Spirit Walker (24 page)

Chapter 25: Journey of the Worm

When Tull rose up before dawn, the ash on the hillside had turned a pale gray, almost white, so that in the semi-darkness, the ash looked as if it were snow.

Phylomon told them, “We must begin the journey at dawn so we can reach the top of the tower by midday. We must take no food, and only the smallest flasks of water.”

Then he led them along slowly.

To reach the tower, they had to tread through a maze of small valleys, past strange rocks in odd formations. Pieces of metal and glass jutted from the ground at extreme angles. When they reached the bottom of the tower, the land all around it was cluttered with twisted shapes of metal and glass, as if an alien mind had ringed the tower with an equally bizarre forest.

The bottom of the tower was a simple glass pole with glass stairs leading around it, spiraling up. The Benbow glass was tougher than diamond of course, and could not be destroyed by heat, even a lightning strike.

An ornate rail rose up on each side of the stairs. Engraved upon the railing were countless peoples—Pwi dressed in ancient headgear, Starfarers with tall lean bodies, Hukm with broad furry chests and leather faces, simple humans dressed as traders, slavers, workers. Men and women, people of all ages—all running, crawling, hobbling up the tower. At the bottom stair, Phylomon scraped the dirt to reveal some ornate letters: “The Journey of the Worm.”

Phylomon waited for the sun to strike the bottom stair. For the first time that fall, Tull could see his breath in the cold air. His “soul cloud,” as the Pwi called it.

When the sun struck the bottom stair so that it shone along its whole length like a green and golden rod, they began to climb. Phylomon raced ahead and urged the others to hurry. For the first few minutes, Tull was so occupied with trying to match the grueling pace that he did not notice his surroundings below him, but then he looked down and gasped in surprise. With the sun rising, the rays of light caught upon the small scraps of metal that jutted from the ground, the strangely shaped rocks, and small hills. The light coming from the east threw shadows upon the gray ash, and the shadows resolved themselves into the figures of two lovers, naked on the ground, a woman lying atop a man, with one leg draped over him.

Tull thought it a clever trick, but Phylomon pressed them forward, and inch by inch as the sun rose over the mountains, the shadows moved, recombining into new shapes. Tull watched the lovers disintegrate, and suddenly as he ran he realized that he had made an error—he had only seen a small part of the picture—for the lovers resolved into a much larger image of a sabertooth, chasing a child through a horrific dreamscape of melting trees.

What is the meaning of this?
Tull wondered. He suddenly had a feeling that the artist was trying to convey something, but for the moment, the meaning eluded.

And so it began. Tull ran behind Phylomon and Ayuvah, and at each turn of the stairs he was aware of the continual play of sun and shadow to form new images. Always the images grew, so that he learned to look beyond the borders of the old picture to discern a larger portrait. Some images were superimposed one upon another—a man selling a woman in a Craal slave market was suddenly revealed to be a man making the figure-eight upon her hand as a sign of marriage.

Is my wife a slave to me?
Tull wondered. If it was slavery, it was joyous slavery, for Tull saw that both the man and woman smiled.

Perhaps the images are only meant to make me think,
he wondered.

A line of stones with odd indentations to cast shadows upon their tops could be seen to be joyful children, or if you lined them together two at a time they could also be seen as two oxen pulling a cart, or viewed in a pair of threes they became warriors with whitened faces, or as a whole they could be seen as a beggar with an outstretched hand pleading for food upon an empty platter, and then suddenly the image opened up, and among the surrounding stones he saw children and parents and grandparents joined hand to hand in a circle.

Will my children be my enemies, my servants? Will they be beggars I resent, or will they grow in my image, an unending circle?

Still the shadows shortened and changed, giving birth to new depictions.

And Tull saw that the shadow show was about relationships and perceptions. At any moment, the shadows became one thing for him, yet he wondered if Phylomon and Ayuvah might see completely different views. Perhaps because of the limits of his own mind and imagination, he could only discern certain patterns.

And perhaps,
Tull wondered,
Huron is saying that all relationships are mere perceptions, never fully understood by the participants? That our view of a relationship creates the relationship? If I were to run this same course in twenty years, would I see the same patterns?

Tull’s throat was dry, but he licked his lips and kept running. His legs ached and he became dizzy, and he found that he was moving in a dance—take two steps, turn to the right, take two steps, turn to the right, take two steps, turn to the right. His own steps, along with the steps of the others, set up a complex pattern of harmonics. The glass hummed with a low-pitched tone, and he could almost imagine that he heard a song forming in his head.

And then they came to a landing, and Phylomon bid them to halt and drink some water.

“Huron,” he said between panting breaths, “was an odd man. When he lived, the Pwi saw life as a stair, a straight path between nonexistence to all-existence, where we expanded and grew until we filled the universe. They called this path
Laschi Chamepar,
the Path of the Crushed Heart.”

Tull gasped, for that was the name that Chaa had bestowed upon him.

Phylomon continued, “The Starfarers, for the most part, saw life as only a circle—a journey from life to the grave, and the mystics among them asserted that once they reached the grave, they circled back to life—a maddening, meaningless journey.

“But Huron was enraged by both prospects. He saw life as a journey along an endless winding stair. With each step up, he believed, we view a greater expanse on the horizon, and with each completion of a circuit, we enlarge our knowledge and see the world in a new way, gain a greater awareness of the diversity and complexity of life. When he built this, Huron said to me, that if we but had the eyes to see, with each turning we make upon these stairs, we would be granted a different vision of the world below.

“He was a madman, of course, obsessed by the need to present his views. He used to say that we were all spoiled, that we Starfarers were born believing that happiness was deserved, the birthright of mankind by virtue of the fact of our mere existence. He scorned such foolishness, and taught that happiness is the reward for those who learn
how
to live.”

Phylomon watched Tull for a long moment, and Tull wondered what thoughts the blue man was trying to drill into him. “Happiness is the reward for those who learn how
to live.” Phylomon repeated, yet his face was sad. Tull wondered if the Starfarer was happy. Had he, after a thousand years, still not learned how to live?

Phylomon fell silent, then raced ahead and upward. Tull followed behind, but he was wet with sweat and feared slipping. He kept up, but there were no more pictures to be seen below. Instead, he listened to the music in his own head. He was weary of gazing below, and looked to the hills: and was astounded, for the lower hills—hills that he thought no man could have carved even if he dug for an entire lifetime, took on the image of dancing beasts.

As the group climbed, the animals changed slowly to a great circle of humans snake-dancing across the hills, and within an hour he recognized that the images shifted and showed an enlarged view of a man and woman expanding in size, filling the world, filling the universe.

When they reached a second landing, Phylomon explained. “We can rest, but don’t relax! Don’t stop. Your muscles will cramp.”

They drank a bit more water, and Phylomon stood and stretched, watching the sun. “We must reach the top at midday,” he said, and when he judged the time to be right, he sprung up the ladder. Looking down, Tull could see that the sun was high enough so that there were no more shadows upon the ground except an odd dot here and there. The illusion had been burned away.

The run to the top was more demanding than the first two runs. It was longer, and required them to run faster. Tull passed beyond the need to count steps. Instead, the journey became a matter of habit: two steps up, turn right, two steps up, turn right. Dizziness came upon him, and to combat it, he leaned his head back and gazed straight ahead at the feet of the others moving before him.

Round and round the winding stair, climbing, tripping, struggling up the smooth glass steps, the world below growing distant so that the shadows of trees squatted like flies upon a table. Sweat streamed down Tull’s brow, down his armpits, into his moccasins. And with each step, his grip slid so that he no longer trusted his footing. His head swayed backward and sideways, his legs felt loose, and he no longer cared.

Beside him, clouds loomed. They were high enough now so that the clouds no longer held the illusion of being flat on the bottom, as they often seem below. Instead they were tall and magnificent, like long quartz crystals floating through the sky, and for a while the group ran up through a wonderland of clouds, where water condensed upon the stairs.

They climbed among the billows of a cloud, then they were above white, running silently except for the blood pounding in Tull’s ears, and Tull wished that he could have stopped among the clouds and let the mist coalesce on his tongue, even if it were only a small drink. The air became cold, and ice formed a thin sheet on the stairs.

He did not look for patterns anymore. There was nothing to see. Beneath him, the mountains in their fall colors spread like a Pwi blanket of dyed mammoth hair, painted in reds and yellows upon the ground. The opal mist of the clouds floated along beneath him, and the wind blew vapors by so fast that he felt as if he watched foam floating in a stream.

Their climb took them above the coastal mountains, and Tull could see the blue haze above the sea out on the horizon, clouds sweeping off it like gauze, and somewhere over there was Smilodon Bay. After days of journeying, they had not really come so far. Only a hundred and twenty miles. Beneath them, among the pale tans of autumn grass, dark herds of giant sloths and wild ox moved across the Mammoth Run Plateau. Each poor beast watching for predators, leading its insignificant life.

There are no more illusions,
Tull thought,
only the world beneath me, curving off into a shining bow on the horizon. I am separating myself from it. Drawing away. This stair is only a thin line connecting me to the world, just as the silk flowing from an inch worm connects it to a limb. All the beasts beneath me, they are trapped in the illusion. Yet all of life is refined to a single act: the upward climb.

With a suddenness that made him gasp, Tull saw the ultimate meaning of the Journey of the Worm: All the shadows upon the ground, the different views of family, and man, of life and beauty—did not lead to greater and greater complexities to be eternally wondered at by the sages. They were mere shadows, illusions, to be grasped.

His feet seemed to be slipping out from beneath him, wet with sweat, slick with ice; the world spun more than it should. He was worn and tired, and suddenly he staggered into a crystal bar that was spread out to block his way. They had reached the top of the tower, and upon the bar a single word was written—
Death
.

Tull staggered back. He looked at the bar, and his head spun. He held to the bar for a moment, and because he had been running for hours, climbing for hours, he felt as if he were still climbing. Everything within him longed to climb. The stair beneath him, bent by the winds, shimmered in the sunlight like an icicle hanging down from a roof. Yet Tull felt that he was still traveling upward. He gazed up at his final destination, if he were to keep climbing, and above him was the sun.

I am but an inchworm, joined to this world by a silken thread. I can set myself free!

Something within him snapped, and Tull felt the silken cord drop away. For the first time in his life, Tull looked at the sun full, and saw it directly, like a great beautiful silver and violet flower, each of its flames whipping out.

Yet the light did not hurt his eyes or blind him. He was freed from his body, with its weaknesses and limitations. It was like watching waves play upon the sea from the cliffs above Moon Dance Inn, and the beauty of that great silver and violet flower was mesmerizing, and he longed to be there. And with the longing, came motion, and Tull began spiraling toward the sun, flying away.

“No!” Ayuvah shouted, and the force of the words shook Tull as if he were a sheet upon a line, blown in a fierce wind. Tull could see the sound, flashing golden waves, whipping past him, and he glanced down.

Phylomon and Ayuvah were far away, at the top of the crystal stairs, holding Tull’s body. They both glowed with a deep blue aura of concern. Tull lay with arms and legs askew, muscles twitching in his neck.

Phylomon was examining his body. “He’s dead,” Phylomon said, his words echoing through the heavens, and Tull felt curiously unconcerned by his own death.

Ayuvah shouted at the lifeless body, “Tull, do not leave! Think of the things you have left undone! Think of the kwea of your love for Wisteria! You cannot leave her!”

And when Tull thought of Wisteria, the kwea of his love slapped him. It was as if he were home, in bed with her again, with the goddess Zhofwa blowing her kisses through the open window.

The sun was a beautiful flower, beckoning to be touched, but it would always be there.

He looked down. The earth itself was a fascinating tapestry: the souls of men and animals and trees glowed like fireworms across its face, a thousand shades of purple, gold and black. Dragons floated below him, and he knew that they saw him for what he was.