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Chapter Five
BORN AGAIN
The underground river Sirithurin runs about five leagues from its outlet at the bottom of Lake Cornen to its cave-mouth, seldom exposed above the waves, at the head of the fiord of the Bay of Undor. What makes the Sirithurin a real oddity is that it does not always flow in the same direction. At times of very high tide, combined with low rainfall – or alternatively, perhaps, when impelled by such freak events as the giant wave that was seen by the Punchkins – the sea-flood rushes all the way back to the lake, rising into the bowl and leaving the saltiness that Swin acutely surmised and tasted. And at normal times the level of the lake is constantly affected, after an interval that varies over a few hours, by the distant tide-level.
Such facts, whether of interest or not, may at least account for Swin’s and Erum’s escape from drowning. Though dizzied, disoriented and half-crushed by the outward-flying forces, the two friends were able to keep their heads in the air, their faces dry. Though their boat was filled with water, it continued to spin down the curved and smoothly-twisting tube of air, the base of the vortex, and to achieve the exit from the whirlpool. After an indescribable time, the revolutions eased off, the boat came into a horizontal alignment amid a final deluge of water, and the Sirithurin sped on through its dark tunnel. Swin unfastened his fingers from the sides of the boat; he ignored Erum’s retching and gasping, and the horrid queasiness that he himself felt, and began at once to bail out the water with his cupped hands. This took some time. He had leisure, during the task, while still tactfully looking away from his friend, to examine their new surroundings.
The vault of the tunnel – which was, supposing it to be round in section, about two-thirds full – was smooth and polished, faintly gleaming, but not at all flat. There were many curious cavities and recesses, many wavelike patterns of deep erosion around which the water sleekly curled. The air was fresh. Swin thought he could still smell the scents of leaf, fruit and flower from outside. There was a distinct tide-mark running along, high up through the obscurity of the vault. This, again, was discontinuous and unlike the inside of a pipe. Sometimes it came down lower, with a fleeting suggestion of dark stubs of stalactites; sometimes it rose higher, into darkness. But always there was the overwhelming conviction of gigantic rock-masses piled high above.
Erum’s vomiting ceased. He moved and crouched at his own end, and began to help Swin in throwing handfuls of water out of the boat. The water was cold. Swin suddenly felt very cold. All he had been wearing, at the moment of Yabeth’s summons, was breeches, belt and boots. The pack and gear had been left by the cave. ‘How goes it?’ he called cheerfully.
‘Fine, thanks, much better,’ was the response. Erum then muttered something like: ‘But what’s happened to my hands...?’ Swin ignored this for the moment, as it made no sense; nor was there any urgency in Erum’s tone. He continued to look at the beautiful shapes of the rock as they flowed past. In the strange, colourless light, that now seemed to be growing a little stronger, he noticed scraps of living weed, dark brown or dark green, clinging to the rock-face or waving just below the surface of the water. There were clusters of pointed and bladed shapes – shellfish – and the dark glistening blobs of sea-anemones.
‘Swin –’ Erum’s voice was superficially calm – ‘turn round. Look at me.’
Swin turned, and looked, and made a convulsive jump of terror, the clenching of his buttocks lifting him right off his seat. The boat rocked wildly and almost capsized. Swin subsided. He opened his screwed-up eyes. He took a second look at his friend.
The light by which the surroundings were visible was emanating from Erum himself. A mild ghostly radiance, somewhat lacking in colour, as has been said, but clear, not misty, was shining out of Erum’s skin. His eyes were glowing pools of brightness, his hair a pale diffuse flame, his fingernails gleaming crescents. Beyond him, as he sat facing Swin with a perplexed smile, the river rushed forward into blackness; behind Swin the darkness through which they had passed was like the darkness of oblivion; yet the boat, and the water where they were, and the inscribed rocks, were contained in a little globe of constant light. And the heart of the globe was Erum. Even his belt-buckle seemed to give off a faint glimmer.
‘My God!’ said Swin, staring open-mouthed. ‘My God! Dryhten-Sweald!’
‘Is that all you can say?’ said Erum, now a little embarrassed.
‘Well, who do you think you are, then? Eangil the Voyager?’
Erum laughed and twitched a shoulder under Swin’s scrutiny. ‘It seems Providential,’ he said.
‘Yes, indeed, but how? Why? How has this come to you?’
Erum looked down, and the brightness was dimmed for a few moments as he closed his eyes. He answered in a low murmur which was covered by the subdued swilling and gurgling of the stream. Swin had to ask him to repeat what he had said. He looked up, looked Swin firmly in the eye, and his luminous gaze now held a kind of allure, a fascination. He said:
‘I think it comes from my gelding.’
‘How might that be?’ asked Swin soberly.
‘I don’t know, but it’s as if... maybe... all my darkness has been taken away from me?’
Swin could think of nothing to say in response to that, and the talk lapsed for some time. He went on scooping out the water till there was only half an inch left. He looked for the paddles, but they were both gone; the boat, however, was keeping itself to the middle of the stream. Time passed. There was no way of judging the hours or the miles. The stream seemed to be flowing levelly rather than downhill. Swin clenched his teeth to stop them chattering, and at length Erum picked up the conversation again. By tacit agreement they avoided the subject of his penalty and its miraculous consequence; they talked, instead, of their journeys and friends, of the future of Thandor and the fate of Punchkinland, of old legends and recent history. They employed pastimes, sang songs, asked riddles and played word-games. ‘I went floating down a Horrible Hole, without even a Hat, a Hood, a Handkerchief, a Hairbrush, a Horn, a Horse, a Hen, a Hawk, a Honey-pot, a Hazel-nut, a House-key, a Hoop, a Hawser, a Hammer, a Hinge, or a, a, a Heresy,’ repeated Erum. ‘Hark!’ said Swin. ‘What’s one of those?’ asked Erum. ‘No, I mean listen!’
Swin’s ear had caught the first echoes of a louder roaring. The tunnel had come down low and the current was now faster, with a perceptible downward slope. There was no telling what lay ahead, but suddenly and shockingly, after the smooth drifting, a group of dark jagged rocks were seen standing out of the stream, the white foam curling fiercely round them. Erum reached his hand out just in time and fended the boat away from the first of these, but then the boat swung round and hit violently against the second. Timbers cracked and started. Water came gushing round Swin’s feet. The cavern was full of close thunderous noise. The boat dragged and grated past more rocks, then came to a halt. Swin saw the gleaming, lowering rock-face, the end of the tunnel – the dark downward curves of the river where it passed among the upstanding rocks – the dreadful blind chasm into which it descended – the shallower depth of the stream to the right of the boat’s prow, the further smaller stones and the wet shelf that extended to meet them, rising above the surface of the water at the base of the right-hand wall. ‘Go!’ he yelled to Erum. ‘Along there! It’s not so steep!’
The boat lurched and cracked again. Erum flung himself forward, awkwardly but accurately enough; his arms came round the top of the black spike; in a moment he was clinging to it tightly. His legs contended against the implacable water and his feet sought for lodgements. Swin was ready to follow him at once, but he must wait until Erum had found his footing and moved on. Meanwhile the boat, relieved of Erum’s weight but already half-full of water, had sluggishly oscillated backwards. It was turning, it was tipping and tilting, and then Swin was out of it, falling alone, down into the throat of Sirithurin.
Perhaps he cried out as he fell; perhaps the roar of the waterfall covered his cry. We can be sure that he thought of Erum, and that his thoughts were all of pity and regret. Now, bereft of the light of his friend’s presence, Swin must rely on other senses; but the last impression received by his eyes, amid the overwhelming fury of the torrent, was of squareness – large, flat and artificial. It appeared to him that the drain of the fall had been narrowed and regulated. Then he was enveloped in cold bubbling and churning. Down he went, down down, until his outstretched hands touched something hard and smooth, tilting down and away. He felt the huge weight of water still coming down on top of him, forcing him to follow the flat thing still farther. The water was surging and beating in his ears like a menacing chug, with strange slow regularity. His fingers caught an edge. The flat board was drawing him onwards, no, drawing him forwards; before long, forwards and upwards. He was caught up in some kind of trough, being lifted, his head rising out of the water. He could breathe. The water was draining away. He slithered among bare boards, wooden blades. His hands were gashed. But the noise of the water was getting louder, an intense rain was showering all around him, and then, ah, down it came a second time, the black deluge, crushing him and pressing the life from his body. He was in some kind of mill. He thought he might not survive another turning of the wheel. That being so, he had no alternative but to seek for the sluice, casting himself forth at hazard. He came up above the water-level again, coughing hard, with white sparks flashing at the corners of his eyes. There was no indication, not the slightest mark to judge by; with a groan he launched himself over the edge of the rising blade.
A bad time followed, an excruciating ordeal. Repeatedly he thought: this is unreasonable, this is beyond human strength: nobody could be expected to survive this! He crouched into narrow sewers, he squeezed under dark wheels, he shivered and hesitated by hatchways leading to down-sloping troughs and further terrifying falls. He was crushed, scraped and lacerated, half-drowned, struck on the head and almost knocked out. Once his belt caught on some projection of rock or steel; he knew that he had bare seconds to free himself before the next blade came down; underwater, holding his breath, he fumbled desperately with his belt-buckle, pulled the belt free from his breeches and squirmed away. His boots were gone, his last clothing ripped off. Naked he was pummelled and lifted and submerged. Always he was aware, beyond the turbulence, of the turning wheels, their chugging, their churning, their endless throb. His strength was fading. He came down another chute, fetched up in low water on a solid floor and hit his head ringingly on a vertical metal surface. The water immediately began to rise all round him. Having, for once, a flat surface to rest on, he thought he might just lie there until the water covered his face, and then take it finally into his lungs...but then he found he could see. He raised his head. Above him a grille, set in place of a ceiling, was letting in a dim light. The water went on cascading and foaming around him. How cold he was. He made out an arrangement of chains and pulley-wheels; the pulleys were turning, the chains moving along. A double door, big and heavy, was being closed, its two halves cutting into and stemming the flow of water. Swin kept himself languidly upright. Already he was near the grille. He grabbed it with his fingers, pressed his face against it; nonetheless the water continued to rise all round him, lapping his shoulders, his cheeks, his hands, his forehead, smoothly rising past him and up through the grille. There was a dull boom. The door had closed. He was imprisoned in a small cell that was completely full of water. He was about to die.
But now more metallic noises and vibrations were reaching his ears: something was happening: the water-level had dropped again, allowing him to take in fresh air. Another door was being opened. A new current urged him forward. All at once there was a great surge which impatiently pulled him between the outward-opening doors with a plunge, a mighty splashing, a brief violent flow and tug and pull, and a sudden sense of lonely abandonment. He lay in a stone channel. The element that had oppressed him so cruelly was gurgling away, emptying itself and disappearing. He lay still. He realised that he had been admitted through some kind of deep lock or water-gate. The last of the gates.
He lay still, shivering.
He opened his eyes.
With a clashing of chains, and a harsh grinding of bronze on stone, the second door was being closed behind him. In front of him the channel disappeared under a black arch. Alongside, the channel wall ran between the gate and the archway. It was no more than hip-high, but it seemed to him long and tall and intimidating, as he lay there prostrate: like the outer fence of some dark sinister fortress. Beyond it a wall of roughly rendered stone was visible, and the top of a doorway. The posts and lintel of this doorway were rectangular slabs of black stone; the flat surface of the farther post had a warm sheen, a faint reflection of the reddish, flickering light which was allowing him to see the place where he was. He sat up. It looked like some sort of crude laundry: there were on one side a couple of big wooden tubs, from one of which protruded the handle-end of a gigantic pair of wooden tongs; there was a slab of rock set at an angle to the channel-wall, and a dim recess containing clay jars, and a mixed smell of soap and fire. But no-one has yet espied Fuindis doing her washing.
For a few more minutes Swin remained where he was, sitting in a puddle, naked, shivering and bleeding. Then he roused himself to do what he obviously must do next: get up, swing his leg over the low wall and go through the doorway. Leaving a trail of bloody footprints, he shuffled and hobbled into the next chamber.
There was the sense of vast caverns receding far beyond, with many intricate columns and partitions. Unlike the Punchkins, Swin was able to see all this with his eyes open, but his attention was at once drawn to the cavelet, close at hand, from which the light was shining. Its floor was smooth, sandy and dry. Swin saw a bright hearth in the rocks, like an ingle; but there was no fire, only the dark figure of Fuindis seated in a wooden chair. She was still wearing her old black gown, but now it was pushed back and her body exposed. The sourceless light gleamed and played over her heavy, large-nippled breasts, her creased belly and thick-sprouting bush, her thighs and her knees, only slightly apart, on which her hands rested separately, gathered into loose fists. The bare feet were planted on a dark rug. The necklace of white beads lay on her bosom. Sombrely she stared down at him, her tangled hair falling over her eyes; but as Swin came up to her she sat up and pushed it back from her forehead. Her gaze was dark, stern, accusing.
‘I have come to give myself up,’ he said.
Her brow relaxed a little and the severity faded from her expression. She held out her hand to him. The palm was filthy, the nails black and jagged. ‘Tulo,’ she said.
Elvish was for Swin a dead language, of course, but he found, in all that followed, that he could take her meaning with slight difficulty. And for her part, she seemed to understand all his thought, so that it did not matter when he lapsed into the common speech. Obediently he came limping towards her, right up to her. There was one other piece of furniture in the cave: a heavy black table with a few objects on it. The one he particularly noticed was a long-bladed knife that glittered in the flickering light. He swallowed painfully. Seated as she was, with her feet on the same floor, Fuindis looked down on him from her greater height. She continued sternly to gaze into his eyes, interrogating him thus, searching his soul. Her hand, however, was still offered, so Swin slowly reached forward and took it.
In the dry powerful grip he recognised her, beyond any doubt whatsoever, as the old woman, Berma, who had drunk tea with him at The King’s Head.
‘Speak,’ said she.
‘I beg for the healing of my mind,’ he said. ‘Also: I believe that the Goddess desireth my presence here.’
‘Yes,’ was the reply: ‘She is wroth with thee.’
The words fell from her lips in tones of condemnation. Again he swallowed, manfully enduring the now intense pain. He let go of her hand and continued to stand as straight as he could, awaiting the punishment-stroke, whatever might befall. But her eyes, from which he could not look away, were becoming darker and softer. Unexpectedly she then moved forward, taking a step away from the chair and seating herself, with slow and heavy grace, upon the rug. She swept the robe out behind her: she sat upright, with her legs stretched out in front. ‘Sit by me,’ she commanded.
Swin did so. Her sleeved arm came round him, drawing him in close. He tilted his head and gazed up at her, mutely inquiring, begging, pleading. The heavy face nodded. Then he laid himself down on the rug, put one arm carefully around her waist – all bare, and warm, and soft as it was – and the other over her broad bare thighs, and buried his face in her naked lap. She had a lovely complex scent: womanly, mature, but with no stink as of an unwashed old woman, no fishy smell of genitals, rather the flavours and all the aromas of the earth herself, with a hint maybe of the sea, and stronger overtones of piss and dung also, yet all gathered up into the richness of living soil, of fertile loam and sun-warmed grass, of violets, bean-flowers, honeysuckle...
He burst into tears.
He tightened his grasp on the warm flesh. She took up a corner of her gown and laid it over him so that he was all snugly covered.
Long he wept, long long tears of profound anguish, with many sobbing jerks and convulsions.
The luxuriant hair of her crotch was soft rather than wiry: as the earth would, it seemed to absorb all his copious tears and snot. He rubbed his face deeper into the welcoming lips and folds, exploring with his nose like an animal. Meanwhile her warm hand caressed the back of his head and neck and shoulders.
Presently he heard her speaking.
‘She is wroth with thee because thou hast turned aside from thy destiny.’
‘What is that?’ he mumbled.
‘As thou knowest, thy destiny is to restore the Kingdom. This is the unpardonable thing: that thou, having the strength and the right, willest not to rule.’
Swin turned his tear-stiffened face and looked up from her lap. The thick-nippled breasts loomed above him, round and shadowy. The queer speckled beads of her necklace were hanging down between them. He noticed the two small beads that were set together as a pair.
‘But what power have I?’ he asked. ‘I lack the lion’s voice for command.’
‘Nay! All needful thou hast! Cease to deny!’
Then he turned his face back and wept deeply once more. And he said: ‘I am so ashamed.’
‘Truly,’ said she, after a long quiet pause, ‘a shadow lieth on thee still. The false burden must be lifted ere thou canst receive the true.’
‘The burden,’ he asked, ‘of my destiny?’
‘For this thou wert chosen: for this the bargain was made: for this thou wert bought again from the Lord of the Dead: that serving Yabeth as her knight, thou shouldest at once redeem thine own kingdom and accomplish her purposes.’
Swin shuddered at these words. And indeed, they fell so terribly on his ears, so threateningly and burdensomely on his undefended soul, that his courage expired. With childish self-abandonment he wept, and wept, and wept, until at last an exhausted peace came over him. He lay curled up in a ball, fingering the strong, soft tufts of her pubic hair, while she continued to cuddle him and caress him like the most patient of mothers.
‘Now get off me,’ she said at last. ‘Lie down on your front.’
Once again he obeyed. But now a small secret voice of resentment spoke clearly within him: Am I never to be free? I desire no burden at all! I desire to be free!
Fuindis gathered spittle in her mouth: then, kneeling over him, she spat, full and warm, onto his back. Her hands then pressed down on him with great force, almost unbearable yet gratifying and welcome. Eased and oiled by the spittle, they passed firmly down his back, buttocks and legs, as far as his heels. He could feel, could even hear, his bones cracking, his spine clicking and being moved with a succession of intense fiery explosions and sparks of brilliant pain. He was commanded to turn over. The heavy, desirable, irresistible touch travelled up along his body, around his erect prick, over and somehow through his belly and up to his breast. Swin gasped. His shoulders and neck received the forceful healing. ‘Thank you, Lady Fuindis,’ he said. He rose to his feet, feeling as light as a feather.
What next? She was standing at the table now, grabbing handfuls of herbs from the open jars that stood there and carelessly dropping them into a red earthenware jug. She added a ladleful of slimy black jelly. The light grew brighter. The cave seemed to be full of a surging golden fire, through which Fuindis was visible as a tall shadow, featureless though clear-edged. She turned to him, holding the jug in her hands. ‘Thy boon is granted,’ she said. She stooped and placed the jug on the floor. Swin tried to work out what boon she was talking about, but then his puzzlement gave place to sheer disbelief. This cannot be happening, said his mind: such things as this simply cannot be! Nevertheless it was so: Fuindis had gathered the skirts of her robe and pulled them up around her waist, and was now squatting above the jug. Swin could see the full, protuberant outlines of her nether lips. A dark jet poured from them. She did not urinate precisely. A lot of the liquid splashed around the vessel, wetting the floor and the rug with dark stains. It had no golden gleam, no lustre: dark and repulsive it appeared, and it stank: it stank of piss. A gurgling note came out of the jug and rose in pitch until the jug was nearly full.
Fuindis wiped herself with her hand, dried her hand on her gown, closed the gown and tightly knotted the girdle; bent down, picked up the jug and brought it to him. She now looked terribly witchlike. Her hair was falling over her eyes and her face had a look of glee. ‘Take it!’ she commanded.
He carefully took the jug from her. It was hot and heavy. The liquid was black, with steam rising from it and blackish objects floating upon it; but it was largely covered with a grey froth which crawled and writhed about the inner surface, having an independent life of its own. ‘I thank you for this also, Lady,’ he said courteously, ‘but what is it for?’
‘For you, of course, you fool!’ she shouted. She sat down in her chair. ‘What you need! Go on!’
‘But what is –’ Swin’s voice died away in the middle of his question.
‘Yes, memory beer,’ confirmed the Witch, with a kind of scornful private triumph. ‘Seldom do mortals think to ask me how it is brewed! Now drink!’
While Swin stood there, struggling with disgust and dismay and resentful anger, the light faded and thickened around him until he was alone in an amber-coloured mist.
He raised the jug to his mouth and drank.
The beer was just as nasty as he or anyone else would have expected, but he found, as the Punchkins had done, that it went down more easily after the first few swallows.
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