The End of the Game

by Sheri S. Tepper

  “Yes,” I agreed, beginning to get the drift. “Small words,” it said, gesturing at itself once more. “Ah.” So the forest had sent a messenger, but the thing it had separated from itself was only a part. A small part. With small understanding, small words.

  “Damnation,” I muttered at myself. More riddles and conundrums, more quips and oddities. Why couldn’t someone in the world simply tell me what was going on? The creature reached a finger—a woody protuberance, sharp, pointed—to touch my face, drawing it away with a tear hanging from it. “Sad?” it asked.

  “Confused,” I whispered, astonished at its sympathy. One does not expect that from a ... whatever it was. “I only get pieces of things. You don’t tell me. The Wize-ards don’t tell me. Dervishes don’t tell anyone anything. All this mysterious, weird stuff going on, and I don’t understand any of it.”

  “Shhh.” It reached to me again, touching the locket that hung at my throat, next to the star-eye. “Please.”

  I clutched at it. The fragment? Please what? I didn’t want to take it off, but I did, opening the locket. The thing leaned forward, as though it had eyes. “Please, Star-eye. Look.”

  I looked. It was what it was, a silvery fragment with no ... Wait. The twiggy finger touched it. The forest touched it. Touched it and it swam with light. A pattern. A circle of black. Inside that, a circle of light. Upon that, a design of such brilliance it made my eyes hurt. A cross—not a regular one, more like a letter “Y” with a center post through it. No, flatter than that. The top branch was forked at the edge. The brilliance ran through the dark circle. Outside the dark circle was a gray mixture, grains of dark and light mixed, swimming together.

  It pointed to the brilliant design with its very pointed finger, then reached down to touch my foot. The voice came like a tiny wind. “Same. Uncover it, Star-eye. Fix it.”

  And then it was gone. Oh, I don’t mean it left. There were tumbled branches and fragments of moss upon the floor, still shivering from the suddenness of their collapse. Outside something huge and ominous gathered, listening with all its attention, but there was no longer anything for it to listen to. I put the fragment back around my neck, then slowly, slowly fed the leafy branches to the fire. Even this, my teachers would have told me, has meaning. When you think an event is ended, look past it. The things that happen immediately following—or sometimes, just before—have great meaning. Fire, I mused. Branches to the fire.

  I went to the window, pulled the makeshift curtain to one side, only a crack, drawing back as though stung. Something cold had lashed at me. I replaced the stones and crept to the fire, first humming, then singing to drown out that feeling of terrible disquiet. The song wasn’t much. A love song. Come to my fireside and shelter, my love, and so forth and so on. Gradually the silence turned to evening sound: birdsong, small animals calling, the rush of a quick rain. When only the sound of the forest was there, I took the rain cape down from the window, wrapped myself in it, and went to sleep. Just before doing so, however, I took one of the charred branches and drew on the stone hearth the design the forest had showed me in my fragment. I wanted to remember it in the morning, to look at it again in the light.

  When I woke, bunwit and tree rat were there with breakfast, both of them stepping quietly aside from the design I had drawn, bringing my attention to it with their feet. Well, I had remembered it correctly. A radiant three-branched tree, the top branch forked, set on a circle of light, surrounded by a circle of dark. Outside of which was the mixture of light and dark. I marked it in with the charred stick and stood looking at it, chewing on a stalk of rootcane. It was sweet and crisp, gnawed only slightly with bunwit teeth marks. Which was still far better than having to dig my own.

  The design meant something. What it meant, I didn’t know. But the forest had said. “Fix it.”

  Uncover it?

  Well, so much was clear. The gray slime that Bloster had sprayed at the edge of the forest was obviously part of what had to be fixed. In so doing, we would uncover the forest and fix it, in a sense. If the gray circle were broken ... Wait. I looked at the design again. If the dark circle represented the slimy circle around the forest, then the light circle represented the forest itself. And by breaking the gray circle, the forest would not be cut off any longer. The rest of the design could be deciphered later.

  “A way out, ninny,” I said to myself. “This forest is shut in, disconnected, and it needs a way out. All right, then. Try to figure a way to get rid of that filthy gray slush they’ve sprayed all over.”

  Bunwit stiffened and whimpered. Off in the trees I heard a snorting whomp, whomp. Centipig was tearing up the shrubbery again. “And at the same time,” I promised myself with determination but no idea at all how to begin. “No. First we deal with that pig.”

  15

  We spent five days following the centipig, trying to find out where it went, what it ate, when it drank. The results were very discouraging. It went everywhere, ate everything, and drank every time it crossed a stream. In the five days, it crossed its own trail a hundred times but did not establish any habits whatsoever. Trapping a thing that size without any habits one can count on would be impossible. This caused me some tears of frustration and a sleepless night or two until I thought of Dedrina-Lucir. They had trapped the Basilisk by digging a pit for it to fall into as it chased something else. So if we could get the pig to run after something, we could perhaps put a pit in its way.

  Next day we tried to get centipig to chase the bunwit, or tree rat, or even me. I had the most luck, but even that couldn’t be called successful. It would come after me, eyes burning, tusks flashing, but the minute something else moved, bird or beast, it would forget me and take off after the other thing. I tried standing in front of it, waving my arms and shouting insults, but it merely stared at me, unable to decide whether I or the bird flitting across the clearing made the most appetizing target. Whatever monster shop they had made it in, they had forgotten to put in any brains.

  I learned when it did chase me that one way to escape was to run downhill. Going downhill, its legs got tangled and it would sometimes fall over. None of this helped, however. The thing was too big to tie up. There may be ropes strong enough somewhere, but they were not where I could get them in Chimmerdong Forest. Meantime, centipig destroyed great stretches of beautiful woods, leaving ugly, tangled messes behind it, piled with trampled greenery.

  I considered putting it to sleep, but making enough potion to keep a thing that size asleep for very long would have taken pots and kettles and a large-size root masher. There was none of those available, either. At last, out of desperation, I decided to try a love potion. Love potions work no matter what the size of the creature involved, and all the ingredients I needed were in plentiful, proximate supply. Bunwit and I went back to the ruined inn and stayed two days while I gathered the sixteen herbs and earths. Bowl-fruit were ripe, so I even had bowls and containers in which to measure and compound the mixture. I made it just as I had memorized it on the way from Schooltown, long ago. When I was finished, I had a neatly corked hollow bowlfruit full of potion, another one in reserve, and a pretty good idea where the centipig was, since it had been whuffling and snorting within earshot most of the afternoon.

  We sneaked up on it, managed to get in front of it, then I tossed the bowlfruit directly into its path. Piglike, it whuffled and snorted and kicked the fruit aside, thundering through the woods with its wicked little eyes gleaming. Bunwit retrieved the bowl and we tried again.

  My idea had been that bunwit should be the first thing centipig saw after eating the bowl of potion. I’d thought it out very carefully, and that seemed best. Bunwit was very fast on his feet and couldn’t possibly be overtaken even at centipig’s fastest. But after nine tries to get the pig to eat the bowl, I ... well, I became careless. Anticipating still another failure, I was leaning against a tree waiting for the pig to kick the bowl away for the tenth time when it whoffled it up in one gulp and turned its piggy eyes straig
ht on me. They were full of rage and fury, just as always, but as I looked into them I saw them change. The only thing I can think of as a comparison would be the expression on Grompozzle’s face when he used to come licking my hands and begging for biscuits. It was a much more frightening expression than the beast-destruction look it had worn before. This was truly horrifying. A kind of sucking, intense desire. An unthinking hunger. I knew what I’d done in a moment. The thing was so big that, without even thinking about it, I’d made enough potion for any hundred persons. I’d forgotten that size doesn’t matter with love potions. “Size doesn’t matter,” Murzy had said. “It’s not like a sleeping drug.” Well, I’d remembered her saying it, but I’d forgotten it in the doing.

  It came for me, ready to eat me out of love, ready to pursue me forever, and I screamed as though Basilisks were biting me and got out of there. Enough sense remained to remember to run downhill and then away. It bleated horribly, then began to track me. By the Eleven and the Hundred Devils, it had never tracked anything before, but now it was tracking me.

  “Water!” I screamed to bunwit. “Get us to running water.” And we screeched along, first one in front and then the other, with the crashing behind us coming closer and closer.

  We got to water just in time, a deep, slow-flowing stream. I dived in and swam underwater, coming out on the other side a long way downstream. It was some time before bunwit found me, and I knew he’d had forest help to do it. It was impossible to go back to the ruined inn. My smell was all around that place. The only safe place to spend the night was in a very large tree—one too big even for centipig to knock down—while the shadow crept and prowled.

  Next morning we sneaked away to the northwest, to the edge of the forest nearest Daggerhawk Demesne, and got the flood-chucks to come help dig a pig pit. It was a narrow pit, very deep, very steep sided. It had to be long enough to hold the whole pig, steep-sided at the front and sides so he couldn’t climb out, narrow so he couldn’t turn around. Then it had to be roofed over with a net of branches and twigs strong enough to bear my weight since I’d be running directly across it. During the time they dug it out, I sat to one side, my ears up like a bunwit’s, alternately shivering and sweating. From time to time, I’d fall into a sickly doze only to wake with my heart pounding. At the time I thought the expression on the centipig’s face had given me nightmares. Being loved by a centipig was like being loved by a Ghoul, rather. A mindless passion that could as easily kill as kiss. I sat and shivered and watched the flood-chucks working with their usual deliberation. It took them all day and was then too late to try the pursuit. Another uncomfortable night in a large tree.

  And something more than discomfort. A kind of sickness taking hold of me. By the middle of the night it was clear that this malady was not simply a pig problem. Something other than that was wrong, but there was no time to figure out what.

  For morning had come, a rainy morning with slick footing. I had to decide whether it would be better to wait for good weather or get it over with. The thought of waiting seemed worse to contemplate than the terrible footing.

  So, bunwit, tree rat, and I went off to find the pig. When we found it, I showed myself, wishing there were some other way and trying very hard not to see its face. Had to see its face, of course. Had to see that long, long tongue come slavering, dangling out, those eyes fix and bore into me, hear that sound, part whine, part growl, part bleat, part grunt. Then it was after me and I away.

  We did it in short pieces. Somehow it was possible for me to run only a little at a time. We did a piece ending in a hillside, and I got away. Then we did a piece ending in the river, and I got away again. Each time I saw that face it drained more strength away. That kind of bestial, blind adoration sucks at you. It was as though the pig drank me up every time he saw me. Even then, though, I knew it was something more. A real sickness.

  The third race almost ended it for Jinian Footseer. I stumbled and fell with the pig so close I could feel the breath from his mouth. I screamed silently, begging for help. Bunwit flashed across in front of him in a long, zigzaggy bound, and that distracted centipig just long enough for me to limp into a rock tangle where he couldn’t follow. I sat down and cried. Bunwit and tree rat come in after me, snuggling close, warming me up. There was only one more piece to go, but no person around to do it. Jinian was lost somewhere else, gone. Centipig was still whomping around, but shortly he would lose interest and move away and we would have lost all the effort we had made. After a little time, bunwit hopped away, returning quickly with a few ripe berries of an unfamiliar kind. They were purple, with a green bloom upon the skin. He nibbled one to show me they were all right. I ate one, then another. Warmth ran into me and my head steadied. Well, I thought, that’s one I need to tell Murzy. I had never seen them before, and had I known how rare they are, I might have saved one to prove they exist.

  So, it was back into the forest again, and showing myself to the pig again, and letting it run after me one last time, blundering, thundering, with its hooves cutting up great chunks of turf and all the flowers pounded into mush where it went. Bunwit flashed ahead, finding the path for me. Tree rat chittered from above, saying, Close, closer, there it is. And there it was, the mat of branches I had watched the flood-chucks lay down.

  Careful, careful I went. Slowing. One step, two.

  Don’t let the foot fall between the branches. Set the feet down. Careful, careful. Centipig came on behind, heedless, not knowing, not caring, the whole thing shaking and heaving like a boat on the sea. The branches at the head of the pit were stronger, to take the weight until the whole beast was on it. I ran on, feeling the structure begin to tremble beneath me. It was weaker here. Then I was at the end, stopping, turning, letting it see me plainly.

  It came on and on. Its face was fixed on mine, eyes wide, a horrible anticipation there. I thought the branches would not break. We had built them too strongly, built too well, oh, it was coming on and I was not far enough back. I stepped back, stumbled over bunwit, who was at my ankles, and sprawled on my back as that hideous face loomed over me.

  And then a cracking, crashing, and the whole thing went down in an instant. There was centipig, horri-bleating in the bottom of the pit, and there was I, safe above, shaking like a tree in storm as though I would never stop. I sat down and hugged bunwit for some little time, crying as though I had been a tiny child.

  “Maybe we’ll ask the tree rats to feed it,” I whispered into the wide, furry ears. “Maybe we’ll want it for something. Right now, though, I’m going to sleep for a day and a night.”

  We returned to the ruin, I stumbling and weaving while the animals held me up until I could get to the leafy bed and into sleep as one falling into a well.

  The centipig pursued me into sleep.

  I sat in the window of a high tower and the pig rooted at the foundations far below, looking upward now and then with a glance of devotion, drool falling in long droplets from its mouth as it stared. It adored me, and that adoration slimed my skin as though it had licked me with its tongue. It loved me and would destroy me if it could, out of love. I wept in the tower, longing to escape, but the blind passion of the pig shut me in. There was no way out, no way around. Soon the very foundations would begin to shake. My small boat floated in a shallow pond and the pig wandered on the shore, calling to me ceaselessly, casting his offal in my direction with his hooves, a filthy offering, deeply sincere. Soon he would begin to drink, and the pond would go dry ...

  The cave trembled and I within it, as the pig strove mightily with the stones that composed it, grunting a paean of adoration for my beauty. “Love,” grunted the pig. “I will prove my love!” His great boar’s prick waggled as he rooted at the stones. Already most were rolled away, soon the others would follow ...

  And I woke. From far off in the woods came the sound of the trapped pig, squealing at the sky, demanding his love with brute virility. I sat up, screaming. “Come,” I called to the beasties beside me. “What one
potion can do, another can undo.” And I ran into the darkness, they after me, before I realized I would need a torch to find what I needed and returned shamefaced to get it.

  It was only after the pig was dead that I began to shiver and vomit, sick at heart and soul, eventually exhausting myself. And only as I drowsed toward sleep did I consider why Murzy had said, “Never for anything small, chile. Never for anything small.” Then to remember with revulsion the decision I had made long before as I’d left Schooltown after a Festival. I had thought, then, if he did not love me, I would make him love me.

  I gagged on hot bile, choking on it.

  However else I might win the love of the mysterious boy, it would not be with a potion. How dishonorable and vile the creature who would force love from another. I had looked on the face of that kind of love, a pig love which cared not what it did to that it loved.

  How could it? How shameful and sickening to have one’s affections raped away. I would not be that low and would not bring that kind of shame upon him. And so resolved, the horror in me quieted at last and I slept.

  16

  I dreamed again. I was very ill. Murzy was holding me in the rocking chair. Someone said, “Either she’ll get well or she won’t. That’s all one can expect.”

  Murzy said, “Nonsense. She’ll get well just as soon as she knows how sick she is. She’s only moving out of habit.”

  There was a sound then. In the dream it seemed that the foundations of my world were being destroyed, and I woke in the chill day of Chimmerdong to a continuing blast of muttering thunder rolling ceaselessly out of the sky.

  The dream remained, a clear reminder of my illness, even as I climbed a tall tree in lethargic spasms of effort, getting above the lower roofs of Chimmerdong to peer toward the west. Pillars of vasty cloud and needles of lightning played there in fitful dark as the sound beat upon us. I clung raglike to the branch, limply absorbing the fury of the sky, growing soggy and droopy with it, climbing down at last to lie at the foot of the tree like an overfull sponge, oozing resentment at having been wakened, too weary for surprise, too depressed for wonder.