Celephais

In a dream Kuranes saw the city in the valley, and the seacoast beyond, and the
snowy peak overlooking the sea, and the gaily painted galleys that sail out of
the harbour toward distant regions where the sea meets the sky. In a dream it
was also that he came by his name of Kuranes, for when awake he was called by
another name.

Perhaps it was natural for him to dream a new name; for he was the last of his
family, and alone among the indifferent millions of London, so there were not
many to speak to him and to remind him who he had been. His money and lands
were gone, and he did not care for the ways of the people about him, but
preferred to dream and write of his dreams. What he wrote was laughed at by
those to whom he showed it, so that after a time he kept his writings to
himself, and finally ceased to write.

The more he withdrew from the world about him, the more wonderful became his
dreams; and it would have been quite futile to try to describe them on paper.
Kuranes was not modern, and did not think like others who wrote. Whilst they
strove to strip from life its embroidered robes of myth and to show in naked
ugliness the foul thing that is reality, Kuranes sought for beauty alone. When
truth and experience failed to reveal it, he sought it in fancy and illusion,
and found it on his very doorstep, amid the nebulous memories of childhood
tales and dreams.

There are not many persons who know what wonders are opened to them in the
stories and visions of their youth; for when as children we listen and dream,
we think but half-formed thoughts, and when as men we try to remember, we are
dulled and prosaic with the poison of life. But some of us awake in the night
with strange phantasms of enchanted hills and gardens, of fountains that sing
in the sun, of golden cliffs overhanging murmuring seas, of plains that stretch
down to sleeping cities of bronze and stone, and of shadowy companies of heroes
that ride caparisoned white horses along the edges of thick forests; and then
we know that we have looked back through the ivory gates into that world of
wonder which was ours before we were wise and unhappy.

Kuranes came very suddenly upon his old world of childhood. He had been
dreaming of the house where he had been born; the great stone house covered
with ivy, where thirteen generations of his ancestors had lived, and where he
had hoped to die. It was moonlight, and he had stolen out into the fragrant
summer night, through the gardens, down the terraces, past the great oaks of
the park, and along the long white road to the village. The village seemed very
old, eaten away at the edge like the moon which had commenced to wane, and
Kuranes wondered whether the peaked roofs of the small houses hid sleep or
death. In the streets were spears of long grass, and the window-panes on either
side broken or filmily staring. Kuranes had not lingered, but had plodded on as
though summoned toward some goal. He dared not disobey the summons for fear it
might prove an illusion like the urges and aspirations of waking life, which do
not lead to any goal. Then he had been drawn down a lane that led off from the
village street toward the channel cliffs, and had come to the end of things to
the precipice and the abyss where all the village and all the world fell
abruptly into the unechoing emptiness of infinity, and where even the sky ahead
was empty and unlit by the crumbling moon and the peering stars. Faith had
urged him on, over the precipice and into the gulf, where he had floated down,
down, down; past dark, shapeless, undreamed dreams, faintly glowing spheres
that may have been partly dreamed dreams, and laughing winged things that
seemed to mock the dreamers of all the worlds. Then a rift seemed to open in
the darkness before him, and he saw the city of the valley, glistening
radiantly far, far below, with a background of sea and sky, and a snowcapped
mountain near the shore.

Kuranes had awakened the very moment he beheld the city, yet he knew from his
brief glance that it was none other than Celephais, in the Valley of
Ooth-Nargai beyond the Tanarian Hills where his spirit had dwelt all the
eternity of an hour one summer afternoon very long ago, when he had slipt away
from his nurse and let the warm sea-breeze lull him to sleep as he watched the
clouds from the cliff near the village. He had protested then, when they had
found him, waked him, and carried him home, for just as he was aroused he had
been about to sail in a golden galley for those alluring regions where the sea
meets the sky. And now he was equally resentful of awaking, for he had found
his fabulous city after forty weary years.

But three nights afterward Kuranes came again to Celephais. As before, he
dreamed first of the village that was asleep or dead, and of the abyss down
which one must float silently; then the rift appeared again, and he beheld the
glittering minarets of the city, and saw the graceful galleys riding at anchor
in the blue harbour, and watched the gingko trees of Mount Aran swaying in the
sea-breeze. But this time he was not snatched away, and like a winged being
settled gradually over a grassy hillside til finally his feet rested gently on
the turf. He had indeed come back to the Valley of Ooth-Nargai and the splendid
city of Celephais.

Down the hill amid scented grasses and brilliant flowers walked Kuranes, over
the bubbling Naraxa on the small wooden bridge where he had carved his name so
many years ago, and through the whispering grove to the great stone bridge by
the city gate. All was as of old, nor were the marble walls discoloured, nor
the polished bronze statues upon them tarnished. And Kuranes saw that he need
not tremble lest the things he knew be vanished; for even the sentries on the
ramparts were the same, and still as young as he remembered them. When he
entered the city, past the bronze gates and over the onyx pavements, the
merchants and camel-drivers greeted him as if he had never been away; and it
was the same at the turquoise temple of Nath-Horthath, where the
orchid-wreathed priests told him that there is no time in Ooth-Nargai, but only
perpetual youth. Then Kuranes walked through the Street of Pillars to the
seaward wall, where gathered the traders and sailors, and strange men from the
regions where the sea meets the sky. There he stayed long, gazing out over the
bright harbour where the ripples sparkled beneath an unknown sun, and where
rode lightly the galleys from far places over the water. And he gazed also upon
Mount Aran rising regally from the shore, its lower slopes green with swaying
trees and its white summit touching the sky.

More than ever Kuranes wished to sail in a galley to the far places of which he
had heard so many strange tales, and he sought again the captain who had agreed
to carry him so long ago. He found the man, Athib, sitting on the same chest of
spice he had sat upon before, and Athib seemed not to realize that any time had
passed. Then the two rowed to a galley in the harbour, and giving orders to the
oarmen, commenced to sail out into the billowy Cerenarian Sea that leads to the
sky. For several days they glided undulatingly over the water, till finally
they came to the horizon, where the sea meets the sky. Here the galley paused
not at all, but floated easily in the blue of the sky among fleecy clouds
tinted with rose. And far beneath the keel Kuranes could see strange lands and
rivers and cities of surpassing beauty, spread indolently in the sunshine which
seemed never to lessen or disappear. At length Athib told him that their
journey was near its end, and that they would soon enter the harbour of
Serannian, the pink marble city of the clouds, which is built on that ethereal
coast where the west wind flows into the sky; but as the highest of the citys
carven towers came into sight there was a sound somewhere in space, and Kuranes
awaked in his London garret.

For many months after that Kuranes sought the marvellous city of Celephais and
its sky-bound galleys in vain; and though his dreams carried him to many
gorgeous and unheard-of places, no one whom he met could tell him how to find
Ooth-Nargai beyond the Tanarian Hills. One night he went flying over dark
mountains where there were faint, lone campfires at great distances apart, and
strange, shaggy herds with tinkling bells on the leaders, and in the wildest
part of this hilly country, so remote that few men could ever have seen it, he
found a hideously ancient wall or causeway of stone zigzagging along the ridges
and valleys; too gigantic ever to have risen by human hands, and of such a
length that neither end of it could be seen. Beyond that wall in the grey dawn
he came to a land of quaint gardens and cherry trees, and when the sun rose he
beheld such beauty of red and white flowers, green foliage and lawns, white
paths, diamond brooks, blue lakelets, carven bridges, and red-roofed pagodas,
that he for a moment forgot Celephais in sheer delight. But he remembered it
again when he walked down a white path toward a red-roofed pagoda, and would
have questioned the people of this land about it, had he not found that there
were no people there, but only birds and bees and butterflies. On another night
Kuranes walked up a damp stone spiral stairway endlessly, and came to a tower
window overlooking a mighty plain and river lit by the full moon; and in the
silent city that spread away from the river bank he thought he beheld some
feature or arrangement which he had known before. He would have descended and
asked the way to Ooth-Nargai had not a fearsome aurora sputtered up from some
remote place beyond the horizon, showing the ruin and antiquity of the city,
and the stagnation of the reedy river, and the death lying upon that land, as
it had lain since King Kynaratholis came home from his conquests to find the
vengeance of the gods.

So Kuranes sought fruitlessly for the marvellous city of Celephais and its
galleys that sail to Serannian in the sky, meanwhile seeing many wonders and
once barely escaping from the high-priest not to be described, which wears a
yellow silken mask over its face and dwells all alone in a prehistoric stone
monastery in the cold desert plateau of Leng. In time he grew so impatient of
the bleak intervals of day that he began buying drugs in order to increase his
periods of sleep. Hasheesh helped a great deal, and once sent him to a part of
space where form does not exist, but where glowing gases study the secrets of
existence. And a violet-coloured gas told him that this part of space was
outside what he had called infinity. The gas had not heard of planets and
organisms before, but identified Kuranes merely as one from the infinity where
matter, energy, and gravitation exist. Kuranes was now very anxious to return
to minaret-studded Celephais, and increased his doses of drugs; but eventually
he had no more money left, and could buy no drugs. Then one summer day he was
turned out of his garret, and wandered aimlessly through the streets, drifting
over a bridge to a place where the houses grew thinner and thinner. And it was
there that fulfillment came, and he met the cortege of knights come from
Celephais to bear him thither forever.

Handsome knights they were, astride roan horses and clad in shining armour with
tabards of cloth-of-gold curiously emblazoned. So numerous were they, that
Kuranes almost mistook them for an army, but they were sent in his honour;
since it was he who had created Ooth-Nargai in his dreams, on which account he
was now to be appointed its chief god for evermore. Then they gave Kuranes a
horse and placed him at the head of the cavalcade, and all rode majestically
through the downs of Surrey and onward toward the region where Kuranes and his
ancestors were born. It was very strange, but as the riders went on they seemed
to gallop back through time; for whenever they passed through a village in the
twilight they saw only such houses and villagers as Chaucer or men before him
might have seen, and sometimes they saw knights on horseback with small
companies of retainers. When it grew dark they travelled more swiftly, till
soon they were flying uncannily as if in the air. In the dim dawn they came
upon the village which Kuranes had seen alive in his childhood, and asleep or
dead in his dreams. It was alive now, and early villagers curtsied as the
horsemen clattered down the street and turned off into the lane that ends in
the abyss of dreams. Kuranes had previously entered that abyss only at night,
and wondered what it would look like by day; so he watched anxiously as the
column approached its brink. Just as they galloped up the rising ground to the
precipice a golden glare came somewhere out of the west and hid all the
landscape in effulgent draperies. The abyss was a seething chaos of roseate and
cerulean splendour, and invisible voices sang exultantly as the knightly
entourage plunged over the edge and floated gracefully down past glittering
clouds and silvery coruscations. Endlessly down the horsemen floated, their
chargers pawing the aether as if galloping over golden sands; and then the
luminous vapours spread apart to reveal a greater brightness, the brightness of
the city Celephais, and the sea coast beyond, and the snowy peak overlooking
the sea, and the gaily painted galleys that sail out of the harbour toward
distant regions where the sea meets the sky.

And Kuranes reigned thereafter over Ooth-Nargai and all the neighboring regions
of dream, and held his court alternately in Celephais and in the
cloud-fashioned Serannian. He reigns there still, and will reign happily for
ever, though below the cliffs at Innsmouth the channel tides played mockingly
with the body of a tramp who had stumbled through the half-deserted village at
dawn; played mockingly, and cast it upon the rocks by ivy-covered Trevor
Towers, where a notably fat and especially offensive millionaire brewer enjoys
the purchased atmosphere of extinct nobility.

The White Ship

I am Basil Elton, keeper of the North Point light that my father and
grandfather kept before me. Far from the shore stands the gray lighthouse,
above sunken slimy rocks that are seen when the tide is low, but unseen when
the tide is high. Past that beacon for a century have swept the majestic
barques of the seven seas. In the days of my grandfather there were many; in
the days of my father not so many; and now there are so few that I sometimes
feel strangely alone, as though I were the last man on our planet.

From far shores came those white-sailed argosies of old; from far Eastern
shores where warm suns shine and sweet odors linger about strange gardens and
gay temples. The old captains of the sea came often to my grandfather and told
him of these things which in turn he told to my father, and my father told to
me in the long autumn evenings when the wind howled eerily from the East. And I
have read more of these things, and of many things besides, in the books men
gave me when I was young and filled with wonder.

But more wonderful than the lore of old men and the lore of books is the secret
lore of ocean. Blue, green, gray, white or black; smooth, ruffled, or
mountainous; that ocean is not silent. All my days have I watched it and
listened to it, and I know it well. At first it told to me only the plain
little tales of calm beaches and near ports, but with the years it grew more
friendly and spoke of other things; of things more strange and more distant in
space and time. Sometimes at twilight the gray vapors of the horizon have
parted to grant me glimpses of the ways beyond; and sometimes at night the deep
waters of the sea have grown clear and phosphorescent, to grant me glimpses of
the ways beneath. And these glimpses have been as often of the ways that were
and the ways that might be, as of the ways that are; for ocean is more ancient
than the mountains, and freighted with the memories and the dreams of Time.

Out of the South it was that the White Ship used to come when the moon was full
and high in the heavens. Out of the South it would glide very smoothly and
silently over the sea. And whether the sea was rough or calm, and whether the
wind was friendly or adverse, it would always glide smoothly and silently, its
sails distant and its long strange tiers of oars moving rhythmically. One night
I spied upon the deck a man, bearded and robed, and he seemed to beckon me to
embark for far unknown shores. Many times afterward I saw him under the full
moon, and never did he beckon me.

Very brightly did the moon shine on the night I answered the call, and I walked
out over the waters to the White Ship on a bridge of moonbeams. The man who had
beckoned now spoke a welcome to me in a soft language I seemed to know well,
and the hours were filled with soft songs of the oarsmen as we glided away into
a mysterious South, golden with the glow of that full, mellow moon.

And when the day dawned, rosy and effulgent, I beheld the green shore of far
lands, bright and beautiful, and to me unknown. Up from the sea rose lordly
terraces of verdure, tree-studded, and shewing here and there the gleaming
white roofs and colonnades of strange temples. As we drew nearer the green
shore the bearded man told me of that land, the land of Zar, where dwell all
the dreams and thoughts of beauty that come to men once and then are forgotten.
And when I looked upon the terraces again I saw that what he said was true, for
among the sights before me were many things I had once seen through the mists
beyond the horizon and in the phosphorescent depths of ocean. There too were
forms and fantasies more splendid than any I had ever known; the visions of
young poets who died in want before the world could learn of what they had seen
and dreamed. But we did not set foot upon the sloping meadows of Zar, for it is
told that he who treads them may nevermore return to his native shore.

As the White Ship sailed silently away from the templed terraces of Zar, we
beheld on the distant horizon ahead the spires of a mighty city; and the
bearded man said to me, This is Thalarion, the City of a Thousand Wonders,
wherein reside all those mysteries that man has striven in vain to fathom. And
I looked again, at closer range, and saw that the city was greater than any
city I had known or dreamed of before. Into the sky the spires of its temples
reached, so that no man might behold their peaks; and far back beyond the
horizon stretched the grim, gray walls, over which one might spy only a few
roofs, weird and ominous, yet adorned with rich friezes and alluring
sculptures.

I yearned mightily to enter this fascinating yet repellent city, and besought
the bearded man to land me at the stone pier by the huge carven gate Akariel;
but he gently denied my wish, saying, Into Thalarion, the City of a Thousand
Wonders, many have passed but none returned. Therein walk only daemons and mad
things that are no longer men, and the streets are white with the unburied
bones of those who have looked upon the eidolon Lathi, that reigns over the
city. So the White Ship sailed on past the walls of Thalarion, and followed
for many days a southward-flying bird, whose glossy plumage matched the sky out
of which it had appeared.

Then came we to a pleasant coast gay with blossoms of every hue, where as far
inland as we could see basked lovely groves and radiant arbors beneath a
meridian sun. From bowers beyond our view came bursts of song and snatches of
lyric harmony, interspersed with faint laughter so delicious that I urged the
rowers onward in my eagerness to reach the scene. And the bearded man spoke no
word, but watched me as we approached the lily-lined shore. Suddenly a wind
blowing from over the flowery meadows and leafy woods brought a scent at which
I trembled. The wind grew stronger, and the air was filled with the lethal,
charnel odor of plague-stricken towns and uncovered cemeteries. And as we
sailed madly away from that damnable coast the bearded man spoke at last,
saying, "This is Xura, the Land of Pleasures Unattained.

So once more the White Ship followed the bird of heaven, over warm blessed seas
fanned by caressing, aromatic breezes. Day after day and night after night did
we sail, and when the moon was full we would listen to soft songs of the
oarsmen, sweet as on that distant night when we sailed away from my far native
land. And it was by moonlight that we anchored at last in the harbor of
Sona-Nyl, which is guarded by twin headlands of crystal that rise from the sea
and meet in a resplendent arch. This is the Land of Fancy, and we walked to the
verdant shore upon a golden bridge of moonbeams.

In the Land of Sona-Nyl there is neither time nor space, neither suffering nor
death; and there I dwelt for many aeons. Green are the groves and pastures,
bright and fragrant the flowers, blue and musical the streams, clear and cool
the fountains, and stately and gorgeous the temples, castles, and cities of
Sona-Nyl. Of that land there is no bound, for beyond each vista of beauty rises
another more beautiful. Over the countryside and amidst the splendor of cities
can move at will the happy folk, of whom all are gifted with unmarred grace and
unalloyed happiness. For the aeons that I dwelt there I wandered blissfully
through gardens where quaint pagodas peep from pleasing clumps of bushes, and
where the white walks are bordered with delicate blossoms. I climbed gentle
hills from whose summits I could see entrancing panoramas of loveliness, with
steepled towns nestling in verdant valleys, and with the golden domes of
gigantic cities glittering on the infinitely distant horizon. And I viewed by
moonlight the sparkling sea, the crystal headlands, and the placid harbor
wherein lay anchored the White Ship.

It was against the full moon one night in the immemorial year of Tharp that I
saw outlined the beckoning form of the celestial bird, and felt the first
stirrings of unrest. Then I spoke with the bearded man, and told him of my new
yearnings to depart for remote Cathuria, which no man hath seen, but which all
believe to lie beyond the basalt pillars of the West. It is the Land of Hope,
and in it shine the perfect ideals of all that we know elsewhere; or at least
so men relate. But the bearded man said to me, Beware of those perilous seas
wherein men say Cathuria lies. In Sona-Nyl there is no pain or death, but who
can tell what lies beyond the basalt pillars of the West? Nonetheless at the
next full moon I boarded the White Ship, and with the reluctant bearded man
left the happy harbor for untraveled seas.

And the bird of heaven flew before, and led us toward the basalt pillars of the
West, but this time the oarsmen sang no soft songs under the full moon. In my
mind I would often picture the unknown Land of Cathuria with its splendid
groves and palaces, and would wonder what new delights there awaited me.
Cathuria, I would say to myself, is the abode of Gods and the land of
unnumbered cities of gold. Its forests are of aloe and sandalwood, even as the
fragrant groves of Camorin, and among the trees flutter gay birds sweet with
song.

On the green and flowery mountains of Cathuria stand temples of pink marble,
rich with carven and painted glories, and having in their courtyards cool
fountains of silver, where purr with ravishing music the scented waters that
come from the grotto-born river Narg. And the cities of Cathuria are cinctured
with golden walls, and their pavements also are of gold. In the gardens of
these cities are strange orchids, and perfumed lakes whose beds are of coral
and amber. At night the streets and the gardens are lit with gay lanthorns
fashioned from the three-colored shell of the tortoise, and here resound the
soft notes of the singer and the lutanist. And the houses of the cities of
Cathuria are all palaces, each built over a fragrant canal bearing the waters
of the sacred Narg. Of marble and porphyry are the houses, and roofed with
glittering gold that reflects the rays of the sun and enhances the splendor of
the cities as blissful Gods view them from the distant peaks.

Fairest of all is the palace of the great monarch Dorieb, whom some say to be a
demi-God and others a God. High is the palace of Dorieb, and many are the
turrets of marble upon its walls. In its wide halls many multitudes assemble,
and here hang the trophies of the ages. And the roof is of pure gold, set upon
tall pillars of ruby and azure, and having such carven figures of Gods and
heroes that he who looks up to those heights seems to gaze upon the living
Olympus. And the floor of the palace is of glass, under which flow the
cunningly lighted waters of the Narg, gay with gaudy fish not known beyond the
bounds of lovely Cathuria.

Thus would I speak to myself of Cathuria, but ever would the bearded man warn
me to turn back to the happy shore of Sona-Nyl; for Sona-Nyl is known of men,
while none hath ever beheld Cathuria.

And on the thirty-first day that we followed the bird, we beheld the basalt
pillars of the West. Shrouded in mist they were, so that no man might peer
beyond them or see their summits-- which indeed some say reach even to the
heavens. And the bearded man again implored me to turn back, but I heeded him
not; for from the mists beyond the basalt pillars I fancied there came the
notes of singers and lutanists; sweeter than the sweetest songs of Sona-Nyl,
and sounding mine own praises; the praises of me, who had voyaged far from the
full moon and dwelt in the Land of Fancy. So to the sound of melody the White
Ship sailed into the mist betwixt the basalt pillars of the West. And when the
music ceased and the mist lifted, we beheld not the Land of Cathuria, but a
swift-rushing resistless sea, over which our helpless barque was borne toward
some unknown goal. Soon to our ears came the distant thunder of falling waters,
and to our eyes appeared on the far horizon ahead the titanic spray of a
monstrous cataract, wherein the oceans of the world drop down to abysmal
nothingness.

Then did the bearded man say to me, with tears on his cheek, "We have rejected
the beautiful Land of Sona-Nyl, which we may never behold again. The Gods are
greater than men, and they have conquered." And I closed my eyes before the
crash that I knew would come, shutting out the sight of the celestial bird
which flapped its mocking blue wings over the brink of the torrent.

Out of that crash came darkness, and I heard the shrieking of men and of things
which were not men. From the East tempestuous winds arose, and chilled me as I
crouched on the slab of damp stone which had risen beneath my feet. Then as I
heard another crash I opened my eyes and beheld myself upon the platform of
that lighthouse whence I had sailed so many aeons ago. In the darkness below
there loomed the vast blurred outlines of a vessel breaking up on the cruel
rocks, and as I glanced out over the waste I saw that the light had failed for
the first time since my grandfather had assumed its care.

And in the later watches of the night, when I went within the tower, I saw on
the wall a calendar which still remained as when I had left it at the hour I
sailed away. With the dawn I descended the tower and looked for wreckage upon
the rocks, but what I found was only this: a strange dead bird whose hue was as
of the azure sky, and a single shattered spar, of a whiteness greater than that
of the wave-tips or of the mountain snow.

And thereafter the ocean told me its secrets no more; and though many times
since has the moon shone full and high in the heavens, the White Ship from the
South came never again.
