Strange News From Another Star Page 12

  'Pictures,' he said at times to himself, 'everything just pictures.'

  But within him he felt an essence that was not a picture and this he followed, and the essence within him at times would speak, and its voice was the voice of Iris and the voice of his mother, and it was comfort and hope.

  Wonders came his way but did not surprise him. For example, one winter day he was walking through the snow in an open field, ice forming in his beard. There in the snow stood slim and pointed an iris stalk which bore a single beautiful blossom. He bent over to it and smiled, for now he realized what it was that Iris had again and again urged him to remember. He recognized his childhood dream when he saw between the golden pickets the light-blue, brightly veined path leading into the secret heart of the flower, and he knew that this was what he sought, that this was the essence and not any longer a picture.

  And presentiments came to him again, dreams guided him, and he found a hut where children gave him milk, and as he played with them they told him stories; they told him that in the forest near the charcoal burners' huts a miracle had occurred. There the spirit gate had been seen standing open, the gate that opens only once in a thousand years. He listened and nodded assent to the cherished picture and went on, a bird in an alder bush sang in front of him, a bird with a strange sweet note like the voice of the dead Iris. He followed the bird as it flew and hopped ahead of him, deep into the forest.

  When the bird fell silent and disappeared, Anselm stopped and looked about him. He was standing in a deep valley in the forest, water ran softly under broad green leaves; otherwise, all was silent as if full of expectation. But in Anselm's breast the bird continued to sing with the beloved voice and it urged him on until he stood in front of a cliff overgrown with moss, and in the middle of it was a gaping fissure that led narrowly into the interior of the mountain.

  In front of the fissure sat an old man who arose when he saw Anselm approaching and cried: 'You there, turn back! This is the spirit gate. No one has ever returned who entered here.'

  Anselm glanced up and into the rocky entrance. There he saw a blue path disappearing deep inside the mountain and golden pillars stood close together along both sides and the path within led downward as though into the chalice of an enormous flower.

  In his breast rose the bird's clear song and Anselm strode past the guardian into the fissure and between the golden columns into the blue mystery of the interior. It was Iris into whose heart he entered, and it was the sword lily in his mother's garden into whose blue chalice he softly strode, and as he silently drew closer to the golden twilight all memory and all knowledge were suddenly at his command, he felt of his hand and found it small and soft, voices of love sounded near and familiar in his ears, and the ring they had and the glow of the golden columns were like the ring and glow everything had had at that distant time in the springtide of his childhood.

  And the dream he had dreamed as a small boy was his again, that he was striding into the chalice, and behind him the whole world of images strode too and glided and sank into the mystery that lies behind all images.

  Softly Anselm began to sing, and his path sloped gently downward into his homeland.