XLIV

And now, though the scene around me was so terrible and the air so thick with desperate cries, I felt myself slip into a state of inexpressible rest and peace.  So intense was the heat as we drew nearer the flaming gateway that it no longer registered on my senses.  The wound in my heart burned hotter than ever, and I began to feel as if I were melting, both inside and out.  It was an indescribably pleasant and soothing sensation.  Relaxed, supple, flexible, and yielding, my body sank deeply into the lady’s arms.  I closed my eyes and leaned my head against her breast.

When we were almost directly beneath the fiery arch itself, my repose was suddenly shaken by the strident sound of a powerful revving engine.  Raising my head to glance in the direction of the noise, I found that its source was none other than the elegant yacht manned by my old friends Ralph, Jack, and Dr. Roger.  All three were on the vessel’s bridge, wrestling frantically with the controls, striving with every ounce of their gas-powered might to break free of the force of the current which was drawing them inexorably into the sun’s open mouth.  On either side of the yacht hundreds of other craft, both large and small, were streaming through the bright portal surrounded by flaming bits of flotsam and jetsam.

As I watched, the laboring yacht nosed slowly around, gradually putting its stern toward the sunset.  Then, with a final surge of power, it inched its way out of the current and drew off slightly to the south.  But its struggle was far from over; for, as I have explained, the waters on either side of the sun – those not sucked through the fiery gateway – were pouring over the margin of the world in an endless cataract.  Any vessel coming this far had only two options:  either it must pass through the sun’s arch or fall over the edge.

Its engines screaming, its tailpipes shuddering and spewing black smoke, the yacht struggled to escape the irresistible pull of the falls.  But it was all to no avail.  Just as the prow began to turn to the east, the craft’s progress suddenly faltered, then halted altogether.  In the next instant the stern burst into flame.  Then came a terrific explosion as the fuel tanks were ignited and a shattering of glass as the cabin windows burst.

With that the nose swung swiftly around to the west and the entire craft went spinning over the precipice in a cloud of spray and smoke.

*  *  *  *  *  *  *  *  *  *

XLII

I felt my head begin to swim as I looked first at the basket of apples and then up into the boy’s clear blue eyes.

“Is it possible …” I stammered.

“Say no more,” he interrupted.  “I am the man you met under the tarpaulin on the raft.  Oh, if only you could see yourself now!”  And he laughed as if he could not contain his joy.

Then I took one of the apples from the basket and ate it with great relish. No apple ever tasted sweeter.  It warmed my heart from within and dispersed the terrible sense of dread that had gripped me for so long.  I wiped my mouth and smiled up at the boy, a feeling of relief and inexplicable peace washing over me like a summer rain.  But in the next moment I was stricken with a feeling of sudden weakness.  My legs collapsed beneath me so that I fell down and lay upon the surface of the water at the boy’s feet.

“What is happening?” I whimpered in alarm.  “You said that eating the apple would give me strength.  Instead, I feel so weak that I cannot even stand.  How can I complete my journey now?”

“Take courage,” said a new voice.  “Your weakness is your strength.  You are now too young and small and feeble to stand or walk on your own.  You are happy and to be envied, for I am now going to carry you the rest of the way.

I turned my head in the direction of the voice.  There behind me stood the three ladies, Givers of the Gifts, who had the power of changing their shapes and taking on the form of birds.  It was the dark-haired one who had spoken to me, the one I understood to be the eldest, the wise raven of the night sky.  She was clad all in black and midnight blue, a diadem of white gold about her brow.

On her right stood the dove, the lady of the auburn hair.  She seemed larger and more majestic than I remembered her.  Her face and eyes glowed, her cloak of white feathers was thrown back over her shoulders, and her bare arms were resplendent with armlets and bracelets of silver.  Even her hair seemed to have changed its color to a fiery red, and it appeared like an aura of flame as the hot wind whipped it wildly to and fro.

On the left stood the youngest of the three — the sparrow, the girl with the circlet of spring flowers in her golden hair.  She looked at me and smiled, and I smiled back.

Then the dark-haired lady stooped down and lifted me in her arms.  Straightening up, she turned to face the sunset, the golden-haired girl taking her place beside us and holding me by the hand.  But the lady with the fiery red hair went on ahead, leading the way through the reefs and rocks, past the disastrous smokes and flames, over the flashing wave-tips, straight into the burning gateway of the setting sun.  The boy went beside us, holding his clay lamp aloft, its pale flame strangely visible even against the blinding background of the sun’s rays.  In the sky above me the Firebird reappeared.

*  *  *  *  *  *  *  *  *  *

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.”

*  *  *  *  *  *  *  *  *  *

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.

*  *  *  *  *  *  *  *  *  *

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.                            

*  *  *  *  *  *  *  *  *  *

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.

*  *  *  *  *  *  *  *  *  *