Flying to Nowhere: A Tale Read Free

his right side.
    He was unused to visitors with whom he must converse on a footing more equal than that of master and pupil. Had he given to Vane the impression that he was sceptical of miracles, and therefore of the curative power of the Saint’s well? Perhaps he had. If so, he regretted it, for though Vane was an intelligent man unlikely to find reason to be committed to the superstitions of the mass, he was here in a critical, investigative, potentially hostile role. Any remark of the Abbot’s which might seem at all relevant to his inquiry would certainly be noted in his papers for possible use in his conclusions—unlike his comments to the novice, for example, which might on serious reflection appear more precisely heretical. Who should assert without danger, reflected the Abbot, that natural law was immutable and already written? Didn’t that seem necessarily binding upon God who was, after all, the legislator of that law? Was it not, indeed, the rationale of disbelief in all miracles, whereas his conversation with Vane had touched only on the evident unlikelihood of such prevalence of miracles as the existence of shrines required? The Abbot concluded that it probably was, and that it was a good thing that he believed he could rely both on the discretion and, alas, on the essential obtuseness of the novice.
    Soon he fell asleep again, but was immediately woken by his strangely jerking shoulder. He knew that he had somehow strained this shoulder, and now remembered how.
    In the early hours of that morning he had gone down to his study, using, upon some whim, the second staircase. This staircase was one that he hardly ever used, being a narrow circular one of stone fitted within a buttress of the house. Its steps were worn and their descent precipitous, around a central stone pillar which it was advisable to cling to with the left hand.
    Thus he had descended, his mind not so much on his studies as upon how to remove such traces of them as might provoke awkward questions from the official visitor, due that day if the tides permitted. The dissecting chamber was well enough out of the way. He sometimes couldn’t find it easily himself in the mazes of the house. And the library he always kept locked, too, out of respect for those silent guardians of words, laboriously accumulated. Whatever lay casually in his study that Vane’s eye might light on—a forbidden monograph, perhaps, or a gland in a little dish, brought from the chamber for longer reflection upon its secret properties—he intended that morning to hide away.
    But the rhythm of the stone stairs and the coolness of the central pillar beneath his palm distracted him. The pleasure of leaning at a slight angle above his feet as he placed them one after the other at that precise point on each triangular wedge of step to lend at once enough width for momentary balance and enough narrowness for downward spring and propulsion was combined with the pleasure of the friction within the light grip of his hand and kept him moving on even after he had come to the small wooden door that led to his study.
    Perhaps he was still not properly awake. He tried to remember if he had known before that the staircase continued beyond that point. But whether he had known or not did not seem to matter, for it indubitably did. On and on he went, faster and faster. As he descended it became cooler, and although the Abbot’s heart raced from the exercise and his shoulders and sides were damp with sweat, he felt about his cheeks the dead cold air of cellars, and the stone beneath his palm was wet.
    Round and round he went, now taking two steps at a time. It had become absolutely black so that he could not even see his feet beneath him. He supposed, therefore, that at any moment the stairs might come to an end and that he would be brought up with a jolt. But the continued sense of an unseeable void beneath him and the obsessive movement of his legs carried him on, dizzyingly.
    He did not