In the Hall of the Mountain

When she heard, there appeared to be no stopping the flow of Aisah’s tears. Her heart went out to that poor, sad, creature who had been the hantu raya, who, it had turned out, had been a noble and self sacrificing creature. A creature, who had not, despite the agony it must have gone through, revealed what had happen to her, and who had ultimately died trying to keep Aisah safe.

Tears ran down Aisah’s face and mingled with the mucus from her nose. Together the fluids dripped into a small, but growing, puddle of red laterite earth, thoroughly dampening the iron oxides. Aisah hic-cupped little sobs of her sorrow until, eventually, she had to put her head down between her knees, and begin to control the out-flow of her grief, and guilt.

Though it had been Aisah who had been kidnapped, first by Ali the djinn and his support cast of hantu raya, then by one of Ali’s hantu raya, who appeared to have formed some type of affection for her. Aisah nevertheless felt guilty that the creature had died, or simply ceased to exist, because of her. This, she pondered, was the sort of emotional burden which could follow her for the rest of her life, regardless of how long, or how short, it was going to be in actuality, and in fact it was the sort of mental trauma which festered in the mind like a worm in jambu (pink fruit).

Ala Al Din Hamid Malik Farid Jabr Nasir Bin Hind Abd Al Aziz, otherwise known as Al, looked on helplessly at this woman’s grief, and tried desperately to understand what she had been through and was now experiencing. He felt genuinely sad at the news brought by the mountain spirit beings – the Bunian, but in a sense it had softened the blow of their presence, to Aisah, who had had so much to cope with in the past few days.

After Aisha had left the hantu raya, and met Al, it had, in itself, been a strange journey. Al had led her through the shrubs and trees to an area which looked at once familiar yet strange, like being in a parallel world. Al had sat her down and promptly began talking to a bush.

To all intents and purposes the bush was, well –a bush. It was so bush-like in its bush appearance that one could only describe it as a bush, and that, indeed, was exactly what it was. However, hidden, carefully, inside the bush was one of the Bunian, the spirit keepers of the mountain. It was to the Bunian that AL was talking, but of course Aisah was not to know that. Aisah assumed that Al was either a secret toddy drinker, or was mad, or possibly both.

Aisah had heard of the mind disease schizophrenia, where for no apparent reason people start to laugh, even at jokes that weren’t funny, and frequently talked to people who weren’t there, not invisible, just not there. Aisha wondered if being cooped up in a soft drink can, for eons, could give a djinn schizophrenia, and if so what was she to do with this mad genie?

In Melvyn’s surgery he had kept medicines and potions for people suffering from mind diseases, from the fox bat fur ointments, mixed with fermented durian, to cure, or induce paranoia, she wasn’t quite sure which, to the really hard core unguents of smelly bean (petai), belacan (shrimp paste) cincalok (smelly prawn sauce) and fermented fish sauce which you could either eat or spread over your head to cure manic depression. Aisah imagined that the sufferer was, in fact, spending more time worrying over the stench of the unguents than their ailments, so it, sort of, cured itself. Or so she reasoned.

After some long minutes talking to the bush Al had come back to her with a broad smile on his face, and if he hadn’t carefully explained about the Bunian, Aisah would have had no doubt of her previous diagnosis.

But Al had explained about the secret keepers of the mountain, and, after much discussion between Aisah and Al, and Al and the Bunian, two offered to reveal themselves to her. It was a shock, but then recently her life had been full of such shocks, and, for some reason, she still seemed to be sane. Aisah was not sure if being sane was helping in this seemingly insane world, but she seemed to have little choice.

The Bunian escorted Al and Aisah to a large cave. They drew aside fake bushes, which had totally fooled Aisah, and revealed a beautifully carved wooden door. The door was only three feet high, and covered in a form of writing which resembled the Islamic jawi script, but also looked a little like western world runes. Aisah was not an expert, but somewhere, perhaps in one of the twenty-year-old national geographic magazines which Melvyn kept in his surgery, she had seen some writing like this before.

There seemed to be no key, but the Bunian, merely by placing its hands upon the ancient wood, provided the magical key which prompted the door to begin to move. A tunnel was revealed.

Walls, obviously carved a very long time ago, radiated with bizarre greenish yellow light, a sort of bio-luminescence being emitted by fungus and moss lining the tunnel walls. It was enough to light their way, but not light enough for Aisah to see every protruding root, and she slipped and almost fell, many times, as they journeyed further and further down the eerie tunnel.

Eventually the tunnel opened into a kind of hall. It was obviously some sort of larger cave, but something told Aisah that is was carved out of rock, rather than being naturally formed. The walls were covered in writing that had almost disappeared with age, and, in places, what she could only imagine to be words were etched out of the rock.

The cave opening arched upwards to mimic a dome, similar to the inside of a mosque, or the British St. Pauls Cathedral. There, at the top, a larger collection of bio-luminescence made the area where the key stone, of the arch, would have been; glow vividly, like the reflection of sunlight on gold, giving an almost religious feeling to the whole cave.

Momentarily Aisah was awe struck. She had never seen anything like this, before, in her entire life. For a few seconds all the worries and stresses of the last few days just washed away as she gazed at the splendour of the ceiling.
“It was carved about three thousand years ago” Al said as Aisah looked,
“The Bunian told me. It was the work of their ancestors, before they moved to the other place.”

“Other place, what other place” Aisah had enquired.

“Well” said Al

“All I can understand is, that the Bunian actually live across two dimensions”
Aisah raised an obvious eyebrow as high as she could, to project her total scepticism
“No seriously, this is what they believe and what I was just told. Many many years ago their ancestors deserted this realm to live somewhere more suited to them. Some remained and kept to the mountains, especially as we humans became more plentiful. Over time, the Bunian who were left behind took it upon themselves to look after the old caves and tunnels, and therefore the mountains themselves. When the Bunian discovered that not all humans were bad, they began looking out for humans on the mountains too, and developed their system of intercommunication, something like ESP, or telepathy.”

Now Aisah’s eye-brow was so raised it was becoming painful.

“There is more, so much more to these little green folk, but I don’t have time to tell you now, they want us to move on again.”

The small green Bunian led Aisah and Al out of the glowing hall and back into more tunnels. Each tunnel, Aisah noticed, had its own hue or shade of bio-luminescence, so each tunnel was distinct and easy to spot, aiding navigation.

Aisah noticed homeliness about the tunnels. She had been a little preoccupied at the beginning, but now she found that even the very tunnels themselves seemed to radiate friendliness as well as light.

Aisah had no idea how long they travelled, but she was beginning to feel weary, and just as she was about to ask Al about stopping again, they stopped. This time they were facing a door which appeared to be made out of old blackened suede. Heavy, protruding, brass rivets formed a pattern of squares and rectangles on the door, and, like the previous one, swung open at the Bunian touch.

This time, the light Aisah witnessed at the top of the large cave was all over the walls, making them shine so brightly it almost hurt Aisha’s eyes, but it didn’t. Somehow Aisah’s eyes adjusted very quickly to the golden light, and she saw beyond into a huge cavernous hall full of light, reflections, and refractions, jewelled light and soft haziness. It was like slipping into a daydream, a feeling of floating, unreal, and other-worldliness. Aisah’s emotion at seeing the cavern was so intense that she gave a gasp and a little startled cry, which made both Al and the Bunian turn to look at her.

A golden toned, female voice boomed across the cavern, at once warm but very much in command.

“Welcome, my children, welcome to my world”.

Princess Sri Ayu raised herself smoothly from her throne, and practically glided towards them, such was her elegance and grace.

“And you must be Aisah, wife to Melvyn the bomoh”

“Er, no, that would be me” said a slightly confused Aisah stepping out from behind Al the djinn.