The War for the Lot

by Sterling Lanier

  "Just relax," Whisperfoot said, her delicate voice seeming to chime like a tiny bell in Alec's head. "We are all your friends, remember? Nothing can hurt you while we are all here."

  He rushed out of the shadows and scuttled under the branches of the big apple tree, where he came to a halt by the trunk. Two dim shapes rose from the ground at the base of the tree to greet him.

  "Good," said the remembered mind-voice of Scratch. "I see she got you here, and earlier than we expected." A clearly audible sound of chewing and a mental grunt indicated that Stuffer had, as usual, been storing up food against any contingency.

  "Nobody brought him!" retorted Whisperfoot sharply. "He brought himself, and me, too, for that matter. He's a very brave person and you don't have to sound so pleased with yourself. I'd like to have seen you when you were young. Probably spent all night hiding in a hole in some hollow tree with your stripey tail over your face!"

  The raccoon chuckled. "I see he's made a new friend, anyway, which is all to the good. Not that we're not all his friends," he added hastily. "Still, you can't have too many. Let's get moving. I'll go in front and warn you of any branches or stones. Stuffer, stop eating those weeds and bring up the rear. Look sharp, now!"

  "Wait," said Alec suddenly. "I'm not scared, but I have to know something. How late will it be when I get back? I can't come back when it's daylight. You have to bring me back while it's still night. And where are we going?"

  "If we stand here all night," said Scratch impatiently, "we'll never get back. We thought of all this before. Humans aren't the only creatures with brains, you know. You'll be back in plenty of time, but we have to get moving."

  "All right," said Alec. "I'm ready. Go ahead."

  In single file, which is how almost all animals travel, the little party went out into the open and headed for the woods. The raccoon and the woodchuck, both being short-legged creatures, humped up in the middle as they flowed over the ground, but they still moved briskly along.

  Alec found that he had, without realizing it, put his right hand up on his shoulder and curled it around his passenger in a protective way. "Don't worry about me," she said. "I can move pretty fast when I have to. But thanks anyway." He noticed that the raccoon was not aiming for the break in the wall which he and John had used that morning, but instead was angling further downhill, to a place where the wall bent to the right and headed for the driveway to the house. It was toward this corner that they were going.

  They came to the angle and Scratch promptly scrambled over the loosely piled stones and vanished into the blackness of the trees overhanging the wall. From ahead, his voice came back to them. "There's a path here and nothing to climb but the wall. Come ahead."

  Alec carefully examined the wall, and saw what he felt sure was poison ivy, growing over one large rock. This he avoided and climbed over carefully, using both hands to balance. Behind them, he heard the scratch of claws and a low grunt, to indicate that Stuffer was still following in the rear. Ahead the thick darkness seemed impossible to see through, and he almost jumped when a paw touched his foot.

  "I'm right here, and I'll still go in front," said Scratch. "Walk slowly and keep one hand in front of your eyes, in case a branch swings down that I don't see. There's a narrow path here, but it goes quite straight for a long way. If we come to any obstacles, I'll warn you."

  They were standing at the entrance to a deer trail, used by these larger animals when they came out to the upper meadow at night to feed on the grass and fallen fruit. Like all such trails, it was quite clear but very narrow, permitting only one deer at a time to pass along it. Alec stepped out hesitantly, one arm up, and cautiously began to walk forward. As he gained confidence, he was able to see better and he realized that even here, under the overhead canopy of leaves, there was some dim light, however filtered and dwindled. The eyes of his companions had no such difficult, for of course they were all three animals who went abroad at night and slept through much of the day.

  They went down a long, gentle slope in silence, save for the murmur of the breeze in the trees high above them and the rustle of leaves under Alec's feet. He noticed that even the awkward-looking woodchuck made very little noise, while Scratch might have been walking on air for all the sound his feet caused. Occasionally his voice would send a message to the boy's mind, of a stump near the path, or a low branch; but Alec could now see so well that most of these warnings were unnecessary. Once the raccoon warned of a cat-claw vine across the path and Alec lifted his feet over the thin, spiny bramble, which he could not see in the dark. Other than that, their steady march was uninterrupted.

  The faint frog voices, which had sounded quite noisy, though distant, from the second floor of the house, had died away and become almost inaudible when they first entered the forest. Now they gradually began to grow louder again. The earth underfoot was softer, and Alec had the feeling that they were coming to water. The air felt moister and the ground had leveled off, as if the group had left the slope of the hill and was now advancing on the flat.

  As the frog chorus grew, Alec became conscious of yet other sounds. Small, muted cracklings and soft rustlings sounded from either side of the path, and he was quick to remember his trip to the woods in the morning. It was the sound of many other creatures accompanying the little group, and despite their care, their numbers were betrayed by the noise of their passage. Once again, the boy's fears returned. What was he getting into?

  "They are all going to the same place we are," came the voice of Whisperfoot. "Don't be nervous now. Nobody wants to hurt you. We all want you to help us, and you can't do that if you let yourself be frightened." She had sensed his rising panic and her soothing message helped to calm him down.

  Ahead of him now, his night eyes began to see more light. The full moon had risen yet higher, adding its pale strength to the dim starshine.

  An open glade became gradually visible, ringed by tall trees, mostly oak and pine, and the little path was leading directly into it. The frog chorus was quite loud now, and Alec decided that the clearing must be located quite close to the pond. Tall, damp grass brushed his thighs as he followed the dimly-seen form of the raccoon out into the open. Once inside the clearing, he stopped and looked around. He found that he was able to see quite well and the sight held him enthralled.

  The entire area was filled with secret movement. Small bodies were packed in wherever they could fit, larger creatures looming over them, and all were shifting restlessly about, as if they could not stay still but had to keep in continual motion. In the pale moonlight, Alec saw two red foxes quite near him, side by side and staring calmly at him as they stood, shifting their dainty feet occasionally in little dancing steps. A whole swarm of cottontail rabbits, adults and young, the latter only the size of large mice, were crouched around the foxes, paying no attention to them at all. Almost at the boy's feet, a gray opossum, its long naked tail catching the faint light, ambled slowly through a horde of meadow mice like a battle tank moving through a restless sea of infantry soldiers. Further off, Alec saw the black-and-white gleam of two skunks, and wondered if one of them was the animal he had seen, whose mind voice he had heard the day before.

  Turning his head, he now saw to his left some large pale patches of movement, so large, indeed, that he almost started in amazement. His eyes were used to taking in smaller creatures and the realization that he was seeing a whole herd of deer not thirty feet away left him shaken. The big animals, at least a dozen at a guess, were keeping to the edge of the wood in an effort to avoid crushing the smaller beasts which filled the glade almost to overflowing. But they, too, were drifting back and forth, a prey to nervous energy and excitement.

  And aside from the rustle of countless feet there was not a sound! Not the youngest mouse or smallest chipmunk baby made a squeak. Only the scuffing of the grass and the soft susurration of animal bodies in movement broke the quiet of the night. Even the frogs had suddenly stopped their croaking from the nearby pond. The hum of tiny inse
ct voices and the drone of a mosquito or two were the only exceptions. The whole night seemed to wait.

  But Alec felt something else now, and didn't like it at all. There was a new sense of pressure and heaviness in his head, a feeling that a swarm of bees had got inside his mind and were flying around banging into things, trying to get out and not succeeding. With every second this feeling became stronger and stronger, until he could actually feel a sharp pain in his temples. Forgetting the marvels all around him, he gasped, his hands going up to his throbbing head. It felt now as if his head were in a great press, which was steadily and remorselessly crushing it. Then, just when he was about to scream and throw himself on the ground, so terrible had the hurt become it suddenly ceased.

  He stood, swaying slightly, his head ringing like a bell from the cessation of pressure, but the pain was gone. And all about him he was conscious of utter and total silence. A thousand eyes were fixed upon him, but nothing moved. From the largest whitetail buck to the newest mouse child in the grass, not a creature stirred. "Not even a mouse," he thought absurdly.

  The voice of Scratch came into his mind. "Sorry, Watcher. They have all been waiting for you and they got so excited that they all began to think at you and try and catch your thoughts in return. Pretty bad, wasn't it? They didn't mean to hurt you and when I saw what was happening, I made them stop. They all want to say they're sorry and it won't happen again. How do you feel now?"

  "I'm all right, I guess," said Alec, shaking his head to make it stop ringing. "Can they hear me when I talk to you? Boy, that really hurt, what they did."

  "Yes," said the raccoon. "They can hear, but they won't try to talk again, unless it's one at a time. Don't worry. This is just as new to them as it is to you. No one had talked to a live human, except by accident, for so long that the whole forest didn't believe it could be done, or even ever had been done, for that matter. Now they know better. Can't you feel the difference?"

  He could. There was no longer any hurt or pressure, but he caught a strange feeling in his mind, as if a great soft blanket had arisen from the earth and flowed gently over him, warming and soothing at the same time. It was a very comforting feeling and he knew that he was not in any danger from the multitude of creatures gathered around him. But he was not to be given long to think about it.

  "Come with me," said Scratch. The raccoon began to move forward toward the center of the circle and the animals that stood between him and his goal parted, making a narrow path. Hesitantly, the boy followed him, watched by countless eyes as he came further out into the open.

  "Put me down now," came a thought message from Whisperfoot. "You have to go out in the middle by yourself. I'll see you again afterward." Alec stooped and laid one arm gently on the warm earth.

  The shadowy shape of the deermouse darted down his arm and vanished into a sea of small creatures to the right of the open path. Then the boy stood up again and followed Scratch, his feet steady but his heart hammering.

  The big raccoon stopped finally near the middle of the clearing and waited for Alec to catch up. As he drew close, Alec saw that a circular space in the exact center of the Council Glade had been left clear. A ring of animal faces surrounded it on all sides, but none encroached upon it.

  There, the grass was clipped like a lawn, the blades only an inch high. In the middle of the smooth grass was a circle of large, smooth, flat stones, hardly protruding from the ground. They in turn guarded a space about five feet square, where the lawn was so closely trimmed that no individual grasses could be seen at all. As Alec approached, Scratch moved to one side and his voice came into the boy's brain.

  "Go out to the middle, between those flat rocks, lie down, and shut your eyes. Nothing will hurt you, but it has to be done this way. Don't be afraid."

  "I'm not afraid," said Alec. And he wasn't. He felt a compulsion to go forward which had nothing to do with the animals any longer.

  He had been called, his presence had been demanded, by something as far removed from the creatures around him as an ant is removed from a star. Something ancient and wise, a force as undefined and mighty as a hurricane and yet as placid and inflexible as a giant tree, was beckoning.

  The soul of the ancient wood had waked after long years of dreaming, and had summoned a human for purposes of its own. Without the slightest bit of fear, Alec walked through the ring of flat rocks, lay down and folded his arms across his chest. He closed his eyes.

  A gray mist seemed to cover his thoughts. He seemed to walk in a cloud of haze and smoke which shifted and drifted constantly. All feelings of heat and cold were gone, as were the senses of smell and hearing.

  Then the mind-mist began to thin and there appeared a Face.

  He could never quite be sure, in later times, whether it was human or animal. It seemed to change somehow between the two. Now it was the bronzed head of a huge Indian warrior, long braided plaits of black hair hanging over the ears, painted bars of color on the broad cheek bones, black jetty eyes staring into his. Then suddenly, the human aspect would leave it completely and the appearance of a giant tawny cat would be poised in the fog, the yellow eyes with their dark slitted pupils drilling into his mind as if in search of his most secret thoughts.

  Then back would come the head of the great Indian, only to be replaced by the mask of a huge wolf, with long gray muzzle, pointed ears cocked, and white grinning fangs. And always the eyes never left his and the Face itself hung motionless, poised in nothingness. It might have been gigantic and a hundred miles away in space or normal in size and only a few yards distant.

  Alec felt himself caught up in the tide of great forces, forces long sleeping and quiet. A test was being given him, far more thorough than any he had experienced. His memories, his most hidden thoughts, were being probed and turned over, held up to an outside scrutiny and then gently replaced. A vast intelligence, beyond human comprehension, was studying the mental pictures it had extracted from his brain. And all the while, as Alec felt the power of the mind, he also felt its age.

  For it was old beyond the meaning of the word, born in an age so remote as to make all human history seem only a second in time.

  At last, after what seemed hours to Alec, a loosening came of the invisible bond which held him fixed in the place of swirling clouds. A voice, tremendous and vibrant, seemed to fill the whole universe like the strokes of some great bell.

  "I have called you, young human, to come before my Gate. Are you afraid?"

  Alec answered, but not as he had talked to the animals. Rather he spoke in his human voice, or it seemed to him that he did.

  "I'm not afraid. Why am I here? Who are you?"

  "I have many names," said the voice, which rolled and echoed in his mind like thunder over distant mountain peaks. "Once I was called Manibozo by a red people who have since dwindled and passed away. I have many Gates, of which this is the least, and moreover one long unused. I live both in your world and outside, coming and going as I choose.

  "Many Gates and many names have I, and all the life of your human world is little to me, who was here first, as I shall be last. For I have no longer anything to do with your race or kind. From out of the past, beyond the memory of the first of your people who ever lived, I came, who had been here long ages before the red race came from over the western seas to hunt the hairy elephant and the giant sloth.

  "And when all are gone I shall still be here, who belong to the land and the beasts, the rocks and the trees, the waters and the wind. For a time the life of the world may forget me; but always I return and always the land is here and always are the seasons renewed.

  "I have been worshipped as a god. But I am no god, but only one of the first things to come alive and breathe and move in all this wide earth. The animals have named you 'Watcher'. Well, I am one of the Watchers of Eternity, and all the forests and lakes and plains and mountains, and all that live therein are my concern. In other lands beyond the great oceans are others of my kind, and in the seas are more. But here
I am the First, who have guarded the life of this land since before the mountains were young and newborn, and a helpless, gasping thing struggled across the mud to gain a distant pool, knowing not that its clumsy fins were the first legs.

  "At this late day my people, the little forest creatures around you, have remembered my forgotten Gate in this glade where once the red-skinned folk used to pray for my aid. And I have listened and harkened and I have come. I have told them that you are one who may help them. For against men and their works I can do nothing." The voice paused for a moment, and a strange note of sadness crept into it.

  "Men have their own Judge and their own perils and it is given to other hands than mine to balance their evil and their good. Men answer to Another and on their day of reckoning I will not be there, unless as a witness.

  "A peril threatens my forest people here and also my long-forgotten Gate. And the menace is one which comes from the same source as do I, and to meet it falls within the authority I was given in ages past."

  A note of humor, vast and ironic, came into the voice. "But I must call upon a human to aid the small folk of tree and earth. I offer no reward, even had I the power to grant any. But there may be one, anyway, though granted not by me. I cannot compel you. I have searched your mind and found it clear and good.

  "Now comes the choice. Will you help save the forest? Say no, and all of this will be like a dream, unremembered and lost, and you will be restored to the life of your people, recalling nothing.

  "Say yes, and there will be fear and hardship, peril and strife. Reward there may be none. Consider well." There was silence and the Face stared at Alec out of the clouds and mist, still immobile, only the eyes alive and glowing.

  As Alec considered, there came to his mind the picture of two animals, Scratch the raccoon and Stuffer the woodchuck, staring hopefully after him as he ran up the woodland path towards the house on that morning when they had first met. They really did need him, for something they could not do themselves. And if he did not help them, who would? His mind was made up at that moment.