I tell you these things, knowing not how many hours had passed, for time was not the same. Nothing was the same and, though I knew I was dead, I knew also that it was not over for me.
Walking through water, now.
Clear, soft water that was flashing over the grass and cascading down the hill. Water like music.
Me walking barefoot, the grass slick between my toes. Led by the hand, feet in the soft flowing land, down towards the nest of apple trees, and I could smell the breeze around them, the scent of apples and the ferment of cider, and all the juices of late summer.
And the tor rising on the other side and the soaring golden pinnacles of the abbey.
Walking through an old orchard, and the twigs of the apple trees were scraping at my bared skin.
And then, with no awareness of a journey, I was in the sky.
Not in my body but as a spirit made of finest air, and I was walking in the garden of the firmament, stars around my hands, whole worlds that I could hold, yet did not wish to hold, wished only to exist with them in peace and a sense of eternal wonder. And for a split instant, I almost knew His mind.
Seemed to be here for many hours, but it might have been mere seconds before I was falling back in vague dismay… back to a place that was close to our world yet not of it. Where I saw the land again – the Glastonbury land – veined with clear water.
Then saw through the skin of fields and woods and hills, to the innards of the island, all the inner chambers and vessels linked by the flow of water underground, a low and rumbling power, the engine of the earth, held together by the bones of the hills and all the bones of the saints which lay here, the bones of Avalon…
…and I drew back and all the shapes of the land were moving. I saw creatures there, made of the earth… a lion and a dove… fishes that swam in grass. And the earth went atilt, and the creatures formed a great circle all around me.
‘Where are you?’
‘I’m flying,’ I said.
‘Come,’ she said. ‘This may be too much too soon.’
When the vision faded to a pastel blur and the body’s weight returned, I felt a stab of sorrow. But then I heard the old soft singing, a flow of molten gold, and saw the abbey from above, laid out below the tor like to a golden body.
A paradise. Avalon.
And I heard these words, soft-spoken but quite clear:
The whole magistery depends upon the Sun and the Moon. The Sun is its father and the Moon is its mother, and we know truly that the red earth is nourished by the rays of the Moon and the Sun.
The sun was in me. My head burned with gasses like to the orb of the sun. And the moon…
…the moon was awaiting the sun.
I was walking towards the summit of the tor.
What can you see?
The sky.
And…?
The tower.
Go to it. Put your hands upon its nearest corner at chest height.
Opening my hands, and the stone which had lain there was gone. A connecting. A shiver through the arms and into the breast, and I sprang away but did not fall this time.
Did not fall.
Knowing that the stone which had been in my hand had been absorbed back into the high standing stone whose spirit lived inside the tower upon the tor. And tower and stone both lived in me, when I walked back down the hill, lured by the the wappling of the water in the Blood Well at its foot. Rolling and sliding down the hill, my apparel left strewn out behind, and she was waiting and wore no cloak, nor over-dress, nor shift, and was but a haze in the soft air.
Soft. The softness of the grass where we lay. The softness of lips and breasts, the yielding of flesh, the rising of the tower, all the energy entering into it as I rolled over and felt the opening of the well-head in the thicket and then the tower sliding deep into the well. And, oh God, a tongue ’twixt criss-cross teeth, greenlit eyes in bright water, a fluid white light, the light of a thousand candles, a river of white light flowing through me.
And then, later, the sunrise in the heart.
And I will travel to Avalon, to the fairest of all maidens……and she shall make all my wounds sound and make me whole.
PART FOUR
Superstition requires credulity, just as true religion requires faith. Deep-rooted credulity is so powerful that it may even, in false beliefs, be thought to perform miracles. For if anyone believes most firmly that his religion is true, even if it is in fact false, he raises his spirit by reason of that very credulity until it becomes like the spirits who are the leaders and princes of that religion and seems to perform things which are not perceived by those in a normal and rational state.
De Occulta Philosophia.
XXXII
The Word
When I awoke before dawn, it was as if I’d slept for whole days. Or rather as if I’d been away for days. And I felt…
…felt my body was a strange place. Stretching out in the bed, I could feel all of it at once, from the soles of its feet to the weight of its skull and, betwixt them, the slow pulse of the unbound heart. And I felt…
Whole. I felt whole. Entire. Complete. Felt the heaviness of the sun in me, its holy rays opening me up into an aching, languid release, and I rolled over, reaching out an arm for her.
Nothing. Absence.
When the arm closed on cold air, I was in terror, my eyes falling open like a trapdoor into darkness. I sat up and took in the empty chair, the empty board. The empty bed. I was alone in the half-light.
Gone. Performed her alchemy and gone. I was thrown into panic: had it been a dream, a night excursion of the soul? I fell back, an aching void in me.
Then, as my face slipped between the pillows, the scent of her came to me, her body’s wild-animal musk, and my breath caught in my throat.
God. God, God, God…
Rolled out of bed and found myself naked, the cold dawn seizing my flesh. Yet, for the first time, welcoming its bite. I stood and pulsed and tingled as if all the stars were lit within me. Had other men felt this? Did all men feel this, after…?
After what, the condition of the bed and its emanations left little doubt. Thankful, tearful, I went back and laid upon it, burying my face in the scent of her, and when I closed my eyes the dust rose again, a ripple of images of moon and water, earth and…
…fire. Even the fire was good.
Jesu!
I came off the bed again, moved slowly to the window. Touching it. The strangeness of glass. The miracle of seeing out from within.
Of course, there must have been more to it. More than the potion, although that clearly had opened doors between my inner being and something that was out there. But, in some way, she ’d made that happen in the way it had, and there was a word for this.
The lower panes were jewelled with red and blue and orange, a pool of water on the sill reflecting these colours and more, and my eyes were drawn into it and I must have lost several minutes and…
Oh, yes, the word.
It had ever been with us, ever misunderstood, feared and rendered demonic by the churchmen – those same churchmen who preach that we should ever be open to higher influence.
I saw the wet roofs shining red. Raised my eyes to the first sunlight running like syrup along the ramparts of an old night cloud. Felt a trembling of my whole being. And uttered the word, breathing it softly into the coppery fire of the nascent day.
The word was magic.
I knelt, then, and prayed.
‘You all right, Dr John? You look…’
Cowdray in his sackcloth apron at the bottom of the stairs, all grey stubble and troubled eyes.
‘Thank you, I’m well,’ I said.
Hearing my own voice for, it seemed, the first time. It sounded frail, immature, a boy’s voice.