Snakes and Ladders and the Destinies of Unborn Universes: Chapter 19
A Novel
If you’re joining us just now, follow the snake’s tail to the Prologue or climb a ladder to the Table of Contents.
Chapter 19: The Tumtum Tree
The three adventurers crossed the footbridge spanning the jungle ravine. The rotting planks creaked and the ropes groaned under their weight—or at least under the weight of Evan and Niyati. The librarian was featherlight since, as an archetype, she didn’t actually exist. The fifty surviving inert singularities floated around them, solicitous for their safety.
Evan led the way with Niyati close behind. He probed each plank gingerly with one foot before stepping onto it. He directed Niyati to stay three planks behind, so as to avoid concentrating too much weight in one area. (As an astrophysicist, Niyati found this patronizing, but let it slide.)
The librarian hovered over the planks like a ghost since her legs and feet (under the flounces of her scarlet dress) became diaphanous when no one was looking at her. It was a fundamental law of the Astral Plane that objects ceased to exist when no conscious or unconscious observer was regarding them—a state of affairs that was doubly applicable to the librarian since she had never ever existed at all until Evan’s subconscious had somehow conjured her into a rather complicated and vexing state of non-existence.
With a sigh of relief, the party made it to the other side unscathed. When Niyati stepped from the last plank she turned to help the librarian and noticed something peculiar. “What’s that?”
She pointed to what appeared to be a dreamcatcher forming from the bridge’s ropes and suspension cables; and the inert singularities were getting stuck in it.
“We have crossed into Manat’s territory,” the librarian observed. “The unborn universes can go no farther.”
A shriek tore through the humid jungle, sending a flock of birds to flight.
Niyati peered around her apprehensively. “Was that her?”
The librarian nodded and calmly surveyed the mist-wreathed branches of the sentinel trees. “In this part of Hell,” she said, “the demoness is known as Kaa-Manat, the Python Queen.”
As the self-appointed leader, Evan managed to keep his cool. He removed the map from his cowboy hat and unfolded it. His repeated foldings and unfoldings of the map (which had originally been a scroll) had wreaked havoc on material. He held the map up close to his eyes. “There’s some steps close by—up this embankment. . . This map’s kinda shitty and hard to read.”
“That’s because it’s not the real map,” the librarian remarked.
They ascended a ferny slope and discovered a staircase of undressed stone rising between ashlar monuments choked with lianas.
Evan folded up the map and was about to put it back in his hat when he instinctively looked down because his legs felt drafty. He was in a black kimono. Beneath the rustle of silk he saw that his boots had been replaced with slippers. The length of his hair had shortened (yet again) and his hat was gone. He tightened his grip on the map, and looked over his shoulder at Niyati and the librarian. They were still dressed as they had been, but the smirk on Niyati’s face made it clear that she had noticed his makeover.
For an hour they marched upwards—an hour that lasted a year, maybe two. They arrived at the top of the hill near sunset.
“Look!” Evan said, pointing at the structure he had discovered. The other two joined him.
“What is it?” Niyati asked.
The librarian exhaled in relief and took the lead. “It’s the library.”
“From the Canadian Colony of Norway?” Niyati asked.
“Of course!” the librarian said. She mounted the marble steps, one hand on the balustrade.
“It’s in ruins,” Evan noted. “And it’s no longer in the Canadian Colony of Norway.”
“Oh, Dr Evan,” the librarian muttered in frustration. “Stop trying to impose your Western ideas of logic on the Astral Plane. The library is not in ruins. It’s caught up in what is called a Contingent Pluperfect Probability Wave—a CPPW for short.”
“What’s that supposed to mean?” he asked.
“It means, Dr Evan, that the library is waiting for you to fall through the painted ceiling long ago in the past. Once you’ve done that, the wave will collapse and the library before you now will appear then in the Canadian Colony of Norway—at which point it will have made its way back to the earlier part of your dream. Note that I say ‘will have’ because this will happen in the future even as it will have happened (pluperfectly) in the past. . . Though it’s all contingent on what happens now.”
Evan blinked uncomprehendingly at Niyati, who shrugged. The librarian resumed her brisk ascent. Evan chased after her. “How can something I’m looking at in the present make its way into the past.”
“You’ve reached a part of the dream, Dr Evan, where the deeds you do now could theoretically alter those done long ago. In other words, you may be able to remedy some of your past blunders.” She looked at him critically.
The front door was sealed by a chain and padlock. Inside they heard a gramophone playing a Gershwin tune. A sign on the door revealed that the library was under renovation and therefore “stengt i overskuelig fremtid” (closed for the foreseeable future).
The librarian translated the sign with a snigger, emphasizing the words foreseeable future with an eyeroll. She looked left and right to ensure no one was watching. Then she removed a hairpin and jimmied the lock. The chain fell with a thud. She pushed open the door and the music stopped.
Evan stepped inside and loudly cleared his throat, mostly for the satisfaction of hearing his own voice reverberate through the length of the building. The jungle had poured into the library through the fissures in the walls and ceiling. The stale tang of moss mingled with the stench of decay. There were patches of lichen and mushrooms everywhere. Guttering tea candles lay about, as if the building had been converted into some pagan temple. The place looked like the penultimate scene of an Anne Rice novel.
“Hello, sister,” the librarian said, addressing the desiccated corpse of Madame Blavatsky who sat at the front desk with a book under her bony hands. The librarian removed the book, which caused the mummified Theosophist to crumble to the floor.
The librarian blew dust off the book. There were no words on the cover, so she opened it to the title page. “Some language I don’t recognize,” she muttered. “Oh, wait. Utalla pu-Nokornay. . . Ah, yes.”
“What’s that mean?” Evan asked.
The librarian translated: “The Impossibility of Motion: Being a Collection of Zeno’s Paradoxes as Cited by Graeco-Roman Authorities, Translated from the Original Greek and Latin into Every Language in the Known Universe that Has Never Existed Nor Ever Will.”
“All in that little book?” Evan asked.
“Apparently,” the librarian remarked, snapping the volume shut as she gazed in the direction of Niyati, who was walking down a side corridor where three powder-blue figures were emerging from the shadows.
“But,” Evan persisted, “if the book is a collection of translations into languages that don’t exist, then what language was the title in?”
“So many questions, Dr Evan. Like an overly curious child. Rather tedious.”
But Evan was no longer listening. He too had seen Niyati advancing toward the figures (as if in a trance). Alarmed, he ran after her, albeit with difficulty, since, true to their name, his slippers slipped thrice on the floor. “Hey! Get away from her!”
Niyati turned calmly. “Evan, don’t be alarmed. They’re on our side. Don’t you recognize them? They’re Satcitanandans.”
“The time people?”
“Yes.”
The aliens began to execute one of their strange interpretive dances.
“Goodness!” Niyati exclaimed, “I had almost forgotten.”
“Forgotten what?” Evan asked.
A desk laden with writing materials appeared in the middle of the corridor. Niyati sat down at the desk and a desk lamp snicked on. She took up a quill, dipped it in ink and began scribbling in the notebooks so rapidly that she seemed not to be moving at all.
“The impossibility of motion,” the librarian said drily, quoting the title of the book she held.
“What’s this all about?” Evan asked.
“You seem to forget, Dr Evan, that the woman you love is a savant and accomplished scholar. She wrote a monograph on the history of the Satcitanandans. But the monograph was never published. After all, it was written entirely in a dream—right here in the library in the Canadian Colony of Norway.”
“Jesus Christ. How long is this gonna take?”
“Roughly four billion years.”
“What?!”
“She’s chronicling every day of the Satcitanandans’ recorded and unrecorded history. Quite a project. But don’t be alarmed, the Satcitanandans will restore her to this timeline momentarily.”
As they talked, stacks of notebooks mounted on either side of Niyati. One of the Satcitanandans gathered an armful of these and vanished, apparently removing them to a different location; perhaps to an archive. In a matter of seconds another Satcitanandan (almost certainly the one that had just vanished) appeared in its place.
“Dr Evan, there’s a reason you’re here,” the librarian said, pointing to the tattered map in his clenched fist. “I would advise you to go to the reading room and have a look. You might find a clue: hint, hint. Meanwhile, I must return this book to the Philosophy section—or perhaps to Classical Studies.” A twin copy of the book appeared in her other hand. “Wouldn’t hurt to put it in both places.”
Evan looked uneasily at Niyati, who was still absorbed in her work and appeared to be frozen in time. He didn’t notice the sly expression on the librarian’s face as she turned away.
“Don’t worry about her, Dr Evan. She’ll be back in no time. Get it? No. Time.”
Without another word, the librarian was gone. Evan heard her footfalls on a metal staircase somewhere in the shadows.
He shook his head, walked back down the corridor and bent his steps to the library’s reading room. He found the carrels, card catalogs and long oaken desks. He looked up at the painted ceiling which had not yet been destroyed in that freak fire that had entirely gutted the library in an earlier part of the dream.
He had to admit that he now understood why the librarian had been so moved by the plafond’s destruction. The hues and tints of the original were so vivid. And the Angel Gabriel’s face had not yet been fucked up by the incompetent UNESCO artist who had attempted to restore it.
A placard on a brass stand near the room’s entrance read:
RULES OF THE READING ROOM:
1. SPEAK IN A LOW WHISPER IF YOU MUST SPEAK AT ALL.
2. LEWD AND VULGAR LANGUAGE IS STRICTLY PROHIBITED.
Evan grinned at the sign. He threw back his head and shouted at the top of his lungs “Ass Titties!” But the reading room echoed the word fastidious. When the echo died away, he tried something else: “Cock Balls!” But the room echoed back refrigerator.—“That doesn’t even sound the same!” Evan shouted. There was pause. Then the room echoed back the phrase “Fuck off, dickweed!”
A red light came on on the west side of the room. Evan turned in that direction and saw a double door beneath a gothic arch. A giant X was on the door and another X was drawn underneath it. Evan repeated the phrase the librarian had uttered when he found the map on the train platform in Rajasthan: “X marks the spot where the map you’re holding can be found.” I know I’m slow but that’s kinda insulting.
He unfolded the map and a fragment detached from the corner and fell away, vanishing in an ember-flash before it reached the floor. Then the rest of the map went up in smoke.
The librarian stood in an upper gallery looking down on the scene. Madame Blavatsky whispered into her ear: “There’s still hope, sister.” The librarian nodded.
Evan went to the door and pushed it open.
Inside was a room lined with bookcases (which was not illogical since this was a library). A crumbling spiral staircase stood in the center of the room. There were several Romanesque columns covered in Latin graffiti, possibly dating to the Crusades. The ceiling of the room had collapsed and a vine or root hung down the central shaft.
It took Evan a moment to realize he was standing in a tower—a tower he hadn’t noticed when they approached the library from outside. He passed his eyes cursorily over the books. This dream knows I hate reading, so I don’t think the map is in a book.
He randomly pressed a few book spines and prodded the shelves. He ran his fingers along the columns, thinking there might be a secret door or button somewhere. No luck. He presumed the answer to the puzzle was the obvious one. I’ve got to go up that vine, since the name of the game is Snakes and Ladders; and the vine looks like a snake, and the staircase is basically a ladder.
He walked up the steps as far as he could but was confronted with no other option than to climb up the vine, which looked like a winding phallus. He removed his slippers, grabbed hold of the vine and began to shinny upward. It all felt very Freudian. Earlier in the dream he had learned to control certain aspects of his environment by “wishing” for minor conveniences, like grips and footholds. He used that power now to aid him in his ascent.
It didn’t take long to make it to the top of the tower. But the ceiling was so entirely decayed that he could find no foothold so he kept going up. Below him were the imbricated tiles of the library’s gabled roof. When he looked up he saw that the vine rose into a white cloud where other vines (similar to the one he was ascending) poked out of the bottom of the cloud like pigtails. This must be the “Jack and the Beanstalk” segment of my dream. He made rapid progress and was starting to enjoy himself. It was exhilarating to be alone again.
Meanwhile, Niyati had finished her monograph and rose from the desk. I’m not sure where this sudden compulsion to write a monograph came from? she thought. And how did I retain my sanity after four billion years working on the same project? I think this was intentional. The Satcitananadans stared at her, their faces blank, inscrutable.
“There you are,” the librarian said.
“Where’s Evan?”
“Come with me!”
The librarian conducted her to the reading room and through the double door. Niyati looked at the folds of the door and saw how an X would have been clearly visible when the door was shut. She began to panic.
“What’s going on?! Where is he?!”
“He’s searching for the map.”
Niyati saw the slippers on the spiral staircase. “Why was I not told?!”
“Because we are in his dream. And only he is permitted to find the way to his heart.”
The vine began to rise up through the ceiling.
“What is that? A root? A vine?”
“No,” the librarian replied. “It’s the topmost branch of the Tumtum Tree.”
“The Tumtum Tree?”
“The map is located there.”
“I must go to him!”
“You cannot.”
“Where is the base of the tree?”
“The Tumtum Tree stands on the outskirts of the Shattered City. It is hundreds of millions of light years away.”
“Is there any way for us to get there?”
“Yes,” the librarian said. She walked briskly out the tower and into the reading room. “With the help of the Satcitanandans, we shall be there in a trice.”
The powder-blue aliens resumed their wonder-working dance, and as they did so, a wormhole opened in the reading room near the card catalogs. The librarian stepped thru.
“Come!” she said, extending her gloved hand to Niyati who followed.
They emerged in a field at the base of a gigantic tree rising out of another tower, this one of Dravidian design.
Niyati looked up, straining her eyes. She thought she saw Evan descending upside down from a cloud high in the air. “That looks so dangerous! Is there nothing we can do to help?”
“Our orders are to wait here by the Tumtum Tree in a state of uffish thought.”
“I don’t even know what that means,” Niyati lamented.
Evan was surprised by how swiftly he was moving up the vine. Then he realized it wasn’t a vine at all, but a tree branch. He paused for a moment, looked up and craned his neck. He saw that the branch was just one of many; and that they belonged to that tree “way up there”—a tree that appeared to be growing out of another tower.
In lieu of a sky, the Deccan peninsula spread overhead, and there was lettering under the cities, rivers, and other landmarks. It was as if he was looking down at a map, and he wondered if this was the map he was supposed to find.
He laughed at the absurdity of the dream, as he continued his climb. But now that his mind had registered that the ground was above him, he felt a twisty lurch in the pit of his stomach and the force of gravity compelled him to turn upside down so that he could lower himself down to the tower.
He lost his grip, but rather than fall, his backside clung to the tree and slid down its smooth length. (Fortunately it produced no splinters. The sensation was similar to the one he had felt earlier in the dream when he had ridden down the back of a serpent’s tail. He landed on a tangle of limbs near the roof of the tower.
Niyati saw him fall, covered her eyes and screamed. But the librarian swiftly seized her and clapped one hand over her mouth. “Do you hear that?”
Niyati pulled the librarian’s hand away and said breathlessly, “Hear what?”
The air was filled with a whiffling noise. And the Jabberwock with eyes of flame came flying low over the tulgey wood, burbling as it came.
“Quick!” the librarian shouted. “Into the woods!”
Evan had neither heard nor seen the Jabberwock. He let himself down from a branch onto what was evidently the top floor of the tower. He couldn’t tell if the room he stood in had always been without a ceiling, or if the ceiling had just fallen into decay, like the tower in the library that he had climbed out of.
There were cracks and fissures along the floor, and the tree’s branches poked up through these. The size of the room was deceptive. Depending on the observer’s angle, the walls were either close at hand or far away. But the room was large enough to miraculously accommodate a life-size statue of Lord Shiva sitting on a throne. Somehow the statue occupied the center of the room, where the trunk of the giant tree should have been.
With a horrid burbling sound, Manat in the guise of the Jabberwock circled the tower of the Tumtum Tree. Evan glimpsed the shadow of something dragon-like swooping down toward him. He dashed behind the statue Lord Shiva, and duck-walked around it, taking care to keep the statue between him and the monster. Fuck! Fuck! Fuck!—And, of course, no weapon!
When Manat could not find him, she landed in the field at the base of the tower. Her outspread wings detached from her shoulders and turned into hissing snakes. For a moment Manat stood, a full grown woman, glaring in the direction of the trees where Niyati and the librarian had taken refuge. Her hideous grin disclosed three rows of fangs. She sensed that Evan was in the tower, but could not reach him in the form of the Jabberwock.
The snakes that had served as her wings merged again with her body and she metamorphosed once more—this time into the giant snake Kaa-Manat, the Python Queen.
“We’ve got to help him!” Niyati exclaimed, wringing her hands.
“We are in Manat’s territory. There is nothing either of us can do. You risk utter destruction and obliteration if you intervene.”
Niyati looked around for the Satcitanandans who had brought them to the clearing, but they were gone. They too must fear her.
Kaa-Manat coiled slowly round the base of the tower that encased the Tumtum Tree. Her head invaded every chink and crack wide enough to permit access; and her black tongue probed the crannies.
The floor of the room Evan stood in was suddenly crawling with black vipers. They didn’t bite. They simply amassed. He kicked at them, sprang into the branches; and leapt back down onto the floor. But there were too many. They multiplied until he was immobilized at the base of the statue.
Then an auburn-black flame rose up from a rift in the floor. And in its midst Evan saw the shadow of a man in a cowboy hat and duster.
From their hiding place, Niyati and the librarian witnessed the gigantic python explode into carrion and gore as a column of brown smoke shot out of the tower and over the trees, heading east to the Shattered City. The cackle of a million hyenas died in a clap of thunder.
“What just happened?” Niyati asked.
“Something more powerful than Manat has found its way into the tower of the Tumtum Tree.”
‘a rather complicated and vexing state of non-existence’ - sounds like the fiction writing vocation! Great work, Daniel.