The Indigo King Read Online Free Page A

ahead of the other two, hands clasped behind his back, deep in thought. Occasionally he would stop and begin to utter some half-formed thought, then reconsider and keep walking. Finally he fell back with the others.
    “So,” Hugo asked, “according to your experiences, all myths are real, and they happened someplace within the Archipelago?”
    “That’s an awfully general statement,” said Jack. “I think it’s more reasonable to say that much of what we have believed to be myth and legend in our world here was actually derived from real events in the Archipelago. We’ve been at this Caretaking business for a number of years now, and we’re still just getting our feet wet.”
    “Indeed,” said John, who was rustling around in the brush for a walking stick. “Fact and fiction do not fall into the clear patterns they once did.”
    “So taken as a whole, mythology, or some of it at least, might actually be real history?”
    “We’re still trying to figure that out ourselves,” replied Jack, “although I must admit it’s quite a relief to be able to discuss a lot of this openly with you, Hugo. It’s sometimes been very difficult to restrain myself during conversations with Owen Barfield, for example.”
    “I’d imagine,” said John.
    Seeing Hugo’s puzzled look, Jack explained. “In recent years Barfield has made the argument that mythology, speech, and literature all have a common source, a common origin. In the dawn of prehistory, men did not make distinctions between the literal and the metaphorical. They were one and the same.”
    “The word and the thing were identical,” said Hugo.
    “Exactly,” said Jack. “That can be described best as the mythological meaning—somewhere between reality and metaphor. When we translate a word, we make distinctions based on context, but early speakers didn’t.
    “Barfield used the Latin word ‘spiritus’ as an example,” Jack continued. “To early man, it meant something like ‘spirit-breathwind.’ When the wind blew, it was not ‘like’ the breath of a god. It was the breath of a god. And when it referred to a speaker’s self, his own spirit, he meant it literally as the ‘breath of life.’
    “What made this compelling was that I had already had several discussions along the same lines with John, Charles, and Ordo Maas in the Archipelago.”
    “The shipbuilder you told me about?” asked Hugo.
    “The same.” Jack nodded. “It began with the discussion of the similarities between himself, as Deucalion, and the Biblical Noah, and the fact that stories of the flood and great arks go back well before Gilgamesh.”
    “But some are real, and others are myths based on the realities?” “There are different kinds of reality,” said Jack. “Barfield said mythological stories are metaphors in narrative form—but that makes them no less real.”
    Hugo shook his head. “Language gives us the ability to make metaphors, but really, that’s all myths are, whether or not they were created around real happenings. Pretty them up all you like, but myths are essentially lies, and therefore worthless.”
    John and Jack stopped and looked directly at Hugo. “No,” John said emphatically. “They are not lies.”
    At that moment there was a rush of wind through the trees that pushed past the three friends and swirled down the shallow hill beyond. It burst upon them so suddenly and forcefully from the still, warm night that it sent a cacophony of leaves raining down from the branches, and it was nearly a full minute before the patter subsided and the walk was quiet once more.
    They held their breath, standing still on the path.
    “What was that all about?” exclaimed Hugo.
    “Quiet,” said Jack. “Something’s changed.”
    And he was right. Something had changed. There was another presence there with them, somewhere among the trees.
    Unmoving, the three men looked about, but nothing seemed amiss. The streams burbled, the trees stood, somber, and the