Alys Clare - The Way Between the Worlds

The painting was extraordinary, and it throbbed with life.

‘Behold Mithras.’

I did not know who spoke the words. It might have been Gurdyman, but it didn’t sound like his voice.

There was a long silence. I stood awestruck, and eventually I felt Gurdyman take my hand and lead me away.

‘This house is on the spot where, many years ago, a rich merchant built himself a fine dwelling.’ It was Gurdyman who spoke; it was some time later that day and we were sitting in the sunshine in his inner courtyard. I still felt very odd; it must have been past the time for the midday meal, but I had no appetite. My stomach was tense with — nerves? Excitement? I was not sure.

‘We know the merchant must have been a wealthy man,’ Gurdyman went on, ‘because he built in stone. As you will be aware, child, there is very little stone in this area and it has to be brought in from elsewhere.’ He glanced up at the clouds floating across the blue sky. ‘He could also afford to choose a location well away from the bustle and the stinks of the quayside,’ he went on, ‘which must have pleased him, for no doubt he had quite enough of that during the working day.’ He smiled happily at me. ‘Imagine him, Lassair, coming home at the end of a long, hard day. Tonight is special, for a very select group of men will make their quiet way to the house later for a ceremony. They will meet up here, then one by one they will descend the steps and prepare themselves, washing carefully and dressing in their ceremonial robes. Then they will go into the cave, and there the god will welcome them into his presence.’

‘I felt him,’ I breathed. ‘I’m sure I did, I-’

Gurdyman held up a hand, and I knew I was not to say any more. ‘I believe you did, child,’ he said softly.

We sat in silence for some time. I heard a blackbird singing, and the sound seemed far too normal for a day when something so extraordinary had happened. As if the blackbird thought so too, abruptly the song ceased. After a while, I said, ‘How do you know, Gurdyman?’

‘Hmm?’

‘How can you be so sure about the merchant and the — and what he made down there?’

Gurdyman smiled. ‘You do not doubt what I say, then?’

‘No!’ It hadn’t even occurred to me. Deep within myself, I knew that all he had said was right.

‘Good,’ he murmured. Then: ‘As to how I can be so sure, there are ways, Lassair.’

The word seemed to hang in the air. ‘Ways?’ I repeated in a whisper.

‘The barrier that divides time can be crossed, you know,’ he said softly. ‘If one has the courage to try.’

Out of nowhere I heard my own voice, relating the tale of my ancestor Luanmaisi and her daughter, my namesake. ‘Luanmaisi walked with the spirits,’ I murmured, ‘and they took her between the worlds to encounter beings of other realms.’

My mind detached from the present and I remembered what else I knew. I seemed to hear Granny’s voice: Luanmaisi learned much powerful magic from the spirits and the elves, and it was said that her daughter surpassed even her mother. Both women were shamans, healers and shape-shifters. Luanmaisi’s animal spirit was the hare: solitary, independent, representing immortality and symbol of the corn spirit, a fighter who will always ferociously defend his own territory. Lassair’s was the silver fox known in the northlands: clever, adaptable, cunning, able to move unseen. Fox has great magic in his pelt, and his element is fire. .

I wondered now if it could be possible that either mother or daughter, or even both, became sufficiently great shamans that they left this world and went into another one, where they existed still.

Gurdyman’s eyes were on me, demanding my attention, and they seemed to bore into mine, as if he was trying to get inside my head. ‘She was of your blood, this woman?’ he asked.

I nodded. ‘She bore a daughter, although nobody knew who the child’s father was. The daughter was called Lassair.’

Gurdyman beamed widely, as if something had just been proved to his enormous satisfaction. ‘Hrype was right about you,’ he observed. ‘Child, so much awaits you!’

‘Will I do it?’ I asked in an urgent hiss. ‘Will I cross the barrier and go between worlds?’

I thought for one wonderful, terrifying moment that he was going to answer me. But then he smiled very kindly, reached out to pat my hand and said, ‘Not today.’

And as if a vast door had slammed on a room full of golden light, suddenly the magic that had been humming and thrumming in the air was shut off. We sat, a round old man in a shabby robe and a thin girl who looked like a boy, on a spring day in the sunshine, and somewhere above us, unconcerned, a blackbird sang.

I was dreaming. .

I am up in that wild country where the humps of low hills march steadily along the horizon. I am very afraid. Someone is after me. The giant with the axe? I do not know, but the urge to flee, to run till I can’t run any more, is quite irresistible. My feet keep stumbling, the soles of my boots caught in something tacky, and I realize it is blood. I cry out loud, and my voice is swept up in the bitter wind that whirls and swirls, sending dark clouds flying across a low orange sun.

I have to find a place to hide!

I am in that strange place where the ruins are. Beside me, the open grave pit beckons. I would be safe in there, wouldn’t I? I bend and creep inside, but the soft earth crumbles around me, falling on my face, in my eyes, in my mouth, and I forget about having to hide and scream because I think I am being buried alive. Then there is a figure in a cloak with a knife in his hand, and he leaps on the back of a bull and slits its throat, and the blood spurts over me, warm, pulsating with each beat of the mighty beast’s dying heart. .

I woke up.

I was lying on the floor of the crypt beneath Gurdyman’s house, wet with my own sweat, hot with the fever of my dream and yet shivering with cold. Gurdyman was crouching over me. He had a thick blanket across his shoulders, and he removed it and wrapped it tightly round me. It was warm from his body. I realized I was sobbing and, with an effort, made myself stop.

I looked up into his kindly, concerned and — I had to admit — fascinated face. I understood something about Gurdyman then: he would always look after my welfare, but his overriding interest in me was because he recognized some potential in me that as yet neither of us fully understood.

I was a little disappointed. But it was better to know, then I would not expect more than he could give.

‘You have been sleepwalking,’ he said. He moved away from me slightly, going to sit down on his low cot. ‘Clever of you,’ he added in a light tone, ‘to have negotiated both the ladder down from the attic room and the dark steps into the crypt without mishap, but then it’s said that sleepwalkers rarely come to harm in their own houses.’

‘How did you know I was down here? Did I — did you hear me screaming?’ I was very embarrassed to think that again I’d woken him with my noise.

‘I did, but I was already on my way to find you. I had dozed off in my chair out in the courtyard.’ That was why he’d been wrapped in the lovely, warm blanket. ‘There was a disturbance in the air, and that was what woke me.’

A disturbance? I wondered what that meant. Had the power of my dream shaken the whole house? The idea scared me.

He was watching me, his expression unreadable. ‘I think you had better tell me what you saw,’ he said softly. ‘The spirits do not send a dream of such resonance unless they seriously expect you to pay heed.’

I drew a deep breath, gathered my courage and then made myself go back to those awful scenes. I spoke even as I thought; I knew that if I hesitated, I might not dare put them into words.