by Jeffrey Ford
A spout of red appeared to the left of Willa, and drenched her dress on that side. She moved her arm freely now and balling her hand into a fist, lashed out at the seemingly empty air to her right. Cley could not believe it, but she was free and running back toward him. Wood barked wildly, awaiting the order to attack. Cley saw a knife appear in the air three feet behind her as she closed the distance between them. Cley dropped the rifle and lifted the pistol from where it lay on the ground beside the baby.
Standing straight, he called to her, “Fall down.” She did, and he aimed the gun and shot. A wound appeared in the air at the height of where a man’s stomach might be. He had obviously hit his target, but the slug had not killed the warrior, and the knife kept slowly advancing toward the fallen woman.
“Now,” said Cley, and Wood was off like an arrow. The dog covered the distance in seconds. He hit the ground just in front of Willa’s head and sprang upward over her. The floating knife fell to the ground, and the dog wrestled with the unseen warrior. Where Wood’s teeth closed, blood trickled out of thin air. Cley was by then beside the dog. He called him off and with his own blade in hand, went to his knees and viciously stabbed at the invisible body.
The cold water of the stream that seeped into their shoes and around their feet was refreshing after their long march. Cley held back his hand and helped Willa and Wraith up onto the opposite bank.
“Nice shooting, Mr. Cley,” she said, and gave him a curious glance.
“Indeed,” said the hunter. When he looked back across the stream, he saw a large party of Beshanti, standing over the bloody patches of ground that were their brethren. Cley pushed Willa Olsen ahead of him and walked behind her in case one of the warriors had a mind to send an arrow over the boundary.
As they moved in among the trees and out of view of their pursuers, Cley took a moment to reflect on what had transpired. He realized that the large red bird that had thrown off his shot and resulted in the salvation of Willa was of the same variety that he had eaten on the boulder island in the flood.
He laughed wildly at this fact. The sound of his voice echoing among the trees woke the baby, who began to cry.
“Shhh,” said Willa, admonishing the hunter.
Wraith fell back to sleep, and they moved on in silence.
At night, they had taken to sleeping together as an antidote to the cold. Beneath the two blankets they carried, Wraith rested between Willa and Cley. Wood curled up at their feet and added his own warmth. The hunter again made use of the flint stones for lighting fires and resurrected the practice of heating rocks in the flames, which he then buried beneath the ground to offer heat from below.
He slept poorly, always afraid that he would roll over on the child and smother it. Willa did not have this problem. The long days’ walks exhausted her so that after dinner, she dropped to the ground and was immediately asleep. Wraith somehow knew the severity of the situation and usually did not stir before sunrise. The hunter was uncertain how long they could continue to press onward, and searched every day, to no avail, for the temporary shelter of a cave.
They crossed a plain, three miles wide, that was dotted with small pools of bubbling water. Great plumes of steam rose up and filled the air with the scent of sulphur. Cley was reminded of his labors in the mine of Doralice, and he warned Willa to keep the baby’s face covered as much as possible. They saw, through the ambient mist, a herd of large shaggy beasts with humped backs and curved horns protruding from their mouths, lurking on the southern edge of this boiling land. The hunter had never before encountered this creature. From the size of it and the thundering roar of its voice, he had no desire to inspect it more closely. Wood, on the other hand, kept running off in the direction of the herd, and Cley had to call him back repeatedly.
In a forest of pines, Willa rested against a fallen tree, holding Wraith to her breast. Wood lay at her feet. The warm sunlight found its way through the breeze-shifted branches above and fell like rain on the carpet of dry, brown needles. Cley stood in front of her, his gaze directed anywhere but at Willa, and smoked the very last of the cigarettes. He was worried about the possibility of encountering demons, about being lost in the heart of the Beyond with a woman and child, about finding a permanent shelter for them, about the senseless nature of his journey.
“Where are we going, Cley?” she asked.
The hunter thought for a moment, took a long drag, and said in a cloud of smoke, “Toward the future, where I have an appointment to keep.”
“Shouldn’t we be heading back to the ocean, so that we can meet the ship coming from the realm? Spring is here, and soon they will arrive,” she said quietly.
“Perhaps we should,” he said, “but I can’t. There is something I need to do.”
“What of Wraith and me?” she asked.
He had no answer for her.
“Well?” she said.
“You had better stay with me, at least for a while longer,” he said.
“Who is this person you are meeting?” she asked.
Cley gave a distant smile. “You’ll know him when you see him,” he said.
“So we are to follow you across the Beyond on your errand?”
“I’m sorry,” he said. He turned and looked directly at her. “I’m very sorry.” His face was haggard with weariness, and he shook his head as if in confusion.
“You are exhausted, come and sit down,” she said, and touched the ground beside her with her free hand.
Cley dropped the burning cigarette and stepped on it. He moved slowly toward her. “Yes,” he said, “I will.” He leaned over, and then sat with his back against the fallen tree. Willa reached over and removed his hat. Closing his eyes, he said, “I promise, I will find a way to get you home. I …”
“All is well,” she whispered, and put her arm around his shoulders. In minutes, he was asleep.
The hunter again took to using the bow so that he might conserve the ammunition he had taken from Fort Vordor. It had been some time since he had nocked an arrow into place and practiced his shot, so a rabbit and two deer were spared this day that in the previous year would have been dead.
Willa asked that he teach her how to use the weapon, and they spent a morning at target shooting. Wraith lay on the ground with Wood at a safe distance behind them next to the packs and supplies. Cley used his knife to chip off the bark of a pine trunk, and this mark served as a bull’s-eye. He was impressed with Willa’s strength, for she had no trouble pulling the bowstring back far enough to get the maximum tension. On her first attempt, she hit the tree only inches from the mark.
“Not bad,” said Cley, and he stepped up behind her and put his hands on her shoulders. Gently, he pulled her back straight. “Watch with both eyes,” he said. “I know there are those who might squint, but I keep both eyes open.”
She let the string go, and the arrow flew wildly off course, striking the base of a tree ten yards beyond the target.
“So much for my instruction,” he said.
“I blinked,” she told him.
“No blinking,” he said.
“I blinked because you touched me,” she said.
“My apologies,” he said.
“I didn’t mind it at all,” said Willa.
Cley looked at her, and she at him. She lowered the bow and he took a step closer to her. He was about to lift his hand to touch her again, but from the corner of his eye, he saw something move. He turned quickly to find Vasthasha standing next to them, holding the baby. When Willa screamed, he knew she had also seen the foliate.
The night sky was strewn with stars, and the travelers sat next to a fire in a clearing in the pines. Cley had convinced Willa to take one of the foliate’s leaves and place it under her tongue as he had done. She rocked the sleeping baby in her lap, and Wood lay next to Vasthasha, being stroked across the back of the neck by a leafy hand.
“I went to the fort to find you,” said the foliate.
Willa looked around to see where the
strange voice was coming from. She stared at the curious twin fires burning in the green man’s hollow eye sockets.
“What did you find there?” asked Cley.
“Carnage,” said Vasthasha, “and this.” He straightened out his leg and, reaching down, drew something long and slim from within the thatch that was his thigh. He held it up. “I brought it as a gift for you.”
Cley peered through the dim glow of the fire and saw Curaswani’s pipe with the bowl that was the woman’s head. The hunter reached out tentatively and took it. He remembered the white-haired man, and a wave of sorrow passed over him.
“Humans live a hard, brief life,” said Vasthasha.
“I have no tobacco,” said Cley.
“Try this,” said the foliate, and handed him a small ball of dried yellow leaves.
The hunter stoked the pipe and sparked it with a stick he lit in the fire. A cream-colored smoke gathered around the company as Cley exhaled. He passed the pipe to Willa, who took it and placed it to her lips. She coughed hard and passed it on to the foliate. After Vasthasha inhaled, he did not exhale. The smoke simply drifted out of the tangled foliage from his chest to the top of his head.
“We must start tomorrow in a new direction,” he told them. “I know of a trail through the Beyond that will take us a hundred miles in a mile.”
“What?” said Willa.
“A shortcut?” asked Cley.
“The wilderness is veined with passages that defy time and distance. One simply has to know where they are. At the other end, I know of a place that the woman and child can stay,” said the foliate.
“Ea, from the true Wenau, mentioned them to me,” said Cley. “I could never really believe in their existence.”
“The Beyond exists on many planes and in many times,” said Vasthasha.
“I hope we are not going to another fort,” said Willa.
“A house. It lies in a meadow of beautiful flowers near the edge of a forest, and there is a lake no more than a hundred yards from it. Many, many years ago, it was built by one of the party of men with the lighted hats. His name was Pierce, I believe, and he was lost on his journey to Paradise and lived for a long time in the wilderness by himself,” said the foliate, and again accepted the pipe from Willa.
“One of the expedition from Anamasobia,” said Cley. “The last companion of Beaton. He was a young man. I thought he had perished on an ice floe.”
“Figuratively,” said Vasthasha.
“Wraith and I are to be left alone?” asked Willa.
“For only a short time, while Cley serves Pa-ni-ta,” said the foliate.
“Pa-ni-ta?” asked Willa, and looked at the hunter.
“Please,” he said, “I cannot even begin to explain.”
Later, when the mother and child were sleeping beneath the blankets, and the fire was dying, Cley and the foliate sat in silence. A warm breeze blew through the clearing. The hunter noticed something gently floating on the wind. It fluttered and twisted and came to rest on the grass a few feet away. He slowly got up, stretched, and went to inspect it. As he approached, he saw the veil, folded in half, one corner slightly flapping. When he leaned over to touch it, it changed before his eyes into a large leaf.
“Get some rest, Cley,” whispered the foliate.
Vasthasha led the way to the head of a well-worn path through the forest. From where Cley stood, peering over the foliate’s shoulder, he could see that it traveled straight like a road of the realm for a quarter of a mile and then made a sudden turn to the left, out of sight.
“I have to warn you,” said the green man, “once we are on this trail, no matter what you see, you must not make a sound. Entities human, animal, and vegetable, who have traveled here, who are, somewhere in Time, always traveling here, will pass you. To touch them, to speak with them, will cause you to shatter like the ice of a winter lake struck by a falling star.”
Cley and Willa nodded, and then the hunter said, “But Wraith, how will we keep him from crying, from uttering a sound?”
“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 th
e 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.
