The Endless Knot (53 page)

Trusting my feet to the dark path before me, I stepped forward. The churning air swelled over and around me with an empty ocean's roar. Emptiness on every side and below me the abyss, I stretched my foot along the sword bridge and stepped out onto that narrowest of spans. In the windroar I heard the restless echo of unknown powers shifting and colliding in the dark, endless depths. All was darkness— deepest, most profound darkness—and searching silence.

And then arose the most horrendous gale of wind, shrieking out of nowhere, striking me full force, head-on. It felt as if my skin were being slowly peeled away, my flesh shredded and pared to the bone. My head began to throb with pain; I found that I could not breathe. My empty lungs ached and my head pounded with a phantom heartbeat.

Ignoring the pain, I lifted my foot and took another step. My foot struck the void, and I fell. I threw my hands before me to break the blind fall; my palms struck a smooth, solid surface, and I landed on all fours in the snow outside the cairn in the thin, gray dawn.

“Llew . . . ?” It was Goewyn's voice.

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T
HE
E
NDLESS
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NOT

I
raised my head and looked around to find her. The effort released something inside me and cold air gushed into my lungs. The air was raw and sharp; it burned like fire, but I could not stop inhaling it. I gulped it down greedily, as if the next breath would be my last. My eyes watered, and my arms and legs began to tremble. My heart pounded in my chest, and my head vibrated with the rhythm. I squeezed my eyes shut and willed my heart to slow.

“Lew . . .” came the voice again, concerned, caring. I felt a light touch on my shoulder, and she was beside me.

“Goewyn?” I lifted my eyes and glimpsed a trailing wisp of reddish hair—not Goewyn, but her sister, the Banfáith of Albion. “Gwenllian!”

“Lew . . . Lewis?”

My eyes focused slowly and her face came into view. “Gwenllian, I—”

“It's Susannah, Lewis. Are you all right?”

From somewhere in my mind a dim memory surfaced.

“Susannah?”

“Here, let me help you.” She put her arms around me and helped me stand. “You're freezing,” she said. “What happened to your clothes?”

I looked down to see myself naked, standing in about an inch of light, powdery snow. The wind sighed in the bare branches of trees, and I stood outside the narrow entrance to a hive-shaped cairn, reeling with confusion, despair breaking over me in waves, dragging me under, drowning me.

“Put this on,” Susannah was saying, “or you'll catch your death.” She draped her long coat across my shoulders. “I've got a car—it's on the road up the hill. We'll have to walk, I'm afraid. Nettles didn't tell me to bring any clothes, but I've got some blankets. Can you make it?”

I opened my mouth, but the words would not come. Very likely, there were no words for what I felt. So I simply nodded instead. Susannah, one arm around my shoulders, put my arm around her neck and began leading me away from the cairn. We walked through long grass up a snow-frosted hill to a gate, which was open. A small green automobile waited on the road, its windows steamed over.

Susannah led me to the passenger side of the car and opened the door. “Just stay there,” she said. “Let me get a blanket.” I stood staring at the world I had come to, trying to work out what had happened to me, grief powerful as pain aching in my hollow heart.

Spreading one blanket over the seat, she swathed another over me, taking back her coat as she did so. Then Susannah helped me into the car and shut the door. The engine complained, but caught and started purring. Susannah put on the heater and defroster fan full blast. “It'll warm up in a minute,” she said.

I nodded and looked out through the foggy windshield. It took all the concentration I could muster, but I asked, “Where are we?” The words were clumsy and awkward in my mouth, my tongue a lump of wood.

“God knows,” she replied above the whir of the fan. “In Scotland somewhere. Not far from Peebles.”

The defroster soon cleared a patch of windshield, which Susannah enlarged with the side of her hand. She shifted the car into gear and pulled out onto the road. “Don't worry,” she said. “Just sit back and relax. If you're hungry, I've got sandwiches, and there's coffee in the flask. We're lucky it's a holiday and traffic will be light.”

We drove through the day, stopping only a couple of times for fuel. I watched the countryside rush by the windows and said nothing. Susannah kept clearing her throat and glancing at me as if she was afraid I might suddenly disappear—but she held her tongue and did not press me. For that, I was profoundly grateful.

It was late when we reached Oxford, and I was exhausted from the drive. I sat in my blankets and stared numbly at the lights of the city from the ring road and felt utterly devastated. How could this have happened to me? What did it mean?

I did not know where I would go. But Susannah had it all worked out. She eased the car through virtually empty streets and stopped at last somewhere in the rabbit warren of Oxford city center. She helped me from the car and I saw that we stood outside a low door. A brass plaque next to the door read D. M. Campbell, Tutor. Susannah pulled a set of keys from her pocket, put a key in the lock, and turned it.

The door swung open and she went before me, snapping on lights. I stepped into the room and recognized it. How many lifetimes had passed since I last stood in this room?

“Professor Nettleton told me to give these to you,” Susannah said. She pressed the keys into my hands. “He isn't here—” she began, faltered, and added, “but I suppose you know that.”

“Yes,” I told her. Nettles, I suspected, would never return. But why had I come back? Why me? Why here?

“Anyway,” she said, her keen, dark eyes searching my face for the slightest flicker of interest, “there's food in the larder and milk in the fridge. I didn't know who or how many to stock up for, so there's a bit of everything. But if you need anything else, I've left my number by the phone, and—”

“Thanks,” I said, cutting her off. “I'm sure it's . . .”Words escaped me. “It's fine.”

She gazed at me intently, the questions burning on her tongue. But she turned toward the door instead. “Sure. Ummm . . . well.” She put her hand on the doorknob and pulled the door open. She hesitated, waiting for me to stop her. “I'll look in on you tomorrow.”

“Please, you needn't bother,” I said, my mouth resisting the familiar language.

“It's no bother,” Susannah replied quickly. “Bye.” She was out of the door and gone before I could discourage her further.

How long I stood, wrapped like a cigar-store Indian in my blanket, I could not say. I spent a long time just listening to the sounds of Oxford, a crashing din that the heavy wooden door and thick stone walls of the professor's house did little to shut out. I felt numb inside, empty, scooped hollow. I kept thinking:
I am dead and this is hell
.

At some point I must have collapsed in one of Nettle's overstuffed chairs, because I heard a scratch at the door and opened my eyes to see Susannah bustling into the room, her arms laden with parcels. She was trying to be quiet, thinking me asleep in bed. But she saw me sitting in the chair as she turned to pile the packages on the table.

“Oh! Good morning,” she said. Her smile was quick and cheerful. Her cheeks were red from the cold, and she rubbed her hands to warm them. “Tell me you didn't sleep in that chair all night.”

“I guess I did,” I replied slowly. It was difficult to think of the words, and my tongue still would not move properly.

“I've been up since dawn,” she announced proudly. “I bought you some clothes.”

“Susannah,” I said, “you didn't have to do that. Really, 1—”

“No trouble.” She breezed past me on the way to the kitchen. “I'll get some breakfast started, and then I'll show you what I bought. You can thank me later.”

I sat in the chair without the strength of will to get up. Susannah reappeared a few moments later and began shifting parcels around the table. “Okay,” she said, pulling a dark blue something out of a bag, “close your eyes.”

I stared at her. Why was she doing this? Why didn't she just leave me alone? Couldn't she see I was in pain?

“What's the matter, Lewis?” she asked.

“I can't.”

“Can't what?”

“I can't do this, Susannah!” I snapped. “Don't you understand?”

Of course she didn't understand. How could she? How could anyone ever understand even the smallest, most minute part of all I had experienced? I had been a king in Albion! I had fought battles and slain enemies, and had, in turn, been killed. Only, instead of going on to another world, I had been returned to the one I had left. Nothing had changed. It was as if nothing had happened at all. All I had done, all I had experienced meant nothing.

“I'm sorry,” Susannah said, with genuine sympathy. “I was only trying to help.” She bit her lip.

“It's not your fault,” I told her. “It's nothing to do with you.”

She came to me and knelt beside the chair. “I want to understand, Lewis. Honestly. I know it must be difficult.”

When I did not answer, she said, “Nettles told me a lot about what was happening. I didn't believe him at first. I'm still not sure I believe it. But he told me to look for some things—Signs of the Times, he called them—and if I saw them, I was to go to that place—he even gave me a map—and wait there for someone to show up.” She paused, thoughtfully. “I didn't know it would be you.”

The silence grew between us. She was waiting for me to say something. “Listen,” I said at last, “I appreciate what you've done. But I need . . .” I was almost sweating with the effort, “I just need some time to work things out.”

She gave me a wounded look and stood up. “I can understand that. But I want to help.” She paused and looked away. When she looked back, it was with a somewhat forlorn smile. She was trying. “I'll leave you alone now. But call me later, okay? Promise?”

I nodded, sinking back into the all-enfolding chair, back into my grief and pain. She left.

But she was back early the next morning. Susannah took one look at me and one look at the room and, like a rocket blasting off, she lit up. “Get up, Lewis. You're coming with me.”

I had no will of my own anymore, and hers seemed powerful enough for any two people, so I obeyed. She rummaged through the untouched packages on the table. “Here,” she said, thrusting a pair of boxer shorts into my hand. “Put these on, for starters.”

I stood, the blanket still hanging from my shoulders like a cloak. “What are you doing?”

“You've got to get out of here,” Susannah replied tartly. “It's Sunday. I'm taking you to church.”

“I don't want to go.”

She shrugged and shook out a new shirt, cocking her head to one side as she held it up to me. “Put this on,” she ordered.

She dressed me with ruthless efficiency: trousers, socks, shoes, and belt—and then professed herself pleased with the result. “You could shave,” she said, frowning. “But we'll let that go for now. Ready?”

“I'm not going with you, Susannah.”

She smiled with sweet insincerity and took my arm in hers. Her hands were warm. “But you are! I'm not leaving you here to languish all day like a dying vulture. After church I'll let you take me out to lunch.”

“I know what you're trying to do, Susannah. But I don't want to go.”

The church was absolutely packed. In all the time I'd lived in Oxford, I'd never seen so many people at a church service. There were a thousand at least. People were crammed into pews and lined up in the wide windowsills all around the sanctuary. Extra chairs were crowded into the back in every available space. The kneeling-benches had been pulled out and placed in the aisle to accommodate the overflow. When that did not suffice, they opened the doors so the people standing outside could hear.

“What's going on?” I asked, bewildered by the noise and hubbub. “What's all this?”

“Just church,” Susannah said, puzzled by my question.

The service went by me in a fog. I could not concentrate for more than a second or two at a time. My mind—my heart, my soul, my life!—was in Albion, and I was dead to that world. I was cut off and could never go back.

Susannah nudged me. I looked around. Everyone was kneeling, and the minister—or priest, or whatever—was holding a loaf of bread and saying, “This is my body, broken for you . . .”

I heard the words—I'd heard them before, many times; I'd grown up hearing them and had never given them a thought beyond the church sanctuary.

This is my body, broken for you . . .

Ancient words, words from beyond the creation of the world. Words to explain all that had happened to me. Like a star exploding in the frigid void of space, understanding detonated in my brain. I knew,
knew
, what it meant!

I felt weak and dizzy; my head swam. I was seized by a rapture of joy so strong I feared I might faint. I looked at the faces around me: eager in genuine devotion. Yes! Yes! They were not the same; they had changed. Of course they had. How could they not change?

Albion had been transformed—and this world was no longer the same either. Though not as obviously manifest, the great change had already taken place. And I would find it hidden in a million places: subtle as yeast, working away quietly, unseen and unknown, yet gently, powerfully, altering everything radically. I knew, as I knew the meaning of the Eucharistic words of Holy Kingship, that the rebirth of Albion and the renewal of this world were one. The Hero Feat had been performed.

The rest of the service passed in a blur. My mind raced ahead; I could not wait to get outside and bolted from the church as soon as the benediction was pronounced. Susannah caught me by the arm and spun me around. “You worm! You could at least have pretended to pay attention.”