Far Horizons: Tales of Sci-Fi, Fantasy and Horror. Issue #11 February 2015 | Page 4

I had gone to bed, the blankets pulled up against the
cold air of the night. No light save the street lamps and
a few stars breaking through the clouds. Darkness and
cold, a British winter night.
Yet the sky overhead was blue, clear blue, the pale
bright blue of a Mediterranean summer day. Not a
cloud to be seen though I could only see a strip of the
sky because of the walls.
The walls either side of me, twice my height, rough
hewn and of great blocks. Lichen fills the gaps where
mortar should be and softens the edges of the blocks.
The walls stretch away before and behind me, the same
crude blocks piled one atop the other. Before me they
go a good hundred steps and then stop, I can see the
wall that marks the end of this, what is this, a passage,
a walk way?
The ground beneath me is dust and stones, three times
my height across from side to side though the base of
the walls are thick with weeds and bushes, waist high
and reaching across the path to catch legs and ankles.
How many have walked this way before to have cut
such a mark into the middle of the path? How many
thousands of feet have worn away the cobblestones and

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left such a groove in the ground?
The path slopes up before me and down behind me, a
gentle slope but every score or so paces there are rough
stone steps where it becomes steeper, blocks of stone
worn away by countless footsteps.
Before me in the distance, a wall. What is behind me?
Where did I come from? I look back, down the slope
of the path, the hundreds of steps I must have walked
to reach this point and yet I remember none of them.
I see the walls end and a glitter of gold and of crystal
blue, some treasure perhaps, and yet I feel that is where
I came from. Did I walk away from gold and jewels?
Why am I here?
I am compelled to walk onward, upward. Why I could
not say but I cannot stop, I cannot turn about and walk
down. My legs are not my own, they take a step onward, then another and another. This must be a dream,
everything is so clear and yet so unreal. I will walk as
my legs take me, as the dream takes me, I am not in
control.
Step by step, yard by yard and I can see the end of the
path. But it is not the end for what I see is the place,
where it turns sharply to the right, the weeds turn and