by M. R. Carey
The top platform was empty, but that didn’t mean it was going to stay that way. I went to one of the corner posts, and I leaned on it hard to test that it was still sound. Of course it was. My mother give the wood for the repairs, and she never let a plank or a pole go out of her workshop until she was satisfied with it.
There was a rail there, around the height of someone’s waist, that was wooden too. I scrambled up on it, and balancing with my one hand on the corner post I throwed my bundle out onto the lookout’s roof. Then I shinnied up the post and climbed up after it. I would of dashed my brains out if I fell, but the climbing wasn’t no harder than climbing the wall of the broken house when we was children.
I crawled up to the mid-ridge of the roof. There was three pegs at one end of it that was for hanging signal flags for times when warning had got to be give to the village without raising a hue. I tied the rope I got from Catrin to one of the three pegs and myself to the other end of it so if I rolled over in the night I would not fall off the edge and die from a hard waking.
Then, having done all I could, I lay down full length on the wooden shingles and closed my eyes.
That night lives in my memory. The strangest thing about it is that I slept deep. I had been shut underground for a long time, and in fear of my life. The wind that whipped around me from time to time was cold, but it smelled richly of the world, having the sharp bite of pine resin, the earthiness of mould, the sweetness of fruit that had not made it to the ground when it fell but broke on the shingles and left its juice and its memory there. I found some happiness in them smells, and then some peace. The next thing I knowed, morning light was touching my face and the birds was telling their prideful tales to anyone that cared to listen.
I was slow in coming up out of that sleep. A moment later, I realised what the light meant and I made to scramble up, but the tied rope kept me from moving more than an inch or two. It was a lucky thing I tied it well, for otherwise I would of pushed myself right off the roof with moving so sudden.
I seen quick enough there wasn’t no reason to be scared. The light was grey, coming from a sky full of heavy cloud. The closest trees was fifty paces off anyway, and couldn’t reach me here. I was safe enough for now.
I stretched my arms and legs a few times to get the cramps out of them. I et a little mutton and drunk a few swallows of water. Then I untied the rope and made my way back down to the ground.
I stood there for a little while, without an idea in my head. This being the half-outside, it was not a place I could stay in for long. It wasn’t hardly a place at all really, being neither village nor forest but only a rag or ribbon of ground that was not claimed by either one.
Then of a sudden I heard the hail from the main lookout in Mythen Rood, the old sentry calling off and the new one calling on. It took me by surprise, and it made my heart hurt a little bit. It was a sound I knowed well, but I was hearing it a different way now, for I was outside the fence. I was not one of them being guarded, but one of the things they was guarding against.
I had got to go. If I lingered long here, I was bound to be seen, and that would bring disaster on my kin. It was not easy to move though, for that meant going into the forest. I had never gone there alone, nor ever give thought to such a thing. Hunters went among the trees with their weapons ready and their hearts running like hares. They took their catch as quick as they could, as close as they could to the roofs of home and the safety of the high fence. The forest wasn’t a place that liked us much at all, except as meat.
I whispered goodbye to my mother and my sisters. Their names come scraping up out of my throat like they had sharp edges to them, and the ache of it brung tears to my eyes. That was a good thing in a way though. Saying their names made me feel a mite closer to them, and the crying, being loud, forced me to walk away from the fence at last, in case I was heard and discovered.
I took the first path that offered, which was a hunting trail. It led me down into the stake-blind, along its narrow channel for a hundred steps or so and then up again on the far side. The trees loomed right in front of me there, stretching up into the sky, shouldering each other aside, or so it seemed, to get a look at me.
That was only my fear, though, and not a real thing I was seeing. The trees was sleeping the dull day away and give no sign they even knowed I was there. Don’t be such a coward, Koli, I says to myself. Think of them men and women of the before times, that had such knowing of trees they could tell them what to do and when to do it. Imagine you’re one of them men of old, and be brave. Imagine the trees bowing down in front of you, like you’re their king.
But I was still just me, for all them words. I didn’t go into the forest like a king, but like a dog that’s just been whipped or fears it’s about to be. The only thing that give me any comfort at all was the path. I had walked it a hundred times when I was out with the catchers, so my feet was among the many that had made it. Where the sentry shout had made me feel how outside I was, the path reminded me that the outside was not just all the one same thing. The path was put there by us, and shaped by us using it. It led to other paths that was made the same way for the same purpose. And beyond them there was the markers we painted up on rocks here and there, or slashed into the bark of the oldest trees, to give direction to them as might be lost. And further out still there was houses of haven – a cave in the wall of the valley, a log cabin in the lee of a hill and suchlike places – for our hunters and catchers to shelter in if they was benighted in among the trees. It was like Mythen Rood was the most inside of a whole lot of different insides, and though I was outside the fence yet I was not outside of everything.
My fear of the trees didn’t lessen though. I was watching the sky with every step I took in case it gun to clear. This was a day we would of said was safe for hunting, for the clouds was thick and dark. But I was skittish, and did not trust them.
I come over a rise, and the valley was away under me as far as I could see. I was looking at the tops of trees in the far distance, in between the jostling flanks of the trees that was near to hand. Under my feet was a narrow strip of packed dirt, cut through a mass of nettles, burdock and speargrass out of which the spiky ropes of bramble sprung up high and threatening. I heard a skein of crows go by, high overhead, screaming bloody murder, though I couldn’t see them. Then an echo bird said the same sounds, only mixed with what sounded like a dog’s bark. Under the trees’ wide arms, close enough that I could of reached up and touched them, spiders as big as my head run back and forth in their great webs, plucking a thread here and there to spread the word about some danger or some meal that they had seen coming. It could of been me they was talking about, though whether that was as a danger or a meal I couldn’t rightly tell.
This being Winter, there was no flower smells in the air. Only wood and earth and rot, and under that an animal smell that was strong and rank. I thought a fox or a tree-cat must of walked this way not long before I come.
I had got a hard choice to make. The paths was mostly made for hunters and catchers to use. They went round in big, nested curves on the south side of the valley, most times turning back when they come to the river. When they turned back, they always come the same way, towards the village where it would not do me no good to go.
So I had got to think of somewhere else to go, and I had got to do it soon. I couldn’t sleep out in the forest and have much hope of waking. A cave down by the river might offer some shelter, but there was many beasts besides me that would take such an offer. I knowed how to set traps, so I could live for a few days eating small deer and such if I did not get myself et along the way. But in the long road I had got to get myself taken in somewhere. Nobody ever choosed to live alone in the outside even for a little while, except only Ursala, and she had the drudge to guard her while she slept.
The nearest place I could go to was Ludden. I knowed it lay east of Mythen Rood, and I knowed four miles of walking would bring me there. There was even a road if I could find it, or at least there used
to be one. Jemiu said when she was a girl it was kept open all year round, except for the hottest days of Summer. Obviously nobody walked it then, but come Falling Time the people of both villages would be out there, Ramparts among them, opening it up again with axes and saws and tech.
It had been years, though, since Mythen Rood and Ludden had talked each with other. Dam Catrin got news of our neighbours now from Ursala, and if it was news worth telling she passed it along on meet-days in the Count and Seal. I could not remember the last time even that happened.
Them arguments might of give me pause another time, but right then they struck me as good things for a man in the corner I was in. If Ludden got no better tell of Mythen Rood than we did of them, they wouldn’t know I was made faceless. They would cast a cold eye on a stranger walking the road all alone, but they might take me in if I told them I was a woodsmith from a family of woodsmiths, with years of catching and cutting to my name. Sowby was a bigger settlement, no doubt, and might give me a warmer welcome, but Sowby was as far again as Ludden and I would have to pass through the dangerous place called the Foot to get there.
So I set my sights on Ludden, and for a beginning I cast around to find the road. I stayed on the catchers’ path for as far as it went, and after that I kept on going. The compass Catrin give me showed me where the east was, but at first I couldn’t find no trace of the road that should of been there. I tacked north and south of the true line, back and forth with my eyes on the ground, hoping to see a space between the trees that looked like it might be a made thing.
For a long time there wasn’t nothing. Then I seen a cairn of stones that had been piled up. The top one had a sign painted on it, rust red, in the shape of a hand with one finger raised up and three closed down. That was a way marker, and the four fingers meant a distance of four miles between here and somewhere – most likely Ludden. It also meant I was standing on a road, for there couldn’t be a way marker without a way to be marked.
Once I seen that, I read the ground altogether differently. Where the cairn was, there was a strip or ribbon about three strides wide that lay a little lower than the ground on either side. It wasn’t like it was a cleared space, for there was bushes and seedlings and weeds a-plenty on it, and no shortage of saplings, but the growth was less in that shallow dip than it was on either side, and the line of the dip was marked by cupflowers, which will take the vantage of any break in the ground to make their traps for bugs to fall into. This was the road then, or what was left of it.
I followed the line of flowers into the deep woods, being careful not to step on any of the cups, for they was filled with a stuff that would sting and itch you till you wanted to cut your own foot off. I was wearing the boots Spinner give me, but cupflower sap will go through even the thickest leather.
A man can walk four miles in a lot less than two hours, and not be short of breath when he comes to the end of it, but you’d be a fool to walk at that pace in the forest. For one thing, you would be sure to make a noise. And even if you didn’t, the slap of your soles and heels on the ground, coming in a kind of pattern of samenesses on account of the length of your stride, would get some attention on its own account. You’d have molesnakes wrapped round your ankles, thick as streamers on Summer-dance, before you’d gone a hundred steps. They’d clog your steps till you went down, then knifestrikes would fight them for the bits of you they could get a claw to. Or else something bigger would come and chase them all away, and then at least you’d get to be et all at once instead of in bits and pieces.
So I took my time and walked what’s called the catcher’s walk, two steps and then three with a pause in between to break up the pattern in case anything was tracking it.
Oftentimes too I had got to leave the road on account of trees that had moved to block it sometime since it was last cleared. And one time there was a kind of a pit in the middle of the way that something had made there, tunnelling up as it seemed to me from underneath. It was narrow enough to jump across, but deep enough that you couldn’t see nothing but darkness down inside it. I thought of the cupflowers’ traps, and I did not jump across but walked around a long, long way. And when I come back to the road, I kept on looking back over my shoulder until a bend come in between. Whatever digged that pit, I did not want to meet it, especially not in its own house.
There was no way to tell the passing of the day without the sun, and the sun was kind enough not to show itself, but I reckon I had been walking an hour or so when I found the second cairn. The topmost stone was marked again in the same rust-red paint showing a hand with two fingers up. That lifted my spirits somewhat, after the scare I got from that pit. I was still on the right way, and making good time.
I did not stay happy for long though. A little while after that, I heard movement from back along the road, like there was something following me. I pushed on faster, but still breaking my pace the way I done before. Then hearing the crackle of leaves and branches even louder, I stepped off the road and hid myself in some bushes that did not look like they was poison nor preying.
The thing that was following me come by at a fast lick. I heard the thumping of its feet as it passed me. Whatever it was, I knowed it had got to be fierce for it didn’t trouble to slow, nor to go quietly. I was minded to look out and see, but I knowed that was foolish thinking. I digged myself in deeper in the bushes instead, and by and by there was stillness again so I come out and went on my way.
When it seemed like it might be the middle of the afternoon, I stopped and et a couple more bites of mutton, taking some bread with it this time and washing the whole lot down with a swig of water. The waterskin was still good and heavy, but it was clear to see the bread and meat wouldn’t last me long. If I got a cold answer at Ludden, there was going to be nothing for it but to hunt or trap something, though I didn’t have nothing I could use for the venture except only a short knife.
I got on my way again, but my troubles only worsened after that. I come upon some more of them deep-digged holes, just exactly like the first one, which made me certain sure that something living had made them. I walked wide around them whenever I seen them, but it troubled me that they was so many, coming closer and closer together so I had them before me and behind me as I walked. If I stumbled or stepped on a branch, and the things that was hid in them stirred and come up above ground, I was like to be surrounded.
Then it come on to rain. Rain was not so bad as sun by a long way, but it brung its own dangers for there was things that woke and become lively with wet weather. Some of them things was bugs that could bite or sting. Then because of the bugs there was molesnakes that come and lay out on the ground, brown side uppermost so they looked like nothing more than a scuff of dirt until they moved. There was also the sound of the rain that covered the sound of other things coming up on you until they was too close to be escaped.
None of the clothes I brung was proof against rain, so I was very soon soaked to the skin and shivering with the cold. I give up in the end and took shelter under a choker tree. Its lower branches, curved round me like claws, give me a twisting feeling in my gut, but I trusted the tree would not get restless in such cold, dark weather as this.
While I was sitting with my back to the choker’s trunk, three rats run by me. I would of been afraid, for they was as big as dogs, but they didn’t so much as look at me as they passed. A moment later, I heard the breaking of twigs and stomp of feet again from somewhere very close. It might be the thing that had come by me before, or something else, but whatever it was I didn’t care to meet it. I stepped around the trunk and backed away with slow and careful steps into a stand of ferns that was higher than my head.
It was not a wise thing to do, I seen that at once. The ferns was thick, hiding the ground at my feet, so I couldn’t see what might be down there. And the branches over my head was big ones that dipped down almost to my shoulders. Anything up above that got the scent of me and found it pleasing could walk a short, straight road to its dinner.
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br /> But it was too late to change my mind, for the thing that was moving on the road was so close now I could taste its shadow, as they say. Any second now, it was going to come into sight.
There was nothing for it but to hide and hope I was not gone out of the fish-pan straight into the firepit. I ducked down in the ferns until they was up over my head.
The thing, whatever it was, come crashing and thrashing by. It stopped a while, which had got to mean it seen my footprints on the road and was sniffing around them. I was grateful now for the heavy rain. A light shower will freshen a scent, but a downpour scatters and drowns it.
Then of a sudden I seen a sight that was a deal less welcome. Something unfolded itself out of the weeds and earth in front of me, like the earth itself was rearing up and moving. I stared at it, dumb and scared, until it opened its mouth. The streaked red and black inside that mouth, and the four fangs at the corners of it, told me what I was seeing. It was a molesnake.
I did what you’re meant to do in such a case. I froze still where I was and made no move at all. A molesnake sees only two things, which is movement and heat, but them two is enough in most cases for it to find you. I was chilled from the rain, but I still was warmer than the air all round me. When the snake started to sway from side to side and gaped its mouth even wider, I knowed it was going to strike.
I spread my fingers, slower than slow. The onliest chance I would have, when the snake moved, was if I could grab it right behind its head and hold it away from me, far enough so it couldn’t bite. But I knowed how fast molesnakes was, and I did not hold much hope.
I heard heavy steps further off. The thing on the road had started moving again, away from where I was hid.
I drawed a breath, held it as long as I could then gun to let it out. Of a sudden, the snake reared up and back. Breath’s hot, I thought, too late. The brown, fanged thing, as thick as my arm, snapped like a whip.
At the exact same time, a tawny brown mass drooped from out of the branch above. Claws as long as my hand’s span snicked out and stabbed home. The tree-cat yawned. Its mouth was as wide across as its body was long. Two rows of dagger-sharp teeth was in there, with a sliver of red between, so it looked like a fence had met its reflection. It bit down, seemingly with no haste at all, and the snake’s head was gone.