The Nargun and the Stars

by Patricia Wrightson

  ‘Eh?’ said Simon. He could see vistas of darkness reaching away amid rock, and up and down. There were columns and flowing shapes, dusty but gleaming with lime crystals; he had no idea where the light came from to show them. He could hear a silver gong of water dripping into a pool.

  ‘You wrestle,’ said the eager voices again. ‘Now.’

  ‘Rot,’ said Simon. ‘There’s no time. I’ve got a message.’ He fumbled in his pocket and held up Charlie’s message-stick like a candle in the gloom.

  The Nyols flowed around him in a tide of small grey bodies, fixing bright curious eyes on the stick.

  ‘It’s from Charlie Waters. He’s the Man in Charge,’ boasted Simon, ‘and he could blow this place wide open with dynamite if he wanted to. Only he doesn’t, because he’s a good sort. He sent me because the Turongs said to.’

  Whispers swirled around the cavern and ebbed away beyond. The tide of bodies swept closer; small hands seized Simon and tugged. ‘You come,’ they said, and drew him deeper into the heart of the mountain. Simon thought that now they were treating him as a messenger and not as a catch – but they were so strong that he thought they could have dragged him in any case.

  He hoped they would not suddenly leave him, for no one could ever find his way out of this cavern. It twisted and curved, rose and fell, with winding ways leading up and down. Its floor was heaved into humps and hills of stone among which the Nyols hurried him on. He wondered if the faint light came from their eyes. Sometimes there were echoes; sometimes the cavern widened and sounds ran away and were lost. Stalactites as thick as tree-trunks made brittle pillars under broad shelves of stone, or flowed in salt-cascades over slopes of stone. All of them were covered in powdery dust and half seen in shadows. The Nyols led him down into deeper levels and stopped at last on a broader, flatter floor. All at once the crowd swirled away, leaving Simon alone in an open space while they sat or squatted on rocks along one side.

  ‘Speak,’ they said.

  This must be their meeting place, and they were waiting for his message. Simon paused to gather his wits, listening to the whispers and the dry shuffle of small feet in the dust. Rows of eyes gleamed in dark faces, and over them spread a canopy of rock. That would be a higher floor if you found the slope of rock that led up to it … There was something there, on the wide stone shelf above the Nyols’ heads. He could see a yellow shape in the shadow.

  ‘Hey!’ cried Simon, speaking at last. ‘That’s the bulldozer! How did it get in here?’

  Its proud yellow dim in the shadows, but blunt and powerful as ever like a beast in a cage, the bulldozer was imprisoned in the mountain.

  eleven

  Simon stared at the bulldozer. ‘It was you that pinched it!’ he cried.

  The Nyols grinned at each other with shy pride and kept an uneasy watch on Simon.

  He was looking now at the shelf of rock where the bulldozer stood, following along it with his eyes to find the way down. He traced the falling level to a point behind him, opposite the Nyols on their perches, and hurried over there. The voices of the Nyols rumbled like stones. Simon had only put a foot on the upward path before the crowd was round him.

  ‘Ours!’ they said. ‘You come back. You have message – speak.’

  ‘Hang on,’ Simon objected. ‘I only want to have a look -’ It was useless; he had no chance at all. The small grey bodies bore him back with no effort.

  ‘I wasn’t going to touch it,’ he said huffily. ‘It’s not mine. You can do what you like with it for all I care.’

  They smiled at him. ‘You speak. We hear,’ they said kindly, going back to their seats like a well-behaved audience.

  ‘All right,’ said Simon. He began to tell them about the Nargun.

  It was hard to keep his mind on it, with the bulldozer just in front of him. Simon began to play a sort of game as he talked. He never lifted his eyes to the high shelf above, but turned his head from side to side and began to step back a little now and then, as if he found it hard to keep his audience in focus. He was sure that they would stop him and make him return, but they seemed to be simple creatures and to take no notice. ‘Can’t see you all, there’s so many,’ he said once; and they chuckled at his difficulty and let him move another two steps back. At last he stood on a hump of stone only two yards from where the upward slope began, and there he stayed and talked in earnest. He had won his game and got home on the Nyols; there was no other idea in his mind just then.

  The Nyols nodded their heads solemnly to all he said. They seemed to understand, and to agree with the other old things that the Nargun should go away.

  ‘Well, we can’t make it go,’ said Simon. ‘The Turongs thought you might know more about it because of living in stone all the time.’

  They smiled importantly and nodded again.

  ‘So you’ll help us, then?’ he asked.

  They all shook their heads.

  ‘Well why not, for heaven’s sake? You just said it should go.’

  There was a soft chorus of agreement. ‘The Nargun should go,’ they all said.

  ‘And you just said you knew about it.’ They smiled and nodded. ‘Well, you could tell us something about it, couldn’t you?’

  They all shook their heads again.

  ‘That’s mad,’ said Simon crossly. ‘Why can’t you help?’ They told him, in their chorus of soft rumbling voices. ‘Stone is our dreaming.’ ‘That Nargun, that strong stone.’ ‘Clever stone.’

  ‘Oh …’ said Simon. ‘But you could just tell us about it, couldn’t you? That wouldn’t be helping. We only want it to go to its own place.’

  ‘We not tell,’ they said, and began to mutter to each other in a hundred voices. Listening, he picked out some of what they said: ‘We help Nargun.’ ‘Man not move Nargun.’ ‘Man not thunder to shake the mountain.’

  ‘Oh …’ said Simon again. Yet he thought they had told him more than they meant to tell. He said, ‘Thunder drives the Nargun away, doesn’t it?’

  They only shook their heads again and said, ‘We not help.’ ‘Bad luck,’ said Simon. ‘Have a sandwich, anyway.’ He took Edie’s lunch out of his pockets and tossed the packages across the cavern to the feet of the Nyols. They scrambled down to poke curiously at these gifts and to tear at the wrappings; and Simon turned and ran quickly and softly up the sloping ledge to the bulldozer.

  It couldn’t have got where it was by coming this way – not even with the powerful little grey bodies pushing it. The ledge was not a wide enough ramp, and sometimes it was blocked by pillars of rock that Simon had to work round. But it took him along and up two sides of the cavern to the shelf where the bulldozer stood. As he ran the last few yards he could look down at the Nyols directly below.

  They were clustered thickly round the scattering of sandwiches, biscuits and apples. Those in the front rank were breaking off small pieces of bread or biscuit, sniffing at them doubtfully or putting morsels in their mouths and spitting them out, passing broken crusts to the crowd behind. One of them rolled an apple over the rock, and three or four of them chased it with chuckles. Simon did not think his lunch would hold their attention much longer. But he scrambled into the bulldozer hoping that the darkness under its canopy might hide him a moment longer. He only wanted to sit there for a minute and prove that it was real.

  It seemed to be quite normal and unharmed, the great yellow monster shadowed deep inside the mountain. The only damage he could see was to its chimney-like exhaust; that had broken off short, taking the muffler with it and leaving jagged, rust-flaked edges to show why it had broken. Simon touched levers very lightly and imagined it springing to life beneath him.

  It was darker up here, and he could feel the bulging rock of the roof looming close. Then, from behind the bulldozer, he felt a breath of air. Was there an empty blackness there? Had he found a passage to the outside of the mountain? He thought there must be one, or how could the bulldozer have come here?

  That was all he had time to notice. The
Nyols had lost interest in his lunch and remembered Simon himself. Their bright eyes found him at once, and with rumbles of alarm they came in waves. One stream came along the ramp as Simon had done; the rest swarmed up pillars of rock and dusty crystal, and sprang from each others’ shoulders to catch the edge of the shelf. Their dry soft bodies rustled like bats as they swept over the bulldozer. Simon was lifted out like a toy. Crying, ‘Hang on! I didn’t hurt it – I only wanted -’ he was passed from hand to hand and lowered to other small hands below till he was standing again amid the ruins of his lunch. ‘- to look at it!’ finished Simon indignantly.

  The Nyols ringed him round. ‘You wrestle,’ they said, stern and unsmiling.

  ‘I can’t wrestle! Anyhow, I bet no one could wrestle with you little monsters.’ He began to be afraid from the way they looked that they would keep him there until he did wrestle. He fumbled in his pocket again for Charlie’s message-stick and held it up. ‘I’m a messenger. You have to treat me right.’

  ‘You speak,’ they said, but they did not go back to their seats on the rocks.

  ‘I did speak. I told you about the Nargun, and you said you wouldn’t help.’

  ‘We not help. You go.’

  ‘All right. But I’m going that way. Through that hole.’ He pointed up towards the bulldozer.

  ‘We take you that way,’ they said.

  They closed around and bore him away: pushing him past obstacles on the ramp, racing him past the bulldozer and carrying him into the mountain’s dark side. There they slowed down.

  It was a wide passage, low roofed and sloping upward steeply; and though it had been a blackness before, now it was faintly light. It must be true that the light came from the Nyols. The passage turned and twisted in much the same way that the caverns had done, and like the cavern it seemed to twist through solid rock. Yet once or twice Simon thought there was a washing of soil across the rock floor, as though water had carried it there in a storm. He wondered if the passage was sometimes a river, and imagined waterfalls spilling past the bulldozer, over the shelf where it stood, and far down into the dark heart of the mountain. He would have liked to look for signs of it, but the Nyols closed around and pressed him on.

  They came round a turn and into a stretch that was suddenly much lighter. It was dim grey light, but to Simon’s dazzled eyes it seemed bright. He could see the stone-grey skins of the Nyols, and the uneven roof of rock pressing down. He shivered, feeling as if the monstrous old mountain held him crushed in a fist, and thinking how deep inside it he had been.

  Another turn – and the wind curled gently round him, and the daylight was so bright that he shut his eyes. The Nyols chuckled; they were quite good-humoured again. With a last rush they carried him forward – and left him. Simon opened his eyes and shut them again. He was in a wide, shallow cave full of brilliant light. There was blue sky outside, and he thought treetops.

  It took a minute or so of opening and closing his eyes before he could see well again. Then, warned by the tree-tops, he went carefully to the edge of the cave and looked out. But the Nyols had not, after all, left him stranded as they had found him. The sloping ground of Charlie’s bulge was just below and the treetops rose from behind it. To the right he could look far down on the ridge where the men were still clearing. The shadow of the mountain stretched over it; by mountain time it was late afternoon.

  He had spent his lunch to buy two minutes in the bulldozer, and Simon suddenly knew he was very hungry. Also, it must be late enough for Charlie to begin to worry. He would have to hurry. Yet he couldn’t help pausing to see how the Nyols might have brought the bulldozer to this narrow slope, and along it, and into the passage. He was sure that a person couldn’t have done it; and now the bulldozer was inside the mountain for good. It could never come out – but he might go back some time with a torch to see it – if only the Nyols weren’t so touchy – He turned away and hurried off round the mountain’s rocky shoulder, coming face to face with Charlie.

  Charlie’s face was deeply creased, but as soon as he saw Simon it relaxed into its usual lines. ‘There you are, then,’ he said. ‘Thought you might be having a bit of trouble. What happened? Did you find anything?’

  Simon burst into speech. ‘I found them – the Nyols – a whole bunch of them! Strong! I bet even a gorilla couldn’t wrestle with them. Where do you think I’ve been, Charlie? Right inside the mountain! Did you know it was all hollow in there, with miles of caves and stuff! Miles inside, of course. And you couldn’t guess what’s in there! Have a try – you wouldn’t guess in a hundred years! The bulldozer’s in there! They’ve got it!’

  ‘You’ve had a day of it,’ observed Charlie with a serious inward smile. ‘Had your lunch yet?’

  ‘No, I had to give it to them, and I’m starving.’

  ‘No lunch? It’s past three. We’ll go home for a cup, and you can tell us all about it.’

  Simon was only a little surprised that Charlie should be giving up his watch so soon. He was too excited to think much of the Nargun; and too glad to be out in the wide-open world again, where the silence was alive instead of hollow or dead. He poured out his story all the way down to the house and then, while Edie supplied bread and butter and cake to stop the ache inside him, he had to tell it all over again to her.

  She was a satisfying audience. She didn’t say much, but her face showed the wonder that Simon felt. She glanced once or twice at Charlie, who listened to the second telling as closely as the first.

  ‘It just shows,’ she said at last. ‘We’ve never known any of that, even when we’ve known the other old things so long. I’ll never be able to look at the mountain again without seeing the inside too. Stalactites, you said, Simey. And the bulldozer in there, and all those Nyols … Shouldn’t be surprised, I suppose, after the Nargun. I suppose you didn’t find anything new about that, Charlie?’

  Then Simon did wonder about Charlie’s deserted post. Some of his own excitement ebbed away, and the coldness of the Nargun came closer. He waited as Edie did for Charlie to answer.

  ‘I might’ve,’ said Charlie.

  ‘Go on, then,’ said Edie while Simon was still looking astonished.

  ‘Well, I don’t know that there’s time,’ said Charlie, ‘what with this long tale of Simey’s. You did a good job, mate, and we’ll go and have a look at that ’dozer one day; and you got a bit that ties in with mine, too. But it’s getting late, and there’s wood to chop and the rest. I want to go up there again with the tractor just on dusk, and I don’t want to be caught up there in the dark. So I reckon we’d better get busy now and talk later.’

  ‘The tractor!’ cried Simon. ‘You said we wouldn’t touch it, Charlie!’

  ‘Cool off, I’m not going to touch it. I just want to try something.’

  ‘You can go any time,’ said Edie. ‘I’ve chopped wood before. I’d rather break up a bit of wood and know what’s going on. You ask a lot, Charlie.’

  He looked at her in a helpless way and sat back in his seat. ‘Sorry, I’m doing my best, that’s all, and maybe I’m not too good at it. I’m trying not to put too much on you, Edie, and to have the young bloke by me and keep the lot of us safe. That’s all. You look after the stock again, and I’ll chop a bit of wood before I go.’

  ‘You’ll do what’s best. Tell me now.’

  ‘Well … I watched that thing like I said. I put Simey on his way and found a spot just above it, and I never took my eyes off it for four solid hours except to fetch my lunch. I’d have stopped longer only I got a bit anxious about the boy. And then he had that bit of a hint, and it seemed to tie in …’

  Edie nodded. ‘What did you see?’

  ‘Nothing, maybe – only it happened every time. They were blasting a few trees. You’d have heard them.’

  Edie nodded again. ‘Never any warning. Heart failure every time.’

  ‘Five trees, they blasted. I got a shock myself the first time, didn’t keep my eyes fixed tight enough. But I thought that stone t
hing shivered.’

  ‘Shivered?’ wondered Simon. ‘You mean jumped the same as you did?’

  ‘Well, it could’ve been that. I told you I jumped. Only I thought it shivered. And I didn’t jump the next time, and it did the same then. So then I thought it might be vibration through the ground, and I shifted a bit. Got it lined up with another rock and watched them both. That one never moved. Can’t be sure, of course … But I think with every shot of jelly that other thing shivered.’

  twelve

  Simon was bewildered and almost ready to be angry. After the sheep, and the fright with Surprise, and whatever it was that had happened the other night – after what all the old things had told them – Charlie had spent a whole day proving that the Nargun shivered when an ordinary stone didn’t.

  ‘But Charlie! It’s the Nargun, and the other one’s just a rock! Why shouldn’t it shiver?’

  ‘Why should it, mate? We got a rope tight round it, and it didn’t shiver then – it just went for us. It didn’t shiver when you chucked a lump of wood at it. It just chucked it straight back. Why should it shiver at the blasting?’

  ‘It was frightened,’ said Edie. ‘Poor thing.’

  ‘Well, I think it didn’t like it. Matter of fact, I don’t think it liked the chain-saw much either. Didn’t shiver the same, but I think it crouched down harder when the chain-saw started. You had to watch so close a man couldn’t be sure.’

  ‘So what?’ asked Simon, really wanting to know.

  ‘So then I got thinking. It’s some sort of coincidence that we found out about this Nargun just when they started clearing the scrub. Either it landed on Wongadilla just when the clearing started – and that’s funny if it doesn’t like it; you’d think it’d go somewhere quiet – or it was here already, and it only started moving about when the clearing started. So maybe, if we could make enough row, we could send it off somewhere.’