he says, holding out his hand. “Come inside, Lucas.”
He barely reaches my chest. Although he is a cripple, he strikes me as a person even my father would respect. His eyes are fierce, and his intelligence apparent in his high forehead and perceptive eyes.
I follow him inside, curious to see how he lives inside this rock.
“Take a seat, young man.”
I take the hard, straight-backed chair he shows me. He sits opposite me in a red armchair, rests his canes against the arm, and his hands in his lap. Then, silence.
My fingers trace the carved pattern on the armrests, where the wood twists and turns into leaves and fruit I can’t identify. I examine the room. We are inside the rock but its wafer-thin walls are luminous, letting the light in from outside, forming a seamless curve with the roof. Francis is obviously a man of learning. The desk under the window shows signs of recent work: there’s a quill pen in an ink stand, and a pair of rimless glasses rest on the pages of a leather-bound book. However, the thing that most intrigues me is the row of books lined up along the mantelpiece. He is a scholar, and I have dreamed all my life of meeting someone who was fortunate enough to devote their life to scholarship.
“And have you enjoyed your first few days in Celestia?” His hands rest quietly in his lap, and his question is not asked in the manner of the idle chatter I know from Earth. His head is tilted slightly to one side as he watches me with his brown, birdlike eyes. He’s interested in my response, and I become flustered by his attention, stopping and starting to speak before breaking off into a fit of coughing.
“You find this a difficult question?”
I try to gather my thoughts. He doesn’t appear to be aggressive. He’s not trying to trick me or expose me, so I take a chance and engage with him in conversation. “On Earth if one could not display dominance, like my younger brother Hal, or follow the leader submissively, one was nothing.”
“And you do not have the gift either for dominance or for submission?”
“Precisely.” He is astonishingly adept at reading personality. “I have always wanted to forge my own path, away from the crowds. I can do that here. Nobody bothering me, nobody wanting anything. I’m free to do exactly what I wish, when I wish.”
Silence. A good, peaceful silence lies across the room, like a large dog relaxing in front of the fire.
“You are interested in my books?” His eyes twinkle as he catches me trying to read the titles from my seat.
“A person could spend a thousand years here and still not know the names of all the plants. Do you have a book listing the flora and fauna?”
“Ah, Lucas,” he says, shaking his head so his white hair shimmers. “Always so fond of the list. There’s nothing wrong with lists, but there is more to you than your mind. What about your heart? Will it stagnate forever?”
“It’s not stagnating.” The chair has suddenly become uncomfortable. Is that a splinter sticking into my forearm? I try to ignore it. “My heart is not significant,” I say firmly. “My mind is what matters.”
The seat of the chair jabs my thigh. I change position. I wait. Wait for him to move on, but he doesn’t, watching me squirm as a sharp pain runs through my left hand on the armrest.
I get up and inspect the chair. It’s as smooth as it was when I first sat down, the wood finely polished, the bunches of fruit glistening in the light glowing through the roof. I check underneath it, behind it. It appears perfectly normal.
“Please sit down,” he says, his voice soft but not one that a person would disobey.
Carefully I sit down again and immediately the chair jabs me in the right buttock, as firmly as if someone had stuck a pin into me. I jump up, clutching my bottom. This is too much. “What is going on?”
“This is the conscience chair,” he says. He’s not laughing at me, he’s not mocking. He sits there, his hands still lying in his lap, speaking as calmly as ever. “Its shape changes to reflect your thoughts. Any untruth, anything you are unwilling to face, it will let you know.” He gestures to the stool in front of the desk. “You don’t have to sit in it. You can sit over there if you wish. But the quicker you face the parts of you that need growth, the quicker you begin your journey.”
“Journey? I’m in Celestia. I’ve reached my destination.”
“Ah, my boy, your journey has just begun. You have many worlds to pass through before you reach the Fiery Spiral. uMvelinqangi waits there, to welcome you home.”
uMvelinqangi.
I know that name, from long, long ago … Suddenly I am back in my childhood. It’s night, and I have had a nightmare. I wake, terrified, and call for my nanny. “Nokhanyo! Nokhanyo!”
She comes in, and her goodness and kindness chase the terrors from the room. She sits on the bed, and I lean against her warm body. “You’re alright,” she murmurs. “Everything is alright. uMvelinqangi is looking after you.”
She tells me about the great god, greater than my father’s god Prospiroh, greater than all the gods in the whole universe, greater than the moon and the sun and the stars. “One day you will be one with him,” she says. And as I fall asleep I hear him calling my name across the sky, and know that he is where I belong.
“You want to be one with uMvelinqangi.” Once again he is reading my thoughts. But his voice is kind, a little like Nokhanyo’s.
“More than anything.”
“You need to journey not outward, but inward into your heart. It is blocked. You have shut out other people. You must open it. Now come, sit down again.”
I perch on the edge of the seat, watching his hands as he picks up a small green alabaster egg from the bowl on the table, and rolls it in his fingers, testing the smoothness. I feel as though it’s my heart he’s holding in his small hands. How do I really know I can trust him?
“You love Ebba.” The words ring out in the room, hanging there, and the blood rushes to my face.
“No. Of course not.” Where did he get this ridiculous idea?
He raises one white eyebrow. “But you saved her, and in the process lost your own life.”
“I was doing my duty, ensuring the sacred task was completed and the amulets restored to the necklace.”
This time the chair jabs me from all sides. His eyes twinkle and I know I’m reddening more – not with shame but with anger. He’s got me trapped. If I get up, I’m a coward. If I sit here, he can torment me with his ridiculous chair.
“Your father was a hard man, too dim-witted to recognise your value. You hardened your heart against him when you were just a child. And then you built an even higher wall to keep everyone else out. Now that wall is hindering your growth. Your journey in Celestia is to dismantle the wall and to reveal your heart to another person, even if that means you are hurt or mocked or rejected.”
I stand up. I don’t have to stay here listening to this senile old man babbling on. “And if I choose not to do this?”
