with long spidery legs and flat circular feet scampered across its surface. They looked comical. They looked like nothing on Earth.
The rising suns were directly ahead of us, in what I instinctively considered to be the East, even though the points of a compass may have been meaningless on this world. There were low hills to either side of us. At our rear, at the edge of the now distant Forest of Indistinct Murmurings, a range of jagged mountains rose up and stretched away “southward.”
Kata saw me looking at them and said, “They are the Mountains That Gaze Upon Phenadoor.” She passed a strip of material to me. I put the fruit aside, stood up, and wound the cloth around my hips. My goodness, what comfort I gained from that simple rag! Adam’s fig leaf!
“What is Phenadoor?” I asked.
“It is the sea. Phenadoor: the Place of No Sorrow or Pain, of Indescribable Joy, of Eternal Bliss. The Shunned enter it when it is time to die. It is their recompense.”
“For what?”
“For not being Wise.”
“And the ones who are Wise?”
“They are denied Phenadoor.”
“Why?”
“Because the Saviour is not the only god.”
“I don’t understand.”
Kata shrugged.
I examined the so-called “children.” They looked identical to the other Yatsill except they lacked the little bumps above their upper eyes, were not armed with spears, and were very quiet, squatting motionlessly but for the constant movement of their fingers.
Clarissa asked, “So it’s decided at Immersion which of the creatures will enter Phenadoor and which won’t? Where does this ritual occur?”
“In the Shrouded Mountains. The children will go into a pool there. It is tradition.”
As the seemingly interminable journey went on, I continued to describe the scenery to my friend. Gradually, I began to feel a little more in the “here and now.”
“It’s actually quite beautiful,” I said. “Can you imagine, Clarissa, the subject matters of Hieronymus Bosch but painted, instead, by J. M. Turner?”
“Frankly, no. And I would hardly classify Bosch as beautiful,” she responded.
“True, but there is so much to take in, and all of it so queer, that the effect is the same. I feel overwhelmed and mesmerised by it; my eyes can barely make sense of it; yet, undeniably, there is an allure in its softness and luminosity.”
“Unfortunately, I can neither corroborate nor refute your impressions, Aiden. But I’m pleased to hear you sounding more yourself.”
“You’re right! A little sleep has done me a world of good!”
“An interesting choice of words,” she responded.
I glanced at the group of Yatsill standing at the “prow” of our bizarre vessel. “Then we really are on another planet?”
“Can you doubt it?”
I watched a creature float through the air nearby. It was a hollow, transparent ball, about twelve feet across with a hole on opposite sides. The opening at the rear expanded, moved forward, enveloped the creature, then, having moved to the front, shrank, while the opening that was now at the back started the process all over again. The thing thus moved along by turning itself inside out.
“No,” I said. “I don’t doubt it at all. But how are we here?”
“A more pertinent question might be why.”
“You think there’s a reason?”
“If Iriputiz wanted to get rid of us, he could have killed us with impunity. Instead, he caused us to be transported to this place.”
“Or—or—” I struggled with the idea that had just occurred to me.
“What?”
“Or he did kill us, Clarissa. He killed us, and we are in Heaven—or Hell.”
“As a priest, surely you’d recognise which?”
“The landscape might be Paradise, but its inhabitants—” My voice trailed away.
Clarissa massaged the calf muscle of her right leg. “Why would Heaven have a heavier gravity? Why would the atmosphere of Hell have a citrus tang? If this is the afterlife, why do my legs still pain me? No, Aiden, this is undoubtedly a world of the flesh rather than of the spirit, and I suppose the reason for us being here will emerge in due course.”
° °
In Earthly terms, day after day must have passed as the Ptall’kor pulled itself over the rolling grasslands, but on Ptallaya the twin suns barely moved at all. I ate, I slept, I examined the extraordinary flora and fauna, I even became bored, and still the journey went on.
Eventually, when I shaded my eyes and peered ahead, I saw, rising from the horizon, a wall of white vapour bubbling high into the air. The Ptall’kor, making straight for it, entered a valley and pulled itself alongside a wide river, gliding over an ever-thickening forest of