by Maurice Gee
The afternoon was half gone when a whisper came. It said: Dweller. It said: Child.
Yes, I’m a Dweller, Tealeaf whispered. We’ve spoken before.
You are Xantee. Who is the child?
Xantee too. She is human.
And the other child?
Lo.
And the one who doesn’t hear?
He’s Duro. He can speak with us but not with you.
Two others came, hand in hand.
Their fear of the gool has locked them together. So they seek the gool to kill their fear. I did not know they would hear you.
There are few, the whisper said. Now let the children Xantee and Lo say what they want.
I’m not a child, Xantee said softly.
How many summers have you seen?
Fifteen.
A child then. And Lo is younger. The one who doesn’t hear, how many summers?
Sixteen.
Xantee looked at Duro and saw him standing back from them, alert, not hearing what was said but ready for anything he must do.
He can’t speak with you, but he stood on a hill last summer and heard the great voice say his name, she said.
Then he is one we’ll help, whispered the Peep. Now tell us, Xantee, where you are going and what you will do.
First, who are you? Can we see you?
Every noise and movement fled away. The jungle held itself still. Xantee grew afraid. She felt Tealeaf’s anger, and knew her questions broke some law. She sent her mind out, questing, but found emptiness all around. The Peeps were gone.
Stupid girl, Tealeaf said.
I didn’t know.
The people won’t be named. They won’t be seen. It’s against their nature.
But I saw a kind of flittering in the trees, like bits of light.
That’s all you’ll see. Now wait. They’ll come back if they can.
And if they can’t? Lo said.
Then you’ll go on alone.
They helped Sal and Mond.
Sal and Mond knew not to ask questions.
Slowly the jungle sounds returned – moans and squeaks and slitherings and whispers – but no Peeps came. Xantee sat on her pack and brooded. Humans, Dwellers and Peeps were united against the gools. There was no time for stupidity, hers or the Peeps. Yet there were ancient laws her curiosity had infringed against, and it had caused pain. She had felt the stab of it as the Peeps fled.
I’m sorry, she whispered.
No answer. It was not until late in the day, when the gloom in the jungle clearing had deepened almost to night, that she felt a feather-light stroking on her mind.
Xantee?
I’m here.
Say what you want now, but ask nothing.
We want . . . She collected her thoughts and spoke carefully: We want to find the gool. My father fought with it and it wrapped a piece of itself round his neck. His name is Hari. Unless we find the place where it’s born, and find a way to kill it, he’ll die. And . . .
Yes, speak.
The gool is growing. Something hidden somewhere keeps it alive. We don’t understand what. Or where it lives. Or how to fight it. But there are stories.
She told them the tale of the red star and the white.
So we’re going to the city to find the meaning of the stars.
We know nothing of the city.
There’s a man who does. He lived in the burrows. His name is Tarl, the Dog King. Hari is his son.
We know of Tarl.
So, what we want is for you to show us the way to him, that’s all. And I’m sorry we call you Peeps. And I’m sorry that I hurt you.
Silence came again, but this time nothing fled. Xantee felt that the people were holding her apology up and turning it round to see what it was made of.
I mean it, she said. And I think we’re on the same side.
Yes, we are. We have a pact with Dwellers. Now we make one with you. But reaching the Dog King isn’t easy. He’s far away. There are mountains to cross.
We want to go as fast as we can.
Then go. When first light comes, take the canoe the joined ones left. Follow the river two days to the place where it falls from the mountain. You’ll find people waiting there to help you.
Thank you, Xantee said.
No answer came. The people with no name were gone.
Who are they? Xantee whispered.
No one knows, Tealeaf said. No one sees them. But Dwellers believe they’re only half our size. They’ve got arms and legs, like us, and eyes and ears, and they eat and drink and sleep and wake, like us. They’ve been in the jungle forever and will be here when the world dies – that’s what Dwellers say. What the people say, no one knows.
So let’s not ask any questions, Duro said. Let’s just go. This jungle’s getting too dark for me.
They heard the rattle of Karl’s oars on the river and his voice calling from the mud bank. Lo answered silently. Human sounds had no place among the animal cries increasing as the darkness increased. They made their way quickly to the river. Duro and Lo pulled the canoe to a drier part of the mud bank, making it safe. Then Tealeaf said goodbye, entering their minds one by one. She knew – they all knew – they might never meet again. She climbed into the dinghy and Karl rowed away. Soon the creak and splash of oars were all that was left. Further out, beyond the river mouth, faint yellow lights gleamed on the schooner. They seemed to be on another world. Near at hand a different sort of splashing sounded.
Chopper, Duro said.
But he can’t get near us, Lo said. Hear the people.
Can they make sounds underwater? Duro said. Let’s get back in the trees.
They returned to the clearing where they had spoken with the people and built a small fire and ate a meal. Then they laid out their sleeping mats and wrapped themselves in blankets – one thin blanket each in the hot night. There was no need to keep watch. Animals barked and hooted in the jungle but the singing of the people, almost too thin to be heard, kept them away. Xantee felt how ill-made she was – curious, pushy in the daytime, and with ears so dull in the night she could barely hear harmonies that tree tigers and fangcats heard so painfully. The sound kept biting insects away as well.
Thank you, she murmured. And keep bad things out of my dreams, if you can. And Lo’s dreams. And Duro’s dreams.
They were asleep already. She touched each one lightly on the face, and slept too.
FIVE
The waterfall curved like a skein of wool and shattered into spray on coal-black rocks at the river’s end. It roared like volcanic steam, yet a rainbow hung across it as peaceful as a painting on a wall.
Paddling had been hard against the river’s flow. Their sleep had been uneasy, without the people to protect them. One of them always had to stay awake. They could not set up harmonies to keep animals off, but several times joined their minds to push them away. The waterfall, impassable though it was, marked a new beginning. There would be Peeps to help and guide them on their way.
They camped at the edge of the spray, close enough to enjoy its cooling touch. No fire was possible, which increased the danger from animals – but presently a voice whispered: Xantee, Lo.
Yes. We thank you for your help, Xantee said.
You’re safe here tonight. Follow us in the morning.
That was all, but after a moment the singing began, weaving through the clamour of the waterfall. Xantee tried to help Duro hear, and soon he was able to pick out a pleasant buzzing. Xantee, listening with him, heard a lilting and retreating and advance, like her mother Pearl playing her flute, and she wondered if one day humans would learn the people’s music and travel through the jungle without help.
They slept well that night, but woke with their blankets and clothes sodden from drifting spray.
This is a place where there could be gools, Lo said.
The people would have told us, Xantee said.
No gools, whispered a voice.
Can you tell us if Sal and Mond –
the two who are joined – came this way? Xantee asked.
No one has come.
They’re not looking for the Dog King, Lo said. They’re heading for the city. They’ll be further west.
They ate wet food and drank cold water. Duro pulled the canoe under the trees as a gift for the people. The sun was playing rainbow colours across the waterfall when they started out. Now and then a whisper came, leading them eastwards through giant trees. They began to climb. By midday the trees were smaller and the understorey thinner, but at nightfall the jungle still enclosed them. Again they slept well, and Xantee, waking early, enjoyed the gleam of stars through the canopy. She had missed them in the deeper jungle.
At dawn the people roused them with a voice that seemed more distant: Now you must go on alone. Climb into the open slopes and then into the mountains. The pass lies between the fist and the serpent’s head. Beyond there is jungle again, and higher mountains. The people will help you.
How far to the Dog King? Lo said.
We don’t know. The Dog King is never in one place. Beyond the furthest mountains, that’s all we know.
Are there any gools?
We know of one, far away. The people will take you safely past.
The knowledge that one of the beasts lay ahead, even though distant, struck cold into them. But when they had climbed for another hour and broken out of trees on to slopes of coarse grass and sliding stone and seen the jungle stretching behind them and the white line of the Inland Sea, and seen how big the world was and how it stretched out and seemed to yawn, Xantee felt her fear slip away. The gool could take only little bites.
Little bites are enough when it’s got forever, Duro said.
I want to talk to Blossom and Hubert, Lo said. They mightn’t be able to reach us over the mountains. I want to find how Hari is.
And Pearl, Xantee said. Her mother’s fear and sadness had been with her, like a silent companion, ever since they had left the farm. The thought of her sitting by Hari, watching him waste away, caught her like a bone broken in her chest.
Let’s climb first, Duro said. We’ll try when we get to the pass.
At noon they reached the formations the people had told them of, one shaped like a hooded serpent ready to strike, the other like a clenched fist defying it. They sat in the cool sunlight and ate strips of dried meat and jungle fruit.
Now Xantee, Lo said, the twins.
They stood and faced the jungle and the Inland Sea and joined hands, joined minds, like two strands of wool weaving in and out, and Xantee understood, in her closeness to her brother, how Sal and Mond must feel – their need, after the terror they had known, and the living dead thing that had dragged them to its mouth, to stay with each other forever.
Yes, Lo whispered, agreeing.
They sent out their call: Blossom, Hubert – and in a moment their intertwined voices replied: Xantee, Lo, where are you?
In the mountains. We mightn’t be able to speak from the other side.
But we’ll reach you, and we can feel you, and we’ll know . . .
They did not go on. They would know if Xantee and Lo died. They would feel it like a missed beat of the heart or a breath that could no longer be drawn.
How’s Hari? Lo and Xantee said.
He doesn’t change. We feed him honey and milk. Pearl washes him. She sings him songs and plays her flute to him. We can find a little bit of him not sleeping. He hears but he doesn’t understand.
Is Pearl all right?
She’s sleeping. She’s been up all night, watching him, and watching the thing on his neck. Xantee, Lo, she’ll die if he dies. Find the gool and kill it.
We will, they breathed.
And come back to us, because . . . you must.
They heard the childishness of the command, and answered with a confidence they did not feel. Then Duro sent a message for the twins to tell his mother: Hi Ma. Go easy on those pancakes. Save some for me. And here’s a kiss.
Their talking was done. Painfully – it was always painful – they unclasped their minds, envying the twins for whom everything was easy. Then they shouldered their packs and went between the drawn-back serpent head and the thrusting fist. When they looked again the wide view to the north was gone, closed off by granite walls slick with water. It was a place, Xantee felt, where a gool might find its way into the world after its journey along birthing veins deep underground.
The people would have told us, Lo said.
The people don’t come here, they wouldn’t know.
Let’s get through it quick, Duro said.
But the way through was long and hard. They waded waist-deep through pools made by water oozing from crevices plugged with stringy moss, and emerged shivering, with no feeling in their legs. It was more ravine than pass. In places the walls leaned inwards, blotting out the sky. It was as though the body of the serpent and the arm attached to the fist rippled their stone muscles, keeping their contest alive. Yet there was no life – nothing in the pools, nothing in the hollows opening in the walls. The threat came from the cold and they forced themselves to jump and climb, and run where they could, to reach the end of the pass before nightfall.
The sun was hidden west of the mountains when they came out but sent shafts of light across the jungle confronting them. It lay in a wide basin rising at the far rim to another mountain range where snowfields shone pink and ice peaks gleamed. Rivers bent like knives, with flowering trees at their edges, coloured like rust.
Do we have to cross there? Lo whispered.
The Dog King’s on the other side of those mountains, Xantee said.
Our grandfather, he said. I wish we could meet him halfway.
You can give up wishing. Let’s get in those trees and make a fire, Duro said.
They slid and scrambled on scree slopes but soon found it too dark to keep on. There was nothing for it but to build a platform by scraping stones away and piling them up. They made a fire of branches hacked from mountain scrub, ate warmed strips of meat and drank water. Then they huddled close and slept as well as they could in the chill air.
Sun on their faces woke them. They stood and stretched and looked at the jungle they had to cross.
There’s a gool in there somewhere, Lo said.
They strained their eyes, trying to see the cone of coldness the beast would make, but mist from swamps and slow-flowing waterways, and the sun’s rays widening and diffusing, and the largeness, the lazy stretching out of the jungle, made the task impossible.
It’ll take us weeks to get across, Duro said.
So, you want to turn back? Xantee said, letting her fear turn to anger at him.
I never said that. You need your breakfast. And I need a piss. Close your eyes.
The scree ran out in low hills, nodding together like heads. By midday the burning heat had Xantee longing for the cold of the pass. It was close to nightfall before they broke into flat land and saw the jungle in front of them – trees as solid-seeming as cliffs, with dark caves opening at the base.
Do we have to go in there? Lo said.
In the morning, Duro said.
No, I want to call the people tonight, Xantee said. She could not forget Hari wasting away.
They approached the trees, feeling their weight, feeling the greediness with which they fed on the earth. Behind a dark wall of growth they sensed the jungle teeming with life, all of it hungry, all of it intent on survival. Xantee wondered how many centuries – how many hundreds of centuries – the people with no name had spent reaching their state of perfect harmony with their surroundings. They had, in a way, conquered the jungle and, in another way, were part of it. She could imagine their dismay at the arrival of the gool, whose intention was, it seemed, to devour everything.
She and Lo spoke formally, in a soft clear voice: We are humans seeking your help, people with no name. We’re searching for the place where the gool was born, to destroy it, and we ask your help to cross the jungle to the home of the Dog King, who knows th
e way.
Silence. No sound, no whisper from the trees. Only the humming, almost unheard, of a million insects, and the woofing and grumble of animals ending their day, and the crack, far off, of a rotten branch splitting from a trunk.
They’re not here, Duro said.
They’re here. We can feel them.
They like to play games, these Peeps. Why can’t they just say yes or no?
Quiet, Duro, Xantee whispered. She had heard her name – and Lo his.
Xantee. Lo. And Duro, who can speak with us if he wishes. The way is open.
Duro, join with us, Xantee said.
He did so, clumsily, then with greater ease.
Xantee. Lo. Duro. We haven’t spoken with humans before. But our brothers over the mountains told us you would come, and that you travel to fight the gool, which eats the world. Say what you would have us do.
Take us safely through the jungle. Show us where the Dog King lives.
The first we will do. But the Dog King is over the mountains, sometimes in the forest, sometimes on the plains, near the city that lies in pieces by the sea. We’ll take you as far as we can.
Is there a gool on the way?
In the far mountains. We’ll show you how to pass. Sleep now. In the morning follow.
How long to reach the mountains?
The sun will return as many times as you have fingers on your hands, then two more times.
Twelve days, Lo whispered.
Why can’t they just say so? Duro said.
Xantee thought of Hari lying on his bed, growing thinner and weaker all the time.
Can we travel in the night? she asked.
You can travel and sleep when you need, the people said.
Then take us into the jungle now.
Xantee, Lo protested.
For Hari, she said.
We’ll need torches, Duro said.
We can make light for you to see, the people said.
Then let’s go now, Xantee said.
The sun made its sudden descent beyond the western mountains. The jungle, which had been blue and purple and grey, and rusty red with flowers, and yellow with slanting rays, turned black, as if to repel the travellers. As they approached a tiny seed of light appeared, floating ahead of them. It led the way, growing as it went into a pod, then into a globe enclosing them with light like a lantern of seed oil – except that it had no source and threw no shadows.
