foot.  Tom did not bother to estimate the distance they traveled, but instead occupied himself with wondering as to the properties and qualities of HP: what class of thing was this HP?  He wondered the same about Mother: would she be kind and benevolent, or hostile?  Deciding that such guesswork was an enterprise of limited potential, Tom’s thoughts roamed back again to the dwarf about whom Peter Gardener had warned him.  Maybe these seemingly wellmeaning youths would know something about the dwarf and how best not to run into him.  Tom eventually decided to ask them about the dwarf, but at a later occasion when perhaps he could speak to Ronny alone.  It was wise, he thought, to say something, which may go amiss publicly, in private.

            Time passed in silence, the four of them sitting side by side and toe to toe and occasionally bumping into each other when the carriage bounced over an odd uneven cobble; the incline became gradually ever steeper, and Tom felt his ears pop in token that a significantly higher altitude had been reached.  Then the slope began to flatten again and the horses began to speed up, causing Tom to infer that they had reached a kind of plateau, and the road seemed to change from cobble to smooth cement.  A few minutes later he thought he heard voices and other noises outside the carriage as if they were in a town or something, causing him to hope that they were approaching their destination, for he was wearying of the blindfold and finding it increasingly agitating and unpleasant being taken so far without seeing where he was going.

            “Are we almost there?”  Tom asked, as cheerily as he could.

            “Almost there,” said George’s voice to the right of him.

            They were not close enough for Tom, though.  After another couple minutes of waiting in the darkness of the blindfold, in the greater darkness of the silent carriage, in the even greater darkness of the unknown world outside, Tom began to become extremely impatient and restless.  His breathing became heavier, and he shifted positions constantly in physical objection.

            “Are you all right, Tom?”  Calpurnia asked across from him, simultaneously dealing him a sharp kick in his left shin.

            “I fear that I am finding this voyage increasingly uncomfortable.  Perhaps I could get out to stretch my legs for a while?”  Tom responded, trying to restrain his increasingly violent discomfort.

            He heard a window slide to the right of him, letting in a sudden gush of noise, of people laughing, talking, arguing in unknown languages, what sounded like a train whistle piercing shrilly over everything, and Tom thought also that he could hear the hissing crash of waves assailing stone walls or cliffs.  Some of the voices he thought were oddly familiar, among them George’s, obligingly, urgently asking Ronny to stop the carriage and let Tom stretch his legs.  The carriage did not stop, however, but rather sped up and started bouncing and skipping violently as if they were riding over broken concrete.  The noises became louder, and Tom thought he heard Ronny cry, “I can’t stop them!” but he was not sure, for he heard so many other noises and voices, as of many animal and human tongues, that the whole thing became a horrible cacophony of overwhelming, all-too-real sound, rushing right through Tom’s eardrums like a hungry, bloodthirsty horde to pour unstoppably into Tom’s very mind.  Calpurnia screamed; George emitted a low groan of uncertainty; the girl to the right of Tom grabbed his leg and began to wail; Tom covered his ears with his hands and clenched his teeth, rocking himself back and forth convulsively as the carriage threw his body in every other direction.  The many noises coalesced to become one horrible monstrous roar, like a gargantuan explosion, an atomic bomb.

            Tom was not sure what happened next.  His entire perception had been utterly overwhelmed and bombarded far beyond the point of manageability – but, since it was apparently not yet his time to die, or because the perceptual cataclysm was not quite enough to kill him, he simply endured, screaming and convulsing, every bit of his body tense and jittering, as the sounds poured in through the window and the damned stallions of hell dragged the atrocious vehicle over the razor-waves of an infernal stormstricken sea-route, every bump a tsunami, twenty tsunamis per second.  Tom could hear only a horrible, ten-times-deafening roar, clouding with blackness his mind’s sky.