Something fast and heavy knocked me to the floor. All that happened afterwards occurred so quickly, that even for a dream, it is difficult to recall.
I remember the blueness, the floating blue, the ferocity of the attack, the strength I could not resist. Why, in the dream, I transformed Ast in that way, I cannot say, but maybe it wasn’t of her I dreamed. There was lust, yes, but not mine. It hurt me. It hurt me terribly, but like the mating of animals it was swift, a quick brutal reflex, and I escaped, half naked, screaming and running, hitting out at things that were no longer there, the pages of violated books swirling round my head. The nightmare carried me down endless stone passageways, and always I feared pursuit. Then I was spilled, like a barrel of bones and loose flesh, into a brightly-lit room. Lurching to my feet, I recognised the sarcophagus of Mipacanthus. Whether I sought sanctuary or spiritual comfort, I cannot say, but I threw myself across the tomb. However, there was no crystal plate to arrest my fall. I landed in flowers, thick, fleshy flowers that exuded a hideous sickly perfume. I fought with the petals, gasping for breath, and found the body of the dead prophet beneath my hands. Then I was upright, gazing down in shuddering, mindless rigour at what lay there.
It was Mipacanthus.
It was her.
Ast, naked in the flowers, her eyes closed, her perfect breasts rising and falling as if in light sleep. A beautiful woman, yet not. Hers was the body of Mipacanthus. She was male. Below the slight torso, the tiny waist, were the hips and loins of a youth. The hands, too. I should have realised about the hands.
She opened her perfect black eyes, those gutting eyes. For the last time, she impaled me. Her face was pale as marble, her lips a livid wound. ‘The tomb is flesh,’ she told me. ‘You ran from me, Alexi, and in running, you changed your own future. There is no end, for I am eternal. Hear my prophecy now. We shall meet again. I have seeded you, Alexi. Through the children of your children, I will come back to you. For that is the way. It has always been so.’
And there it ended, or nearly so. Dream fragments of flight through the sleeping city, the laughter of writhing stone carvings, the leaning colossi of the buildings threatening to topple, to engulf me in ashes, in petals.
That was all.
Now, the memory of the last few days I spent in Charidotis is blurred. I am sure that very little happened, and I cannot even remember the homeward journey. None of it. Strange how certain recollections stay with us through the years.
I have met no blue woman since. And yet, all these years, Ast has been with me. It has not been a lone vigil for me. There have been other women, true and ordinary women, women who cheered my heart and quickened my flesh. I loved, I married, and I lost to age and death. Ast, as she told me, is eternal. I try to remember her as she was in her darkened room, not as the violating monster of my nightmares. And yet, there must have been at least some truth in the dream. Perhaps I should not have run from her, even though I knew the fact of it, the knowledge that spawned the malformed image of the dream. All was magical in the haze of youth. I tell myself she was a freakish creature, but, oh, so lovely. Would it have harmed a boy to have touched her, to have tasted that experience?
The night is long, and I have been waiting here, as I have waited every time, for the birth. This will be my sixth daughter’s seventh child. Time passes so swiftly in the winter of our lives. I am not long for this world now, but still I await Ast’s prophecy. I am a stupid old man, for I think of it still. She will come back to me. I know it was nothing but a dream, yet it haunts me, becomes more vivid as my mind and body withers. I find myself wondering whether I carry it within me, a secret seed, an infection, but then I fight it with denial. If it were to happen, it surely would have done so by now.
There, now, I can hear them: the screams of the girl in labour. It will be soon. How many births have I attended in my life? Too many. We are a fecund family. She screams so long, so desperately. It is always so with women. I pity them for their beds of blood and birth. Can one woman make so much noise? It is like a song, a hymn of terror. Poor creature.
A plait of sounds, of voices, floating out over the river. Burning dead, the ashes swept into the water.
The dawn is coming.
I never went back to Charidotis, though I thought of it often. Now it is too late.
Too much noise for one woman. They are all screaming! The mid-wives, the priestesses. What is that? I can hear the pound of feet along the passageway outside my room. I hear a man’s voice, calling hoarsely.
There is a wall between myself and the door. I cannot pass through it, yet I must. On the table beside me, three candles burn in silver cups. My eyes are dim, but I can see them flicker. The flames are blue.
She comes, then, a restless spirit, to her resting place, a new, sweet sarcophagus of flesh.
The Heart of Fairen De’ath
As with several of my other stories, when I decided to try and sell this one, I changed the male protagonist to a female in order to make it more acceptable to conservative editors. (Mercifully things have changed a lot since the 80s). It eventually appeared in Weird Tales in America. Here, as with the other stories, is a re-edited version of the original, restoring Filerion’s gender to its original state.
It shares another trait with various other pieces too, in that it was written as a kind of magical spell for a sad friend; an exorcism for a broken heart, if you like. I remember that when I came to sell the story, the friend in question was rather put out that I’d changed the gender of the protagonist and felt I was selling out, bowing to social pressures. I argued that I needed to make a living and at the time fantasy with homoerotic overtones was not widely acceptable. I hope that in restoring this piece to its original state, my friend will be somewhat mollified!
Filerion had dwelled in the heart of the forest, in the house of black stone, for two years. Other people lived among the trees, in dark and hidden glades, but Filerion rarely saw them. It was a lonely life he led, and one quite different to that he had left behind in the lakeside town of Celestia. Filerion was not upset by this; his seclusion was wholly voluntary.
One night, what now seemed such a long time ago, he had sat outside an inn along the Avenue of Red Eyes and, over his sweet but vicious cordial of direthorn and spice, had faced the sadness and disappointment that had become the sum total of his life. His mother had recently died – there was no father he could remember – and had left him worse than penniless. More creditors than friends had attended the funeral and, to satisfy them, Filerion had been obliged to sell the lease to his mother’s spacious rooms and millinery workshops. He had then moved all the possessions he could not sell into smaller and meaner accommodation. But it had not been enough.
There had been a series of jobs, each more poorly paid than the last; most of what he earned passing straight to the purses of the merchants and storemen to whom his mother had owed money. Filerion wished he’d paid more attention to family finances in the past, and considered bleakly that luck must have fled along with his mother’s spirit. If luck was currency, perhaps the dead woman had owed more than earthly debts.
Barely more than a boy, Filerion’s only recourse to survive had been to open his cloak along the dark alleys of the Footways of Perfect Desire, and receive coin for the brief pleasure his flesh could bring to others more financially fortunate. The reality of this trade revealed itself less dreadful than the intention of it, Celestia being a town where courtesans were respected rather than reviled. They could earn themselves legendary status if they were clever.
Furtive, masked gentlemen, whose breath smelled of cloves, enticed Filerion into their carriages, where they fumbled through cramped couplings. Sometimes, pairs of pampered, spoiled boys would come giggling to the Footways and Filerion would take them to his lodgings to join in their laughter and offer them the delicious, dark pleasures they yearned. Also, sleek young daughters of wealthy houses sought his services, all claiming, in bored voices, they were there because it was necessary to sa
mple all of life’s spices; it was merely curiosity.
Filerion did not care about their reasons. He took the money and walked away. It was not important. He never experienced shame or self-hatred, but knew that his youth, however fresh for now, would not last forever, and when it left him, he would have to think of a different way to earn his coin. Affairs of the heart, though plentiful – for many of his patrons were intrigued enough by his mystery to become regular – had always ended in sorrow. It was a game to them, an act of rebellion and daring. Should wives, lovers or parents ever begin to suspect, they fled, never to return. Filerion was tired of trying to convince himself he did not care. Resolve hardened within him. He must seek a new life, elsewhere.
Perhaps crazed by the moon, for it was full and powerful that night, he gathered up his belongings, left a brief, vague note in his lodgings, and walked northwards out of the town, through the shuttered merchant quarter, past the low, sprawling temples, whose chimneys gouted the smoke of burnt offerings and incense. He wondered how long it would take for him to be missed. Tonight’s regular patron would undoubtedly already be fractious at his absence from his usual corner, beneath the magnolia trees. He wondered whether he’d miss the generosity of his customers. No, he decided. All they’d given him was coin and material things. Filerion suspected there was more to happiness than that.
Without planning a destination, he eventually found himself upon the road that wound along the edges of Coolcandle Forest. The dark between the trees seemed to beckon him; he felt soothed by it. By the roadside, he came upon an old, wooden barrel that appeared to act as a post box for lake-bound mail, and here there was a track, leading into the forest. Filerion followed it. The strong scent of the foliage enveloped him like the water of a scented bath. He felt comfortably drowsy. Now, he would rest, shaded and fanned by fragrant ferns. Tomorrow, he could plan his future.
Filerion woke with the dawn. He stared up through the shivering fronds, arching over him protectively and decided he could not bear to set foot once more upon the hard, open road. Let the forest take him. He sat up, ate some food from his pack, drank some water and ventured further into the trees.
He travelled this way for three days. To complement his meagre food supply, he ate berries and nuts he recognised as edible. Later on, he unpacked his slender knife and confidently, if inexpertly, killed and skinned a small animal. He changed direction many times, doubling back, leaving the paths, investigating each intriguing sound. At no time did he feel in any danger. At first, it seemed he was the only human creature in the forest, but as time went on, he scented smoke and once passed a camp of charcoal-burners, who paid him no attention. At night, resting in open glades, he patiently persisted in the art of making fire. During the day, as he wandered, he was wooed by the low, enchanting song of hidden life, and entranced by the stranger places that seemed to vibrate with sentience, and where there was no sound at all.
On the morning of the fourth day Filerion discovered a brown, dusty pathway shadowed by ancient trees. Short, dark green grass grew between the massive, moss-carbuncled trunks. In the distance, he could hear the sound of water running. Filerion felt a quickening of excitement within him. The track appeared to have been beaten down by human feet. Perhaps it would lead him to a deep forest settlement. What kind of people would live there? Would they be friendly or hostile?
At length, the trees thinned and a large glade was revealed, overlooked by a soaring, crag that reared above the trees. Filerion immediately recognised the marks of cultivation in the glade. Against the dark rock at the farther end stood a tall, black house.
Filerion froze, staring. The house exuded a powerful air of great age, its eccentric design suggesting someone quite apart from conventional thinking had built it. There was no sign of life, however; no curl of smoke, no sound, no open window or door. Brooding eaves overhung the dark bricks. Grass and moss mantled the sagging roof. A weather vane poised motionless among the tall, narrow chimneys. Every bit of the building showed signs of neglect and decay.
After maybe half an hour of cautious scrutiny, Filerion convinced himself that if the house did have inhabitants, they must be old or dead. Summoning courage, he walked up to the front door, which swung open when he knocked on it. Filerion paused at the threshold, then entered the building. What had he to lose? A search within revealed the place deserted.
Dusty furniture stood disintegrating beneath shawls of spider-web. In a spacious, low-ceilinged kitchen at the back of the house, Filerion found a large, cracked sink filled with leaves. There were corridors and passages to explore, scurrying things darting from his sight as he crept through the silence. There were stairs to climb; stairs that wound, stairs that swept purposefully straight, stairs behind doors, stairs down to darkness. And there was a multitude of rooms; big rooms, small rooms, empty rooms, rooms with books, rooms with torn, heavy curtains, rooms with bare, high window-frames, rooms with beds. The place was enormous. Enormous and unused.
Filerion found himself once more in the kitchen, after having carefully made his way down a narrow, dark stairway with a door at the bottom. He dropped his bags upon the large central table, tested the pump above the sink and was eventually rewarded by a trickle of clear water. It was obvious no one had lived in the tall, black house for considerable time. Filerion took a drink of the water, found it good, and straightened up to assess his find. He breathed deeply. Yes, he thought to himself, the house had a good feel. Solemnly, he spoke aloud, introducing himself, asking if he might be allowed to stay for a while. Silence. But not a menacing silence.
He decided to stay there for a couple of days until some plan presented itself for the future. In the meantime, he thought, he could tidy the place up a little. He took off his thick cloak, bound up his glossy black hair and rolled up his linen shirtsleeves. Brooms were found in a cupboard and he tore down some of the ragged curtains to use as cleaning cloths. By mid-afternoon, the kitchen was almost habitable.
Pausing to refresh himself, Filerion heard an eerie scratching at the back door. Suppressing a tremor of apprehension, he wrenched open the protesting door and looked out. At first nothing. Then: ‘meow.’ Filerion looked down. A small grey cat sat upon the doorstep, smiling. ‘Meow, pee-urr, yeowrrr!’ it said, and to Filerion it sounded as if the cat was saying, ‘At last, you’ve finally arrived.’
The couple of days extended into a couple of weeks. Treasure after treasure revealed themselves in the tall, black house. Not jewels or gold or rare paintings, or any such riches, but useable crockery; packets of seeds; a keg of salt; bales of twine; bottles, some still full of wine; a chest crammed with blankets packed in lavender and sage; baroque mirrors; bolts of cloth; jars of beeswax; dried herbs hanging like mummified limbs in a closet, and many books.
The cat, whom Filerion named Segila, followed him from room to room, jumping onto the windowsills, whispering cruelties at the birds outside, jumping down again to wash herself and generally keep him company.
Time sped by; a holiday of exploration and renovation. Gradually, Filerion accepted the fact that some part of him had decided to stay indefinitely, and he gave in to that desire with little fight. The house seduced him, constantly leading him to find things of use, to bring comfort to his life. There were caves in the cliffs behind the garden, some with pools of sweet, clear water. At one time, someone had constructed a plumbing system, using as supply a natural reservoir found within the caves, and had connected it to the house. Filerion inspected the pipe-work and found it sound. A survey of the garden and orchard revealed overgrown vegetable plots, masses of riotous, giant herbs and fertile fruit trees. There were hives for bees, sadly empty, but, Filerion reasoned, if he could restore the garden, he could grow things to sell in the villages that punctuated the road to Celestia and Grote. Maybe he could buy some bees one day.
Buy bees he did. And a goat, some hens, grain, meat and white, glistening sugar in a sack. The garden responded to his attentions and even the first harvest, only months
after he’d begun work, rendered a pleasing income. Sometimes, Filerion wondered who had lived in the house before him, why they had left it, and whether they’d been as contented as he was now. Surely, countless lives before his own had whiled away the dark, green hours beneath this roof? Many of the books he’d found had been written by hand, in graceful, curling script. The subject matter was often esoteric and strange, as well as being practical and eminently useful. Since studying them, Filerion had learned how to heal his body, whether of disease, wounds or spiritual ennui. He could treat his animals effectively. All of the plants required were on hand in the garden, waiting to be discovered and nurtured once more as Filerion cleared the ground of weeds. The strength of will to empower the remedies he drew from the trees themselves.
There was only a single stain on his happiness. One afternoon, in summer’s full heat, Filerion took mop and brooms to the uppermost floor of the house. It consisted of a single passageway, with three doors leading off it, and had the feeling and smell of a place that had not been disturbed for years. There was almost an air of resentment at Filerion’s intrusion. Summer was shut out there. Filerion did not like it. He turned to say to Segila, ‘Perhaps this part can wait...’ and then noticed Segila was not behind him. A shiver of unease slipped up his spine. Usually, the cat followed him everywhere. He stepped backwards, not through feeling threatened, but wanting to avoid something he thought would be unpleasant, sickening. The house would not allow that. It was quite emphatic. As if dazed, Filerion let it show him a small, dismal room at the end of the corridor.
Afterwards, he could not remember clearly what he had seen; only a feeling of depression had remained, but words whispered through his head for the rest of the day, faint yet persistent: ‘This is why, this is why, this is why...’ Filerion avoided that area of the house thereafter.