by Jeffrey Ford
“You must let me carry the child,” said Vasthasha.
The hunter looked at Willa, who was shaking her head.
“Trust him,” said Cley.
Vasthasha smiled as Willa reluctantly handed over her son to the foliate. He pulled Wraith up close to his chest, and the baby’s eyes closed immediately in sleep.
“Wait, what about Wood?” asked Willa.
“The dog knows,” said the foliate.
In the first few minutes they traveled the trail, a distinct humming sound, which rose and fell, could be heard coming from everywhere, as if the air itself was trying to recall a song. The atmosphere grew heavy and soft, and Cley felt like he was more floating than walking. There came a strong breeze from up ahead that lifted the bottom of Willa’s skirt and held it, not rippling but like a painting of a dress in the wind.
When they made the first wide turn, they saw the entities Vasthasha had spoken of. Deer and fox and rabbits and birds, using the trail to travel to another day, another year, someplace a hundred miles away in the Beyond. These creatures glowed, encapsulated in a faint silver aura. It was clear to Cley that his party most likely appeared the same to them.
They took another turn in the trail, and the hunter looked up to see a tall human figure approaching. It was Ea. The traveler from the true Wenau turned and smiled as he passed by. The hunter wanted desperately to speak, but he remembered Vasthasha’s warning. “He is going to Anamasobia long ago to begin the story that has brought me here,” Cley thought to himself.
Ea was only the first. As they continued on the path, they passed dozens of others, moving in either direction. At one point, Cley believed he saw the old body scribe of the Silent Ones, the Word, hobbling around a bend. He wanted to catch up to see if it was really him, but there Vasthasha moved to the side of the trail and signaled to the others to follow him.
A moment later, they were back in the woods, walking with the work of gravity. Vasthasha stepped up to Willa and handed Wraith to her. As she took her child, she leaned over and kissed the foliate on the slick green leaves of his forehead.
Pierce, minus his flesh, still stood dressed in tatters in the flowering meadow, resting on the handle of his pickax. One of the points on the head of the tool was dug into the ground. Around him there was the faint outline of a rectangle, indicating that he must at one time have kept a garden in that spot. His skull nodded in the direction of the house, a large, two-room log construction with a porch and a fireplace, much like the Olsens’ home. All that was missing were the windows.
The owner had obviously been very handy, because the furniture, although fashioned from branches and trees and tied with animal gut, was sturdy, even stylish in its design. On the large bed there was a mattress made from hide stuffed with soft fur. The pillows had been made in the same manner. As in their house back in Beshanti territory, there was also a high-backed chair, like a throne, that sat before the fireplace.
Candles made from animal fat stood in wooden holders on the table in the corner of the main room. The planking of the floor had obviously been swept clean the morning of Pierce’s demise with the handmade broom that still rested against the side of the table as if the owner of the house had meant to put it away later. Luckily, Pierce had been a tall man and built the entire place to accommodate his size. He had been poor in companionship but rich in Time, and the patient nature of his work was consistently evident.
In the days that followed, Cley and Wood hunted in the forest in order to put up enough game for Willa to survive in their absence. Vasthasha accompanied them and gathered wild fruits, plants, and roots that both could be eaten and had medicinal value.
Willa worked on Pierce’s house, cleaning it and discovering old supplies left by the dead explorer. She patched holes against the night wind in the mud-and-dried-grass layers that sealed the spaces between the logs. One of her most useful discoveries was a stone ax, which she used to chop large branches to be burned in the fireplace. On the northern side of the house, about fifty yards away, she found the remains of the scaffolding Pierce had constructed to build his chimney. The wood was old and rotted, but the sections were large and still dry enough to be burned for heat.
There was no use for it, but she also found a locket on a fine golden chain beneath one of the pillows of the bed. The metal heart opened on tiny rusted hinges to reveal the yellowed portrait of a pretty young woman, no more than a girl. She put this around her neck along with the necklace of the Carrols that Cley had made for her, and it became Wraith’s favorite toy.
At night, after they ate and the baby was asleep, Willa and Cley and the foliate sat near the fireplace and discussed their plans for the future. The hunter smoked his pipe, passing it around to the assembled company, and Wood moved close at times, in order to imbibe their exhalations.
They decided that Cley and Vasthasha should begin on their journey at once, so that they might be able to return before the cold autumn weather set in. The days now were warm and beautiful, and even the rain, when it came, was gentle. The hunter decided to leave Wood behind to be what help he could—to offer some companionship to Willa and to guard the baby.
When the evening grew late and the fire subsided, Vasthasha left the house to sleep in the forest. Then Willa and Cley, who had not changed their routine from the cold nights in the wilderness, moved into the other room and got into the large bed on either side of Wraith. Once Cley started to snore, Wood, moving as cautiously as a cat, lifted himself onto the mattress and curled up at their feet.
“I am going now,” said Cley, wearing his pack and holding the rifle in one hand.
Through the open doorway, Vasthasha could be seen standing on the porch in the bright morning sunlight.
Willa sat in the chair by the fire, holding the baby, and staring at the blackened logs. “Good luck,” she said, but did not turn her face to him.
The hunter left the house, and he and the foliate headed out toward the northern side of the lake. Wood followed, barking. Cley stopped and pointed back at the house, indicating for the dog to return. “Stay,” he said. Wood sat and stared at him.
“Does he understand?” Cley asked of Vasthasha.
“No,” said the foliate.
“Go,” said Cley, and Wood turned and walked away with his head lowered.
“Come, we must hurry,” said the foliate.
They walked a few more yards, and then the hunter said, “Wait for me.” He put down his pack and gun and ran back toward the house, passing the dog on the way.
As he approached the structure, the door opened, and Willa stepped quickly across the porch. When Cley saw her, he stopped running and walked slowly up to her. He put his arms around her. They stood together, in silence, for a long time. When their embrace ended, and they each turned away, neither uttered a word.
Like diminutive carved figures traversing a huge miniature in a box crafted by Christof Olsen, where the trees are dwarfed with tortured roots and the streams are real water that miraculously flows, Vasthasha and Cley journeyed through forests of oak, of pine, of shemel, of demons, across marshes and wastelands and meadows, down into valleys of flesh-eating plants, through ruins of lost cities, up steep hills and the sides of cliffs.
It was the very apex of summer, when the days were longest and the nights offered a cool respite from the blazing sun. The two wayfarers sat by a fire beneath the stars and smoked the pipe. Vasthasha was in full flower, and there was a large, shiny black fruit growing from a stem at the nape of his neck. Cley no longer needed the leaf beneath his tongue to understand the foliate, and he asked his companion the purpose of the dark plum.
“Tomorrow, we will arrive at our destination,” said the foliate, “and then I will reveal everything to you.”
“Very well,” said Cley.
“You have brought the crystal given to you by the old man of the Word as I have instructed?” asked Vasthasha.
“It is in my pocket, here,” said Cley.
“We w
ill need that,” said the foliate.
“And when I am finished with this task, I am guaranteed passage to Wenau?” asked the hunter.
The foliate said nothing, but looked overhead at the moon.
“Yes?” asked Cley.
“You will finally find Paradise,” said Vasthasha.
The foliate closed his eyes, folded his arms in, his head down, changing his posture from green man to shrub, and slept. Cley tried to think about what he would say to Arla Beaton when he finally was reunited with her, but his thoughts always drifted back to Pierce’s house by the lake. He missed Wood, and although the foliate was good company, a fine friend, the hunter felt as if he had left a piece of himself back by the lake in the meadow.
He put his hand in his pocket to check that the crystal was there. His fingers touched its hard smoothness, but he noticed there were other things in this pocket that he did not remember putting there—two very small objects along with the stone. He gathered them up in his hand and pulled them out. The Carrols, not all of them, just the woman and the little boy, rested in his open palm.
“Willa,” said Cley, knowing this had been her work. He smiled and closed his fingers around the miniatures.
In the afternoon, they came to the foot of a mountain that had loomed on the horizon, appearing to grow bigger each day for the past week of their journey. Vasthasha led Cley through the trees that surrounded the base of the stone giant to the head of an old trail that angled upward along the southern face. The hunter marveled at the work it must have taken to carve the path into solid rock.
“Who was responsible for this?” he asked the foliate when stopping to catch his breath.
“Those from the inland sea. They created it in a single day. The inside of the mountain is hollow, and the peak that we cannot see has been removed so that the sun may shine down inside on the world they have made there. Their machines made light work of the impossible on more than one occasion,” said Vasthasha.
“What were these machines?” asked Cley.
“Not the simple gear-work of men,” said the foliate. “The Water People have an organic technology that can manipulate the very particles that constitute reality.”
“I’m lost,” said Cley.
“Actually,” said Vasthasha, “in being here, you are found.”
“What is it, a hiding place for them?” asked the hunter.
“Not for them,” said the foliate.
Before Cley could question the green man further, Vasthasha moved on ahead, continuing along the steep trail. The hunter shook his head and thought, “He’s starting to sound like Brisden.” As he hoisted his pack, he looked back over his shoulder and saw how far they had already climbed. Spread out below him, to the south, was the wide plain they had crossed in the last three days. He took a few deep breaths and followed his guide.
A half-hour later, and a few hundred feet farther up, they came upon what appeared to be the entrance to a cave. On closer inspection, though, Cley could see that the opening in the rock was too uniform along its edges, too perfectly engineered an archway to have been made naturally. Vasthasha stopped outside the gaping hole.
“We have arrived,” he said. “You may rest, and I will now tell you everything.”
Cley took off his pack and sat down. The foliate sat across from him, and they passed the waterskin, each drinking great draughts.
“This is the entrance to the garden inside the mountain. As I said, it was created by those from the inland ocean …”
“Do they have a name?” asked Cley.
“They do, but it is so long and complicated I could never remember it,” said Vasthasha. “We will call them the O or Water People or those from the inland ocean.”
“Agreed,” he said, smiling.
“Inside the mountain there is a lush landscape that was created to hold the last remaining great serpent of the wilderness. Once these creatures roamed the entirety of the vast width and breadth of the Beyond. You could not travel a mile without encountering one. They were fearsome creatures, pink-scaled, with horns, and they slithered like snakes along the ground …”
“I have seen their remains,” said Cley. “I call them Sirimon after the star constellation.”
“Very good,” said Vasthasha, annoyed at the interruption. “Now, these Sirimon, as you call them, were more than just death dealers, more than just the greatest fear of the peoples of the wilderness. They embodied the ability to transfer, to project the very mind of the Beyond itself. The distance between the points that were the Sirimon collectively created a web or a net through which the consciousness of the Beyond flowed. It was through them that the wilderness could be aware of its own awareness.”
“The wilderness thinks?” asked Cley.
“It did. It directed the course of its own existence. It had a will, and it was good,” said Vasthasha. “It was the war between Pa-ni-ta and the Water People that destroyed the Sirimon and depleted the will of the Beyond, so that now it is contained in only the one creature that has been kept alive inside the mountain. The wilderness is dying.”
“How did the war destroy the species?” asked the hunter.
“Pa-ni-ta circumvented the will of the Beyond and sent the Sirimon against those from the inland ocean. In defense, the Water People destroyed them with a disease in the same way they killed off my brethren. When we were defeated, and Pa-ni-ta was killed in her physical body, the Water People understood too late what they had done. They could smell the wilderness dying. They saved the life of the last Sirimon and trapped it here, in the mountain, for a time when they could decide how to regenerate the species. When they decided to expand their civilization to the land, they had never wanted to inhabit a dying world.”
“But the wilderness seems very alive to me,” said Cley.
“To you, because you are not from it,” said Vasthasha. “You cannot notice all of the small complex ways in which it is perishing just as you will not notice when it is revived.”
“I understand what you are saying, although it sounds like a fairy tale, but what is my part in this?” asked the hunter.
“Pa-ni-ta has sent us to revive the serpent, to impregnate it,” said the foliate.
Cley laughed. “It’s been a long time since I have made love, but, still, I don’t think I can generate the passion to join with a dragon.”
Vasthasha turned his back to Cley. “Pick the fruit that grows at my back. Take it in your hands and do not let it go. This contains the seed that will cause the serpent eventually to spawn offspring.”
The hunter reached out and grasped the dark fruit. When he pulled it away from the foliate there was a distinct snapping noise followed hard by a deafening scream that echoed across the mountainside. The cry was so unexpected, he almost dropped the large plum. When Vasthasha turned back to face him, Cley could see the green man sobbing.
“This is madness,” said the hunter. “I’m sorry.”
“Now,” said Vasthasha, heaving, “you must tempt the serpent.”
Inside the cave, there was a pool, and it reminded Cley of the water that was in the cave where he had discovered Pa-ni-ta’s physical remains. A few yards beyond it there was another opening, covered by a very thin, blue membrane. Through this rippling blue window, he saw a beautiful landscape of trees and flowers and ferns. It was how he had pictured Paradise since the idea first presented itself to him years ago in Anamasobia.
His clothes lay in a pile on the floor, the black hat resting atop them. Cley was completely naked, holding the fruit in one hand and the crystal given to him by the body scribe in the other.
“Explain to me one more time why this is necessary,” said Cley.
“The serpent distrusts anything from the Beyond, because the wilderness has become infected against it. That is why it is sealed in this garden chamber. The fruit has been in your hand long enough now to have taken on your scent. Also, that which has brought you so far, the desire that burns in you to rectify a great wrong, to
achieve an equilibrium of peace with your conscience, recommends you for this task. The wilderness must reacquire that same balance. You will find the sleeping Sirimon and tempt it to open its mouth. Then, throw the fruit into its maw,” said Vasthasha.
“What if I miss?” asked Cley.
The foliate did not answer.
“It might kill me, though,” said the hunter.
Again, there was no comment.
“I see,” said Cley.
“The crystal will give you passage through the blue entrance. Don’t lose it, or you will never get out. Once you have delivered the seed, run as fast as you can. Do not look back. I will be waiting for you,” said Vasthasha.
Cley stepped up to the blue membrane. It was like a window made of water. He passed one hand through it, then brought it back.
“This is the only way that you can complete your own journey,” said the foliate.
The hunter held his breath as if he were about to dive into a wave, and stepped forward through the portal. He felt an intense cold and lost consciousness for a split second. Then he heard birds singing, felt the warmth of the sun, and opened his eyes, knowing he had been born into Paradise.
Vasthasha stood in the cave, watching through the membrane as Cley walked off through the trees. Behind the foliate, from within the pool, two webbed hands appeared at its edge. A red-scaled being with the bubble eyes of a fish and fanlike fins at the sides of its head pulled itself up onto the dry rock of the cave. Water dripped off it, and its rasping, gilled breaths echoed through the cave. Barnacles grew on its arms and stomach, and its wide mouth was rimmed at the top lip by two long feelers that formed a kind of mustache. Hair, like yards of seaweed, flowed down its spiked back and tail, undulating as if still below the surface of the pool.
The creature slithered up next to Vasthasha in time to see Cley disappear around a flowering hedge.
“How did you convince him to come?” asked Shkchl, the scaled being.
