The Ships of Aleph (2 page)

The sound of rushing water changed and deepened. I opened my eyes to see the world tilting, a crazy view of black lightning-laced clouds filling the sky. Sky meant breath – I breathed again, though the effort was almost too much.

I was going faster than any man ever had. Though I knew I should try and observe the process terror and exhaustion got the better of me and I screwed my eyes shut.

The next time my head broke the surface I took a breath. Nothing happened. I opened my eyes to darkness and a strange sensation. I felt as though I was floating, not falling, yet I was no longer in the water. Eerie silence had replaced the roar of the sea.

How interesting, I mused. No one ever predicted
this
about the edge of the world: there is no air, and yet you float!  

However, because there is no air, you also drown. 

                                                            ***

I woke up in my bedroom.

At least, so I thought when I opened my eyes; that I lay in my bed in the room where I had slept all my life. But the bed was against the wall, not under the window as it should be and when I looked around I discovered other out-of-place details. I recognised the wooden puzzle my father had fashioned from different colours of driftwood, but it was next to my bed, not on the high shelf I had relegated it to when I grew tired of it. And the clothes chest my brother and I shared lacked the large splotch on the lid where father had spilt limewash on it while he was recoating the walls.

I sat up. I ached, but not badly, which was unexpected because ... ah, because
I had died
! In which case, this had to be Heaven. Or Hell, although I saw no sign of the expected fiery rivers and cruel imps.

When I stood I found another argument in favour of this being a place of celestial reward. I went to adjust my stance to allow for my shortened leg and discovered that both legs were the same length. I sat down again and felt my shin: there was no lump, no bend.

A miracle to be sure, but Heaven was said to be perfection, so why was the room not as it should be? And why was the scar on my wrist, a burn from a foolish accident one midwinter, still there? And, if Heaven was where I should find my heart’s desire, why was I still in the village I had died trying to escape?

I stood again, and opened the shutters. The view outside was as I expected, save for a faint mistiness.

I went downstairs, almost stumbling as I adjusted to my restored leg. The kitchen and parlour were the same as upstairs, familiar yet subtly wrong, not least for being empty: my mother or sister should be here. I called out, not expecting an answer, and not getting one. For the first time I felt a flutter of fear: if this was not Heaven it must be Hell, and that implied things were likely to become a lot less pleasant soon. I decided to face my fear. I opened the door.

On the threshold stood an angel.

I recognised the description from Scripture –
a bronze being in the form of a perfect, shining man
– even as I felt immense relief that I was not, in fact, damned. Having never expected to meet such a being, I had no idea how to react. The Scriptures told of those lucky enough to receive angelic visitations prostrating themselves in awe, but although I was both impressed and disconcerted, I felt no inclination towards abject worship. Instead I stepped back to let it in, as though I were receiving a normal caller into my home.

It showed no offence at my lack of piety, and merely walked across the threshold. As it passed me it said, in a clear but not particularly angelic voice, ‘I expect you have some questions.’

Some questions?!
Where to start?

I thought for a moment, then raised my most immediate query: ‘Am I dead?’

‘You are not,’ it said. ‘You were saved, though the others on your ship perished.’

I wanted to ask why I alone had not died, but that seemed impertinent. Instead I said, ‘So this is not Heaven, then?’

‘No.’

‘I see,’ I said, though I did not.

‘You do not sound surprised or disappointed to find that you have not reached the reward the Scriptures promised.’

The angel’s voice showed no emotion and its perfectly proportioned face was as immobile as a mask. I had no idea if my unexpected behaviour was angering or pleasing it. ‘I did wonder,’ I said carefully, ‘but I have found small differences from my expectations, and so concluded it was not. May I ask where I am?’

‘You are beyond the world. However, there is nothing to be afraid of. You will find this a pleasant place to live.’

I had no idea whether to be grateful for the reassurance or concerned I was not being given the option to refuse. I reminded myself that I was lucky to be alive, and said, ‘Thank you.’

‘Food will be provided for you, though you may also wish to cultivate a garden. I suspect the contents of the other cottages will be of more interest to you, though.’

Did I imagine amusement in the angel’s tone? ‘I assume I am alone here,’ I said.

‘You assume correctly. And you are advised not to stray more than a thousand steps from this house. I will return.’ With that it turned and left.

I watched through the open door as the angel walked out of the village on the path down to the sea. It was soon swallowed by the mist.

I stayed where I was for some time, thoughts running through my mind in time to my racing heart.

Finally I resolved to follow the angel. It had not forbidden me to do so, and I would stop before I went beyond the limit it had set.

Though I had never counted the number of steps from the village to the sea, I knew it to be far less than a thousand; yet, once clear of the village, the path merely continued as it had, a narrow track through the low grass. The further I went, the thicker the mist became, though in truth it was more like smoke, being not at all damp. By the time my count reached eight hundred I could barely see the path. I carried on for fifty more steps before unease forced me to turn around.

Back in the village I examined the re-creation more closely. The detail was perfect, right down to the newly mended rope on the well-bucket and the yellow foxtails and late-blooming purseflowers nodding in the verges. I decided to investigate the other cottages, as the angel had suggested. I started at the modest home of the widow whose daughter was betrothed to my brother.

I was not sure what I’d expected, but what I found certainly surprised me. The place was full of books.

The village priest had had a shelf in his study holding a handful of religious works – Morius’
Lives of the Saints
, Campur’s
On the Transience of Souls
and suchlike – but here every wall of every room was covered with shelves, and every shelf was full! I scanned titles until I found one I had heard of:
The Travels of Alban the Tall
. Alban was said to have visited every burgh in the world, and seen the sun both rise and set above the sea. I pulled the book out carefully, placed it on the table in the centre of the room, and began to read.

Some time later I was distracted by the rumbling of my stomach. I closed the book and went back to my cottage. In the larder I found black bread and pale, bland cheese. The meagre fare was enough to stop the hunger. I drew water from the well – it tasted odd, but quenched my thirst – then went back to my book.

When darkness fell I reluctantly left off my reading; although the recreation of my family kitchen had lamps on the shelves the angel had said nothing about providing oil, only food.

That night I slept fitfully, and dreamt of drowning.

The next morning more bread and cheese had appeared, along with a pot like the one my mother kept honey in; this contained a thick gloop which tasted as sweet as honey, though it held hints of other, unidentifiable flavours.

I waited a while in case the angel returned. When it did not, I examined the other cottages and found every one packed with books. I had not known there were so many books in the world!  I also found, lying on their sides rather than upright, books with empty pages, and beside them, a quill.

All my life I had sought learning, and here it was.

I resolved to approach this bounty with an ordered mind. I would record my reading, and my conclusions, a job made easier by the strange quill, which wrote flawlessly without ink. I set to my task with joy.

I also took time to explore my environment, as much to rest my eyes as because I thought I would find any new information out there. As expected, I soon encountered the thickening mist in every direction, and I experienced a disquiet that grew the further I walked from the village.

The angel returned after ten days. I found it standing beside the table in my kitchen when I came back to my cottage for my evening meal.

‘Are you happy?’ it asked, as though we had left off our conversation mere moments ago.

‘Yes,’ I said, ‘I believe I am.’

‘Good. Do you have all you need?’

‘I ... yes, I think I do. Actually ... could I have some oil? For the lamps.’

‘Light can be provided,’ it said. Then it added, ‘You have no wish to return, then?’

‘Return where?’

‘To your village.’

It had not occurred to me that this was even possible. I thought about it, though not for long, balancing my old life as a misfit who dreamed against my new one, living in my dream. ‘No. I have no desire to go back.’

‘Good. Then I will leave you for now.’ It made to go.

‘Wait ... you said when I first came here that I could ask questions. Is that still true?’ I should have thought about this before, maybe considered what I wanted to ask.

‘It is.’ 

‘Then ... ’ I searched my whirling thoughts and hit upon the book I had been studying most recently, a treatise on the disposition of the heavens, ‘ ... I want to know about stars.’ Some scholars thought them eternal fires; others, holes showing a glimpse of the light of Heaven beyond. ‘What are they made of?’

‘That is not a question I can answer.’

I wondered if I had misheard it. ‘But you are an angel! You know the mind of God.’ My words were thoughtless, insolent. Who did I think I was to talking to?

But the angel merely said again, ‘That is not a question I can answer.’ Then it left.

The next morning, along with my food, I found a white hemisphere the size of my palm. It was featureless save for a slider on the bottom. When I moved this along its track, the object lit up with a cold white light, like starlight. Presumably I had not angered the angel with my presumption, for it had granted my request. I wondered if I was being tested; perhaps it had refused to answer my question because I needed to find out the truth for myself. Maybe the answer was in the books.

I began to keep a note of questions to ask the angel when it returned, which it did, every ten days. I noted its answers with equal care and as the sun grew smaller and winter – or a re-creation of it – arrived, I found a pattern emerging.

The angel would answer any question I posed, save those that dealt with God, or with the sky, such as queries on the nature of the sun or stars. It would even provide answers I could have found in my books: for example, the writer of a treatise on the fauna of the Inner Spine mountains suggested that perhaps the snow-hares did not hibernate, and instead changed form. The angel confirmed the truth of this. Sixty-seven days later, in a different book, written some years after the first one, I found this written down as a solid observation. Had the angel known I would discover the answer for myself, yet chosen to tell me anyway? I asked that, but this was another question it would not answer, presumably because it strayed into matters of the spirit.

It also told me some things no man had recorded, such as why the Duke’s ship had finally foundered. There was, it said, a ring of rock just inside the lip of the world that helped control the flow of water over the edge. When I asked what was beyond that, and where I was in relation to it, the angel was predictably uninformative.

I asked about myself. It told me that I could chose to live out my allotted span of days – however long that might be – either here or back in the village. I was becoming emboldened so I asked, ‘What if I were to ask to be returned, not to my village, but to Omphalos, to the halls of the University?’

‘If you wished. But what would you do then?’

‘Why, tell people what has happened to me!’

‘Are you sure? You would go back to the world exactly as you left it, save for the time that has passed and your remembered experiences of being here. Why should the words of a rootless stranger be heard in the halls of great scholars?’

It was right, of course. ‘But why am I here at all?’ I asked.

Again I thought I detected faint amusement. ‘That is a question every thinking being must answer for themselves.’

‘No, I mean why am I
here
, in this constructed place, with all these books.’

‘To learn and think and question,’ it said. ‘Such is your talent.’

‘But
why
?’

‘That is not a question I can answer.’