by Jeffrey Ford
As soon as dinner was finished, and Cley and she had cleaned off the table and put things where they belonged, she returned to the other room. The hunter stoked the fire and sat in the chair that had once belonged to her husband. He smoked a cigarette from the pack that had been given to him by Weems and stared at the flames, watching for scenes and faces and portents of the future in their frantic dance. Then, he heard from the back room, the mother talking in a high, sweet voice that drew murmurs of delight from the infant. The demon killer, the tattooed slayer of invisible Wraiths, smiled at the sound and blew smoke rings at the ceiling. Wood lay curled up at the entrance to the other room and lifted his head from dreams every time the baby cooed. It was only in this brief hour before sleep that ghosts were banished and the future and past were forgotten. When the cigarette had been smoked into oblivion, Cley lifted himself out of the chair and lay down on the floor.
The sun had barely begun to cast its reflection on the waters of the lake. Cley stood in the quiet house at the window, staring out along the tree line, watching two Beshanti warriors surreptitiously moving through the shadows from tree to tree. He had a mind to send Wood out to chase them away as he had done on numerous occasions.
One night, after he had sat in the chair, staring into the fireplace longer than usual, Cley was lying on the floor, trying to decide whether he should return to the fort and see if anyone had been spared.
Just as he decided that he could not bear to discover Curaswani slaughtered, the door to the other room opened on creaking hinges. He looked up and saw, in the light of the dying embers, Willa Olsen moving around the central room. Her eyes were closed, and she trod softly and slowly in her thin cotton nightgown. She whispered in her sleep, the name Christof. Finally, she leaned down over the back of the chair the hunter had recently vacated and planted a kiss in midair. Then she returned to the bedroom, and he heard no more from her till the morning when the baby woke, crying.
Cley smelled the scent of the ocean on the breeze one bright afternoon while hunting a mile north of the house. He thought to himself how much easier his life would be if he were to just keep heading in that direction, making progress toward Arla Beaton and the true Wenau. Willa and the child were to him like Vasthasha’s taproots, holding him firmly in one place. He daydreamed of the freedom he had once known and cursed in his loneliness. In his mind, he saw the green veil soaring above the Beyond.
The hunter discovered a fishing rod and tackle in a corner of the main room of the house. On a clear afternoon, he and Wood went down to the lake to try their luck. Chunks of venison were used as bait. In the first hour, Cley managed to hook himself once in the pants and once on his thumb. The line tangled and snarled every few minutes, and it took at least as long to unravel the maze of knots.
Finally, with great patience, he was able to cast and keep things in order. The wooden bobber, carved into the form of a small boat with a tiny fisherman in it, floated on the surface. Below, in the clear water, Cley could see large, dark forms moving close to the bottom.
Hours passed, and there was not so much as a nibble. The day was peaceful, and the lake was so still its reflection was a perfect opposite of the world above. Cley was roused from his torpor by the sight and sound of a large fish leaping into the air out past where his line descended. Scales caught the sunlight in a ripple of iridescence before it splashed back beneath the surface.
“Over here,” Cley yelled.
Wood was bored beyond reckoning and headed back to the house.
“Deserter,” the hunter called after him.
More time passed, then, suddenly, Cley felt a tug at the line. He reeled in, but the reel was old and rotted and the handle broke off. Filled with excitement, though, he took the line in his hands and began pulling his catch ashore. From the monumental struggle, he knew that whatever was on the hook must be very large. The line ran back through his grasp and cut his calluses until his palms began to bleed.
Cursing and struggling, he started to make headway. His nemesis, it seemed, had given in. With each tug a huge, black creature emerged more clearly from below. Dragged onto the shore, its slick skin glistened in the sun. The hunter approached and was met with a horrific sight. It was a blob of a fish, with large, unlidded human eyes, antennae that reached three feet from its head, and a big-lipped mouth so wide it could swallow a whole crow at once.
“Harrow’s hindquarters,” said Cley, staring down on the monstrosity.
The creature opened its mouth, spit out the hook, and made a loud noise like an old man in respiratory distress, its gasping interspersed with explosive farting sounds.
“All this work for this flatulent pig of Hell,” thought Cley, as he stepped forward and kicked the thing back into the lake. Then he looked down and saw the condition of his hands and the bloodstains on his yellow coat. He pitched the fishing pole out into the water and stormed away toward the house.
“Where’s my gun,” he said as he came through the door. But he was brought up short by the sight of Willa, naked to the waist, sitting in his chair by the fire, nursing Wraith. She gazed calmly at him. He looked from her breasts up into her face.
“How was the fishing, Mr. Cley?” she asked in a quiet voice.
A moment of silence passed, then he said, “Excuse me, madam. Oh, yes, the fishing … It was something less than a triumph.” He turned quickly away and found his gun. When he looked back to call for Wood to follow, he saw what he believed to be a subtle smile on Willa Olsen’s lips.
He knew the Beshanti were stalking him as he stalked a deer through thick underbrush on the opposite side of the lake. Wood looked over to see if Cley wanted him to charge back into the birches and chase them away. Instead, the hunter ran as fast as he could, weaving in and out of the straight, thin trunks of the trees. The black dog stayed even with him, as if knowing which way his companion would turn before he actually did.
Three Beshanti found Cley’s hat lying on the ground. The leader of the party was a large muscular man with a painted face—two streaks of white cutting diagonals across either cheek. He wore the delicate skeleton of a hummingbird on a lanyard around his neck, and a black, sleeveless blouse decorated with red-dyed circles. His two partners were dressed in green tunics and wore their hair in triple braids as was the custom. The trio bent over Cley’s hat as if it was an animal that might spring to life at any moment.
Wood suddenly appeared from behind the tree in front of them. Startled, they rose and turned to run. Facing them now, with his rifle aimed at the largest, was Cley.
“What do you want?” asked the hunter.
The leader of the Beshanti spoke in his native language, making signs that seemed to be imploring Cley not to shoot.
The hunter smiled broadly but did not relinquish his aim. He was about to speak again when an invisible force violently pulled the weapon clear of his hands. He stared in amazement as it floated in midair a few feet in front of him. Wood growled at the presence of a Wraith but remained standing behind the warriors.
Now it was the Beshanti’s turn to smile. The large man spoke quickly in his own tongue. Cley shook his head, showing he did not understand. It was obvious that he was being lectured to. Then the leader took a knife from his belt and passed it in a cutting motion an inch from his own throat. When he was finished speaking, he motioned with his left hand to where the invisible Wraith stood, holding the hunter’s rifle. From that empty patch of air, a white scrap materialized and unfolded into a sheet of paper. It floated slowly toward Cley, and when it was within his reach, the hunter took it.
As he turned it over and noticed the handwriting on one side, his rifle fell to the ground and the three Beshanti brushed past him and began to walk away. Intent on what he was reading, he did not watch them leave. The script was beautifully rendered and at the bottom of the page he saw the name Misnotishul. When he was finished with it, he tore it into small pieces and threw them to the muddy ground. Wood walked over and sniffed at the fragments.
“Good morning, Mrs. Olsen,” he said, and opened the door to the outside.
“Mr. Cley,” she said, and he was surprised that she had spoken.
He turned back. “Yes?”
“I need you to watch Wraith for me while I go out to get some fresh air,” she said.
The hunter was silent, at first stunned by the request and then working mightily to come up with an excuse why this might be impossible. “I have to go hunting,” he said.
“We’ve got enough salted venison here to last two months,” she said. “I need to get outside in order to keep my health up. I’ve been in this house for weeks. I won’t be gone long. Wraith is asleep. I doubt he will awaken for some time. All you have to do is listen for him.”
“Very well,” said the hunter. “But do not go far, the Beshanti are about. And take my pistol with you.”
Willa walked over to the windowsill where the gun rested and lifted it.
“I can send Wood with you,” he said.
“No, I’d feel better with him here, with the baby,” she said.
The door opened and closed, and she was gone.
Five minutes passed and Cley was still standing in the same spot, wondering about the change in Willa Olsen. Not only had she spoken to him, but it was more than a single sentence. She could almost have been said to be animated. A moment later, Wraith began screaming.
Although the hunter was a successful midwife, he had never been a baby-sitter. Delivering children was one thing; having to amuse them was something else entirely. He tried at first to ignore the cries coming from the back room, hoping the child would fall asleep again. The noise did not stop, though, and gave no indication of diminishing.
“Demons in their death throes send up a less obnoxious caterwauling than this baby,” he said.
Wood ran into the other room and then back out to stare at Cley. The hunter stood his ground. The dog barked at him.
“May I first just say, shit,” said Cley. Then he walked in and gathered up the squirming child.
Willa came through the door to find Cley sitting in the chair before the fireplace, the baby wrapped in blankets on his lap. Wood lay on the floor, watching the child grab at the hunter’s beard. In his free hand, Cley held open the empty book cover. The house was quiet but for the low murmuring that was a story about a man fishing for the answer to a great problem through a hole in a frozen lake.
Cley and Wood were returning from the south. The day was waning as a beautiful golden light drenched the birches. They had taken a large rabbit and a partridge. The hunter thought about Vasthasha and where he would find him once the weather grew warmer. He wanted desperately to leave the woman and child behind, but now, after reading Misnotishul’s letter of warning, he knew the Beshanti would not let Willa live.
Before the log house or lake came into view, he smelled a peculiar scent on the air. He feared it was the smoke of a fire, and the first thing he could imagine was that the Beshanti had torched the house with the woman and child in it. Whistling to the dog, who was lagging behind, he ran frantically toward the lake. As he neared the house, he stopped in his tracks, realizing it was not the aroma of a fire, but rather the smell of wild onions and venison cooking.
“She’s making a home,” Cley whispered to Wood with a look of great sorrow.
The meal was tragic in its excellence. Willa watched Cley carefully as he took each forkful. This night, it was the hunter who did not look up from his plate. He noticed out of the corner of his eye the small purple blossom floating in a bowl of water to his right. The venison had been cooked all day in some kind of rich gravy, but he could not enjoy it, for simmering in the back of his own mind was the fact that Willa and Wraith must again be displaced. His thoughts were ablaze with scenarios of how he would break the news.
“Did you ever wonder why the Beshanti did not destroy this house, Mr. Cley?” she asked.
He nodded.
“I’ll show you after we finish eating,” she said.
His curiosity getting the better of him, he looked up and saw her face illuminated by the candlelight. Her features were plain and honest and appealed to him more than ever before. He wanted to look away again, but knew he couldn’t without seeming rude.
“The food is very good,” he said.
“You have cooked so many meals since we have arrived that I thought it was only fair,” said Willa.
“The house looks different too,” said Cley, “less cluttered and jumbled.”
“I had a chance today to clean. Wraith slept quite a stretch this afternoon,” she said, and pushed the bowl of potatoes toward him. As he took one more, she said, “Please, Mr. Cley, will you try to knock the mud off your boots before entering from now on?”
Cley could not help but smile. “Granted,” he said.
There was a long silence, and then at the same moment, they both said, “It was a beautiful day.”
When Cley had finished his second helping, they cleared the table together. Willa then told the hunter, “Stay there, I’ll be right back.”
She moved off toward the other room, stepping over Wraith, who lay on a blanket on the floor next to Wood. A few minutes later, she returned carrying a three-foot-wide wooden platform with six-inch sides. It was open at the top, and there was something growing from within. As she set it down on the table, Cley looked inside and what he saw astonished him.
There was a miniature landscape, a slight, grassy rise with two perfectly real, diminutive pine trees growing at either end. At the top of the small hill, there sat a house carved from dark wood. It was incredible in its detail.
“The windows of the house are made from slivers of quartz,” she said. “If you take the candle and look inside, you can see the people who live there.”
Cley did as she suggested and leaned over with the candle close to his face. There, in the flickering light, he could easily make out a man and a woman and two girls sitting at a table. He blinked and saw that the woman had a miniscule pipe to her lips and, even more fantastic, there was a trail of smoke coming from it. The man was at work on a box, very similar to the one the house sat in, with a birch tree the width of a fly wing growing from it. One girl had long blond hair and the other had brown.
The hunter shook his head, and reached out to touch the delicate pine needles of one of the trees. Quickly, he pulled back his finger. “They are real,” he said.
“Yes,” said Willa. “Notice the lower branch of the one on the right.”
Cley looked and, for the first time, noticed a boy, scrupulous of detail, swinging from the branch by one arm.
“The carving is miraculous,” said the hunter, “but the trees, the trees …”
“My husband, Christof, grew them from the seeds of real trees, and then through some process I do not understand, that has to do with the twisting and pruning of their roots, stunted their growth. He was a master carver and created the house and the people. I remember him working always with two jewelers’ loupes, one in each eye,” she said. The excitement in telling about the small wonder was evident in her voice.
“He must have been an incredible artist,” said Cley, now truly absorbed in the tableau.
“He was an unusual man,” said Willa. “He was quite naive and open and somewhat strange. He would always tell me stories about the people who lived in the house. The Carrols, he called them. Long, involved stories with happy endings about their everyday lives. There was a point where I believed they were real.”
“Did the Beshanti know of this?” asked Cley.
“Yes, some of them would come with that one who knew the language of the realm, and Christof would tell them about the lives of the Carrols. Their leader would interpret for them. They were mightily intrigued, to say the least, and som
ewhat leery of the little world. His stories were as detailed as his carving, and through them, the Beshanti were convinced that this was a kind of magic they should not disrespect. This is why, though they killed my husband, they left the house, because they knew the miniature was here.” She looked over at Cley when she finished speaking, and he could see that there were tears in her eyes, and she was smiling.
“Listen, Willa,” said Cley. “We can’t stay here.”
“We can,” she said. “Things are working out perfectly.”
“No,” said Cley. “We must leave in a few days. The other day in the forest I got a letter from the Beshanti, Misnotishul, in which he warned me that there is great agreement among his people that you should be disposed of.”
Willa brought her hands to her face and turned away.
“Listen to me,” said Cley, raising his voice. “They won’t kill me, and they won’t harm Wraith, but they know I was lying when I said you were my wife.”
“You what?” she said, and looked at him as if he had betrayed her.
“I told them that, the day I went with Dat to get Wraith from them. I did it to save you and the child.”
“I can’t go away from here,” she said.
“Misnotishul, the Beshanti who knows the language of the realm, has been protecting you. In the next few days, he will undergo a ritual to cleanse him of our language. He told me in his letter that while the words of the realm still live in him, he has sympathy for us and because of this has made an attempt to warn me. Once this ritual has been performed, there is nothing that can save you. They will come for you,” said the hunter.
