We understood nothing, the boy neither, but it was like an omen. By then we knew that die desperation of the dream was our own, and the destination — perhaps it was the Great Church.’
An expedition! And Connor, why Connor suddenly stepped forward as leader.
Then Arno and Ulf and Martin, all in a rush, and Griffin.
Searle doubted the vision, he doubted it deeply, yet it was not just doubt that raised the sweat I saw break out upon his face.
For the vision foretold that the men would burst out the far side of the earth. And who knew what lay there? But the villagers were by now in a whirl of finding ropes, packing copper and shouting instructions, and even Searle was caught up in it. When the party left, he was there beside his brother, Ulf.’
So Linnet told the story…
And if the mad dream at first had made me smile, it had infused the village, and therefore in this seat in the sun, in this place I could see, and smell, and hear, and touch, this same village, it had infused me.
Well, a little, and I was impelled further by a quality in Linnet’s voice which gave it soft strength, and a surety I yearned towards, for the quality was belief, but in what? I urged her to go on, but stopped when I saw Searle approaching.
He came down the crooked path towards me, a dark, choleric man, and I saw Linnet was right when she said something lay below the doubt with which Searle had greeted Grif-
fin’s story. For he was strong and suspicious, yet beneath you could feel it still — a hub of fear.
‘Let the alms we have given you count as a good deed, monk,’ he said to me, ‘for you are a friend of God, and were a comfort to Chrissie, but now you should not linger here.’
And so I was bound to leave the village, yet once beyond its sight on the road west, I sought with a desperate determination on every hill the pit of which Linnet had spoken, and found it at last, and ventured into its darkness, and stumbled on a ma- chine corrupted by decay. Yet did my hands thrill to the shape of a windlass, and rope, and a long smooth shaft, and a tip of iron.
If all else was fancy, still I had entered the jagged portal of the dream, and found the machine, and what else! The chasm!
For my foot stumbled upon a torch made of lake reeds and pitch, and as I set it afire, I beheld the terrible crack in the earth.
I hurled the torch into this chasm, and it dropped, and dropped, and still it fell on, until the darkness converged upon it, and engulfed it.