A Beggar’s Kingdom

“Options.” Devi shook his black-haired head. He was starting to get some gray in it. It was time. The man was over seventy. “Some men are never satisfied.”

“Can you answer my question?”

“There’s no easy way to do what you want.”

“Is there a hard way?”

“No.”

“Why can’t I bring money with me?”

“A thousand reasons.”

“Name two.”

“You don’t know where you’re going,” Devi said. “Are you going to bring every denomination of coin from every place in the world, from every century?”

Julian thought about it. “What about gold? Or diamonds?”

“You want to take diamonds with you.” It wasn’t a question.

“Something of value, yes.”

“You can’t. What I mean is—you literally can’t,” Devi said. “The diamond you talk about, where was it mined, Russia, South Africa? Was it worked on by human hands? Was it then picked up by these hands and shipped to where you could buy it? Was it bought and sold before you ever laid your paws on it, a dozen times, a hundred times? You think it’s sparkly and new just for you? A thousand hearts were broken over your diamond. Bodies were killed, discarded, cuckolded, buried, unearthed. The blood of greed, envy, outrage, and love was spilled over your diamond. Where do you want to end up, Julian? With her, or not with her?”

Having bought a sturdy Peak Design waterproof backpack and loaded it with every possible thing he could need that would fit, ultimately Julian decided not to bring it. Well, decided was a wrong word. He showed it to Devi, who told him he was an idiot.

“I like it very much,” Devi said. “What’s in it?”

“Water, batteries, flashlights—note the plural—a retractable walking pole, crampons, Cliff Bars, a first aid kit, a Mylar blanket, a Suunto unbreakable ultimate core watch, heavy-duty insulated waterproof gloves, three lighters, a Damascus steel blade, a parachute cord, carabiners, climbing hooks, and a headlamp.”

“No shovel or fire extinguisher?”

“Not funny.”

“What about glacier glasses?”

“Why would I need glacier glasses?”

“How do you know you’re not headed into a glacier cave?” Devi paused. “Permafrost in bedrock. Ponded water that forms frozen waterfalls, ice columns, ice stalagmites.” He paused again. “Sometimes the ceiling of the cave is a crystalline block filled with snow and rocks and dirt.”

“You mean full of debris that freezes in the icy ceiling?”

“Yes,” Devi said, his face a block of ice. “I mean full of things that freeze in opaque ice four hundred feet deep. Things you can see as you pass under them but can’t get to.” Devi blinked and shuddered as if coming out of a trance. “That reminds me, best bring an ice axe, too.”

“You’re hilarious.”

“You haven’t mentioned a toiletry kit, a journal, a camera, a neck warmer, and a fleece hat. I feel you’re not prepared.”

“I’m tired of your mocking nonsense.”

“No, no, you’re fine,” Devi said. “Get going. When noon comes, and the blue shaft opens, just send in the backpack by itself to find her. Because there will be room for only one of you. But the bag’s got everything, so it should go.”

“Why can’t I throw the backpack in and then jump after it?”

“I don’t know why you can’t. But as I recall from your story, last time you got stuck. What happens if the backpack gets stuck, and you can’t get to it?”

“Why are you always such a downer? It’s no to everything.”

“I’m the only one in your life who said yes to you about the most important thing,” Devi said, “and here you are whining that I haven’t said yes to enough other things? No to the backpack, Julian. Yes to eternal life.”

“If I can’t bring a backpack, can I bring a friend?” a defeated Julian asked. He would convince Ashton to go with him. He wasn’t ready to part with his friend.

“I don’t know. Does he love her?”

“No, but …” Julian mulled. “Maybe I can be like Nightcrawler. Anything that touches me goes with me.”

“You don’t impress me with your comic-book knowledge,” Devi said. “I don’t know who Nightcrawler is. What if there’s time for only one of you to jump in? You get left behind in this world, and your friend’s stuck in the Cave of Despair without you?”

“I’ll go first, then.”

“And abandon him trapped in a cave without you? Nice.”

But isn’t that what Julian was about to do, abandon Ashton, without a word, without a goodbye? Guilt pinched him inside, made his body twist. “Cave of Despair? I thought you said Q’an Doh meant Cave of Hope?”

“Despair and hope is almost the same word in your language and my language and any language,” Devi said. “In French, hope is l’espoir and despair is désespoir. Literally means the loss of hope. In Italian hope is di speranza. And despair is di disperazione. In Vietnamese one is hy vong and the other is tuyet vong. With hope, without hope. It all depends on your inclination. Which way are you inclined today, Julian Cruz?”

Julian admitted that today, on the brink of another leap through time, despite the remorse over Ashton, he was inclined to hope. “In English, hope and despair are separate words.”

Devi tasted his homemade kimchi, shrugged, and added to it some more sugar and vinegar. “The English borrowed the word despair from the French, who borrowed it from Latin, in which it means down from hope.”

“What about the Russians? You have no idea about them, do you?”

“What do you mean?” Devi said calmly. “In Russian, despair is otchayanyie. And chai is another word for hope. All from the same source, Julian, despite your scorn.”

Julian sat and watched Devi’s back as the compact sturdy man continued to adjust the seasonings on his spicy cabbage. Julian had grown to love kimchi. “What does the name of the cave actually mean?”

“Q’an Doh,” Devi replied, “means Red Faith.”

Julian wanted to bring a zip line—a cable line, two anchors, and a pulley—strong enough to hold a man.

Devi groaned for five minutes, head in hands, chanting oms and lordhavemercies, before he replied. “The anchor hook must be thrown over the precipice. Can you throw that far, and catch it on something that won’t break apart when you put your two hundred pounds on it?”

“Calm down, I’m one seventy.” He had gained thirty of his grief-lost pounds back.

“Okay, light heavyweight,” Devi said. “Keep up the nonstop eating before you grab that pulley. You won’t beat the cave. It’ll be a death slide.”

“You don’t know everything,” Julian said irritably.

“I liked you better last year when you were a babe in the woods, desperate and ignorant. Now you’re still desperate, but unfortunately you know just enough to kill yourself.”

“Last year I was freezing and unprepared, thanks to you!”

“So bring the zip line if you’re so smart,” Devi said. “What are you asking me for? Bring a sleeping bag. An easy-to-set-up nylon tent. I’d also recommend a bowl and some cutlery. You said they didn’t have forks in Elizabethan England. So BYOF—bring your own fork.”

Silently, they appraised each other.

“Listen to me.” Devi put down his cleaver and his cabbage. “I know what you’re doing. In a way, it’s admirable. But don’t you understand that you must rediscover what you’re made of when you go back in? The way you must discover her anew. You don’t know who she is or where she’ll be. You don’t know if you still want her. You don’t know if you believe. Nothing else will help you but the blind flight of faith before the moongate. If you make it across, you’ll know you’re ready. That is how you’ll know you’re a servant not just of the dead and the living, but also of yourself. Will a pole vault help you with that? Will a zip line? Will a contraption of carabiners and hooks and sliding cables bring you closer to what you must be, Julian Cruz?”

Julian’s shoulders slumped. “You’ve been to the gym with me. You’ve seen me jump. No matter how fast I run and leap, I can’t clear ten feet.”

“And yet somehow,” Devi said, “without knowing how depressingly limited you are, you still managed to fly.”

The little man was so exasperating.

A pared-down Julian brought a headlamp, replacement batteries, replacement bulbs and three (count them, three) waterproof flashlights, all Industrial Light and Magic bright. He had a shoemaker braid the soft rawhide rope of his necklace tightly around the rolled-up red beret. Now her beret was a coiled leather collar at the back of his neck, under his ponytail. The crystal hung at his chest. Julian didn’t want to worry about losing either of them again.

“Do you have any advice for me, wise man?” It was midnight, the day before the equinox.

“Did you say goodbye to your friend?”

Julian’s body tightened before he spoke. “No. But we spent all Sunday together. We had a good day. Do you have his cell number?”

The cook shook his head. “You worry about all the wrong things, as always.” Conflict wrestled on Devi’s inscrutable face. “Count your days,” he said.

“What does that mean?”

“Why do you always ask me to repeat the simplest things? Count your days, Julian.”

“Why?”

“You wanted advice? There it is. Take it. Or leave it.”

“Why?”

“You’re such a procrastinator. Go get some sleep.”

Julian was procrastinating. He was remembering being alone in the cave.

“Go catch that tiger, Wart,” Devi said, his voice full of gruff affection. “In the first part of your adventure, you had to find out if you could pull the sword out of the stone. You found out you could. In the second part, hopefully you’ll meet your queen of light and dark—and also learn the meaning of your lifelong friendship with the Ill-Made Knight.”

“What about my last act?”

“Ah, in the last act, you might discover what power you have and what power you don’t. What a valuable lesson that would be. After doing what he thinks is impossible, man remembers his limitations.”

“Who in their right mind would want that,” Julian muttered. “I hope you’re right, and Gertrude Stein is wrong.”

“That wisecracking old Gertrude,” said the cook. “All right, let’s have it. What did she say?”

“There ain’t no answer. There ain’t going to be an answer. There never has been an answer. That’s the answer.”

“Is it too much to hope,” Devi said, “that one day you’ll learn to ask better questions? You haven’t asked a decent one since the one you asked my mother.” What is the sign by which you recognize the Lord?

“I’ll learn to ask better questions,” Julian said, “when you and your mother start giving me better answers.” A baby in a swaddling blanket indeed!

2
Oxygen for Julian

HE TRAVELLED THROUGH A DIFFERENT SHAFT, HE TRAVELLED through a different cave, he travelled to a different life.

Noon came to zero meridian at the Royal Observatory in Greenwich, England, the sun struck the crystal in his palm, the kaleidoscope flare exploded, the blue chasm opened for Julian once more. This time he didn’t get stuck. He slid without resistance, plummeted through the sightless air, skydived. He could’ve brought the bigger backpack, Ashton, Devi, Sweeney, an airplane. It occurred to him that if he didn’t stop falling, he’d crash to the ground. Before he had a chance to ponder this, he plunged into warm water.

It was like falling into terror.

His boots never touched bottom. He panic-paddled from the ebony depths to the surface and fumbled in his cargo pocket for the headlamp. When he switched it on, he felt better; when he slipped it over his forehead he felt better still. The rocky bank was only a foot away. He swam to it, grabbed a ridge, and pulled himself out. At first unsettled by the bathwater temperature—in a cave no less—now Julian was grateful. It could’ve been freezing, and then where would he be. How long did the Titanic’s men last in the northern Atlantic?

It was hard to call any footwear waterproof when everything on him was sopping wet, his Thermoprene suit, his boots, his jacket and pants, his two shirts. Wiping his face, he shined a flashlight around the cave. This was a whole new subterranean world than the one he had encountered the first time he went in, a year earlier. He was at the edge of a black cove at the bottom of a mountainous gorge. Hundreds of ragged feet of rock flared up around him. On two sides of the inlet, the vertical slope was unscalable limestone. But on his bank and the bank opposite, the angle was more gradual, and the walls, though rocky and uneven, looked climbable. Good thing Julian had brought crampons. He attached them to the bottom of his boots, careful not to cut himself on the razor-sharp spikes. The blades scraped against the rock as he took a few steps to adjust to walking on them. It was like balancing on Poppa W’s razor wire.

Feeling heavy and cumbersome, Julian wrung out his jacket, shook himself off like a dog, and checked his equipment before climbing to find the moongate. Batteries, extra lights, her stone on his chest, the beret wrapped in rawhide at the back of his neck, his Suunto watch, an impressive wrist computer with a barometer, altimeter, and heart monitor. Proud of his new gadget, Julian switched on the Suunto to check the cave temperature and his GPS coordinates. How deep was he below sea level? What direction was he facing?

The unbreakable scientifically precise timekeeper showed him noon, the coordinates of the prime meridian, the direction as north. In other words, the exact measurements of the Transit Circle as the sun hit the quartz crystal. Well, that was £400 well spent.

On all fours, Julian crawled up the rough slope to the highest elevation in the cave floor where it hit the limestone wall. The walls were solid. Feeling for the moongate with his bare hands, he walked back and forth along the wall but found no opening. On this side at least, the chamber was hermetically sealed.

Julian knew there had to be a way out because otherwise there would be no river and no Josephine, and also because he could hear running water in the distance. He scaled back down to the swimming hole and shined one of his heavy-duty, high-powered flashlights up and down the cave walls. Finally he spotted it. Across the pool, up the slope in the far corner, as if concealed from casual view, the water trickled out from a perfectly round opening in the bedrock and dribbled down into the cove below.

The only way to get to the other side was to swim across. Julian felt some relief. It wasn’t long-jumping over a canyon, it was just swimming, right? When he first fell in, he had swum to the wrong side, that was all. Shame, but now he would swim to the right side.

He hesitated before he dived. Was the pool a wormhole, a shortcut between two distant points in infinite time and space? He didn’t know. He didn’t think so. It didn’t look far, maybe thirty, forty feet. And the water was warm. He was a good swimmer. He came in seventh in the London Triathlon. Riley had been so proud of him. Granted he didn’t enter the top-level category, but still, he had to swim an entire mile, not a few measly feet. Full of confidence, Julian jumped in, like the starting gun had gone off. He swam methodically, pacing himself, without undue exertion. The headlamp illumined only a few feet of black water in front of him. He couldn’t see the other bank. No matter. A minute or two at most and he’d be there. He was glad he had listened to Devi and brought a minimum in his backpack. Fifty pounds of extra weight would’ve been a burden.

Julian swam and swam and swam and swam. It felt longer than forty feet. He must have gotten confused, lost his orientation. It had looked so easy—swimming forward—but for some reason forward wasn’t getting him to the other side, and his headlamp with its short beam was annoyingly little help.

He swam and swam and swam and swam. Above him the cliffs loomed, ominous and oppressive like stone Titans. How could he see those, much farther away, but not see the opposite bank of a medium-sized cave pool?

Julian began to tire, to feel oppressively heavy. And when he started to feel heavy, he panicked.

And when he panicked, he started to sink.

His boots, jacket, gloves, flashlights all felt like anchors strapped to his body. Yes, the water was warm, but so what? He was being sucked into a slow warm drain.

Was he just treading water or actually moving forward? He spun around but couldn’t see where he had been, nor where he was going. He was in the middle of nothing and nowhere. He stopped swimming, held his breath, listened for the trickling stream on the rocks. He heard no sound except his anxious gasps.

He didn’t know what to do.

There was no going back. The only way out was through it.

Julian resumed the front stroke, in slow motion. His body was weighted down, as if concrete blocks were tied to his feet. The body refused to cooperate with staying afloat. He tried to turn onto his back for a rest, but kept sinking. When he stopped flapping his arms, he sank. Even as he swam forward, he sank. It became nearly impossible to hold his head above water.

He flung away the waterlogged gloves, the extra lamps, the batteries, the carabiners, the hooks, his non-working £400 Suunto Ultimate watch. He threw off his jacket and unstrapped and kicked off his boots with the metal crampons. He unzipped and pulled off his cargo pants. He discarded everything but his headlamp and a thin Maglite that fit into a chest pouch in his wetsuit.

And still he sank. Fear was heavier than fifty pounds of gear.

His head slipped under water. He resurfaced, opened his mouth, tried to swim. The effort required to stay afloat became greater. His breath got shorter, the time under got longer. In panicked desperation, gulping for air, Julian lowered his chin to his chest and rammed forward.

His headlamp hit something solid and immovable. Rock! The lamp cracked, slipped off his head and vanished into the deep. He grabbed on to the edge of the rock and after a few moments of gasping, pulled himself out.

For a long time he lay in the darkness getting his breath back. Had the headlamp not been on his head to absorb the blow, he would’ve cracked his skull open. He must’ve been swimming pretty fast, despite his clear perceptions to the contrary. That was quite a jolt he had received. What an ugly cheat it was, not to be able to trust your own senses.

So—four sources of light were not enough. New boots, hooks, spikes, new jacket, new pants, not enough. Extra batteries, bulbs, gloves, all of it at the bottom of the bottomless cave. After all the preparation to offer his woman a new and improved man, Julian was right back on novice course, climbing a steep uneven terrain, barefoot and without his clothes, holding a small cheap flashlight between his chattering teeth.

Past the moongate, the river was shallow and flowed slowly—and in the wrong direction! It flowed back toward the black hole cove. After a curve in the cave and a shallow whirlpool, it finally turned and flowed in the direction Julian was wading, filling the barrel-shaped passage to his knees. The cylindrical walls shimmered with hallucinations, with carved etchings. Julian no longer believed his eyes. It could be a Rorschach test. He saw what he wanted to see, not what was really there. But why would he want to see illusions of writhing beasts with open groaning, screaming mouths, why would he wish to see colliding live things loving each other, fucking each other, killing each other? In many cases all three.

Before long, trouble came. It came in the form of water that rose to his legs and then to his waist. The Thermoprene suit was wet inside, and the trapped moisture kept him warm, but the water that seeped in and trickled down his ribs and back also made him itch like a motherfucker. The cave remained troublingly warm, as did the water. Weren’t caves supposed to be 54ºF at all times? Maybe not magic caves. He should’ve brought an inflatable boat. He was so tired. There was no ledge or shelf for him to rest on, no dry ground. Endlessly, relentlessly, half-blind, Julian trudged hip-deep in water, avoiding the images that filled his defective vision, of gods and men and beasts intertwined.

He should’ve known better than to complain about cave drawings. As soon as they vanished, the water rose to his chest. He could no longer walk in it. That meant he could no longer carry the flashlight or even hold it in his mouth. In impenetrable darkness, he swam. Either the water level kept rising or the cave narrowed, because when Julian lifted his arm for the front stroke, he hit the roof of the cave. The space between the surface of the water and the ceiling—in other words the space in which he breathed—was no longer large enough to fit his head. He had eight inches, then six, then four.

He stopped swimming, turned on the flashlight, stuck it between his teeth, and put both palms on the ceiling to rest for a bit while he looked around. He lifted his mouth to the limestone and breathed through the slit of remaining air. He couldn’t stay still for long because the channel began to fill up with black rushing water. Oh—now it was rushing. It swallowed him and pitched him forward before he had a chance to put away his one light. While Julian was flung about like a rubber duck, the flashlight slipped out of his hands and swirled into the void, and Julian once again was plunged into wet spinning darkness.

What did he learn in advanced spelunking that could help him now? The first thing he remembered was decidedly unhelpful.

Never cave alone.

Dennis, his unruffled instructor, could not have been more plain. The only reasons to be alone in a cave were injury and emergency.

As he tumbled through the gushing current, Julian came up with a third reason. Insanity.

Cave diving was the most advanced, specialized, dangerous of all caving activities. Without training, Dennis said, no human being had the knowledge to stay alive. Only months of rigorous preparation could help you. You had to learn to control five things on which your life depended. If those five things weren’t built into your muscle memory, you would die.

Not could die.

Would die.

Julian recalled precisely two things.

Number one: respiration.

Number two: emotion.

The first one was impossible, since he was fully submerged in the current, and as for the second one, check. Emotion aplenty.

You have no training for open water, he kept hearing in his head. Stop. Think. Picture the reaper. See her face. Prevent your death. Respiration. Emotion.

What else?

His head bobbed up for a moment, he gasped for air, was pulled under, and then driven forward. But there was air above him! There was oxygen for Julian. Sounded like a song.

Respiration!

Emotion!

Calm yourself!

Think!

Another bob.

Another gasp.

Oxygen for Julian.

He must keep his mouth closed. If he swallowed water and his lungs filled up, he wouldn’t be able to continue bobbing like a buoy. He would sink. Think! Breathe! Another bob. Another gasp. Oxygen for Julian.

Trouble was, when his mouth was closed, he couldn’t breathe.

How could he save her when he couldn’t even save himself?

Josephine. Mary.

Calm yourself. Think! Breathe.

Oxygen for Julian.

All he could feel was panic for his life.

Finally, Julian found something to grab on to, a churning plank. Pulling himself on top of it, he lay down on it lengthways, grabbed the short edge with both hands, put his head down, gurgled up a lungful of water, and was asleep in seconds. No terror was so strong that it could force his eyes open.