A Darkness in My Soul

me.
        I sat up, looked around me, knew that it was so, that I was trapped here, and decided there was nothing to do but make the most of it.
        Besides, I nurtured a grain of hope. Perhaps the mind of the wizened boy, this Child, would regain its sanity.
        Perhaps, then, there would be a way out, a way to return to my own body. They would keep me alive, back there in AC, feed me through my veins, keep my body processes functioning, hoping for my return just as I was. If Child returned to normal, I could go upwards through the nowblocked conscious mind and return to my own flesh. Free.
        With even the smallest minim of such hope, it was better to maintain my sanity instead of losing it again and being able to return to my own body as a madman.
        And, too, there was the possibility that, with my mind intact, I could search out this nightmare landscape and find some chink in the cold stone that kept me from leaving. I could explore for days on end, having nothing better to do, and perhaps discover the passage out. I knew the chances were small. Child's mental analogue was immense, as big as an entire world. It would require years and years just to investigate each corner of it. And a mind destroyed, a mind seeking total refuge from reality, would hardly leave any breach of its seal against the world, no matter how small that breach and no matter in what distant corner it existed.
        But I had hope. It was all I had, and it was warmly nourished.
        

    II
        
        Sane and determined, I set out on foot to know the place where I now found myself. There was no need to provision for the journey, no matter what its length, for I no longer held the needs of flesh. There was no such thing as hunger, only a vague memory of what thirst had once been. I couldn't know pain, nor pleasure-except on an emotional, mental level. Though the world seemed physically as tangible as the real one, I moved through it like a spirit, autonomous. I could have formed food and drink from the air-as I had formed that sword to fight off the Minotaur, for I still contained the same level of psychic energy. But it would have been a charade with but a single purpose: to make this world less alien and more like the one I had left. And I had decided that I could only survive by forgetting that other reality and accepting this one fully.
        There was no need to rest as I walked, for my analogue body did not tire. I could run, letting the wind whip my hair, for hours on end, without feeling a sore muscle, the tugging fingers of gravity.
        I came out of the caves onto a ledge no more than two feet wide that wound out of sight along the side of an immense gray mountain studded with shrubs and gnarled, weathered trees whose extensive roots tangled through the rocks like tentacles. Above, mists obscured the skies, thick roiling masses of gray clouds that moved fast from horizon to horizon. Fingers of the fog came down now and then, slithered along the mountainside, touched the trees and wrapped my legs so that I could not even see my feet I walked upward along the trail, deeper into the darkness that lingered there. At places, the trail disappeared, and I had to climb across to where it started again. I feared nothing, for I could not be hurt. As long as Child lived and as long as I was trapped within him, I was invulnerable.
        Days or perhaps weeks later, I had gained the summit of the great mountain. It was constructed of four pinnacles, each as tall as a man, which formed, between them, a nest large enough to stand in. I nestled there, hunched over, and looked out across the world that was his tortured mind.
        The mists hung all about me and shrouded the path I had walked up on. It was cold and wet and left glistening droplets on my skin. I went naked, though, for cold could not harm me and was not a discomfort. It was merely a quantity now, much like light or darkness. I accepted it and watched the dew bead on the hairs on my arms and legs, like pearls in the shimmering gloom.
        I looked out from the peak in all directions. At times, the curtains of gray would part, present a flash of some strange scenery. It was as if all parts of the world were equally near at hand from this summit-but a mile at most. I saw green fields and a silver river cutting through them like the winding body of a python. I saw a cold white plain where there was snow and where slabs of ice