The End of the Game

by Sheri S. Tepper

  Which meant I’d crossed it? No. Couldn’t have. Crossed no stream. Which meant I was so far north, I’d missed it completely, as well as the great east-west canyon it fell into.

  Possible. Probable! If so, horse and I were on the north side of Longbow Mountain and would shortly arrive at Pouws! We climbed the slope to the right, looking for a place with a view east and north. If Pouws were anywhere near, there’d be smoke. And I knew people from Pouws. There was a girl a little older than I, Lunette. She had an older brother. I’d forgotten his name. They had guested with us at Stoneflight after being caught on the road by storm, oh, five or six years ago at least. I had been only eight or nine at the time. The older brother had ended up challenging Mendost to Game of Two, and Bram had had to put a stop to it by forcing Mendost to apologize for breaking guest privilege. Mendost and Dorto—that was his name!—had been unfriends ever since, though neither of them had taken it further ...

  There was smoke! High, curling over a frowning ridge of stone, black, roiling smoke. No cookfire smoke, that. Horse cocked his ears forward, made a little uneasy sound in his nose, then he and I went farther up the mountain. When we came to the foot of a tall, sentinel stone, I left him there and clambered up the back of it like a tree rat, lying on top ratrug flat the way they do. Below me in the valley lay the Demesne of Pouws with Pouwstown on beyond it and a few farms scattered beyond that. What was burning was quite a large grain storage barn, and who was burning it was a Sentinel I knew very well because he was Mendost’s man. There was a Herald down there, too, and two or three others who were quite familiar to me. The situation was easy to read. Mendost, having made an alliance with King Kelver, was now setting out to even old scores. Which for Mendost meant declaring Game against everyone within six days’ ride of us in any direction. Including Dorto of Pouws.

  Not precisely the time for me to ride into Pouws Demesne and ask for help. Sister of an attacker, betrothed to his ally. Lovely! Thus far I had kept my spirits up, planning each step ahead, but now I wanted to cry. With Mendost on a rampage, there would be no friends within reach. Behind me somewhere was Porvius Bloster, who was just stupid and prideful enough to declare Game against me personally because I’d outwitted him. Below me were Mendost’s men, dangerous as vipers. All I could do was keep riding east, staying well away from the conflict. I tried to recall what I knew about the country east of here. All I could remember was that there were no traveled roads.

  No roads.

  No roads because at the east end of Longbow Mountain is the Forest of Chimmerdong, where nobody goes.

  I remembered the chant:

  Tearful the music, full of woe,

  In the stone deep, fern steep woods of Zoe.

  But a stranger voice sings a sadder song In the sorrow-wild Forest of Chimmerdong.

  “By all the old gods,” I said to horse when I had come back down the rock, “this is the dirtiest trick Mendost has played me yet.” Knowing even as I said it that Mendost had not thought of me at all—never had, much.

  When we had passed all but one of the outlying farms, I rode up to the last farmhouse and traded with the little farmwife there. My suit of red clothing—which I had worn only once, I assured her—for whatever food she could spare that would travel well. She looked over the wet red trews and the striped tunic, brushing it off, admiring it. There was a youngster playing out back who would look well in it in a year or two, and I told her so. She asked if I’d stolen it, and I said I’d be glad to put it on to prove it had been made for me, but she smiled and said no. She said I seemed young to be out on such a large horse, and I said the horse was younger than I. At which she laughed. We ended making a bargain, and I took enough dried meat, roadbread, and dried fruit away to last me for several days, as well as a leather-covered flask full of beer. The beer wouldn’t last long, but the bottle could be filled at any stream. I told her someone might come looking for me, in which case I would be mightily thankful if she said I’d gone northward. She frowned, not at me, nodded, and said she would indeed. She had done well by me, so as I left I turned and offered to sign the place friendly to the wize-art. I don’t know what made me offer it. When it came from my mouth, I expected her not to understand what I was saying, but instead she came up to me, knelt down, and took my hand, clutching it tightly.

  “Art Wize-ard?” she begged me.

  “Learning,” I answered her honestly. “I’m learning.”

  “Bless this house, then,” she said, and I did, taking the star-eye out of my blouse and turning it so that it saw every part of the house and the land about it. “Under the Eye of the Star,” I cried, “whether forest or meadow, under sunlight or shadow. Woman or man, elder or child. Bless all here.” Then nothing would do but she run back in the house and bring me out a sweet cake to eat on my way.

  I did not need to worry about the forest for two days, for that was how long it took to come to the end of Longbow Mountain, through the pass between it and the Tits—two huge, rounded protruberances to the north—and stand at last at the top of that pass looking downward on the endless black fur of the forest. Looking at it, I felt like a tick, like a flea about to burrow onto a very large fustigar. Looking at it, I knew time had come for me and horse to separate. There were no trails. Branches grew low over the ground. I could walk under those trees fairly well. I could not ride.

  So I unsaddled the good creature, smacked him upon his rump, and sent him back the way we had come. I hoped he would come to the farmhouse and stay with the farmwife. I hoped Mendost wouldn’t find him. I hoped Porvius wouldn’t, either, for I could sense that Tragamor’s anger still behind me and coming after me. Perhaps only fantasy, but I thought not.

  The truth was far worse than I imagined.

  6

  Even with the food I’d traded for, my pack wasn’t heavy. I had no gear at all except a knife and firelighter. Not even extra boots. I don’t know how many times Murzy had told me never to go anywhere without extra boots. And underwear. Well, it was her doing. If she’d wanted me to have them, she should have packed them.

  So thinking, I strolled down the rock-strewn slope to the trees. The edge of the forest seemed a little misty, but it didn’t worry me much. Ponds, I thought, giving off a veil of vapor. Then, as I got closer, I saw it wasn’t mist at all but something else. A grayness. A vagueness. The trees looked not quite solid, rather like the reflection you see in a pane of glass looked at sidewise. Odd. When I came beneath the nearest tree, I reached out to feel it.

  My hand went into it. Not far. Not like into soup or mud, but more like into—oh, really punky wood. The kind you can squash between your fingers. A harder push, and my fingers went in farther. When they came out, a great hunk of the tree came with them. The tree creaked and gulped. Like someone does who’s been crying for a long time and tries to catch his breath. Sad. Then I forgot the sorrowful forest, for my hand began to burn like fire, and then my lungs, as though they were full of smoke. I coughed, hacked, turned about, finally ran from the forest to recover myself after some time lying flat on the grassy slope. Not good, Jinian. Not a good place to be. There had to be some other way in, even if one had to go all around the outside of it.

  But something was calling, in that sad, sad voice. Wanting. Begging. I could hear it, not with ears, but inside. As a loving mother might hear a child in trouble when it was too far away to really hear. Or so I told myself.

  I tried again, and was driven out again. Then I began to think and plan sensibly. The gray area wasn’t deep. There was darker, healthy-looking forest beyond it. The burning sensation was strongest beneath the punky trees, so they should be avoided. All up and down the edge I went, hearing that sad pleading, finally finding a place where there were no trees at all, merely a long, flat waste of deadly gray. I rinsed out my kerchief in a nearby stream, tied it around my face, and ran for it.

  It seemed endless. For a time I was sure I’d die there, in the middle of the gray, lungs burned out by whatever it was, but in wha
t was actually a very short time, I fell onto the grass at the other side, heaving, eyes flooding, telling myself I would live, looking back the way I had come.

  The grass and bushes were slimy gray. Only the rocks were hard, and the soil. Up to the place my toes touched the earth, everything was this pale, soft, almost fungus kind of forest, and then quite suddenly, as though to a line drawn by a great pen, the trees were all right again.

  I did not understand it; there was nothing I could do about it. I put it out of my head and starting walking east.

  I’d been in forests before. For the first half-dozen breaths walking under the healthy trees, I still believed that. Then it was clear I had never been in a forest before, not until Chimmerdong.

  It’s not that it was dark. It wasn’t as dark, for example, as the woods down the north-south canyon behind Stoneflight where the sun only reaches for an hour a day. It’s not that it was silent. It was much quieter on the back side of Longbow Mountain. The thing was that the forest seemed to be aware of itself. That sounds silly. It sounded silly to me, too, when I first thought it, but this is what happened.

  There was a bunch of blue flowers, little bells, almost like lady bells with silver centers. They stood in a shaft of sunlight, against a mossy stone. And the tree above them moved a branch, just a little, so that the sun would go on shining on that bunch of flowers. No wind. No. It wasn’t wind. And it wasn’t a tree rat or some other small dweller pushing or pulling. The tree simply did it. It liked the feel of the flowers in the sun, so it moved.

  Well, I had been standing there, watching the flowers, and I noticed all at once that the shadow of the rest of the tree had moved, but that one branch’s shadow had stayed quite still. So, being sensible, as Murzy had suggested, I marked that down in my mind and went on my way, being very careful where I stepped.

  Then there was the waterfall. I heard it long before I saw it, gurgling to itself in a melody that repeated, over and over, five notes in different order but that five over and over in a melancholy, satisfied little gurgle. As I came to the fall, a cone dropped from a tree right into it, wedging itself tightly on a stone. The music changed, a sixth, gargly note added. And all at once a wave came down the stream—now this is a tiny brooklet I’m talking about, no wider than my arm is long—and this wave came down and dislodged the cone and the little fall went back to singing its tune. One wave. Like a horse, twitching its hide when it has a troublesome fly. Twitch—well, that fixes that—then back to whatever it was doing. That particular brook sang that particular sorrowful song, and it didn’t wish to be interrupted.

  Things went on in this way generally, as I walked deeper and deeper in, the sun gradually moving up overhead and then falling behind me. There was no attempt whatsoever to interfere with me. I munched some roadbread as I went, sharing the crumbs with a tree rat and a bunwit that came begging, then went on walking, talking to the animals in a soft voice, amazed that they came along even after the food was gone. There were ups and downs, none of them very steep or long. There were streamlets and small clearings. There were leaping bunches of small horned animals with bright golden behinds, perhaps a kind of forest zeller, and flocks of mournful birds which followed me for half the afternoon. Nothing threatening at all. Except that the forest was quite aware I was in it and would decide what to do about me.

  Well, think about it. Trees that can move their branches, and streams that can make waves. If such things decided they didn’t want me where I was, there were twenty ways they could get rid of me quickly and quietly without so much as a bloody splash. I should have been frightened to death but wasn’t. The star-eye was hanging on its thong, visibly bobbing against my chest. That, I was sure, was what Murzy had meant.

  Eventually, it began to get dark. There was a mossy stretch of ground surrounded by small trees, edged by bunches of the blue, silver-centered bells and with a tiny clear pool in a rock basin. No point looking further. The place might have been made for me.

  There was dried fruit and bread to eat, water to drink. There was the rain cape to lie down and roll up in. Sleep came at once, as though someone had given me shivery-green, then there was a complicated dream about the old gods and I wakened up to find that my bed was taking me somewhere.

  The small trees around the moss bed had raised up the mosses, stepped out on their roots, and were going somewhere. In the starlight, the little pool tilted silver into my eyes. The flower bells swung. We moved along under branches, among big trees, the moss bed rocking gently as we went. Wize-ard, I cautioned myself. Either the thing knew I was there or it didn’t. If it did, my making a fuss would not improve matters. If it didn’t, remaining quiet might keep it in ignorance of my presence. As Murzy and Tinder-my-hand had so often counseled, I remained invisible. We rolled on through the forest, a curiously hypnotic movement, not at all threatening. I may have fallen asleep for a while. When I noticed the motion next we were climbing down into a deep round hollow. The trees around us were larger than any I have ever seen, like huge castle towers. Down we went, and down again, and at last came to rest in the very bottom of the hollow, the little pool quivering then becoming still to reflect one star at me as in a mirror. I stayed right where I was without moving. It was warm, dry, and still dark. No sense roaming around in the night.

  “Person,” said a voice, whispering. “Person?”

  “Child?” asked the—another?—voice, also whispering.

  “Child person?” said the first. “Star-eye?”

  It would have been impolite not to answer. “I am here,” I said, leaving it at that. Least said, Murzy often told me. Least said, least promised.

  All this time, I was looking about for the source of the voice or voices, up and down, peering into the shadows. The starlight was very bright, the shadows very dark. When I saw the face at last, I didn’t believe I was seeing it. Then the lips moved, and I heard the whisper.

  “Are you there?”

  “Yes,” I breathed, open-mouthed, staring at the face. It was made up of leafy branches against the sky. Each eye had a star reflecting in it. The lips were two twisty branches. It was all there, even a cascade of leafy hair above and to the sides. Each time it spoke, the mouth moved, the eyes blinked. “Can you tell me what you are? If it’s not impolite to ask?” I whispered.

  “I ...” whispered the voice.

  “We ...” whispered another one. I looked over my shoulder to confront another face, then saw that I was surrounded by them. There were at least a dozen. “It!” asserted a third. “All,” said a fourth. “Forest.”

  “This forest?” I asked. “I ...”

  “We ...”

  “Every ...”

  “All forest,” the first repeated. “Broken. All, all forest.” The stars that reflected its eyes glittered in dark, leafy hollows. It was through these eye hollows I saw the shadow come like some great sea creature, all tentacles and flow, reaching out of the dark, covering the stars, covering the light. Suddenly the face was obscured, the stars of its eyes put out. The face vanished. Its component parts were still there, but it was like a cloud face which vanishes when you look away, all the subtle modelings changed, deranged, lost.

  “Help ...” I heard a whisper, so softly I could hardly hear it, the forest vanishing in shadow.

  “Hellllp ...” A last, faint hiss of the leaves, crying such sorrow that I wanted to weep.

  The shadow flowed, coiled, sent its tentacles down searching for something. At which point I lay down, rolled up in my rain cape once more, and pretended to be any tiny, furry thing that came to mind. The small trees picked up my moss bed and slithered it between the giant trunks, up the slope, and into the more ordinary forest. Behind us in the hollow, I could feel the shadow gathering, darker than dark, filling the hollow, looking for something. For me? For whatever had spoken from the forest?

  The forest had wanted to talk to me. Something else had prevented it.

  Now what would a Wize-ard do about that? The very young Wize-ard,
me, did nothing at all until morning. I fretted a bit, but only a bit, because the shadow kept lurking about and it seemed safer not to think at all. Considering water instead of thinking put me to sleep. When morning came, the shadow was gone, but so was any sense of the forest presence that had been there the night before. I ate my boring breakfast and thought very hard.

  Something here. Something I’d never heard of. Something vast and ... well, helpless. Helpless. Unable to help itself. Well now.

  If I were unable to help myself, needing someone else to do something for me, it would be to do something I could not do myself. Self-evident. Right? Right, I assured myself. Now, what could one young person—child person—do that a forest could not? A forest that could move its own branches and make waves in its own streams. I thought about that, lying there on my back, staring up at the sun dapple. All around me was growth and green. All around me was birdsong and rustle as little things moved here and there. The tree rat sat on my foot to beg crumbs. Seeing this, a gray bird wafted over on silent wings and demanded a share, which the bunwit disputed. He and tree rat owned me. No mistake about that. Crumb sources were not that easy to come by. All about me was bright, growing, green—and sad. Overlaid with a terrible melancholy that was almost more than one could bear.

  What could I do?

  I could leave. I could move out of the forest and go elsewhere. I could go away, taking the knowledge with me that something here needed help. After lengthy consideration, that was all I could come up with.

  I said, moderately loudly, “I’ll do what I can to help, but you have to realize, I’m not sure what’s needed, and it may take a long time.” I waited.

  The hush was unbroken. Sighing, I got up, put on my pack, and turned eastward once more.