Amidst the falling dust (The Green and Pleasant Land) (10 page)

The Harlequin he looks at me and beckons gently. I follow like a hypnotised rat. We walk through sunny glades and through mossy hollows until I can hear the sound of waves lapping at the shore. We emerge from the trees and I look up and down the deserted beach which looks out onto the Irish Sea.

A boat waits there, a simple rowing boat. The Harlequin has but to point to it. I know my purpose, I help him into the boat. My skin crawls at the sensation of touching him. I feel sick to my core and am forced to vomit once more, this time my bile goes into the sea and floats there on the top like some pathetic mutant jellyfish.

I push the boat out into the waves and clamber aboard feeling soaking wet and confused. The Harlequin points out to sea. I turn my back on him, take up the oars and begin to row. My mind is hazy, a fuzz filled mess. I am blinded by the chaos of what just happened, I think I may have broken something, a part of me has snapped, deep down inside my mind.

I keep rowing. It is a nice day. The salt sea air and the sense of purpose start to ease my nausea. The seagulls they circle beneath a cloudless sky, miles of beautiful green and yellow coastline fill the horizon. The further I get from my nation the more beautiful it looks, the greater the distance between myself and the horror, the less the horror seems.

We are a couple of hundred metres out from the shore when I see him. He comes walking down out of the trees. He wears a backpack and saunters as if on a summer holiday. I would know him anywhere, even if I was to stare at him from the other side of the heavens I would know that figure.

“Gideon!” I shout with all I have. It is enough. My desperate and elated cry carries across the water like a skimming stone. “Gideon!!” I cry again. One can spend too long questioning how the impossible has come to be, sometimes it is best to embrace it and never let it go, and at some point within that embrace you may come to know how miracles occur.

I must turn this boat around. He has seen me. He waves and I start to turn the bobbing vessel. What is that pain? It was so fleeting, like a wasps sting at the base of my spine. Why is the boat not turning? Why have my arms failed me? I can see my son still waving. I will come for you my boy.

I am laying down, gently I fall backwards into the boat. This is not right. I need to go back, I must go back. The Harlequin has my head resting on his legs. I see he holds a scalpel with blood upon its tip. He is smiling at me. I cannot feel a thing. The gulf, the sadness, it is too wide, too deep for me to factor in any other feeling. So I become the sadness, woe is me and I am woe, we know nothing else beyond each other, and I cannot miss a happiness I can no longer conceive.

The scalpel descends towards me. It feels like he is drawing on my face, lines and curves that work their way all around. Finally he stops and I can feel tugging as he peels at something. I see a flat and flopping item pulled from my head. My eyes are filled with blood but even so I see as the Harlequin lifts the mask which melds messily with the one of Tasker he already wears. His own features are hidden but not forgotten.

It is like looking in a mirror. I stare back at myself. Bloody tears mark both the real me and the reflection. I look up at the blue sky one last time. I imagine the clouds and form them into the shapes of everything that has come and gone. I have so many questions. “Fey Le Nar?” I say. He nods and grins with delight. “We rise” he says excitedly. Then the scalpel comes down. It is with slow delight he takes my eyes. Once I am in the dark I am vaguely aware of more blows as they rain down on me. Then the darkness is total and I cease to be aware of even that which was me. Goodbye.