He was dead, but his head hurt. He was alive, but a red-hot shell fragment had ripped through his helmet like a knife through cake frosting.
Paul looked up and saw the tree, the small, skeletal thing that had drawn him across no-man's land. The tree where the dying man had hung.
Now it stretched up through the clouds.
Paul Jonas sighed. He had walked around the tree five times, and it showed no sign of becoming any less impossible.
The frail, leafless thing had grown so large that its top was out of sight beyond the clouds that hung motionless in the gray sky. Its trunk was as wide as a castle tower from a fairy story, a massive cylinder of rough bark that seemed to extend as far downward as it did up, running smoothly down the side of the bomb crater, vanishing into the soil at the bottom with no trace of roots.
He had walked around the tree and could make no sense of it. He had walked away from the tree, hoping to find an angle from which he could gauge its height, but that had not assisted his understanding either. No matter how far he stumbled back across the featureless plain, the tree still stretched beyond the cloud ceiling. And always, whether he wanted to or not, he found himself returning to the tree again. Not only was there nothing else to move toward, but the world itself seemed somehow curved, so that no matter which direction he took, eventually he found himself heading back toward the monumental trunk.
He sat with his back against it for a while and tried to sleep. Sleep would not come, but stubbornly he kept his eyes closed anyway. He was not happy with the puzzles set before him. He had been struck by an exploding shell. The war and everyone in it seemed to have vanished, although a conflict of that size should have been a rather difficult thing to misplace. The light had not changed in this place since he had come here, although it must have been hours since the explosion. And the only other thing in the world was an immense, impossible vegetable.
He prayed that when he opened his eyes again, he would either find himself in some sort of respectable afterlife or returned to the familiar misery of the trenches with Mullet and Finch and the rest of the platoon. When the prayer had ended, he still did not risk a look, determined to give God—or Whoever—enough time to put things right. He sat, doing his best to ignore the band of pain across the back of his head, letting the silence seep into him as he waited for normality to reassert itself. At last, he opened his eyes.
Mist, mud, and that immense, damnable tree. Nothing had changed.
Paul sighed deeply and stood up. He did not remember much about his life before the war, and at this moment even the immediate past was dim, but he did remember that there had been a certain kind of story in which an impossible thing happened, and once that impossible thing had proved that it was not going to un-happen again, there was only one course of action left: the impossible thing must be treated as a possible thing.
What did you do with an unavoidable tree that grew up into the sky beyond the clouds? You climbed it.
It was not as difficult as he had expected. Although no branches jutted from the trunk until just below the belly of the clouds, the very size of the tree helped him; the bark was pitted and cracked like the skin of some immense serpent, providing excellent toeholds and handholds. Some of the bumps were big enough to sit on, allowing him to catch his breath in relative safety and comfort.
But still it was not easy. Although it was hard to tell in that timeless, sunless place, he felt he had been climbing for at least half a day when he reached the first branch. It was as broad as a country road, bending up and away; where it, too, vanished into the clouds, he could see the first faint shapes of leaves.
Paul lay down where the branch met the trunk and tried to sleep, but though he was very tired, sleep still would not come. When he had rested for a while, he got up and resumed climbing.
After a while the air grew cooler, and he began to feel the wet touch of clouds. The sky around the great tree was becoming murkier, the ends of the branches obscured; he could see vast shadowy shapes hanging in the distant foliage overhead, but could not identify them. Another half hour's climbing revealed them to be monstrous apples, each as large as a barrage balloon.
As he mounted higher, the fog thickened until he was surrounded by a phantom world of branches and drifting, tattered clouds, as though he clambered in the rigging of a ghost ship. No sound reached him but the creaking and scratching of bark beneath his feet. Breezes blew, cooling the thin sweat on his forehead, but none of them blew hard enough to shake the great, flat leaves.
Silence and shreds of mist. The great trunk and its mantle of branches above and below him, a world in itself. Paul climbed on.
The clouds began to grow even more dense, and he could sense the light changing; something warm was making the mists glow, like a lantern behind thick curtains. He rested again, and wondered how long it would take him to fall if he were to step off the branch on which he sat. He plucked a loose button from his shirt cuff and let it drop, watching it shiver down the air currents until it vanished silently into the clouds below.
Later—he had no idea how much later—he found himself climbing into growing radiance. The gray bark began to show traces of other colors, sandy beiges and pale yellows. The upper surfaces of the branches seemed flattened by the new, harsher light and the surrounding mist gleamed and sparkled as though tiny rainbows played between the individual drops.
The cloud-mist was so thick here that it impeded his climb, curling around his face in dripping tendrils, lubricating his grip, weighting his clothes and dragging at him treacherously as he negotiated difficult hand-to-hand changeovers. He briefly considered giving up, but there was nowhere else for him to go except back down. It seemed worth risking an unpleasantly swift descent to avoid the slower alternative which could lead only to eternal nothingness on that gray plain.
In any case, Paul thought, if he was already dead, he couldn't die again. If he was alive, then he was part of a fairy tale, and surely no one ever died this early in the story.
The clouds grew thicker the last hundred yards of his ascent he might have been climbing through rotting muslin. The damp resistance kept him from noticing how bright the world was becoming, but as he pushed through the last clouds and lifted his head, blinking, it was to find himself beneath a dazzling, brassy sun and a sky of pure unclouded blue.
No clouds above, but clouds everywhere else: the top of the great frothy mass through which he had just climbed stretched away before him like a white meadow, a miles-wide, hummocked plain of cloudstuff. And in the distance, shimmering in the brilliant sunlight . . . a castle.
As Paul stared, the pale slender towers seemed to stretch and waver, like something seen through the waters of a mountain lake. Still, it was clearly a castle, not just an illusion compounded of clouds and sun; colorful pennants danced from the tops of the sharp turrets, and the huge porticullised gate was a grinning mouth opening onto darkness.
He laughed, suddenly and abruptly, but his eyes filled with tears. It was beautiful. It was terrifying. After the great gray emptiness and the half-world of the clouds, it was too bright, too strong, almost too real.
Still, it was what he had been climbing toward: it called to him as clearly as if it had possessed a voice—just as the dim awareness of an inescapable something awaiting him had summoned him to climb the tree.
There was the faintest suggestion of a path across the spun-sugar plain, a more solid line of whiteness that stretched from the tree and meandered away toward the distant castle gate. He climbed until his feet were level with the top of the clouds, paused for a moment to revel in the strong, swift beating of his heart, then stepped off the branch. For a sickening instant the whiteness gave, but only a little. He windmilled his arms for balance, then discovered that it was no worse than standing on a mattress.
He began to walk.
The castle grew larger as he approached. If Paul had retained any doubts that he was in a story and not a real place, the ever-clearer view of his destin
ation would have dispelled them. It was clearly something that someone had made up.
It was real, of course, and quite solid—although what did that mean to a man walking across the clouds? But it was real in the way of things long believed-in but never seen. It had the shape of a castle—it was as much a castle as something could ever be—but it was no more a medieval fortress than it was a chair or a glass of beer. It was an idea of a castle, Paul realized, a sort of Platonic ideal unrelated to the grubby realities of motte-and-bailey architecture or feudal warfare.
Platonic ideal? He had no idea where that had come from. Memories were swimming just below the surface of his conscious mind, closer than ever, but still as strangely unfocused as the many-towered vision before him.
He walked on beneath the unmoving sun, wisps of cloud rising from his heels like smoke.
The gate was open but did not seem welcoming. For all the diffuse glimmer of the towers, the entranceway itself was deep, black, and empty. Paul stood before the looming hole for some time, his blood lively in his veins, his self-protective reflexes urging him to turn back even though he knew he must enter. At last, feeling even more naked than he had beneath the hail of shellfire which had begun the whole mad dream, he took a breath and stepped through.
The vast stone chamber beyond the door was curiously stark, the only decoration a single great banner, red embroidered with black and gold, that hung on the far wall. It bore a vase or chalice out of which grew two twining roses, with a crown floating above the flowers. Below the picture was the legend "Ad Aeternum."
As he stepped forward to examine it, his footsteps reverberated through the empty chamber, so loud after the muffling cloud-carpet that it startled him. He thought that someone would surely come to see who had entered, but the doors at either end of the chamber remained shut and no other sound joined the dying echoes.
It was hard to stare at the banner for long. Each individual thread of black and gold seemed to move, so that the whole picture swam blurrily before his eyes. It was only when he stepped back almost to the entrance that he could see the picture clearly again, but it still told him nothing of this place or who might live here.
Paul looked at the doors at either end. There seemed little to choose between them, so he turned toward the one on the left. Though it seemed only a score or so of paces away, it took him a surprisingly long time to reach it. Paul looked back. The far portal was now only a dark spot a great distance away, and the antechamber itself seemed to be filling with mist, as though clouds were beginning to drift in from outside. He turned and found that the door he had sought now loomed before him. It swung open easily at his touch, so he stepped through.
And found himself in a jungle.
But it was not quite that, he realized a moment later. Vegetation grew thickly everywhere, but he could see shadowy walls through the looping vines and long leaves; arched windows set high on those walls looked out on a sky busy with dark storm clouds—quite a different sky than the shield of pure blue he had left beyond the front gate. The jungle was everywhere, but he was still inside, even though the outside was not his own.
This chamber was larger even than the huge front hall. Far, far above the nodding, poisonous-looking flowers and the riot of greenery stretched a ceiling covered with intricate sharp-angled patterns all of gleaming gold, like a jeweled map of a labyrinth.
Another memory came drifting up, the smell and the warm wet air tickling it free. This kind of place was called . . . was called . . . a conservatory. A place where things were kept, he dimly recalled, where things grew, where secrets were hidden.
He stepped forward, pushing the sticky fronds of a long-leafed plant out of his path, then had to do a sudden dance to avoid tumbling into a pond that the plant had hidden. Dozens of tiny fish, red as pennies heated in a forge, darted away in alarm.
He turned and moved along the edge of the pond, searching for a path. The plants were dusty. As he worked his way through the thickest tangles, powdery clouds rose up into the light angling down through the high windows, swirling bits of floating silver and mica. He paused, waiting for the dust to settle. In the silence, a low sound drifted to him. Someone was weeping.
He reached up with both hands and spread the leaves as though they were curtains. Framed in the twining vegetation stood a great bell-shaped cage, its slender golden bars so thickly wound with flowering vines it was hard to see what it contained. He moved closer, and something inside the cage moved. Paul stopped short.
It was a woman. It was a bird.
It was a woman.
She turned, her wide black eyes wet. A great cloud of dark hair framed her long face and spilled down her back to merge with the purple and iridescent green of her strange costume. But it was no costume. She was clothed in feathers; beneath her arms long pinions lay folded like a paper fan. Wings.
"Who's there?" she cried.
It was all a dream, of course—perhaps just the last hallucinatory moments of a battlefield casualty—but as her voice crept into him and settled itself like something that had found its home, he knew that he would never forget the sound of it. There was determination and sorrow and the edge of madness, all in those two words. He stepped forward.
Her great round eyes went wider still. "Who are you? You do not belong here."
Paul stared at her, although he could not help feeling that he was doing her some insult, as though her feathered limbs were a sort of deformity. Perhaps they were. Or perhaps in this strange place he was the deformed one.
"Are you a ghost?" she asked. "If so, I waste my breath. But you do not look like a ghost."
"I don't know what I am." Paul's dry mouth made it hard to speak. "I don't know where I am either. But I don't feel like a ghost."
"You can talk!" Her alarm was such that Paul feared he had done something dreadful. "You do not belong here!"
"Why are you crying? Can I help you?"
"You must go away. You must! The Old Man will be back soon." Her agitated movements filled the room with a soft rustling. More dust fluttered into the air.
"Who is this old man? And who are you?"
She moved to the edge of the cage, grasping the bars in her slender fingers. "Go! Go now!" But her gaze was greedy, as though she wished to make him into a memory that would not fade. "You are hurt—there is blood on your clothing."
Paul looked down. "Old blood. Who are you?"
She shook her head. "No one." She paused and her face moved as though she would say something shocking or dangerous, but the moment passed. "I am no one. You must go before the Old Man returns."
"But what is this place? Where am I? All I have are questions and more questions."
"You should not be here. Only ghosts visit me here—and the Old Man's evil instruments. He says they are to keep me company, but some of them have teeth and very unusual senses of humor. Butterball and Nickelplate—they are the cruelest."
Overwhelmed, Paul suddenly stepped forward and grasped her hand where it curled around the bars. Her skin was cool and her face was very close. "You are a prisoner. I will free you."
She jerked her hand away. "I cannot survive outside this cage. And you cannot survive if the Old Man finds you here. Have you come hunting the Grail? You will not find it here—this is only a shadow place."
Paul shook his head impatiently. "I know nothing of any grail." But even as he spoke he knew it was not the full truth: the word set up an echo deep inside him, touched parts that were still out of his reach. Grail. Something, it meant something. . . .
"You do not understand!" the bird woman said, and shining feathers ruffled and bunched around her neck as she grew angry. "I am not one of the guardians. I have nothing to hide from you, and I would not see you . . . I would not see you harmed. Go, you fool! Even if you could take it, the Old Man would find you no matter where you went. He would hunt you down even if you crossed the White Ocean."
Paul could feel the fear beating out from her, and for a moment he was over
whelmed, unable to speak or move. She was afraid for him. This prisoned angel felt something . . . for him.
And the grail, whatever it might be—he could feel the idea of it, swimming just beyond his grasp like one of the bright fish. . . .
A terrible hissing sound, loud as a thousand serpents, set the leaves around them swaying. The bird woman gasped and shrank back into the center of her cage. A moment later a great clanging tread sounded through the trees, which shivered, stirring more dust.
"It's him!" Her voice was a muffled shriek. "He's back!"
Something huge was coming nearer, huffing and banging like a war engine. A harsh light flickered through the trees.
"Hide!" The naked terror in her whisper set his heart hammering. "He will suck the marrow from your bones!"
The noise was becoming louder; the walls themselves were quivering, the ground pitching. Paul took a step, then stumbled and sank to his knees as terror fell on him like a black wave. He crawled into the thickest part of the undergrowth, leaves slapping against his face, smearing him with dust and damp.
A loud creak sounded, as of mighty hinges, then the room was filled with the smell of an electrical storm. Paul covered his eyes.
"I AM HOME." The Old Man's voice was loud as cannon-fire and just as boomingly inhuman. "AND WHERE IS YOUR SONG TO GREET ME?"
The long silence was broken only by that hiss like escaping steam. At last the bird woman spoke, faint and tremulous.
"I did not expect you back so soon. I was not prepared."
"AND WHAT DO YOU HAVE TO DO BESIDES PREPARE FOR MY RETURN?" More crashing footsteps sounded as the Old Man moved nearer. "YOU SEEM DISTRACTED, MY NIGHTINGALE. HAS BUTTERBALL BEEN PLAYING ROUGHLY WITH YOU?"
"No! No, I . . . I do not feel well today."
"I AM NOT SURPRISED. THERE IS A FOUL SMELL ABOUT THE PLACE." The ozone stench grew stronger, and through his laced fingers Paul could see the light flickering again. "AS A MATTER OF FACT, IT SMELLS LIKE A MAN."