Shadowland. Spider World 06 by Colin Wilson

He understood something else: why he had never felt entirely at home in the world. He had always had an obscure feeling that there was something strange and unfamiliar about life as a human being. It was as if somebody had made up the rules arbitrarily, and then forgotten to explain them. Now he understood that this was because half of reality was missing: the part that began below the point of deep relaxation.

As he looked around at their strange, monkeylike faces, Niall understood that they were communicating with him as clearly as if they were speaking. Just as human beings can communicate with a smile or a frown, or even the twitch of an eyebrow, so they could communicate by their expressions. This was language on its most subtle level, the direct level of meaning. It took place far more slowly than human speech, but by comparison, human speech was as crude as throwing lumps of rock.

The first thing Niall understood was how these chameleon men passed their lives. The rhythm of their consciousness was the same as that of the Earth and of the things that grew upon it, trees and grass and moss.

This meant that they experienced very little danger. To begin with, no enemy could see them. Like the spiders, they had enormous patience. But unlike the spiders, they had no need to catch prey. They stood still for pleasure. They found nothing so fascinating as falling rain — it seemed unutterably dramatic as it splashed down from the clouds and helped replenish the earth. As to a waterfall, like the one that had almost drowned Niall, it was like standing in a theater where all life passed in front of their eyes. That was why Niall had been rescued so quickly: they had been indulging in their favorite pastime of watching the water foam over the rocks. They often stood there from dawn till dusk.

But who were they? Where did they come from?

The answer was altogether more difficult to comprehend. They seemed to be saying that they were far older than human beings. They had lived on the Earth before man’s first ancestors had appeared. Human beings would probably call them nature spirits.

As they conveyed this insight, Niall experienced what it was like to be a spirit, and was overwhelmed by an ecstatic sense of freedom.

But why had they decided to change into solid, material beings?

This was because of a great change that had taken place. The quality of the Earth’s energy had suddenly become heavier and richer.

Niall understood what they were talking about: the Great Change had been brought about by the energies of the Earth goddess. But why should that make them want to be solid?

The answer was conveyed in a split second, and seemed so obvious that he felt stupid for having asked the question. Being a spirit brought freedom. But being solid brought a far keener satisfaction: all the incredible, rich reality of the world of matter — of mountains and rivers, of dawns and sunsets.

Niall absorbed this answer for a long time, allowing himself to taste the richness they were describing. But this led inevitably to another question:

If they had no enemies or predators, why did they prefer to remain invisible?

The answer disturbed his peace of mind. What they seemed to be saying was that the Earth was full of dangerous and evil forces, and that no one was immune.

Because this answer was conveyed to him directly, it made his skin crawl. For a moment he thought they might be referring to the Magician. But his mental image drew no response; it seemed they had never heard of the Magician.

Then what, he wanted to know, were these evil forces?

With a suddenness that startled him, the leader of the chameleon men stood up, and as he conveyed to Niall that he should do the same, Niall understood that he was about to be shown the answer to his question.

Stretching his limbs, Niall discovered that they were less stiff than he expected. He was also surprised to realize that, although the cave seemed as cool as ever, his clothes were now completely dry. When he ran his hand over the back of his head, he could no longer feel the bruise under the mat of blood-soaked hair. The earthy water must have possessed some healing quality.

The leader beckoned, and Niall followed him down the cave, and then through the archway that he had assumed to be a kitchen. It was, in fact, the entrance to another tunnel, which sloped steeply downward. A number of wooden barrels, stored in recesses in the walls, caught Niall’s attention, because of the deep, rich color of their wood. Then he realized that, in fact, their color was no different from that of any other wood. It was simply that the consciousness he shared with his companions somehow endowed everything with an extra degree of reality.

In fact, everything had changed — not in his surroundings, but in himself. In the time he had spent in the cave — it seemed about two hours — he felt as if he had ceased to be himself. He was seeing himself through the eyes of the chameleon men. It was almost as if he was floating in the air above his own body, and had become a stranger to himself.

When he had entered this place, he had experienced a sense of uneasiness about going into a tunnel under the earth. Now he felt as relaxed as if he had been a badger or a rabbit, and the sensation of having earth above him was as natural as walking under the sky.

Again, he felt quite different about the tunnel through which they were making their way. It was not man-made, but it had obviously been made by some intelligent creatures, who had carefully embedded rocks into the earth to support its weight. Again and again, he had the impression that faces were looking at him out of the walls — blank, nonhuman faces that were aware of his presence.

The tunnel continued to descend for perhaps half a mile, then flattened out, and became wider and deeper. At this point he experienced a puzzling phenomenon. There was a crack in the ceiling, and water seemed to be dripping through it, as if from a leaking roof. Then, as he noticed its sparkling quality, he realized that it was not water, but the blue-colored vital force that had formed a layer like frost on the brown lichen of the cave. It had accumulated in a hollow of the floor, forming a pool.

The chameleon man in front of him paused as he walked through this pool, allowing the falling liquid to drip on his head. When, a moment later, Niall passed under this strange leak, he understood why his companion had paused. The blue liquid that struck the top of his head and ran down his face caused an almost unbearably delicious tingle of vitality. It was so pleasant that Niall was surprised that the chameleon man had not paused longer.

A moment later, he understood. The glowing force filled his body with a sweet, pure joy, like some unutterably delightful food or drink. But he quickly felt he had taken all he could absorb, and a faint dizziness ensued, not unlike feeling sick after overeating. He walked on feeling lightheaded and absurdly happy, but as if he had drunk too much mead.

He noticed something else: his sense that the walls were alive, and full of blank faces, grew even stronger.

Now they were walking on the level, but the ground underfoot became so rocky and uneven that at one point he tripped and fell onto his hands and knees, and was helped to his feet by the chameleon man who was walking behind him. It was hard to understand why the floor had become so rugged and irregular. It was as if it had been deliberately made to twist the ankles of incautious travelers. He noted the same ruggedness on the walls and on the ceiling overhead. He also observed that the tunnel had become much wider, and that the ceiling was almost twice his own height.

The chameleon men seemed to be finding the going far less difficult, gliding over the irregularities with a kind of natural grace that he had observed in cats.

Now they began to pass other tunnels to the right and left, and these increased in number until he was aware that the ground on either side of them must be honeycombed with them. Many of these tunnels sloped downward at a steep angle. It was suddenly obvious that they were in a completely different kind of terrain, and he sensed, from the minds of his companions, that it was inhabited by creatures quite unlike themselves.

Now a slight breeze was blowing from the cross-tunnels, and the air had become colder. There was a curious, sharp smell in the breeze that he failed to recognize, although it reminded him of the smell he had encountered in the shop of Golo the knife grinder when Golo was sharpening knives on a grinding wheel that made the sparks fly, and at the same time cooling the blade with some white liquid that dripped from a narrow spigot.