Somewhither: A Tale of the Unwithering Realm

The men of the East may spell the stars,
And times and triumphs mark,
But the men signed of the cross of Christ
Go gaily in the dark.

G.K. Chesterton

The gates of heaven are lightly locked,
We do not guard our gold,
Men may uproot where worlds begin,
Or read the name of the nameless sin;
But if he fail or if he win
To no good man is told.

G.K. Chesterton

The wise men know what wicked things
Are written on the sky,
They trim sad lamps, they touch sad strings,
Hearing the heavy purple wings,
Where the forgotten seraph kings
Still plot how God shall die

G.K. Chesterton

They have weirded Him to wander
till He bring within His hands
The water of eternal youth
from black-enchanted lands

Dorothy L. Sayers

All wholesome advice they labor to destroy, saying, “The cause of thy sin is inevitably determined in heaven”; and “This did Venus, or Saturn, or Mars”: that man, forsooth, flesh and blood, and proud corruption, might be blameless; while the Creator and Ordainer of heaven and the stars is to bear the blame.

Saint Augustine of Hippo

Night shall be thrice night over you,
And heaven an iron cope.
Do you have joy without a cause,
Yea, faith without a hope?

G.K. Chesterton

My grateful thanks to Nathan Smolin and Matan Arkin for their help in matters where the author’s scholarship failed.

“Dad, how many universes are there?”

“Only one, by definition, son,” he answered. “Hence the term
universe
.”

Spread out on the couch, still in his gear, my father spoke in a weary monotone, not raising his head, not opening his eyes. I was surprised to get even a grunt out of him, much less an answer, even if it was an answer that was not really an answer.

I prodded the fake log with a poker, but no sparks flew up. I tried to keep the frustration out of my voice. Depending on his answer, I would either be back upstairs asleep in ten minutes, or running wildly out of the house into the wide darkness before the dawn, at top speed.

It might be too late already. I wanted to take out my phone and look at the time but feared I might glimpse the message that was still glowing on the little screen.

“Let me ask it another way. What is reality?”

He heaved a weary sigh.

Before you ask, it was because of a girl. Before you laugh, tell me a better reason to dive headfirst off the edge of reality.

Her name was Penny Dreadful. Unless it wasn’t. I was in love. Unless I wasn’t.

Penny was a very pretty, witty and brave girl, as bold as a Marine platoon storming Iwo Jima. She was famous and rich, and way out of my league.

It wasn't her fault. It's not like she asked me to save her. Heck, she did not even know I was alive. Well, technically, she knew I was alive.

She saw me every day. She just couldn’t remember my name.

It’s Ilya, by the way.

Ilya Vseslavyevich Bessmertniy Saint Mitrophan Muromets.

And who in the world could recall a name like that? Aside from Russians, I mean. And most of them live in Marion County, fifty miles southwest over rough terrain backpacking, or one hundred miles by car, if you go by way of Portland. Or in Russia.

No one famous is named Ilya. Aside from the blond spy on
MAN FROM U.N.C.L.E.
reruns. That show’s been off the air since before the moonshot. I think my mother had a crush on the actor or something when she was a girl, which is how I got stuck with it.

I had been afraid my whole life to ask my father this one, haunting, huge, dread question. Had I never heard of her, nor met her, nor seen her emerald eyes, beheld her golden hair, nor heard her silver voice, I never would have found the nerve.

So, technically, it is her fault, sort of.

But I don’t blame her.

If you blame the damsel in distress, you are not the hero.

Before you laugh, tell me a better role for a guy like me to shoot for. A bystander? An extra? A nobody?

So, it was not because of a girl. It was because of the guy I wanted not to be.

I wanted not to be just a big, huge, bulky, ugly, quiet, shy guy whose name no one knew.

Father spoke again, his eyes still closed, “Reality is what’s not the voting booth and not the salad bar. When you don’t get to vote and don’t get to pick,” he spoke louder. “That’s reality.”

“And…” I slid my tongue over my lips, surprised to find my mouth dry. “How many? How many are there? How many … realities?”

Usually when he comes home from one of his business trips, Dad goes straight to the couch in the den to collapse in blissful fatigue before the fireplace, too tired to climb the stairs to the bedroom, and too tired to talk. So he lay now, head back, elbow over his eyes, one boot on the arm of the couch, and one on the floor.

The unmarked black helicopter that flies without lights and brings him home lands in the grove my brothers and I have to keep clear of shrub and sapling as one of our chores, way up the mountain above the ruins of the old monastery. Dad takes over an hour to trudge down the twisting paths and switchbacks. So he is not the most energetic of conversationalists right after a trip.

This time something was different, because Dad lowered his arm and turned his head, so he could catch me with his eye. I could not tell if the squint in his eyes was just fatigue, or if there was something else, a look of accusation there. Or fear.

“I have always known this day would come. Who talked to you? What did they tell you?”

I heard more in his voice than I had seen in his eyes. His look was one of accusation, but his tone was one of self-accusation. It was the fear of a father wolf who had failed to protect his cubs.

He was afraid for me.

The moment felt like the whole earth and sky together had just missed an expected bottom step, and was jarred to an ankle-spraining halt and bit its tongue.

When I was younger, and Mom was still here, she would get my two brothers and me all out of bed before dawn, and we would stand shivering on the back porch with mugs of hot cocoa in hand, waiting for Dad to appear at the wood’s edge beyond the fallow field, now waist-high with tares and circled by the dismembered posts of a skeletal fence, that lay uphill beyond the back yard.

There were both bees’ nests and owls’ nests in those ungainly oaks. Their roots hid an extensive clan of rabbits fat and unwary enough that, with a .22 and help from Lady, we could have coney in the stewpot, except not on Fridays.

Deeper and higher in the wood, a family of foxes, black as midnight, made their den in the roofless remains of the chapel overlooking a cliff. Only the tips of the ears and tails of that fox family were white, as if snowflakes landed only just there. They helped us keep the rabbit population in check, so Dad told us not to disturb them.

Because of this, while we toiled and sweated long summer days to chop the weed and vine away from the rest of the monastery’s frowning and tumbledown walls, or clear leaves and beehives out of the narrow slits of its creepy and squinting cross-shaped windows, we did not have to approach the chapel haunted by the foxes, but let the greenery slowly cover the faded frescos of tormented martyrs and floating saints.

So I was thankful to those soot-black creatures with snow-white on the tips of their ears and tails. Not only did they get me out of a chore, one of them got me my job at the Museum. And the black foxes got me interested in Natural History, because they showed me at a young age that the world will show you its wonders, but only if you seek.

I sometimes wonder what kids who don’t have woods behind their backyards do in the summer. Join street gangs, I guess.

Back in the days before her funeral, when Mom had us awake and awaiting Dad’s homecoming, I recall how the birds would start singing while it was still pitch dark, able to sense a dawn I could never guess was coming. We would leave the windows open and all the lights in the house burning, and we carried flashlights in hand, so that our meeting would be nice and bright. We never knew which part of the wood would release him, since he never approached from the same way twice. He never held a light in his hand, and he moved quite silently, so we never saw him until he was at least halfway across the yard. Mom would gently wipe the camouflage paint from his face while he was sleeping, and undo his boots, dismount the bayonet, lock his rifle in the gun cabinet, lock the relic-bearing crucifix in the reliquary and the flask of holy water in the font, and then shoo us away back upstairs until the alarm clocks would ring the time for Morning Services, and we could officially get up.

I miss her. Dad took his favorite pictures of her and had them framed, and hung them in every room and corridor in the house, at the top and the bottom of the stairs, and over every cabinet in the kitchen and the arsenal, to remind us that she was still watching us, even if we could not see her.

This time, my older brother Alexei decided to spend his Spring Break with his college chums, drinking booze and getting in trouble, and my younger brother Dobrin was staying with Aunt Iaga, to keep him out of trouble, so this time it was only me here to greet the prodigal father at his return, and make sure the fireplace was lit.

I should mention: Alexei is tall and slim and blue-eyed and blond, and Dobrin is taller and slimmer and bluer-eyed and blonder.

Me? Back when we went to school like other kids, and they put on
THE HOBBIT
as a play, Dobrin was Elrond the Elf and Alexei was the Elf who keeps the Elfs' wine cellar, and I was the guy who turns into a bear. I got to wear a huge furry mask in the fight scene. I did not really need the mask, even at that age. When they did the Disney-musical version of
HUNCHBACK OF NOTRE DAME
, I landed the role of Quasimodo, and not for my singing voice either.