The Paradise War (12 page)

“Now then, there are two things which puzzle me about your story. I must ask you to remember very carefully. Quite a lot depends upon it, I’m afraid.” Nettleton returned to stand over me. “Think back to the cairn. Did you notice anyone nearby when you were there?” he asked, watching me intently. “Did anyone approach you?”

“No one.” I shrugged. “Why?”

“An animal, perhaps? A deer? Or a bird of some kind? A dog?”

I sat bolt upright. “Wait a minute! There
was
someone. I remember seeing this guy and he had some dogs—three of them, funny looking. I mean the man was funny looking, not the dogs. Well, the dogs were strange, too, now that I mention it. White with red ears, big and thin—they looked like oversize greyhounds or something. They actually blocked my way to the cairn, but I just stood my ground and they left.”

“When did you see him? Before or after Simon entered the cairn?”

“After,” I said. “No, wait . . .” I thought back. “Before, too. Yes, I saw him before, too—Simon and I both saw him. Simon said it was probably just a farmer, and we went on to the cairn. I saw him again when I went back to the cairn after Simon disappeared.”

Nettles clapped his hands and chortled with delight. The kettle shrieked from the sideboard, and the professor bustled over to it. I followed him. “Milk?” he asked.

“Please.” I watched him pour boiling water into a large, tea-stained pot. He also poured water into two unwashed mugs. A fresh pint of milk stood on the sideboard; he took it up and pushed the foil cap with his thumb. “Have I said something important?” I asked.

He swished the water around the mugs and then dumped it back into the kettle. “Yes,” he answered, splashing milk into first one mug and then the other. “Unequivocally.”

“Good. I mean, that’s good . . . right?”

“Oh, it’s very good. I was beginning to wonder if you were telling me the truth.” To my stricken look, he replied, “Oh, there is no doubt in my mind now. None at all. The presence of the guardian confirms it all.”

“Guardian?” I asked. “You didn’t mention anything about any guardian.”

“We will let the tea steep a moment. Bring the mugs.” He pulled a knitted tea cozy over the pot and carried it to the driftwood table, then nudged his chair closer to mine. “The guardian of the threshold,” the professor said simply. “It might have been a stag, a hawk, or a wild dog—the guardian can take many forms. His absence puzzled me. And another thing puzzles me as well: why was Simon allowed to cross the threshold and not you?”

“That puzzles me too. No end.”

“Was Simon perhaps more sensitive?”

“Sensitive Simon isn’t,” I said. “Not that sort at all. No way.”

Nettles shook his head and frowned. “Then this becomes very difficult.” He turned to the teapot and poured our mugs full. He handed a mug to me, and we drank in silence for a moment. Then he said, “Did he show any interest in the Otherworld before this business at the cairn?”

“None,” I said. “Celtic studies is
my
thing, not Simon’s.”

“But it was his suggestion to go and view the aurochs, was it not?”

“Yeah, but—I mean, he just wanted an adventure.”

The professor regarded me over the rim of his mug. “Did he indeed?”

“You know what I mean. Any excuse for a party, that was Simon.”

“Of course. But you would say he was the adventurous type?”

“Sure. He liked a bit of excitement.” I sipped some more tea and then remembered something else. “But you know, there
was
something weird that morning. Simon quoted poetry to me.”

“Yes? Go on,” Nettles urged.

“Well, I don’t remember it, but it had to do with—I don’t know.”

“Please try to remember. It might be important.”

“We were driving to the farm—this was before we’d even seen the aurochs—which we didn’t see, because it wasn’t there—and Simon all of a sudden rattles off this scrap of poetry. Celtic poetry. Something about standing at the door to the West,” I said, trying to recall the exact details. “It was one of those Celtic riddle verses where the speaker gives all these clues and you’re supposed to guess who he is.”

“Standing at the door to the West,” the professor repeated. “Yes, go on. Anything else?”

As with a jolt from an electric cattle prod, I remembered something else. “And before that,” I said, excitement tightening my vocal cords, “when we were just waking up. We slept beside the road, like I said, and I woke up just before sunrise. Simon wanted to get an early start but we overslept—not much; it was still plenty early. But Simon got all upset because he wanted to be at the farm
before
sunrise—not after. When I asked him why, he sneered and said, ‘And you a Celtic scholar.’ It was the time-between-times—Simon knew about the time-between-times, see. That’s why he had us rushing to get to the farm. I asked him and he didn’t deny it. Simon
knew
about the time-between-times.”

Nettleton smiled. “I see. Go on.”

“That was all. I wasn’t aware he knew about anything like that. It was odd, but that was Simon. He’d tear into anything that took his fancy.”

“But you did not reach the farm or the cairn before sunrise?”

“No. We reached the cairn well before ten o’clock, though,” I told him.

The professor rose and fetched the milk bottle. He poured milk into the mugs and topped up with hot tea, replacing the tea cozy. He rested his hands on the warm teapot and said slowly, “This is extremely interesting.”

“Great, but what’s it got to do with Simon’s disappearance?”

As if he hadn’t heard me, the professor got up and started rummaging through the pile of books on his desk. He found one and held it up to me. “I came across this last night,” he said and began reading to me.

“On a day in August in the year 1788, I arrived in the chief village of Glen Findhorn, a settlement of fair aspect called the Mills of Aird Righ. I called first on the schoolmaster, Mr. Desmond MacLagan, who kindly agreed to conduct me to the Cairn. MacLagan had been raised in the region and indeed had heard stories of the Cairn from his grandmother, Mrs. Maire Grant, who would oft times relate how she and other youths of the village on bright moonlit nights were wont to go to the Cairn. They seldom had long to wait before they would hear the most exquisite music and behold a grand tower standing in the hollow there. The diminutive folk of Fairyland would issue from the tower and perform their frolic and dance. Next morning the tower would not be found, but the grandmother and her friends would gather Fairy Gold from around the Cairn. This continued until one of the youths, when questioned about the gold, told his father, who then forbade any further excursions of this nature, saying that from time to time people were known to have disappeared in that vicinity.

“Upon reaching the glen, my guide and I dismounted and made our way into the hollow to the Cairn on foot. I found the ancient structure wholly unremarkable in size or proportion, and somewhat dilapidated in appearance. The only distinctive feature is an oven-shaped projection oriented west. Albeit, the farmers and uneducated folk of the glen consider the Cairn a Fairy Mound and accord it wide respect in their deliberations upon matters supernatural.”

Nettles glanced up from his reading. “This document establishes Carnwood Cairn as a site of Otherworldly activity,” he announced. “Although the author did not find the entrance—slightly puzzling, that—still I have no doubt that the cairn described is the one you have seen. The hill, the hollow, the bulbous protuberance on the side of the structure, argue for precise identification.”

I agreed. But the account was standard folklore stuff, and unremarkable at that. I had come across these same shreds and tatters of tales hundreds of times in my studies. It was the common grist of Celtic folklore, after all.

“The chronicle continues,” Nettles said, “recounting several more sightings of wee folk, objects lost and found in the vicinity, and other benign disturbances. And then this . . .” He began reading again.

“MacLagan also introduced me to a farmer living at Grove Farm nearby, Mr. E. M. Roberts, who affirmed the reputation of the Cairn as a Fairy Mound, insisting that his father had once hired a labourer by the name of Gilim, who, returning home one Samhain Eve, espied a Fairy Cavalcade issuing forth from the aforementioned hollow. Directly he hid himself and, when they had gone, hastily made his way down to the mound which he discovered to be standing open. He entered the Cairn and found it bright daylight within and himself in the midst of a green meadow of great extent wherein other Fairy Folk were at labour preparing a banquet. He remarked to himself that the Fair Folk were no longer small, but well above normal stature and beautiful to behold. The most handsome women he had ever seen approached him and offered him to eat of their food, which he accepted, remarking that he had never in his life tasted anything so delicate on his tongue. He remained the whole day with the Fairy Women until at sunset the Fairy Riders returned from their errand and the banquet began, whereupon the prince of the Fair Ones gave him a silver cup of wine and a long yellow coat and asked him if he would stay. The unthinking labourer replied that he was expected at home in the morning, to which the prince observed, ‘Then you must fly at once, my friend, lest your secret find you out!’ Upon the instant, the Fair Company vanished in a golden mist and Gilim found himself in a hawthorn bush hard beside the Cairn, wearing the yellow coat and holding the silver cup which he had been given. Gilim used oft-times to display this coat and cup as a proof of his tale.”

At this, the professor closed the book and lifted his cup as one who has driven the last nail into doubt’s coffin. “What are you thinking?” I asked, already dreading the answer.

“I am thinking your friend Simon has left our world for the Otherworld.”

Though Nettles spoke with simple frankness, the sick dread I had been holding at bay for the last few days swarmed over me at last. The room dimmed before my eyes. The coat . . . the yellow coat . . . I had seen it—and him who wore it.

“The Otherworld,” I repeated softly, naming the fear that had pursued me since Simon’s disappearance. I gulped air and forced myself to stay calm. “Explain, please.”

“It is obvious that Simon manifested a distinct and lively interest in the Otherworld just before his disappearance.”

“Lively interest—that’s all it takes?”

“No”—Nettles sipped his tea thoughtfully—“not all. There would have to be some sort of ritual.”

“There wasn’t any ritual,” I declared, snatching at the fact with a drowning man’s tenacity. “I watched him every second, from the moment we reached the cairn to the instant he disappeared. He didn’t do anything I didn’t do. I mean, I sat down on a rock and he just walked around the thing, asking questions. He was all of a sudden interested in cairns and what was inside—that’s true. But that’s all. He just walked around it once or twice, looking at it. He only left my sight a couple times—when he was on the other side of the cairn.”

The professor merely nodded indulgently. “But that’s it. Don’t you see it yet?”

“No, I don’t see it yet. He didn’t do anything I didn’t do,” I said flatly. I had invested so heavily in denying what had happened, I suppose I found it necessary to defend myself to the last.

“He walked around it! Of course, he did. He circled it. But you did not.”

“That’s right. So?”

The professor clucked his tongue. “Someone has sadly neglected your education, my boy. You should know this.”

Realization broke clean sunlight through my wilful fog. Of course, it was the oldest ritual of all: sunwise circles.
Deosil
, the Celts called it. “Sunwise circles,” I said. “You mean simply walking around the cairn a few times in the direction of the sun—that was enough to . . . you know, make him disappear?”

“Precisely,” Nettles affirmed over the rim of his mug. “Representing the motion of the sun at an Otherworld threshold—at the proper time and under the proper circumstances, it is a very potent ritual.”

“Proper time—like the time-between-times?”

“Exactly.”

“But we missed it,” I complained. “Sunrise was long past by the time we got there.”

Nettles tapped his teeth with a finger. “Then the day itself . . . Of course! Late October, you said: Samhain!”

“Pardon?”

“Samhain—you
must
have heard of it.”

“Yes, I’ve heard of it,” I admitted glumly. Samhain—the day in the ancient Celtic calendar when the doors to the Otherworld opened wide. “It just didn’t occur to me at the time.”

“A day fraught with Otherworld activity. It would have fallen in the third week of Michaelmas term—on the day you viewed the cairn.”

By now I was thoroughly distressed and disgusted. Distressed by Nettles’s matter-of-fact assertions and disgusted by my own ignorance. You’d think after a few years studying this stuff I would have learned something, but no-o-o-o! “Look, you said you were going to explain everything. So far, you haven’t explained anything.”

Professor Nettleton set aside his tea. “Yes, I think I have all the pieces now. Listen carefully; I will explain.”

“Good.”