Land Under England

by Joseph O'Neill

  I found myself running back through the darkness as fast as I could, crying out to him as I ran. There was no answering cry. Again everything had gone silent.

  I stopped, staring forward.

  Before me, in the dim light, a ring of lassoers was visible, standing in a sort of half-moon, watching me. What had happened?

  I drew my bow, put an arrow to the string, and went towards them.

  Then I saw what they were staring at.

  In front of them, two of their fellows were crouched over something. I ran forward, shouting, until I was within bowshot.

  They never moved. I stood and sent a shaft at one of the crouching brutes. He fell, got up again, and rushed aside. The other had lifted his head, and, staring at me, began to swing a lasso.

  I shot again. He fell.

  I rushed forward. The second lassoer rose again, then fell, flailing with his legs. The others gave back.

  I ran on. On the ground, the body of a man was lying motionless. The second brute, that had been on top of him, was rolling and screaming beside him. The line of the others was falling back a little. I ran to the man. His throat was cut. A glance showed me that he was dead, but it was my father that was lying there dead—not that other.

  I threw myself down beside him. His arms were pinned to his body with lassos. Under his neck a pool of blood was growing.

  Yes; it was my father’s face, not the face of that other. I was looking into the face I knew so well of old. The eyes were staring back at me with an expression of utter astonishment. It was hard to believe that he was dead.

  The line of lassoers had halted about fifty yards away, and now stood facing me in the dim twilight, as if they were trying to understand my actions. The movements of the brute that I had shot were dying away in spasmodic convulsions.

  I looked round me. I could see nothing at the sides or the rear.

  I had no doubt what would happen. The lassoers were only waiting to see what I would do. If I went forward, they would lasso me at once. If I tried to retreat, they would follow me and lasso me also. Now they were merely waiting for me to show what I was going to do. They had been made cautious by the fate of their comrades, but they would not let me off. In a short time I should be dead.

  I looked at the dead man. He had brought me and himself to this, and now he was beyond all trouble. Those staring eyes had such an expression of astonishment, and they were my father’s eyes. If I had come up in time, or stayed with him, I might have saved him.

  Had he wakened before he died? If he had, it was dreadful that the last thing he had seen was those hideous masks. I might have spoken to him, if I had followed him instead of running away … he might have spoken to me. I had failed him in the end.

  Perhaps even now I could save the body from being desecrated by these brutes. I had still a little time left.

  I looked at the line of lassoers. No. I had no time left. They were beginning to close in on me slowly.

  There was a fallen tree just in front—a sea-weedy thing that sprawled across the way between them and me. I went over and crouched behind it. Then I put an arrow to the string. The line had stopped its movements again. They were waiting to see what I was going to do behind the tree.

  I was striving to think what I could do with the body before they got me. Then I remembered my match-candles. I felt in the bag of serpent-skin. There were some still left, two at least, if I could get time to use them. The creatures were still standing. Now one of them was moving forward.

  I took careful aim, and loosed the arrow. It struck him in the middle of the breast. He fell over, screaming. The others fell back hurriedly. I had two more arrows, and the one that was stuck in the second brute I had shot. With these I could keep them off, perhaps, for long enough to do what I wanted to do.

  I took one of the match-candles out of the bag. I needed a little heap of sticks and dead leaves. They were easy to get, for they were on the tree—sticks and leaves, withered but oily. The next thing was to find a stone to strike the candle on. I couldn’t see one near me, the light was so dim. The line of lassoers had halted again. They were now about eighty yards away, bunching together, preparing for a rush.

  At my back a little air began to move, as if there were an air-current from above. Then I saw the stone behind me, protruding from the ground. A rock of some sort, nearly covered. I got up, and moved back to it.

  The brutes were coming on again. They thought I was retreating.

  I hurried to the rock, and struck the phosphorus head. It hung fire, as if it had got damp. They were coming on. I struck again. It caught. I ran back, shading the flame with my hand. They stopped. I raced to the tree, and put the flame to the little heap of sticks and leaves I had made under it. It caught, and spurted up into a tongue of fire. Then I put an arrow to my bow and waited.

  They were now about thirty yards away, and pushing out their line into a semicircle, as if to surround me. Suddenly the flame leaped up. The oily branches of the tree were beginning to burn like candles. The flame was running along the tree.

  As the tongues of fire darted up, the brutes stopped again. A little wind from behind me was fanning the flames.

  I ran back to the body, and began to drag it towards the tree.

  The lassoers stood motionless, watching the flame … it was mounting now, running along the tree, crackling and licking upwards.

  I laid the body across the tree, right in its path. As the flames lit the eyes, they seemed to stare back at me with that intense surprise. I had not time to close them.

  I drew back. The fire was now beginning to run along the ground beyond the tree, fanned by the wind. The line of lassoers began to give way. They stood out clearly in the light of the flames, that were tossing upward and forward now.

  Their line was halting, bunching. They were moving towards the flames, slowly….

  Ah! A bunch of them was running towards the fire, with a wave of lassos whirling over them. I stared at the advancing line, an arrow ready on the string.

  Were they going to rush through the flames to get me? If they did, I should have no chance against them.

  The first line of them was in the flames—springing up, falling, dashing back against the others, screaming. At that moment my father’s body began to flame upon its pyre. As the flames tossed upward from it, the screams of the lassoers seemed to make a fitting keening for the body that had bred such dreams.

  I thought of that first funeral that my mother and I had given him on the Roman Wall, in the quiet of an English dusk, the pressure of her arm on mine, as the light faded, and the day that had ended one part of our lives died into darkness. Was she still waiting for him, and me, up there above the darkness?

  I could scarcely believe that there could be such a person, waiting above in the starlight or the sunlight, while here below my father’s body burned on its pyre, to the accompaniment of the screams of a horde of creatures more fantastic than those that made the nightmares of my childhood so terrible.

  I felt dizzy and sick. My head seemed to be whirling round. The heat was choking me.

  I drew farther back from the fire. The current of air was blowing it away from me, but it was now rising into a wave of flame that was rushing to right and left. The heat was getting unbearable. My head was burning.

  I turned back. If at any moment the air-current shifted and set in my direction, I should be caught. I began to run—stumbling, panting.

  I had escaped. I knew that I ought to be glad of that but I could feel nothing.

  The cries of the lassoers were drowned in the roaring of the flames.

  The trees were fewer now. The air was fresher. I was gasping, and had to stop running.

  I looked back. Down below me the valley seemed to be all catching fire. Beyond, bare mountain peaks began to show in the light. I looked ahead. The trees were very sparse in that direction. I could see that the mountain I was on ran steeply upwards. I started again through the trees. Then they ceased, and I was o
n bare slopes, with thin trailing vegetation.

  My head was still throbbing, but, here above, the air was clearer. Behind me, the country through which I had been travelling showed as a broad wooded valley between the mountain I was climbing and another that rose over against it. I could not see the summit of either. Somewhere, up above there, was the earth roof through which I must penetrate, but there was no way of knowing if any of the peaks joined it, or, even if they did, whether there was an opening through it.

  The shock of the fight between my father and the lassoers had cleared my mind for a while, but the confusion was falling on it again.

  All those scores of barren peaks that were being revealed in the light of the lake of fire below me, how could I know if any of them led up to the earth surface? … Scores and hundreds of peaks, crowding in on me, like vast sums, great rows of figures in gigantic sums of addition or subtraction.

  I tried to pull myself together. My mind was wandering. I had escaped from him and from the lassoers. I mustn’t let myself die in the darkness. I must keep my mind pulled tightly together.

  It was clearer now. I looked round me at the world that the flames were revealing—tumbled barren peaks, deep valleys in between them, on the lower ranges. Here and there a waterfall gleaming in the light of the flames. The sea of flame was rushing downwards and spreading to left and right, so that at every moment new peaks and valleys and waterfalls stood revealed.

  I was clear in my mind now … I must keep on thinking clearly. There was probably no exit in all that wilderness, and, even if there were, my chances of finding it were not good. But if I kept my mind clear, I might have some chance.

  I went on… .

  Even if the fire were to remain, to light all these barren slopes for me, I should have little chance … but it wouldn’t remain. Presently the flames would die away. I should be once more in darkness. The thought steadied me, like the touch of a cold finger.

  I had been in the darkness before, but now I was going upwards. If I could keep my senses together, I might have a chance. I should probably die, but better die going upwards.

  A few minutes ago I had been sure that I should be dead or dying by now, but that danger was past. All the dangers that I had been so much afraid of—the Master of Knowledge, my father, the creatures that had killed him—all these dangers were gone, put behind me. There were no more fearsome things, nothing but the emptiness and the darkness—not even the sea-weedy trees, nor any fear under them.

  With the fears, all the hopes were gone too. Emptiness was without, and emptiness inside me … and it was getting cold.

  The emptiness inside me and the emptiness outside—they were cold. A few minutes ago I had been hot—roasting. Now I was shivering. Too hot still at the top of my head, where the beating pulse was going on—and on… .

  I must get upward. Now that I had passed the trees, everything was so empty and clear. The mountain peaks looked hard—clear and hard. They were not blurred, like all the things I had been seeing. Things were sharp and clear now once again.

  I was quite clear too. I felt no fear, no emotion of any sort. I had exhausted all that. Everything was very clear again, the mountain peaks and my own life … all that I had done and left undone.

  I was not troubled about it. It had been so. That was all. I saw it very clearly, in a great calm.

  Perhaps I was mad, like the man that was burning below me. He would be burnt up by now, the eyes and the hatred, or was it astonishment?

  There was no more fear. Everything was clear, all barriers down … all states the same in my mind… .

  I might have lived a different life, or I might have given myself up to them below—or stayed with the Sacketts, living with machinery….

  Suddenly I began to laugh.

  I stopped, then went on again. The face of John Sackett was floating in front of me. But why should I laugh at it? He had always kept rubbing his hands one over the other, when he was trying to get me to marry and settle down beside him and live for the motor-business.

  I remembered the first day I had heard John Sackett speak disparagingly of my father. It was in the days before the war, and I had come into the room, unseen, where he and my mother were talking. I had trembled with rage at the outrage, and had gone out to my father, where he was mending a fishing-rod, seated on an upturned box. I had put my arm round his neck—the neck that had been cut across, below, in the burning wood—and he had looked over his shoulder and laughed at me.

  I could still feel the roughness of his cheek where I had touched it, and the softness of his neck. His neck had always been soft and full, not like my mother’s neck, that had been once. All that meant little to me now. I just remembered it. Perhaps it was he that had followed me up from the Wall, perhaps not. It didn’t matter at all … not much anyway. What mattered was to keep my mind clear—keep off this dizziness.

  Below, the fire was distant now. Its noises had died away. Silence had come back, like the silence of those men below, who were so fixed and isolated, waiting for death in an eternal calm, without thought or waste, safe, completely safe… .

  I burst into laughter again. I stood there, laughing, while the tears rolled down my cheeks. John Sackett’s balance sheets, his yearly statement of accounts, with the hidden reserves for caution, the hidden reserves—safe too!

  I stopped laughing. What was that noise rolling round the rocks, breaking the silence, like loud laughter? Now it was dying away in a series of chuckles….

  It was the echo of my own laughter at the thought of John Sackett’s hidden reserves in the balance sheet. But there was nothing to laugh at. They were very useful, those hidden reserves. Better be over-cautious, like the men below—the automatons that were saved from all trouble by the Masters of Knowledge.

  My father… now he was safe too, his madness gone, burnt up … everybody was safe.

  There was that sound again, up on the heights to my left. I was not making it. It was not an echo, but a sound that was making me feel thirsty. It was water, water that was coming down from the top of the earth.

  I was very thirsty. . . .

  CHAPTER TWENTY-SIX

  And See Green Grass in Fields Again

  WHEN I AWOKE from my sleep beside the waterfall, I had no feeling of being refreshed. It was as if I had been in a drugged state rather than asleep, but I was not so dizzy.

  The way up from the waterfall was smoother. There were no trees nor any growths under my feet, but I found it heavy on my body to drag my feet upwards. An extraordinary fatigue was clogging my movements.

  The air was colder now, much colder… a breeze from above. It should have refreshed me, but my body was heavy.

  Morsels of thought or memories of my father kept coming to me, as if from the wind that was now coming streaming down—the cold wind from the earth that I had often shared with him, up on the Wall, in those January days … the days, even in May sometimes, cold as January … before the war.

  That May evening when we found the kestrel dead on the Wall, with its ash-coloured plumage and its fixed beautiful eyes … he was telling me his dreams. His dreams had come true—dreams vacuous like the eyes of the kestrel… but true.

  That evening, after we had shown my mother the hawk, he had burned it in a fire in the garden, so that it would not decay and be eaten by the worms…. That was the sort of thing he did before the war, though my mother and the Sacketts thought, then, that he was full of faults.

  That day that I had first heard her talking about him to John Sackett… but I had thoughts of that before. Afterwards she knew. They had said, that day, that he was a creature of impulses, she and John Sackett—that he was unstable. Life was not a thing of impulses, and it was time that he learned that. I remembered their words.

  That evening, when a speck of froth was floating in my soup, I had thought of their words, and looked across the table at my father and smiled. My father hadn’t known why I had smiled that evening, but he had smiled back, and we
had shut out the Sacketts, who were talking, my mother, and her brother John. Mother had said to me, “You’re not eating anything, Anthony,” and I had burst out laughing—the unity between my father and myself had been so clear. No use telling John Sackett or my mother.

  Afterwards we had gone out to the orchard where the apples and pears were ripening.

  Perhaps they were ripening up there again. … Or was it too late or too early? The wind from above was very cold. It couldn’t be summer up there—unless it was May again, and cold in the evenings… .

  Up on the Wall the air had always a lovely sharpness, even on the hot summer days. But, when the lights come out in the farmhouses below, it often died down, the sharpness. My father used to say that it was always warmer in the darkness.

  Down below, in the darkness, it was warm. But up here, near where the light was, it was shiveringly cold… .

  I stood looking down. Far below there were red glimmerings, but the peaks had all vanished. But for this dim light above me, all the light was gone.

  The way was dim—shelves of rock, with the cold wind coming down along them.

  I shouldn’t waste the light standing there looking down. I had no time to waste. Up above, not so far up now, men were living … very near me now, if I could get up to them. It couldn’t be far… if I didn’t waste time before I got too exhausted….

  Up above, the wheels were turning in John Sackett’s workshops. He had always said that there was no reason to waste time, and that I shouldn’t stay up so late at night when I could work at my inventions, just as well, in the daytime. But he had sometimes come in very late at night himself, and it was not inventions that had kept him up. He said, then, that a man had to give way to a man’s needs or he would die of it. It would be better for me, too, if I lived the life of an ordinary man—got drunk and other things—not been like my father, who was only a shadow. John Sackett said that. He did not move in a mist of unrealities.