Enchanted Pilgrimage

21

A full moon had risen above the jagged horizon of the trees, paling the stars, filling the glade with light. The fires burned low, for the meal was over, and out on the grass between the camp and road the little people danced in wild abandon to a violin's shrilling music.

For once the food was eaten, the Gossiper had unshipped the sheepskin bundle he carried and, unwrapping the sheepskin, had taken out a fiddle and a bow.

Now he stood, a ragged figure, with the fiddle tucked beneath his chin, the fingers of his left hand flashing on the frets, while his right arm sent the bow skittering on the strings. The moth-eaten raven still maintained a precarious perch on the Gossiper's right shoulder, hopping and skipping to keep its balance, sometimes climbing out on the upper arm, where it clung desperately, uttering dolorous squawks of protest at the insecurity of its perch. Underneath the table the little lame dog slept, replete with the meat it had been thrown by the festive feasters, its tiny paws quivering and twitching as it chased dream rabbits.

"There are such a lot of them," said Mary, meaning the little dancing people. "When we first arrived, there did not seem so many."

Jones chuckled at her. "There are more," he said. "There are all of mine and most of yours."

"You mean they have come out of hiding?"

"It was the food that did it," he said. "The food and beer. You didn't expect them, did you, to stay lurking in the bushes, watching all the others gorge themselves?"

"Then Bromeley must be out there with them. The sneaky little thing! Why doesn't he come and talk with me?"

"He's having too much fun," said Cornwall.

Coon came lumbering out of the swirl of dancers and rubbed against Hal's legs. Hal picked him up and put him on his lap. Coon settled down, wrapping his tail around his nose.

"He ate too much," said Gib.

"He always does," said Hal.

The violin wailed and whined, sang, reaching for the stars. The Gossiper's arm was busy with the bow, and the hopping raven squalled in protest.

"I don't quite understand you," Cornwall said quietly to Jones. "You said you never went beyond the Witch House. I wonder why you didn't. What are you here for, anyhow?"

Jones grinned. "It is strange that you should ask, for we have much in common. You see, Sir Scholar, I am a student, just the same as you."

"But if you are a student, then why don't you study?"

"But I do," said Jones. "And there's enough to study here. Far more than enough. When you study something, you cover one area thoroughly before you move on to the next. When the time comes, I'll move beyond the Witch House»

"Study, you say?"

"Yes. Notes, recordings, pictures. I have piles of notes, miles of tape…"

"Tape? Pictures? You mean paintings, drawings?"

"No," said Jones. "I use a camera."

"You talk in riddles," Cornwall said. "Words I've never heard before."

"Perhaps I do," said Jones. "Would you like to come and see? We need not disturb the others. They can stay here watching."

He rose and led the way to the tent, Cornwall following. At the entrance to the tent Jones put out a hand to halt him. "You are a man of open mind?" he asked. "As a scholar, you should be."

"I've studied for six years at Wyalusing," said Cornwall. "I try to keep an open mind. How otherwise would one learn anything?"

"Good," said Jones. "What date would you say this is?"

"It's October," said Cornwall. "I've lost track of the day. It's the year of Our Lord 1975."

"Fine," said Jones. "I just wanted to make sure. For your information, it is the seventeenth."

"What has the date got to do with it?" asked Cornwall.

"Not too much, perhaps. It may make understanding easier a little later. And it just happens you're the first one I could ask. Here in the Wasteland, no one keeps a calendar."

He lifted the flap of the tent and motioned Cornwall in. Inside, the tent seemed larger than it had from the outside dimensions of it. It was orderly, but crowded with many furnishings and much paraphernalia. A military cot stood in one corner. Next to it stood a desk and chair, with a stubby candlestick holding a rather massive candle standing in the center of the desk. The flame of the lighted candle flared in the air currents. Piled on one corner of the desk was a stack of black leather books. Open boxes stood beside the books. Strange objects sat upon the desk, leaving little room for writing. There was, Cornwall saw in a rapid glance, no quill or inkhorn, no sanding box, and that seemed passing strange.

In the opposite corner stood a large metallic cabinet and next to it, against the eastern wall, an area hung with heavy black drapes.

"My developing room," said Jones. "Where I process my film."

Cornwall said stiffly, "I do not understand."

"Take a look," said Jones. He strode to the desk and lifted a handful of thin squares from one of the open boxes, spread them on the desk top. "There," he said. "Those are the photos I was telling you about. Not paintings—photographs. Go ahead. Pick them up and look."

Cornwall bent above the desk, not touching the so-called photos. Colored paintings stared back at him—paintings of brownies, goblins, trolls, fairies dancing on a magic green, a grinning, vicious horror that had to be a Hellhound, a two-story house standing on a knoll, with a stone bridge in the foreground. Tentatively Cornwall reached out and picked up the painting of the house, held it close for a better look.

"The Witch House," said Jones.

"But these are paintings," Cornwall exploded in impatience. "Miniatures. At the court many artisans turn out paintings of this sort for hour books and other purposes. Although they put borders around the paintings, filled with flowers and birds and insects and many different conceits, which to my mind makes them more interesting. They work long hours at it and most meticulously, sparing no pains to make a perfect picture."

"Look again," said Jones. "Do you see any brush strokes?"

"It proves nothing," Cornwall said stubbornly. "In the miniatures there are no brush strokes. The artisans work so carefully and so well that you can see no brush strokes. And yet, truth to tell, there is a difference here."

"You're damn right there is a difference. I use this machine," he said, patting with his hand a strange black object that lay on the table, "and others like it to achieve these photos. I point the machine and click a button that opens a shutter so that specially treated film can see what the camera's pointed at, and I have pictures exactly as the camera sees it. Better, more truthfully than the eye can see it."

"Magic," Cornwall said.

"Here we go again," said Jones. "I tell you it's no more magic than the trail bike is. It's science. It's technology. It's a way of doing things."

"Science is philosophy," said Cornwall. "No more than philosophy. Putting the universe into order. Trying to make some sense out of it. You cannot do these things you are doing with philosophy. It must be done with magic."

"Where is that open mind you said you had?" asked Jones.

Cornwall dropped the photo, drew himself up, stiffening in outrage. "You brought me here to mock me," he said, half wrathfully, half sorrowfully. "You would humble me with your greater magic, while trying to make it seem it is not magic. Why do you try to make me small and stupid?"

"Not that," said Jones. "Assuredly not that. I seek your understanding. When I first came here, I tried to explain to the little people. Even to the Gossiper, disreputable and benighted as he may be. I tried to tell them that there is no magic in all of this, that I am not a wizard, but they insisted that I was, they refused to understand. And after their refusal, I found there was some benefit to being thought a wizard, so I tried no longer. But for some reason I do not quite understand I do need to have someone who at least will listen. I thought that, as a scholar, you might be that person. I suppose, basically, that I need to make at least an honest effort to explain myself. I have, underneath it all, a certain contempt for myself parading as something I am not."

"What are you, then?" asked Cornwall. "If you are no wizard, then what are you?"

"I am a man," said Jones, "no whit different from you. I happen to live in another world than yours."

"You prate of this world and of your world," said Cornwall, "and there are no more worlds than one. This is the only world we have, you and I. Unless you speak of the Kingdom of Heaven, which is another world, and I find it difficult to believe that you came from there."

"Oh, hell," said Jones, "what is the use of this? I should have known. You are as stubborn and bone-headed as the rest of them."

"Then explain yourself," said Cornwall. "You keep telling me what you're not. Now tell me what you are."

"Then, listen. Once there was, as you say, only one world. I do not know how long ago that was. Ten thousand years ago, a hundred thousand years ago—there is no way of knowing. Then one day something happened. I don't know what it was; we may never know exactly what it was or how it came about. But on that day one man did a certain thing—it would have to have been one man, for this thing he did was so unique that there was no chance of more than one man doing it. But, anyhow, he did it, or he spoke it, or he thought it, whatever it might be, and from that day forward there were two worlds, not one—or at least the possibility of two worlds, not one. The distinction, to start with, would have been shadowy, the two worlds perhaps not too far apart, shading into one another so that you might have thought they were still one world, but becoming solider and drawing further apart until there could be no doubt that there were two worlds. To start with, they would not have been greatly different, but as time went on, the differences hardened and the worlds diverged. They had to diverge because they were irreconcilable. They, or the people in them, were following different paths. One world to begin with, then splitting into two worlds. Don't ask me how it happened or what physical or metaphysical laws were responsible for the splitting, for I don't know, nor is there anyone who knows. In my world there are no more than a handful of people who know even that it happened. All the rest of them, all the other millions of them, do not admit it happened, will not admit it happened, may never have heard the rumor that it happened."

"Magic," said Cornwall firmly. "That is how it happened."

"Goddamn it. There you go again. Come up against something you can't understand and out pops that word again. You are an educated man. You've spent years at your studies…"

"Six," said Cornwall. "Six back-breaking, poverty-ridden years."

"Then you should know that magic—"

"I know more of magic, sir, than you do. I have studied magic. At Wyalusing you have to study magic. The subject is required."

"But the Church…"

"The Church has no quarrel with magic. Only magic wrongly used."

Jones sat down limply on the bed. "I guess there's no way," he said, "for you and me to talk with one another. I tell you about technology and you say it's magic. The trail bike is a dragon; the camera is an evil eye. Jones, why don't you just give up?"

"I don't know," said Cornwall, "what you're talking about."

"No," said Jones, "I don't suppose you do."

"You say that the world divided," said Cornwall. "That there was one world and it split apart and then there were two worlds."

Jones nodded. "That's the way of it. It has to be that way. Here is your world. It has no technology, no machines. Oh, I know you say machines—your siege engines and your water mills, and I suppose they are machines, but not what my world thinks of as machines. But in the last five hundred years, for more than five hundred years, for almost a thousand, you've not advanced technologically. You don't even know the word. There have been certain common happenings, of course. The rise of Christianity, for example. How this could come about, I have no idea. But the crux of the whole thing is that there has been no Renaissance, no Reformation, no Industrial Revolution…"

"You use terms I do not understand."

"I'm sorry," said Jones. "I got carried away. I beg your pardon. None of the events I mentioned have happened here, none of the great turning points of history. And something else as well. Here you have retained your magic and the people of the old folklore— the actual living creatures that in our time are no more than folklore. In my world we have lost the magic, and there are none of these creatures, and it seems to me that we are the poorer for it."

Cornwall sat down on the bed beside him.

"You seek some insight into the splitting of the world," he said. "Not for a moment do I accept this mad tale you tell me, although I must admit I am puzzled by the strange machines you use…»

"Let's not argue about them further," said Jones. "Let us simply agree we are two honest men who differ in certain philosophic matters. And, yes, I would welcome an insight into the divergence of our worlds, although I have not come here to seek it. I doubt it still exists. I think the evidence is gone."

"It might exist," said Cornwall. "There is just a chance it could. Mad as it may sound…"

"What are you talking about?" asked Jones.

"You say we are two honest men who differ. We are something else as well. The both of us are scholars…"

"That is right. What are you getting at?"

"In this land of mine," said Cornwall, "scholars are members of an unspoken guild, a spectral brotherhood…"

Jones shook his head. "With some notable exceptions, I suppose the same is true of my world. Scholars, as a rule, are honorable."

"Then, perhaps," said Cornwall, "I can tell you something that is not really mine to tell…»

"We are from different cultures," said Jones. "Our viewpoints may differ. I would be uncomfortable if you were to tell me secrets that should be kept from me. I have no wish to cause you embarrassment, either now or later."

"Yet," said Cornwall, "we both are scholars. We share a common ethic."

"All right," said Jones, "what is this thing you wish to tell me?"

"There is a university," said Cornwall, "somewhere in this Wasteland. I had heard of it and thought of it as legend, but now I find it is not a legend, but that it actually exists. There are old writings there…»

Outside the music stopped, and the sudden silence was almost like a sound. Jones froze, and Cornwall took a step toward the tent flap, then halted, listening. A new sound came, far off, but there was no mistaking what it was—a screaming, an abandoned, hopeless screaming.

"Oh, my God," Jones whispered, "it's not over yet. They have not let him go."

Cornwall moved quickly through the tent flap, Jones close upon his heels. The band of dancers had drawn back from the road and stood in a huddled mass about the table. They were looking up the road. None of them spoke; they seemed to hold their breaths. The cooking fires still streamed columns of wispy smoke into the moonlit sky.

Coming down the road was a naked man. He stumbled as he walked and it was he who screamed, a senseless, endless screaming that rose and fell, but never broke, his head thrown back as he screamed against the sky. Pacing behind him and to either side of him was a pack of Hellhounds, black and evil in the night, some going on four feet, others shambling erect, with their bodies thrust forward, stooping, not as a man would walk, and their long arms swinging loosely. Their short, bushy tails twitched back and forth in excitement and anticipation, and their terrible fangs gleamed white against the blackness of their snouts.

Oliver broke from the crowd around the table and scurried up to Cornwall. "It's Beckett," he screamed. "It's Beckett that they have."

The man and the pack of Hellhounds came steadily down the road, the screaming never ending. And now they were closer, there was another sound, heard as a sort of bass accompaniment to the terrible screaming—the snuffling of the Hellhounds.

Cornwall strode forward to take his place beside Gib and Hal, who were standing at the edge of the huddled crowd. Cornwall tried to speak, but found he couldn't. A cold trembling had seized him, and he had to clamp his mouth tight shut to keep his teeth from chattering. Oliver was pulling at him. "That's Beckett," he was saying. "That's Beckett. I'd know him anywhere. I have often seen him."

As Beckett came opposite the camp he suddenly ceased his screaming and, stumbling as he turned, shuffled around to face the crowd. He threw out his arms in an attitude of pleading.

"Kill me, please," he babbled. "For the love of Mary, kill me. If there be a man among you, kill me, for the love of God."

Hal, bringing up his bow, reached quickly for an arrow. Sniveley flung himself at the bow and dragged it down. "Are you mad?" he shouted. "Even make a motion and they'll be on us, too. Before you have an arrow nocked, they'll be at your throat."

Cornwall strode forward, his hand reaching for the sword. Jones moved quickly to block him.

"Out of my way," growled Cornwall.

Jones said nothing. His arm, starting back and low, came up. The fist caught Cornwall on the chin, and at the impact he fell like a cut-down tree, crashing to the ground.

Out in the road the Hellhounds closed in on Beckett with a rush, not knocking him down, allowing him to stand, but leaping at him with slashing teeth, then falling back. Half his face was gone and blood streamed down across his cheek. His teeth showed through where the cheek had been sheared away. His tongue moved in agony, and the scream bubbled in his throat. Teeth flashed again and his genitals were torn away. Almost as if by reflex action, he bent forward to clutch at the area where they had been. Snapping fangs tore off half a buttock and he straightened, his arms going up in a flailing motion, and all the time the scream gurgled in his throat. Then he was down, writhing and twisting in the dust, gurgling and whimpering. The Hellhounds drew back and sat in a circle, regarding him with benevolent interest. Slowly the moaning ceased, slowly he drew his knees beneath him and wobbled to his feet. He seemed whole again. His face was whole, the buttock was unmarred, the genitals in place. The Hellhounds rose leisurely. One of them butted him, almost affectionately, with its nose, and Beckett went on down the road, resuming his senseless screaming.

Cornwall rose to a sitting position, shaking his head, his hand groping for the sword.

He gazed up at Jones, saying to him out of the fog that filled his brain, "You hit me. You hit me with your fist. A peasant way of fighting."

"Keep your hand off that toad-stabber of yours," said Jones, "or I'll cream you once again. All I did, my friend, was save your precious life."