“Where in hell is it that damn lake?”
Cynic sensed how perturbed Jeff was and ambled into motion rather than put his oar into troubled waters. He wasn’t particularly concerned about finding a ‘lake’, but understood it was important to Jeff. Cynic was concerned about dark passages that might hide a bear. The claw-scored tree had made a big impression. While he had no idea what a bear looked like, Cynic most certainly did not want to find out by stumbling into one.
Early one morning they finally ran into the lake. Stirred up by a recent thunderstorm, large waves crashed onto a pebble beach as Jeff vainly tried to pick out the opposite shore. Muttering, “Everything’s too damn big around here,” he climbed a tree but still couldn’t spot it.
They located the discharge river and continued southward. Confronted with heavy growth forest and brush along the river, progress slowed to a crawl. The heat was stifling, and clouds of biting flies tormented them. Stopping to listen for the river, Jeff removed his hat to get at the sweat with a shirtsleeve.
Shaking his head, he laughed mirthlessly. “Ain’t we havin’ fun.”
Cynic was in a particularly foul mood. He had been complaining all day about the flies, and swarms of the red insects attacked him the moment they stopped.
“Are we to remain standing until I am consumed by these creatures?”
“Been a tough day, old hoss,” Jeff sympathized. “Let’s do it.”
They had not gone far when Cynic stopped abruptly, ears swiveling and nostrils puffing in and out.
“What is it you sense?”
“I am not certain.” Cynic continued his search. “A foul odor fleetingly passed. It was most offensive.”
“Danger?”
“Perhaps. Yes. It spoke of great strength and anger. I have never sensed its like.”
Try as he might, Cynic could not recapture the smell and daylight was running out.
“We must gain our freedom. A night in these woods will leave us open to attack. Come, let us move cautiously but quickly.”
Easing through the brush more like a cat than a horse, Cynic’s nostrils and ears never ceased their work. Whatever breeze there had been failed with the advent of dusk, the flies doubled in number, and Jeff was running sweat from the oppressive heat.
As light faded, Cynic became so nervous he lathered up and jumped at every unexpected shadow or sound. Still, he smelled or heard nothing out of the ordinary. Jeff was seeing goblins in every shadow himself, and cursed under his breath when they were forced to a halt by an impenetrable barrier of tall thorn brush.
With no room to maneuver, Cynic was forced to back out of the trap. He had no more than started when they heard a crash and the sound of snapping limbs a short distance away. Cynic tried to move faster but wasn’t built to back up with any speed. Jeff had the pistol out when two huge birds blundered by, one of them holding a fish in its talons and the other snapping at his tail feathers.
“Shit! We’ve got to break out of this crap soon or we’re both going to go nuts. It’s as bad as logging slash!”
Cynic extracted himself from the worst of it, and they backtracked looking for a way around. Jeff was about to give up and make camp when he saw a brighter window of light.
“About time!”
Intensely relieved, Jeff urged Cynic around the last deadfall in their way. Cynic was as eager as Jeff and broke into a fast trot. Penetrating a screen of trees, they rushed into a meadow. An odor that sparked abject fear immediately hit Cynic’s nose. He slid to a halt and reared with a terrified squeal.
“What the fuck? Cut it out!”
A coughing roar jerked Jeff’s attention to the opposite side of the meadow. Something loomed like a mountain.
“Oh, damn. Look at that bastard! No bear can be that big!” It stood over seven feet at the shoulder.
Whirling around with astounding speed, the bear rose to its hind legs. Jeff didn’t think it would ever stop. In near darkness, the bear seemed a monster. Dropping back onto all fours, it let out a high-pitched roar and charged.
Narrowly avoiding the bear’s rush, Cynic spurted to the opposite side of the meadow and spun around. Impenetrable brush and trees blocked escape.
Jeff knew he stood no chance of killing such a huge animal. The .357 would be about as effective as a BB gun unless he could get a head shot from only feet away. To attempt that would be insane. Either they escaped or they were dead.
Getting both feet back in the stirrups, Jeff frantically looked around for a clear exit from the meadow then back at the bear. The beast loomed like a dark colossus as it roamed the meadow searching for them in the last shadings of dusk. Quite abruptly, as if someone had thrown a light switch, twin beacons of red blazed to life.
“My God. His eyes. They’re glowing red! What is that thing?”
The bear heard the cry and charged, bawling fury. Jeff picked the most likely spot and booted Cynic at the same instant. Hooves digging deep, he bolted. Protecting his face with an arm, Jeff hung on for dear life when Cynic hit the edge of the forest and launched himself into the air.
They smashed through a screen of saplings and landed in thick brush, but Cynic never let up. He dodged large trees, plowed through smaller ones, and sailed over deadfalls in prodigious leaps that seemed to never end. Scrambling and sprinting like a running back, the miles flowed under his hoofs. Jeff called a halt when he figured they were a safe distance from the bear. Dismounting, he flipped a stirrup up to get at the cinch buckle.
“Nice job with that bear, buddy.”
Although unusually subdued, Cynic replied with spirit. “You would be nothing but a morsel for such a creature, I would be a feast!”
Breaking out in laughter, things back in perspective, Jeff poured a generous ration of grain into Cynic’s nosebag to commemorate their close escape. Building up a large fire to get some light, Jeff cleaned a number of cuts on Cynic’s chest and forelegs. There were quite a few, but most were no more than scratches.
From that night on Cynic was a fanatic where bears were concerned. Jeff came to implicitly trust his horse’s instinct in such matters, never questioning a sudden change in course.
The moot camp was duly encountered at the confluence of the river they had been following, the Vekka, and another flowing in from the northwest, the Farga. Caught as they were by the joining, Jeff decided to ford the Vekka.
He made sure everything was snugly tied to the saddle and urged a muttering Cynic into the water. The river was about thirty yards wide. It didn’t appear to be particularly deep, but was swollen by spring runoff and flowing fast.
Midstream, Cynic stepped into a deep hole, lost his footing and fell sidewise with a squeal. Jeff was thrown out of the saddle and swept away head over heels. He managed to find his feet only to be knocked rolling an instant later. Fifty or sixty feet downstream he snagged a projecting rock and half swam, half crawled to the opposite bank.
Streaming water, an obviously alarmed Cynic trotted down the bank to Jeff’s location. Having assured himself that all was well, he covered his anxiety with a tart observation.
“How you two-legs have managed to survive stumbling around in such a fashion is beyond me!”
Coughing and retching, Jeff was so relieved to be back on firm ground he didn’t bother to point out that Cynic had been the first to fall.
The terrain slowly changed as they covered ground south in a timeless world of forest and meadow. While evergreens continued to be dominant, they began encountering large stands of hardwoods and other deciduous trees. Herds of deer were heading north for the summer, and hunting became an easy chore they both looked forward to.
One day while they were chasing down a fatally wounded buck, Cynic pounded over a good-sized hill and a new world appeared. Spread out below them, an unbroken canopy of deciduous trees marched off to the south, east and west. It was a brilliant-clean sort of spring day, the bright green of newly leafed trees shading to a purple haze at the limits of vision. Jeff searched for eve
rgreens in the ocean of trees that rolled away to the horizon. There were none.
The buck had collapsed a short distance beyond the hill’s peak and Jeff dismounted to butcher it. Things were well in hand near sunset, and he sat down to watch the play of yellow-green and gold over the canopy below.
“This is what eastern forests must have been like when Boone moved west,” Jeff mused. “I’ve never seen anything that comes close to it.”
Next morning, Jeff pulled Cynic to a halt at the forest edge. He looked with dismay at the dense mass of trees and heavy undergrowth barring the way.
“No way are we going to wiggle through that jungle.”
Turning west they jogged along for some time before Jeff spotted what looked like a break in the wall of trees. Climbing down from Cynic’s back, he walked into the cut and scuffed leaf mulch aside to discover a trail. It was several feet wide and deeply worn.
“Can’t be a game trail. Hasn’t been used in awhile, but a lot of horses passed this way. That’s our ticket.”
Remounting, he clucked Cynic into motion. Ducking his head to avoid a limb, they penetrated the forest perimeter. Once inside the underbrush rapidly thinned out. The canopy of leaves was so dense that little sunlight found its way to the ground. A thick layer of rotting leaves muffled Cynic's hoof beats, giving Jeff the impression they were gliding through the forest. It wasn’t long before he began to feel closed in.
The hills they encountered were low, and that along with the thick forestation never allowed an overview. The tracts of mixed deciduous and evergreen trees farther north seemed open by comparison. Yet while heavily shadowed and foreboding, the forest was in no way silent. Warbling music filled the air from sunrise to sunset, and tree boughs rustled with the passage of many-colored birds.
Confronted with a narrow trail and no escape route short of plowing through the forest, Cynic’s bear paranoia hit a new peak. His ears were in perpetual motion, reminding Jeff of tactical radar antennas as they continually swiveled back and forth. When confronted by a particularly dark passage, Cynic invariably stopped to check it out inch by inch, muttering darkly all the while.
In the middle of one such passage, a coal-black animal that looked like a gazelle burst across the trail in an effortless leap. Cynic swapped ends so fast that Jeff was still going south while Cynic was charging north. Fortunately nothing came unglued when he hit the ground. Sitting with his back against a tree, Jeff waited. It was some time before Cynic came creeping along the path radiating embarrassment.
Gradually, Jeff came to feel they were moving through a bewitched land. The forest had such presence that he half expected someone or something to tap him on the shoulder. Likely it was the trees. On the other hand, he worried it could be something else entirely. On more than one occasion, Jeff caught himself searching for large spider webs. He felt foolish but kept doing it. The fact that he saw none, large or small, was a great relief.
Sitting close to a fire of an evening, it seemed that the trees pressed in with drooping branches. The effect was one of curiosity, not malice, as if they wished to listen and observe. Jeff had never experienced such a sense with evergreens, nor did they project the same aura of great age and brooding wisdom. Taken as a whole, the forest stimulated Jeff to explore reservoirs of musical expression that drew him ever deeper into haunting melodies that lived out of time and far beyond previous skill.
Day by day, as they penetrated deeper, Jeff came to believe that these trees at least were alive and aware. He found himself listening intently to whispers that tickled his mind and sighed like a gentle breeze from centuries in the past, whispers that could not be apprehended except through music. During one quiet evening of pastoral melody and meditation, Cynic bedded down near the fire and Jeff scooted back so he could lean against his side.
Legs folded underneath his body, Cynic attended the lilting notes and fire, finding enchantment new to his spirit in both. Normally given to deep suspicion of anything untoward or new that he could not hang a label on, this night he was content to wonder at the points of light that gathered to dance around the fire until they merged into a whirling galaxy of multicolored sparks.
Late in the evening, Jeff lay the recorder aside and fell asleep with blanket tucked under his chin. As the motes of light had come, so they left. Cynic kept vigil until the last one wandered into the forest and blinked out for the last time. Shortly, all was dark and still.
Somewhere toward the end of a day they emerged into a sun-dappled glade watered by a chuckling brook. The first opening of any size they had encountered, it was carpeted with violet flowers and thick grass. Jeff let out a sigh of relief and Cynic a snort of anticipation. Stripping him of saddle and baggage, Jeff turned Cynic loose to graze while he set up camp.
Later that evening Jeff wandered around the glade with his eyes to the ground. The combined effect of glade and forest was so magical that he hoped to find a faerie ring. Even though it was still early in the season, the evening air had a comfortable warmth to it and he felt tired muscles relax. Giving up his search, Jeff stripped and plunged into the brook for a long overdue bath.
When he waded out of the brook, a brilliant canopy of stars sparkled and winked overhead. The starfield was so dense that the sky seemed more white than black. Jeff let the soft breeze dry him and breathed deeply of the flowers’ delicate perfume. He couldn’t put a name to the perfume, but was reminded of lilacs and peonies brought to full effervescence by a warm spring day.
Lying down in a dense patch of grass, he put hands behind his head and watched the larger moon rise above the trees. Small night creatures rustled through the grass and whispered nervously to one another, serving to accentuate the glade’s expectant silence. Jeff propped himself up on his elbows so he could look around.
“What a strange feeling. It’s almost like something is supposed to happen.” He smiled wistfully. “Don’t I wish.”
Imperceptibly, the glen’s dark shadows gave way to moonlight in glimmering shades of metallic silver and green. Nearby, a bird sang a compline of liquid beauty that reminded and promised before fading in a final prayer. Jeff sighed from the ethereal beauty of it and let his mind drift into elvish paths.
On his way back from that land, memories of his relationship with Sarah and several other women came to mind. While the pain was gone, sadness and questions remained. He had tried so hard. Why had all the relationships failed? Was something wrong with him? Sitting up, Jeff clasped his knees and searched the glen with longing eyes. Just give me hope, he thought. Even a glimpse will do. Do I have to go through life alone?
The glen was enchanted with cool moonlight, babbling brook and nodding flowers, but no lithe form came singing and dancing into the meadow. Give it up, man, Jeff sadly thought. That’s kid stuff. There’s no Luthien for you.
A shooting star leaped over the horizon and raced into the heavens, trailing fire. Jeff clambered to his feet and stared.
“That’s going in the wrong direction. What could it be?” He took a sudden breath when the object traced a parabola in front of the moon and merged into a glowing ball that rapidly expanded.
“It’s going to hit close!”
He was about to dive for cover when a glittering something streaked into the glen riding a moonbeam. A crystal-faceted globe the size of a basketball came to an instantaneous stop only feet from his head and began spinning rapidly. Jeff couldn’t tear his eyes away, was rooted in place by a compulsion that insisted every flashing facet held a secret that must be understood. Then the globe exploded into his mind, filling it with visions.
Emerging from his synthetic cocoon, Jeff held his arms up to bright sunshine. “What a beautiful morning. Haven’t felt this good in weeks.”
He pottered around camp whistling under his breath and made a leisurely time of preparing food. When it came time to saddle up, Jeff found it difficult to leave the glen. He recalled that Cynic’s mane and tail were matted with burrs.
“I should have brushed
them out long ago. No time like the present.”
He found the currycomb he had picked up in Valholm and went to work on Cynic’s mane. Every so often Jeff stopped to lean an arm on Cynic. Something was nagging at him about the prior evening. It was frustrating when all he remembered was a pleasant evening, yet Jeff couldn’t keep a smile off his face.
Once Cynic’s black mane and tail were brushed out, Jeff figured he couldn’t dawdle any longer and fetched the saddle. He had his foot in the stirrup when a sequence of images rushed through his mind and were gone, leaving vague impressions. Jeff laughed self-consciously. Shaking his head, he swung into the saddle.
“Talk about biting off more than you can chew. Where did that come from? Good grief, I’d give anything to find just one.” Sweeping his hat off, Jeff bowed grandly to the meadow. “Thanks for a wonderful evening!”
The forest had no more than swallowed them when Jeff guffawed. “Monster castles and tropical islands? Beautiful women? Sheesh. Settle down to earth, boyo.”
An hour or so into the day’s ride, Cynic recalled Jeff from amused if titillating reflections.
“May this one learn of Luthien and Middle Earth?”
“Eavesdropping again?”
“Your thoughts were quite strong, horse-brother.”
“Yes, I imagine they were.”
There was no missing Cynic’s interest, and Jeff was intrigued by its intensity. “So he’s a horse. So what? It’s an outstanding tale, and he’s one outstanding horse.”
Jeff had to search deep, but was surprised at how much he found and how easily it came to mind.
“The full tale is long and quite sad, yet also contains hope and joy.”
“I would be most pleased to hear it.”
“Very well. This is the story of Beren, son of Barahir, and of Luthien, named Tinuviel by Beren, which means Nightingale, daughter of twilight.”
“What is a Nightingale?”
Jeff directed Cynic’s gaze to a bright red and yellow bird that flushed from high grass along the trail. “Like unto this creature, and given to beauteous song.” Although Cynic’s question had distracted him, the story came back to mind quickly, and line by line at that.
Exile to the Stars (The Alarai Chronicles) Page 14