The Traveler

44

Gabriel opened his eyes and found himself falling through blue sky. He looked down and from side to side but saw nothing. There was no ground below him. No landing place or final destination. This was the barrier of air. He realized that he had always known of its existence. Attached to a parachute, he had tried to re-create this feeling in his own world.

But now he was free of the jump plane and the inevitable descent back to earth. Gabriel closed his eyes for a while, then opened them again. He arched his back and spread his arms, controlling his movement through the air. Look for the passageway. That’s what Sophia had told him. There was a passageway that led across all four barriers and into the other realms. Leaning to the right, he began to spiral downward like a hawk looking for prey.

Time passed and then, in the distance, he saw a thin black line, like a shadow floating in space. Gabriel extended his arms, pulled out of the tight circle, and fell quickly to the left on a sharp diagonal. The shadow grew into an oval shape and he glided into its dark center.

ONCE AGAIN, HE felt a compression of light, a movement forward and the life-giving breath. Opening his eyes, he found himself standing in the middle of a desert, the red dirt cracked open as if it were gasping for air. Gabriel turned on one heel, surveying this new environment. The sky above him was a sapphire blue. Although the sun had disappeared, light glowed on every part of the horizon. No rocks or plants. No valleys or mountains. He was captive in the earth barrier, the only thing vertical in a flatland world.

Gabriel began walking. When he stopped and looked around, his perspective hadn’t changed. Kneeling down, he touched the red dirt with his fingers. He needed a second point on the landscape, some other feature that would confirm his own existence. He kicked and clawed at the earth until he scraped together a pile of dirt about ten inches high.

Like a small child who had thrown down a cup and thereby changed the world, he circled the pile several times just to make sure it was still there. Once again, he started walking and counted his steps. Fifty. Eighty. One hundred. But when he looked over his shoulder, the pile had disappeared.

Gabriel felt a surge of panic push through his heart. He sat down, closed his eyes and rested, then stood up again and resumed walking. As he looked for the passageway, he began to feel hopeless and lost. For a while, he kicked at the earth with the toe of his boot. Chips of dirt rose up into the air, fell down, and were instantly absorbed by this new reality.

He looked over his shoulder and saw a patch of darkness behind him. It was his own shadow, following him around on this aimless journey, but the image had an unusual depth and sharpness, as if someone had cut into the ground. Was this the way out? Had it always been there? Closing his eyes, he fell backward and was pulled down the passageway.

BREATHE, HE TOLD himself. Breathe again. And he was kneeling in a dirt street that ran through the middle of a town. Gabriel stood up cautiously, expecting the ground to collapse and drop him into air, water, or the bare desert world. He stomped his feet on the street like a man having a tantrum, but this new reality sustained itself and refused to vanish.

The town reminded him of a frontier outpost in an old-fashioned Western, the sort of place where you’d find cowboys, sheriffs, and dance-hall girls. The buildings were two and three stories high, built with flat boards and shingles. Wooden sidewalks ran on both sides of the street, as if the builders wanted to keep mud from splattering into the doorways. But there was no mud or rain or any water at all. The few trees on the street looked dead; their leaves were dry and brittle-brown.

Gabriel drew the jade sword and held it tightly as he stepped onto the wooden sidewalk. He tried a doorknob-unlocked-and stepped into a one-room barbershop with three chairs. Mirrors hung from the walls and Gabriel stared at his own face and the sword in his hand. He looked frightened, like a man who expected to be attacked at any moment. Leave this place. Hurry. And then he was back on the sidewalk with the clear sky and the lifeless trees.

All the doors were unlocked and he began to search each building. His shoes made a hollow sound on the wooden sidewalk. He discovered a fabric store filled with bolts of cloth. An apartment was upstairs. It had a sink with a hand pump and a cast-iron stove. Plates and cups had been set for three people, but the shelves and icebox were empty. In another building, he found a cooper’s shop with wooden barrels in different states of completion.

The town had only two streets and they intersected at a city square with park benches and a stone obelisk. There was no writing on this memorial, only a series of geometric symbols that included a circle, a triangle, and a pentagram. Gabriel kept following the street until the town disappeared and he reached a barrier of dead trees and thornbushes. He spent some time looking for a path, then gave up and returned to the square.

“Hello!” he shouted. “Is anyone here?” But nobody answered him. Now the sword made him feel like a coward and he slid it back into the scabbard.

A building near the square had a rounded cupola roof, and the front door was made of a dark, heavy wood with iron hinges. Gabriel passed through the doorway and found himself in a church with pews and stained-glass windows that displayed complex geometric patterns. A wooden altar was at the front of the room.

The missing inhabitants of the town had decorated the altar with roses that were dead and faded, showing only a faint suggestion of their former color. A black candle burned at the center of this dry offering. The bright flame flickered back and forth. Other than himself, it was the only thing that was alive and moving in the entire town.

He stepped toward the altar and breathed deeply, like a sigh. The black candle fell out of its brass holder and the flame touched the dry petals and leaves. A rose was set on fire and an orange flame ran down the stem to another flower. Gabriel began searching the room for a bottle of water or a bucket of sand, anything that would extinguish the flame. Nothing. When he turned back, the altar itself was on fire. Flames curved around the posts and touched the edges of the scrollwork.

Gabriel ran outside and stood in the middle of the street. His mouth was open, but he stayed silent. Where could he hide? Was there any place of refuge? Trying to control his fear, he ran down the street that led past the barbershop and fabric store. When he reached the edge of the town, he stopped and looked out at the forest. All the trees were on fire and smoke rose up into the sky like a massive gray wall.

A particle of ash touched his cheek and he brushed it away. Gabriel knew there was no way out, but he ran back to the church building. Smoke leaked out of the crack around the heavy door. The stained-glass windows glowed from within. As he watched, a crack appeared in the center window and grew larger, like a jagged wound on someone’s skin. Air expanded inside the building and the window exploded, showering the street with broken glass. Flames reached out of the window frame and black smoke touched the side of the white cupola.

He sprinted down the street to the other side of town and watched a burning pine tree explode into flames. Turn back, he thought. Run away. But all the buildings were burning now. The intense heat caused a wind that made bits of ash swirl around like leaves in an autumn storm.

Somewhere in this destruction was a way out, the dark passageway that would guide him back to the human world. But the fire destroyed all shadows and the rising smoke turned day into night. Too hot, he thought. Can’t breathe. Returning to the square, he kneeled beside the stone obelisk. The park benches and the dry weeds were burning. Everything was touched by the flames. Gabriel covered his head with his arms and curled up in a tight ball. The fire surrounded him and pushed through his skin.

AND THEN IT passed. When Gabriel opened his eyes, he saw that he was surrounded by the charred ruins of the town and the forest. Large pieces of wood were still burning and wisps of smoke rose toward a slate-gray sky.

Gabriel left the square and walked slowly down the street. The church, the cooper’s shop, and the fabric store with the upstairs apartment had been destroyed. A moment later, he reached the edge of the town and the remains of the forest. Some of the trees had fallen to the ground, but a few of them were still standing like black stick figures with twisted arms.

He retraced his footsteps through the ash-covered streets and saw that a wooden awning post was still standing in the middle of the destruction. Gabriel touched the post, sliding his hand down its smooth surface. Was this possible? How did it survive? He lingered by the post, trying to understand its meaning, and saw a white plaster wall standing about twenty feet away from him. The wall hadn’t existed a few minutes ago-or perhaps he was too dazed to notice it. He kept walking and found a barbershop chair in the middle of the ashes. This object was completely real. He could touch it, feel the green leather and the wooden armrests.

He realized that the town was going to reappear in exactly the same form. It would become whole, only to burn again-the process repeating itself forever. This was the damnation of the fire barrier. If he couldn’t find the passageway, he was trapped within this endless cycle of rebirth and destruction.

Instead of searching for a shadow, he returned to the square and leaned against the obelisk. As he watched, a front door appeared, and then part of a wooden walkway. The town began to form and reassert itself, growing like a living creature. The smoke vanished and the sky was blue again. Everything was changed but the same, as ashes melted in the sunlight like flakes of dirty snow.

Finally the process was complete. A town with empty rooms and dead trees surrounded him. Only then did a degree of clarity return to his mind. Forget the convolutions of philosophy. There were only two states of being: equilibrium and motion. The Tabula worshipped the ideal of political and social control, the illusion that everything should remain the same. But this was the cold emptiness of space, not the energy of the Light.

Gabriel left his refuge and began to look for a shadow. Like a detective searching for a clue, he entered each building and opened the closets and the empty cupboards. He peered beneath beds and tried to look at each object from a different angle. Perhaps he could see the passageway if he stood in the correct position.

When he returned to the street, the air seemed a little warmer. The town was new and complete, but gaining power for the next explosion of flame. Gabriel began to get angry about the inevitability of the cycle. Why couldn’t he stop what was going to happen? He began whistling a Christmas carol, enjoying the feeble noise in the silence. Returning to the church, he yanked open the door and marched toward the wooden altar.

The candle had reappeared as if nothing had ever happened and burned bright in its brass holder. Gabriel licked his thumb and forefinger, then reached out to snuff the flame. The moment he touched the candle, the flame broke off from the wick and began to flutter around his head like a bright yellow butterfly. It came to rest on a rose stem and this dry tinder started to burn. Gabriel tried to crush the fire with the palm of his hand, but sparks escaped and settled on the rest of the altar.

Instead of running from the fire, he sat down in a center pew and watched the destruction spread through the room. Could he die in this place? If his body was destroyed would he reappear again, like the altar and the barbershop chair? He began to feel an intense heat, but tried to deny the new reality. Perhaps all this was a dream, another construction of his mind.

Smoke had risen to the ceiling and now it began to drift downward, pulled toward the half-open door. As Gabriel stood up and began to leave the church, the altar turned into a column of flame. Smoke entered his lungs. He started coughing, then glanced to the left and saw a shadow appear in one of the stained-glass windows. The shadow was black and deep; it floated back and forth like a wavering particle of night. Gabriel grabbed a pew and dragged it over to the wall. He stood on the pew and pulled himself onto the narrow ledge at the bottom of the window frame.

Drawing the sword, he slashed at the shadow and his right hand disappeared into the blackness. Jump, he thought. Save yourself. He began to fall into the dark passageway, pulled forward into space. It was only in the final moment that he looked back and saw Michael standing in the church doorway.