Stephen Donaldson - The Runes of the Earth

Thomas Covenant had told her that some decisions could not serve evil, no matter how severely they appeared to harm the Land. When he had been summoned to Revelstone’s last defence, he had refused to comply: not because he had no love for the Land, but rather because a little girl in his present world had been bitten by a rattlesnake and needed his help. That refusal had delayed his arrival in the Land by many days. And during those terrible days many of the Land’s most valiant champions had fallen. Yet the conditions of the delay had enabled him to challenge Lord Foul in ways which might never have been possible otherwise. In the end, Covenant’s rejection of the Land for the sake of a little girl had provided for the Despiser’s defeat.

Fervently Linden prayed that Covenant’s promise would hold true for her as well.

With that, she left her car, climbed the steps to the front porch, and let herself into her home.

The door admitted her to Jeremiah’s domain; and at once she had to duck her head. During her absence, the short hallway which joined the living room on one side, the dining room on the other, and the stairway to the second floor had been transformed into the site of a high, ramified castle of Tinker Toys.

Turrets of wooden rods and circular connectors rose above her on both sides. If she had not ducked, she would have struck her head on the flying rampart stretched between them. Other ramparts linked the turrets to a central keep: more turrets proliferated beyond it. The whole edifice was at once enormously elaborate, thick with details like balconies and bartisans, and perfectly symmetrical, balanced in all its parts. Its strangeness in her entryway, a pedestrian place intended for the most ordinary use, gave it an eldritch quality, almost an evanescence, as though some faery castle had been half translated from its own magical realm, and could be discerned by its outlines in slim rods and wheels like a glimpse into another dimension of being. Seen by moonlight, blurred and indistinct, it would have seemed the stuff of dreams.

As perhaps it was. Jeremiah’s dreams-like his mind itself-lay beyond her reach. Only such castles and his other constructs gave her any hint of the visions which filled his head, defined his secret life.

“Sandy?” she called. “Jeremiah? I’m home.”

“Hi,” Sandy answered. “We’re in the living room.

“Jeremiah,” she added, “your mother’s home.”

One of the things that Linden appreciated most about Sandy was that she consistently treated Jeremiah as if he were paying attention.

Smiling, Linden worked her way between the turrets to the living room.

Sandy put down her knitting as Linden entered. “Hi,” she said again. “We were going to put the Lego away, but I wanted you to see what he made.” She gestured around the room, pleased by what her charge had accomplished.

Linden was accustomed to Jeremiah’s projects. Nevertheless this time she stopped and stared, stricken with shock. At first she could not grasp the import of what she saw.

Sandy sat in an armchair in one corner of the room. Opposite her, Jeremiah knelt on the floor as he usually did when he was not busy, feet splayed out on either side of him, arms across his stomach with both hands folded under them, gently rocking.

And between them-

From the floor up onto an ottoman in the middle of the rug, he had built a mountain of interlocking Lego. Despite the stubbornly rectangular shape of the Lego, and their uncompromising primary colours, his construct was unmistakably a mountain, ragged ravines cut into its sides and foothills, bluffs bulging. Yet it also resembled a titan kneeling at the edge of the ottoman with its elbows braced on the ottoman’s surface and its crown raised defiantly to the sky. A canyon widened between its legs as its calves receded into the floor. The whole structure stood almost to the level of Linden’s shoulders.

The mountain or titan faced the sofa; and there Jeremiah had been at work as well. He had adjusted one of the seat cushions so that its corner jutted outward; and out onto the floor from that corner as from a promontory he had devised another castle. However, this one was entirely unlike his towering, airy construct in the entryway. Instead it resembled a wedge like an extension of the cushion’s corner-a wedge which had been hollowed out rather than built up for habitation. Its high walls were marked with tiny windows, clever ramparts, and delicate battlements, so lifelike in spite of the materials from which they had been formed that they might have been limned from memory. And at the tip of the wedge stood a sturdy watchtower, nearly half the height of the wedge itself, connected to the main castle by a walled, open courtyard. In the base of the tower, and again in the base of the high keep, he had built entrances like tunnels, guarded by gates that closed like teeth.

“Jeremiah,” Linden gasped involuntarily, “oh, Jeremiah,” while all her fears rebounded through her, and her heart laboured in her throat as if she might choke.

She had seen such shapes before. She recognised them, even though they had been constructed of bright plastic, all flat sides and right angles. The resemblance was too exact for confusion. The mountain was Mount Thunder, ancient Gravin Threndor, its bowels full of Wightwarrens and buried evil. And the castle was Revelstone beyond question, Lord’s Keep, delved from the gutrock of its mountain promontory by Giants millennia before she had known it during her time with Thomas Covenant.

She had seen them, but Jeremiah had not: never in his life. He had not accompanied her to the Land after Covenant’s murder.

Yet somehow he seemed to know such places-

His knowledge alarmed her. During the years that she had been his mother, he had produced hundreds or thousands of constructs; but until now none of them had hinted at the Land in any way.

“Linden?” Sandy asked anxiously. “What’s the matter? Is something wrong? I thought you would want to see-”

Although Linden had gasped his name, Jeremiah did not look up at her or react to the sound of her voice. Instead he rocked himself gently, blankly, as he always did when he was not assembling one of his constructs-or tearing it down. He must be finished with this one. Otherwise he would have been difficult to deflect from working on it.

Dear God! she thought in dismay and outrage. He’s threatening my son. Lord Foul meant harm to Jeremiah.

Ignoring Sandy for the moment, she moved to kneel in front of Jeremiah. There she put her arms around him as if her mere embrace might ward him from the Despiser’s malice.

Passively he accepted her hug without touching her, or turning his head, or focusing his eyes. She only knew that he noticed her on some level-that his nerves felt her presence if his mind did not-because he stopped rocking until she let him go.

Although she had known him for ten years, and had been his adopted mother for eight, he still gave her only the subtlest of indications that he was aware of her existence.

However, she had long ago accepted him as he was. Subtle indications were enough for her. She loved him intensely enough for both of them.

“Linden?” Sandy repeated. “Have I done something wrong?”

Linden closed her eyes, took a deep breath to steady herself. “I’m sorry,” she told Sandy. “I didn’t mean to scare you. There’s nothing wrong. You haven’t done anything. It’s just another of those feelings. When I saw all this”- she swallowed convulsively”- I panicked. I can’t explain it.”

“I understand.” Sandy’s relief was evident. She loved Jeremiah: Linden did not doubt that. “Don’t worry about it.” Then she asked, “Is there anything I can do-?”

Linden tried to put aside the shock of seeing Jeremiah’s construct, but it clung to her. Seeking reassurance, she opened her eyes and looked into his face.