Cloven Hooves

by Megan Lindholm

  His voice is getting strangled, and he will not look at me as he speaks. I take his hands and draw him from the beaten path, aside, to a mossy place where I can sit comfortably. I ease myself down and he crouches beside me. “What is it you need to tell me?” I ask him.

  He puts a lean brown hand over his mouth, squeezes hard, pinching his lower jaw as if to still a trembling. When he drops his hand, he takes a very deep breath. “That I—that the memories of a woman bearing one of our children are old, very old. We take our lovers, our true lovers, from your kind. They seldom conceive. But you have. Usually, when a human woman becomes pregnant with one of our children, she rids herself of it before the child comes to term. It has been a long time since a woman has chosen to bear one of my kind. And when your time comes, I do not know how much help I will be to you. The memories are very old. And not good. And if something should happen to you, in the process …”

  A tear breaks loose from those dark and shining eyes. It is inconceivable to me, as if I were watching a wolf weep. The faun is not made for human fears and sorrows. From him I have come to expect the natural confidence of an animal, the acceptance of the wild world as it is. It frightens me, and I reach to wipe it hastily away.

  “I’ve had a child,” I tell him comfortingly. “I know what childbirth is like. I’ll manage.”

  “It’s going to be hard,” he tells me naively. “I’ve started to wonder if it was wise. If this isn’t a terrible mistake for both of us.” It is the last thing I want to hear.

  “Let’s go,” I say suddenly, struggling to my feet. “We’re losing the daylight. And I’m getting cold sitting still.”

  He rises, but this time he does not lead. He lets me set the pace, and follows a few steps behind me. Waiting. Finally I ask it.

  “This child. It won’t be mine, will it? It won’t take anything from me, will it?”

  “Clone is the word you’re looking for,” he says softly. “No. The seed my kind plants is a complete seed, needing only nourishment from the mother. It will take nothing of you from you. It will be me again, as I am my father and grandfather and great-grandfather.”

  “But how?” I struggle with the words, try to keep walking. I feel as if I have lost something, have been denied something. Cheated. The path seems to get steeper with every step I take. I am reduced to taking three steps, pausing, taking three more. “How could it have ever come about?”

  “It’s almost enough to make you a Creationist, isn’t it?” he asks dryly. Then, more seriously, “How did the cuckoo come about? Or mistletoe? I only know it’s true, Evelyn, if there is a biological niche, something will fill it.”

  “That’s about what I feel like right now. A biological niche, and you came along to fill me.” I am breathing hard and the words come out sharper than I intend them. I hear him pause behind me, and I deliberately push myself to keep moving up the trail. There is light ahead, a clearing perhaps. I push on toward it. I still don’t hear him behind me. He is deliberately letting the distance between us grow.

  “You’re thinking,” he calls up to me, “that you’re nothing but a walking womb. That I’ve used you for my own selfish ends. That I got you with child, my child, solely for my own satisfaction. Without regard to what you wanted or needed. Well, that’s true!”

  Clear-cut. I emerge suddenly onto the bald crown of the hill. One of the big timber companies has been here and scalped the forest. Not one sizable tree of any kind still stands, and the smaller stuff has been trampled by dozer tracks, obscuring our path. Not too long ago. The stumps are still raw, the ashes of the burned branch piles are still black and new. I feel naked and exposed under the grey sky. Some of the scrub brush will survive this mauling. Already, those ones are springing erect again, but even on them, the leaves are scarlet or a withered yellow. Winter lurks around the next corner. There is wind here, too, sneaking inside my loosened shirt and chilling my body, making my skin as cold as Pan’s words have made my soul.

  “Evelyn!”

  He is suddenly behind me. His arms close around me, holding me firm. I do not struggle. I am dead wood in his grasp. A great stillness has filled me, filled me more fully than the child that already pouches my stomach. His two hands settle on my belly. He speaks over my shoulder, his mouth by my ear.

  “I have a memory,” he says. “A very old one. A very precious one. Old but so clear, so vivid, as few of the old memories are. It is no struggle to recall it. It came to me when I was a child, clear in my mind, with no effort on my part. Do you know what that means? It means it has been recalled often, has been taken out and handled by every generation since its happening. It comes to me as clearly as the memories for fashioning a pipe and playing, as fresh as my own self-made memories. Because it has been remembered so often, and so well.

  “It is of a woman, Evelyn. Her hair is dark and curly, her eyes are immense. Her lips are always smiling, my love, and she touches me, so gently, so surely. All is right and safe in her arms. She sings to me, foolish little songs, as she takes the tangles from my hair. And then she lifts me and holds me on her lap as she opens her garment and puts me to her breast. A mother, Evelyn. The last real mother any of us have known. And do you know what she wears, Evelyn, what she opens to bare that warm, milky breast? A chiton. A chiton.”

  We stand silent on the windswept hill, in the midst of this man-made desolation, and he lets the words sink in. I think of a dark-haired woman, hundreds of years ago, standing as I stand now, in a faun’s arms, heavy with his child. Did she know she would be remembered, cherished by generations to come? Nothing of her body continuing in the child she bore; only her memory and her image, handed down the spiral ladder to each succeeding generation.

  “All who come after me will know you, Evelyn. As friend, lover, and mother. You are the gift I give to myself, a hundred times over, perhaps to the very end of this world. I will never be sorry for that.”

  His body warms my back and his arms steady me. A gust of wind slides past the bared hillside, chilling me. The sweat has dried on me and I shiver in his arms.

  “We’d better keep moving,” he says, but stands still, holding me a moment longer. Loving me so I can almost feel it, like a coat I can wear. For a brief time, I imagine I can see as he does, not back down his line, but forward. I carry a hundred children in my womb. All will know my touch, or recall my rejection. It is like standing on a stage before them all, and looking out over all their upturned faces. All of them are Pan. All of them are waiting.

  I look out over the clear-cut hilltop. The area seems smaller now, for it is but one hillside, and is surrounded by many that are still crowned with trees. It has been slashed and burned, but that is not what is permanent here. Fireweed will spread and seed across the burned areas. Bulldozed willow will send up new shoots, from the cedar stump new branches will sprout, a million tiny seeds that have waited for the soil to be opened to the sunlight will germinate next spring. This devastation is temporary. Life is what is permanent. Fragile, forgiving life is what we all must eventually answer to.

  Then Pan steps clear of me, but takes my hand. He leads the way and I follow him, stepping over tangled branches and smashed and flattened bushes. The way is slow and difficult, but he leads me surely on.

  TWENTY-TWO

  * * *

  We seem to have left all civilization behind. This part of Canada is made entirely of forested mountains, divided by lush valleys and coid rivers, and all capped with ice. These are young, lusty mountains, rugged and toothy against the sky. The beauty is breathtaking. So is the effort of crossing such terrain. Our path curls and twists as it threads its way through the mountains. We challenge no more than the foothills, but it is a daily trial I must face. The constant climbs and descents are a torment to me. Each day the snowline on the mountain peaks creeps lower. Nights are cold, and frost edges our blankets each morning. I never knew I could be so tired, so cold and uncomfortable, and still press on every day.

  I miss humanity’s food.
Pan provides, and I trust him when he says the things he brings are edible, but most bear little resemblance to anything I’ve ever eaten before. There are scrubbed roots, some long and tough, some like handfuls of rice packed together. There are greens, but these are scarcer, more fibrous, and most have a bitter edge to their flavor. The meat is mostly hare, sinewy and lean. In the cold weather, I begin to long for fatty, greasy foods, for rich foods thick with calories. I dream of french fries and deep-fried chicken, of ice cream and cheesecake and chocolate bars. But the wild land yields up no such luxuries. The berries he finds are past their prime, shriveled by frost’s touch, but edible. At one stream we pass, he finds the survivor of a late salmon run. The dog salmon is tattered and mossy-looking from its long sojourn in fresh water. Its teeth have grown enormous, giving it a monstrous prehistoric aspect. All spawned out, it lurks under a cut bank, waiting to die. And die it does, when Pan hauls it out triumphantly and it flops the last of its feeble life out on the shore. We cook it immediately. It is a large fish, but when we are finished, there are only bones and a few scraps of skin. Never has anything tasted so good to me. I am tempted to linger here in the hopes he can find another, but with an apologetic look, Pan gathers our gear and we move on.

  We move slowly now, ponderously. Already I have felt the stirrings of the child within me. Something, elbow, small fist, tiny hoof, occasionally pokes out uncomfortably. Then I massage my belly as we walk, gradually easing it back into position.

  My jeans are too tight. I can no longer snap them, and they only zip partway. I have used my knife to bore more holes in my belt, but soon I will run out of space on it. If I am this big now, what will I be when the baby comes to term? I don’t like to think about it. My bra is too tight, but going without it is even more uncomfortable. I am not used to the weight of swollen breasts depending from my chest. The stretch marks are shiny and purplish, and extend up my belly like ragged ferns growing from my groin. The skin is being forced to stretch too fast. I try not to wonder what my body will look like when this is all over.

  Pan continues to be solicitous of my health. He looks tired, for he has taken all tasks to himself. He is thinner, too, for he will not eat each evening until he is sure I have had enough. After a day of walking, while I am resting by a fire, he goes off to do his hunting and scavenging. Then he returns, to cook the food and to spend long hours rubbing my back, or gently massaging my belly. This type of touching has replaced sex between us. I am usually too tired to want more than this, and my swollen belly is not an easily surmounted barrier. So he strokes me gently, easing the aches instead. One evening he plays the pipes for me as I huddle by the fire wrapped in our blankets. He plays again that same mysterious tune that had seemed so familiar. Now I recognize it as the infant growing inside me in a muffled liquid world. The baby stirs as the music flows, and I put my hands on my belly, holding the child securely. For a few moments I can forget the discomforts of this pregnancy, the deep chill of the night, the daunting walk that awaits me tomorrow morning. For just an instant, we are a closed circle, we three. Everything I need is right here.

  The next morning, Pan wakes me very early. “We have to get up and get moving,” he tells me. “Now. We’re running out of time.”

  He doesn’t need to explain. The sky has lowered, disappearing the mountains, leaving us in a low-roofed grey world. There is wind above the trees that shelter us, and a damp edge in the air. Bits of branches and dry needles fall. I am already wearing every shirt I own, and it is not enough. Today when we pack, Pan keeps the two blankets out. He puts the woolen one around my shoulders, and wraps his, much the worse for wear, around himself. It is the first time I have seen him take any precautions against the weather. It is not reassuring.

  We are on the trail for perhaps an hour when the first flakes start to fall. They fall as large clumps of tiny wet flakes, drifting down between the trees to quickly melt on the moss. If this is as bad as it gets, I think, we’ll be fine. But the snow continues, and the temperature falls with it. Soon the snow is sticking, lacing the branches and forming a mosaic tracery on the forest floor wherever the interlocked branches overhead do not catch it. Our trail is uphill, as it seems it always is, and the snow makes slippery spots. Pan’s hooves cut through the wet snow down to the moss and earth, but my worn sneakers are treacherous on the stuff. Mindful of how ungainly I have become, I set my feet carefully and move more slowly.

  By noon we are still climbing. The tree cover has changed. The trees are shorter and more gnarled, natural bonsai, but still taller than we are. They bow away from the wind. Soon, I think, he will decide to stop and rest. I have been walking with my head bowed and the blanket up over my hair and ears. I watch little more than the path right in front of me. It seems to me that the snow is becoming thicker, that more often we are leaving tracks in it. Before, the pressure of my steps was enough to melt it down to the earth. Now it packs beneath my sneakers. I can feel the edges of my socks starting to get damp. These are the things I think of as I hike. Tired, wet feet, and surely we must start to go downhill again soon. No more than that. I follow Pan, trusting, not thinking.

  But when Pan does stop and I lift my head and look around us, I am filled with dismay. We are leaving the tree line behind us. I am breathing hard, and I put a hand on his shoulder to steady myself as I look back the way we have come. I am looking out over an irregular bowl, lined with the tops of the trees. Down there is the sheltering forest. Up here is knee-high brush, rocks, lichen, snow, wind, and little more. I look back at him, dumbly questioning.

  “Up,” he says, gesturing with his chin. “We’re close now, I think.” The falling snow deadens his words, makes his voice dull.

  “It’s colder up there,” I protest. Even this brief halt has been long enough for me to start chilling. My shivering will soon turn to shaking.

  “No.” He looks vague, tries to explain. “There’s shelter up there. A warm place.”

  “A cabin?” I guess, looking up the treeless slope ahead of us.

  “No.” He pauses, furrowing his brows. “A cave. With water in it. But it’s warm.”

  “I don’t think that this is a good idea,” I tell him. I am not feeling stubborn so much as impossibly tired. As far as I can see, the ground does nothing but go up, getting steeper each step of the way. “I don’t like the idea of getting halfway up there, and not being able to go any farther. Can’t we go back down, under the trees, and then start the climb fresh in the morning?”

  He looks at me and then up, measuring my strength against what the sky threatens. “It has to be now,” he says at last. “This snow isn’t going to stop. If we don’t get there by nightfall, we won’t get there at all. We’ll be forced back down, into the forest.”

  “Would that be so terrible?” I have wrapped my arms around myself to try to quell my shaking. Snow blows between us as we speak. It clings to his eyelashes and brows until he lifts a hand and brushes it away.

  “It will soon be deep snow down there as well. Up there is the only place I know where we can be safe until spring.” He turns, bows his head, and starts uphill again. For three steps I can only stare after him, stalled out by the enormity of his words. Until spring. Up there, somewhere, in a cave. For months. What will we do, what will we eat, what will we wear? Like a dash of cold water in the face, it hits me how completely I have been trusting him. And this is what he’s been leading me to. A cave.

  I spring after him, my heaviness temporarily forgotten, and hurry to catch up. I have too many questions, they are logjammed in my mouth, but before I can even clutch his arm, he turns back to me. “You’ll have to trust me,” he says, offering me his hand. “It will be all right. Believe me.”

  And I do. I try not to wonder if it is the pheromones or love or simple stupidity. At this point I decide it hardly matters which it is. If I go back down, I’ll freeze. If I follow him up, I may freeze. But then again, I may not. And that is as good as I’ve got right now. I realize I have surrendered al
l control to him, that I have become so enwrapped in listening to the life growing within me that I have forgotten all else. How foreign, how stupid of me, I think, but there is no surge of the old anger to support such an opinion. Walking takes all my energy.

  So I follow. His grip on my hand is sure, his fingers warm mine. We climb. The snow gets deeper as we go up, and the flakes seem to fall faster. We climb. It’s colder up here, but not so cold that the snow stops falling. Maybe it’s the wind, which is definitely stronger up here. I grip the blanket tighter under my chin, but the wind sneaks up under it and whips it out behind me like a cape, stealing my hoarded body heat. And still we climb.

  My feet are completely wet now, and my toes are going numb. There is nothing I can do about it. Stupid to think about stopping and changing into dry socks. They’d be wet again one minute later. No, keep going, and trust to the exertion to keep the old blood pumping around, hell, I had numb feet a thousand times when I was a kid, frost bit hell out of them a couple of times. Don’t think about it. Just keep going. Up. I keep following him, clutching his hand, watching little more than my own feet.

  The wind lessens. A few more steps and it lessens even more. I am not aware of how much we have been fighting it until it drops, and the going seems almost easy for a while. Pan has taken us around a fold in the mountain. The wind whips past above us and I am grateful for that, but to me it looks as if the going will soon be even rougher. I lift my head and look around. To our left, the ground falls away, sudden as a knife slash. There is a deep gouge down the mountain, carved by a boulder-choked stream that runs moodily at the bottom of the ravine. Our path parallels the edge of the slash. We walk on an area that retains its thin skin of topsoil and stunted plant life. Only a few feet away to our left, that ends, and the sliding gravel and bare stony earth of the crumbling embankment begins. Tiny plants cling precariously in patches, but there is no real plant life nor roots to anchor the earth. I don’t like walking this near it. I know that I am safe where I am, but I have an idiotic fear that somehow I will get too near and the edge will give way. I can visualize so well myself sliding on a carpet of moving pebbles, flailing and grabbing for support that isn’t there, slipping irrevocably over the edge, falling free down the face of sheer rock. I’ve done it a thousand times in dreams. It isn’t true, what they say about waking up before you hit. For me there is always the sudden bloody impact, and the shocked realization, beyond pain, that my body is ruined, that the little animal I live inside is shattered. That’s what wakes me up.