In the Shape of a Boar

by Lawrence Norfolk

  The walls were worn smooth to the height of a man but thereafter cracks began to appear in their sides. Jagged overhangs jutted out higher yet as if a thick cord of sinew had been pulled from the body of the mountain leaving an open wound which the sun had baked to stone. Some way ahead the course of the canyon bent towards the north and the shadow cast by the west wall cloaked the stone in a darkness that their sun-blinded eyes could not penetrate.

  And so the first trickle of water, advancing and filtering through the till and low mounds of pebbles in the lee of the shadowing wall, sucked at by water-starved roots, spilling in and out of cracks, went unremarked until it began to splash about the larger rocks and its noise called them to kneel and slake their thirst.

  Aura lapped at an arm of water which curled about a smooth-sided boulder, her yellow teeth and quick pink tongue visible as she twisted her head. The shade was a cool balm. Atalanta cupped her hands and scooped water which ran down her arms and dripped off her elbows. Her skin remembered faster streams, foaming and colder. She looked up. The nearest of the men was Ancaeus, who crouched some way downstream of her and bent to immerse his face. The other men kept their distance from her. They cast down their weapons and cupped their hands, all save Thersites, who lay flat on his belly, and Lynceus, who approached the trickling stream then retreated from it, back and forth until his brother pulled him down and dashed the water into his open mouth. Meleager's dogs waited for their master's command, given when the last of the men had had their fill, and then they too leaped forward to drink.

  Atalanta rose. Nestor and Phoenix supported Thersites but in the heat haze the three men appeared to her as a single figure staggering under the weight of his frame. The others were thin as twigs, merging and dissolving. The heat of the canyon blended and collapsed them into one another, all save herself.

  A prohibition fenced her and held the men away. Her continuing presence and Meilanion's disappearance were alike inexplicable to the huntsmen, part of the same mystery in which the two of them were bound together. She thought of the frame of bones that an animal carries in the case of its flesh, its articulations and flexings and possible shapes. The youth was a space in their ranks and whatever deeds were marked out for him were now among their omissions. But she was their excess. A hunter might dispatch the quarry with a single cut of the knife and then find himself in the grip of its death, stabbing at the carcass over and over. An avenger might take the life beyond the one owed him and turn restitution into a blood-feud, a blood-feud into a war. They feared what she might mean.

  Atalanta, in her turn, thought on what their fear might mean to her. Meleager strode ahead with his mane of yellow hair heavy in the heat and his dogs advancing in line with him, heads held high, for the sun had scoured any scent which might have been laid here. Rhoecus and Hylaeus had reared up expecting her to turn and run so that their hooves might knock her down, crack her bones and pin her motionless, face-down on the forest floor. But she had not turned and in their confusion they had made easy prey. She did not know if she might resist Meleager, if he should come for her. And she did not know whether Meleager might break the prohibition in which the others had immured her or whether, being hers and she his, he would find himself bound within it.

  The canyon's sides rose higher. Aracynthus's flattened peak would be far above them, to the left. It was invisible from the canyon floor. The stream – it had broadened to merit the name–gurgled in its channel and its noise echoed off the walls. The bottom of the canyon began to narrow. The sinking sun sent a black shadow creeping across the floor and up the eastern face. They walked in the bed of the stream, which now reached as high as their calves. The dogs jumped from rock to rock, panting to keep up. The air cooled.

  They halted where the canyon bent off at a different angle. From a distance it had appeared that their passage might have come to an abrupt halt. Peleus and Acastus marched forward to investigate. The rest sat down to await the stragglers. Phoenix and Nestor were struggling to carry Thersites over this more difficult terrain and Theseus and Pirithous had dropped back to add their efforts. Idas and Lynceus had yet to come into view.

  The stream rose again.

  But among those waiting on the near side of the bend - Eurytion sharpening a short-bladed knife, Telamon standing guard over the spear of Peleus, Ancaeus sitting beside him, Caeneus lying propped on his elbows, Laertes squatting, Eurytion slumped, Castor and Pollux drawing lines in a pan of dry gravel, Jason speaking to a nodding Podargos, and Admetos spreadeagled on a sun-warmed rock, arms outstretched along an axis linking nothing to nothing unless it be Meleager and Atalanta, both alone-and among those to the van and rear, none noticed.

  For water is devious by nature. It infiltrates and forms its shapes between rocks and roots, in their concavities and sharp angles. It penetrates, waits out the winter in the form of ice and peels shelves of stone which crash down the high sides of mountain in thunderous tumbles of loose rocks and lethal rains of stones. And in summer the same mountains trigger catastrophic downpours which the baked earth will neither channel nor accept and which gather in fragile sumps, deceptive lakes with brittle boundaries. Noiseless, distant, unsignalled and without warning, seepage becomes a drip, then a trickle, a steady and fattening flow which batters down its dykes and hurls their fragments forward. Rock will float, in a flood.

  Atalanta watched motes of gravel no bigger than olive pits form curling ridges and grooves in the clear water. The stream-bed wavered and drifted. Thersites and his bearers had stopped to rest some way short of the main body of men; Theseus and Pirithous were not to be seen. She recalled the sharp peaks she had seen from the far coast of the gulf and wondered at the decision which would have to be made when they were reached. For their route must be taking them towards the mountains where the maimed man and Idas's raving brother would hinder their progress, if not bring them to a standstill. She looked up at the unscalable walls and wished herself clear of them.

  The men lazed and yawned. The canyon now was an airy channel through which shade flowed. Meleager's dogs nosed at his feet. She watched him out of the corner of her eye as he reached to retie the thongs of his sandals, intertwining them in a lattice. The sinews rose in his arms. The others would play the parts of his functionaries, for now. But not herself. And not Meilanion. She dipped the tip of her toe into the water. The cold pricked her flesh. Thersites’ grunted curses reached her ears across the intervening distance - Nestor and Phoenix were preparing to lift him again – and then, far behind these three, Lynceus at last came into view.

  Theseus, Pirithous and Idas were clustered about him so that at first she could not make sense of their movements. They proceeded in a chaotic zig-zag, all four of them lurching over the broken ground. Then she saw that the men were bound together. They had tied two cords about Lynceus's wrists and a third about his neck. His mouth hung open but no sound issued from it, or none that she could hear. His head tossed up and down and he strained his arms against their restraints, but these motions were undirected and random, compelled by some interior torment rather than directed against his keepers. So they led him forward like an animal. When he stumbled they lifted him to his feet and continued.

  As she watched their advance, the water touched her again. She looked down. The stream, which had been crystal clear, was now clouded with mud. When had that happened? There were sub-streams within it, strata of sorts, composed of oxides and mudstone which deepened as she watched their idle collisions, growing richer and redder so that her thoughts turned to the glow of the sun's dying torch as it fell through the line of bristling firs forming hackles atop the ridged back of Erymanthus, or its pinkened morning echo sounding over Mount Cyllene, bright poisonous berries and rusty lichens, the autumn leaves of the middle slopes and the hides of wily stags clip-clopping through them, almost invisible in their own autumn colours. Arcadian scarlets, russets and reds.

  But this was the red which waited in the moment at the end of the chase, when her arm w
ould rise and fall in an arc whose terminus was her victim's twitching neck. Then the blood would come. The streams of Arcadia, too, had run red when Rhoecus and Hylaeus became hers, so that someone standing far downstream might have watched a tongue of scarlet stain the water and lap about his legs, and wondered whose death it tokened, as she did now. Except there was no mystery here, for the lives dissolving before her eyes belonged to the pair sent forward: Peleus and Acastus. The boar must be close, she realised. She jumped to her feet and would have shouted out, but the cry died in her throat.

  A dull rumble was rolling down the canyon. It echoed off the canyon walls and for a few moments it seemed to be dying away. But then it deepened and grew louder again, moving towards them, and in her bafflement Atalanta understood nothing save that this was not the beast they hunted. This was a sound she had never heard before.

  A ridge of water rounded the bend ahead, scended against the wall, broke and fell. For a moment it appeared motionless, then it gathered itself and rolled towards them. She saw Meleager rise, disbelieving, locked in confusion until her high shout broke his trance. Her voice sounded alien to her. The others were rising, grasping their weapons, some fleeing down the canyon, others jumping for the walls. Aura was up. Atalanta snatched her bowstave and sprang from the channel, searching for handholds as the muddy wave swept down the channel. She gulped air and pulled herself tight to the rock, tensed herself against the impact.

  But it did not come. She felt the very top of the wave wash over her ankles, then sink away. The stream fell. Down the canyon she saw Nestor, Phoenix and Thersites coughing and spluttering. Lynceus and his guardians were rising to their feet, drenched but unharmed. She turned. Ancaeus was wiping down his axe and Telamon his brother's spear. Or his dead brother's spear. The others were wringing water from their chitons, puzzlement and relief showing in their faces, all except one. Meleager's gaze was directed at herself, but his face was blank. He seemed not to see her or anyone else. He was listening.

  Then she heard it too, the same sound as before. This time it was deeper and its noise issued from a mouth whose teeth ground stones and whose swollen tongue thrashed down and drove before it a rolling head of air. Atalanta smelt river-weed, soil and clay. She looked up, wondering how high she must climb to clear the surface of the flood. Aura snarled at her feet. The noise of the flood rumbled louder and deeper, then jumped to a new pitch.

  Further down the canyon, Phoenix had abandoned Thersites and was running for the side. Nestor remained, struggling to lift his burden. Or was the injured man refusing to release him? They wrestled, fumbling at each other. Theseus and Pirithous had stayed with the two brothers but Idas was pushing them away with furious gestures. The sound shuddered in her bones, an assault. She jumped and felt her arm lodge against something. There was nothing in her head except the noise of the flood, which would come as a rampart of liquid mud, bristling with tree trunks and hurling boulders before it, scouring everything in its path. She turned away, pressing her cheek to the rock. She heard the impact of the water as it hit the bend in the canyon. She saw Theseus and Pirithous break away from their hopeless task and sprint for the walls, their weapons scattering about them. She sucked air. Then she saw Idas plant his feet, take hold of Lynceus and lift him, raising him above his head as though he might carry him thus to safety. He stood rooted beneath the weight of his brother, a single pillar supporting the pediment of an impossible temple, refusing flight, but whether in defiance or acceptance of his fate she could not guess and would never know, for at that moment the wave fell upon her and she saw no more.

  ***

  Blood dries to black and fades to brown. His guide was the dying fall of a dead man's cry, a stain on a rock. A man had failed on this climb, where he, Meilanion, had so far succeeded. The same man had died far below, on the rocks. He might have failed at a point below, or one higher up, a point Meilanion had yet to reach but which awaited him as a covered pit awaits its unsuspecting victim. A smooth overhang would bring him to a halt somewhere beyond the point where descent was possible and he would cling there, trapped in his inability and his failing strength; to fall here was no less certain than falling there. The pads of his fingertips felt the mountain's coarse skin. He must use his hands as tools. There was a narrow place where he could be, a tight crevass whose sides were made of rock and air. Before him rose the face. Behind him lay the drop.

  Climbing thoughts.

  And below him were the huntsmen whom he had abandoned, whilst above him were the sons of Thestius. A light wind blew, which cooled the surface of his skin even as the sun burned it. His hands and feet were blunt pegs fixing him to the stone. His body hung from them, then pulled them loose, then drove them in again. He continued in a broken rhythm. Behind the sons of Thestius was a being who tracked them and could think of only that: the night-hunter, who exists between his appetite and its satisfaction.

  But the night-hunter's appetites were various and the hunt complex, pulling his limbs into strange attitudes and alliances so that the knuckles of his left hand were braced against the instep of his right foot, his intervening body threaded by the shallow bow of muscle which tensed and connected them, and then – some moments later – his cheek was pressed against the rock and supporting there a tiny portion of the weight which hung below it: the weight which pulled him out into space and the jointed pieces of him which clung and gripped, released and moved in slow passes over the mountain's coarse surface. The rock's stasis was a deception; it was a river whose spate had swept away its bridges. Now it would sweep him off the broken stumps of their piers and hurl him down, were he to miss his footing. And how little of him was accepted – fingers, toes – in the cracks and narrow ledges which punctuated the face, precious enclaves of security from which he hung suspended, midstream in the current that would carry him to his extinction far below.

  He had been climbing since midday and he was tiring.

  A crack to his left had opened. It ran toward a wider fault which seemed to follow a steep diagonal. He edged towards it twice and each time the featureless stone surrounding the fault forced him back. Its slant was away from him and when he made height to try again, it had receded further. His weight was on one foot. He raised an arm, feeling for a handhold above him. There was nothing. He made the next foothold and repeated the motion.

  A tiny ledge. And he could see the end of a horizontal crack, which he now knew he must reach. The ledge must lead to the crack, he told himself. His fingers must search along the ledge and then they must bear his weight. And then he must reach the fault and the fault must carry him to the top. Because he was tiring.

  He flexed his knuckles and brought one hand up to join the other. The arch of his right foot tautened and the slack weight of his body hung between these extremities, slung like a carcass from a pole. He could not hold himself here for long. A vague outswelling created an overhang whose brow rolled back out of sight. He thought of the arc his arm must follow and the splayed fingers of his hand, imagining their impact and how his palm would slap the rock and hold. He could not see, or wait any longer. The air burned his throat and smelt of nothing. When his lungs were filled he would push off from his foothold, swing his arm and the ledge would hold him. His chest swelled and tightened, his ribs pressing against the tight membrane of flesh and skin. He launched himself out, swung around and grasped, his fingers searching for the handhold.

  Nothing.

  An instant later he felt his palm sliding off the smooth lip, his own unbearable mass pressing down on his last handhold, which could not support him. Two wild heartbeats and he was dangling, but how? And from what? He jammed a foot hard into rock, felt pain as it stripped a nail from his toe, reached out again, his fingers clawing for purchase. He could not understand how he was still here instead of tumbling through the air. It seemed easy to relinquish his foothold and, at the same time, slide his hand further along the top of the overhang – a hand's-breadth, a finger's-breadth. If there was nothing, he wou
ld fall. If something, he would cling to it. He felt grit between his fingers and an instant later a spray of it dashed against his face, blinding him. It made no difference. Another hair's-breadth would topple him and this too made no difference. When he tumbled into space he would take the mountain with him, bring it crashing down. The tendons in his arm were tight as bowstrings. They would snap before he fell. His hands would detach themselves from his wrists and be left here to scrabble like crabs over smooth rock. He understood then that he had lost.

  But his hand closed on stone. The ledge led to the crack. His fingers searched along it and they bore his weight. He hung like a dead man, awakening and disbelieving his reprieve. His body's motions were impossible and he disbelieved these too. He reached the fault.

  When his watering eyes had washed out the grit, he looked up and saw a disc of piercing blue sky far above, as though the crevass were a well and he was lodged at the bottom. He could wedge himself between the sides, but the incline was kinder even than he had hoped and irregular enough for him to walk up as though it were a shallow-raked ladder. He pulled the remnant of his toenail from its bed of flesh, spat on his hands and began, once again, to climb. The blue pool of light grew. He clambered over the lip of the rock and stood before a different vista. He had reached the flat summit of Aracynthus.

  Tall, purple-feathered grasses covered an undulating meadow whose gentle troughs deepened until, to his left, they sloped down to a thickly-wooded terrace. The tops of the highest trees showed above the drop of the ridge. Ahead, the distance of an arrow shot, the ground fell away into a narrow ravine, its exact contours smoothed by dark green pines. The breeze gusting from the north buffetted the tall grass, flattening and releasing it. Its scent billowed and sank in the cold air.

  But around his feet the grass had been trampled flat and a trail of broken stems marked a broad furrow. The sons of Thestius had rested here and then moved on, making no effort to conceal their passing. He felt his muscles begin to ache and shifted from foot to foot, rubbing his arms. In the west the sun hung above the horizon. How long had he been climbing? The mouth of the gulf was a sheet of blue. The lagoon below was in shadow now, while to the north the distant mountains glowed pink where the sun caught their western slopes. His damaged toe began to throb. He tore a strip from his chiton and knelt to bind it. When he walked, he would leave the mark of his injury in every footprint. He pressed his hand to the crushed grass, gauging its resilience. The sons of Thestius had not lain here long.