Josh allowed himself a quick smile. “You must,” he said softly. “If you don't, everything we have done amounts to nothing at all, and I will be no better off for your valour. Can't you see that?”
“No! I cannot! And don't ask me to.”
Vortigen smiled cruelly, enjoying his enemy's anguish. “Well, well,” he mocked. “A conundrum if ever I saw one: whether to be a coward or a fool. In my opinion, you must be both, Charlie. Ha-ha!”
Some of the soldiers on the parapet joined in the hilarity, and Charlie reddened.
“Don't listen to them,” Josh pleaded. “Listen to me. If I get to see you and the others go, even a few of you, I will have a vision that will sustain me for an eternity on Desolation Isle. I know it's a terrible thing to ask, but you must do this for me.”
“But I cannot!” Charlie wailed.
“Charlie,” Josh said gently. “I have been training for this moment from the day I opened the Magic Vial and met Inspector Puddifant. This is my destiny, and we must continue to have faith that I will not be abandoned here.
“And yours is to find a new sort of courage and leave Syde this instant.” He leaned closer and whispered so only Charlie could hear. “Go to my physical being in Outworld, my friend. Bring your followers with you to my bedside. You are not abandoning me. Rally to my aid. Your help is sorely needed.”
Charlie stared hard at him. “This is not the joyful departure I had imagined,” he said, a tear rolling down his cheek. “I shall not forget you Josh Dempster, nor will I rest until you are rescued.”
He strode back into the crowd of his followers. “All of you listen!” he commanded. “We must leave this place. We must go. Join hands now and follow me. Do not let go, but stay together, for there is work to do in Outworld. We are not yet free.”
“Aye! Be gone you rabble!” Vortigen jeered. “Litter some other dimension with your lazy corpses, for Syde never needed the likes of you.”
Charlie and his companions closed their eyes. “To Outworld!” Charlie shouted.
“To Outworld!” they replied in unison.
Then they dissolved like the sparkling brilliance of fireworks. Before he had quite disintegrated, Charlie opened his eyes and winked at Josh. “I will see you again,” he seemed to say.
“I will see you soon,” Josh answered with his own thoughts.
“Well! It didn't take them long to make up their minds, did it Josh. So much for the honour amongst thieves. But enough idle chitchat. It's almost dinnertime and I'm quite ravenous.
“As for you, I'm afraid you have an engagement that will prevent you from joining me at table. Besides, I'm not inclined to invite someone to my board who seems more intent on biting his host's hand than in noshing on the excellent viands that have been provided. It is time for you to take up residence in a place where barbarism and ungratefulness are not only acceptable behavior, but are quite necessary for survival.
“Welcome to Desolation Isle, Josh,” Vortigen smirked. “Remember what I offered in times to come. Remember what you have turned down for the life of misery that is now yours.”
With that, Vortigen waved his hand and uttered what Josh took to be a curse, even though it was spoken in a strange tongue. Vortigen's words raged like a storm. They tore at Josh's clothes and hair, and shuddered in his ears. A thick fog closed in around him and Josh found himself drifting into a faint.
Not a shred of vegetation graced the barren rocks of Desolation Isle. Its jagged landscape was pocked with bubbling pots of lava and hot mud, and the atmosphere was thick with the choking stench of sulfur. When its woeful inhabitants wanted to drink, they were forced to dip their hands into the brackish water of the Underground Sea, for there were no wells or springs on Desolation Isle. There was nothing that could provide sustenance or comfort to a burning soul.
No human could survive there. It was a zone of torment for spirits, and perhaps the worst thing about Desolation Isle was the type of spirits that inhabited the place. They had either been corrupted before they arrived, or by the acid environment. The only entertainment on Desolation Isle, for those who wanted to partake of such amusement, was to torment fellow sufferers and make their lot worse than your own.
Such was the social and physical climate on Desolation Isle. It was a place where hope could not possibly germinate and take root, a zone of utter despair.
Josh saw all this in the moment of his arrival. When he had recovered from the effects of being transported, he found himself lying on a shelf of rock, which overhung a basin of molten lava. Through the swirling clouds he could make out the rugged contours of his prison, and even see the shapes of fellow inmates moving through the mist â emaciated, malevolent spirits with not a trace of joy left in them.
The true meaning of the word “hell” closed in on him.
“Don't!” a voice, which he recognized as Puddifant's, cautioned. “Don't give in to despair, my friend. You become the beacon of hope in this place. Keep the anthem of joy alive in your soul.”
Josh crossed his legs and rested his hands on his knees. He closed his eyes and focused all his spiritual energy on a point in the exact centre of being, on his connection to Millie, and Ian, and Puddifant, and his parents. This point connected him to his former world and all he knew about love.
Physicists talk about the Big Bang theory. They say the entire universe exploded into being instantaneously from a single point in time and space, and they add (paradoxically) that the point exists everywhere and forever simultaneously. Such are the contortions language and logic must go through when we try to describe things of the spirit. Josh let go of language, for it could not take him where he wanted to go â to the purest form of love, what the mystics call “Enlightenment” or “Nirvana” or “Heaven” .
He opened his eyes. The same dreary scene presented itself, and he understood that he might have to persevere against this hell forever, and that he had not even begun to discover the forms of anguish and suffering it might impose.
“Help me!” he cried out.
“Oh, it prays Andrew!” a voice cackled behind him.
A jolt of fear paralyzed Josh for a second. But he let go of his fear, preparing himself for whatever was to come.
Two spirits clambered over the rocks next to him, then stood in front of Josh on his platform. “You are the newcomer?” the taller of them said.
Josh nodded.
“Well, we're the reception party. This here is my sorry excuse for a son, Andrew, and my name is . . . ”
“Sirus,” Josh said. “Sirus Blackstone.”
“Ha-ha! So you've heard of me then. My fame is still abroad on the earth. Well, that's a good thing.”
Suddenly he struck his son a mighty blow, which sent Andrew tumbling down the rocks and almost into the molten pool. “Take that, dog!” he raved. “You see. Your plotting still hasn't had its intended effect. You're long forgotten, but the name of Sirus Blackstone is still feared â here and on the earth.
“Tell me what they're saying about me up there in Outworld!” he demanded eagerly.
Shaken by Blackstone's violence, Josh renewed his concentration, trying to keep himself from hating. Blackstone disgusted him, but he tried to see through to something good in the filthy, bedraggled animal. Perhaps there was some smidgen of decency left, even here, even after the degradations Blackstone had suffered.
“There are those who admire you, still,” Josh said calmly.
“Who are they?” Blackstone demanded. “And if they admire me so much, why don't they call out to me? I haven't heard my name called in many a year, except when I make that cur yelp for mercy.”
Andrew had righted himself. He sat at a distance on a rock, rubbing the fresh wounds that had been inflicted by his father's latest blow.
“You injure yourself as much as him with your brutality,” Josh said.
“Oh-ho!” Blackstone sneered. “A preacher type! Well, this should be fun. I've never seen the like of you here on Desolation
Isle. But answer me, what are they saying about Sirus Blackstone in Outworld?”
“You have a granddaughter, Endorathlil who remembers you.”
“Yes, and hates me heartily too!”
“And there are a few academics, who come across references to you in old newspapers and books.”
“Yes.”
“That's it, I suppose.”
“That's it! Bah! If this idiot hadn't cut my career short by betraying me to this place, my name would still be on everyone's lips. Why I might have outdone Vortigen himself. I might have taken over this rotten hellhole of a place.
“D'ya hear me, you snivelling, skulking dog.” With that, Blackstone picked up a boulder and hurled it down at his son, sending Andrew scurrying for cover. “There'll be more of that later, and worse.”
Turning back to Josh, he said, “It's a full-time occupation, punishing that blackguard. Hardly leaves me any time to torment the other souls that arrive here on my little island.”
“Your island?”
“Yes,” Blackstone replied, a note of pride in his voice. “People do consider me ruler around here. They
do
offer me their allegiance, for what it's worth.”
“And what do you offer them, as leader?”
“I offer not to punch them, or kick them, or dunk them in the molten pots that abound here abouts,” Blackstone growled. “Do you want to make something of it?”
“And what do you derive from this harsh treatment of your subjects?”
Blackstone smirked. “A modicum of pleasure; a memory of delight; a slight easing of my own pain.”
“There is another way, you know,” Josh ventured.
“Oh, here we go!” Blackstone hooted. “Andrew! Drag your carcass up here and listen to the reverend speak. He's going to show you how to be a happy wretch.”
Timidly, with an eye always on his father, Andrew made his way up the slope.
“Now, if you've got pearls of wisdom to toss, here's the swine that could do with some of 'em, eh?” Blackstone gibed.
Instead of rising to the bait, Josh closed his eyes and meditated. Once more, he thought of those he loved. Would he ever see them again? What were they doing at that very moment?
Blackstone railed, and even Andrew, emboldened in the hopes of pleasing his father, made fun. None of that mattered. Josh saw through them both â saw through to the power that drove them and him and everything else in the universe. Vortigen himself became puny in this vision, which superimposed itself on the world around him.
He laughed. Giggled like a babe actually, and witnessed the ripples of pure joy emanating out from him into the ether. The very atoms jiggled in harmony with his elation. Suddenly he found himself greeting all the saints and martyrs who had died at the hands of their brutal captors, and he understood the stoic courage of those heroes.
“Why so much suffering?” he asked. “Why?”
No answer came to him, but in the midst of his own torment, Josh suddenly awakened to a new knowledge â a knowledge that ignited his soul in a burst of radiant energy.
“LOVE!”
The meaning of the word pulsed through the air.
“LOVE!” he shouted out loud this time, so his enemies could hear it.
Blackstone, taken aback, stared at the boy, then sneered. Andrew squealed in impotent rage.
“Love!” Blackstone mimicked in a hard, dispassionate voice. “I'll show you what happens to love on this Isle. I'll teach you about the quality of my love.”
He picked up a boulder and raised it over his head, as if to hurl it at Josh. To his own amazement, Josh did not flinch. He prayed. He emanated the power of love even then, in the face of terror and adversity. He prayed not for himself, but for his enemy â that Blackstone and Andrew might be healed.
“LOVE!” he shouted one last time, steeling himself against Blackstone's blow.
M
illie tried not to look frightened, or even sad, for that would have been giving in. She remembered how brave Josh had looked, and what he'd said sending her and Ian off from Syde.
“I need you to call to me from Outworld â even if it seems like I'm sleeping and can't hear,” he'd shouted after her when Millie had been pulled out of Syde by the gravity of this world.
“I have called, and called,” she reminded him, wiping a tear away. “But you don't seem to be listening, you just keep getting worse and worse.
“When will you get better Josh?” she sorrowed. “When will you come home?”
“He hears you, lass.”
She turned and smiled through her tears. It was good to see Puddifant.
“Don't talk to me, just think what you want to say. No need
to alarm Josh's parents.”
“Oh, he would love this!”
she smiled ruefully
. “Me not allowed
to say a word.”
Puddifant chuckled.
Ian thought
“Hello Puddifant,”
from the other side of the bed, then,
“Since when can we hear ourselves think?”
“Your experiences in Syde have changed you in ways you have
not yet fathomed,”
Puddifant said earnestly
. “But we shall talk
of those things later. Right now we must apply all our energy or
all our will, I should say, to the task at hand â bringing young
Master Dempster home.”
“What's happening?”
Millie wanted to know
.
“The rebels have been freed, due in no small measure to our
Josh,”
Puddifant answered
.
“And?”
“And they are ready to join their voices to yours in praying for
our friend.”
“And?”
Millie thought, impatiently.
“And Josh has been banished.”
Millie stared, waiting for an explanation.