And so they began the long retreat back towards the house, protected by the circle of death they maintained around them. The mob followed; occasionally an individual, egged on by the others, would dare to approach the thirsty steel. Most drew back as they got near; a few did not and fell where they stood.
‘Jon!’ Shana panted, ‘this is no good! We can’t go back to the house – they’ll simply surround it and burn it down!’
‘We have to find a way out,’ Jon said, mainly to himself.
‘But where? There’s nowhere to go!’
Then like a thunderclap it came to him.
‘We go to the place that Korok doesn’t want us to go!’
‘Where? Where?’ Shana cried as she lopped the arm off someone who had come too close.
‘The Gate of Light. It’s the only place left.’
Suddenly it was obvious to Shana too: it had to be the Gate of Light.
They changed direction, passing between the houses towards the slope that lead up to that enigmatic column of brilliance.
Suddenly Jon felt the hairs on his head and arms rise and a prickling tingle ran over his torso. Swiftly he glanced up and then immediately he grasped Shana and threw the two of them to one side. One immeasurable instant later a great column of blazing blue-white heat came down, striking the exact spot on which they had been standing. The heat roared over them like the tongues of hungry beasts. And then it was gone.
Jon looked behind to see that the crowd had fallen back as the fire had come down, giving them some precious extra time. He tugged at Shana and pulled her to her feet.
‘Come on before he tries again!’
They staggered on as the ground before them began to rise into a severe slope. As they climbed higher fewer people followed. Above them, the great column of light loomed larger and larger but remained completely soundless. The last scraps of vegetation died out and then, abruptly, they were nearly at the flat summit of the hill. They looked down: no-one was following – the Gate of Light was too powerful, too mysterious, too potent for any but themselves to approach.
They turned. The great column took up a good half of the summit and remained totally inscrutable. It shone in endless variations of brilliant blue, ever shifting like a sea; it was never the same shade twice and yet it always gave the feeling of being merely the surface of a blue immensity, a surface which covered depths that could not be plumbed.
They glanced at each other for a moment and then began to walk over the stony surface towards the silent structure.
It grew before their amazed eyes, becoming vaster, more gigantic, more overwhelmingly tremendous than they could have imagined. A glance upward showed it dwindling very slowly into a thin cone that had no terminus, no end, a structure that must stretch to mathematical infinity.
They were almost within touching distance. To their astounded vision the surface was as completely smooth as the finest glass and in a continual swirling, bewildering motion.
And then came the voice. A voice that shook their bones, made their eyes roll back into their heads and by its very force and intensity made them drop to their knees.
It was a voice that could have been that of mighty slabs of rock, smashing together in a colossal avalanche.
‘You will go no farther. You have angered me greatly. I had hopes for you and you have turned that hope against me. In your ingratitude, you have earned my just wrath which I will now visit upon you. I could have given you a swift death, a release from agony but you have caused me to turn even from that boon. So here is your reward.’
And with that, it started. Pain began in every part of their bodies: their fingers, their hands, their legs, their eyes. There came a host of intangible, esurient blades slicing through soft skin, slicing deeper and deeper, passing through the bone, the marrow; peeling the flesh off in thin, bloody sheets. It was pain no mind could tolerate; the only escape was into red madness.
But something started to happen. In the cores of Jon and Shana’s being a small sphere of peace, of quietude, began to form. In each person it grew faster and faster, driving the agony before it and dressing the wounds with healing balm. The spheres of influence met each other and merged.
And Jon and Shana together threw off the ripping claws of the clinging pain and stood up again.
They were free and pain was just a bad dream. And then it was nothing at all.
Shana stood facing the enigmatic column and raised both her arms in triumph.
She shouted in a voice that carried strength and hard-earned authority.
‘Korok! Whoever you are! Whatever you are! Jon and Shana are coming for you!’
They glanced at each other briefly, held hands briefly.
And then Jon and Shana entered the Gate of Light.
THE WORLD OF LIGHT
One
Jon felt that he was at the bottom of a vastly deep volume of black water and that it was absolutely imperative that he get to the surface as quickly as possible. But how? – he was unable to move any part of his body or even open his eyes.
It was no good trying to struggle for it was literally impossible to do so. He must be dead. This was what death was like. This was eternity.
But then he was somehow conscious of a kind of movement, a kind of upward motion. He could not explain it even to himself but it was as if he was indeed moving rapidly upward through that tremendous depth of starless blackness, up to the unknown surface.
And then he broke through that surface and was instantly aware that there was light, a harsh bluish light, burning through his eyelids. It took every atom of strength that his body possessed but he forced the eyelids open against a sticky, clinging resistance.
Light! Was there anything more beautiful, more glorious than light!
And yet he realised that there was still liquid above his eyes, a thick colourless liquid that was causing the light to streak and ripple. Panic returned but even as it did so he saw that the liquid was slowly draining away and his head was emerging into air.
After what seemed an age it had all disappeared, with just a few slowly moving drops adhering to his skin. Still all was not well; there was a sick, rubbery taste in his mouth, caused he suddenly realised by a tube that was taking up most of its volume. And his nostrils were closed firmly shut by a small clamp. He pulled the pipe out of his mouth and tried to remove the clamp from his nose but under his grasp it crumbled into tiny particles of dust.
His nostrils were almost blocked by glutinous mucus but eventually he was able to draw great draughts of air into his lungs. But the air tasted bad; it tasted of metals and artificial materials and somehow of senescence; as if the air itself was very, very old.
He tried to rise but hit his head on a transparent covering. He was in some kind of box that had various outlets in its sides into which various pipes and wires were slowly retracting. His body he noticed was covered in little indentations where presumably those implements had been attached until recently.
Once again panic returned as he realised the nature of his incarceration and he began to push desperately against the transparent covering. To his gratified surprise it immediately yielded and rose up, allowing him to step out.
He stood outside his box or casket and looked around and was astounded beyond description to see that he was in a huge room made apparently of a dull grey metal, whose walls and ceiling were both staggeringly distant. But that was not the greatest wonder: his casket was not alone; it was one of a large number that stretched in all directions.
He began to cross to the nearest and was stopped by a stab of pain from his legs. It felt as if he was attempting to push himself through thorn bushes on legs made of stone. He was forced to lean on that casket for some time until the pain in his limbs began to subside. When he eventually looked into the casket he wasn’t entirely surprised to see that it contained the figure of a being very similar to himself but with many thin pipes and tubes apparently entering the body. The eyes were shut and a pipe was firmly attached to the mouth. And the somnolent body was floating in a liquid that looked much thicker than water.