The Ships of Aleph Page 3

  She relaxed a little, then asked, ‘What is this place?’ She had a strange accent, with longer vowels and a downward intonation even when asking a question.

  ‘It’s where I live,’ I replied, not untruthfully, then added, ‘But you are welcome to share what I have.’

  My answer appeared to satisfy her, but my mind raced as I led her downstairs. I made myself stay silent, and gestured for her to sit. I got down utensils for the two of us, and we broke bread and ate. She held the bread close to her mouth and tore lumps off with her teeth.

  Finally I could resist no longer. ‘Where are you from, Merel?’

  ‘My village is on the Coast of Shoals, but ...’ she looked down for a moment, long dark eyelashes dipping over pale cheeks, ‘ ... I was taken by sea-raiders. How long ago, I cannot tell.’

  The Coast of Shoals is a fascinating place; many writers have investigated its mysteries. I said, ‘I would love to hear tales of your homeland, Merel.’

  Again the downcast eyes. ‘If you wish.’

  Something in the way she spoke pricked at me. Carefully I asked, ‘Did the sea-raiders ... keep you on their ship?’

  She nodded, and the flush of colour to her cheeks confirmed my suspicions. I felt my own face grow hot. I stood up. ‘I will find you something to wear. Wait here.’

  I knew the other rooms had items similar to those I would expect to find, so I looked in my sister’s clothes-chest. I came back with a tunic and skirt to find Merel sitting where I had left her. She appeared more relaxed. I decided it was not unreasonable to ask one more question.

  ‘Do you know how you got here?’

  She frowned. ‘I’m not sure. They kept me below-decks most of the time. I think the ship got caught in the Current, and there was a storm. I heard them shouting, and the ship was tossed around. One of the water-barrels came loose. The last thing I remember was seeing the barrel heading towards me. I closed my eyes ... and woke up here.’ She turned to me, and I tried not to look at the curve of her throat, the warm, soft skin leading lower. ‘Can I really stay?’

  ‘Of course. You can have the room you woke up in if you like.’

  She smiled, which made her look even younger. ‘Thank you,’ she said.

  ***

  I got little study done that day. I told Merel we were alone here, and she would be safe provided she stayed near the village, information she accepted without question. When I mentioned I had work to do she said she would be content by herself. As far as I could tell she meant it, so I returned to my books. But my mind kept coming back to my visitor, both to the many questions her unexpected appearance raised and to the simple presence of a living, breathing woman.

  When I returned to the cottage she asked, shyly, whether she might get clean. She had seen the tin bath hanging in the outhouse and wished to use it. I saw no reason why not, and we heated water on the stove. When the bath was full I muttered an excuse about unfinished work and went out. I paced the bounds of the village as night came on, trying not to think of Merel, naked in the warm water.

  I returned to find her already abed, for which I was grateful. She had even managed to empty the bath by herself.

  I slept badly that night, and once thought I heard Merel cry out. I nearly went to her, but remembered the sting of trackleburs on my skin, and disciplined myself to remain in my room.

  As dawn lightened behind the shutters, I resolved to consider my visitor as a source of information, a living book, though also to treat her gently, for she had obviously suffered at the hands of men. Having categorised her to my satisfaction, I could safely talk with her at length, rationalising the pleasure this gave me as a worthy one. Although knowledgeable about those parts of the world she had seen she was, I soon realised, a little simple. I also thought her remarkably incurious, but then I thought that about most people.

  I slept better that night, until I woke in the darkness, confused. Then the sound came again: a woman’s incoherent cry.

  I leapt from my bed and ran to Merel’s room. I found her tangled in the bedding, her mind caught in some nightmare. ‘Wake up,’ I called. When she did not respond I called again, louder. Still she moaned and thrashed.

  I caught her hand. Suddenly she stopped and opened her eyes, looking at me first with fear, then with slow recognition. Her wrist was warm and frail in my grasp.

  Her face creased and she began to cry. Without thought I gathered her to me, holding her while she wept. When the tears passed, I did not let go, and she did not pull away. Instead she nestled into my arms. My world was filled with her intoxicating presence, so intense I could barely breathe.

  I knew I should let her go, but she was more real than my books, more real than this place. Trying to break the spell, I murmured, ‘I will leave you to rest.’

  I felt her shake her head. ‘Don’t go. Stay with me.’

  I wasn’t sure she was asking what I thought she was. Then she lifted a hand and stroked my face.

  The next morning I was torn between elation and guilt. But as I looked down on Merel’s sleeping form, I decided I had no reason to feel guilty. She was happy, and that made me happy. I had found something I hadn’t even known I was missing.

  ***

  My next angelic visit occurred two days later. I had told Merel about the angel, and the workings of my – our – strange home, though I did not mention my previous small rebellions. They were in the past now, irrelevant.

  Merel was apprehensive about meeting the angel, so I said she didn’t have to. I was secretly glad of her reticence, for I had questions she might be happier not hearing. I started with the obvious one:

  ‘Why is she here?’

  It replied with a question of its own: ‘Are you not happy?’

  ‘Yes, yes I am. But ... why her? And why now? Will there be others?’

  ‘Those are questions I cannot answer.’

  I knew better than to pursue the matter. Instead I told myself that even if, as I suspected, Merel had been plucked from her doom merely to provide company for me, I had done one good thing in my life by inadvertently saving hers.

  Merel and I settled into life together as summer waxed. She took on the cultivation of the garden, a task I missed a little at first, though I was glad she had found something to occupy her. She also cooked and cleaned; not that I hadn’t done these things before but she applied herself to them fully. Our house became her pride; she started to mend clothes, and sew new ones, even though such tasks were not necessary when the angel would bring whatever was requested within the bounds of its remit.

  It occurred to me that, things being what they were, one day it might be more than the two of us in our house. I asked her about this one summer evening as we sat outside the cottage, my arm around her while she sewed in the golden light. She dipped her head. ‘I’m sorry, Lachin, but the raiders gave their bondswomen a certain herb. I only took it for a season but the effects are permanent. There can never be children.’

  I could have asked the angel whether it was possible to reverse the effects of the drug – God had cured my lameness, after all – but I was still unsure how I felt about the idea of a child. It had not been something I’d given much thought to in my old life, and none at all here. I decided that unless Merel wished otherwise, I would leave things as they were.

  We had plenty to fill our time without the need for anyone else. Merel displayed a skill and enthusiasm in the ways of physical love that made me discount my earlier brief experiences of sex. Outside of our bed, she was always happy to talk about her life on the Coast of Shoals, and beyond in the company of her captors. She told me of the shallow coral seas with their low islands and the great whirlpools off the headlands of some of the bays. For my part, I taught her to read. She showed little enthusiasm at first, then took to it with a surprising aptitude. She remained shy around the angel, while it generally ignored her. It visited with the same regularity, once every ten days, but our conversations tended to be shorter now that I was spending more time li
ving life rather than analysing it.

  ***

  All through that summer and autumn, we were happy.

  The first cracks appeared after we argued about the wine. Merel wanted to brew with some of this year’s crop of berries. I have no taste for drink, and I felt it was not something we needed. In the end I conceded to please her.

  Our argument, though not long or fractious, got me thinking about the future. Would we always want to live together? If not, what then? The angel’s offer to return me to the world still stood, but how about Merel? As far as I knew it had never spoken to her directly. If I tired of her, or she of me, what would it do?

  Such questions never concerned her, an attitude I initially envied but which came to trouble me. The first flush of love was past and I began to return to my old routines and regain some of my objectivity. As I gave the matter more thought a terrible, unthinkable possibility started to dawn on me. I found myself considering questions I dared not voice, either to her or to the angel. Small things at first: why had my research never uncovered the herb she said the raiders had given her? Why had she taken to reading so quickly? Why would one as misused as she be so eager to press herself upon a man? Even the way she’d recognised the bath when she first came to me: I only knew of such things from my reading, and had asked for it when I found no sea or river to bathe in; she, like me, came from a coastal village, and was unlikely to have encountered such an object.

  Yet I loved her, and loved our nights of pleasure and our days of contentment. So I hid my fears, even from myself.

  In the end it was the wine that did it. We drank the first batch at midwinter. The young, fruity brew went straight to my head and I became playful and silly, though in the back of my mind I was annoyed at myself for such frivolity. She seemed as intoxicated as I. But I had a growing conviction that she was not actually drunk, that she was playing with me. Pretending. We rowed about nothing, then made up in the usual way. But afterwards I found myself unable to sleep and, still mildly intoxicated, went downstairs and waited for the angel’s nightly visit.

  It paused on the threshold when it saw me sitting at the table.

  ‘Is something wrong, Lachin?’ it asked.

  The drink made me speak harshly when I asked, ‘Is she real?’

  The angel never played games but neither would it hazard guesses when my meaning was unclear. ‘That would depend on your definition of real,’ it said.

  ‘Is she a person, an actual person? Is what she told me true, or just a story?’

  The angel said nothing.

  When I heard a step on the stair I stood up and turned around. It was too dark to see Merel’s face, but her voice was the same voice that had whispered endearments in the night, that had laughed with me, that had declared its love. ‘You once asked one of us if it was the same as your usual visitor, and it said we are all the same. That is not entirely true. We can take any form.’

  ‘No.’ The word dropped from me like a stone.

  ‘Yes. I am sorry, Lachin.’

  ‘You’re sorry? There is no you! You’re just ... there’s just ...’ speech left me.

  She – it – knew better than to approach. Instead it simply said ‘Goodbye,’ then walked out, followed by the more obvious construct.

  I stood there, silent and shaking, my chest too tight for breath. Then the nausea came, and I rushed over to the sink, barely reaching it before I vomited.

  ***

  My memories of the following days are unclear. I remember screaming myself hoarse and later, crying myself dry. I remember shouting at God, cursing him for a bastard, daring him to destroy me.

  I drank more of the wine, then threw the rest away. I think I may, under the wine’s influence, have tried to walk the thousand steps again; certainly I stumbled around in the mist for some time, raging and swearing.

  Despite my desire to do so, I did not die. Or perhaps I did, and was resurrected. I cannot be sure.

  Food continued to be brought. I ignored it. I wanted nothing from those who kept me here. Eventually hunger overcame revulsion. Aside from the unseen angel who brought my food, I had no visitors. Presumably they knew I had nothing to say to them.

  My dreams, which I’d trained myself so carefully to remember, were haunted by Merel. In them, she would transform from the woman I had loved into a featureless bronze automaton. Sometimes this happened during the very act of our lovemaking.

  Days passed, and the pretence of winter gave way to the pretence of spring. I went back to my books because there was nothing else. Slowly, the dreams of Merel grew less frequent.

  Eventually it came to me that I could, if I wished, be left alone for the rest of my life. Did I want that? Or did I want to go back to what had once been my home, to try and forget all that had happened here?

  I went out into the square and called up to the sky, ‘I’m ready to talk.’

  An angel arrived that evening, at the usual time.

  When it walked in I felt a sudden blinding fury. I hefted my chair, thinking to strike the angel. But there was no point. I put the chair down and said, ‘Why did you do it?’

  ‘To make you happy. It was hoped having a partner might provide some of the normality and stability of an ordinary life.’

  ‘But I don’t have an ordinary life!’

  ‘No, you do not. But you still can, if such is your desire. Do you want to return to the world now?’ I wished, not for the first time, that the angel’s toneless voice didn’t make it so hard to know its thoughts. After all, I thought bitterly, it was not that it couldn’t speak as a human did, only that it chose not to.

  God and His servants had perpetrated an obscene joke upon me. But I felt sure it hadn’t been done with malice, and the only real harm was to my heart and dignity, my frail human emotions. To let such hurts continue to wound me would be small-minded. ‘No,’ I said. ‘But I do want answers. I need to know what you want from me.’

  ‘The same as always: your insight, your observations.’

  ‘But why does God need that? What are the musings of one lone mortal to Him?

  The angel said, ‘Would you like to see this place as it really is?’

  I stared at it, unsure I had heard correctly. ‘You mean ... travel beyond the village?’

  ‘Yes.’

  ‘Why now, finally?’

  ‘You were not ready before.’

  ‘And I am now?’

  ‘If not now, then never.’

  ‘Then yes, of course!’

  ‘From tomorrow morning, the path that should lead to the sea will lead you out.’

  ‘Out where?’

  ‘Follow it and see.’

  ***

  I managed to sleep, but I awoke early, as the illusory dawn was burning off the chill dew of the artificial night.

  I wondered whether I should take provisions on my expedition before dismissing the notion as absurd. But I did take one of my books: a new, blank one, ready for my notes and observations.

  The path disappeared into the mist, the same as it always had, but when I followed it I found the mist no longer thickened, but remained constant. The sense of foreboding that had driven me back before was also absent. I forced myself not to count my steps. After a while I made out a wall ahead. It was as featureless and grey as the mist itself, save for a rectangle drawn on its surface.

  And then, between one step and the next, the shape changed – no, opened! It was a door. I went up to the doorway and peered through. It gave onto a passage, plain-walled and constructed of a smooth off-white material. Light came from the glowing ceiling. The passage curved away gently in both directions. It appeared I was entering some sort of structure, a building far larger than any I had ever been in.

  I stepped into the passage – no, corridor was a better description – and started to walk. My eye caught movement behind me. I whirled around to find the door back in place. Heart hammering, I ran back. The door opened; tendrils of mist curled out into the corridor, disturbed by
the abrupt motions of this strange device. I resisted the temptation to retrace my steps and check if the village was still there. Instead I turned away from the door – trying not to flinch when I heard it swish shut – and carried on down the passage.

  Now I did count my steps, and I found, some fifty-three steps further on, another door, this one on the opposite wall. It did not open as I passed it. Seventy-eight steps in I found a further door on the same side. This one did open, and led into a cavernous hall, unlit and filled with structures whose function I could not begin to guess. The air was dry, and filled with a faint hum. I decided to carry on along the corridor.

  I had gone just over a hundred steps when the revelation hit me: I was not in a building. Instead, the structure, with its strange gleaming surfaces enclosed the entire reconstructed village. Whatever this place was, it was huge!

  I will not detail here all the wonders I found on that day, nor on the many days since that I have spent exploring my unimaginably vast home. I have mapped and recorded and postulated about my findings in other books, which can be found in my library back at the ersatz village.

  I agree with the angel’s assertion that my mind as it was when I arrived would have been unable to encompass the true scale and complexity of this place. Consider the door that opens into a space whose walls are almost invisible, due both to their great distance and to the clouds that form and dissipate within the chamber. Or the long door-less section of corridor where I hear a faint but thunderous rush of waters behind the walls. Then there is the huge cylindrical room I have glimpsed through a window, actually a contained hurricane whose true nature is only revealed when some unidentified scrap of matter flies past.

  I can move freely about and not come to harm here; in places where I have inadvertently walked into danger, such as the cloud chamber, I was held back from the lethal drop by an invisible force. More than once I have chosen a direction and walked for days, carefully mapping my route. Even so, I can only have explored a fraction of this place.