Cloven Hooves

by Megan Lindholm

  “Only a little farther. Right up there,” Pan tells me cheerfully, and moves on, his small goat feet tripping blithely along. I stare dumbfounded at where he has pointed. “Up there” seems to be where the water is trickling and dripping down the bared stone bones of the mountain.

  “I can’t do it,” I say with great certainty. “I can’t get up there.”

  “There’s a path,” he says reassuringly.

  “I’m pregnant!” I tell him angrily. The baby picks that moment to attempt to stand up inside me. At least, that is what it feels like. Something slams into the bottom of my lungs while it treads firmly on my bladder. I gasp in surprise, and Pan is instantly at my side.

  “Sit down a minute,” he tells me, and tosses the pack into the snow for me to perch on. But sitting down is the last thing I want to do. I feel as if I’d never get up. And my guts feel crowded enough as it is, without folding up to sit.

  “It’s too soon for it to feel this big,” I tell him, taking deep breaths. I have forgotten the mountain entirely and the climb ahead of me. The real endurance challenge is what is building itself inside my body.

  “I told you. My child will develop faster.”

  “Not this fast. Something’s wrong.”

  He blows out a shuddering breath. I know I am frightening him, but I cannot stop myself. I’m frightened. I see him swallow. “Please, Evelyn,” he says desperately. “Let’s keep moving. You’ll be more comfortable up there.”

  The baby sloshes itself into a more comfortable position. I can take a deep breath again. “Okay,” I say, surprising myself. Easier to surrender than to stand arguing on the side of a snowy mountain. He picks up the pack, starts slowly up the trail again. I slog along behind him.

  The way does not get any easier. The afternoon light goes greyer in the snowfall, and then starts to fail completely. I am past worrying about it. My whole being is focused on taking step after step after step, following the sparse trail Pan breaks through the snow. The snow gets deeper, rising past my ankles. It is halfway up my calves before it finally quits falling. It seems darker without the white flakes catching the light as they fall. As the light goes, the world around us cools. The snow takes on a crispy quality as I wade through it.

  Occasionally I lift my head, to look out on the huge expanse of mountainside and forested valley that we have left behind. I can feel how minute we are, tiny specks of life crawling up the mountain’s impassive flank. The valley behind us is filling up with darkness. The light that bathes us now is gentle and has a pink tone. I blink once toward the sun. It has found a crack in the cloud cover and is sending us its last rays through a picket fence of mountain peaks, as if it knows how desperately we need the light.

  “Come on,” Pan calls.

  Our path has taken us closer to the ravine. Indeed, we have almost come to the end of it. Another hundred yards up the mountain, it disappears under an immense scab of old ice. The dirty-looking glacier has been dusted with the fall of fresh snow, but that whiteness only serves to show the age of the ice beneath it. It reminds me of antique ivory, layers in various shades of cream, yellow, and brown. Below the slowly dripping edge of the glacier is a vertical drop of rock, cracked and tilted panels and chunks of stone many times as tall as I am. Their edges have been humbled smooth by the flow of water. In summer, when the ancient water of the glacier runs freely, a waterfall probably sheathes these rocks. Now cold has locked up the glacier and snow-pack water. Some planes of the rock are shiny with trickling ice. Others are edged in moss and slime. A few hardy trailing plants have found a temporary niche in which to flourish, but their time is nearly over. In one area, a thick yellow stain trails down the face of the rocks like a spill of paint. My nostrils catch a faint whiff of a smell like a struck kitchen match. Sulfur.

  “There,” Pan is saying, pointing. “See it?”

  I see nothing except that he is pointing out at some spot on that cracked wall of rock. He glances at my face, grins at my disbelief. In the gathering darkness, I cannot read his eyes. I do not know if they are merry, or if their depths shelter doubts as vivid as my own. He pulls me close for a moment, tries to hug me, but my layered clothing and swollen belly are as effective as any castle wall. He frees me. “Here,” he says, “I’ll show you. It’s not as bad as it looks.”

  No. It’s worse. He walks cautiously across a strip of pebbly ground to where the bared rock begins. Tiny stones roll free from the earth’s cold grip and go bounding into the depths of the ravine. He steps nonchalantly across a gap onto a huge tilted plank of stone. I hear a tiny scree as his hooves slip slightly, but he has the sureness of a goat and quickly he regains his balance. His hooves tack across it, and then he has reached the more vertical portion of the rock face.

  His body puts it in scale for me, makes the immensity of those slabs of stone apparent. I have never gone rock climbing, and I begin to wonder if I have feared unnecessarily. He makes it look so easy. He stays close to the rock face, sometimes clinging to it, sometimes merely trailing a hand across its surface. He moves up and then down, following the contours of the cracked and tumbled rock. He gives me a bad moment or two, times when he ventures out onto steeply slanting surfaces. Twice I hear his hooves slip, and once he has to backtrack when he comes to a dead end of slick, straight stone.

  He is working his way ever closer to the yellowish stain. I realize that I am squinting my eyes to follow his progress. The light is going, and rapidly. He clambers to the top of a steep slant of stone, skitters down it, and suddenly disappears. Before I can even catch my breath, he reappears, sticking his head out of what I would have sworn was solid rock. In the tricky light, it is hard to make my eyes obey me, and sort what is shadow from what is variegated rock from what is a deep vertical crack in the rock face. He reappears completely now, standing on a tiny lip of rock, and makes a deep, sweeping bow in my direction. It sends a chill up my spine. It is too surreal to bear, a goatman with a worn wild blanket for a cloak, bowing to me like a shamanic magician from a rock stage set high over nature’s amphitheater.

  He comes back to me, traveling more swiftly and surely. I see his eyes dart to where the sun is a bright smear between mountain peaks. I know what he is thinking. Bringing the battered bag that holds our belongings, I start out across the pebbly strip of crumbling earth toward him.

  The first step is the hardest, and I force myself to take it before he can reach me. Some dormant sense of independence is raising its head. Despite my belly and weariness, I do not want him to coddle and coax me across this final stretch of rock. I want to go as I would have gone when I was twelve, following him, yes, but following him with no doubts as to whether I can duplicate his feat.

  But on the first slant of stone, I discover why his hooves slipped. The fine misting of water sliding over the cold rock is turning into ice. I can get no purchase. Flailing my arms, I slide, my worn sneakers as smooth as skis. My shriek is an echo of Pan’s hoarse cry as he comes bounding toward me, heedless of his own footing. I sit down heavily on the slick rock, landing with a jolt that rattles the full length of my spine. For an instant I can only sit, staring out over the ravine before me. I feel sick and swirly, the rock is tilting under me, I am sure I am going to go sliding down into that darkness. I close my eyes, will everything to stillness.

  I hear Pan’s hooves clatter behind me. His voice is husky with fear as he begs me, “Take my hand.”

  Eyes still closed, I shake my head slowly. But it is not stubbornness. I don’t want to touch or be touched right now. “If I’m going across this rock face,” I tell him, “I’ve got to do it on my own. It’s the only way I can find my own balance. If I’m holding on to you, I know I’m going to zig when you zag, and we’ll both end up falling. Just give me a minute.”

  He is silent, but I feel his grudging assent. He wants to touch me, I know, but knows the truth of my words. “At least let me take the bag,” he suggests. I wave a hand at it, and hear the scrape of canvas over ice as he tugs it up to
him. I open my eyes again. The light is dimmer already. No time to sit and gather courage. By the time I’m brave enough to do this, it will be too dark.

  I reach past my belly to my shoelaces. They are wet, and half-frozen. My cold fingers tug at the knots. I grunt as I pull my shoes off, and then peel off my socks. I stuff the socks inside the shoes, then knot their laces together and sling them over my shoulder. My feet are cold, my toes numb, but even so I will get better purchase. I scoot back up the rock. Great. Now my butt’s wet, too. When I feel safe to do so, I stand up. Cold bites my feet, but I have a little traction. Pan stands about six feet from me, on the next stone I must clamber. His eyes are very big and dark. “Just what I always wanted to be,” I tell him, trying to break the tension. “Barefoot and pregnant.”

  He doesn’t even smile. “Oh, be careful, my love,” he tells me, and slowly moves over to make room for me.

  I follow him, in fits and starts. From this tilting slab, to that flat but so narrow surface. From places where I can cling to the rock face, to places where I must go, hunched over, hands touching nothing, relying only on my cold feet. I dare not walk upright, but curl over my belly. My center of gravity is wrong, there is no moment when I feel surefooted and agile.

  I am a shambling ape thing following his goat lead. His hooves find every possible purchase and he walks upright, while I come behind, gripping with toes and fingers. It is getting colder and darker with every step I take. Like dying, I think to myself, and out of nowhere, Teddy’s little face swims before my eyes. I try to push the image away, but it clings to me every inch of the way. The baby in my belly churns uneasily, and my little dead son seems to cling to me also. He didn’t know how close death was hovering, that day on the tractor under the bright hot sun. It came quickly for him, snatching him away and closing its bony hands over him. Not like this, where every step I take might be the wrong one.

  I am at a very tricky spot. Both my hands are seeking purchase in an almost horizontal crack as I slide my feet across an unrelated slab of stone. My belly is up against the rock face, pushing me out and away from safety. I turn my head, but Pan is out of my sight and my reach for the moment. “Oh, Teddy,” I say, like a prayer, as if my little son can somehow keep me safe. The deep aching loss of him bursts suddenly back into my life, as if I have wallpapered over a door and now he suddenly breaks back in through it. I feel as if I am walking a narrow path between two children. One grows and turns inside me, demanding a share of every breath I take, of every morsel I eat. His safety depends on my surefootedness right now. The other seems to hover at my shoulder, and his presence is like a rebuke to me. How dare I use my body to shelter another when I did not protect him that day? How dare I be so fearful of the false step and death, when, alone and unprepared, he has already plumbed that fearful chasm?

  “Evelyn, Evelyn,” Pan’s voice reaches me. I am aware that I have stopped moving, that my sweating forehead is pressed against cold rock. My feet are numb except for one extremely painful area by my left heel. I assume I have cut myself, but there is no way I can look. “Evelyn!” he calls, more sharply.

  “I’m okay,” I lie, and take another breath. God, it’s cold and I’m so tired. It’s hard to remember why any of this is important. I only know that the longer I stand, the harder it is to move again. And it’s dark.

  “It’s only a little farther,” he says. “Please, love.”

  I turn my head, try to look around me, but I am pressed too close to the rock face. Impossible to tell how far I have come. I shuffle my feet a few steps, following the sound of his voice, and come to a place where I must let loose of my handholds. I feel sudden fingers brush my shoulder, and nearly scream. “It’s okay, it’s okay,” he says soothingly, and prys my fingers free. “Hold my hand, now. I’ll brace you.” He steps back, away from me, but pulling me. He steps over a gap in the rock, from one slanting rock surface to another. And draws me after him.

  I can’t step over that empty space, not with my belly drawing me down like an anchor on a sinking ship. But I do, and he keeps my hands and draws me on, and suddenly we are skittering down a steep slant of stone. There is nothing to hang on to, and it is too dark to see much of anything, but before I can panic, he stops me with a jerk, and pulls me in close to the rock face.

  “In here,” he whispers, and the words echo. I take a few steps, following him into absolute blackness. My feet make light splashing noises, and suddenly the cut on my heel stings to vicious life. “Stand still,” he tells me, and before I can protest, he lets go of my hand and steps away. I am left standing in complete darkness.

  I glance over my shoulder. There is a jagged grey crack in the darkness behind me, no more than a brighter dimness where the dregs of the light are seeping in. It illuminates nothing. But in a few moments, I start to become aware of my feet. They tingle and ache and burn. The smell of sulfur is stronger, and I surmise that I am standing in the runoff from a hot spring, and that my feet are being thawed by the warmth.

  I stand still in the darkness, letting the warmth seep into my feet, and listening to the odd sounds Pan is making. He is fumbling with something, cursing softly and thudding something about. I hear a clank, like metal against glass. A sharp odor I can’t quite identify drifts to me, and then there is a sudden flare of light. I shut my eyes to it and turn away before I open them again. Then I turn slowly back, letting my eyes adjust gradually.

  It is an amazing sight. Pan is holding aloft a small glass lantern that would probably bring a fortune in any antique store. The sharp smell was the kerosene from the Mason jar on the floor by his hooves. He brushes more dust from the glass chimney before setting it back on the lamp. He hangs the lantern from a metal spike driven into a stone wall and makes a welcoming gesture that invites me in.

  I walk forward slowly, my curiosity overcoming my weariness. The lantern light is yellow and warm, but the cave is warm also. Much warmer than outside, and free of the wind. Deep in the recesses, I can make out the shimmer of reflected light. A pool, and the faint disturbance that makes the light waver on it is the upwelling of the hot sulfurous water. The warmth it gives to the cave is almost worth the rotten-egg reek of it. I am still standing in the shallow moving overflow from the spring. The light touches here and there on the stone walls of the cave, giving me an impression of a low ceiling that rises higher above the spring, but most of the cavern we stand in is left in shadowy darkness.

  Yet it is not the natural wonders of this place that impress me the most. Instead, it is the very plentiful evidence of its former habitation. There is furniture, of a sort, of hewn slab wood, and two wooden chests. Closer to the entrance, scorched rock and sooted wall mark a naturally vented area for a fire. Pan deposits our pack on the table. It quivers with the burden.

  “I don’t think we can trust the table, do you?” Pan asks as he gives that rickety object a shake. The wood of it is damp and mossy-looking, and it gives alarmingly when he leans on it. Of wood, too, is a stoutly built bedstead laced with rope set not far from the table. Tattered scraps of faded fabric scattered across the ropes are probably the remains of a straw tick. “Make yourself at home,” Pan tells me as he tidies up the fabric and bits of long rotted straw and dumps them in a pile on the fire spot.

  “How did you know this was here?” I ask him, already anticipating the answer.

  “Ancestral home, my dear. Hasn’t been used in quite a while, but actually, more things have survived than I expected. Bedstead will probably be okay, if I put new rope on it and a new mattress for you. Cedar is forever. I’ll get a fire going while you go through the chests and see what’s survived.” There is no mistaking how pleased with himself he is. He is as good as his word, efficiently breaking up the table for firewood. I eye the punky damp-dry wood with doubts as I reluctantly leave the stream.

  The cave floor is cold against my bare feet. I stop to dry my feet and put on two pairs of dry socks. My sneakers are hopelessly soaked. I hang them and the wet socks from other metal
spikes driven into the cave walls. I think I am too weary to do more than that, but my curiosity is strong. I pad over and sink down by one of the wooden chests.

  It is made of cedar, hand hewn, and the cracks have been packed with oakum and sealed with rosin, like an old sailing ship. There is a brass hasp, green with age, but no lock. I have to use my pocket knife to pry the hasp up, but then the chest opens easily.

  Dried herbs, gone to crumbles but pungent still, lie in bundles over a thick layer of brown paper. I lift the crackling paper away, to find beneath it thick homespun blankets, only a little musty, and beneath them a little knotted rug. Under them is another layer of brown paper, and then cast-iron cookware, a skillet, a pot and a kettle, heavily greased against the damp. Rolled and packed in thick layers of brown paper are four more Mason jars, large ones, gurgling full of kerosene. There is a knife with a bone handle. The wooden spoons have not survived; their wood has twisted and cracked with time so they are barely recognizable. Another layer of brown paper and more herbs. Below that, a leather garment and several animal hides have not survived. They are greenish and stiff, and have taken with them a patchwork quilt once stuffed with feathers. That is all for the first chest.