Not, I'll not, carrion comfort, Despair, not feast on thee;

Not untwist — slack they may be — these last strands of man

—Gerard Manley Hopkins

I awoke; no, I came to be? No finite verb exists for this… lucidity. It was though I had stepped through a door and entered a synchronous reality which in no way felt a parachronism. I even turned around as if expecting to find that very door and return to look for the correct one, but instead I met with a panorama of queer trees and fog—a sight which I have never seen in my life.

I had heard second-hand stories from the unruly Americans about a land where no step is sure and where scaled beasts lurk in murky waters, where blankets of moss hang from trees like a horse's mane. However, there could not be such a landscape in Cornwall, yet here I was basking in the wet and stifling air.

It must have been some time before noon—I do recall that much—but the events which precede my rude awakening elude me. I remember yesterday: swinging listlessly on the schoolhouse gate in wait for my Quaker acquaintance to whom I laid my pretensions on. I recall an argument we had over the nature of capacitance regarding Volta's cell, and after that, only the fateful decision I made the next morning.

I know I went home that day just like any other, but such monotonous memories do not impress upon the mind, so it seems. The minute and routine parts of life become as trite as breathing, and like breathing, we forget them in their perpetuity. I am not quite satisfied with that as my working theory for misplacing the country I was in, but such prose certainly felt deftly appropriate for my next poem. That was still important, you see, for my work will live for longer than I will; scientific or otherwise.

I set about walking through the moisty mire, navigating through clear paths between trees. My thoughts had long drifted now from sophistry and fallen adroitly into the goal of survival—not that I felt I was in danger but because the itching sense that I was not dreaming had silently crept on me. Hitherto, I had considered this dismal forest an edifice of my far-reaching imagination, but such clarity of reason... nonesuch could exist in the imaginative world.

Even as I trekked, and even as my legs became slow and my breath labored, it seemed I was walking nowhere, for nowhere still did I find evidence of man's manipulation of the land, such as unnaturally square clearings or desolate ground. If I were a farmer—or anyone for that matter—I would not consider this prime real estate, but still I expected there to be someone living out here in desperation.

But I was not simply wandering, no. A wanderer travels with no aim at all, no destination, not even a hope of stumbling upon a anything less bland than where they began. No, I am a thinking man, and I deduced my heading by judging the position of the sun; I turned away from it and firmly marched westward, for any direction is better than no direction, and I could never be truly lost as long as Helios and his chariot raced across the sky.

Yet, in the dull stroll through the thicket, even the sun grew tired, and the curtain of night came upon me so steadily I could not perceive it.

Under the crescent moon therefore I lost my direction, and in my weary stupor, only the whimper of flowing water pierced the veil of darkness to entice me. It called to me like a ringing bell, louder and louder, and I came to it as thirsty beggar. I held my arms out to it, but instead of feeling its assuaging embrace, the ground beneath my feet vanished; and at last, my body impacted the cold, wet alluvium which lulled me gently into unconsciousness.

I had a dream then, that I was lost in the wood—not any particular wood, not even one with trees—rather, it was the wilderness. There was a man standing in a clearing, looking over a loom, and with a hatchet he cut threads according to no pattern. I do not remember if he had a face, but somehow he seemed sad—regretful. He finally noticed me and began to say something, but it was just then that I stirred awake.

"You ain't lookin' so good now," said a rough voice.

I sat up from the soil and began rubbing my eyes. Between glimpses of blinding light and blotches of fuzziness, I made out the dim shape of confusion across a rugged face.

"You alright, pretty boy?" The rough man bent over and snapped his blurry fingers in front of my face. "Bust yer head?"

For reasons I am unaware, I instinctively swatted his hand away like an insect. The rough man sighed, stood up, and adjusted the straps on a saddle-sized canvas bag. Metallic tools and other oddities hung from it and clanked as he brought over his shoulder. He looked at me earnestly and offered his hand once again, and this time I took it with a burden of guilt, wiping the dry soil off my redingote.

"Please accept my apologies for this impropriety."

His small hazel eyes danced warily around the forest, and he seemed to be sniffing the air for something far away. "Don't mention it."

"Where are we?"

"You really did bust yer head," he said casually, "Were in those swamps—uh... Aiyee... Aiya?"

I ignored him. "Generally, though, where are we?"

"Depends on who you ask," he chuckled, "I'd say were 'bout as far south in Lugunica as you can git."

"Lugunica?"

"How far is that from Cornwall—no, Virginia perhaps?"

He responded dryly, almost annoyed, "The hell's a corn wall?"

It was evident from his lack of understanding that wherever I was, it was too remote for the graces of our Kingdom; and that was serendipitous for me, even if I did not understand the minutiae.

"Perhaps you're right, uh..."

"Séamus. Folks call me Séamus."

I stuck my hand out. "Right then, Séamus." We made brief, awkward, eye contact and he reciprocated my gesture of acquaintance; and while he did, I thought of who I might be in this new land. Circumstances were serendiptous; this very exchange—the exchange of my name in a land where nobody knew my face—had been my wish ever since I left grammar school.

"You may call me... John, I suppose"

It was a name I loved, but it was not my own. He will forgive me for using his name, if I am ever to meet my dear brother again.

Séamus smiled earnestly. His grip was stronger than I expected, even for a burly man such as him, but it matched well with his physiognomy. His skin clung tightly to his cheekbones, stretching across his face like a hide on a tanning rack. Wispy striations ran like valleys from the corners of his eyes to some indiscernible terminal on his temple, and crawling along his otherwise ruggedly handsome countenance was visible stubble which further emphasized his stout features—and his age.

Much as I wished to preserve the formality of the moment, there were issues which required my attention. "Say, Séamus, I'm awfully lost in this swamp, and I have nowhere to go." With my right hand still locked in his, I placed my left on his forearm. "It would not be a bother to go with you, now, would it?"

"Well... sure" He let go of my hand. "But how'd you git this far anyway?"

"As you said, a very tragic thing befell my head."

Normally, my pride would not allow charity such as this, but he had already humbled me with kindness, which I suppose that is the best method for flattening even the most mountainous of egos. Séamus led me thence up the riverbank which I had collapsed in last night; allegedly, this would lead all the way to Flander(s)? I asked him how many 'Flanders' there were, but he did not seem to understand, and after a frustratingly long conversation, I understood that 'Flanders' was a city.

"T's gonna be a few days walkin'. After that I can't take you no more."

"That is quite alright."

"Is it? You got family up there—er?"

"No."

We walked further up the river until the sun had sunk beneath the dense treeline, and the forest floor became dark. Séamus finally signaled me to halt with his fist before setting down his canvas sack and unpacking a tarp which he laid on the ground. Our camp site sat on a ridge overlooking the river. He told me there were 'nasty critters' in the water that would 'eat yer baby', to which I responded that I had no children and had not left grammar school but a year prior; that I had only seen fifteen winters, and that the coming winter would be my sixteenth.

Séamus and I laid leisurely about waiting for our exhaustion to set in. I only assumed he was an industrious man, and that to him, sleep was time wasted; whereas I had simply been plucked out of the universe and placed into one where the sun was many hours ahead. That was only an expression, but it was true that I would not be tired for yet another few hours, and so, he and I engaged in banal discussion.

"Like I said, don't go runnin' down there," he said, referring to the riverbank, "and don't go makin' no noise now."

"I am not an infant."

"Sure, but yer still a kid."

"I am a goat? Are you like the Puritans?—wait, I hope it is not like that..."

Séamus squinted in what I could only assume was confusion, though the reason evaded me. I said a very sensible thing, really.

"Yeah... so, anyway." Séamus crossed his legs and stared listlessly into the ground. "You ain't from 'round here, are ya?"

I explained that my town was small and of no particular economic importance, to which he scoffed. "Sure you didn't wander out of yer daddy's mansion?"

"It is more like a shack. My father was a carpenter, or something thereof. He carved wood."

He perused me like a lecher, looking up and down my filthy, silt covered clothes, and loosened his scouring eyes and relaxed his shoulders.

"You know what? You don't really talk like em."

"No, I do not speak French."

A long, quiet repose followed; perhaps I said something strange. Eventually he spoke up again.

"I thought you said..." he cut himself off. "Nah, Nah. You'll come 'round—miss what y'oughta miss."

I did not understand, but there were many things I did not understand.

The moon seemed to herald our dialogue's end, for by now the golden chariot had long since made its voyage across the sky, and a new song I had never heard buzzed incessantly through the air. Perhaps, though, I simply never noticed it before. It reminded me greatly of the pond on the way to school which my father had built a bridge across. Everyday, I crossed that rickety old bridge yet thought nothing of stumbling off and drowning; and I suppose posterity afforded the morbid wisdom of recognizing it now.

With that thought, the Somnium enveloped me like a blanket, and the story continued in new terms. Contiguously, I was there, walking to school filled with youthful optimism, skipping and galloping over the cobblestones and avoiding the cracks between. I came upon my father's bridge and saw a strange knight.

"To hwær bist ðu gande?" said the knight.

"To school."

The knight grinned.

The morning came along with an insensible unease which fled from me the more I tried to grasp its origin. In minutes I had forgotten it, and minutes later I forgot what had gotten me worked up to begin with.

As I stretched my arms toward the sloughy, unpleasant morning sky, birds chirped a frightful song akin much so to a wailing banshee or a woman being mauled to death by a bear. Sights and sounds like these were poetically inspiring in their own way, for if I ever wished to express the essence of discomfort, something like this morning would do well a description.

Séamus rose with a loud yawn and nodded when he saw me—I think he might have forgotten who I was, but it did not seem to bother him, so I left him alone, wrung the knots out of my stiff shoulders, and walked around the camp for a few minutes. When I returned, Séamus was crouched in front of a pit surrounded by five smooth stones and a cast iron pot. In between his fingers was a beetle-sized shard which shone faintly orange. I interrupted him as he held it over the pit as if to drop it and inquired about it.

"What sort of stone is that?"

He replied curtly, "Fire stone," and let it slip into the pit.

Now staring intently into it, he whispered an illegible incantation, and slowly his words seemed to crawl along the surface off the stone and etch cracks from which brilliant yellow flames erupted ferociously.

"What in God's name was that?"

He flipped toward the woods with a start towards the woods. "What? Where?"

I pointed to the now smoldering stone. "That. You spoke and it gave forth hellfire."

"Oh, this," he said casually, "just a real basic spell to make 'em stones burn quicker. And don't scare me like that."

I heeded the lack of care in his words; for him, there was nothing unusual, and strangely that set me at ease, too. It hearkened back to a time before the men of the north came to satisfy their cupidity for blood, when men spoke strange words to tree bark to heal their wounds. The inexplicable seemed far closer now than it did before.

We ate a meager meal and I enjoyed none of it. Nevertheless, it was nourishment for what I assumed would be a long walk. Indeed, it would be a long walk, but also a puzzling one, at least to me. When I interrogated Séamus, he drew forth a map which featured countries and locations I did not recognize; and while the features on the map corroborated our heading, the writing was illegible —unlike any written language I had ever seen, being vaguely analogous to Eastern logography, only the symbols represented individual sounds like my own language.

To the west lied a barren tundra with three large, scattered lakes; to the north, wintry mountains; and to the east, where we were, forest and plain. The river we followed cut up north through the eastern region, and coming right out of the swamp, it flanked a mountainside before resolving into a lake. From the lake, it narrowed again into a stream that ran away further north before intersecting our destination: Flanders.

Thenceforth, narrating our journey were the demonic cries of the swamp fauna and occasionally, when their rapacity for irritation ceased, our own footsteps in the mud. I savored every moment of it, though, for it was novel in every sense, be it sight, smell or touch; yet secretly I yearned for the time I would finally step out of the dismal bog and meet with the cleansing sun as if it were new again; and perhaps I, too, would become new again.

I said my final farewell to the quagmire only half an hour later, before the sun had reached meridiem, and upon emerging from the mire, a different, sweet yet gorgeously dark sight attended me. Foreboding rain clouds hung and drifted near the precipice of a lush mountain, and piercing them like needles through cotton, crepuscular rays painted the verdant pasture beneath; between the havens of heavenly light, the cloud shadows demarcated their dim territory.

It was though the faux gods of harvest and hurricane had married into an everlasting union which itself was an impasse to either of them. Neither rain nor sun would emerge victorious.

This was curious, however, because Séamus and I were situated west of the mountain, and further east was what I assumed to be the ocean (though the map simply ended and contained no further information). He called this abrupt cascade at the edge 'the great waterfall', but this did not alarm me. Many before the time of Columbus had thought the Earth was a plane, and if one sailed too far, he would fall off the edge. I then speculated, for the purpose of amusement, that the water in this silly conception would also fall over the edge, just like a waterfall. However, rain clouds from the east would halt at this mountain and create an arid rain shadow.

Thus, I was left with two possibilities, both of which now really did concern me. Either Séamus's map is wrong, and I am simply wandering the Scottish highlands with an illiterate fool, or—and this is my worry—it is correct, and I am no longer on Earth. Indeed, Séamus's map corresponded to no map projection anywhere in the world, yet the geography agreed perfectly with our surroundings. Suddenly the obscure unease from the morning crept in again and settled on the edge of my mind. I did my best to ignore it.

We continued north until the river united with the circular lake and therefore flanked the eastern side. Then, we joined with the narrow stream and continued north until reaching Castour field. Now it was night, the last night before Flanders, and high in the sky was a foreign moon possessing craters much like my own. And much like the craters of the moon, so too was the land scarred with massive holes where no grass grew. Long into the plain, waiting amongst the undulating hills was a lone tree whose shadow cast all the way over us.

"They ever tell you what happened here?" Séamus said the first word in over four hours.

"Who?"

"Y'know, at school."

"I have no idea what you are talking about."

Séamus was behind me, so I could not see his reaction, but I assumed he was disappointed.

"So, you don't know, like, anythin'?"

"No? Do you?"

He yawned loudly. "Yeah... there was a big ol' fight, I think... yeah, yeah, it was a fight, 'cause there was this guy."

"A what?"

"A guy."

"..."

"..."

"Are you going to finish?"

"Finish what?"

"You were telling me what happened here."

"Where?"

"On Castour Field!"

"Oh." Séamus rubbed his eyes and yawned again. "The Sword Demon. He was somethin' firece, he killed hundreds in the war."

I mused at his naivete. "No man could do that all on his own. Drowsiness is clouding your —"

He collapsed onto the ground, kicking up a cloud of dust.

So, I dragged his cumbersome body to the lone tree to rest under its sheltering leaves. From afar, it appeared like an old goat hanging onto the last of its coat, stretching its weary arms to touch the sky; but it was alone—yet everything we needed. Up close, though, it looked like an old man smoldering in the embers of old age, burning away slowly into ash. I staged my repose under the shade of that tree whose fruits the founder shall never know, and slept the night away dreaming of goats and basket weavers.

Note: Please leave reviews. Later on there will be heavily technical scientific discussions, but I will try my best to simplify it. There are psychological and supernatural elements in this story.