Free Inner Circle by Jerzy Peterkiewicz

for his blessing at the boundaries of my homestead.

    The night swelled up after his departure, pregnant with thunder. Sweat was pouring down Amo’s thighs as I looked at them, saying through my desire:

    ‘I know you’re not afraid. I’ll take you back into my body. For this was meant.
    You knew it in your touch, your fingers, Amo.’

    Amo was rubbing his right arm where the fox’s teeth left a scar, his back bent and touching the wall. When both his arms stretched out, I saw that he was leaning against the place marked with a double circle.

Book Two

    Surface

    1

    ‘We’re not allowed to see death,’ I said and covered my eyes. But 1 had seen the heads, and if they were drowned and now merely touching the surface of the water, I could not erase the sight by rubbing my eyelids. Either I was already a contaminated witness of death, and the others had shared the experience with me, or there was nothing to fear, and death had no dominion over us now as under the domes before.

    I opened my eyes and saw that none of them had listened to my warning. We all, in fact, had our eyes fixed on the heads, hoping perhaps that some might turn round and look at us. That would be a sort of answer.

    ‘If I should die,’ Joker intoned, ‘bury me underground. I don’t want to be afloat.’

    ‘I wonder,’ Sailor put on his best faraway look. ‘Did they teach me how to swim when we were living down below, me and Joke?’

    ‘Things. Things that keep coming back to me. . . .’ Joker’s moon face was in full ascent. ‘I think there was a pond on the other side of time and I sat in a blue plastic saucer. A cat came along and asked for milk.’

    ‘You know what, Dover. . . .’ Leeds sounded knowing and his arm lay with weighty confidence on September’s shoulder. ‘The road to the tree has been paved for us.
    All we have to do is to step on those heads.’

    ‘Oh, no!’ I heard Rain.

    ‘In the stampede style, Dover, if you see what I mean.’

    ‘It’s like swimming with both feet on the surface,’ Sailor said and Joker nodded.
    They were both prepared to follow Leeds and I didn’t expect September would linger behind them. What was I to do? Stay with Rain? try another route or back out altogether.

    ‘Funny, the light . . .’ someone whispered and I couldn’t recognize the voice broken off by fear.

    ‘We’re going blind.’ Rain was now close to my ear. ‘You were right, Dover, we shouldn’t have looked.’

    The last thing I saw was Leeds’s neck straining its sinews in all directions to inform us in time how deadly that death of ours was going to be. Then the neck, the rock, the still horror in the water, everything switched off in a second. From the dark two female hands grabbed me.

    ‘The circle! We must make a circle.’

    ‘Get hold of my belt,’ I answered Rain’s cry. ‘The hooks !’ But my brothers, who had more practice in finding the hooks, were already at my side, then Leeds fell in, pulling September with him. Their voices came after the touch, identifying each grip as it tightened.

    ‘Rain, where are you?’

    ‘My feet are sinking into the sand. I can’t move, Dover.’

    At that moment the whole sky rushed to free my eyes. It glittered with stars, it foamed downwards in white streaks, it chased the slender moon on the water. Clouds of scent broke with the waves, then almost hurt in the nostrils. The noise, too, seemed to push and bruise. More sky, more scent. And our circle split at its joints. Joker and Sailor were lying on their hacks, unable to turn over. The light from the open sky seemed to nail them to the ground. Leeds and September had fallen on the prostrated body of Rain. Neither of them could move.

    ‘Rain! Rain! Rain!’ I shouted again and again, thinking that s he was the first of us doomed to die.

    ‘She’s warm,’ Sailor answered me. ‘I am trying to get up. She’s trying, too. It’s no use.’

    ‘What is the sky gaping like that for?’ Joker said