The Cloven

by Brian Catling

  The lost Limboia was rubbing his feet, having taken off the battered laceless work boots that he had been wearing. He did not hear the other being enter the trees and step quietly into his space.

  “Arise,” it said in a whisper from behind him, which he did, clumsily turning to look directly into the seething black face, and screamed. The guard by the woodpile heard the sound but did not identify it as human. The forest was brimming over with all kinds of cries, screeches, and barks. This was just another; some wild thing having engaged in mating or being ripped apart. They all sounded the same to him. But not to the Limboia, who all stopped eating and stood up and turned to face the same direction. This eerie concentration startled the guard, who telegraphed his dismay to his smoking comrade, who stood over the other man who had poured water on the hot iron tracks so that he could put his ear to it and listen for the train. He waved him over as he stepped forward to see if he could get a closer look at what had so galvanized the mindless ones. Then they started very slowly moving.

  CHAPTER FORTY-THREE

  Hoss had been forced again into the Vorrh with his beloved train. The new Men Without Substance were highly skilled with their own equipment and petrol-driven trucks, but were incapable of controlling and taming the cantankerous ways of the guild’s steam locomotive. It was said that at least three of the soldiers had been injured by the engine. Two by steam and one by the kickback from the heavy iron throttle lever—one of the little tricks of the old monster that Hoss had learned to anticipate and therefore master. So now he was needed and they escorted him with rifles from his home, where he’d had just enough time to find his braces and work trousers before being hoisted onto the cracked-earth road. He was trying to attach the buttons, hold up his trousers, and wave goodbye to his miserable wife, her mouth and arms resolutely folded in their crooked receding doorway as he stumbled hurriedly towards the timber yard and the obstinate hissing object of his desire.

  The train was covered in soldiers. The flatbeds were loaded with rails and sleepers. They had even erected a crane on one of them. Machine-gun platforms had been added to the first and last truck, and Hoss wondered what they expected to encounter inside the Vorrh. There had been much talk about all the tribes of the Lands Without Substance going to war. It was even rumoured that there was not enough killing ground there, so they were bringing their battles here, where they could spread them wide and lonely. Perhaps that is what they hoped for once outside the city walls.

  Hoss was very interested in the machine guns; he had never seen one before but had heard about what they could do. So once the steam was up, all the gauges checked and working, and the pistons and wheels greased and ready to flex their shining muscles, he put down his spanners and wiped his hands. He strolled away from the dripping, steaming mass towards the first carriage and the man in the dwarf tower sitting behind the svelte beast of the gun, its long barrel swivelling this way and that.

  “That’s a mighty weapon,” he called up to the sweating soldier, who ignored him. “It must fire many rounds.”

  The gunner had no intention of starting a conversation with an ignorant black and rechecked the long belt of cartridges that ran through the articulated jaws of the breach. Plagge had been watching the pointless tableau and grew irritated in the process. He strutted up to the wide, dirty driver.

  “Why have you left your engine? You must stay there, we will soon be ready to leave.”

  Hoss looked down at Plagge sweating in his tight, dark uniform and dragged the rag from his loose-fitting overall pocket and wiped his face with it.

  “I was looking at this gun. I like machines, Bwana.”

  “I don’t care what you like, go back to the engine and leave this soldier alone.”

  “What calibre is it?” asked Hoss, stretching up and touching the barrel.

  Plagge stared at the impudent hand fondling the weapon. “Don’t touch that ordinance,” he snapped.

  “Thirty millimetre?”

  A sudden loud hiss from the impatient engine gathered their attention. Hoss was instantly drawn back, ignoring the diminutive Plagge as if he were never there. Whistles were being blown from among the hurrying ranks of soldiers. Officers were calling orders. Overhead birds were circling, some alarmed out of their trees around the station, others attracted by the bustle. So many humans always meant food. Higher under the thin sheeting of clouds, darker, larger birds wheeled in languid circles. Their fist-size eyes calculated the quantities of flesh.

  Hoss was shouted at in his hot, oven-like cabin behind the gallons of boiling water and rigid contained fire. He had been given a soldier to stoke the fire. A man who never spoke to him once. Hoss touched his chest and then the picture of the angel, its broken frame wired onto the thick black steel. He opened the throat of the engine’s shrill whistle and white steam shrieked through the dense humid air, like a razor through a pillow. He unwound the brake and eased the throttle forwards. A wet sensual power shuddered into motion, the piston hearts of the engine filling and discharging anticipation. The heavy length of the overladen flatbeds rolled forward, seeking the momentum sleeping in the rails. The soldiers, engineers, and officers braced themselves and began to enjoy the movement. This was to be a good outing, a logistic exercise in the vast forest that stretched out before them. Enjoyable and rewarding in contrast to the muddled battles and confused bloodshed that some of them had witnessed early in the year. The extension of the line through the forest was beneficial civil engineering, a gift in the tactics of invasion.

  Twenty minutes later, and all sign and sound of the train had disappeared. The birds returned to the trees and the platform, seeking peace or scraps of food. The larger birds had moved off, following the trail of meat. One man remained in the fluttering space, now so devoid of humans. Anton Fleischer stood motionless as the last vibrations faded from the tracks.

  * * *

  The black face of the shapeshifter pulsed as he led the escapee back onto the broader path. If Ishmael was still under the heavy mass of gleaming ants, then he had changed. Even the walk of this man, if indeed he still was a man, was different: a quieter more unhurried gait, marked by a grace that had never been there before. The other Limboia approached and closed their eyes while Ishmael moved among them placing his seething hands above their heads. Each knelt until the whole mass of men were below him. A stillness moved through the trees, as if for the first time ever they had something to observe. The birds hushed and the breeze dropped and every leaf and whine seemed to feel its weight and cup it against the thin magnetism that holds everything together. Only the sound of arrows catching and falling in the branches could be heard.

  Of course, the forest cared nothing about the flickering life of men. What had occurred was a moment of reflection. A refraction in the polished indifference of the Vorrh when the unearthly radiance of the soulless ones found a sympathetic index that agreed in its opacity. The Vorrh mirrored the transition perfectly with as much empathy as silvered glass feels for those who peer into it.

  Two of the attendant guards followed the Limboia. The third stayed with his ear pressed to the track. The sight that greeted them confounded all their expectations: the kneeling Limboia were humming. A low moaning throb passed between. Ishmael stood at their centre, his black writhing hands holding his head, so that the ants could flow freely, making one mass out of the once separate parts of his anatomy. The guards looked at one another and unholstered their pistols, then turned and ran.

  * * *

  Modesta was moving fast ahead of her crippled party, still shooting arrows high into the canopy before her. Her bursting quiver of arrows was alive with ants. They were getting so thick that the mottled woman hesitated, not wanting to put her hands on the livid mass. The trees were very dense here with the sinewy vines heavily meshed between them. The way forward was becoming impossible.

  “Kippa, come here,” called Lutchen.

  The
mass of the grinning youth bumped into them as he stood behind their dwarfed backs.

  “Can you clear some of this away and open the path?” the priest asked, pointing into the tangled mass.

  “Kippa get,” he said, leaning between them, almost knocking the slender woman over with his enthusiasm. He pushed his great fist into the vines and tore them savagely apart. “Kippa get.”

  They were all staring ahead when they heard it. A sound like an animal charging through the thick undergrowth, very nearby. They cringed, waiting for the boar, rhino, or worse to come crashing into their delicate space. Then they saw that it was not something arriving but something going. A great shrapnel of leaves, snapped-off branches, and yanked vines scurried and imploded a few yards away.

  The Wassidrus was gone, pulled away sideways through the undergrowth at ground height.

  “Quick!” shouted Lutchen without knowing why, and the three of them rushed at the shaking hole in the matted green. Inside its torn flutter could be seen the mass of his body and the top of his pointed head, moving quickly away, surrounded by yellow swags of movement and the overpowering stench of the anthropophagi. They were dragging him farther and farther into the impenetrable foliage.

  “They are taking him!” shouted Lutchen, more to define his own amazement than to inform. But Kippa now understood and wailed out a terrible cry of defeat, and then sobbed up another and another, which almost drowned out the voice of the Wassidrus.

  “Shut up,” screamed the priest to the slobbering giant. “Listen…”

  “They will eat him, eat him all up,” Kippa blubbered.

  “Listen.”

  Inside the noise of the snapping wood and the scuffle of earth there was another sound, a coo-cooing and the repetition of a single word trapped in the cradle of the aborted baby speak. It was faint but not uttered by a victim. Not squealed by a wounded quarry. It sounded more like a joyful egging on, an encouragement, an instruction, a spur. It said, “Purrradyce.”

  The undergrowth was quiet now, and the three survivors stood without words. There should have been a sense of relief, a thanking God for his departure, but none arose. In its place was shock and an icy dread. The act that had just occurred did not really have a name or a suitable description to pin it down and hold it sealed for cataloguing. It had been too fast and yet so obviously slow. The Wassidrus must have been speaking to them all the time. Planning what was beginning to feel like his escape. Could that be true? Was there enough vigour left in the freshly leaking wound of a man? The priest looked at the woman and asked the question behind his eyes. She seemed paler than normal, her thin limbs childlike and without expression or any of the strength that had so fervently held the bow. She stared at the ground where the arrow now lay, seeking some kind of resolution among the small stones and arid soil.

  “Not eat him?” said Kippa in a very quiet voice.

  Nobody answered because they did not know how to explain or even say the words that filled their mouths. Did not know how to begin to describe the rage that had motivated and planned the escape. The rage that had always driven the man, kept the wreck alive, and now propelled the monster towards his place of healing. Lutchen began to tremble at the thought of what would one day return if that wraith found a way to repair its wrecked body. Modesta broke the circle and moved forwards.

  “We must go on,” she said, and the other two followed her.

  They walked with their backs to the direction of the monster’s departure, never wanting to see the low gash in the undergrowth between the trees again. There was no more expectation in their quest, they simply plodded towards what Modesta told them was inevitable.

  * * *

  Ishmael, or what had been Ishmael, was waiting for them. He was surrounded by half the Limboia, who were changed in a subtle and overwhelming way. They were no longer slaves. They all smiled gently and held their bodies in a calm ownership. The absence in their souls had been replaced, filled with a future that belonged to nobody. Because now they were all extensions of the Black Man of the Forest. Their bodies were his, his being and will filled them, and their energy flowed into him. Father Lutchen, Modesta, and the much-shrivelled Kippa walked into their presence without amazement. The journey and its horrors had robbed them of that and of the great purpose that had magnetically pulled them all this way. The sunlight was blinding in the clearing and Ishmael’s partials of face made a wide smile to greet them. Kippa fell to his knees, instantly recognising the being from the ancient prophesies. The woman and the priest walked forward in a trance of unknowing, the bow held before them like an offering or a key. The black hands received it and the life between them became one. A radiance of shadows exchanged between the taut purple sinews and the insect-rippling grip. The Black Man of the Forest’s face boiled, seethed, and undulated until finally settling into a composition of eyes, a head made of a great cluster of eyes looking in all directions and seeing nothing and everything. All the Limboia raised their hands above their heads and made the sign of a halo. Modesta fell to the ground in a fit that removed her memory, and Lutchen saw a vision of them all entering Essenwald. But not the city of hungry commerce, acting European in its tastes and controls, but another one overgrown and foreshadowed with young trees; the road between it and the forest seamless; the height of its sharp spires pulled out of focus by clinging vines and choking moss; its buildings vacant of white men and the birds and creatures of the trees nesting there; its streets hollowed by relentless growth, the warm wind of the Vorrh curling through its emptiness.

  The Black Man of the Forest suddenly knelt before Modesta in a movement that flowed and had nothing to do with human anatomy. Modesta leaned closer and their faces touched. The ants swarmed over her, joining their heads into one shuddering mass. Her clothing was shredded in seconds and her mottled naked body became the same as his: an undulating blue-black writhing sleekness. The bodies folded to the moist ground and the Limboia turned away, encouraging Lutchen and Kippa to do the same. A pulse came out of their union that made the forest floor vibrate. It grew in intensity as they shifted and exchanged, slid, rocked, and shook in the shapes of all things. Before and after Adam and Eve had been a gleam in the universe’s eye.

  * * *

  After the first fifteen hours the unprepared officers felt the full effect of the Vorrh, as did every article made of wood in their luggage. Hoss drove on. An intense uncomfortable apathy drained them as the train trundled deeper and deeper into the trees. A sullen nausea started to gnaw at the brightness of their purpose. They explained this to one another as the effect of the rickety carriage over a long period of time. The curling growths of limp shoots extruding from the varnished luggage rack they saw as being the result of inadequate cleaning by the idle native staff. It was near dawn when they decided to stop the train so that they might get some rest in the quiet of the forest without being rattled out of their stiff bunks by the violent pulse that was being felt in every inch of the train, which added to the sickening sensations of all the other unpleasant motion. They opened a case of wine to celebrate their wisdom. A soldier was sent to tell the driver to stop for an hour or so. He climbed along the side of train and fell into the driver’s cabin, telling Hoss the plan. Hoss thought he misunderstood the shouted command over the noise of his engine. When Hoss finally did understand, he said no. Plagge was the next person to appear on the steaming footplate.

  “Stop the train!” he bellowed.

  “We cannot stop here, nobody ever stops in the Vorrh. We must go on,” Hoss shouted back.

  “We will stop to sleep for an hour and then continue.”

  “We must not stop here.”

  “Must not?”

  “It is too dangerous.”

  Plagge considered the driver’s advice for a second or two. He watched the black imbecile touch something in the cabin when he said the word “dangerous.” Plagge moved inside the tight space to
examine it. In the forge-like glow of the firebox and the swinging oil lamp and the first few weak rays of the sun, he could make out a foolish ragged picture of an angel bathed in a rainbow of celestial light. He looked up at the looming black man and then laughed and grabbed at the carefully wired frame, wrenching it from its sanctum, and threw it hard into the fast-receding darkness of the night.

  “Now, you pig, stop the train!”

  Hoss stared in outraged shock, his hand hanging on the regulator, which was set to full throttle. The other hand was bunched into a fist. He looked away from the little shouting man into the direction where his picture lay smashed and torn, somewhere back in the vanished darkness. He then took his hand off the controls and backed away, scared of the consequences if he got any closer to Plagge. He also knew that this foolish stranger had just committed an act of extremely bad magic and that the savage gods were now waiting to pounce.

  “Stop the train,” Plagge bellowed again as Hoss shook his head.

  Plagge started to unlatch his holster as the two men moved around each other in the confined burning-hot space. Then he saw the lever. It was three feet long and painted bright red like the throttle. It was the only significant other control of the engine amid the writhing mass of dark pipes and sullen gauges, so it was obviously the brake. Plagge left the pistol in its holster and grabbed the massive lever, squeezing the clasp to release it from its locking ratchet.

  “I will do it myself.” He laughed and put the full force of his weight and strength onto the lever, pushing it all the way back.

  Hoss screamed “No!” and scrabbled backwards onto the piles of coal, frantically clawing his way up. His panicked feet were kicking the slipping heap of coal, making a scree of it slide onto the footplate, where it rattled and bounced as a crunching scream buckled through every inch of the engine. Plagge felt the lever buck and shudder with such force that it started to dislocate the joints of his fingers. He flew away from it as a series of sharp metal cracks turned into deafening explosions. At the back of the coal tender Hoss was wrapping empty sacks around his thick neck and head. All the bolts and pins that held the hammering thick steel rods that piston-spun the wheels sheared and the massive rods came free. The scream from the engine burst Plagge’s eardrums and blood spurted from his nose. The lever that he had so determinedly pulled was not the brake but the reverser. At full speed he had just forced all the power of the engine to run backwards against its own red-hot direction and the tons of implacable momentum from the hurtling flatbeds. His eyes bulged as he saw Hoss throw himself over the side of the speeding train. For a moment he thought he had imagined it, then realised that the insane driver had actually jumped. A second later the rods flew in all directions. Those that spun outwards felled trees in a glance. Those that went inwards ground wheels to earsplitting fragments of shrapnel and those that went upwards penetrated the firebox and boiler with such force that the violated steam held its breath in shock for a second before it lacerated the night. The train was hamstrung in fifteen seconds, sent earthquaking death throes backwards into its carriages in twenty seconds, and was totally butchered in a minute. Everything on the flatbeds slid backwards and the chains that held the huge bulk of timber and steel snapped like uncooked spaghetti. The soldiers were thrown off like rag dolls and the officers were spilt and crushed in the enclosed carriage with their furnishings and bottles. The rear gunner was wiped off the last flatbed and onto the speeding track, and the front gunner was obliterated by flying coal and irregular steel blades. His machine gun spat defiantly back at the peeling engine in its cauldron of smoke and blistering steam. Plagge was caught in between and remained in one piece for just long enough to squeal for his long-dead mother.