XLII

“Help me!” I cried, turning my face up towards the Firebird; but my voice was lost amid the screams and shouts of the shipwrecked.

The water was up to my chest now.  I craned my neck, twisting my head this way and that in an effort to take in my surroundings for what I feared might be the last time.  The scene, which I had expected to be so glorious, had taken on an entirely disastrous aspect.  Tongues of flame flickered on every side, licking the sulfurous air.  Shafts of blood-red sunlight pierced the thick and gathering purple smokes.  Despite the heat the wound in my heart grew cold and I remembered the word the Bird had used in answer to my question:  ambiguous.

Then once again I heard his voice as if from inside my own head:  “The book!”

Quickly I produced the little book and opened it.  The first words that met my eye were fear not.

“Fear not,” I said, repeating them over to myself.  “Fear not.  Be not afraid.”  With my mind and my mouth I tried desperately to quell my rising fears.  But it was no use, for the dread was not in my mind.  It had nothing to do with the words of my mouth.  I felt it as if it were a dark thread in the very fiber of my being.  My heart was floundering helplessly in an ocean of terror just as surely as my body was sinking into the waters of the sea.  I clenched a fist and raised it to the sky.

“‘Fear not!’” I cried, my chin in the water.  “What good does it do to tell me that?  ‘Fear not!’  You might as well throw me into the sea and tell me not to sink!  You might as well command a stone to float or a feather not to fly before the wind!  What does it accomplish?  How does it help?”

But no answer came, only a repetition of the command:  fear not.  Horror engulfed me and my head slipped beneath the water.

I don’t believe I remained below the surface for more than a few seconds, but it felt like an eternity, during which a flood of confused thoughts went spiraling ceaselessly through my brain.  Foremost among them was this:  To have come so far only to be drowned in sight of the goal.  I wondered why this should be and what sense it could possibly make.

That’s when I felt a hand take hold of mine.  It gripped me tightly and began to pull, and in the next instant I was rising up out of the water.  I lifted my eyes as my head broke the surface and saw the sky, black with the smoke of burning ships and boats, and the wave-tips red with the lurid light of the dancing flames.

Then I turned and looked up into the face of my benefactor.  What a surprise to find myself staring into the eyes of a boy a little larger than myself!  He stood upon the water and drew me up to stand beside him.  His clothes, which were far too big for him, were all in rags, but I paid little attention to that.  What caught my eye was the cloak of heaven blue that he wore over everything else, the red clay lamp that he held in his hand, and the basket of golden apples that hung on his arm.

His smooth cheek glowed and his eyes danced bright in the firelight as he held out the basket of apples.

“Take and eat,” he said with a smile.  “You’re hungry, and you’re going to need your strength.”

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XLI

The dazzling half-circle on the horizon grew larger and larger as I sped forward, its great arch towering above me and filling half the sky.  The heat was beyond anything I had ever experienced.  I felt small and withered before it, like a tiny black raisin bobbing on the surface of the sea.  It seemed as if I must soon burn away or melt into nothingness beneath the fierceness of the relentless blaze.

Gradually I began to notice that there were other people all around me, some walking or standing on the current as I was, some swimming, some floating, many in boats and rafts and sea-going vessels of all kinds, all of them heading directly into the sun.

Next I heard a tremendous rushing sound which at first I took for the roar of the sunset’s flame, but soon recognized as the voice of many waters.  Squinting narrowly into the blinding brilliance, I could see that the sun was not a solid disc of fire, as I had supposed, but rather a ring, an arch, a flaming gateway through which the ocean was being sucked as if through a huge drain at the margin of the world.  This, as I now realized, was the source of the current’s pull.  Peering through the fiery portal, I thought I could make out bright pin-pricks of stars shining in a velvet purple sky on the other side.  At the same moment, I discovered the reason for the booming in my ears:  on either side of the bright arch the sea was thundering over the edge of the horizon into a dark, unknowable emptiness below.

Jagged reefs appeared on the right hand and the left as the current made its way straight on into the flaming gateway of the sun.  It became clear to me that if I simply stood upon the surface I was certain to reach my goal without the slightest exertion of effort on my part.  In spite of this, I felt oppressed as with a deep and growing sense of inward dread.

Suddenly I heard cries and screams rising above the roar of the waters:  “Help!  We’re lost!  We’re ruined!”

I whipped my head around in the direction of the sound.  What I saw took my breath away.

It was a shipwreck.  There on a razor-sharp reef, its prow riven in, its cracked and creaking masts swaying and tipping crazily against the sky, lay the great golden-sterned galleon that had passed me by so long ago, the Sunrise.  I saw its passengers, all in their fine silks and velvets and laces, leaping by scores into the boiling foam, mad with terror, some with linen napkins still at their throats, others with silver forks and spoons in their hands.

An instant later the entire ship burst into flame, ignited by the sheer heat of the sun.  Flinching to one side, I saw that hundreds of other small craft – wooden skiffs and rafts and dinghies and boats of every description – had similarly caught fire, and that their crews, too, were leaping into the water on every side.

“This will surely be the end of me!” I cried to the Firebird, who was still soaring overhead.  “I’ll be burnt to a crisp!  How can I possibly go on?”

And as I my sense of dread grew ever stronger, I felt myself sinking slowly beneath the waves.

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XL

And so I rode the green sea current down the long corridor between the two great rocks, the small gray bird perched quietly and unobtrusively upon my shoulder.  When I was not reading in my little book I spent the time in talk with him.

“How wonderful it will be to see the sun again!” I babbled.  “I’ve been in the darkness for such a long time.  It’s not far now, is it?  What will it be like when we reach that place?”

“Ambiguous,” was his reply.

Ambiguous?  What could he possibly mean?  I had no idea, but I had long since ceased to expect clear answers from him.  So I kept quiet and restrained myself from questioning him further.  It was enough to know that I could trust him to be a true and faithful guide.

At length the channel widened out and the rocks fell away on either side.  The blue sky opened out in front of me, so bright to my eye as to be almost blinding.  I closed the book and stood upon the surface of the water, riding the swift ocean current, watching as sea and sky unfolded in a panorama of dazzling brilliance.  The last grim point of rock slipped away and the current flung me, staggering to keep my balance, out into the surging blue plain of the open sea.  Flinching, I squeezed my eyes shut and turned away; for there on the horizon was the edge of the setting sun itself, a radiant segment of a circle, an archway of flaming fire sitting at the edge of the world.

Covering my poor eyes, which had been weakened by such a long sojourn in the shadows, I turned to speak to the bird on my shoulder.  He was gone.  There was a flash of light, and I raised my head to see the Firebird, in all his glory, soaring ahead of me in the air.

All in an instant I was seized with an inexplicable sense of fear.  “What shall I do now?” I called to the flaming bird.

As if from within my own head his voice came to me, still and soft:  “Take one step and then another.  Go straight on into the sunset, through the blaze of the evening and out into the glory of the dawn.  There is no turning back now nor any turning aside.  The current is too strong.”

It was true.  The river in the ocean was picking up speed, flowing faster and faster every minute, drawing me irresistibly towards the fiery arch at the meeting place of sea and sky.  I knew that by my own efforts I might either speed or impede my progress, but with or without them I was sure to reach the place in due time.  And so I resolved to follow the Firebird’s instructions:  one step at a time, placing one foot before the other, I walked upon the surface of the stream in the midst of the swelling sea, faster and faster into the red blaze of the sunset.                            

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XXXIX

Even as he spoke the current gained strength, sweeping me swiftly away from that place and down the middle of the strait corridor between the two rocks.  I did nothing but stand upon the surface of its flow as it carried me rapidly along.  At the end of the channel, in the narrow gap between the dripping black walls where the rocks fell abruptly away on each side and the water spilled out into the open sea, I could see the horizon.  It was a very small piece of the horizon, but bright with clear colors and more than adequate to provide me with a powerful hint of the glory soon to be revealed.

Though profoundly thankful and filled with the joy of anticipation, I could not help turning to the small gray bird, who sat perched on my shoulder, and asking, “Why did you leave me?  And at such a terrible moment?”

“I never did,” he replied.

“How was I to know that?  I couldn’t see you!  When I followed the book’s instructions and looked up, you weren’t there.  What was I supposed to think?”

“Wasn’t the course clear to you?” he answered softly.  “Where else could you have gone?”

“But such a course!” I exclaimed.  “With monsters and blood-sucking predators on either hand!  It was like a death-trap!  Why did you lead me this way?”

“Have you or have you not be delivered?” he responded.

I, of course, had nothing to say in return.

*  *  *  *  *  *  *  *  *  *

XXXVIII

Unable to think or move, I floundered in the water, awaiting the inevitable blow.  It never came – at least not from the quarter expected.  For as the monster shifted its weight and raised its arm, its gaggle of horrid eyes flashing red, something else seized me from behind.

I cried out in pain, for the Something was hard and sharp against the skin of my left arm.  Jerking my head to one side, I saw that it was a huge glossy-black pincer, like that of a crab or lobster.  The creature to which it was attached was shaped like a gigantic beetle or spider.  It was leaning down over me from the rocky ledge above, its ungainly body, encased in overlapping black plates or scales, creaking unsteadily on eight spindly multi-jointed legs.  From beneath its armor peered two green and glowing eyes.

My brain reeled.  Stars danced before my eyes.  The great pincer tightened, drawing the bright red blood.  Slowly the creature drew me, screaming, shouting, and pounding the iron-hard armor with my free hand, up to the mouth of its hole.  Here it would certainly have devoured me had not the first monster shot out an elastic limb and caught me by the waist.

Then began a tug o’ war that continued until the crab-like creature suddenly and deftly snipped off the other’s arm with its empty claw.  With a howl, the hundred-eyed beast flung three more snaky limbs across the channel, fastening them not upon me but around the body of the black crab.  Then both creatures splashed down into the churning green water with me tightly in their grasp.

By reason of its weight, the black crab sank immediately.  I held my breath until it seemed my lungs must burst.  At last, with a violent tug of its tentacles, the hundred-eyed monster, which was floating on the surface like a great bulbous jellyfish, drew both the crab and myself out of the water and straight towards its gaping red maw.

To my surprise, it was at this very moment that the words of the book came back to me once more:

Look up, for help is near.

Even in the midst of my terror and confusion I did look up.  Out of the corner of my eye I caught a glimpse of the small gray bird sitting on a projecting ledge of rock above my head.  He winked at me before fluttering off into the air.

Strange to say, that wink changed everything.  My entire outlook was instantly altered.  Though bleeding, bruised, and nearly suffocated in the crush, I could not help laughing out loud as I gazed upon the two unsightly creatures, so ridiculous did they appear to me in the midst of their deadly struggle.  I laughed again as the black crab lunged with its claw, the other catching the pincer in its powerful teeth.  An instant later I was free, the crab having released me in an attempt to save its own life.  I sank, then surfaced, blowing and spluttering and trying desperately to swim.

“The book!  The book!” came a voice at my ear.  “Remember the words of the book!”

I raised my face to the zenith as the foam surged over my head, filling my nose and mouth.  Even as I went under I could see through the lens of shifting water bright bands of cloud floating in stripes of white and gold across a patch of clear blue sky between the black summits of the rocks.  I knew without seeing it that the sun was above the horizon and very near indeed.

And then I was rising slowly out of the water.  First my face, then my whole head broke the surface.  Gratefully I gulped the salty air as my shoulders, chest, arms, stomach, and legs all rose dripping from the sea.  At last I stood upon my feet above the waves once more.

Turning my head, I looked up to the mouth of the hundred-eyed monster’s cave.  There lay the two creatures, dead, each locked firmly in the other’s death-grip.

“You see how simple it is,” whispered a voice at my ear.  It was, of course, the small gray bird.

“They have destroyed each other,” he said.  “They have cancelled one another out.”

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