READER LETTER: The Rise of the Islander (Part 2 of 3)

Something completely different was about to happen.

Previously, in ‘The Rise of the Islander’, in [part 1], having been overcome by curiosity, I had fallen through a loophole. 

There I had discovered a path, a golden path, shining and glimmering. 

Movement but no footsteps! What could it be? I stopped and paused, waiting for whatever it was to emerge from the undergrowth and join the path ahead of me.

And they did, they emerged floating in the air.

They joined the path and carried on forward. They were beasts of some kind. Not human, but airborne creatures. More of them joined from behind the others, following in single file, floating through the air like ghosts. I stayed calm, again my curiosity got the better of me. I could not see what they were. I wanted to know. All fear had left me now. I continued to walk forward along the way, there was no other option really. More and more of these apparitions joined the path. A steady flow of them now.

I came within eyesight of them, and was astonished to see… 

They were…

What in the heavens was this!?! 

Lines and lines of fish floating along the path, more joining further ahead. Fish just swimming through the air as if it were water. Like regular fish, but with wings on their back, wings that didn’t appear to work very hard. They defied physics in the way you would expect a flying, floating fish to defy physics. 

Had I taken leave of my senses? What was going on?

The fish were also all murmuring softly as they floated along, they were producing these noises I had been hearing. The whispers that weren’t whispers. It was most peculiar. They didn’t appear to have any biological way to make the noise, but they seemed to be making it anyway. The noises were growing louder and louder as more fish joined the way. 

Walking nearer they didn’t seem bothered by me either, I began to walk with them, like one of their shoal. Rather than being afraid of me, they seemed pleased, as far as I could tell. I was no expert in the body language of fish but it was clear to me they were happy that I was here and willing to join them in what appeared to be some sort of procession. The fish knew why they were here, even if I did not. 

More and more paths emerged to join my own, more floating fish emerged to join me. The whispers grew louder. Up ahead, I saw some water, a tiny pond. Calm as the air above, a mirror of shallow glass reflecting the stars in the heavens. I could see the path leading me towards it. All the great rivers of the path uniting into one. Leading into one body of water where the path met its end.

I came to this tiny pool and there I stopped, for there was nowhere left to go. All paths terminated here.

This was their sacred place, I would learn, their refuge from the devil fish. He could not approach them here, they were safe and they welcomed me.

All these things which come and go in the troubled atmosphere of sleep, and to which men give the name of dreams, are, in truth, only realities invisible to those who walk about the daylight world. 
The dream-world is the Aquarium of Night

The fish all seemed to know they were heading here, it appeared to be some sort of pilgrimage. As if they regularly came, but I wondered whether, or how often, anyone had ever been here to witness it. In any case, they seemed glad to have me here and, to demonstrate their feeling, the fish were swimming high up in the air now in massive groups above the pool. Shoals twisting back and forth to make shapes like a great flock of birds in the sky. Still more companions joining from other paths. Perhaps they had heard there was an unexpected visitor and they wanted to put on a special performance for me, they all wanted to be involved.

I hadn’t known it at the time, but I had entered the waters of life and I was now about to witness something extraordinary.

The combined noise grew louder as more joined this cloud. As more joined the gathering they seemed to feed off of each other’s energy and the flock became more animated. Their were no longer whispers but a loud chorus in song. Individually the sound coming out of them I couldn’t quite explain, but now taken all together I began to recognize it. It had very nearly the sound of bugpipes in the air above me, as peculiar a notion as that might be. Apparently now delighted that I had been prepared to come all this way and join them, the flying flock became ever more spirited in their movements and their song grew ever more joyous. 

Then as they grew up to their crescendo the very air around them began to glow with luminescent green and it moved this way and that in tune with their bodies. Whirling and twirling in the eddies and drafts created by their movement, like an aurora overhead but instigated by the fish themselves in the elation of their dancing for this new unexpected guest in their domain.

I just stood there and I was happy to watch in amazement and let them entertain me. I let my inner quiet respond and I could perceive the inner rhythm of the dance above my head, I could feel the heartbeat of their song. Their movements directed my mind like I was one of them, like I was part of their flock and they were welcoming me to join in their dance.

I also realised it wasn’t just a song, they were talking to me and, in the silence of my mind, I could talk to them. Their song was their language, what’s more I found I could influence their words and I could shepherd them into new shapes.

I began to command them and issued them instructions for this and that and they would follow and thus I began to guide this preposterous piscean plume.

It was exhausting and dizzying as they turned my mind, but resolutely I grappled with them, attempting to bring order and shape them to my will and I found, paradoxically, the more I calmed my mind, the less I attempted to control them, the more that I went with the flow, the more successfully I could influence them gently to go in this or the other direction.

Pushing this to the point of exhaustion, I couldn’t go on any further and then, at this point of mental depletion, I began to rise up, or rather it felt my mind was rising up, to meet them in their dance in the air, and there they carried me with them.

I was not their conductor anymore, I was just another one of their flock. We were each of us simultaneously together, both leader and follower.

We began to understand each other and then, at that moment, they declared their dance was over. I had earned their trust.

In the distance, a rooster crowed. The fishing was at an end.

A great flood of rain descended from above. It poured the fish out of the sky into the pond like a jug emptying its contents and as it did so, the fish began to change shape. They began to lengthen and contort and turn into different patterns.

The fish began to turn into an assortment of letters and words scattered around the pool. Some floating, some hollow, some sunk to the bottom. All shapes, all sizes, varying conditions. They littered the pond, and the pond had now become a great lake. I picked up the letter nearest to me and attached to it was a golden thread, the thread connected the next letter and the next. They had become joined together in a long strand. 

The first I found amongst the reeds and I began to pull it out, and as I did the next in the series, connected by the golden thread, came with it. I collected the golden thread and, taken all together, it formed a string.

A string that, once decoded, would form a message, and in that message, one command:

To weave this thread into a yarn and to deliver it for Guernsey. For what purpose I did not know, other than it was my duty to do so.

The fish had instructed me thus during our dance together and, before they had finished, they had told me one more thing.

I would be sent a companion to help me. An old friend, the woolf, leaping to my aid, to guide me in this purpose.

The abyss sometimes has these thoughtful ideas; but you will do well to beware of its kindness

I sat quietly, doing nothing, pondering the meaning of it all. Staring silently at the still pond, a liquid mirror once again, reflecting the world. How could something such as this possibly be delivered? How could it work? 

Then a light began to stir in its waters.

I looked up, it was the morning sun beginning to rise over the brow of the hill to the east, and as I turned to look at the sunrise, a figure emerged over the rise of the hill crest.

It was difficult to tell their identity against the backdrop of the rising light. It was a lone figure, but I sensed there were others behind, though I could not see them. The blinding rays made telling any detail impossible. There were many approaching, the one in front though, clearly their emissary and their leader.

A Priest of some kind, a saintly traveler or, a grey wanderer.

As he came closer, the light of the sun behind became less glaring, the image of this figure became more distinguishable. It was certainly a man, at least it appeared.

I was able to perceive a face now, or rather where the face would be, a face covering. He was wearing a mask, a shiny glittering mask. A mask of jasper, one of many facets and in every facet a reflection, and in every reflection a face. In this way, the man wore many faces, if indeed he was even a man at all.

It was an exact duplicate of myself. A second David Reed. We corresponded with one another, identical in nature apparently, to the unknowing eye, but opposite in degree. Alike, but un-alike.

He reached out his hand in a gesture of welcome.

In joined hands there is still some token of hope, in the clinched fist none

 I knew he meant no harm, he was an old friend of course. He was me in a different guise. I knew I would need him to deliver this message, I could not do it alone. I was just Dave from Accounts. An alter-ego was needed to help deliver the story. A persona to reflect and project the idea.

In order to deliver a campaign that was a paradox, I had to become a paradox myself: an absurd contradiction that, upon investigation, would be found to be true. An accountant using creative writing skills in an attempt, with his south african accent, to capture the voice of the Islander. This was the way.

Two personalities:

But which one was I?

Was I still the original who had stepped into the Loophole, or was I the alternate self? There was no way to tell us apart. Except of course if you’d ever met him, you would immediately know the difference. That was the greatest irony.

I reached out and shook his hand and then,

We would be in league with one another, each of us sharing half a life to deliver the message. My twin had come onto the scene to give full effect to tone of the campaign.

Deputy Reed was something completely different, he was a dreamer.

His disposition united the characteristics of the hallucinationist, and visionary hallucination may inspire a peasant as well as a king. 
Sometimes the unknown reveals itself suddenly to the mind of a man. A momentary rent allows what has been invisible to be seen for an instant, and then it closes over again. 
These visions sometimes change the destinies of those to whom they are revealed, and convert a camel-driver into Mahomet, and a tender of goats into a Jeanne d’Arc

Who was Deputy Reed? He was not David Reed.

So who was he really?

I’ve shown you the beginning of this campaign, now I will show you its end.

That will be this campaign’s last revelation, and then you will see.

A la perchoine and Best Regards,

Deputy Reed !?!

Fief St Michel, Vale