Jumping (30 page)

“Well, the choosing is all done between lives,” Leonid says. “That's when we do the planning. We figure out why now, and with whom. You're making that choice when you're who you really are, your whole, fully knowing self—you're holding all the experience, all the memory, all the history. And you're doing it with your cohort, who have been there every step of the way with you. It gets pretty complicated, as you can imagine, because there's lots of other people, too, on the same purpose. You see how it's different from projections—it has a common, consciously realized purpose for all. We're not re-living something we haven't gotten clear of yet. We're creating something, together.”

“But why? Why would we?”

“Well,” Norwenna says, thinking about it. “It's done according to contracts, typically. As a contract, it's often done as a favor to a cohort member or to complete your own karma with that person. It works to balance karma, to balance what's been released into the world by war. So, ideally, we would have fought once, like kids fighting over a toy, and we would learn our lesson, never to do it again.”

She actually snorts at this.

“But on Earth, we've done it over and over. The irony is that every time we do it, we're all agreeing to fight to end all fighting!” She shakes her head and kicks at a stone on the tunnel floor, sending it flying into the dimness ahead of us. “It just seems to take us a long time to do that, to get that lesson. So, we fight because we're young and ripe for adventure, or we fight because we've been talked into it—to see ourselves as heroes or properly patriotic, or maybe we're branded cowards if we don't.”

She looks at me, to see if any of this is ringing a bell for me. Considering all the war experience I've apparently had, I guess it should be. But I'm not feeling it yet.

“Or maybe we're just forced to fight, by somebody more powerful than we are, who holds our lives and our families and our property hostage. Anyway, the idea is we get used to fighting, if we do it enough.” She pauses again, thinking. “And it's hard to stop.”

She looks at me, and I see a deep sadness in her eyes. “That's what happened to you. And to me.”

I don't want to hear this.

“I want to heal,” she says. “That's why I'm here. I don't want to carry the blood and gore any more. I want other experiences. But sometimes I think I've stayed too long at the fair.”

Her words chill me. I'm not like her, I say to myself, but it carries no conviction.

“No one wins. This is my last piece of work here, and then I can move on. But it's taken its toll. I find I don't make a very good woman.” She smiles at me, and I feel the chill to my core. “Too much baby killing, I guess.” She turns away from me, saying, as she turns, “You can extinguish your own light before you know it.”

I can't speak. Fear has a hold of me.

Leonid goes on talking. He agrees with her. “Think about your own Civil War, right on your own territory. Your own history tells you it was fought in 10,000 places, with three million dead. Think of the battle at Cold Harbor. Your history tells you about that, too. Skeletal remains from the first battle at Cold Harbor were found when they dug in for the second battle. More than 7,000 men died in 20 minutes. Necessary?

“World War II, history tells you, called more than 85 million people into uniform, yet the over-whelming majority of people who perished were civilians. They still say the real number will never be known. And wars are full of stories like that. Yes, that kind of chaos can create fertile space in which to learn some of life's toughest lessons, if you survive. But it's not the only way to learn or even the best. It's just the most expensive way to learn. Somebody pays and somebody profits. Somebody always does.”

Norwenna looks at me, her eyes cold and dark. I'm disturbed at seeing the light go out of her this way. “Some people think wars bring out the best and the worst in us. But I think they're designed to bring out the worst, in order to win; the best is only incidental.” She looks down.

“You know, things like blood lust can develop in wars.”

“I don't really know what that is,” I say, wondering if I want to. But this seems important to her. And I have a feeling if it's important to her, it's important to me.

“People consumed by blood lust just want to kill, to feel powerful, maybe because they've gotten attached to their possessions or their people. Or maybe they're too afraid of being killed, so they just kill everything they can, trying to feel safe. Maybe they're even supposed to be killed, and they know it but don't want to be, so they kill instead. Newer, less experienced souls might follow them, caught up in what they see as the glory, the spoils of it.” She looks at me, and I have to admit I feel something here, like she is telling my story, too, not just hers.

“And so-called religious wars are the worst!” she says. “Convincing ourselves we're doing it for the highest possible good. It's the highest possible delusion, but it can take a while to work our way out of it. You should know. You've been there, done that,” she says, with a short laugh. “So have I.”

Seeing the unhappy look on my face, Leonid says, “Think about it, Miles. Ethelred is our cohort. Battle was our cohort's way for millennia.”

Norwenna and Keilor nod. I'm thinking about what it means to try to heal from all this. I guess it's possible, because Keilor is here.

We come around a gentle curve in the tunnel, and Leonid points out an opening on our left. This time the markings scrawl across the left side of the opening, indicating some sort of battle associated with the portal. It's dark inside, but the three of them walk right in. I follow and as my eyes adjust to the dark, discover myself in a good-sized room with high ceilings, and a low-burning fire in a fireplace in front of us. By the fire's light, a table is visible with a couple of flickering candles on it. The table stands between us and the fire. A large man sits with head bowed over some papers. Startled by our entrance, he rises up out of his chair. Then his face lights up at the sight of us.

This must be Ethelred. He shouts a greeting and rushes around the table to give each of the others a bear hug that lifts them off the ground and then settles them back down. Tall as Norwenna and Keilor are, they seem dwarfed by this man. They're all talking and laughing.

Ethelred looks over their heads to see who is behind them. All goes still. He stares at me for a long moment. I'm feeling just a little unreal. Who am I to this man? This, after all, is a king.

He comes over to me and takes both my hands in his—a gesture of unquestioned loyalty, even at Ethelred's time in history. “A bond stronger than life,” he says, as he looks into my eyes.

Leonid says, “Ethelred, meet Miles. Miles this is Ethelred.”

So, I meet Ethelred—inside his castle, in the middle of the night and have to smile. I feel deeply touched by this man. Though I do realize, after all the war talk, that
castle
is just another word for
fortification against war
.

Ethelred looks at me with tears in his eyes, and once again, I have tears in mine. I have never felt as close to anyone as I do to these people.

“So you've come to help us,” he says.

“If I can,” I say, and mean it, though I have no idea what might be expected of me. He looks at me for a moment, with such love that I finally have to look away, I'm so overwhelmed. He squeezes my hands and then lets go, turning to the others.

We all look at him, and he seems to sense that everybody is ready for whatever it is we're going to do. I think I've stopped breathing for a moment, the atmosphere seems so heavy with this unnamed purpose. I'm just going with this flow, with these people.

“Let's go,” Ethelred says quietly, and we follow him from the room.

Ethelred seems to know clearly why we're here—“to take a look at some significant warfare for our cohort, to heal it.” That's what he tells me as we all walk down the dark halls of the castle. Apparently he's used to walking these halls in the dark. Nobody mentions grabbing a torch or a candle. He's trying to give me some background for the battle we're apparently going to witness, as we feel our way down narrow winding stairs in the dark, trying not to bump into each other. Ethelred sees like a cat—he points to engraved words above the door we exit by. The words are in Latin, so he translates them—“If you want peace, prepare for war.”

“It's what we live by,” he says. We head outside, past the animal pens and out into the fields surrounding the castle, and he talks to us about the work and duty that fill his days.

Once outside, I finally get a real sense of where we are—in another place and time. Everything feels different—the air, the ground, the sky—as if it doesn't fit me but it's allowing me to be here on borrowed time, only because we have work to do. There's a full moon, and by its light I can see the walls of the castle stretching up and up and up behind me. I can't see the top of them. I can't see the extent of their breadth either. The walls go out into the night on both sides of the door we came through, without a visible end. The ivy that grows part way up them undulates with the light wind, adding to the sense of being somewhere other than solid reality. In front of me, land rolls away in every direction as far as I can see. The woods take up part of it, but they go on and on, too. There's such a vastness to it all. Who could rule this? No one could. Yet they try.

And this larger-than-life man in front of me is somehow of two times, as well. His own and ours. And he's got a command of it. I have no trouble believing he's a king. Not only is he tall, he's got a great head of wavy red hair and a beard to match. He's dressed with a simple elegance. He wears an earth-colored, belted tunic over knee-length breeches with matching stockings. He has a short cloak over the whole thing, and his head is bare. He's very muscular and moves with great agility. His presence feels larger than life.

“These are hard times indeed,” he says of his legacy of time. “It's a primitive, violent land—not long since a Roman boot trod here. The land is uncultivated and food not easy to come by. People are isolated from each other by the span of countryside and by the amount of work they have to do to just survive. Because they spend so much time alone, they're an independent lot, mistrustful of everything but their own judgment. But we make them fight, for causes they don't care about, on empty stomachs and with homemade weapons. History will say of these people that they lost the will to live, to have children, due to the dreadful toll of prolonged warfare. My heart is not in it, either, but we saw no way out of it. We try to keep the relentless Danes at bay, but there is no constancy in my own men's loyalty. So we fight, and fight again, sometimes each other, sometimes the Danes. There seems no other way.”

The moon helps us see our away across the fields of grass to the top of a low hill in the distance and the mild wind moves with us. There's mist in the low areas and it comes alive with the wind. The land has a fairytale feel to it, as if any inanimate thing could come to life.

“We're all in the same place,” he says, looking at me. “You, me, and Norwenna. We've had our fill of warfare. And tonight we'll put an end to our part in it.” He's silent for a moment as we continue to walk towards the hill.

“I'd rather be doing the things that hold the land—clearing and irrigating, building communities, ensuring wealth this way, in the things that root the land in the people's hearts. Then they will feel loyalty to the land as well as to me, because I gave it to them. They will defend it when I'm not there, because they know it is theirs to defend.

“My brother was better at battle than I am, even as a boy. I wish he was still here. He'd manage all this. I'm better at statesmanship—holding things together—not ripping them apart.

“I do love this land and the people. The land may isolate them, but when they come together, their isolation is the commonality that binds them. And it breeds an independence of thought and spirit that's good for the development of the land.” We're moving through mist now, at the base of the hill.

His people might be taciturn, but Ethelred can talk—maybe all royal people can, by nature or because they are expected to. Maybe, though, it's because he has things to be healed, and talk is one way to do that. He has high energy, too—as maybe all royal people do, because don't they have to, to lead? I find it infectious and like Ethelred for it. He is a leader whom others naturally follow, as we do.

Leonid has been quiet as Ethelred talked, but now he speaks. “Do you know this place?” he asks me.

We've crested the hill, and I look out over the larger clearing in front of us, silvered by the moonlight. I see the dark woods just beyond the clearing. It's the same as all the land around it, but it's not, in a way I can't describe. Suddenly, I feel the hair stand up on the back of my neck. That's a first for me. I know this place, on a visceral level, and it's not good. I want to go back to the safety and warmth of the castle.

“I do know this place,” I say quietly, really afraid now, in the pit of my stomach.

“We all do,” says Ethelred, tense beside me.

Norwenna and Keilor, standing to the left of me, are looking around them uneasily, too. Norwenna has gone pale. She looks at me with fear and sorrow. But she's determined, too, and I align myself with her determination. Otherwise, I feel as if I could crumple into a boneless heap right here. Leonid has that same determination, as he stands still, staring ahead of him. Keilor is a tower of strength. He is actually serene. I guess that's what comes from never having fought. You don't know to be afraid. I take a breath. We are as ready as we ever will be, for whatever comes.

All of a sudden, we all turn our heads to the clearing in front of us, as if there's been a signal. I know the clearing is going to come alive. And it does. I feel it change. There's a ripple of energy that comes from the clearing and passes through us. Apparently it took only our arrival to cue it. With the ripple comes life. Dim shapes that followed the ripple begin to assume human form. I can hear the sound of many voices, of branches breaking, of movement. Out of the mist, I see a contingent of men rushing through the grass toward another group of men who are waiting for them, standing braced, weapons raised.