Celephaïs
In a dream Kuranes saw the city in the valley, and the
sea-coast beyond, and the snowy peak overlooking the sea, and the
gaily painted galleys that sail out of the harbour toward the
distant regions where the sea meets the sky. In a dream it was also
that he came by his name of Kuranes, for when awake he was called
by another name. Perhaps it was natural for him to dream a new
name; for he was the last of his family, and alone among the
indifferent millions of London, so there were not many to speak to
him and remind him who he had been. His money and lands were gone,
and he did not care for the ways of people about him, but preferred
to dream and write of his dreams. What he wrote was laughed at by
those to whom he shewed it, so that after a time he kept his
writings to himself, and finally ceased to write. The more he
withdrew from the world about him, the more wonderful became his
dreams; and it would have been quite futile to try to describe them
on paper. Kuranes was not modern, and did not think like others who
wrote. Whilst they strove to strip from life its embroidered robes
of myth, and to shew in naked ugliness the foul thing that is
reality, Kuranes sought for beauty alone. When truth and experience
failed to reveal it, he sought it in fancy and illusion, and found
it on his very doorstep, amid the nebulous memories of childhood
tales and dreams.
There are not many persons who know what wonders are opened to them
in the stories and visions of their youth; for when as children we
listen and dream, we think but half-formed thoughts, and when as
men we try to remember, we are dulled and prosaic with the poison
of life. But some of us awake in the night with strange phantasms
of enchanted hills and gardens, of fountains that sing in the sun,
of golden cliffs overhanging murmuring seas, of plains that stretch
down to sleeping cities of bronze and stone, and of shadowy
companies of heroes that ride caparisoned white horses along the
edges of thick forests; and then we know that we have looked back
through the ivory gates into that world of wonder which was ours
before we were wise and unhappy.
Kuranes came very suddenly upon his old world of childhood. He had
been dreaming of the house where he was born; the great stone house
covered with ivy, where thirteen generations of his ancestors had
lived, and where he had hoped to die. It was moonlight, and he had
stolen out into the fragrant summer night, through the gardens,
down the terraces, past the great oaks of the park, and along the
long white road to the village. The village seemed very old, eaten
away at the edge like the moon which had commenced to wane, and
Kuranes wondered whether the peaked roofs of the small houses hid
sleep or death. In the streets were spears of long grass, and the
window-panes on either side were either broken or filmily staring.
Kuranes had not lingered, but had plodded on as though summoned
toward some goal. He dared not disobey the summons for fear it
might prove an illusion like the urges and aspirations of waking
life, which do not lead to any goal. Then he had been drawn down a
lane that led off from the village street toward the channel
cliffs, and had come to the end of things—to the precipice and the
abyss where all the village and all the world fell abruptly into
the unechoing emptiness of infinity, and where even the sky ahead
was empty and unlit by the crumbling moon and the peering stars.
Faith had urged him on, over the precipice and into the gulf, where
he had floated down, down, down; past dark, shapeless, undreamed
dreams, faintly glowing spheres that may have been partly dreamed
dreams, and laughing winged things that seemed to mock the dreamers
of all the worlds. Then a rift seemed to open in the darkness
before him, and he saw the city of the valley, glistening radiantly
far, far below, with a background of sea and sky, and a snow-capped
mountain near the shore.
Kuranes had awaked the very moment he beheld the city, yet he knew
from his brief glance that it was none other than Celephaïs, in the
Valley of Ooth-Nargai beyond the Tanarian Hills, where his spirit
had dwelt all the eternity of an hour one summer afternoon very
long ago, when he had slipt away from his nurse and let the warm
sea-breeze lull him to sleep as he watched the clouds from the
cliff near the village. He had protested then, when they had found
him, waked him, and carried him home, for just as he was aroused he
had been about to sail in a golden galley for those alluring
regions where the sea meets the sky. And now he was equally
resentful of awaking, for he had found his fabulous city after
forty weary years.
But three nights afterward Kuranes came again to Celephaïs. As
before, he dreamed first of the village that was asleep or dead,
and of the abyss down which one must float silently; then the rift
appeared again, and he beheld the glittering minarets of the city,
and saw the graceful galleys riding at anchor in the blue harbour,
and watched the gingko trees of Mount Aran swaying in the
sea-breeze. But this time he was not snatched away, and like a
winged being settled gradually over a grassy hillside till finally
his feet rested gently on the turf. He had indeed come back to the
Valley of Ooth-Nargai and the splendid city of Celephaïs.
Down the hill amid scented grasses and brilliant flowers walked
Kuranes, over the bubbling Naraxa on the small wooden bridge where
he had carved his name so many years ago, and through the
whispering grove to the great stone bridge by the city gate. All
was as of old, nor were the marble walls discoloured, nor the
polished bronze statues upon them tarnished. And Kuranes saw that
he need not tremble lest the things he knew be vanished; for even
the sentries on the ramparts were the same, and still as young as
he remembered them. When he entered the city, past the bronze gates
and over the onyx pavements, the merchants and camel-drivers
greeted him as if he had never been away; and it was the same at
the turquoise temple of Nath-Horthath, where the orchid-wreathed
priests told him that there is no time in Ooth-Nargai, but only
perpetual youth. Then Kuranes walked through the Street of Pillars
to the seaward wall, where gathered the traders and sailors, and
strange men from the regions where the sea meets the sky. There he
stayed long, gazing out over the bright harbour where the ripples
sparkled beneath an unknown sun, and where rode lightly the galleys
from far places over the water. And he gazed also upon Mount Aran
rising regally from the shore, its lower slopes green with swaying
trees and its white summit touching the sky.
More than ever Kuranes wished to sail in a galley to the far places
of which he had heard so many strange tales, and he sought again
the captain who had agreed to carry him so long ago. He found the
man, Athib, sitting on the same chest of spices he had sat upon
before, and Athib seemed not to realise that any time had passed.
Then the two rowed to a galley in the harbour, and giving orders to
the oarsmen, commenced to sail out into the billowy Cerenerian Sea
that leads to the sky. For several days they glided undulatingly
over the water, till finally they came to the horizon, where the
sea meets the sky. Here the galley paused not at all, but floated
easily in the blue of the sky among fleecy clouds tinted with rose.
And far beneath the keel Kuranes could see strange lands and rivers
and cities of surpassing beauty, spread indolently in the sunshine
which seemed never to lessen or disappear. At length Athib told him
that their journey was near its end, and that they would soon enter
the harbour of Serannian, the pink marble city of the clouds, which
is built on that ethereal coast where the west wind flows into the
sky; but as the highest of the city’s carven towers came into sight
there was a sound somewhere in space, and Kuranes awaked in his
London garret.