The Other Ones

“Through verdurous glooms and winding mossy ways.”

(John Keats, “Ode to a Nightingale”)

There are certain things in life so fundamental, so implicit in the structure of the world, that you can go for years without ever becoming consciously aware of them. And when awareness comes, it is simply the bringing into light of something you have always known on a deeper level. So it was for me with the Other Ones.

In this I am unusual, for very few become aware of them. Only those who seek the Other Ones can find them, and this seeking must inevitably be guided by a blind instinct. For the world in which we live is designed to conceal all evidence of their existence. The Other Ones are an absence, a lacuna, built into the very fabric of our world. You might say that there is a silent conspiracy, a conspiracy of silence, which we all collectively uphold.

But we do not uphold it consciously. Perhaps, at some point in our culture’s distant past, our ancestors established a covenant or “contract” which laid down the foundational invisibility of the Other Ones. There is now no memory or record of this inaugural event, if it took place. Or perhaps it has simply been this way from the beginning of culture itself.

Why this state of affairs exists is a question I have found no satisfactory answer to, even after everything that has happened to me. My best guess is that the invisibility of the Other Ones is necessary to our culture’s existence, that there is something about them inimical to our present way of life. Perhaps it is necessary to their existence, too. They are certainly complicit in their own concealment.

But there are some who are destined to see through their camouflage. People who were born into the wrong world. People, that is to say, like me. And, if I am typical of my type, the first symptom of this unusual destiny is an inexplicable malaise whose onset coincides with that of adulthood. At least, it was at around the age of seventeen or eighteen that I first remember being distinctly aware of it.

For me, its most prominent symptom was a certain unspoken, mutual discomfort, a wariness mingled with hostility, which made itself felt whenever I came into contact with other people. This feeling was as pervasive as it was vague and impossible to pinpoint. As a result of this feeling and my painful awareness of it, I struggled with feelings of shame, confusion, alienation, frustration and resentment, a condition which grew worse the more time I spent around other people. Inevitably, I became more and more solitary.

Of course, this change didn’t happen all at once. It was gradual. For a few years I fruitlessly searched for some solution to—or at least an explanation of—the malaise. This pursuit led me to research various subjects, from the science of aesthetics to psychiatric disorders and personality theory. I emerged from these studies with a multitude of theories and no closer to a definite answer to the question which tormented me. And so I resolved to swallow the bitter pill of my confusion and try to live a normal life. Perhaps, I thought, that was the solution. Perhaps I was just thinking too much, sliding into a personal rabbit-hole that had no bottom—except, perhaps, in madness.

For about ten years I stuck to my resolution with a grim, masochistic determination. I went through all the motions. I worked, paid my bills, saved money, did my best to maintain some kind of social life, even made a few, uninspired attempts at romantic relationships. But it seemed like I was never really invested in any of it—the deeper part of me wasn’t really in my life. It was as though my soul had fled somewhere else, somewhere inaccessible to me—or, as I sometimes feared, somewhere I was simply too afraid to follow.

Every now and then, though, it sent me postcards from the mysterious country to which it had migrated. I was usually outside when these messages arrived, but I might equally be gazing out of a window. Suddenly, my surroundings would seem imbued with an invisible light. Everything—from the twigs on the trees to the taillights of receding cars—would seem to be pointing the way to some unseen destination. And my soul, from some impossible distance, whispered in my ear. It whispered that all I had to do was drop everything, then and there, and follow where the signs led. But something—some hesitation, some treacherous timidity—always prevented me.

These experiences tugged at me, disturbed me, like nothing else. I tried to brush them off, because I instinctively felt that to acknowledge their reality would be to admit that the very foundations upon which my life was built were insubstantial, false. And, as empty as that life was, I feared this, this stepping out into the unknown. If I had overcome my fear and followed the signs, perhaps I would have found the Other Ones much sooner than I did. But, in my defence, I still had no way of understanding what these intimations meant, no context in which to place them. I needed some other piece of information, some token of what I would find at the end of the path that they beckoned me to follow. I needed a clearer signal.

Eventually one came, and in an unlikely form.

#

It came in the form of my grandmother.

My parents died when I was very young, and it was she who raised me single-handedly for the remainder of my childhood and my teens. Our relationship was unusual. We were close in our own way. We didn’t speak much. We didn’t need to. We had a wordless understanding. I think at some level we both felt more at home in nature than in the manmade world, and more akin to animals than human beings. In light of the things I have since discovered, I think I now understand the source of this strange affinity.

But I’m getting ahead of myself. When the malaise descended on me, I soon found that my grandmother was the only person I knew who remained untouched by the obscure antagonism which came between me and other people, like an invisible sheet of glass. I found myself stranded on a strange, alien shore, and but for her I would have been completely alone.

It should, then, come as no surprise that her death dealt me a heavy blow. By the time she died, she also had dementia. Luckily, the illness didn’t have time to reach its worst phase before her demise cut its progress short.

But it did advance far enough to achieve something very strange and, for me, profoundly important. Perhaps the disease, as it did its destructive work, dissolved some barrier in her mind, allowing some innate knowledge, long repressed, to resurface. However it happened, it is certain that, for a moment, it turned her mind into a mouthpiece through which a clear message could at last reach me from the world of the Other Ones.

I can still picture the scene. It was in the nursing home. I was sitting by her bedside. It was mid-morning, a bright day in early spring. Sunshine flooded in through the big sash window behind her bed. Some yellow tulips in a jug stood on the bedside table. There was, it seemed to me, something uncaring, blithely brutal in their bright yellowness, like the happiness of other people. At this time I often had the vivid impression that she was, during this last stretch of her pilgrimage, undergoing a kind of transmutation, an alchemical magnum opus, her flesh turning to ivory and her hair to silver.

She was holding my hand in her bony hand with its swollen, arthritic knuckles. Even then, as her end neared, she had a talon-like strength of grip.

“You’re a good boy... I know it’s been hard for you, but you can go and see them now.”

“Who, Grandma? Go and see who?”

“The Other Ones. Don’t worry, I’m sure you’ll find them.”

As soon as she named them, it was as if a light switched on in my mind. And this light illumined with a warm, secret, golden lambency a passageway which stretched on and on, and became a pathway through a forest, and the light became the light of a secret sun shining on that forest path. And, at the end of that path, I felt rather than saw that there was a place—a place where I would not be seen as an outsider. A place where I might finally feel at home.

#

It would be some time before I thought of this incident again. During the following weeks—which would be the last of her life—a snowfall of other responsibilities and considerations pushed it from my mind. After her death, I was kept busy for some time, first with arranging the funeral, a quiet affair attended by only a few guests besides myself; then with settling the estate.

This all took several months, at the end of which I was considerably better off than before, having inherited a second property (a small house which was rented by a family), some stocks and shares, and a substantial amount of money. This, added to the money I’d saved over the twelve years since I’d started working, was enough, with some careful investments, to allow me to live in modest comfort for the indefinite future, without having to work. With this newfound freedom, I planned to lead as reclusive an existence as possible.

While I was making these preparations, I didn’t exactly know what I intended to do with the new life I was creating for myself. I only knew, instinctively, that I had to free myself for something—something that would reveal itself in time, if only I kept looking.

All I had to guide me in this search were my instincts. And they led me to strange places: firstly, into an eclectic and obscure range of subjects, from philosophy, anthropology, religion and occultism, to local history and folklore; later, into the equally old and forgotten ways of the world outside of books: to ancient hillforts and holloways, to abandoned industrial-era factories strewn with the rust-grown carcasses of defunct machines, to derelict scrapyards and tumbledown houses. In these places I sometimes came across strange signs or symbols, like runes or sigils, made on walls, floors or large stones, some made using charcoal or clay, others arranged from objects like small stones, twigs or animal bones. One motif I encountered repeatedly resembled a fish and an eye at the same time. At times, I had the distinct impression that I was surrounded by figures which were just out of sight, and voices just out of hearing. Sometimes, when the atmosphere seemed alive and populous with these elusive presences, I almost felt myself to be one of them.

In all of these wanderings, mental and physical, there was no obvious common thread—not, at least, one that I could articulate. Yet I somehow knew that, though I might be groping in the dark, I was nevertheless moving towards the discovery of something—some other world which I sensed all around me but could not yet lay my hands on.

Ironically enough, in the event it wasn’t in the course of any of my outré investigations that my first real contact with the Other Ones occurred. It happened much closer to home.

#

At the time, I did most of my shopping at a corner shop about a fifteen-minute walk from my house. On my way there and back, I often took a detour through a certain lane.

This place had a strange enchantment for me. It is hard to describe the feeling, but whenever I think of it, it brings to mind Keats’ “verdurous glooms and winding mossy ways.” It was enclosed on both sides by high stone walls and overshadowed by tall trees, giving it a sunken, almost submarine atmosphere. On one side was a neat Victorian red brick wall which marked the boundary of a private estate; the wall on the other side enclosed the earth of an old churchyard whose grounds lay about ten feet above the level of the lane. This latter wall was clearly very ancient, probably medieval. It was overgrown in many places by big, tendril-trailing cushions of ivy and patches of moist, dark green moss.

Near one of the entrances to the lane was a particularly large patch of this moss. At night, it was thrown into relief by the light from a lamp on the street beyond. The effect was particularly striking because the lane itself was unlit—a fact which, combined with the high walls and overshadowing trees, meant that I sometimes had to use my hand torch to see my way at night. And it was at night that the uncanny effect of this patch of moss appeared most vividly. It always seemed to me like the shape or silhouette of a little old woman, stooped with age, standing sentry at the entrance to the lane.

Over successive visits to the lane, this resemblance seemed to become more and more distinct. At times, the light from the streetlamp would catch two mossy protuberances in a way that made them resemble a pair of preternaturally large and palely shining eyes. More fascinated than disturbed by these strange developments, I began to experience a strange tingle of anticipation whenever I found myself approaching the end of the lane, where I knew the patch of moss would be. I began to feel as though the moss itself had some secretive intelligence or soul, and that, little by little, it was being drawn out by my own awareness of it.

And then, one night, the old woman came out of the wall.

It was an especially dark night, and as I approached the end of the lane, I saw from some distance away that something was different about the mossy form. At first I thought it might be a trick of the light. It seemed in some indescribable way to be emerging from the wall, like a creature in an old horror movie emerging from a swamp, draped in algae.

I stopped in my tracks, heart thudding in my chest. After a moment I began, slowly, cautiously, moving forward, keeping close to the brick wall on the opposite side of the lane. As I approached, I kept the weak beam of my torch trained on the mossy shape, whether in an attempt to shed more light on the phenomenon I was witnessing, or from some superstitious idea that the light might somehow keep the creature at bay, I don’t know.

As I drew nearer, the effect grew unmistakeable. Slowly, the moss was changing, from an outline to a form, from silhouette to substance. A figure was bodying itself forth from the wall before my eyes. In some far-off part of my mind, I was dimly aware of the clatter of my torch as it slipped from my fingers and began to roll down the slope of the lane behind me.

The little old moss-woman stepped out from the wall. As she did so, she seemed to shed a layer of camouflage. Now I could see a small, wizened face; two unnaturally large eyes that strangely reflected the light that fell on them from the streetlamp beyond, emitting a silver-green radiance; and a pair of thin, long-fingered and ivory-white hands. Having freed herself from the stone, she remained a short distance from the wall, still with her back to it, her stooped form outlined in silver by the streetlamp’s light. Indeed, she was so stooped that her outline would have resembled the letter “r” if it hadn’t been concealed by the hanging folds of a strange, moss-like garment which hid all but her head and hands. She slowly turned her face towards me. Yet she did not exactly look at me. Rather, her eyes seemed to take me in along with my surroundings.

Slowly, she brought her hands together. Slowly, the pale, elongated fingers laced themselves together. These movements, though slow, were not laborious, and her fingers, though visibly ancient, were strangely pliant. She had an air of arboreal patience and awareness. I had the impression that she was slowly absorbing every detail of the surrounding scene, like a camera set to a long exposure.

By now, my fear was fast evaporating, transmuting to a flame of fascination and wonder. Without consciously intending to, I found myself slowly moving once more towards the moss-woman.

Soon, I was close enough to get a proper look at her eyes. I have always found it hard to maintain eye contact for any length of time, but the strange comprehensiveness of her gaze, which seemed aware of me but not focussed on me, made it impossible to feel self-conscious. I could now see clearly what caused this effect. Her eyes, about three times the size of an ordinary human’s, resembled those of a tarsier. They seemed all iris, with no visible whites and only the tiniest dot of a pupil in the centre of each. They were the colour of moss, mottled with several shades of green, and delicately threaded through with filaments of silver.

As I approached she slowly unlaced her fingers and, with one white hand, gestured to the wall behind her. Where the patch of moss—she—had been there was now a jagged opening. Into this aperture poured the streetlamp’s light, veiling all that lay beyond with a fine sidereal mist. I moved past the old woman and stood before the opening. It was about as high as my shoulders. Within, I could dimly make out a passageway descending deeper into the earth beneath the churchyard.

Uncertain, I turned back to the moss-woman. She now had her back to the streetlamp, and in the absence of its light her eyes were the colour of the darkest moss, and the silver threads had vanished, engulfed in the viridian depths. Her hand still gestured towards the wall, and I now realized that she was indicating a part of the wall just beside the aperture.

There, shallowly carved into the weathered stone, was a kind of pictogram. Bells of recognition tinkled tantalisingly in the back of my mind, as though I were struggling to remember something from a dream I’d just woken from. Then I remembered. It was the same symbol—combining an eye and a fish—that had kept cropping up during my investigations of abandoned places over the previous months.

I turned towards the moss-woman again and the words passed my lips without my wholly understanding them, as though spoken by someone other than myself, as one often speaks in dreams:

“The Other Ones?”

Perhaps the old woman understood them better than I did, for I thought she nodded in response, though the movement, if such it was, was so slight as to be almost imperceptible.

It came to me then that I had arrived at the end of a thread that my grandmother’s cryptic deathbed words had first placed in my hands, and which I had been unconsciously following back to its source ever since.

But it seemed that this thread of Ariadne had led me out of one labyrinth only to leave me at the entrance of another, far deeper and stranger.

#

As I approached the opening, I could now see that it gave onto a flight of stone steps descending into deeper darkness. Stooping and holding onto one side for support, I stepped through and began, slowly and cautiously, making my way down.

As I descended, the darkness thickened and enfolded me. Before long, I had to rely on touch alone, carefully feeling for each step with my foot, trailing my hand along the wall to steady myself. The steps felt strangely irregular, as though they had been assembled piecemeal from odds and ends of stone. With a stab of self-irritation, I remembered my torch, left behind where I had dropped it on the slope of the lane. But as I was debating whether to go back for it, I saw a faint light below me.

The light grew stronger as I continued my descent. Soon it revealed that the steps were indeed cobbled together from stones of various type, shape and size, from blocks of pink sandstone and purple volcanic rock to red bricks, and flints embedded in mortar. In some places there were even pieces of what looked like aged, hardened, darkened oak, such as you find supporting the ceilings of old cottages. Soon the passageway’s sides and curved ceiling also became visible, revealing themselves to be made of the same strange bricolage of materials.

Reaching the bottom of the stairs, I found myself faced with the bizarre explanation of the light. Here the ceiling was higher, high enough for me to stand with some room to spare, and the passageway itself broadened to about five feet across. Ahead it continued, strangely illuminated, for some distance, before bending to the left. All along its visible length it was lit by an extraordinary diversity of lamps. These ranged, in design and materials, form and function, from the picayune to the peculiar, the ordinary to the outré. There were bankers’ lamps, miners’ lamps, hurricane lamps, and carriage lamps. There were Art Nouveau lamps and Art Deco lamps, and lamps in styles from tribal to contemporary. There were lamps featuring kitschy classical figurines of cherubs and women in togas astride eagles. There were lamps shaped like seashells, tree trunks, black panthers, Chinese lanterns and terrestrial globes. Light, variously tinted by shades of diverse material and hue, suffused the passageway with a warm, mottled lambency. The place would have been a perilous paradise for moths, if any had been able to find their way in. But there was, beside myself, no living thing in that strange subterranean corridor.

But though there was no insect life, I soon become aware that the lamps themselves were collectively emitting a low, insectile humming, which reminded me of Keats’ “murmurous haunt of flies on summer eves.”

#

I have no idea how long I walked along that passage, or how far I travelled. I seemed to have entered a dream-world where the normal laws of time and space were suspended. But it must have been a decent hike because my legs were aching by the time I reached the other side.

I emerged into the open air. A cool night breeze brushed my face and hair. From the tunnel’s mouth a narrow path ascended a short, steep slope flanked by forest. The patch of sky framed by the trees at the top of the slope was lit with a hazy, dusty, golden light. Behind me, an old-fashioned electric lantern hung from the wall above the arch of the tunnel’s mouth, dimly lighting the path.

I climbed to the top of the path and found myself at the edge of a wide clearing. Dotted around it were various lampposts, collectively bathing the clearing in a hazy, golden light, and bronzing the leaves and trunks of the trees which enclosed the clearing on three of its sides. The remaining side—the far side from where I stood—consisted of a rock wall or cliff face, about the height of a three-story building, itself surmounted by more trees.

I say wall or cliff face because it was hard to tell which of these it was. It seemed to be the product of a cooperation between nature and human—or something like human—hands. Sections of the same patchwork masonry I had seen in the tunnels were encrusted around seemingly natural rock formations. Here and there were openings of various shapes and sizes, some at ground level, others, smaller and higher up, appearing to serve the purpose of windows.

The clearing was alive with strange activity. Figures moved ceaselessly and noiselessly in and out of the wedges of light cast by the various lamps and the penumbrous spaces between like shuttles in a living loom, as though by their mysterious activities they were continually weaving the clearing’s weird, golden gloaming into existence. I couldn’t tell whether these figures were human or animal: they seemed to shapeshift as they moved about. Under the direct lamplight they settled into more-or-less human forms, but when they passed into the more dimly lit spaces they seemed to deliquesce into shadowy, animal shapes.

For a while I stood there, frozen by fear and enchantment; then my attention was drawn by something nearby.

A few feet away from me stood a lamppost with a very unusual lantern. It was formed from two curved planes like wings, fused in the middle. The undersides of the wings were lined, mosaic fashion, with small panes of glass which reflected the light from the exposed bulb hanging beneath them. It looked like some fabulous glittering butterfly, or a falcon bowing its body and wings over a glowing prey caught in mid-flight.

It is difficult to describe the feeling that drew my attention to this unusual piece of street furniture. It was certainly remarkable in its own way, but no more so than anything else I had seen. But it seemed surrounded by an invisible electric field, swelling and crackling with the force of some imminent manifestation.

Then, in the space beyond the zone of light cast by this bulb, I glimpsed a movement of shadowy wings flitting down, something alighting on the ground. Into the light materialised the figure of a woman. At least in general outline she was a woman; but in every detail of her appearance there was something distinctly avian. Her tall form was draped in a cloak that looked like it was made of feathers, white flecked with black.

She paused under the lamplight and regarded me. Her eyes had the far-seeing, penetrating look of a bird of prey’s. After a few moments, she spoke:

“A long and lonely way you’ve walked to come here. It was the same for all of us. But you’re home now.”

Her voice was as clear, keen and cold as a bright winter’s day.

For a long moment, I struggled to formulate and utter some response to these cryptic words. Under her cold, bright gaze I seemed to have lost the power of coherent thought, let alone speech. At last, I managed to get out the words:

“You are... the Other... Ones?”

My voice sounded small and hoarse in my ears. A strange smile, cold but kind, appeared on the woman’s face.

“Yes,” she said. “That is one of our names.”

During this short conversation, in some half-conscious part of my mind, I had been struggling to put my finger on precisely what it was that she reminded me of. Now the answer suddenly came to me: it was a picture of a gyrfalcon that I’d once come across in a book of ornithological illustrations. And in the same moment I knew, by a sure instinct, that this woman somehow was a gyrfalcon, at the same time as she was a human being, just as the old woman who emerged from the wall was at once a tarsier, a patch of moss and an old woman.

“And who are—I mean, what’s your name?” I stuttered.

No sooner had these words left my mouth than I felt them to be irrelevant and stupid. To my relief, she answered with a seriousness that seemed to legitimise my question:

“My Other name, which perhaps you have already perceived, is Gyrfalcon. Idalia is the name I was given by my parents.”

“Two names,” I said meditatively, momentarily forgetting my nervousness. “And ...” I glanced towards the mutable figures still moving ceaselessly in and out of the lights in the clearing behind her. “... I take it everyone here has two names?”

“Yes,” she said. “A human name and an Other name. And so do you. In fact, it’s time for you to learn your Other name.”

“You mean that I’m...”

But I found myself unable to finish the sentence, afraid, perhaps, that openly speaking the idea that seemed to hang in the air between us would make it real. But she seemed to read in my expression more of what I was thinking than I was able to articulate.

Again that queer, cold smile lit her face like a wintry sunbeam.

“Yes,” she said. “Like us. But you’ll find out everything soon enough. I am here to escort you to the house of White Poplar. He will show you your Other name. Follow me.”

She turned and began walking towards the rock wall at the opposite end of the clearing, her feathered cloak billowing a little behind her.

For a moment I stood there stupidly, still, I suppose, trying to process everything. Then, shaking myself, I hurried after her. She offered no more conversation during this walk, which gave me a chance to gather my wits and look at my surroundings.

As we went, we passed many of the strange shadowy figures I had seen from the edge of the clearing. Of those who were in motion, I now saw that they were in transit between the edges of the clearing, where they continually emerged from the shadows of the surrounding forest, and the various entrances in the strange rock wall towards which my guide and I were headed. I could now see that most of them carried bags, but the nature of their errands remained as mysterious as they had been at first.

Others were engrossed in more static, but no less enigmatic, pursuits. In one place, a man who was also a fox was intent upon arranging small tiles of a reddish ochre colour, which might have been made of stone or baked clay, and on which were painted runes or glyphs. His eyes darted back and forth between the different tiles, and his tail twitched behind him. Elsewhere, a moth-woman meditated amidst a constellation of varicoloured glowing spheres. So absorbed were they in these pursuits that they did not appear to notice us at all as we passed.

Soon, we were approaching one of the larger openings in the cliff face, resembling a medieval archway. Above the entrance, a stone-carved child leaned out of the wall with a confidential air, holding out before him a lamp which illumined his weathered but still round and elfin face. It also illumined my guide, making her briefly resemble a figure in a stained-glass window as she passed beneath and into the interior beyond.

I followed her into a warmly lit space, which felt at once like the vestibule of some ancient place of worship, the entrance hall of a stately home, and a waiting room. Here Gyrfalcon stopped and turned to me.

“Wait here while I go and tell White Poplar that you’ve arrived. He’ll need some time to prepare. Make yourself comfortable. I won’t be long.”

Without further ceremony she crossed the room and disappeared down one of three dimly lit passageways at the far side of the chamber.

Left temporarily to my own devices, I began to study the place in which I had found myself. Part of it seemed to have been hewn from the rock, which I could now see was some kind of porous, reddish sandstone. The left-hand wall was decorated with a strange bricolage of pictures, in the centre of which hung a large, colourful but faded tapestry. On the right-hand side, a large stone fireplace stood ensconced among shelves and bookcases which filled up most of the wall. A small fire burned in the hearth and a handful of old upholstered chairs stood around it in various states of dilapidation. In one of these, drawn up close to the fire, sat a middle-aged man who was also a firefly, his abdomen glowing with a golden, softly pulsating light. He carefully manipulated the glowing embers in the fire with an ornate pair of tongs fashioned in the likeness of insectile claws. Like the others I had seen outside, he seemed not to notice my presence.

Being an inveterate bibliophile, I was soon drawn to the shelves. The books ranged from old leather-bound tomes to creased paperbacks. Most were works of anthropology, or studies of religion, mythology, or folklore. Scattered among them were also a handful of works of fiction. Among them I recognised The Island of Doctor Moreau, Strange Case of Dr Jekyll and Mr Hyde, The Lord of the Rings, Steppenwolf, and collections of stories by Franz Kafka and Algernon Blackwood.

After briefly, restlessly scanning these titles, I turned my attention to the pictures which covered the opposite wall. For the most part these were reproductions of well-known works. Among them I recognised Michelangelo’s “Fall of Man”; several of Doré’s illustrations to Dante’s Inferno, including Arachne, the Forest of the Suicides, Agnello’s ophidian metamorphosis, and the centaurs; Rubens’ drawing of a reclining Pan; and a Japanese print showing a kitsune changing into its human form.

But in the centre of the wall, dominating the rest, hung the tapestry, and its subject was entirely strange to me. The closest thing to it that I could think of was the famous frontispiece of Hobbes’ Leviathan. Like that image, it showed a giant human figure which was made up of a multitude of smaller creatures. But rather than encompassing myriads of miniature men like Hobbes’ imposing personification of the body politic, this Leviathan teemed with a panoply of non-human lifeforms. Within its gargantuan body was represented, it seemed, every major class of organic life, from the protozoan to the prehensile, the viral to the viviparous, the fungal to the furred and feathered. It was impossible to tell whether the titanic form was male or female; it seemed at once androgynous and sexless.

While I was absorbed in my study of the tapestry, I heard a light footfall and looked up to see Gyrfalcon standing beside me. I had not heard her approach and yet, somehow, I wasn’t startled.

“White Poplar is ready now,” she said. “Follow me.”

Once more I obediently followed her into the middle of the three branching passageways. It was dimly and flickeringly lit by sconces, some containing candles, others electric bulbs. We must have walked a considerable distance into this subterranean world. The passageway meandered as it burrowed deeper into the rock, and seemed not the work of human hands at all, but rather of a river which in some distant past had bored its way through slow, persistent years through the soft stone like a great chthonic worm.

Every now and then we passed open doorways affording glimpses into rooms filled with the paraphernalia and products of bizarre and marvellous pursuits. One was filled with intricately fashioned orreries depicting apparently alien solar systems. From another there floated an enchanting, delicate, crystalline music, and, passing, I caught a glimpse of an instrument consisting of a wooden frame in the shape of a large wave, from which hung clear polygonal vessels of various shapes, sizes and tints. At intervals, other passageways intersected ours, tunnelling on into further unexplored depths.

As before, my guide led the way in silence, but somehow I trusted that, as she had said, my meeting with the mysterious White Poplar would make everything clear.

At last we came to a very old, rough-hewn archway which might have been the portal to some primitive chapel. It framed a scene which appeared immemorially ancient, sacred. Candlelight danced against ancient stone pillars, on a sagging stone floor which seemed to have been worn down to its present shape by numberless generations of shuffling feet.

Here my guide halted and gestured me towards the archway. After a moment’s hesitation I obeyed.

#

On stepping over the threshold I experienced a queer sensation. The feeling, which at the time I couldn’t explain, I now think must have arisen from a combination of elements, the most prominent being a slight breeze that flowed through the space. It created a sensation of perpetual motion, as though some gentle cosmic wind were eternally passing through, or as though this strange sanctuary itself were a vessel on some perpetual, leisurely pilgrimage through the boundless regions of space. Above, the low, arched roof softly receded into grey shadows.

Two rows of pillars—one on either side—defined a central aisle. I myself stood at one end. At the other, behind what looked like a large baptismal font, there grew a shrub or small tree, decked in white and flickering foliage. And yet it was also the shape of a person, seated on a crude stone plinth or altar. This, then, was the one I’d been summoned to see.

Slowly, as if drawn by some hypnotic force, I made my way down the aisle. At last, after moving through a time that might have been measured in seconds or cycles, I stood before the enigmatic figure. Strange, amber-coloured eyes surveyed me. The eyes of White Poplar.

Of all the strange beings I had encountered so far, he was the most eerily beautiful. His skin was smooth and white like purest paper, and speckled with little spots of black where it broke to reveal a darker dermis. From his head there grew a thicket of soft, slender twigs, and the twigs themselves were clustered with leaves which flickered and rustled with a papery sound in the breeze that seemed to flow perpetually towards him. The leaves were two-coloured, on one side a dark green delicately edged with frost, on the other covered with a silky white down. His body was slender and, though he hardly moved, seemed lithe. His face was an ageless mystery, young and untarnished, yet unfathomably ancient.

He didn’t speak, just gazed at me; and his eyes were full of strange sentience. I saw in them, distilled, the accumulated wisdom of millennia of watching, absorbing, until at last, having peeled away, layer by layer, the epidermis of the world’s appearances, they had seen through to the ancient, eternally recurring essences of things.

And as he gazed at me, it seemed he was likewise peeling back the layers of my being. Strange vistas opened within me. Feathers, black as night, flowered behind my eyes. I saw the intricate silhouettes of leafless trees against wintry sunset skies. And all this time my eyes were fastened to his, so that I couldn’t look away. Likewise I couldn’t move, as though my feet had sent down roots into the stone beneath them.

At last, he gestured with his hand towards the stoup that stood between us, and I understood that he wanted me to look into it. For the first time, I noticed that the font was covered in carvings, in bas-relief. They were not easy to see at first, but slowly I began to make out figures, in which were mingled the shapes of humans, plants and animals, all interlaced in an intricate, shapeshifting dance.

The force that had paralysed me now relented, and I seemed to float, disembodied, over the few paces that lay between me and the font. As though, by some mysterious mechanism, set into motion by my own motion, the figures now began to stir and glow, acquiring colour, texture, life. In a flowing procession they circled the sides of the font, ever vanishing from view around the left-hand side, while fresh figures appeared from the right.

Soon I was close enough to see over the font’s rim, to glimpse a strangely dark water within. I was aware, muted and distant, as if my own bodily sensations were reaching me through layers of some dream-fabric, of my heart thudding in my chest. And with the same dreamlike awareness, I felt a terrible, bone-deep feeling of impending revelation. For as I peered over the edge, in tandem with my own motion, a head swam into view in those dark, watery depths, a head which was, and was not, my own.

At first I saw just the crown, the jet-black hair strangely glossy, feathery. Then the forehead, the hairline considerably lower than my own. And then the eyes. They seemed to be a slightly different shape than usual—more slanted and sharper at the edges. And the eyes themselves were black and glistening as obsidian.

But it was when the lower half of the face appeared that the sense of dreamlike unreality culminated. Admittedly, my nose had always been strikingly aquiline, which might partly have accounted for the impression. But on the face of that dark doppelganger in the water, the resemblance to a beak was uncanny, unmistakeable. It resembled the black, shiny beak of a crow or raven. I even thought I made out short, bristly feathers covering the upper part. The mouth, too, when it came into view, seemed to have subtly changed shape, so that it seemed to have partly melded with the beaklike nose.

Then I felt a dark revelation flowing through my being, dark currents of reciprocity flowing between me and that corvine double, and I was drawn inexorably down into the reflection before me. And, in the depths of the water, a dark flowering, a transaction deep and obscure, took place. And on the tide of that dark flowering, as on the breakers of a midnight sea, there floated towards me a voice, flutey, melodic, old and young: the voice of White Poplar.

“See yourself. This is your Other Self, and this your Other Name: Crow.”

And I was flying through a wintry sky. The air crisp, cold. Mist condensing on my feathers. Air flowing, palpable and buoyant, a cool cushion, under my wings. Lift and elevation, joy. Rolling far beneath me, fields, greenish grey through the thin mist and in the dawn light. Here and there, bare wintry trees. Then, in the centre of a field, encircled by a ring of raised earth, a round pool, perfectly circular, limpid.

And then I was back in my body, my human body. And the round pool had become the basin of the font, its water no longer dark but transparent. I could see, with perfect clarity, the pale, porous stone of the basin’s bottom. The face in the water was gone.

#

For days after my strange baptism, I underwent a continuous process of inward transformation. During that time, I was so engrossed by what was taking place within me that I was virtually blind to my surroundings. I remember being taken to a room—my room—and meals being brought to me—simple meals consisting of bread, water, cheese, meat. I remember pacing around the room, lying on the bed. My waking and sleeping flowed so easily and naturally into one another, and there seemed so little distinction between the two, that they became like rhythmically alternating phases of a single, continuous waking dream. With the inevitability of a series of dominos falling one after the other, everything fell into place in my mind.

I discovered a lost world, ancient and strange, within myself. A part of me, which I had, without knowing it, been missing all my life, was restored. For a time this rediscovered self, this other animal self, took over completely. For hours, days, I wandered through the woods which surrounded the clearing, getting lost yet never losing my way, guided by a sure instinct. Feelings and sensations of which, in my previous life, I had only ever caught the vaguest intimations, the faintest scent on the wind, were now vividly present and alive to my senses and my soul. I communed with something ancient yet ever-renewed. Though I wandered through the forest, I also carried the forest within me.

Before long I discovered that I could take on my Other form completely, and become the crow. For seemingly endless expanses of time I would fly over the forest, its undulating sea of green rolling below me.

Then, slowly, my human nature returned, and an equilibrium was established between my two natures, the human and the unhuman, the avian. And with the arrival of this new balance, my purpose in this new life was also revealed.

#

Now, for the first time since my baptism, I felt an urge to explore the maze-like complex of corridors, rooms, chambers, and alcoves which made up the cliff-delved dwelling which was my new home, when not exploring the woods. I could fill reams of paper with the strange secrets and wonders I have found here, but I will content myself with one small detour before arriving at my final destination. And I ask you, gracious reader, to indulge my humour and accompany me on this bit of sightseeing. The place I want to show you is one that I have called the Lantern Room.

To reach it, you must ascend a spiral staircase, like you might find in a tower in a medieval castle, which winds tightly and steeply up a narrow shaft. Finally, you enter the room itself through a small trapdoor in its floor. Inside, the space is large enough only to comfortably accommodate a few people. The room is circular, and a cushioned seat extends from the wall all around. Above the backrest of the seat, which comes to about shoulder height, the walls and domed ceiling are almost entirely composed of stained-glass panels, interspersed with narrow vertical panes of clear glass which allow a limited view of the outside world. Glimpsing through these panes, you discover that the room is located among the upper branches of tall trees. For the Lantern Room is located at the top of a tower which projects somewhere above the cliff-delved cave complex and into the canopy.

During the day, sunlight, filtered through the surrounding leaves and through the glass, lays faint, fragile patterns of coloured light on the floor of the room. At night, a lantern, suspended from the centre of the dome, illumines the space with a soft white light, making the windows glimmer darkly like crushed embers. Seen from outside at this time, it must resemble a giant, ornate lantern, glowing, suspended in the forest canopy. Sitting in there at night, I have often heard owls calling to each other nearby in the branches. This enchanted eyrie has become one of my favourite haunts.

But now I have come to the last stop of my tour, to the place that played a direct part in the revelation of my purpose. I call this place the Emporium.

The dominant impression the Emporium produced on me when I first entered it was at once cavernous and cluttered. Like everywhere in the cave-complex, it seemed at once the product of natural forces and of human hands. The roof—perhaps forty feet high—was upheld by irregular stone piers like the massive, misshapen arms of some chthonian Atlas. It was punctuated here and there by shafts of varying sizes, through which shafts of sunlight poured. These illuminated the place in patches of light, throwing into lucent prominence certain of the objects making up the fabulous sea of antiquities and bric-a-brac which filled the entire space.

Among these, perhaps the most impressive was a giant man, which stood perhaps eighteen feet high. From neck to feet, the massive form was concealed in the voluminous folds of a crimson robe. From beneath this garment’s hem the tips of two black boots peeped out. The great head was swaddled in a medieval cloth cap, greenish grey in colour. The face was painted a fleshy pink and punctuated by a pair of thick black eyebrows and a beard. The features were strong and round; the expression good-humoured and benevolent. A leather baldric hung sash-wise from shoulder to waist, and at the waist was fastened a great sword in a scabbard. The sword’s hilt was fashioned into a dragon’s head.

But the object which bore on my own destiny was much less impressive in itself. I found it when I had quite lost myself within the labyrinth of little paths that threaded through the piles of paraphernalia. It was in an out-of-the-way corner, perched precariously on a pile of ancient books and papers.

As soon as I saw it I felt a thrill. It was a beautiful thing, despite the thin coating of dust that dimmed the onyx-like blackness of the frame and the neat gold lettering on the paper rest, spelling out the letters of Underwood. I ran my fingers over the round, ivory-coloured keys, the faded letters like the symbols of some magical alphabet. I pressed the keys, watched the typebars spring up and strike the cylinder like the legs of some fantastical black spider, a weaver of worlds from words.

And that was when I felt the purpose stir in me. At first it was a tingling in the fingertips, as if some faint electric current were being transferred to them through the keys. Then the current passed into me, stirred something deeper. And somewhere that was at once in the abyss of my being and far out in the outermost reaches of space, an undiscovered planet swam into my ken. And it was like a crystal ball, this planet, swathed in pearly mist, with nacreous gleams and glimmers in its depths, and muted flashes like streaks of silver lightning in a cloud.

And I flew down through those opalescent clouds, and there, spread below me, was a world. On that world’s surface moved souls, thousands upon thousands of them, all isolated, strangely disconnected from their surroundings, present yet absent in their lives. All haunted, as I had been, by an obscure emptiness, an unidentifiable, half-buried longing. All seeking, though they didn’t know it, some greater, truer, realer existence. For they, like me, like all the Other Ones, were twin-souled, double-natured. And all had within them an undiscovered world, another self—an Other Self.

And I saw that I had a part to play in awakening them to that other life and that other self. For the world that vision revealed to me is the human world from which I came, and those souls are real souls, half human and half Other. And I must be a messenger between this world and that.

This is my first message. I will leave it in some hidden place for someone to find. Someone whom, like me, some strange, secret impulse compels to look in hidden places, to seek though they don’t know what it is they seek.

If you are reading this, let this be the start of your journey. I cannot tell you how to find us. I cannot tell you the steps you must take. Everyone’s path to the Other Ones is unique, and yours cannot be the same as mine.

But I can tell you that you have already taken the first step. The path will reveal itself to you, piece by piece. You will find the signs.

All you have to do is look.