Fergal had been searching for the sheep all day. The sunlight was fading and a chill was rising from the ground. There’d been a powerful storm last night following the earthquake and it looked to be the same tonight. He wrapped his arms around himself, hugging some warmth to himself. His father would beat him for certain now - and he’d deserve it: a sheep was too valuable to lose because he hadn’t been watching. It had probably been killed in the earthquake, but he had to make sure. He picked up his walking staff and began to climb to the top of the hill: perhaps he could see it from the top. He clambered over some loose shale to gain higher ground and nearly toppled as his foot sank into empty space. He frowned: he’d been up this hill dozens of times: there’d never been a hole there before. Perhaps the force of the quake and then the storm had loosened the rocks.
He would have liked to investigate it further but he thought of the sheep. And his father’s meaty hands. He sighed, levered himself up with his staff and looked about for this accursed sheep.
There was a faint "baa..." in the distance. Fergal jerked his head around at the sound of it. He squinted in every direction, but could see nothing. The noise came again. This time he realised where it came from. Perhaps he would get to look at the hole after all...
He clambered down into it, causing scree to fall down with him. In the gathering twilight it was dark to see but his eyes soon adjusted. There was another "baa", closer this time then something butted against him. His nostrils filled with the smothering aroma of wet sheep.
"There you are," he said, pleased that his search was so soon ended. "How did you get down here." The sheep made no answer, and Fergal cast his eyes about in a quick survey of the cave. Might as well explore before he had to go home.
It was a big cave, he soon found and mostly filled with rubbish from the hillside: there were small rocks all around that threatened to trip him up at every turn, branches from trees, some that crumbled to dust when he touched them. Fergal marvelled at the age of the things in there. He might be the first person to find it since...since forever!
At one end of the cave there was a clear round space: it was free of the detritus that was all over the rest of the cave. He knelt and ran his fingers over it: they came away from the shiny surface clean. His fingers tingled slightly, like they had when there was lightning in the air during last night’s storm. He stepped onto the circular area. If he looked down he could see a dim reflection of himself staring back up at him. The sheep followed him onto the space. Fergal frowned: this was interesting, but it was getting late. Maybe he could come back tomorrow...
The tingling that he felt in his fingertips suddenly raced up his arm and down his chest. He jerked to a stop, rigid with fear. Oh Lord, he thought, but he did not finish the prayer because the tingling turned into a grinding hum that shot through his whole body. He felt like he was being torn in two and pushed and then...
Fergal groaned as he returned to consciousness. He rubbed his head and gritted his eyes shut at the bright light. He coughed up some bile, rubbing his mouth dry with his sleeve. What had happened to him? He looked around and saw the sheep beside him, unmoving. He felt its body: still warm, which was something.
He looked around at the cave. From the bright light it was obviously morning. His father was going to murder him for staying out all night...
The thought died as he relised that he wasn’t in the cave anymore. He stared around at his surroundings, terror growing in his belly. Where he had been before had changed completely. This was a high chamber lit by... he didn’t know what. The light came from a length of some bright substance set into the ceiling. He looked about: they were set at regular spaces across the roof. He sat up and realised that he was on a covered table of some sort. He swung his legs down to the floor and stood up. The chamber he was in was about the size of his home, but the large table that still held the sheep was the only object in it. The rest was made of a featureless wall with a single window in it. The roof was white, the floor grey. He went up to the window: at least he could see where he was. As he walked towards it, he could see someone walking towards him. His spirits rose. The figure in the distance waved a greeting at exactly the same time as he did. They drew closer and closer until there was only the window separating them. The stranger was dressed in the same sort of clothes as Fergal was: a muddy brown tunic and breeches stained with grass and mud. His hair was red and unkempt, like Fergal’s.
Fergal said "Hullo," to the figure. It mouthed something at exactly the same time but Fergal couldn’t catch the words. He greeted him again. As before, the figure spoke at the same time but no words came. Fergal reached up and pushed an errant lock of hair out of his eyes. The figure in the window did exactly the same. He smiled in relief. So did the figure. Fergal realised what this was: he’d seen his reflection in enough ponds and puddles to realise that this was a pool of some sort. Maybe it had been frozen to be fixed upon the wall... He reached out his hand again, ignoring his reflection and ran his fingers down the length of the reflection. His fingers left a smear. He put his fingers to his mouth. No: it wasn’t ice. He frowned again, wondering what the window was made of.
Behind him the sheep suddenly thrashed around on the table and fell to the floor. It bleated indignantly and shat on the grey surface. Fergal wrinkled his nose at the smell, but grinned at the spectacle of the sheep regaining its balance after falling.
He looked at the "window" again. How had he gotten in here? There was no door.
Fergal did not know how much time had passed since he had stepped onto the shimmering floor, but he was starting to get bored, and the air was starting to get close - one can only spend so much time in a closed room with a sheep and it’s droppings before the novelty wears off. The air was warmer than he remembered the cave being: if it got much hotter he would have to take off his coat. He sat on the floor beneath the reflecting window and decided to wait.
He did not have to sit long: a piece of the wall opposite the window slid to one side and a figure stepped in.
It was the most curious looking person Fergal had ever seen. It shimmered under the light of the room: as it got closer he saw that the shimmering was caused by scales, small and polished, like a snake with newly-sloughed skin. It appeared human but was taller and leaner, the arms and legs longer. The head appeared to have no neck: rather it grew out of the creature’s shoulders. The face on the head was shaped like a man’s with differences that were not apparent until you were up close to it. The nose seemed to stretch out of the face, like a hound’s snout, and the eyes were slitted like a cat’s. There were no ears like a man’s, but a flap of skin on either side of the head that moved when the creature turned. While it walked over to him, the "ears" opened up until they were pointing up at the top of the chamber. It wore clothing, he noted, a grey tunic and breeches, with markings of some sort on the shouders and sleeves. Fergal’s breathing grew ragged in his throat and he realised that he was not in the earthly realm any longer. Clearly, these were elves or some other faery folk who had abducted him.
Then it spoke, a hoarse whisper hard to understand. Spit dried in Fergal’s mouth when he saw the tongue that moved in that mouth: longer than a man’s, paler and thicker, too. It spoke like Katherine, the baker’s daughter: she had a harelip and could only speak - when she chose, which was rarely - in a slushing, hissing sound that you had to strain to hear.
"Your tongue...hard for us to...speak. Your mind is so different from ours...difficult to...read, but we try for your...understanding."
Fergal stammered a reply. "Wh-where are we? W-what do you call this place?"
The creature cocked its head to one side, seemingly thinking, and said, "This is the...resting area for those of our brood who...must recover from sickness. It is at the...centre of our...vessel."
"I’m not sick! Please, by Christ and all His saints, where under heaven am I?" The creature backed away, clearly frightened. Fergal cupped his hands over his face, breathing deeply. He hoped that he hadn’t been afflicted with some elven sickness.
"Where is this vessel going?" he asked next, bewilderment evident in his face: the sea was over sixty miles away, according to his father.
The creature went over to the door and opened it soundlessly.
"Follow me," it said, "I will show you our vessel."
Fergal went along behind it out of the room.
The door slid noiselessly shut behind him as he passed through it, which caused him to jump. When he recovered from that slight shock he noticed that he was in a long corridor, punctuated with doorways every dozen footsteps or so.
The creature motioned him to follow behind and they went up the right-hand stretch of hallway. Fergal found that his heavy tunic, appropriate for searching for a sheep in a storm was stifling in the mid-spring heat of this place. He wondered where the fires were that warmed this building. Then he realised that it must be some form of magic. Stopping briefly, he pulled off his coat and tunic and draped them over his shoulder.
"I am...sorry for your...discomfort," said the creature. "The vessel is kept at a...heat...that suits my people."
Fergal nodded. "Could I please have a drink when we get to where we’re going, sir?" Continued life so close to this creature was making him bold, but he was glad that he remembered how to speak properly to his betters.
"Yes...food and drink will be...given at our destination."
Which they arrived at after they passed thirty-four doors. At one point they had stood in a small room that hummed and made Fergal uneasy on his feet, then they left that room and proceeded back in the direction they had come from originally. He shook his head in bewilderment, but said nothing. Then he noticed that somehow, the doors were closer together now. Clearly they had travelled somewhere while they were in the small room. He was awestruck at the powerful magic he had stumbled onto.
Finally they stopped at a door that was wider than the one he had travelled through to reach the corridor. It slid open noiselessly and the creature walked through. Fergal followed it.
They stood in an immense chamber. There were chairs at large tables in a horseshoe shape facing a large window. Fergal glanced briefly out it and noticed that it was nighttime. He wondered how long he’d been asleep before this vessel had sailed.
There was a creature seated in each of the chairs. They looked up briefly as the two of them came forward, most of them staring at Fergal. He tried not to blush, but it was hard. There was a hissing sound that came from a dozen places at once, in varying pitches, and he realised that they were speaking. The heat was getting to him, and he said, almost too loudly, "How about that drink, hey?"
There was a stunned silence that followed his outburst, and all the elves were looking at him, the earflaps on the sides of their heads twitching and flapping. The one that led him to this place made placating gestures towards him and motioned him to a table, where there were a group of cloudy, tapered cups already sitting.
"Thank you," said Fergal as graciously as he could. He sat and sipped the liquid in the cups. It was warm and seemed to be a flavour that he didn’t recognise, but it slid down his throat effortlessly and quenched his thirst immediately.
When he looked up he noticed the stars again. Any words he wanted to say caught in his throat.
The stars were moving.
Of course, the stars moved across the heavens each night. Fergal knew that, but their movement was slow and stately and you had to be staring for ages to notice, but here they were gliding across the sky almost as quickly as shooting stars.
One of the elves hissed something at his guide. His guide hissed back then spoke to Fergal.
"My Captain wishes me to explain to you about the speed we are travelling." It - Fergal thought of it as a he, though he couldn’t really tell - crossed to one of the tables and ran his fingers across it, occasionally tapping on the surface of it. The window flickered and was replaced with a round object floating amongst the stars. Fergal marvelled at the sudden change that he almost missed the next part of the explanation.
"Our world. Your world also. We-" and here the elf waved around the room "- left it some twenty-four years ago. There was a...disaster that destroyed most of the world, making it unliveable for my people."
A bright light travelled across the window and rammed into the round object. As Fergal watched, brightness engulfed half the object and was then slowly swallowed up by an opalescent, mistiness that covered the entire surface.
"Most of our people died, along with almost all the animal life familiar to us. Our vessel was...circling the world when the accident occurred. We were not able to...find the object in time to warn our people. We could only watch...and land afterwards to rescue any...who lived afterwards."
The picture changed to rivers of fire, rains of fire, storms wilder than any he had before experienced lashing at ruined buildings of otherworldly grace, ashen trees, bodies of creatures larger than any Fergal had ever before seen, bodies of elves and faeries like the ones in this room. Fergal noticed that all of them watched as spellbound as himself, though some were looking away, their faces contorted.
"We found so very few...living, but we left...transporting devices behind for any who might still live. Then we turned away from our world and began our journey."
The screen showed elven-folk stepping onto large shimmering black discs, like the one that had brought Fergal to this place, then the picture changed to a line arcing widely across a sky full of stars.
"We would be unable to return to the world as we knew it, but we believed we might find our home again among the stars, unspoiled and ready for us to live upon it again."
The picture changed back to the moving stars that Fergal had seen originally.
"The speed we travel at is so great that...much more time has passed on our world since we left it...than has on board our...ship, which is why your arrival surprised us as much as it did. You were not...expected"
Fergal barely understood a word out of five that his guide had spoken. He sensed that these people had suffered some tragedy, even greater than an earthquake, which had almost destroyed all their people, and that they were travelling to someplace where they could live again.
The one which seemed to be in charge - the Captain - hissed again at Fergal’s guide. He nodded back.
"The Captain says that you and your animal must be returned to your home as soon as possible. The...stretching of time might be more than would be...thought of as unusual."
Fergal jumped up at the mention of leaving. He rushed over to the door, and as it slid open he suddenly ducked his head and turned back into the room.
"Thank you, sir," he said to the Captain.
The Captain spoke. The guide hissed back at him.
"What’d he say?" asked Fergal as they walked back to the hospice to collect the sheep.
"He said thank you to you. For giving us a glimpse at our future."
Fergal didn’t understand that at all.
Finally, Fergal and his guide were in a large room containg a reflective disc identical to the one that had brought him to this place.
The sheep wandered onto the disc with a complacency that Fergal didn’t share. He eyed the disc with distrust.
"Do not fear," said his guide. "This device works with more...exactness than the device that brought you here. It has not suffered the wear that the other has."
Only slightly reassured, Fergal stepped up beside the sheep. Remembering the storm, he put his tunic and coat back on. Almost immediately he began to sweat.
"Goodbye," said the guide and then he vanished from view and Fergal found himself back in the cave that he had been in only an hour or so before.
It had been hard work getting out of the cave. Obviously the storm that had threatened had happened and brought more rocks down, covering the hole. It took Fergal almost a full day to get out of the cave, dragging the sheep behind him. Finally, they were both out in the open air.
He started off walking slowly down to the farm, but the excitement of what had happened to him ran through his veins and he was running as soon as he saw the house in the distance, full of the news of what he had seen. The sheep wandered off as soon as it saw the rest of the flock: Fergal didn’t give it a second glance.
He burst through the door. "You won’t guess, by all the saints you won’t guess what’s happened to me this-"
He stopped suddenly, for he did not recognise the man and woman sitting at the hearth.
"W-who are you?" he stammered. "Where’s my father? And my mother? Where is everyone?"
The man stood up. His face was weather beaten and lined, and his hair was greying at the temple.
"Who are you?" he asked sternly, reaching for a stout staff that lay beside the fireplace.
"I’m Fergal - I live here!" He backed away in fear. What had happened?
"Fergal?" The man stopped, his face paling under his tan. His shoulders slumped hopelessly. "Fergal’s been gone these thirty years and more. And you should be go-" He stopped speaking. "Christ’s bones," he whispered. "Fergal? Is it you? I-I’m your brother, Nolan. Where have you been?"
"I was looking for the sheep that got lost in the earthquake." Nolan? Thought Fergal. Nolan’s only nine years old!
"Looking for..." The man suddenly laughed shrilly. He stepped back and the woman got up to support him back into his chair. "Looking for a sheep?" The cackling changed to weeping somehow and Fergal wasn’t long in joining in. What had happened?
EPILOGUE
A year had passed since Fergal had returned and people still turned to look at him in the streets of the village. All his friends had grown up with their own children and grandchildren, and he was frowned on as a suitable companion for many his own age now, as though his fate might befall any who fell in with him.
Most evenings he spent alone, watching the stars. Many people had wanted to listen to his story, but none of them had understood it. Some thought he was an imposter, come to gull Nolan and his good wife out of their farm. Nolan had laughed openly at that saying that he was welcome to it if that were the truth. A few believed that he had been taken by Jesus himself into heaven for a time. Some even believed the opposite and shunned him in the village. Most, however, agreed with his story of the summery weather, the magical room that took its occupants to another place as evidence that he had been in the land of faery. After all, hadn’t he slept there and had a faery drink in that place, and come back thirty-two years later not a day older?
Fergal ignored them mostly, and tried to rebuild his life. Nolan was letting him stay on at the farm, now that his own children had grown. That would do for now.
This moonlit night he sat beneath the stars, staring at a curved line he had drawn in the dirt.
"We would be unable to return to our world," the guide had told him. He traced the line in the dirt, adding to its curve.
"But we might find our home again among the stars..."
Finally the arc wound back at its starting point. He smiled, glad that his distant friends were coming home.
Bio:Ian Banks was born in Hobart, Tasmania and now lives in Perth, Western Australia. He is a former primary school teacher who is studying to become a librarian. He is married with three children, two dogs and a cat. Other stories of his have and will be published at the Twilight Times e-zine (April 2002 issue) and in the forthcoming Enchanted Realms 2 anthology, as well as at his website.
E-mail: sibanks@bigpond.com
URL: http://au.geocities.com/ianbanks142
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