CHAPTER TWO

James must have already been asleep for sometime, lulled into it by his meandering thought, when he woke up to find a silhouette hovering over him and partly obscuring the mid-afternoon sun.

“Hello James” spoke a soft feminine voice coming from the silhouette. James looked up, disoriented.

“How do you know my name? Who are you?” he questioned the unexpected apparition.

The silhouette now gained colour and a clearer shape as she moved to one side of the sun’s beams and James could make out more distinctly who was talking to him with such confident sweet tone. The girl, for she could not have been more than eighteen, was swathed in a long dress made in what seemed was a brightly coloured woollen material. In the room where he lay it appeared rainbow-hued, the sun catching the edges of the woollen threads which acted like a prism. He could see her dress was, in fact, light grey-white but at her cuffs these was rich embroidery of reds and blues woven into the fabric. The face, Madonna-like in its serene and noble placidity, was framed by blackbird shaded locks cascading in seeming abandon down healthily coloured cheeks.

“My name is Helen”, answered the girl. “I might equally ask, what are you doing here’?”

“I don’t quite know,” answered James, still somewhat groggy after his sleep “I’m lost, I’ve escaped from an unhappy place. I’m lost, but I feel at the same time I know where I am. I’ve been here before, you see.”

“Have you?” said Helen, half-smiling at him. “We’ll soon find out. Come, wake up and follow me.”

James got up and followed Helen along the cliff-top. It was now late afternoon. The sea horses were tinged with a crimson streak presaging the sunset and the heath emanated a full, perfumed warmth.

Helen confidently strode round a headland, her gown gracefully flowing behind her and began to descend into what seemed to be a bay. James followed her, uncertain. Where was she taking him, he wondered? Yet something impelled him to follow her, almost without wishing to question her. Something fatefully, he imagined.

As they cleared the headland James looked down before him. Yes, it was indeed a bay, a wide bay with what appeared to be a settlement on the farther shore. He wiped the remaining sleep from his eyes and looked again, more sharply. A forest of pointed towers and tall spires crowned the town which glimmered mirage-like in the hot atmosphere. Round the steep-gabled confusion of houses which clustered around the towers and spires a high wall wound its course, punctuated at intervals by important-looking gateways.

“I don’t remember a town here at all,” puzzled “James.

“That is my town, the port of Dunara,” replied Helen, who was now almost running towards the bay.

“But what is this Dunara? I don’t even recall its name on any of the maps I have,” said James.

“It won’t be on your maps,” replied Helen, “it has been gone a long time ago.”

“What do you mean?”

“I mean that what you now see before you has long disappeared,” said Helen teasingly.

“I really don’t understand what you mean.”

“I mean what I say; you have stumbled into the past, into the long forgotten past. You see now what was and I have been sent to take you there.”

“Why me?” pleaded James.

“That is not for me to say”, answered the girl. “I have merely been asked to find you and take you here.”

James was increasingly confused but thought that he best accept the situation. After all, he had nothing to lose by following Helen and, anyway, she was attractive, really attractive to look at. And her voice…

The town gates were opened for them and James found himself in a car-less cobbled high street bustling with activity and crowded with people all wearing some type of woollen garment. He passed a large, trundling cart hauled by two white oxen with dark, goddess-like eyes. He smelt the frying of cakes on improvised griddles by the street corners. In the overhanging upper stages of the elaborately carved houses strident women were arguing and chatting with each other, beating out carpets, hanging up the washing. A procession of deeply-cowled members of some religious confraternity passed silently by him. The rich scent of wood smoke assailed James’ nostrils. All activity seemed out, on show to him. No closed doors or hidden proceedings here.

“This is my house”, remarked Helen as they stopped before a particularly large gabled construction. James had noticed that the doorways of the houses, particularly the lintel, were elaborately carved with designs of a twisting, convoluted nature which upon closer inspection on turned out to be animals, strange stylised animals, dragons eating each other, metamorphosed beasts emerging from each other.

James followed Helen up a gaily painted staircase into a large chamber with large, mullioned windows spread out on one side. As he climbed he suddenly realised that he had come across the town of Dunara before. Of course, here he was in the submerged port, now risen from the waves and emblazoned anew into life. How could it have happened?

“Meet my father”, said Helen as she introduced James to a strongly-built man with hair already tinged with grey but with a youthful hearty complexion, green eyes and a large noble, aquiline nose.

“Welcome young man, please be seated. I am glad my daughter has sought you and found you out. There are many things we must talk about and many things you must learn too.” The father spoke in a firm yet gentle tone, full of sympathy and friendliness.

James sat back as Helen delivered into his hand a large tankard of clear sweet-smelling mead and placed a tray of brown buns before him.

“Eat and rest awhile. Then at supper tonight join us at table. For you will stay with us awhile and partake of our family and little ways,” explained patriarch.

James, who had not eaten now for over eight hours, found the food set before him delicious. Drinking the mead likewise satisfied his thirst and its strength put him into a gentle reverie and not a little light-headedness.

“My daughter shall take you to the bath-house, for you need to relax after your journeying. Afterwards my tailor will come and measure you for a new set of clothes for the ones you have on look sadly worn and not a little out of keeping with your new situation.”

James looked at his scuffed leathers and mud splattered boots, then suddenly realised he had left his motorcycle near the headland. Panic caught him. Would it still be there if he left Dunara? He looked out through the mullions to where he had left his two-cylinder horse. But the landscape which he had left seemed curiously changed, a forest now bestrode the headland. He was sure it had not been there when he followed Helen down to the bay and this town.

“Are you ready to come with me?” smiled Helen to James, interrupting his concerned gaze. “Let’s go to the bath-house.”