by M. R. Carey
The tree-cat spit the head out, hacking and hawing a little to clear any poison that was left in its mouth. Then it commenced to eat. It didn’t try to part flesh from bone, but bit off and crunched down everything that was there. The molesnake’s head stared up at me out of the grass, its mouth still gaped to bite me as though it didn’t guess yet that it was dead.
I sit there still until the cat was done with its meal. It looked at me once or twice in that time – a hard, hooded look like it thought I might try to join in the feast and it was warning me not to – but it made no move to hurt me. When there was nothing left to eat, it jumped back up onto its branch and padded back up into the leaves where it had been hid before. Its yellow eye winked once as it passed me, like as to say we was sharing a good joke between the two of us.
It was a while after that before I stood up and walked out of the ferns. The road was clear, both ways, and the sky was clearing too.
36
The way got easier. I never seen the third cairn but I come upon the fourth, knocked down and spilled across the road, the top stone overturned. When I turned it right-side up again, I seen the hand mark with four fingers raised instead of the three I was expecting.
Being closer than I thought, I pressed on. I was wary of lookouts and guard posts, ready to throw myself down on the ground if anyone took me for a shunned man and pitched an arrow or slung a stone at me.
I sniffed the air from time to time too. Oftentimes when I come back from catching or hunting, the first clue that we was getting close to Mythen Rood was cooking smells in the air, or smoke from a fire. But there was nothing like that here, just the same animal and tree and rot smells that had been with me the whole way. I didn’t hear no shouts nor clatter neither, though the wind was sitting just north of east and you might expect such sounds to carry.
I was keeping one eye on the sky, and I didn’t see nothing good there. The clouds that had brung that sudden rain was rolling away fast, and the glow in their underbelly told me the sun was right behind, just waiting for his moment. There was no clearings to hand if that light should break through. The road itself was a part-way cleared space, but I could not count on it to save me. If the trees gun to move, I would not have nowhere to hide. I quickened my pace as much as I dared, though I kept to the three-two rhythm of the catcher’s walk. The ground was still wet, and I did not want to meet another molesnake.
The sky got lighter still. I could see some blue up there now. I told myself the gap in the clouds was still some ways off, and the wind was not strong. But by and by there come the sound that I was listening to hear and not wanting to. Only it was lots of sounds really – creaks and cracks coming from all around me, as if every door in the world had been left unlocked and was slowly falling open.
The trees was waking.
I gun to run then for all I was worth. I didn’t have no purpose in mind, just a hope that there might be a place up ahead of me where the forest come to an end, though there wasn’t no reason at all to think so. I was a long way yet from Ludden. Otherwise I would of heard a hail or seen smoke going up from their hearthfires.
The trees that was closest to the path was not chokers but triptails. Their branches was like a willow’s, hanging all the way down onto the ground – and an inch or two down under it, as I knowed full well. One by one, behind me and up ahead and all around, they sprung their traps, lashing up out of the dirt with their spiked ends curled like sickles, to catch animals as was running there.
Catchers and hunters was trained for this. There was a shiver in the ground before the triptail sprung. I was not used to wear such good boots though, and the thickness of the leather throwed off my sense of it. A triptail sprung up right in front of me, and only missed catching me by an inch and a blink. It raked my arm instead, and I all but dropped my pack as it tugged at me, but then I swung away and was free of it.
The chokers was leaning down now, and the triptails parted like a curtain. Their thinner trunks couldn’t hold against their bigger, wider kin, and didn’t try. The chokers’ lower branches opened up like fingers on a great big hand, and the trunks dipped and twisted an inch or two at a time. The slowness of that movement was deceptive, for it was like the drawing back of a bowstring. I knowed they would be much faster when they struck. Not as fast as the tree-cat, maybe, but faster than I could duck or run from.
I was running this whole time with my head down and my elbows going like pump handles. A choker branch swept across the path ahead of me. I jumped clear over it and kept on going as it ploughed the muddy earth behind me. All along the road I seen more trees leaning in. They would close like the bars of a cage until there wasn’t no way of climbing through. I might last a little longer if I freezed still and tried not to breathe, but the chokers would keep on moving until late or soon a branch would brush against me, and then I would be cooked for sure.
So I just kept running the same way a rabbit does, breaking this way and that in the hope of shaking off what’s behind. But what was behind was everywhere else too, so that was no hope at all.
Of a sudden, a wall rose up in front of me, steep and sheer. It was a green wall, made all out of bramble and ivy and ropeknot. And set in the middle of it, level with the path I was running on, there was a narrow gap like a door that was just open.
A door in the forest was a thing out of story, and in the story there would be an elf or an ogre on the other side, but I did not think twice. I plunged right through, with choker branches slapping and swinging at my heels and twined ropes of bramble ripping at my face and arms.
I tripped on one of them ropes, and went down so hard I rolled over and over in deep grass and tall thistles. I scrambled up again at once, not knowing if I was safe or still pursued, looking on all sides for waked trees that was moving in on me.
But there wasn’t any. And that wall I just run through looked different from this side. There was still ivy and knotweed crawling all over it, but under that vexatious green I seen a line of planed wooden planks, all set tight together, in a right line except for the open place where I had just come through.
It was a fence, and the open place was a gate. A choker branch was moving there, slapping the ground inside the fence like a cat sticking its paw in a mousehole.
My mind all in a daze, I looked around me. There was weeds and saplings and towering brakes of bramble everywhere, but beyond them there was humps and hillocks with strange shapes, all overgrowed. The hillocks was set apart, in rows, with great masses of knotweed in between. Nothing moved or made a sound in all that empty strangeness.
Did you ever see one of them puzzles where someone has drawed a picture and it’s a man’s face or maybe a woman’s? And then they turn the picture upside down and it’s something else, like a dog or a bird? A beard becomes a mane, the lines on a frowning forehead turn into a wing, and other tricks of that nature. My mind done that right then, turning the world upside down to see what had been in front of me all along.
Ludden was not a fair walk up ahead of me. Ludden was this, right here. Them humps and hillocks was houses, half-swallowed up by weeds and young saplings. The forest had come all the way up to the fence and jumped on over it, nor nobody had lifted a hand to interfere.
“Hey!” I shouted. I could not forbear, though it was a foolish and a dangerous thing to do. “Hey, it’s a visitor that’s here, inside your gate. I’m Koli Woodsmith, from Mythen Rood.”
Some birds took flight at the noise I was making, and one or two of them squawked what they thought about that ruckus, but from the villagers I would of looked to find there was never an answer. It was like I stood in a cursed place, not in the real world, for there was nothing I knowed that would make the people of the village stand by while their homes was attacked and whelmed like this.
A bad fright will make you weak oftentimes, but this one time I got some strength from my fear. I pushed my way forward through the weeds, hacking with the knife when I could and tearing with my fingers for the rest
.
On all sides of me I seen the houses. That same wave of green had come against all of them, and splashed up the walls, and over the roofs, and in at the doors and windows that was mostly either hanging open or broke in.
I turned all around in a circle, my knees shaking and my mouth all dry. “Hey!” I shouted out. “I’m Koli! I’m Koli from Mythen Rood. Where are you?” I yelled them words again and again, sometimes in my own tongue and sometimes in the Franker language we used to talk to people from villages further off. It made no difference. I still got the same answer, which was none at all.
A wild dog come out of one of the houses and stood facing me for a few moments before he padded away into all that wild green and was lost to my sight. It seemed like there wasn’t no wight nor beast in Ludden that wanted to stay and hold parley with me.
I tucked my knife into my belt and walked on into the village, like as I was in a dream. I never seen nobody, alive nor dead. Just the ruin and the stillness, and the forest that had come in slow but sure to lay down its claim on this place and make it good.
The numbness of surprise wore off of me then, and panic fear took a hold of me. I would of turned and walked back out onto the road, only there was trees all around that would scoop me up and squeeze me dry as soon as I put my nose out of the gate. I was stuck here until the clouds set in again.
I run in and out of some of the houses, hoping I might find someone, anyone, that was left alive and could tell me what had happened. But there wasn’t nobody to be seen, and nothing to say where they’d gone. Them doors that was broken in, it was only a great push of weeds that broke them, not a violent hand. Inside, chairs and tables was where they was meant to be, with plates laid out on some of them and pots on the range. There hadn’t been no reaving that I could see, nor no great struggle. Whatever took Ludden had took it whole, like as it was in a single bite.
I did find one dead body at last. In a room in one of the bigger houses, there was a bed – and, in among the mouldered sheets, the bones of someone that had slept there. He died looking up at the ceiling, it seemed like, and with one hand under the bolster like he was making himself a mite more comfortable. I say he, on account of he wore a man’s shirt with no drawstring at the neck. There was a pisspot on the floor next to the bed, with black mould all up the sides of it. Flies was coming in and out of the open window, but they wasn’t lighting on the bones, or on the bed. Whatever rotting this dead man had to do, he had done it a while before, so the flies didn’t take no interest.
I cried for him, though it didn’t make much sense to do so. I never knowed him, and I never knowed what killed him. I just felt the weight in my heart of him dying here, and most likely being alone when he went, for if he had kin that stayed with him to the end they would surely of stayed an hour longer to bury him.
I thought maybe I should bury him my own self, but I didn’t have no shovel to dig with and I would have had to carry all the bones down to the street a few at a time and make a pile of them. In the end, I decided it was better to leave him where he was, but I sit with him a while and told him a little of my story in case his ghost was still there to hear it.
Outside the window, the sky was getting darker. I thought I had better stay in Ludden this night, and move on in the morning if there was cloud cover enough, but I was not minded to sleep in the room the dead man’s bones was in.
I picked myself up and went out of the house, back into the street. I looked all around, wondering which out of all these houses I should choose to lay myself down in.
The next thing I knowed, something pitched into me from behind. I went down heavy on my stomach, with all the wind knocked out of me.
I got my hand to my knife quick, but before I could draw it out of my belt someone put their knee into my back and their hand on my neck.
“You just can’t give up lying, can you?” says a voice in my ear, panting hot and heavy. “Crying out that you’re Koli Woodsmith. You ain’t that no more, you thieving bastard. You’re Koli Faceless, and that’s more than you deserve to be.”
I couldn’t see who was up on my back, but I thought I knowed that voice. Then I seen his other hand right beside my face, with a band across it shining bright silver, and I knowed for sure.
37
“You give me a run for it, Koli,” Mardew said. “But I got you now. You stay down there, until I tell you to move, or it’ll go bad for you.”
He lifted himself up off of my back. He was still breathing hard, like he run a long way to catch me, though he must of been hid a fair while when I was in the house. Maybe it was not from running then, but from the fearfulness of the place. If it was that, I could understand it.
I understood something else too. It was Mardew who had been behind me on the road for most of the day, and then got ahead of me and had to turn around. He had come a long way to find me, and risked the forest by choice where I only done it out of having no other choice to make. Did he hate me so much then? I guess I did lay hands on him that time when he was fixing to shoot at Ursala. And I got him a beating when I lied to Catrin. It didn’t seem like so much, but for them as has vengeful natures a very little will do. I knowed in any case this wasn’t like to come out well for me, there being just the two of us here and nobody looking over his shoulder.
I was not much afraid though. I think it was on account of where we was, with the deadness of Ludden all around and all over us like a blanket. It seemed like me dying, or him dying, was a thing that couldn’t matter.
I sit up, slow as cold honey, and turned myself around to face him. He was standing over me with his cutter hand crossed over the other hand, taking tight aim.
“Whatever you do to me, Mardew,” I says, “you got to tell Rampart Fire and them all about this. They got to know that Ludden has been whelmed so they can decide what to do about it.”
He shaked his head like he had pure pity for me. “They already know, you damn fool,” he come back at me. “There’s not much that Ramparts don’t see. But there’s lots we don’t tell. Especially when it’s things that can’t be helped but would just only spread bad feeling.”
“Bad feeling?” I couldn’t make no sense out of that at all. This seemed like it was something that had got to be reported and talked about, and some decision made on what to do about it. “So what happened?” I asked him. “Where did everyone go?”
Mardew rolled his eyes and give a shrug. “How should I know? It happened years back. Maybe they had a bad Summer, or got too many drones coming down on them. Maybe they went to Half-Ax and got refuge there. It isn’t nothing that concerns you, Koli. It’s for Ramparts to worry about.”
I give it up then. An empty barrel makes a fine drum, but it ain’t never going to give out more than the one same sound. “All right then,” I says. “You got me, Mardew, just like you said. Now what do you mean to do with me? For I ain’t got nothing worth stealing.”
“Yeah, you do,” he says. “And you better give it when I ask for it or there’ll be more pieces of you than you can count. You ever seen meat when it’s been through a mincer, Koli?”
“Of course I seen it. Why? You got some there?”
“No, I don’t. But the cutter’s got a setting where it will do that to you. And I’m not even a bit shy about using it.”
“All right,” I said again. “Now what?”
He give a kind of a grin, or leastways bared his teeth. “Now you’re going to tell me how to work the music player,” he says.
I just stared at him, waiting for them words to make sense. I had all but forgot that there was one more quarrel between us that was maybe bigger than all the others. He wanted the DreamSleeve. Though he weared one of the most powerful pieces of tech in all Mythen Rood on his right hand, he was still greedy for more, and it sit badly with him that I got what he couldn’t have.
I laughed then. I couldn’t help it. It was not because it struck me funny but because I seen my own self in that hunger. When I decided I didn’t want
to be a Woodsmith no more but must make myself a Rampart, I wasn’t no different than Mardew was right then. For I chafed at what I was, like he did, and went about to be different by stealing what wasn’t mine and lying about it after.
“I don’t feel like that’s something I want to do,” I told him. “If you’re thinking to kill me, I don’t see why you should get to have your own everlasting Summer-dance as a reward for it.” I was not half so fearless as I sounded, but I wasn’t going to give Monono to him, no matter what he did or said he would do.
Mardew hauled off and kicked me. He was aiming for my head, but I twisted round and took the kick on my arm. It hurt me bad, but not as bad as he meant it to. “Are you stupid, Koli?” he yelled. “You see this? You see it?” He waved the cutter in my face, then took it back again out of my reach in case I went for it. “I can rip you open and leave you for rats to eat.”
I laughed again, mostly because I seen it riled him up the first time I done it. “Rats heard you coming,” I told him. “Everything in the damn valley did. I heard you a mile off, and hid when you passed me. Only I never guessed it was you I was hiding from. I never thought you was like to come so far on a fool’s errand, though now I seen it, it don’t surprise me much.”
Mardew had let the cutter go dark while we talked, but now he fired it up to silver again. His face flushed red, just a little. “You keep on like that,” he said, “and see what it gets you. Now I’m going to ask you again, and it’s for the last time. How do I make that player work for me?”