Chapter 25 #6
“I don’t know why,” I said trembling, “but I am terribly afraid. I don’t dare.
” I tried to forcibly remind myself of the powerful feeling and the all-encompassing understanding that I had experienced the last few times I went through, but all I managed to bring to mind was the terrible, living eyes staring at me from out of that wooden statue, then the feeling of suction, compression, and the suffocating passage yesterday on the way back to my world.
Jean smiled slyly and pulled out a coin that looked exactly like mine, a coin from the house of Ibelin in Beirut. Suddenly, he furrowed his brow and brought the coin closer to his eyes.
“It looks so ancient and worn,” he whispered, swallowing. He rested one hand on the tree trunk. “And yet it is identical to yours. Certainly, it will bring me to the same time.”
“But who knows if it will work in the same way? I cannot be responsible for you popping up in some other time or if you were to be sucked into some parallel dimension.”
Jean bit his lips and didn’t even bother to ask me what a parallel dimension was. He was willing to tarnish his good name for my sake, to quarrel with his wife, to postpone urgent matters of the kingdom—but this was probably already too much.
“I will take you through,” I declared.
Once again, we made a small cut in our palms and held our coins. We laced our hands together and dipped them into the book-sized puddle. I looked into his eyes and counted to three.
How could I forget? My whole being screamed with exhilaration.
It was an electrifying pleasure, almost painful.
The phosphorescent explosion not only was inside my head but also burst from the core of the universe.
Our bodies merged together, blended into each other, and it did not matter that our daily lives took place on completely different tracks.
Within the whirlpool of the spring, we were one body, but actually we were all the bodies in the world, an endless torrent of living breathing material, separated into individuals only so that it might tell itself a bedtime story.
Happy barking accompanied the lurch of being thrown to the ground. Brunette fell upon Jean, who got up at once and breathlessly stroked and hugged and praised her. Maybe this helped him recover from the existential combustion we had just experienced.
“The guards will soon come to see what is going on,” I said in a panic when I heard some voices. Jean, who was clearly relieved to be back in his comprehensible, quiet, green world, stood up.
“I will go reassure them,” he proclaimed. “Wait here for me.”
“Please,” I said.
“Please,” he said and kissed my hand. “Stay,” he told Brunette. I sat down beside the burbling spring and watched her wistfully, passing my hand through the silky waters. I heard whispers of giggles and sighs in my ears, but I resolutely let go of any fear.
“People call everything that is beyond their grasp ‘madness,’” I said aloud to Brunette, then I felt like a truly crazy person.
Brunette buried her snout in my shoulder.
I stroked and hugged her. At least I know that I really have touched the sublime, I told myself, and now I must distance myself from it and come back down to the ground before I lose my way back.
Jean returned and sat down beside me. For a few minutes, we did not say anything. We looked at each other, smiling and sighing.
“I must go,” I said finally, when I could no longer discern between the smiles and the sighs and the whispers floating up to me like an invisible witness from the spring. “I’m about to completely lose my mind.”
Silently, I handed Jean the garb that he had lent me, nicely folded inside a cloth bag. I was afraid that if the clothes remained accessible to me, their shining silk might tempt me back into the other world.
“Will we never meet again?” Jean asked in a voice thick with sadness.
“Let us not make such absolute declarations as ‘never,’” I said.
Further silence. “Maybe I can come back to visit you here when I recover, if you will still come back to the Pilgrim Castle sometime,” I added after some thought.
“And if you want, you can leave me a message. A small note in a corked earthenware vessel to be hidden in an agreed-upon location.” I looked around and pointed to the spot where the trunk of the tree was wet from the spray of water.
“Here, in the ground under this part of the tree, we’ll carve a small cross into it. ”
Jean smiled as if I had suggested something completely useless but took my hand and kissed it with complete focus.
I was not satisfied with this and kissed him on the lips. I felt that I was melting into him, and the whispering inside my head grew stronger. The hum returned.
“Goodbye for now, Jean d’Ibelin, Count of Arsur. May you find blessings at every turn,” I said, swallowing my tears.
“Goodbye, Lady édith, Fairy of the Spring,” he said very quietly.
I held out my finger, and he made a cut in it. I squeezed Lily’s coin in my fist and plunged it into the spring.