She braked hard at the last curve, before she came in sight of the police car. She mustn't risk being detained for speeding. She swung the car onto the verge and climbed out onto the slippery grass. By now she was so anxious she almost neglected to lock the door. She ran down the sloping curve, and saw that the police car and the vehicles ahead of it were unattended.
The sight of so much desertion made her heartbeat falter. She ran past the police car, past muddied sunbursts, painted smiles that looked as if someone had hurled mud at them. The vehicles seemed to smell of exhaustion. By the time she reached the outer edge of Toonderfield she was panting and half suffocated. She didn't want to lean on any of those trees; she gripped her knees to steady herself while she caught her breath, and then sent herself forward. There had to be people not far ahead, close enough to reassure her. She mustn't be afraid of the wood.
A greenish twilight that smelled of oil and worn-out metal closed around her as she ran under the trees. A cramp gripped her stomach as if she were about to start her period weeks early. The convoy blocked her view of the left-hand side of the copse, but that needn't mean that anything was lurking there, waiting for her to come abreast of one of the gaps between the vehicles, any more than the trees to her right concealed something. Every upright shape that wasn't immediately identifiable as a tree trunk reminded her of the scarecrow figures she'd seen in the copse. Once she thought she heard whispering above her, as if things perched in the trees were planning to leap down at her, but it must have been a wind among the leaves.
At last she saw daylight ahead, past the leading police car. A fifty-yard sprint under the trees, and she was able to see Enoch's people. They were crowded together just beyond the police car, and gazing toward Redfield. She ran faster, her body trembling with the effort and with panicky anticipation. She was nearly at the head of the convoy when she saw Roger.
He was in the passenger seat of the second vehicle, a van painted with green clouds. In the side mirror his face looked bemused, dissatisfied, rather helpless. She was abreast of the van before he blinked at the mirror and caught sight of her. She saw him gasp and smile and feel immediately guilty, as if he'd failed her. He leaned stiffly toward the window and rolled it down, and murmured to her while he gazed ahead. "It's several kinds of great to see you," he said.
He let his hand stray down the side of the door, and she covered it with hers. "Same here, and I'm so glad you're safe."
"Oh, I'm safe enough. Why wouldn't I be? I looked so forlorn these guys had to take pity on me, and I've spent the night finding out how much we have in common. They trusted me enough to leave me in their van," he said with unexpected bitterness. "Only I guess they did a better job persuading me than I did on them, since you'll have noticed I didn't convince them they should stay away from here."
He levered himself up to stare ahead more sharply. "Another few hours and I might have, but I didn't realize we were so close. I think Enoch was beginning to take notice. I figured I had to go slow or he might realize I was coming from you."
"I know you had to," she said, and pressed his hand. "What's happening out front?"
"He's scouting the land."
He sounded as nervous as that made her feel. "I'd better go and see," she said, and stopped him when he made to open the door. "You stay here. We may still need them not to realize we're together."
She sprinted up the last of the slope. The police from both cars were keeping Enoch's followers grouped at the edge of the wood. As Sandy ran out of the shadow of the trees, several people turned to her. All of them looked anxious, especially the women; perhaps they were feeling the thirst of the land in their guts, as she was. Nobody seemed to recognize her. Arcturus and his mother were on the far side of the gathering, and didn't notice when she went as unobtrusively as possible to the front, to see what everyone was watching. As soon as she was able to see along the road to Redfield, her throat grew tight and dry.
Enoch was several hundred yards down the road, marching toward the Ear of Wheat as if he was almost exhausted, swinging his arms like lead weights. His bristling head was thrown back; he might have been sniffing the air. A few minutes' walk ahead of him, lined up on both sides of the road past the Ear of Wheat all the way to Redfield, the townsfolk were silently waiting.
Perhaps they only meant to make the convoy feel unwelcome. Perhaps that was how the police interpreted the situation, and so they were keeping Enoch's people back rather than escort him, but couldn't they feel the threat of violence in the air? Both they and Enoch might be assuming that Lord Redfield could control his people, but if one of the townsfolk so much as stepped in front of Enoch, Sandy could see that his people would surge to protect him. It would take many more than four policemen to hold them back, let alone to prevent the bloodshed whose imminence seemed to have stilled the wind, making the land breathless.
The sun had risen above the mists. The fields brightened as if the wheat were eagerly awakening. Again Sandy had the sense of watching a ritual, Enoch the victim marching toward the gauntlet that was to carry out the sacrifice, the townsfolk stiffer than scarecrows, figures erected to carry out the will of the landscape. Her feeling that everyone in sight was subservient to an invisible power filled her with sudden furious panic. She hardly realized she had started forward, opening her mouth to scream at Enoch to come back, until a policeman grasped her arm, not ungently. Presumably he realized she wasn't with the convoy. "You'll have to wait until this is over and done with," he said.
There was movement and a whisper in the crowd. Arcturus and his mother had recognized her. Sandy tried to look as if she was irrelevant to what was happening ahead, and cursed herself for distracting attention from Enoch's plight: how could that prevent the violence whose approach seemed to parch the air and the eager fields?
She heard Enoch's folk murmur uneasily. They were staring past her, uncertain how to take what they were seeing. Whatever it was, it made the policeman let go of her arm. She sent out a prayer for Enoch, too swift to be composed of words or even to have a specific destination, and made herself turn and look.
Enoch had halted about a hundred yards short of the first of the townsfolk, raising his head further, as if he smelled something. Several townsfolk swung watchfully toward him. The landscape brightened around him, the watching faces seemed to take on the color of wheat, and Sandy felt Enoch's people growing tense. If the nearest of the townsfolk even made a move toward him, the police would be swept aside. She could see that his people were concluding that they should never have let him go so far on their behalf.
Then he took a step forward. He held up his hands and addressed the men on either side of the road. He must be trying to placate them, but had he forgotten how unwelcome the convoy was everywhere? They stared at him for so long that Sandy lost count of her racing heartbeats, and then they called out to their neighbors in the line. Their voices were carried away by a wind from the restless fields. By now her heartbeats were so loud that she could have thought they were the sound of the landscape.
Enoch moved again, and she gnawed her knuckles. He turned his back on the townsfolk and began to trudge toward the copse. He cupped his hands to his mouth and shouted, loud as a town crier. In the midst of the unquiet fields under the huge sky, even such a voice seemed small. "We won't go here," he shouted. "This land wants us too much."
Perhaps Roger had convinced him after all, but had Enoch sensed the nature of Redfield too late? The townsfolk were still watching him, they could still come after him if the sight of his retreat enraged them or otherwise tempted them to attack. His people seemed bewildered, which could mean dangerous. Then he gestured at them, pushing with his hands as if the air were thickening in front of him. "Go back to the vehicles," he shouted. "This isn't the place for us. We aren't safe here. I've thought of somewhere else."
Something in his voice told Sandy that he hadn't, that he was so anxious to take them out of Redfield that he was lying. If she could hear that, wouldn't they? B
ut though they were muttering, some of them complaining, they were straggling disappointedly toward the trees. Far more reassuringly, the townsfolk were moving toward Redfield.
She was suddenly afraid that the police would oppose the change of plan, but they seemed ready enough to escort the convoy out of their jurisdiction. Reassured, she turned to watch Enoch. Someone ought to see him safe along the road and let him know that he wasn't alone, though she thought it best not to allow him to recognize her. As his people retreated toward the vehicles, she stepped into the shadow of the trees, from where she could see him more clearly than he could see her.
And that was why she alone saw the scrawny form that rushed out of the wheat and tore at Enoch's throat.
***
Her shock seemed to freeze the moment, brightly displaying what she was helpless to prevent. She saw Enoch recoil as the figure reared up, a scarecrow all the colors of a decayed tree. Its ragged head was level with his; he must be staring straight into whatever it had for a face. It must be that sight which paralyzed him, made him stand like a resigned victim while the nails through which the sunlight gleamed slashed at his neck.
Enoch roared in pain and horror. His hands flailed at the attacker and tore away part of its head, and then he tried either to grapple with the figure or hurl it away from him. To Sandy it looked grotesquely as though the two of them were dancing a couple of steps of a forgotten dance. The scarecrow figure lurched away, a flap of its head wagging, and Enoch either fell or lunged at the figure, grabbing one of its legs as he sprawled on the tarmac. She heard a crack, which at that distance sounded like a trodden twig, before his grasp must have slackened. Dragging its broken limb, the fleshless shape scuttled three-legged into the wheat.
Enoch's yell had brought the nearest of his people running out of the copse, but they weren't even level with Sandy when the track through the wheat disappeared. Enoch lumbered to his feet and marched unsteadily toward the trees, one hand clutching his throat. The hand looked like a red flower, blooming. As Sandy ran to him the watchers began to murmur, and a woman screamed. "Stay back," one policeman said loudly. "There was nobody anywhere near him. He must have done that to himself."
"He didn't," Arcturus cried. "I saw. It was a dog."
The policeman was trying to prevent further violence, Sandy realized, but couldn't he have said something less contentious? At least the citizens of Redfield hadn't halted their retreat toward the town. The landscape seemed to heave up with the motion of her running, as if Enoch's wound were wakening the fields. She thought she saw a trail of his blood on the road. Did it count if it fell on the tarmac? Mustn't it reach the soil? The fields rustled like locusts, the air grew parched around her; she stared about wildly in search of figures in the wheat. The fields surrounding Enoch were still brightening, bristling in anticipation of his blood. She felt sick, almost out of breath. She thought she tasted the rusty flavor of the special Redfield bread.
Roger shouted behind her. She twisted round and saw someone fling a glinting object at him. She thought it was a knife until the van jerked forward, and then she realized he'd been thrown a bunch of keys. He must have struggled across to the driver's seat when he had seen Enoch fall.
Enoch's followers dodged out of the road, taking the police with them, as the van lurched out of the trees. Roger was crouched awkwardly over the wheel, his face squashed together by determination. He slowed when he came abreast of Sandy, and she slid the passenger door open. He was slewed around in the driver's seat, his plastered leg wedged against the accelerator; he had to swing his whole body whenever he needed to work the other pedals. He looked more incongruous than he had when she'd left him by the road; he looked like a grubby knight who'd found his way into a modern vehicle by mistake. The sight of him was so comic and heartening that she wanted to weep. She would have changed seats with him, except that would waste time. As soon as she climbed into the passenger seat he thrust his cast down on the accelerator.
Enoch had halted in the middle of the road and was covering his throat with both red hands. As the van sped toward him he staggered aside. "Don't," Sandy cried, suddenly afraid that he would step into the field behind him. Roger must have thought she was talking to him, for he leaned so hard on the brake that she was nearly flung out of the vehicle as the door slid open. As she jumped down and ran to Enoch, Roger was already turning the van.
The cords of Enoch's vest were beginning to turn red. His eyes looked in danger of glazing over, glistening with his struggle to stay in them. Though she had hoped before that he wouldn't recognize her, she was dismayed now that he seemed unable to do so. She grabbed him by the elbow and felt him trying not to collapse onto her. "I've got you," she said as firmly as she could. "We'll take you back. There's a healer traveling with you, isn't there?"
He drew a breath so painful she thought he was choking. At last he managed to get out one word, in a shrunken laborious voice. "Hospital."
His hands let go of his throat as if to allow him to speak, and she saw how much he needed a hospital, saw the raw shredded streaming flesh he was attempting to hold together. Faintness brought the landscape dancing at her, but she forced herself to support him as far as the van, which Roger had succeeded in turning. Roger clambered down and helped hoist Enoch into the back, where there was a lumpy double mattress for him to lie on. "Can you drive now?" Roger said to her. "It might be quicker."
It would also help her overcome her faintness. She scrambled behind the wheel and started the vehicle as Roger slammed the rear doors from inside. In the mirror she saw his face as he propped himself at Enoch's head, murmuring to him, looking so encouraging that she knew he must be battling not to react to what he saw.
She'd scarcely gathered speed toward the trees when she had to brake. Both the police and the owners of the van, a long-haired middle-aged couple, were blocking the road. "He's badly hurt. We need to get him to a hospital as fast as we can. Will you escort me?" she called down to the police, and threw down her keys to the long-haired couple. "It'll be quickest if you take my car. It's just past all your vehicles."
What sounded like authority was half panic, the sound of her determination to drive straight on if anyone opposed her. The driver of the leading police car scrutinized her face, then turned quickly. "Follow us."
As he swung the police car around, its siren howling, a muscular woman with a crewcut and the whitest teeth Sandy had ever seen jumped into the van and wriggled over the passenger seat into the back. "I'm Merl. I'll look after him," she said, and then with much less certainty: "Oh Jesus. Was it a dog?"
"Whatever it was," Sandy said, to fend off the subject, "he didn't let it get away in one piece."
"You should have seen what it was, you were there. If I'd been there I would have killed it myself." She tore a strip off the hem of her loose ankle-length dress and wrapped it around Enoch's neck, and her voice became maternal. "Rest now, rest and be strong. What is it? What are you trying to say?"
Enoch sucked in a choked breath. "Don't let me die here," he said indistinctly.
"We won't let you die at all," Sandy cried, following the police car. Enoch's plea had made her fear of Redfield more immediate and more specific. All the victims of the land hadn't just spilled their blood within its boundaries, they had died there. The flashing light of the police car made shadows leap between the trees, and she was afraid that one or other of the thin vague shapes would spring into the van to finish Enoch off. When some of his folk stared resentfully at the police car and didn't clear the road immediately, she heard herself moaning between her clenched teeth.
The trees parted ahead, beyond the curve that led into the open, and all at once the copse smelled to her as if the earth were heaving up beneath the undergrowth. She had to restrain herself from ramming her fist into the wheel to sound the horn; it wouldn't make the police drive any faster, it was more likely to pull them up. The last branches sailed by overhead, and their shadows reached beyond the copse for the van. Then the
vehicle was out under the sky, and she had to swallow before she was able to ask, "How is he?"
The woman was singing Enoch a song, too low for Sandy to hear the words. It might have been a lullaby or a soft dirge. When she didn't interrupt it to respond to Sandy's question, Roger peered at Enoch. "Alive," he said.
At the most Sandy would have uttered a secret whisper of relief, but even that was premature. Half the convoy was still on Redfield land. As she raced after the police car she glanced constantly into the mirrors, seeing the trees close around the head of the convoy, the line of vehicles shriveling with distance as though Toonderfield were consuming it. Fumes rose through the trees and drifted across the fields as the vehicles turned, and Sandy willed the drivers to be quick, get out, don't be distracted by any movements in the shadows, stay together… Perhaps there was safety in numbers, for as Toonderfield sank below the horizon to bide its time she saw the convoy following the second police car. She gripped the wheel so hard she bruised her fingers, to carry herself past feeling so weak with relief that she wouldn't be able to drive.
It took the police half an hour to conduct her to a hospital, and the cropped woman sang to Enoch all the way, wrapping more strips of her dress around his neck. Once he tried to say something about a dog, which Sandy thought was either a question or a denial. As Sandy parked the van in front of the Emergency wing, one of the policemen came running out ahead of a doctor and two orderlies with a stretcher. Enoch was loaded onto the stretcher, and Sandy heard him speak. Later she agreed with Roger that he'd muttered, "Can't be helped." She hoped that meant he was resigned to what came, for less than five minutes later he was dead.
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