10. The Breath of Life

THROUGH THE GATES OF TIME - Part 10

“Wow!” exclaimed Apple, “how did you manage this, dad? This and a pram! It’s a champion Christmas, and won’t the rest of my class be jealous! You’re the best and cleverest dad in all the world.”

“I’m scared, Roger,” whimpered May, who knew enough about the Universe to know that what she saw in front of her was very wrong. A closet door should lead into a closet and not a big wide summery land where very little was familiar.

“There’s the man who was in our house,” pointed Frodo, “look, over there, carrying a little child. He’s still wearing your boxers, dad, so it’s got to be him.”

The four of them, still hand in hand, stared at where the younger child was pointing, and, sure enough, there was a figure clad, incongruously, in boxer shorts and a tee-shirt that proclaimed the magic of Queen.

“The poor little child,” whispered May, “he doesn’t look so well to me.”

Roger stared and shook his head. “From here he doesn’t look very alive at all,” he said sadly, “I’ll see if there’s anything I can do to help. After all, I’m the go-to person for coughs and colds in the Housing Department, though it’s usually sprained wrists that I have to attend to.”

Roger had been on a health and safety at work course, and had become the bandages and aspirin man in the office, though his course of training had actually ventured as far as broken bones and even heart failure in an emergency.

“Hey there!” he called towards the figure in boxer shorts.

Uggah looked round and almost jumped out of his skin when he saw the group of four standing just outside the entrance to Hellhole. But he had no time to react because Roger ran up to him, swiftly for a man who was totally confused by the sudden and very reciprocal change in his environment.

He ran up to Uggah, and smiled, hoping that the gesture would calm the other, and it seemed to. Then he looked at the child in the other’s arms.

It was a boy, grubby, no doubt infested with all manner of insect life, and growing cold. He felt for a pulse and to his relief he detected the faintest little indication that life might not yet be quite extinct.

“I might be able to help,” he said, “here, let me see.”

The tone of his voice ought to have told Uggah that he meant only good, but Uggah was a grieving father who wanted to clutch hold of whet he thought was a dead son for as long as he could. He pulled away from Roger, his expression suddenly fierce.

“Here, let me see if I can make him understand,” said May quietly, having followed close behind Roger. She’d told Apple and Frodo to stay where they were, but there was no way their level of obedience was going to prevent them from following her.

“Daddy might help your little boy,” said Apple quietly, and she made a rocking motion as though she was rocking a child to sleep, “he knows stuff,” she added, nodding her head and smiling the sweetest of smiles.

Roger held his hands out and reluctantly Uggah let him take the motionless child. “He’s hypothermic,” he muttered, “but I don’t see how that can be. It’s warm enough here at night, surely.”

“He’s wet,” pointed out Apple, “he must have fallen in some water and got cold that way.”

“I need a blanket,” decided Roger, and seeing that blankets were surely a thing of the far future he took his own jumper off, glad that back home it was Christmas day, and a cold one at that, and that he had dressed warmly enough. He then wrapped the child in his jumper and began gently massaging his heart with two fingers on the chest, aware that young bones might be fragile and easily broken.

He was either skilful or lucky, for the child spluttered and opened his eyes and coughed up a great deal of water mixed with food remnants.

“That’s it,” he crooned, “any more?”

The child, only young, maybe even younger than Frodo, started crying, and he handed him back to his father.

Uggah was at a loss for words, not that he ever had access to many. But what he had just witnessed must surely be magic, for he had believed that his son was dead and, indeed, was on his way to the Plain of the Dead so that this bundle of joy could join his siblings in a long sleep and his flesh return to the wild world of nature. But the child was not only alive, he was clamouring for attention and growing warmer by the moment. He was alive and this weird man who had dressed him in grotesque pants had brought him back to life.

He must be a wizard. A shaman. An emissary from whatever gods controlled life and death.

Maybe, he thought, he could resurrect the others too? They can’t have been lying in their long sleep for long even though he’d lost grip of the passing of recent time.

So he half dragged Roger up the slope that led to the Plains of the Dead. May and her two children followed, wondering what was happening.

“Where are we going, mum?” asked Apple after several minutes of clambering up a slope that terminated in a level plain.

“Look,” replied May, “this is all so sad.”

For the grassy plain had bones scattered on it, and from the shape of the skulls they were clearly human bones. There were many of them, some arranged as they had been in life and others randomly spread as if some beast had dropped them having devoured the flesh on them.

“This is nasty,” muttered Frodo, “bones everywhere. What are they, and why are they here?”

“I think I understand,” replied May, “you know how back home we bury those who die…?”

“Or burn them,” put in Apple.

“Yes, and that,” agreed May, “well, these people, and by the look of them they’re living a very long time ago indeed, have made a different choice and decided to present their dead to mother nature to dispose of. I think it’s a very sensible thing for them to do.”

Meanwhile, Uggah had moved to stand by two tiny skeletons with remnants of flesh still on them. Apple was sick at the sight of it, and her vomiting wasn’t helped by the smell in the air. Not far off, and out of the corner of her eyes, she saw a rat-like creature struggling to cart a human bone into the undergrowth.

“I want to go home,” she said, “now!”

“Yes,” agreed May, “come on Roger, before we forget which cave leads to our closet!”

“Yes,” he said, “yes, indeed. Come on. Hold hands again. Whatever happens, we don’t want to get separated. Let’s go home and get that closet door sealed for good when we get there.

He led the way, and Uggah followed, still carrying the crying youngster.

But Uggah didn’t want then to go just yet. They had taken his dead child when he was actually on his way to the Plains of the Dead and somehow given life back to it. He wanted to reward the man, and he had just the gift to offer.

He had Magga in his makeshift home, and she was the love of his life, the most beautiful of beautiful people. He would give her to the man, as a token of his gratitude. That would be a good thing for him to do, and the strange god would indeed by grateful.

© Peter Rogerson 29.11.20