by Jeffrey Ford
Wood was still asleep, which was unusual. Now Cley noticed that lying on the sand in front of the dog was the empty leather binding from the book of the soul.
“So much for my stories,” Cley whispered to himself. He pictured the dog, sneaking away from the camp, tearing through the forest at night and then breaking free of the trees onto the pink sand illuminated by moonlight.
“That flinking book is a curse for sure,” he said, then poked Wood in the rear end with the toe of his boot.
The dog woke immediately.
“Let’s hunt,” Cley said.
Wood rose and stretched, his front legs forward, his back in the air, while Cley looked around for where he had laid his hat. He remembered taking it off just before they had sat down to eat dinner, but now it was nowhere in sight. He was about to question the dog, suspecting retribution for having left the book out in the desert, but then he noticed something in the sand.
The hunter dropped to his knees and spread his arms for support, bringing his head down close to the ground. The dog came up next to him and also looked at the ground. Cley traced the outline of it with his index finger as if to validate the discovery.
It was a footprint, not an imprint of one of the soles of his boots but a large vague outline of what appeared to be a human foot. He looked up at another spot in the sand. There were more, leading off into the forest.
A scream came suddenly from behind them. Cley reached for his knife and spun around on his knees with the blade pointing out just in time to see the yellow bird in the branch overhead scream again. He looked back at Wood and motioned with his hand to his mouth—their sign to stay quiet. The hunter stood, and with the distinct sensation that he was being watched, turned slowly, peering into the tangle of growth.
They followed the shaggy footprints west through the oasis toward an area they had not yet explored. Cley wondered if the hat thief might be one of the Silent Ones left behind to spy and play tricks on him. “Who else would be about in such a far-flung place?” he asked himself. He ruled out the apparition of the eyeless woman, since she left no prints when he had encountered her in the demon forest. Then he had a sudden memory of the face that was inscribed in blue outline on the queen’s backside. He saw it again in his mind’s eye, and realized where he knew it from. “Brisden,” he said, and stopped walking. Wood held up and waited for him to continue following the trail.
“I’ll be damned if it wasn’t Brisden, that tub of words,” he said. He thought back to his journey through Drachton Below’s memory and recalled the corpulent philosopher, who had saved the dream woman, Anotine, and himself from death at the hands of the Delicate. It seemed like another lifetime when last Cley had known him as the symbolic representation of a concept in the mnemonic world. As he later learned, all of those he had met in that reality had antecedents in this one, in real life. How could the queen have Brisden’s portrait on her left buttock if he had never been or was not in the Beyond? Perhaps the Silent Ones had brought Cley to meet the man, since he was also pale-skinned and had obviously at one time been a subject of the realm like Cley. “But what are the chances?” the hunter asked himself. “And why would he steal my hat?”
Late in the morning, just before Cley was about to stop and pick some fruit, he and Wood passed a shallow pond covered with lily pads. From each of the round leaf bases grew a violet flower whose petals were sharp spikes. Half-submerged in the water and surrounded by the floating blossoms was the skeleton of a Sirimon—the bones gone green and the left horn cracked off. The sight of its sharp teeth startled the hunter, and he raised the bow in self-defense before he knew what he was doing. At the last moment, he held the arrow back.
Sitting beneath an overhanging frond, surrounded by the gnawed cores of red fruit, Cley and Wood dozed in the afternoon heat. They had searched for hours and eventually lost the trail of prints in the sand. The western end of the oasis seemed much like the area they had traversed the previous day. The hunter had killed a small wild pig for dinner, which was lying next to the waterskin. He kept his bow close by and the knife in his hand should anyone or anything try to steal another of his meager belongings.
He began to doubt that what they saw that morning in their camp were human footprints. The possibility that some other creature could have made them seemed all the more likely. He remembered his ruminations about meeting Brisden in the heart of the Beyond and laughed quietly to himself.
“Madness,” he thought, and as the notion passed from his mind, his hat passed along over the tops of a stand of tall ferns that lay across the sandy clearing before him.
The hunter sat upright and watched as the black, broad-brimmed shape sailed by. “Wood,” he called quietly to the dog. His companion looked up and saw the hat moving off into the forest. In seconds, they were on their feet. Cley grabbed the bow and arrows and was off after the thief. They broke through the ferns and saw in the distance, through the mesh of tree trunks, vines, and tall ferns, a vague figure disappearing into the green. Cley began running, and the dog was soon bounding ahead of him.
For the remainder of the afternoon the hat led them on a chase through the exotic forest of the oasis. They stumbled past tranquil pools, gigantic flowers, birds with the most outlandish plumage, a million insect wonders, but noticed none of it, their sights fixed firmly on the quarry which seemed always to stay at the same distance—close enough for them to make out the black lid but far enough away so as to keep its wearer’s identity a mystery.
Near dusk, they realized that they had not seen the hat for an hour and were running blindly with no purpose. Cley called Wood to him, and they turned back, the hunter trying to remember the direction toward the spot where he hoped the pig he had killed would not have been set upon by scavengers.
As they made their way around the undergrowth and between the trees in the failing light, Cley was no longer nervous about the stranger, who was obviously much more afraid than he and Wood were. In fact, he desired a confrontation, his curiosity now ablaze.
Just as he was considering forsaking the wild pig and stopping to make camp in the next clearing, they came upon the site where they had left their kill. He realized that while he had been walking, his mind turning wildly with thoughts of the day’s pursuit, he had been unconsciously following Wood. The dog obviously knew all along where he had been headed, driven by a desire to eat roasted pork.
Luck was with them, for no scavengers but the ants had bothered the meat. These were easily scraped off. Firewood was searched for and a fire started. In their toil to prepare for the coming night, Cley did not notice the hat sitting atop a large bush off to the right of the clearing. Just as the dark completely swamped the oasis, and he was carving up the kill into strips to affix to his makeshift spit, the hunter noticed the hat. In astonishment, he began to laugh out loud and shake his head.
“Our neighbor is a trickster,” he said to Wood.
The dog looked where Cley was looking, saw the hat and walked over, lifted his leg, and urinated on the bush.
“Revenge,” said the hunter, and turned his attention back to preparing dinner.
That night a sweet wind carrying the narcotic scent of blossoms slithered again through the forest. Cley had already read the sleeping Wood a confabulated nonsense story from the missing pages of the book cover the dog had insisted on carrying in his mouth all day. The hunter leaned back on a tree trunk well within the flickering bubble of light cast by the fire’s glow. He was exhausted by the day’s exercise. Through lowered lids he looked across the clearing at the hat perched atop the bush and let his thoughts unravel. In his hand was the stone knife and lying next to him in the sand was the bow and quiver of arrows.
The sizzle of a moth in the flames woke him from a doze, and he looked around the clearing to see that everything was as it should be. He glanced at the hat and jerked himself forward to sit upright. Squinting in order to focus his sight, he scrutinized the bush atop which the lid rested, and confirmed what he, at fi
rst, could not believe. Some inches beneath the broad black brim, two burning eyes, like tiny fires recessed in twin caves, had opened in the matrix of leaves and seemed to be staring straight at him. Confusion paralyzed the hunter, and though he wanted to stand, he could only sit where he was and stare back.
A moment later, a dark opening, obviously a mouth, appeared below the eyes. Then, the bush began to slowly move in unnatural ways. A leafy arm spread itself from the whole and reached out, followed by another on the right side. There were hands of tangled vine with delicate sprouts continuing like thick hairs from the tips of root digits. The body of the bush began to rise on incredible legs composed all of leaves and tangled twigs. It stood upright, like a man, but a man of vegetation, with tiny white flowers growing here and there amidst the thatch of its body. The black hat riding atop this green impossibility was the most absurd thing Cley had ever seen, and he could not help but smile through his amazement and terror.
The plant creature walked toward him, and still he could not move. Already he sensed that it did not mean to attack. Its movements were as gentle as the wind-rocked fronds of the tree above him. It stepped carefully over the sleeping dog and came to a halt before the hunter, where it slowly lowered itself to sit only inches away, facing him. Then the two arms that seemed cut from a hedge rose simultaneously and lifted the hat with leafy hands off a head of spiraling, tendriled hair. It reached over and placed the hat on Cley’s head, and the dark opening that was the mouth almost formed a smile.
Cley was reeling, but in the whirlwind behind his eyes, he suddenly remembered Arla Beaton’s writings about her grandfather’s journey through the Beyond. In certain fragments of that story there was mentioned a man of green, what Beaton had referred to as a foliate, named Moissac, who guided the beleaguered party of miners toward their elusive goal of Paradise.
“Moissac?” asked Cley.
The thing shook its head, reached to its viney throat, and plucked a leaf. It motioned putting the green oval in its mouth and then handed it to Cley. The hunter accepted the gift, and without hesitation opened his lips and placed it on his tongue. The taste was rich with the essence of fruit and flower. Like a perfume he was smelling with his taste buds, this vapor rose through his palate, infiltrated his sinuses, and gathered in his mind to form sounds that slowly evolved into words.
“I am Vasthasha,” said the voice in Cley’s head.
“Do I hear you through this leaf?” asked the hunter.
“No, you understand me,” it said. “The leaf carries me to you.”
“Why are you here? Why did you steal my hat?” Cley asked.
“I had to know if you were the one. The hat carried the residue of your thoughts and dreams. I needed to be with it for a time to discern if you were my liberator,” it said.
“Your liberator?” asked the hunter.
“The seed you planted back in the place you think of as the demon forest. In the new green time, after the ice, that seed produced a plant, which grew and grew with the speed of rain falling, until, in the early days of the sun’s strength, when I had become complete and the spark of life burned in my head, I pulled my legs up by their taproots, snapped off those anchors, and began my search for you.”
“You have found me,” said Cley.
“And now, I am to serve you,” the voice said.
“I am heading to the village called Wenau,” said the hunter.
“I know,” said the foliate, “the green veil? I thought it in your hat.”
“All of it?”
“Much.”
“Am I close to Wenau?” asked Cley.
“In comparison, if you were a child beginning on the journey of your life toward your goal of death, and you were to live a hundred years, you would not yet be born for a hundred years.”
“That close?” said the hunter.
“There are some places in this wilderness you call the Beyond that cannot be reached by traveling through space. The possibilities will simply not align for you to arrive,” said Vasthasha.
“Then I will not reach Arla Beaton?”
“I am here to guide you. The woman, Pa-ni-ta, whose necklace pouch you found my seed in, was the last of a lineage who could direct the energy of the Beyond to her will.”
Cley recalled the last word of the queen of the Silent Ones.
“Yes, her spirit has been with you throughout your journey. She needs you to help her. If you come with me and perform the task she requires, you will reach your destination.”
“And what is that?” asked Cley.
“I cannot reveal it to you until the time of new growth, the spring. While I lie in the frozen ground, the snow piled upon me, she will tell me in my dreams what we are to do.”
“I thought she was dead,” said Cley.
“You might have considered me the same until you put my seed in the ground,” said the foliate.
“How does she know me?” asked the hunter.
“She knows you through your desire. She knows what you want …”
Here the leaf in Cley’s mouth began to lose its flavor and the foliate’s words quickly diminished in volume until they were replaced by a sound like barren branches scraping in a winter wind. Vasthasha reached over and touched one of the gnarled, tapered roots that were his fingers to the tattoo on Cley’s forehead.
“We will talk more tomorrow,” the hunter heard the foliate say. “You must sleep, for with the sun, we must leave this place if you intend to find your way.”
“Through the desert?” asked Cley.
“The desert, indeed,” said the green man. Following his words came the sound of rain falling on dry autumn leaves, and Cley realized that the foliate was laughing.
While he slept, the hunter unconsciously chewed on the leaf given to him by Vasthasha and its sap flowed through him, into his dreams. There, he saw the woman, Pa-ni-ta, as she was in life—black hair flowing in the wind, eyes bright with knowledge. She walked through a field of growing foliates still attached to the ground. Some were only half-formed, and some were near maturity, but as she passed, they turned their leafy heads and reached out, the tips of their branches brushing against her legs and arms. Even in sleep, Cley was somehow aware that they had been created to serve as an army.
Cley woke the next morning, half-expecting all that transpired through the night to have been no more than part of one fantastic dream, but when he opened his eyes, he saw the foliate sitting in front of Wood, lightly stroking the dog’s back.
The hunter rose and walked over to them. As he approached, Vasthasha pulled a leaf from his throat and offered it to Cley, who placed it under his tongue.
“You have become friends with Wood,” said Cley.
“The name is interesting considering the circumstance,” said the foliate, and Cley heard the laughing sound again.
“That dog has saved me more than once,” said the hunter.
“Yes, your fates are bound together,” said Vasthasha. “I just told him that it was I who fetched the book for him the other night.”
“I thought that was his work,” said Cley. “Can I give you a message for him?”
“There is no need for that with a creature like this. He knows all you would tell him.”
“Do we leave then?” asked the hunter.
“We must go now if we are to make progress.”
Cley gathered up his fire stones and put them in his pocket. He took a quick bite of a piece of pork left undevoured by Wood and then slipped the stone knife into his boot. Lifting the bow and arrows, the waterskin, he whistled around the foliate’s talking leaf and motioned for Wood to take up the book cover. With Vasthasha leading the way, they headed for the northern side of the oasis.
Before setting out across the pink sands, each of them took a long drink from the waterskin. Cley was amazed, watching the foliate tip his head back and gulp like any other thirsty man. Although he was seeing it before his eyes, it remained as strange to him as if some piece of furnitu
re in a parlor had suddenly come to life—like a large rock writing a letter or a fence post making love.
Vasthasha handed Cley another leaf for his mouth, and as soon as the verbal effect commenced, he told him that after a few more of the leaves, the hunter would not need them anymore for days to come.
“Aren’t you especially concerned with the heat of the desert?” asked Cley.
“After we have traveled through the sands for a few days, you will have to carry me,” said the foliate, and stepped out of the shade of the oasis and into the bright sun.
Cley was troubled by the thought of hoisting the foliate on his back while traipsing through the deep sand. “We’ll never make it,” he thought to himself.
“Why should I believe all you have told me?” said the hunter.
“At the end of the autumn, when I have to leave you, Pa-ni-ta has arranged to show you a sign so that you will believe that she understands your desire. Until then, you must trust me,” said Vasthasha.
Cley realized right then as he began to walk in the hot sun that he had no other choice but to follow.
The travelers climbed a set of tall dunes like a miniature mountain range, descended into a valley of sand, then faced another three times the size of the first.
Even Wood had a hard time getting a foothold in the shifting sand. The ascent was steep, and with every two steps they took, they slid back another. Cley stopped climbing three-quarters of the way to the summit and worked to catch his breath.
“It’s got to level off soon,” he said to the foliate, who slid back down the incline to help him.
Wood kept charging and sliding back and charging until he reached the top. Once there, he turned back and barked down at the hunter and the man of green.
Vasthasha stayed with Cley on his climb, helping him along. The hunter looked down and saw that the foliate had grown, in mere minutes, wooden spikes out of the bottoms of his feet. By the time they reached the top, Cley had been reduced to crawling. As he came up over the top of the rise, he saw spread out below him the shoreline of a violet ocean. The water sparkled in the bright sun all the way to a distant horizon, and waves rolled in and crashed in foam explosions on the pink sand. A half-mile to the north, along the beach, there was a tree line and the beginning of grass-covered hills.