“Brother Lazarus is convinced that it all has to do with consciousness,” Mina said. “If that is true, then it might be that you have only one consciousness, and it cannot be in two places at the same time.”
“So you’ve been coming here and consulting with Lazarus a lot?”
“He’s the best,” Mina said. “A trained astronomer with a deep knowledge of cosmology and physics-a huge asset. All that, plus he understands ley travel.”
“I wish I did,” sighed Kit. He regarded Mina thoughtfully for a moment. “I wonder when we’re going to catch up to one another. We have to get synchronised at some point, don’t we?”
“I suppose we’ll just have to wait and see.” Her gaze was earnest and sympathetic. “You endured such hardship. I had no idea, or I wouldn’t have sent you there.”
“Really, it’s okay.”
“I looked for you every day-for weeks. Why didn’t you just stay put like I told you?”
“But I did,” Kit insisted. “If I’d waited any longer I would have taken root. I went back every day for as long as I could, but the line never became active again. I waved your little ley lamp around until I was blue in the face, but could never raise a signal.”
“And here was I thinking you’d just got bored and wandered off somewhere.” Mina regarded him with a sympathetic look. “I’m really sorry.”
“Don’t be.”
“I feel responsible.”
“You’re not hearing me, Mina,” he said, force coming once more to his ragged voice. “I count it a privilege to have had the opportunity to spend time with the clan, and to learn what I did. I’d go back there any day.” He smiled knowingly. “Besides, if none of that had happened, I never would have discovered the Spirit Well.”
“If it is the Spirit Well.”
“What else could it be? There is no such thing as coincidence, remember?” He turned his gaze to the blue-misted valley stretching into the distance far below their mountain perch. “I used to think that was just something Sir Henry and Cosimo said-one of their little mottos.”
“And now?”
“Now I know different.” His eyes lost focus, as if gazing through a window into a wider, more intricate landscape beyond. “Everything happens for a reason. You don’t have to convince me. I’m a believer.”
Kit fell silent for a moment, lost in contemplation.
“Tell me again how you found the Spirit Well,” Mina suggested at last.
Kit nodded, considering how best to explain. “I mentioned the Bone House, remember?” he began.
“I remember,” she replied. “But I can’t quite picture what it looks like or exactly what it’s for.”
“Think of an igloo made of the skeletons of prehistoric animals- a huge mound of intertwined bones-and that’ll give you a rough idea. The clansmen carried bones from a kill zone to a clearing in the forest-it’s the dead of winter, right? Then En-Ul-I told you about him, remember? Well, the Bone House was made for him-so that he could go and sleep in it. He called it Dreaming Time-”
“The Dreaming Time,” repeated Wilhelmina softly.
“No,” corrected Kit. “Not the Dreaming Time, just Dreaming Time.”
Mina’s face scrunched up in bewilderment. “What does that mean?”
“I’m not exactly sure. But it seemed that En-Ul went to sleep so that he could dream, and what he dreamed was time.”
“Like looking into the future, something like that?”
“Maybe,” Kit allowed with a shrug. “I got the sense that he somehow entered into the flow of time and was able to manipulate it, or create it. Maybe he saw the future and was able to shape it. I don’t know. He was better at reading my thoughts than I was at reading his. Anyway, he took me down there to sit with him while he did it, and while I was there, a ley portal opened up. It registered on your ley lamp. I fell through it and ended up in the most breathtakingly beautiful place I’ve ever seen-definitely not of this world.”
“The Bone House created the portal?”
“Either that, or the clansmen built the hut there because they sensed the portal was there.”
“Just like the mound builders who made Black Mixen Tump,” concluded Mina. “They knew it was there.”
“Exactly,” agreed Kit. “It seems that primitive humans were far more sensitive to earth energies and things like that than we are.”
“Which is why they marked them,” suggested Wilhelmina, thinking of the standing stones, wells, dolmens, mounds, crosses, cairns, and such scattered willy-nilly across the whole wide world. “Okay, so you fell through the floor of the Bone House and ended up in this amazing place-what happened then?”
“I walked around a little, taking it all in, and I came to a pool of light-I don’t mean an area of sunlight in a shadowy place, I mean an actual pool filled with a sort of liquid light-think of honey made of light, or… or…” Words failed him, so he shrugged. “You’ll just have to see it for yourself to understand. I was standing there looking at it when I heard a noise on the other side of the pool.” Once again Kit’s eyes lost focus as he revisited the memory of a miracle.
“Then what happened?” asked Mina softly.
“I look up, and this man appears, and he’s carrying the body of a woman…” His voice took on the reverent quality of one reporting a marvellous dream. “She was wrapped in a long white robe and had long black hair; her skin was sickly pale, like grey clay. She was obviously dead in his arms. He comes up to the pool and without a second’s hesitation he simply strides into the pool with the dead woman and sinks down into the liquid light. He keeps walking until they are completely submerged in this syrupy liquid.” Kit shook his head in awe at the memory. “They seem to be under for a long time- but it must have been only a few seconds… you know how time stands still? But then when he surfaces again, the woman is alive.”
Wilhelmina gave him a sceptical look. “Are you absolutely certain she was dead? You only saw her across the pond-how do you know she was dead?”
“Mina, she was dead-stone cold dead. You weren’t there. You didn’t see her. But trust me, Arthur was carrying a corpse.”
“How do you know it was Flinders-Petrie?”
“Because,” Kit explained, “when he came up out of the pool with her and put her down on the grassy bank, I saw his chest. It was covered with tattoos-the Man Who Is Map, just like in the tomb painting. He was wearing the Skin Map. Mina, he was the Skin Map.”
“And that’s how you guessed the pool was the Spirit Well?”
“That’s the first thing that popped into my mind. I remember seeing those symbols and thinking, that’s Arthur Flinders-Petrie at the Well of Souls.” He paused. “It is the Spirit Well, I just know it.”
Wilhelmina considered this. “I wonder…”
“You doubt me?” said Kit. “You think I’m making this up?”
“No, no,” Mina countered quickly. “It’s just that since we don’t know exactly what the Well of Souls is supposed to be, we can’t say for certain that is what you saw.”
Kit stood. “Come on, let’s go. I’ll take you there and show you.”
“Right now, this instant?”
“Why not? I can easily find my way back.” He gazed down on her with an intensity Mina had never seen in him. “What are you waiting for? If I’m right, we’re this close to solving the mystery of the Skin Map.”
“Okay, okay,” she said, “just pause a minute and let’s think about this. If we have to travel back to the Stone Age, we should have some equipment. Knocking about in a cave in total darkness is not my idea of fun. We should have torches, at least-maybe ropes too, and… I don’t know-a weapon of some sort in case things get sticky?”
“Sure. Whatever,” agreed Kit. “Then you’ll go with me?”
“Yes, and we’ll take Brother Lazarus with us.”
“Fine.”
“Right. So, as soon as he gets back we’ll start assembling the things we need. It will take a bit of time to get everything, and anyway, if this is as important as we think it is, then it is worth doing right.”
Kit had to admit that she had a point, and in any case there was nothing to be gained by arguing about it, so he let it slide. “There’s something I haven’t told you,” he said, taking his seat again. “I saw Baby-the cave lion? — I saw it in the cave. In fact, it sort of led me out.”