The Dark Ground

by Gillian Cross

  "How many weeks?" Bando said insistently.

  They all knew it was a stupid question.

  But it was the question everybody wanted answered.

  Lorn could see them all waiting for her to speak. Perdew and Dess. Tina and Annet. Ab and Minnow and Shang . . . so many faces, all wanting the kind of simple answer that she would have to give Bando.

  I can’t—

  But already her mind was moving, calm as a machine, visualizing the journey. She guessed at the distance and the time—and then doubled her guess. When she spoke, there was no hesitation.

  "I think it’ll take them about three weeks to get there. Maybe four. And the same to come back."

  She felt the tension loosen as people sat back and relaxed. They should have known that the numbers were sheer guesswork. But speaking them out loud had given them a kind of authority.

  "Seven weeks overall then," muttered Dess.

  "More like eight," Ab said carefully.

  They all started discussing the figures, the cautious ones—like Ab—allowing extra time and the optimists thinking of reasons to reduce it.

  Bando was the only one who didn’t join in. He squatted down beside the line that Lorn had made, shuffling backward along it. When he reached the tunnel entrance, he pulled out the branches that closed it off and went outside. Lorn heard him scrabbling around overhead.

  "What are you doing?" she called. "It’s dangerous out there."

  The scrabbling went on for another moment or two. When Bando crawled back in, he re-blocked the tunnel awkwardly, with one hand. His other fist was clenched tightly.

  "What have you got there?" said Dess.

  Bando didn’t answer. He hurried across to Lorn’s line and squatted down again, spitting into his fist and rubbing both hands together.

  Lorn went over to see what he was doing, and he opened his hands to show her what he had. He was holding four pebbles. One gray, one black, one brick red, and one a dull yellow ochre.

  "Zak," he said. "And Nate and Cam and Robert."

  "That’s nice," said Lorn, not really understanding.

  She would have waited until he explained, but she suddenly saw, out of the corner of her eye, that the fire was burning very low. Shang was supposed to be looking after it, but he was arguing with Dess. Lorn hurried down the cavern to remind him.

  When the fire had been rescued, she turned around and discovered that Bando was crouched right behind her. He was placing his stones very carefully onto the journey line, one beside the other, a couple of steps from the beginning.

  When the four stones were in position, he stood up and studied what he had done. Then he bent down and rearranged them, so that the red stone was in front.

  "Cam leads the way," he said.

  "That’s good," said Perdew’s voice, from behind Lorn. "That’s very good, Bando. We’ll move the stones a little further each day. Then we’ll know how they’re doing."

  No we won’t, Lorn thought. That’s silly. We won’t know anything.

  She spun around and saw that Perdew wasn’t alone. Half a dozen of the others were with him, carrying handfuls of leaves and little sticks. Stepping around Lorn, they began to lay the leaves and sticks along the outside of the journey line, so that it was marked off and protected from careless trampling.

  That’s silly, Lorn thought again.

  But they didn’t look silly. They looked solemn and intent. Watching them, Lorn understood that they weren’t just being ridiculous. What they were doing was a serious game. Like the games Zak made them play.

  19

  UNDER THE DARK TREES, IT WAS VERY STILL. OPENING HIS EYES the next morning, Robert felt the air around him, heavy and scented. The network of bare branches inside the tree wall was separated from everything else by the dense layer of heavy needles on the outer surface of the wall.

  Lying curled among the branches, he was suspended in a cool, hushed space. Glimpses of light and movement came from beyond the needles, but he felt completely detached from them. From one side of the tree wall to the other, it was no more than a minute’s walk, but straight ahead the trees stretched away out of sight.

  Nate reached out from farther along the same branch and nudged him, nodding sideways. "Look at the spiders."

  Huge webs spanned every space in the outside surface of the wall, stretching from one dark green, needled branch to another. Seen from inside the wall, they were striking and dramatic, silhouetted against the pale sky and hung with dewdrops. The speckled spiders waited in their hiding places, ready to pounce, invisible from outside, but horribly plain from where Robert and Nate were lying.

  Birds’ legs strutted past, and once or twice a sharp beak stabbed into the leaf wall near Robert. But he wasn’t afraid. Not even when a huge, wet nose snuffled along the edge of the path. All those things were beyond the trees. The thick needle leaves concealed him completely, and their strong smell masked any other scents. Inside the wall he was in a secret world.

  FOR TWO DAYS THEY TRAVELED UNEVENTFULLY THROUGH that world. The earth under their feet was dry and dusty, and nothing grew in it except the tree trunks themselves. They were able to walk steadily, without too much scrambling, and the days fell into a comfortable rhythm of traveling and rest.

  On either side of them, beyond the walls, they saw the light change through the day. They could tell when the sun was shining brightly, but under the trees the shadows hardly altered. It was always dark and still. There was no noise except the tramp of their feet and sometimes the soft sound of Nate whistling under his breath.

  Even when it rained outside, it was dry under the trees, and the thick outer walls muffled the noises beyond them. Robert began to feel that the only real things in the world were their own footsteps and the rise and fall of their breathing.

  They walked in the early morning and again in the evening, until it was too dark to see the tree trunks in front of them. At night and in the middle of the day, they climbed into the branches and rested. Robert was still too weak to walk for more than two or three hours at a stretch, and whenever they stopped he fell asleep immediately.

  IT WAS ON THE THIRD DAY THAT HE SAW THE RUNNERS.

  It was just after sunrise and he had woken up first. He walked to the edge of the trees, to peer at the sky before they set out. The air was full of a fine, drizzly mist, hanging low on the ground, and everything beyond the tree wall was blurred and indistinct. He couldn’t see even as far as the edge of the grassland.

  In the old days, he would never have been out so early. If he had woken at all, he would have pulled up the covers and reckoned on another fifteen minutes in bed. But he was beginning to like the fresh dawn air and the way the sky changed as the sun came up. Standing just inside the shadow of the trees, he took a long breath and gazed out at the hazy light seeping through the mist.

  And then the ground began to shake underneath him.

  It was faint at first. For an instant he thought it was just an odd tingling in the soles of his feet. But it grew stronger, second by second, until he knew that it was not his body but the earth that was trembling.

  Earthquake, said his brain. But that was wrong. What he could feel wasn’t a sudden, catastrophic jarring. It was a steady beat.

  Bam. Bam. Bam.

  Not a sound, but a vibration. It caught him off balance, and he staggered slightly.

  "Take care," Zak called softly from behind. "Keep still."

  The drumming grew stronger, as though the ground was getting ready to explode. It was impossible to distinguish between sound and vibration now. He sensed them both together, with his whole body. But he had no idea what was producing them. Falling onto his hands and knees, he inched forward until his head was just beyond the edge of the trees, peering out into the mist.

  It blanked out everything except the small space in front of him. For a moment he couldn’t see anything.

  Then they were there in front of him, thudding onto the path, huge and impossible. He knew what they we
re. He recognized the patterns, even magnified a hundredfold. Nike. Adidas. They thundered down through the mist, one after another—three times, four times, five times as tall as he was—with their strips of silver glinting. They came out of nowhere, beating against the ground and then disappearing upward, too close to make any sense. He could smell the strong, sour sweat soaked into them, and see the puff of dust as their soles hit the ground.

  Rolling onto his side, he looked up, trying to see more than feet. Vast shapes rose up into the mist—up and up and up. It was like staring at skyscrapers. The air swirled around them, stirred up by their movements. He felt the chill of it against his face. He felt the ground shake as they passed.

  He felt everything shake.

  Until that moment, he had hardly thought about the end of the journey. He was simply bolting home, like a little child, taking his troubles to be solved. At the back of every thing, he was thinking, They’ll fix it. They’ll know what to do. All I have to do is speak to them.

  But how do you speak to a skyscraper?

  My mother, the apartment building. My father, the office tower.

  He had known—but he hadn’t understood. Not at all. Not anything.

  He lay there watching the monstrous figures vanish into the mist. There were five of them altogether. Even after they had gone, the air was still moving. It still smelled like sweat.

  AFTER A LONG TIME, NATE CAME AND SQUATTED DOWN BESIDE him, laying a hand against his back.

  "You should have warned me," Robert said when he was sure he could keep his voice steady. "I didn’t realize how big people are."

  The hand on his back went very still for a moment.

  "Don’t be stupid," Cam said harshly, from behind Nate. "We’re people."

  Robert rolled over, facing into the shadows, and the others stared back at him. Cam and Zak and Nate. Small. Earth brown. Dressed in bat leather and plant floss.

  People.

  The word napped around them emptily, huge as a marquee. His mind flicked back and forth, trying to make it fit them all. The three in front of him. The runners. His mother and father and Emma. Himself.

  People. All people.

  He couldn’t do it.

  What’s the point of words, if they don’t fit the way things are?

  IT WAS CAM WHO MADE HIM GO ON. SHE WALKED OVER AND jabbed at him with the blunt end of her stick.

  "If you stay there, a beak will get you. Get back under the trees. Start walking."

  "What’s the point?" Robert said dully. "Even if we manage to get there, we won’t be able to do anything."

  "I thought you wanted to find out who made you like this," murmured Zak. "To understand."

  "What’s the use of understanding if you can’t do anything? I just didn’t get it. I didn’t realize how small we are. We can’t do it on our own—"

  "Don’t!" Nate said sharply, interrupting him. Cam and Zak began to chant, in angry, sarcastic voices.

  "Size

  Makes you wise!

  And growing

  Equals gnawing!

  But shrinking

  Stops you thinking,

  And once you’re small

  You’re no use at all!"

  They went on chanting it until Robert pulled himself off the ground and started walking. He snatched up his stick and went ahead angrily, without waiting for them. There seemed to be no purpose in it, no purpose in anything, but he walked forward anyway. He kept to the middle of the trees, as far away as possible from the light on either side. Staying in the shadows, where there was nothing to see except the trees rising up and up above him, in an unending network of bare branches.

  20

  THERE WAS NO MIDDAY REST THAT DAY. ROBERT KEPT WALKING obsessively, pushing himself harder and harder. Not leaving room to think. He strode out in front, concentrating on the next clod and the next stone and the incessant struggle to keep moving. When his leg began to tremble, he stopped and sat down to take food out of his pack, but he ate on the move, chewing with the same mindless determination that drove his feet.

  He could hear the others behind him, but he didn’t look around or wait for them to catch up. He didn’t want to talk to any of them, not even Nate. As long as he kept walking, on his own, he could forget what he was—what they all were. He could forget the questions that boiled below the surface of his brain.

  What are we doing?

  What’s the point?

  He refused to let them take shape, making sure that his mind was completely occupied with practical matters about what to do with his feet and how to get around obstacles. Those were the only realities. Everything else was abstract and unnecessary.

  BY LATE AFTERNOON HE HAD WON THE BATTLE. WHEN HE stopped to gather his strength, his mind rested, too. He was several minutes ahead of the others, and he sat under the trees on his own, chewing a handful of nut meal and gazing idly into the distance.

  He was almost ready to start again before his brain connected with what he was seeing. It took shape gradually, in front of his eyes. While he walked he had been aware of very little except the ground under his feet and a shadowy darkness ahead, stretching on and on, apparently without end.

  Now he realized that the darkness had taken on a different quality. Ten or fifteen minutes’ walk away, he could see the last of the trunks that marched down the center of the tree wall. A little way beyond that, the open space was closed off by a curtain of heavy, dark needles, overlapping each other in great, sculpted curves. They were almost at the end of the wall.

  But at the end, rising up through the thickness of the outer surface, he could see a tall, looming shape. It was pale and solid, like a great, stone tower. Behind it, between the needles, he glimpsed the red and gold of the setting sun.

  He rolled his pack, tied the strings hastily, and pulled it on, grabbing his spear and hauling himself to his feet. Without waiting for the others, he hurried forward, curious and impatient.

  The thing he had seen was brutally man-made. The massive sides sloped slightly inward toward a top that was level with the summit of the tree wall. The surface was rough and grainy, set with huge boulders larger than Robert’s head. He scrambled around it, running his hands over the boulders and peering up between their shadows.

  There were no windows or doors. It was not a tower. (How could it be? Who would build a tower small enough for him to walk

  around?) It was a solid pillar, made of concrete. The far side was set with huge rusty rings, placed one above another, too high for Robert to reach. Anchored in the rings—contorted around them in ugly, twisted knots—were five long metal cables, each one as thick as Robert’s body. They ran ahead horizontally, drawing parallel lines through the air. Impossible lines that went on and on without sagging or breaking.

  With his head flung back, Robert stared up at them, imagining how smooth and easy they would feel under his feet. It would be easy enough to climb the pillar. He could plant his feet on the projecting boulders, dig his fingers into the grainy surface of the concrete, and pull himself up into the sky. Up and up and up, until he reached the highest ring. Then it would be simple to scramble over the ring and out onto the broad, taut surface of the cable. And he would be able to see.

  He had actually put one foot up on a boulder when Cam came charging at him. She seized his shoulder and dragged him backward.

  "Don’t think of it! Don’t even dream of it! Are you crazy?"

  "Leave me alone!" Robert said fiercely. "I’m tired of scrabbling around in the mud. We’ll be ten times as quick walking along the metal."

  "Ten times as dead! Do you want to set yourself up for every bird in the whole park?"

  "She’s right," Nate said, coming up behind her. "You know she’s right. And what if you fell?"

  Robert didn’t want to listen, but he knew they were talking sense. He dragged his eyes away from the straight, easy path through the air and forced himself to look along the ground, at the alternative.

  Beyond the concret
e pillar, there was a narrow stretch of open grassland. And slicing through it, running straight across in front of them, was a deep gorge. To the right, it went under the cables, disappearing into thick scrub, but in the grassland it was plain to see.

  The cables ran over the gorge and into a patch of giant trees that stood separately, rising up and up into the sky, so high that their tops were invisible. Their trunks were like castles, and their branches ribbed the sky.

  Real trees. Oak and beech and maple.

  They needed to follow the cables into the great wood, but there was no way to get there without crossing the gorge. Robert walked forward to the edge and peered down.

  The sides were so steep that they were nearly vertical. Plants grew thickly all the way down, almost hiding the small river that trickled slowly along the bottom. Some of the plants were brown and dry, but there were plenty of green leaves. Robert could see several clumps of grass spikes, heavy with grain.

  Zak and Nate came up behind him, one on each side.

  "That’s not an easy climb," muttered Nate.

  Zak looked down into the gorge, measuring it with his eyes. "It’ll be even harder to get up the other side."

  Robert looked from one to the other, wondering whether they had any better ideas. But if they had, there was no chance to explain them. Cam came past the concrete pillar, peered down into the gorge, and nodded approvingly.

  "That’s great," she said. "See all that grain down there? Just what we need. I bet there are snails, too. Maybe even some fish. We’ll be able to stock up on food before we go on." "We need to be careful," Nate murmured. "You can’t be sure—"

  But Cam didn’t listen. Without giving Nate a chance to finish, she sat down on the rim of the gorge and started to lower herself into it. Within a couple of seconds, she had disappeared. All they could hear was an occasional scraping sound as she slithered over bare stones.

  "Looks like we’re going down there," Nate said.

  Zak shrugged. "She hasn’t left us any choice, has she? We can’t afford to get separated. Come on."