upon it. And from a high promontory, just out of the deep forest of Scots pine and alder and oak, we saw the distant castle across the gulf, a hollow overgrown monstrous thing above the beautiful glowing waters. And in the valley itself the high straggled arches of the Cathedral, and the circle of stones, remote, and austere but plainly visible.
Darkness or no darkness, we decided to press on. We lighted our lanterns and went down through the scattered groves of trees, and into the grassy glen, and did not pitch camp till we had reached the remnants of the town, or more visibly, the village which had lingered on after it.
Mary Beth was for pitching camp in the pagan stones. But the two Scotsmen refused. Indeed, they seemed outraged. “That’s a fairy circle, madam,” said one of them. “You wouldn’t dare to do such a thing as camp there. The little people would take it very ill, believe me.”
“These Scots are as crazy as the Irish,” said Mary Beth. “Why didn’t we go on to Dublin if we wanted to hear about leprechauns?”
Her words gave me a little thrill of fear. We were now deep in the broad glen. The village did not include one single stone left standing. Our tents, our lanterns must have been visible for miles around. And suddenly, I felt strangely naked and undefended.
We should have gone up to the ruins of the castle, I thought. And then I realized it. We had not heard from our spirit all day. We had not felt his touch, his nudge, his breath.
The thrill of fear deepened. “Lasher, come to me,” I whispered. I feared suddenly that he had gone off to do some terrible thing to those we loved, that he was angry.
But he was quick to respond. As I walked out alone with my unlighted lantern in the tall grass, each step an ordeal since I was so sore from the ride, he came with a great cooling breeze, and made the grass bow to me in a huge circle.
“I am not angry with you, Julien,” he said. But his voice was thick with suffering. “We are in our land, the land of Donnelaith. I see what you see, and I weep for what I see, for I remember what there was once in this valley.”
“Tell me, spirit,” I said.
“Ah, the great church which you know, and processions of the penitent and the ill come for miles through the hills and down to worship at the shrine. And the thriving town full of shops and tradesmen, selling images…images…”
“Images of what?” asked I.
“What is it to me? I would be born again, and never waste my flesh this next time as I did in those years. I am not the slave of history but rather the slave of ambition. Do you understand the difference, Julien?”
“Enlighten me,” I said. “There are few times when you make me genuinely curious.”
“You are too frank, Julien,” it said. “What I mean to say is this. There is no past. Absolutely none. There is only the future. And the more we learn the more we know—reverence for the past is simply superstition. You do what you must do to make the clan strong. So do I. I dream of the witch who will see me and make me flesh. You dream of wealth and power for your children.”
“I do,” said I.
“There is nothing else. And you have brought me back to this place, which I have never left, that I might know it.”
I was standing there idle under the darkling sky, the valley huge, the ruins of the Cathedral just ahead of me. These words sank into my soul. I memorized them.
“Who taught you these things?” I asked.
“You did,” Lasher said. “It was you and your kind who taught me to want, to aim, to reach, rather than to lament. And now I remind you, for the past calls to you under false pretenses.”
“You think so,” I said.
“Yes,” he said. “These stones, what are they? They are nothing.”
“May I see the church, spirit?”
“Oh yes,” said he. “Light your lantern if you will. But you will never see it as I saw it.”
“You’re wrong, spirit. When you come into me, you leave something of yourself behind. I have seen it. I have seen it with the faithful crowded to the doors, and the candles and the Christmas green—”
“Silence!” he declared and I felt him like the wind wrapping me so roughly suddenly he