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to Joyce and Jim's Main PageAmelia Gallant
The incline sharpened suddenly, throwing me off balance. I teetered precariously over the mountain, one leg catching on a wizened shrub, a rock slicing into my wrist. I dragged my arm along the ledge, reaching out searchingly for something solid to hold on to, finding only gravel and dirt that fell back into my face.
Dangling over the village so far below that it looked unreal, I tried to pull myself back up to the path. I spat the dirt out of my mouth and shook my head to clear my eyes. "Damn!"
The tiny torches were just beginning their ascent up the dark mountain. They'd have the advantage of light as well as familiarity. The Hayyim walked that path for centuries. I was scaling it for the first, and I hoped, only time.
I'd seen it, running like a pale ribbon along the mountain in the sunlight. The Hayyim leader pointed it out with a stern admonishment to avert my eyes in the future. It was the holiest of places. No strangers allowed. To be there was punishable by death.
With a savage surge of energy, I pushed myself back up on the track. The wind picked up off the mountain face, threatening to pummel me back down to the ground. I found handholds in the rocky ledge and levered myself further up the path. Ice was forming on the rock. I felt my fingers slide, but I kept going.
As I climbed higher, it became impossible to stay up on my feet. I dropped down and crawled, cold stone sliding across my stomach as I kept my mind on moving my hands, one over another. Slide, pull. Slide, pull. I pushed with my booted feet when I encountered a tenacious root sticking up from the rock.
Time became indistinct. The strength of the wind seemed to point to the fact that I was near the top. I looked up, straining just to lift my head, but there was no sign of the opening. Just the deep blackness, the hard, cold stone and the harsh wind.
"Keep pushin', Amelia," I grated through clenched teeth as I realized that my hands were becoming increasingly numb. A shard of rock scratched my face but it only hurt until the wind burned it away with cold. I wiggled my toes as I pulled my legs up another notch, experimenting with what feeling remained in the rest of my body. Urging my blood to flow through my frozen limbs.
"You have to be close to the top," I said, just to hear the sound of my own voice. "And you sure as hell don't want to go back the way you just came. Hayyim or not."
There was no one to argue with me, no one to hear my words. I reached out a hand to pull myself forward one more time. My fingers encountered damp, warm ground and a thick grass covering. I pushed eagerly forward.
It was a plateau unlike any I'd ever encountered. When I managed to shove my whole body up to the top, I found that the wind was gone. The cold that froze the mountain face was replaced by almost tropical warmth. Plants grew extravagantly, a lush scent clinging to the humid air. And there was light.
It was a pale luminescence that shadowed rather than starkly outlined the thickly twisted foliage. I walked through the ghosts of heavy vines and tall stalks, huge flowers layered across the spongy ground. There was a pungent, spicy aroma that filled the air as I approached the narrow crevice where the light emerged.
It was barely one half meter wide and only slightly longer. I began to understand why the Hayyim wise men were always so thin.
As it was, I wasn't certain I could make it through the aperture. Definitely not in my jacket. Quickly, I stripped it off and flung it down, not wanting to take a chance on getting caught on the sharp edge. I studied the opening, trying to see into the depth.
The light glowed as far down as I could see into the mountain below. There was nothing else visible below the surface. I dropped a rock down the breach and waited but there was no sound below me, no hint of where the pebble had fallen. Or for that matter, I reasoned, any way to know that it wasn't still falling.
The Hayyim's excited shouts began to echo in the distance. I knew enough of their language to know that they were calling for my death to be of the Seven Tortures. Not a pleasant way to die. I hoped they hadn't hurt my assistant, Clywd, in their rush to get at me. Then the first torch topped the plateau and I knew there was only time to look after myself.
That the Hayyim neophytes made the pilgrimage up the mountain and down the crevice to discover their spiritual selves was a matter of record. That they did so at the death of every Haynur, their wandering wise man, was validated as well some twenty years before.
What no one understood was why ten or more young people would travel the mountain path and only one or two return the following day from the caves below. Return alive and with their minds intact, I quickly corrected, looking down into the hole in the mountain again.
But there were two things I was certain of. The Hayyim hopefuls did not return the same way they went up the mountain. Which meant that there was another way down. And the tribe was closing in fast on my location. Which meant I could jump and risk death or just die.
Without another thought, I leaped into the crevice, feeling the rock stroke my shoulder as I cleared the opening. The light surrounded, engulfed me as I passed through it, falling hard and fast. I tried to keep my legs going down first, head up, curving my spine and trying to loosen my taut muscles for impact.
But just as the pebble I'd flung down, there didn't seem to be an end to it. I continued to fall through the pale light, a mist like shroud enfolding me. If there were sides to the opening, a top or a bottom, I wasn't certain. It felt like I was falling forever.
My downward motion finally slowed slightly. A warm blast of air puffed up from somewhere beneath me and I slowed even more. I switched on the recorder at my wrist, knowing this would be the only chance I'd have to find out what went on inside the mountain.
My descent finally slowed completely, leaving me suspended in mid air. Then I gently dropped. I landed on my feet, crouching down low while I scanned the empty chamber.
The walls were sharp faced blue rock with a pearlescent sheen. The same blue rock was underfoot but in a darker shade suggesting years of feet treading the passage.
"At least they didn't die from the fall," I said aloud, my words echoing softly around me. The air had cleared. But where was I?
There was a darker walled tunnel that ran off from the chamber I stood in. Since none of the other neophytes seemed to be there with me, I decided to follow it. There was no point in gaining the Hayyim's enmity only to miss finding the truth.
The tunnel was dark, the walls midnight blue. The natural lighting from the first chamber didn't reach its deeper middle. It coiled like a snake, undulating through the mountain's depths. I followed carefully, using my hands along the dry rock wall to guide myself.
A beginning bloom of light began to seep along the floor, making my passage easier. It grew in strength, the luminous quality of the pale blue glow softening the tunnel's contours.
The tunnel finally opened into a magnificent chamber, possibly as high as the mountain's five hundred meters. Gleaming stalagmites hung from its cathedral-like ceiling. The crystal walls were cool to my touch. Reflecting light, refracting the colors back in kaleidoscope complexity, I gazed at my reflection in their smooth surface.
"You should not be here," a voice whispered from beside me. The sound was like the rustle of dead leaves.
I looked down at the Hayyim called Regheyr. It seemed I'd found the neophytes.
"I had to come." I stopped abruptly as I realized why the man spoke so quietly. My words came back to me, shocking in their intensity. "I had to come," I began again, this time in a careful whisper. "The triese lea."
Regheyr was aghast. "You cannot mean to be here. It is sacrilege. The triese lea is only for the Haynur, those who survive to become the wisest."
"The future gift," I murmured. "Or death. Aren't you afraid of which it will be for you?"
"I am not afraid," he assured me. "It is you, Amelia Gallant, who should fear. You will never survive. The triese lea cannot be yours. Only death. Or madness."
"I am here, Regheyr. One way or another."
He turned away. "It will begin soon. Good bye, Amelia Gallant."
I wandered the chamber, not recognizing any other of the Hayyim there with me. The Hayyim recognized me as a stranger and turned away, knowing as Regheyr did that I didn't belong in their shrine. Their eyes were full of hatred and fear. Then the song began and there was only fear.
It began slowly. A sound that was almost indiscernible yet impinged on everything else. It grew in intensity, finally prohibiting everything else except for the sound. There was no breath. No thought. No life. Only the sound that crept on me, shrouding me outside and filling me.
I turned away from some of the early drawings I'd found scrawled on the walls. In amazement, as the sound consumed me, I watched some of the others fall to the floor. Some tried to blot the sound, pushing their hands to their ears. Some cried. Others screamed in wonder or horror. I looked into their eyes and saw madness.
To me, the sound was like a thousand-thousand crystal bells making the most delicate music, chiming through my soul in such a way that I never wanted it to stop. A growing wonder filled me until I found that I couldn't move, couldn't think of anything else but the enchanting sound. There were tears on my cheeks but I was powerless to stop my weeping.
The music, which began so sweetly, continued to strengthen. It turned inside of me until it reached a painful intensity. I lost control of my body, falling to the stone floor while the sound still poured over me. A scream welled up inside of me and I felt my mouth open but there was no sound, no sensation of anything. Only the triese lea.
I stared up at the high crystal ceiling, knowing that I was shrieking though I couldn't hear it, writhing painfully on the cold blue floor. My last coherent thought was sadness that I wasn't able to accept the future gift. But better death than madness . . .