Dreamhunter

by Elizabeth Knox

  She didn’t want to disturb his signs. For a moment she knelt, her hands pressed to her mouth, rocking. Then she took a deep breath, and began carefully brushing sand from the box that she hoped contained an undeveloped film. She knew what to do — she would make sure her hands were clean, then would pull her oilskin over her head to form a tent over the camera while she unwound the wing-nuts on its case, opened it and retrieved the film without exposing it to the light. But first things first. She sat back on her heels, unbuckled the flap on her pack and found the film canister. She put it down carefully on her knees and thrust her sandy hands under her coat and into her armpits to wipe them clean.

  Something moved in the shadow of the overhang on the bank nearest her. Laura started — then instantly recognised the movement, or explained it to herself, as an earth fall, the bank giving way.

  Then, suddenly, she was up and running.

  The earth hadn’t fallen, it had collected itself and had stood up out of the shadow.

  Laura rushed across the stream towards the far bank. She jumped at it, and caught hold of two handfuls of grass. They came away in her hands, roots and all. She fell backward, but on to her feet. She dodged the grey, blurred bar of an arm — an arm! — that snatched at her as she scrambled away again. The sand, a welcome softness after her long tramp on hard earth, was now treacherous; it yielded behind her boots, offered no resistance from which she could launch herself at speed away from the thing that was chasing her.

  She looked back, saw a huge, heavy, glittering mass looming after her, moving forward with great fluid strides. Laura screamed and veered for the bank again. She ran at a ramp of fallen sand and tufts of turf. She waded up it, then jumped at the lip of the bank. Her feet came down on the edge. She saw a crack appear before her. A seam of grass roots ripped opened, the lip broke off and she was dumped back in the streambed.

  There was no air between her and the monster, no open space. Laura scrabbled along the raw earth of the undercut bank, then was cut off by more earth — earth in motion, and in the shape of an arm. The monster set its arms on either side of her body with a thud that shook the bank and sprinkled her face with gobs of turf. The creature’s chest loomed above her like a stone lid. She saw the grains of sand on its torso seething like smoke, rearranging themselves into the shape of muscles under skin. Laura screamed again and turned her head. ‘No!’ she howled, and ‘Please!’ She closed her eyes.

  She was sitting in a warm puddle. Her bladder had let go, and the urine had pooled on the inside of her oilskin. Laura moaned and whimpered, now only able to make inarticulate sounds. Then she broke out again, as a rodent cornered by a cat will, alternately bolting or frozen in fear. She battered at the arms and chest and felt her hands sink some way into the yielding sandy stuff then — horrible — the sand come to life and consolidate to force her fists out of it. She screamed and thrashed until she was covered in sand. It seemed she was buried in the creature itself. She fought to a standstill, and was still miserably conscious, gasping for breath, gagging on sand, spitting it out of her mouth.

  Once she was still, the monster released her, only hovered again, hemming her in. Laura lay motionless. She gave herself up — but then nothing further happened. The monster was there, still and silent. Waiting.

  After a time Laura stirred. She looked up at the monster’s arms, to see if there was a chink it might let her slip through. Then she shortened her focus to look at the tombstone lid of its chest again. It didn’t move. It let her make these slight movements, and didn’t act to suppress her.

  Finally, Laura looked up into its face.

  It was a lopsided, lumpish face — and very solemn. The sand and clay from which it had been formed was crusty and uneven, and stained red, as though mixed with blood.

  Laura saw that the monster was watching her, and waiting for something. She saw letters scored into its sandy forehead. Three letters. ‘NOW’

  Now she was finished, Laura thought. Now she had gone too far, asked too much. She had struck out on her own at last and now she was going to get it.

  Laura cowered from the creature. ‘Don’t hurt me,’ she begged. ‘Please. Please let me go.’

  The monster simply watched her and waited.

  Then a thought came to Laura, as cool as rainfall — a memory, a song.

  The final measure is his Name.

  Four letters, and four laws.

  The first gives life, the last speech,

  though they are the same.

  Two letters remain within,

  death and freedom.

  Make his name his Own and he is.

  If your Will departs he will.

  Laura remembered her father, the last time she had seen him, on Sisters Beach station. He had said, ‘Those are capitals: Name, Own, Will, Name.’

  She remembered the song, and her father’s words. She stared at the letters on the monster’s forehead and her right hand drifted up towards them. It was as though her hand had a mind of its own. She stretched out her forefinger and, for a moment, in the spell of her terror, she nearly used it to erase the W in NOW. But, as soon as her fingertip touched the letter Laura understood that erasing the W wouldn’t make the monster disappear. Laura somehow understood that the monster would be wholly invulnerable till she had finished the spell that made him. She must first write a final N in the sand of his brow. Understanding seemed to rush down her finger, hand, arm, and fill her body. Laura simply knew that there was a NON, that there was an end to the spell, but that first she must supply a second N, a final letter which — the song said — would give the monster ‘speech’.

  Laura wrote with a trembling hand on the creature’s forehead. She knew as she did so that she was opening her father’s Will. For, as she altered her father’s handiwork, and added to his spell, Laura experienced a deeper form of recognition. Some kind of music — more than the remembered song — flowed from her into the sandman. A soundless music made of calculations. The single letter formed by her fingertip was, she knew, a compressed phrase of information, instructions, laws.

  Laura lowered her hand. The word, the name on the sandman’s forehead, now read ‘NOWN’.

  The sandman moved. It sat back, and then knelt before her. In a low, harsh, arid voice the sandman said, ‘Laura Hame, I am your servant.’

  Four

  Laura had no spare trousers, and no water in which to wash. She shrugged off her coat, abandoned it and sat in a patch of dry sand some distance from the creature.

  She watched it. It didn’t move, but turned its head to watch her in return. She saw that while the front of its body and its face were, in their texture, like the crudely clawed-together sand around the excavation, from the back the creature was shapely and statuesque. Laura wondered whether the sandman had been formed like the sculpture she and Rose had made for the Sisters Beach sand-sculpting competition. If so, then only its face and the front of its body would have been formed by its maker’s hands. And, she thought, perhaps the creature’s back bore the stamp of the spell alone, not its maker’s hurried efforts.

  Its maker — her father. When Laura had opened her eyes and read the monster’s name she had recognised it from a song her father had taught her. And when she had finished her father’s spell it was as though she had heard his voice — singing, a music made of calculations.

  Laura pulled her pack to her and put it on. She crouched over the camera and picked at the wing-nuts with weak fingers. Her body was still trying, as though only by reflex, to complete her task and carry her out of there, away from the creature. She was crying. Her corded velvet trousers clung, clammy, at the back of her thighs. She fiddled ineffectually with the camera, then stood up.

  For long moments Laura Hame simply looked at the sandman. Then she said, ‘Come here,’ and, as it got up and moved towards her — with heavy, thumping steps and a dry hiss of sand on sand — she backed away. She pointed at the camera. ‘Pick that up,’ she said.

  The sandman stooped,
like something being poured. It seized the camera, and the tripod’s splayed legs closed together with a ‘clop’. The sandman swung the camera over its shoulder.

  ‘I want you to walk ahead of me,’ Laura said. ‘Walk along the streambed.’ She pointed the way.

  It moved ahead of her and she followed. She wanted to keep it in sight.

  LAURA DIDN’T PAUSE until she had reached the crest of the highest hill. She walked for hours and her thighs were chafed and stinging.

  ‘Go in among that brush,’ she told the creature, pointing at a stand of low trees. The creature pushed its way into them.

  ‘Stop,’ said Laura. ‘Put the camera down.’

  It put the camera down, carefully.

  ‘Sit,’ Laura said.

  It sat, so she was able to sit too. Her head was swimming. She unfastened her bedroll from her pack and spread it out on ground that was gritty and covered in sinewy tree roots. ‘Nown,’ she said, naming the creature, ‘my name is Laura.’

  ‘My dear Laura,’ said Nown.

  Laura flinched. She told Nown not to say that. Then she told it to sit still.

  It was sitting still. She didn’t like to look at it. When it had spoken she had seen the back of its mouth, a shallow cave, without tongue or teeth or any physical equipment with which it could produce its voice — its harsh, low-pitched whisper. She knew she wasn’t looking at a body, but at a conglomeration of earth and magic.

  Laura had to sleep. She was afraid to close her eyes but her eyes were closing. She had slumped on to the bedroll. Her thighs were burning — probably breaking out in a blistered rash.

  ‘We’re hiding,’ Laura explained to the creature. ‘You must be very quiet. People may come.’

  ‘There are no people,’ the creature said. ‘Or I would see them. People are very easy to see here. Only people burn. Everything else is dead. The trees give off no soft fire. People shine through the dead forests and grasslands. If there was a person I could see them. Someone has stopped here before. They have dropped the salt of their fire. They have dropped waste.’

  Laura listened to this. Her eyes had closed. She felt herself slipping, felt herself melt her way through the surface of sleep, felt the world turn from solid to liquid grease round her. She was afraid of Nown, so before she lost consciousness she said to it, ‘Don’t hurt me.’

  LAURA SLEPT FOR a long time. When she woke she found that, at least, her trousers had dried. Nown was sitting in exactly the same place and position, with the clenched legs of the camera inclined against him and its boxy head drooping behind his own. Laura bundled her bedding and scrambled up. The sandman didn’t get to his feet until she told him to. She told him to follow her, and set out herself.

  On any journey in the real world, as often as not there would be something to welcome, the sun coming up over the eastern horizon perhaps, or the heat going off the day. In the Place there was only ever a sense of covering a distance to reach a goal, either In or out. Laura and her servant moved their way across the landscape, leaving a trail of broken grass in their wake.

  Laura was in shock. All she was able to do was head back to the border. She held to her original plan: to find out what was on the film her father made, and then decide where to go from there. There would be clues on the film to instruct her, Laura hoped. But instead of clues — or as well as — her father had left her this. This creature coming after her with its steady, hissing gait.

  It occurred to Laura that, having gone looking for knowledge, she should recognise it when she found it walking softly behind her. She understood that she should ask the sandman some questions. She paused to let him catch up with her. But as soon as she stopped, he stopped too.

  They were on the lower slopes of a hill, winding their way through parched thorn bushes. There was room for Nown to walk beside her, so she told him to. She didn’t like him standing so near to her, but understood that she could, without embarrassment, tell him to keep up with her, but to maintain a certain distance between them.

  When Laura had the sandman where she wanted him, she began to interrogate him. She said, ‘Were you waiting for me?’

  ‘In the streambed?’

  ‘Yes, in the streambed. Were you waiting there?’

  ‘Yes.’

  ‘Is that what my father told you to do?’

  This time Nown answered at once, readily. ‘All your father told me was to chase a spying ranger, and find out who had sent him.’

  ‘So you chased him — the poor man?’

  ‘He ran fast, and he wouldn’t tire.’

  Laura said, ‘Do you know you killed him?’ As soon as she said it she realised that, in fact, they were talking about the ranger who had been killed when he appeared on the road right in front of the Sisters Beach coach.

  Nown didn’t answer her.

  Laura wanted to know what sort of creature he was. How dangerous he was. What he might do, what he was capable of. So she probed some more. She asked him, ‘Do you not mind that you killed him?’

  Nown was still silent. After a while Laura looked at him — an impassive object. She said, ‘I asked you a question. Why don’t you answer me?’

  ‘I was considering your question,’ he said.

  ‘And your answer is?’ Laura demanded, feeling a little thrill of power.

  ‘I wasn’t told to kill the ranger.’

  ‘Then it’s lucky for you that you didn’t,’ Laura said. Then she explained to the sandman how the ranger had been killed when he had stumbled out in front of the coach.

  They walked on for a time in silence. Laura weighed the sandman’s silence, his hesitation before speaking. She looked on his silence as a guilty one, then she looked on it as puzzlement. Then she tried to see it as profound consideration.

  Laura tried to come up with another question. She needed to think about the way Nown expressed himself as much as the answers he gave. She asked, ‘Are you glad that you didn’t kill him?’

  Nown was silent.

  ‘Are you considering my question again?’ Laura asked.

  ‘Yes,’ he said.

  Laura wondered whether he was stupid. Slow, obdurate and earthy. Then she thought about what he’d said earlier, when he was trying to explain to her how he knew there were no other people about. She said to him, ‘How do you know the difference between the forests here, in the Place, and the way that forests are supposed to look if you’ve only ever been here? You have only ever been here, haven’t you?’

  Nown said, ‘I am the eighth of myself.’

  ‘Do you mean that you are the eighth Nown?’

  He didn’t reply.

  ‘Were none of the others called that? Nown?’

  ‘No one has ever called me Nown.’

  ‘But that’s what it says.’ Laura pointed at his face, the four capital letters scratched into the sand above his brow bone. Then she realised that she had been saying ‘noun’ — like ‘noun, verb, adjective’ — not like ‘known’ without its silent K. She asked Nown whether he remembered what the other sandmen had done. He told her he did.

  Laura thought about this. She asked, ‘What did people call those others?’

  ‘Servant.’

  ‘Who were they, these people?’

  ‘Hames. The Hames who could sing true.’

  When she had touched the sandman Laura had felt an ancient, complex music in him. She was sure that she’d heard it before. Her father had been singing it the morning he left Summerfort. He was, Laura remembered, playing with the cold, glutinous oatmeal in his plate; he’d made an oatmeal face and was singing over it. He’d called the song ‘The Measures’. He’d been practising — practising a spell, singing ‘true’. And he had made a point of mentioning all the songs his great-grandfather had wanted to pass on, and how foolish he’d been when he was young not to value them — his Hame inheritance.

  Laura asked Nown, ‘Where’s my father?’

  ‘I don’t know.’

  ‘He’s dead, isn’t he?’
>
  ‘No,’ said Nown. ‘If he were dead, I would be undone.’

  Her father was alive. Laura said it to herself, over and over, ‘He’s alive, he’s alive.’ She was so happy that for a while she hurried, and Nown stumped along behind her, and the camera he carried rattled as he walked.

  Laura wiped her eyes and looked at her servant. She wondered whether he could only answer the questions put to him, couldn’t voluntarily expand on an answer. Then she recalled again that he had expanded his answer about the dead forests of the Place and the ‘soft fire’ that plants and people gave off. He’d spoken as though he was explaining something surprising to himself as well as to her. Laura racked her brain for another question, one that might yield another telling answer. Then she had it. ‘Did you catch the ranger?’ she asked.

  ‘Yes.’

  ‘I thought so. He had sand in his mouth.’

  ‘He bit off my fingers.’

  ‘What were your fingers doing in his mouth?’

  ‘He was eating a paper.’

  ‘A letter from Cas Doran?’

  Nown said, ‘I don’t know.’ And then he unfolded one of his hands from the camera’s legs and touched his own chest. He began to work his hand slowly into his chest. This looked horrible, shocking, as though he had begun to scratch in a very private place. Laura told him to stop it at once. He withdrew his hand, returned it to the camera’s legs. Laura watched this with relief, and then remembered the camera. She asked Nown whether he had been with her father when he was making his film.