CHAPTER 24
For an immeasurable span of time I lay in abyssal cold and darkness. I could see nothing, hear nothing, feel nothing. My feeble thoughts, fading as my body froze, wandered to Ketu’s concept of Nirvana. Was this the end of all sensation, the end of all wants and needs, the ultimate oblivion?
But somewhere in that dark nothingness I began to feel a hollow sinking sensation that gradually deepened into a wild, panicky impression that I was falling, plummeting through empty space like a meteor blazing across the sky. Abruptly I felt myself lying on a rough, uneven surface. Something hard was poking painfully into the small of my back. But the cold had gone; in fact, I felt comfortably warm as I sat up and opened my eyes.
I was sitting on a rocky hillside that descended to a heaving dark sea, where churning waves broke against the black boulders and sent up showers of spray. The salt tang of the sea reached me even up near the crest of the ridge where I sat, blinking away the memories of death, trying to adjust my mind to this new existence. There was a narrow crescent of sandy beach beyond the boulders, and then steep cliffs of bare rock. It was a gray day, yet not really chilly. The wind coming off the water was warm and wet, gusting fitfully. The trees up at the crest of the ridge sighed and rustled. I could see that the incessant sea breeze had bent and twisted them into hunched, lopsided forms like stunted arthritic old men.
I rose gingerly to my feet. I felt strong and alert. I knew I was a long way from Ararat, perhaps in a different era altogether. Then I realized that my clothing now consisted of a brief leather skirt and a leather vest so sweat-stained and cracked with age that it looked black. My dagger was still strapped to my thigh beneath the skirt. My feet were shod in rude sandals, bound to my ankles with leather thongs.
Where I was, and why I had been placed here, I did not know. I saw a trail threading through the rocks down the hillside to the narrow curving strip of white sand and an even narrower road that ran along the coastline. I headed for that road.
Then a new thought struck me. Who had sent me here? Hera, or Anya? Or one of the other Creators, perhaps—Aten, the Golden One?
By the time I reached the side of the road I felt like a blind man groping in unfamiliar territory, wondering which direction to take. To my right, the road followed the coast and then disappeared in a cut between two rocky cliffs. Far to my left, it swung inland from the beach and climbed up into the hills I had just come down from.
I decided to go to the right. The surf was rolling up peaceably enough on this narrow strip of sandy beach, but up ahead the waves smashed against the black rocks with thunderous roars. No one else was in sight, and as I walked along I wondered if Hera or the Golden One had sent me to a time before any human beings existed. But no, I reasoned: the road I followed was unpaved yet definitely the work of men, not an animal trail. I could see ruts in it worn by wheels.
As I walked along, the sun dipped below the dismal gray clouds, heading for the flat horizon of the even grayer sea. The road cut between the cliffs, then curved around another crescent-shaped beach. The coastline must be scalloped with these little beaches hugging the rugged hillsides, I thought. The sea was probably teeming with fish, but I had nothing with which to catch any. So when the sun touched the water’s edge, red and bloated, I hiked up into the woods at the crest of the hills to hunt for my dinner.
By the time it was fully dark I was sitting before a small fire, hardening the point of a rough-hewn spear in its flames, digesting a supper of field mouse and green figs.