They rested in the shade of bankside trees, where it was scarcely less hot than in the full glare of the blazing sun, which seemed to him bigger, brighter and hotter than he had ever seen the sun before.
There was a sudden, agonized wail from Toby. “Mr. Murchison is gone!”
Jarvis was not moved. His principal concern was to find water, and yet they had to have rest. Jo’s sufferings, he knew, were transcended by her concern for him and Toby, and for the feebly gasping butterfly creature she carried in its basket.
Toby was obviously heartbroken, both by Mr. Murchison’s flagrant abandonment of them and by the lack of interest on the part of the others.
Jarvis glanced up at the dropping sun through a screen of dull, dusty leaves. They had only a few hours of daylight left and in those few hours they must find water, if any existed in this barren waste. Otherwise, morning would find them… He shrugged the thought irritably aside.
“Why, he’s all wet!” Toby’s cry only half pierced Jarvis’ jumble of thoughts. “Jeff! Mr. Murchison is here and he’s all wet!”
Mr. Murchison was indeed all wet. Lovely moisture dripped from every hair’s end of his short, brown fur, and a trail of muddy little footprints led off down the baking stream bed, drying quickly even as he looked at them.
Jarvis hoisted rifle and pack to his shoulders. “Come on!” he snapped tersely. “There’s water this way!”
Ten minutes of panting progress brought them to the pool—a much larger pool than he had expected it to be. A thin trickle ran from the downstream end of it, to be absorbed within a few yards back into the thirsty soil of the stream bed. But it was water—fed by a constantly, if sluggishly, flowing spring.
The pool made all the difference in their outlook. They could drink, cook, and bathe again, and they did. Jarvis was pleased with himself, pleased with Mr. Murchison—especially with Mr. Murchison—and with the rest of his companions.
“A little game would make this an ideal camp for a few days,” he said.
Jo was bathing the butterfly girl with water brought from the pool in a twisted leaf.
“The little creature has really taken to you, Jeff!” she pointed out. “Her eyes follow you wherever you go.” Jeff grinned and poked a finger at the creature.
“Pick on somebody your own size, girl!”
“A living doll!” Jo breathed.
“She’s really in love with you, Jeff,” Toby put in. “She says you saved her life from the Eeima.”
Jeff looked at the boy, then at Jo. “What’s the kid talking about? Heat got him?”
“No, really, Jeff!” The boy came close and knelt by the basket. The butterfly creature smiled up at him and held up tiny arms and took hold of Toby’s hand. “Her name is Eluola, and she says she’s glad to be with us. She loves you very, very much, and she loves me and Jo, too; and it was she who made Mr. Murchison go look for water for us, because she knew where the water was, and Mr. Murchison was too stupid to find it by himself…”
“Say! Are you making that up, Toby?”
“Of course he isn’t!” Jo put in quickly. “I think he’s actually communicating with her, Jeff!”
“How did she know where the water was?” Jarvis asked disgustedly.
“She heard its song,” Toby replied. “That’s it—the song of the water. To her, water sings a song, and everything else has its song, too—” The butterfly girl uttered a trilling note, relaxed and closed her eyes.
“She’s tired and wants to sleep,” Toby went on. “But don’t worry. She has been over this country many times and will lead us in the right direction tomorrow.”
All of this did not mitigate the fact that there still was no game, and now they were out of provisions. Water alone they had in plenty. But, if Toby’s fantasy was indeed real, they could take up a few notches in their belts and hold out while the butterfly girl—Eluola was her name?—led them to safety.
CHAPTER 7
Through Toby, Eluola explained that they could no longer proceed directly into the west, because the land turned into complete desert within a few miles. They were very high above the level of the sea, and the land slid downward for a very long way until it was swallowed at the edge of the ocean. There it was inhabited only by the Sea People, whom she characterized as being of a fearsome nature, and who trapped the Eeima with sticky nets in the treetops, treasuring their catch for food.
On the other hand, if they took her suggestion and let their path curve away to the southwest, they would soon come to grassy savannahs, where water, game, fruits and cereals were abundant.
They had only one canteen in which to carry water. Would it be enough to last them until they reached the grassland? There was no way to gather from Eluola’s description of the way how many miles they would have to travel. It was much to Jarvis’ surprise that it took them only until mid-afternoon next day to reach a broad, though shallow, river that flowed around the edge of the grassland. Sight of the river brought more gladness to their hearts than they had known in days, and Jarvis stood for minutes, admiring the twisting line of tall, slim trees lining its banks before leading his companions down to where they could hear the wind whispering among their leaves and feel in their nostrils the crisp, clean scent of water.
They camped on the other side of the river and Jarvis decided to remain here while they regained their strength. All of them had reached the point of exhaustion, and it would take many days of rest before they would be fit to continue their trek.
Nor were the days that followed idle ones. First it was necessary to build a shelter, but before that could be done adequately, he had to have an ax. Not far away, he found a bluff made of flint, and after repeated trials, succeeded in learning how to chip the material in the way of ancient man. Using a large boulder for an anvil, he struck his chosen piece with a pointed piece of flint, chipping off slivers, shaping it into the form of an ax. The finished product was not, perhaps, as fine an ax as Acheulian man had been accustomed to wield, but it was sharp and serviceable, firmly fixed to its handle with stretched and dried thongs of hide.
Indeed, the land abounded in game and the river was full of fish, and between periods of chipping at his ax, Jarvis hunted and fished, stocking their larder with a plentiful supply. Jo and Toby roamed the plain, gathering fruit and grain from ripening grass heads.
Thanks to Mr. Murchison and his little tusks developed for rooting, they discovered tubers growing under the soil, and these provided an excellent fare, whether roasted, boiled, fried, or pounded into a flour and made into thick pancakes.
Among the animals Jarvis hunted on the savannah were deer-like creatures, six-legged and very fleet. Jarvis’ carefully placed bullets brought them down, and he thought, if they could settle here permanently, he could trap the beasts and build a herd, select some of the more favored grasses and grow grain—But he knew the dream was an idle one. The call was still within him to hurry on westward. He had a rendezvous with destiny somewhere in the west, and destiny’s name was Eamus Brock.
During the days they camped there, Eluola’s hurts mended, and at last Jo took off the splint, delighting the butterfly maid, who immediately attempted to stand up, only to fall fluttering to the ground.
Picking herself up on fluttering wings, Eluola hopped on one leg, then took off and went careening away, flashing and dipping among the treetops, the glorious trill of her song floating down to them on the wind.
Jarvis’ eyes followed her flitting progress.
“I wish I could talk to her myself—there are so many things I want to ask about this world that are hard to get across through Toby.”
“You might ask Toby how he does it,” Jo offered.
“You could if you wanted to,” Toby asserted. “I don’t know how you do it, but I just think of what I want to say and she hears me, and then I hear
her answering, like a little voice in my head.”
Summer was ending. Autumn would soon be on hand with withering grasses and shorter days. After that—winter. He could not guess how severe the weather might be at this altitude. And they must be at their rendezvous with Eamus Brock soon. He felt that throughout every fiber of his being with a kind of innate knowledge amounting to instinct.
Toby, erect, slim and tall, was years older in appearance than he had been when they had started their trek a few months ago. Something about the very atmosphere of this alien world seemed to have accelerated his development.
Jo said, “I used to draw the line at believing in things like telepathy, but Toby has provided sufficient proof that he is in telepathic communication with Eluola. If he can do it, Jeff, you possibly can too—even I, perhaps.”
“Oh, no,” said Toby ingenuously. “Not you, Jo. Jeff can, though.”
“What makes you think that?”
Jo asked a trifle waspishly.
“I don’t think it at all, Jo, but Eluola says that is the way it is. You are a child, she says—a child before children. What do you suppose she means by that?”
“A child!” Jo sniffed. “Well, I like that!”
Jeff squeezed her shoulder. “Maybe you are a child—to her. Maybe we’re all children. We know precious little about her, you know.”
“At least you can try to communicate with her,” Jo said practically. “Knowing my own place, I won’t even try.” She flounced off to attend to dinner cooking on the campfire.
* * * *
Jarvis ranged his glance among the treetops, following the clear lilt of Eluola’s song. Her wings were a blaze of color against the clear, deep blue of the sky. He felt a longing possess him, commingled of wonder and desire, and he remembered his boyhood when, upon a windy hilltop, he had watched the birds in flight among the clouds. It had seemed then to his boyish imagination that all he had to do was stretch his arms in the semblance of wings and he, too, could fly.
It was as clear to him now, that remembrance, as it had been the day he imagined it. At once, he was distant in time and space from this alien world, a boy again, alone on a hilltop, and there crept into his consciousness a sensation of what it must be like, up there among the tree-tops with Eluola, flashing bright gold, crimson, azure and bronze in the sun. And as he imagined, he imagined something further, that a tiny voice, filled with laughter and song, tinkled upon his inner ear. What he heard was as if he dreamed it, alien and far from his understanding, yet the imagined sound was utterly dear and close to his heart, as if it were pure love he listened to in distillation of that ecstatic emotion into vibrations and harmonies of thought.
The song he heard within him voiced promise of delight such as he had never known, and it set his skull to ringing with the cadence of a hymn of passion. He knew at once that it was Eluola who sang thus—not with the song of her throat but with the song of her being, which he had never before this had ears to hear. There was a sweetness and poignancy to this inner song, unheard but apprehended in the deep most recesses of his mind. He felt tears sting his eyelids, and his breath stopped in his throat. He quivered throughout his being in the ecstasy of privilege, as he listened to that imperative song.
He found Jo, grinding grass seed into meal in the shade of a feathery-leaved tree.
“I heard her, Jo!” he said tensely. “I heard Eluola’s song!”
Jo tilted her head, listening. “I can hear her, too.”
No, he thought miserably, she does not hear the real song. She hears only the noise made by the passage of air through Eluola’s throat—none at all of her soul-song which beat in a harmony scarcely made for human ears.
The weeks of hard travel had changed Jo. Her reed-like build had passed through a stage of stringiness into lean and rangy grace. The smooth line of her throat was a taut curve, and the muscles of her calves, thighs and arms were hard, her skin sunned a deep bronze. She had developed into a tough woman of the wilderness, a wild thing at one with the wild.
Jarvis’ own muscles had become hard, compact bundles of fiber filled to bursting with explosive energy. In whatever alien world they found themselves, this world had accepted them, made them over into its own likeness.
He reached out and touched her, gently, as if she were a sacred object. Feeling his fingers on her arm, she stopped grinding, looked up at him, and smiled. Something electric rippled through his muscles and he snatched back his hand. No, no, he told himself. Not now. Not in this place. There was too much to do, too far yet to go. And there was something new inside him, born of that brief insight into the song of Eluola’s soul. He had some rationalizing to do to bring his distraught senses and thoughts together.
CHAPTER 8
In spite of the lure of their camping place, they had to go on, marching southwestward under Eluola’s guidance. And as they marched, Jarvis communed with the butterfly maid with the peculiar facility he had suddenly discovered he possessed—but only discovered when he had forgotten himself and become again as a child.
“This is the world of Eloraspon, which means World of Beauty,” Eluola told him. “It is old—old as old. As you reasoned, it is not your world of Earth, which we of Eloraspon know very well. Sometimes Earth people have come here by accident and have died here, and sometimes they have accidentally returned, and we saw them no more. There are holes in the veil that separates Earth from Eloraspon, and we of our world can sense them, though it has been forbidden for many generations for any of us to pass through to Earth. We have tried to help the lone wanderers who came through from Earth by accident, but we could never speak to them as we can to you and Toby…and to Eamus Brock.”
“You know Eamus Brock?”
“Not I, myself, I know of him, as he is known among the Eeima. He is of the Mighty and comes and goes between Earth and Eloraspon as he pleases. So it has been told to me.”
“Why are you forbidden to go through the holes to Earth?”
“Alas! The holes exist no more since the earthquakes came. Why this is, I cannot guess. But generations ago, the Eeima visited your world often. The Earth-people were afraid of them, and if they saw one, tried to kill him. Many were hurt thus and fled back to Eloraspon to die. It then became the law of Eloraspon that Earth was for Earthlings, and we must no more trespass.”
Old tales of the fairies were not myths, then, Jarvis thought. He smiled grimly to himself as he reflected that they found themselves in fabled “fairyland”.
Eluola’s explanation offered a new avenue for speculation. Undoubtedly, Earth and Eloraspon somehow occupied similar positions in different “dimensions”. The earthquakes—of Elorasponian origin?—had caused the mid-western town in which he had stopped to “fall through” whatever it was that divided the one dimension from the other. But, since the earthquakes had caused the holes to close, it was impossible now to tell whether Earth still existed on the other side of that nameless veil. Still, there was hope within grasp. They yet might be able to find a way to return to Earth, and if it was at all possible, Eamus Brock would be the one to show them the way.
There were other things, too, on which Eluola shed a confused kind of light.
“We are all children of the Mighty,” she said, “you in one way and I in another. Toby is a child of you and you the child of the Mighty; whereas the woman Jo is less than a child, for she is not yet a child, but a—” the thought was meaningless, a bright flash of light, “—before children. I mean, first there is Jo and the kind of which she is; then there is your kind, and the children of your kind, such as Toby. When he is such as you, he will be a child of the Mighty, as you, and you both may become of the Mighty yourselves, which Jo can never be.”
The complex imagery of her thought resulted only in confusion for Jarvis, and he dashed speculation from his mind. Mostly, Eluola’s thoughts came to him
couched in a symbolism that flashed with the brilliance of a philosopher’s wit, but unclear to his basic understanding.
Although the physical beauty of the butterfly maid was in itself an understandable thing, the sheer beauty of her subliminal self was another thing, for which Jarvis was scarcely prepared. Now, as he communed with Eluola, he felt a new kind of emotion that was like a devouring flame. As they walked along, and the wonder of her grew upon him, he became convinced that he loved her with a passion beyond dreaming. He, in love with this miniature creature? He had to admit that he was, and to yield to it. As he slogged along, feeling the whip of grass at his calves, hearing dimly from behind the heavy progress of his companions, he communed with her on this lofty plane of love, and his soul knew utter torment with the knowledge of the disparity in their size.
At night, as he tossed on the hard ground trying to sleep, he struggled fitfully with himself, denying his passion at the same time that he let it devour him. The lust he had for Eluola’s flesh tantalized him with the bigness of her presence in his mind and taunted him with the tininess of her physical body.
Day after eternal day of endless marching brought no noticeable change in the geography of their surroundings. The pampas unrolled steadily before them, and stretched away on either side as far as the eye could reach, criss-crossed with streams, alive with game, dotted with copses of slim, elegant trees, tall but bearing little relationship in size to the super giant trees of the lowlands.
They lived, literally, off the fat of the land. Springs and brooks were so frequent that Jarvis became accustomed to carrying an empty canteen. They strode through a paradise of plenty which, though seemingly endless, Eluola assured him did have an end.
Sometimes, in communing, Eluola flashed through the air, fluttering over Jarvis’ head, and sometimes she came down and perched on his shoulder, the better to match his slow pace. And thus she sat one day, when abruptly her thoughts were shattered into a cascade of glittering shards, a piercing cry welled from her tiny throat, and she launched herself into the air. And as she beat her way upward, she began to sing, and the physical song, blending with the song of her soul, brought to his senses a comprehension of what was taking place. His heart turned leaden with the understanding, and he cast his glance upward. A mighty swarm of Eeima was sweeping over the horizon behind them, myriad upon myriad of the shining creatures, and the sky darkened with the mass of them as if banked with angry clouds thrust before a gale.
The 7th Golden Age of Weird Fiction MEGAPACK®: Manly Banister Page 60
