The Book Of Atemporal Itineraries

Published Date: 02 Nov 2017

It is if time began with that white-washed house and the waves and then time ended.

I measure the seashore’s ruin to prevent cliff-fall. Each day I gauge wave-troughs and heights and estimate the length of each wave as it slows down to the shallows at its furthest reach. In all weather, I go down to the coast and use a method based on my own height, five foot four and a half inches, to check the eye-level crest and plunge in with a surf-board to estimate the length. One foot is ankle to knee high. Two foot is knee to thigh. Three foot is waist high. Four foot is chest high. Five foot is head high, crouched.

I live on the shoreline with a dry dock on the ground floor, some narrow steps up to a small living room, a kitchen and a bedroom. The view takes in the whole Atlantic, blue, active and changing, from dawn to dusk.

I collect my mail from the Post Office in the village. There is never very much: postcards from past College friends, letters from my parents and suchlike. Today a curious package has arrived, oddly addressed to me. As I open it, I realise how old and frail it is. It is written in a strange language and is illustrated with florid, but incomprehensible diagrams.

I am determined to break the code and pour over ciphers and cryptograms on my bare kitchen table. I have copied it out page by page, as the original manuscript is likely to perish. I have discovered the text is in Latin, written backward. It tells me nothing of its author. I want to show it to others, but I am so possessive of my discovery that I have decided to keep it to myself.

It addresses me in the second person’ I am to take seven journeys; one across moorland, against my will, one to a park, under fear, one of escape, in rashness, one of recapture, in despair, one under a thrall, in awe across desert and one of rescue, in courage. The final journey, it seems, I have already taken, otherwise I would not have the book. I now put down the text, disbelieve every page and go straight back to the sea.

*

The Book of Atemporal Itineraries

"Before" is only a mass of images, like seeing one’s life in photos on a wall.

I could only recollect from being in a dry sea where the ground was fine, shifting sand that obeyed the laws of water. The grains had the texture of human bones. I gripped the rocks scattered in the pool of soil, having already nearly drowned in a sudden fall. I saw an outcrop of rocks, like an island and made my way towards it. As I climbed from boulder to boulder, I noticed the silt was turning red. As it did so, the soil became like a sea, rippling on the surface. The swirling red sand grew darker. I began to see a shape moving in the depths, its pale, pink contours in motion. I tried to hide in the columns of sandstone that rose from the desert. Some had plants, even trees, growing on their summits. I used the tendrils to pull myself up to safety. I became aware that whomsoever I was, I was strong.

I saw a shape rise up from the deep, displacing the red drifts. A creature was throbbing and writhing inside it. I could see black wisps soaked in the gore, trailing like a web. I felt the presence of other beings, passing me by with speed and strength. They seemed able to walk on the insecure ground. The beings who moved like dragonflies, had swathes of cloth that seemed as vast as the clouds with which they covered the shell. Something alive struggled within the cloths and the beings beckoned to me to come with them, yet spoke in human voices,

"Why should I come?"

"Because you have seen."

"But I saw nothing."

"You saw enough to want to see more."

I decided the hostile place where I found myself was more dangerous than following the beings. They flew across the sky that turned from fiery red to yellow lightning. One held me with a hand and arm while bearing the wrapped being with the other I gripped tightly with my other arm. I saw hills of ancient masonry and the lights of villages, then the flying creatures, swerved to avoid the blasts of a massive volcano made out of the remnants of cities, which tore a mountain apart with sheets of fire and smoke. I was glad to be in the beings’ grip than on that ground. The fumes from the volcano were vaster than the remnant of the mountain. Forks of lightning flickered across the stones. We had diverted to a place of bare rock. The grey scene passed under us. Then suddenly, we fell to the land. It was a firm desert, of human artefacts: old weapons, toys, prayer-beads.

The beings and their creature had gone. I lay on the bare expanse of land. To my right, a sandstorm seemed to arise and from within it a woman. She seemed to belong to the wilderness. She was swirling up the human sand into a cloud with a branch like a firebrand. Out of the mist of sand I could see her face as she smiled at me. I began to walk towards her. Then she disappeared. Unexpectedly I tripped. I was staring at my feet. The woman had thrown me to the ground. Struggling upwards, I blundered forward. The woman who had fair hair and blue eyes fixed me with a firm look. She pushed me gently forwards and I knew I had a journey ahead of me. I regretted being left by those great quick beings that had flown me to this place. I lashed out with my fists to try and overcome the woman and get away. She leaped aside deftly and threw me down to the ground in a single action, rolling me over her back. I fell with a heavy blow. She pulled me up with a smile on her face.

The First Journey

We stood in the wasteland now clearing in the mist. The report of thunder and the threat of distant volcanoes never went away on this planet.

"You are too timid to challenge me, chattel," she laughed.

Right then I felt wounded and humiliated.

"I can’t believe what you’ve done to me. Face me with fists and I’ll fight you."

"No, I’ve fought you already. All reality is based on strength. Those stronger than me rule me, though I am strong enough not to be considered a slave."

"Why call me chattel?"

"As my chattel I can have your strength, your wisdom by demand, or I can sell you."

"I can’t even remember where I have come from. How do you know I have knowledge?"

"You understood my language at once. Yet you speak with a foreign accent. This means you must have leaned it. The Tord tongue is not spoken commonly, which means you must know others."

"I won’t help you!" I sounded peevish and stupid. "I can’t help you. I cannot remember where I have come from or who I am."

"You have a problem remembering who you are and where you come from? I am giving you the outlet for your problems. I will protect you. I have the most absolute authority any person can have over you. This allowed as you are a stranger. I can be as clinical as I want in imposing my authority."

"You’re a monster!"

The woman laughed. "I keep my dignity. I am here to help you understand the pathos of your state. "The Pseudo- Arifet has written, ‘For that some should rule and others be ruled is a thing not only necessary, but expedient; from the hour of their birth, some are marked out for subjection, others for rule."

We set off across the desert, but soon reached countryside of lakes, waterfalls, forests and cliffs. My progress was slow as I was trying to throw her off, but it did not seem to worry my captor and companion. We slept in a rough hut made of loose branches and leaves which the woman who refused to name herself was able to construct with great skill. She sent me out to gather leaves to soften our sleep on the hard soil. When she was satisfied, we sat at the entrance to the shack she had built. I asked her how long this "slavery" was going to last.

"It will last for the rest of your life."

Enraged, I advanced on her. Again she hurled me down, this time bending expertly to throw me over the other shoulder. I came down harder. I knew it was a deliberate warning. She dragged me up again. She was slim with long fair hair and an athlete’s body. Her skin was fair and she had a pointed face with firm features. She wore a small leather jacket that left her legs free to fight and run. She wore the clothes of a hunter. I gathered my strength.

"I know I was free in my previous life, though I cannot remember it. Surely all of us should be free?"

"Some philosophers defend your slavery as natural and necessary. The city I come from believes that the practice of any manual job should disqualify you from citizenship."

"I am older and not so strong."

"You can teach the city. You might serve your owner as a tutor. The task is menial as you are the means not the end of an owner’s knowledge."

"How do you know I am not important in my own country?"

"The city declares all non-Tords slaves by birth. Fit for nothing but obedience, as you are. You are a non-person, outside the norms."

"I thought you were my owner."

"No I will sell you."

"That’s despicable! No-one will buy me."

"Ironically it is people like you with your knowledge who became slaves to the rich, despite your age. You could get involved in their social lives and be respected."

"But what purpose would it serve? Such people would be no concern of mine. I wouldn’t have seen one of their children come into the world, nor been present at their daughters' weddings; I wouldn't share their beliefs, I wouldn't even know a single one of them by name."

She fixed me firmly with her blue eyes and told me to sleep, as we had far to go tomorrow.

In the morning we ate fish which she had caught in the lake. I could see the shoals of fish darting through the clear water. Hunger made me a willing partner in the task. She had baited a trap the night before. Four fine button fish squirmed on the hooks. She took the line and threw it over her shoulder. We fried them over a charcoal fire. I noticed that her attitude towards me had changed. She was both more respectful and yet more anxious

Then we took a path across some low hills. After several hours’ dogged walking, which the woman managed without a sign of weariness, we came out of a wood of trees that had barks that resembled the living scales of armoured fish or reptiles. Perhaps, like so much here they were a genetic compromise between something natured and something once human. Below us I saw a city whose highest towers competed with the hills that formed a backdrop to it.

I noticed she then changed her direction. Instead of making for the place, the woman led me into the dense wood. I saw now why the trees were armoured. Huge lumbering beasts were chomping even the hardest vegetation. They seemed to be heedless of our presence, though the woman kept out of their line of sight and warned me to do the same. She told me they were beetle-birds, though they were flightless.

I asked her why we had taken the path away from the city. We came to a dense ring of buckler-trees. She fixed me with a determined look and began to speak in a whisper. This was a little incongruous in an armoured forest, but I strained forward to hear her.

"I am the daughter of Siri, whom you have just witnessed being reborn. I heard the thunder of the Ultimates’ wings which brought me to you. You would have died in the desert had I not found you. My mother deserted me here. I have grown up here. All have learned I have learned from those I captured and sold."

"But we are out of the desert, so you can let me go."

The woman got up and faced me. She was not menacing, but the prevailing impression she gave was one that she was in charge.

"I have a task to accomplish. I cannot tell you it, as to do so would implicate you. I came back from the desert to be avenged. This is why I am a slaver. It is the perfect role to stimulate revolt. This is why you will stay in my ownership. A thrall has no blame. Yet I know you have the strength to help me. You will help me to complete my task in two ways, hatching a plot together now and promising to fight at the end."

"Thralls can make no promises."

"Thralls can be wise but I would not have you advise others. Now I want you to be my close advisor. My view of our relationship affects my ability to do the task I have to do."

We stayed in that landscape of knobbed, thick-barked trees and beetle-birds for what must have been several months. We lived on the wild animals of the terrain, drank fresh water from the streams and made shelters from the trees and branches in the woods. The winter air-frosts filled the woods with dew -icicles and unassailable snowdrifts. The mass of the hills asserted themselves with dangerous falls of snow and huge carpets after blizzards would threaten to give way and deluge us in a frozen mass. Violent winds cut through the thickest walls of branches and leaves we could make. She was always stronger. Even when her down-hair rose, stiff in its follicles on her legs and arms, she would brush off the frost, break through the surface ice, swim and wash her hair in the mountain lakes. I would be huddled by the fire.

She was attentive to every word I had to tell her. I knew much, but being unable to remember who I was, I could not understand why I knew. I gave up trying to escape after many carefully-planned attempts, some almost risking her life. Her rule became more despotic at each failed flight. She would often make expeditions into the city to steal books and documents.

She was implacable, having learned her skills through surviving what those who had banished her had expected her not to survive. She began to plead with me in the end, rather than use her strength.

"I want you to set me to read all the books I can get my hands on, educate me in philosophy and tell me about ruins we come across as we travel. I want to grow in intelligence. Our relationship must be that of tutor and pupil, teacher and student, but also that of slave and owner. You have no choice but to accept my discipline, not to enforce any view of mine, but to give you complete detachment. Without gratuitous ownership your detachment could not be guaranteed. You will take many more liberties than an actual slave would. It's more as if you are almost comical in submitting to a role as my slave. Yet I must have the final decision in our current actions and destinations."

Life was comfortable and I was happy to help. I couldn’t resist asking what this great task was she had to do, but she refused to tell me as such knowledge would decrease my detachment. She often resisted my playful sexual advances and her measures made it obvious that in that aspect of her life, my neutrality was also to be observed.

One day she told she was going back into the city. I was to come with her and she would follow through her intention of selling me. She spent many days carefully explaining why this had to be. I was more indignant and angry at losing her, than being reduced to a chattel again.

We were walking in the forested highlands looking down at the city from their heights. She as always wore her slavers’ clothes and I had the coarse gown of a slave. The suns were beginning to warm up the brisk start to the day and I never saw her looking more radiant and enticing on that day she counselled me on how to be resigned to separation. My anger suited her as it required me to play a predictable part her the return to the unnamed City

"You have done what I wanted from you. Yet in a way you have done more for me than I thought. You have taught me to be detached. At first I wanted revenge but you have taught me three rules of action which I treasure." 

"What on Ruh are they?"

"First, you taught me about the diversity of personal opinions. Each person has his own opinion about each matter, and thus they are all wrong and yet all right. There is rarely a true right answer and this allows me to keep an open mind when dealing with people and with seeing an argument from all sides."

"Then let them see the other side of slavery."

"I want to fill the people of Ruh with fear first, yet I love them, they are my people and so you have helped me tell them about their freedom. This I will do once they are united under my rule."

"Why do you want them to fear you."

"So that through me they should cease to fear illusions."

"Why not just let people free to look after themselves and for that matter let me go too."

"No the people will only fall into worse illusions. As for your sins against me they are forgiven and your remorse will come. I take them all upon me."

"Sins against you!" I interpolated.

"One day you will come to see it was the only way your wisdom could help us here."

She embraced me then and we set off for the city. My heart was dead with an insuperable pain. I the slave-tutor had fallen in love with the owner-pupil. On the way through the lower forest she told me;

 

"The second lesson you taught me was to distrust passion. I want to do nothing now out of sheer passion. In your attempts to get away from me, you made out a plan and executed it without passion, without repentance, almost without a soul. You did not venture on anything foolish that might have had yourself killed. You did what you knew you had to do."

If only she knew the truth! "So even you admit I had to escape."

"You did your best, but it was not your priority. Your ironic detachment helped me be sceptical about everything in the world around me, even more ethereal things like the God, Areh. You have also shown me the way to gain my freedom. Areh owned nature: the sky, the earth, the clouds. Do you remember that time when I was looking into the sky, You did not see Areh in all his glory, you saw a sky that "was as ordinary as an old man’s face"... Dead nature burst into life, my youth caught fire like straw in the wind and I realised I was alone, utterly alone in the gods’ good-will, little universe."

"Yet for all I know Areh might be a God!"

"I know that you didn’t care either way. My being able to separate nature from that which created, it gave me my complete and utter freedom. My final conclusion was brought about through teachings from you."

"I’m very surprised you didn’t work out that people need their freedom too."

"The third lesson was complete scepticism. Logic and education were predominant in both your personality and your teaching me. You set me to read all the books I could get my hands on, educated me in philosophy and explained the ruins in the countryside we travelled over. I often thought of letting you go, but in the end I knew you had be my property, not to enforce any view of mine, but to give you complete detachment. Without gratuitous ownership your detachment could not be guaranteed.

 A lake lay before us. On the left side of the nearest was a timber-built jetty. On the right was a small inlet. Opposite I saw two round, vertical towers built on the edges of two promontories. Between them a mass of land had been left wild and overgrown with unknown bushes and fir trees. On the left behind the wilderness island a river flowed into a smaller lake. It was bordered by the leafy riverfront of the city. A cluster of building rose up the hill towards the central towers which seemed to be those of a castle or a temple. I asked the woman what the town was called. She smiled enigmatically and refused to say.

"I won’t give you clues should you try to escape."

She let me rest for a while.

"I will never give up my freedom."

The woman smiled, as if secretly to herself. She must have heard these protests many times before.

"I hear some voices, in this city, which are against your slavery and suggest that every person living in a city-state has the right to freedom, subject to no one, except only to laws decided using major right. Major right could weaken our city, but those who believe it have the right as citizens to be heard."

"I will appeal to them."

"One of our thinkers called Samad, says: "The Gods have set everyone free. No one is made a slave by nature." If that were so, then how are some weak and some strong? Your appeal will not be heard in your rich owners’ house .The rich do not like major right, besides they will doubt your neutrality. A poem by Nome also shows that he opposes slavery. He was himself a slave and speaks through a character in one of his plays. His testimony is biased. All slaves want to be free. They should want to be free to justify the strength and superiority of their owners. The Tords define their freedom in terms of your slavery. I want you to want to be free in order to prove my strength in keeping you captive."

Reacting, I began to run, but she felled me to the ground and pulled me behind her mockingly. I twisted and turned to either side in vain. She wrenched me to my feet and gently pushed me onwards to the right and we made for the inlet where I thought a boat would be moored. Instead I noticed large, ruined structures which had been drowned in the lake and formed a causeway under a shallow current that rippled over my feet as I headed for the first of the towers. In the depths of the lake I could see deposit after deposit of ancient human building. On approaching nearer I looked up to see the towers had more of the characteristics of a pyramid or a ziggurat.

"Don’t struggle, or I really will hurt you!" I stared at her. She meant it.

The companion who had returned to being a slave-hunter bound me with a rope, looped around my neck, a double twist around my arms and shoulders, re-looped at my back and bound my hands behind me. She tied no knots and simply held on to the rope. I had planned to run again, but she had predicted my flight with an experienced eye. Other inhabitants were beginning to pass us in the streets.

"I don’t want you stolen by anyone else, or I won’t be paid. There’s a good price for educated strangers. I’ve too much unsold stock in my camp in the Yter Crater, in the desert. " she spoke to me in order to be overheard.

We continued to walk through the city. She told me the name of the city was Worn. Its buildings were huge, but the people seemed dwarfed by them. The market stalls were set up under lofty arches that seemed unfitting to their routine economy. I passed many people who seemed not to care about the slave-catcher with her hand on the rope. Some recognised the woman and smiled.

The country was full of surprises. The lake was part of a caldara which had a steep descent on one side, though the fantastic and highly-wrought town buildings continued to go up the mountain. Some of the buildings had waterfalls cascading down the side of the caldara into the valley below.

I had only eaten the fish that morning and apart from water from a flask I had consumed nothing all day. It was beginning to be dark. The sky was turning leaden and people were becoming less frequent on the streets. The woman escorted me, as I muttered and stumbled down a narrow street where we came upon a ruined building in which various statues stood all in a state of dilapidation. A man with a fresh face and brown hair advanced on us with a huge sword. At first I thought he was going to attack us both. Instead he assumed the role of a guard and accompanied us.

I appealed to the guard to release me as I had been captured by force. The guard laughed out loud.

"I question your right to speak, though. I suppose you are new to the land."

The guard raised his baton. The woman, who had been walking along beside, intervened.

"I will not demean myself to see pain inflicted. The threat and the uncertainty is enough." I recollected the two falls and their bruises on my body.

The guard relaxed and began to explain.

"I am paid to defend the city’s own laws. All of them permit slavery, but the rules differ greatly from region to region. Non-Tord slaves, such as you, have some chances of emancipation; though at some cost to owners."

We went on through the ruin to a rock-hewn tenement, where without ceremony I heard the sound of coin being exchanged, whispering and the sight of a woman with serrated ears. The slave-hunter threw off the rope with a quick flick of her wrist. I was bundled into a narrow room by the guard and locked into a cell with a lattice door.

The guard spoke to me as he left.

"The law protects you, and, though owners have the right to beat you at will, a number of moral and cultural limitations exist on excessive use of force. Remember those rights!"

The slaver, who said her name was Annalta, gently handed bread and wine to me through the square openings and told me not to worry and to get some sleep. There was a comfortable trestle-bed. I thanked her. She seemed surprised.

"I won’t forget you, though you won’t see me for several months. Events are not what they seem, wise one. Remember to play your part."

Then I could hear the sound of bargaining and whispered voices talking about conditions. I felt I was a commodity.

That night I either dreamed, or woke. The beings with rapid wings were hovering over me. Before my eyes they began to unveil the creature that seemed to throb with fiery life. I lay there, spellbound. There was a roar, like the flustering of powerful birds. I saw immense beings, proud, powerful and capable. One of them was the prodigious being, Areh. The sand-lake had cleared and I found myself before the writhing mass of blood. The cloth that covered the brute fell off and I was apprehensive at the prospect of seeing some monster. I looked into the face of a woman so beautiful, she took my breath away. The wide perfectly-proportioned head and shoulders that began to emerge seared my spirit. Her mouth was commanding, sensuous and severe. She looked as if she did not see me. Then she did through her grey eyes. She flinched as the gown fell and, crouched, she turned aside, shielding her body with her hands. I had seen she was a monster. The next second darkness fell.