The Nargun and the Stars

by Patricia Wrightson

  Quickly the water deepened, and slowly, dreamily, the Potkoorok stretched out and began a crawling swim. Simon half swam and half crawled after it. They went with the water out of this cave and into another; and as they went the water swirled and rose. For a moment Simon knew that this was the Potkoorok’s trick. There could not be enough water to flood the caves so quickly. It was not real; yet it was more real than a picture; it was happening to him in his mind.

  He was crawling or walking, yet it felt like swimming. The rocks were dry, yet he could see their wetness and feel the silken swirl of water. Ahead, the Potkoorok must be bobbing as it walked, yet he could see its head bobbing on the water. He stopped wondering at this dream that was happening to him and gave himself up to it … He was swimming through the heart of the mountain in dark and winding caves; and the water swirled higher and stronger, carrying him on.

  Now there was a whisper of water against rock, and a clucking and chuckling round pillars. In dark reaches there were lappings and splashings that echoed and ran about. The Potkoorok chuckled, and all the winding caverns were full of the sounds of water. Suddenly there was another sound, like the rumble and slide of stones: the chattering and soft cries of Nyols.

  The Potkoorok swung close to the rocks, and the strong flow of water drew Simon after it. They were carried on close under ledges and behind fretted pillars of crystal. The rumble of voices lined their way from above, but they turned their faces down and never looked up to see. The voices were startled, excited – disturbed like bees if you knock on their hive with a stick – but not frightened. The undreaming part of Simon’s mind began to doubt that the trick would work.

  The rock beneath them sloped up sharply; Simon had to lie at full length to pull himself along under water. They were coming to an end of the flood. It swirled past them on this rising rock to lie deep and dark in a broad cavern. On the far side it moved about a broken reef of rocks with a quiet lapping that was clear in the imprisoned silence. On the reef swarmed a crowd of Nyols, rumbling and muttering and clambering over each other to look. Above them stretched a pier of rock where more Nyols crouched to look down; and behind them, rich in the dimness, was the yellow shape of the bulldozer. Simon and the Potkoorok were aground on the ramp of rock that led up to it; they had come on the flood right through the mountain to the Nyols’ meeting place.

  The Potkoorok squatted in shallow water with its eyes closed and the dreaming smile on its face. Sometimes it chuckled, and the lapping and clucking of water went through the cavern and off through the heart of the mountain. Simon crouched beside it watching: the dark spread of water where the Nyols crouched, and the darker reaches flooding away, and the yellow bulldozer looming above. Nyols dangled each other from rocks to touch and feel the water, making splashing noises. They went scuttling and swinging like monkeys along rock walls by little crags and ledges, coming and going through the mountain. Still they seemed angry and excited but not afraid; and still the Potkoorok sat dreaming.

  After a time, from far away down corridors, came a flurry of movement and the suck and wash of water. Nyols went scurrying off along rocks, and the crowd thinned. Simon felt the shallow water rise a little, washing into the cave on some new tide. The cries of Nyols echoed out of the mountain, and now they did seem afraid. The water swirled and the cries came closer, passed from Nyol to Nyol. Simon began to hear what they said.

  ‘A Great One comes!’

  ‘Give room, give room!’

  ‘The Rainbow Snake! It comes, it comes!’

  ‘Go while the Rainbow Snake passes!’

  The hair on Simon’s neck and arms began to stir. He looked at the Potkoorok, smiling with closed eyes, and stayed still. The water pushed in with a great strong swirl, and sliding with it out of the darkness came something huge. A long gleaming body went looping through the cave. A great flat head, as thick as the trunk of a tree, lifted from the water and lowered again. With a rustling in rocks the Nyols were gone; there were no more cries. Simon leapt up and went running up the ramp, past the bulldozer and away down the passage beyond.

  What sight the Potkoorok had lent him stayed with him and stopped him from crashing into rocks; but as he ran the dream trickery began to fade. Soon he was running with relief instead of fear, and at last he was running and stumbling to reach Charlie as quickly as he could. It seemed a long time before the beam of Charlie’s torch painted a rock wall yellow; then he was in the outer cave, and the world was open before him with the light of evening on it, and stars beginning to prick through the glow of the sky.

  ‘There you are, then,’ said Charlie tensely. ‘All right?’

  ‘They’ve gone. You’d better hurry before they come back.’

  ‘Crazy scheme,’ said Charlie, tucking wooden chocks under the arm that held fuel and oil cans so as to leave a hand free to manage the torch. ‘I must’ve been mad. Edie’s just below the little gully waiting for you, you’ll see the tractor. There’s another torch in my back pocket, better take it in case you want it. She says to hurry before you catch cold.’

  ‘Can you manage all that stuff? I could come in with you and help carry it. It’s just right at the end of the passage, you’ll see the bulldozer as soon as you get there, but watch the edge so you don’t fall off.’

  ‘I’ll be right,’ said Charlie. ‘You watch out for yourself and Edie, and I’ll be with you as quick as I can. Off you go, now, and stick close to the fence as long as you can in case that thing’s roaming about.’

  Simon found a small torch in the pocket that Charlie presented to him, and picked his way down to the stony ground while Charlie watched. He waved his torch, and Charlie’s waved back from the cave, and then Simon switched his off. It wasn’t properly dark yet, and he didn’t need a torch.

  He hurried round the curve of the mountain till he reached the fence, climbed through it, and started down the steep fall holding on to the wire for support. He could hear the tractor idling, making a series of explosions, phut … phut… phut, because of not having a muffler. In the still evening it seemed almost loud enough to challenge the Nar-gun by itself. He flashed the torch towards it once or twice so that Edie would know he was coming. A breeze as cold as the stars curled round his damp clothes.

  Damp. Not wet. His sweater and trunks had dried out quite a lot on the way through the rocks. When he had thought he was swimming but was really walking or crawling. He knew now that the flood and the Rainbow Snake were not true, but it was hard to believe that they had not been true then. The Potkoorok had made them true. When all this was over he would remember it properly – make it part of his memory of the dark heart of the mountain; for it too was something that had happened to him there. Just now it was better to stick to things that were waking-real, and to follow Charlie’s plan step by step.

  He had reached the easier slope of the mountain’s lap. He could see the tractor’s black shape lit now and then by the spitting of blue-orange flame from its exhaust. He hoped Edie would have the sense not to turn the headlights on and blind him, and of course she did have the sense. She met him a few yards from the tractor, coming out of the dusk with a bundle of clothes.

  ‘There you are, then. All right? Get these dry things on – leave your wet ones somewhere till tomorrow.’ She patted him quickly here and there. ‘Nearly dry. I hope you haven’t caught a chill.’

  Simon took the bundle behind a bush. The dry clothes felt warm and comforting on his damp skin. He shoved the torch into the pocket of the jeans, left his damp things where they were, and went back to the tractor. Edie was now sitting in her place looking as improbable as he had imagined. He climbed on to the draw-bar and leaned forward to speak into her ear.

  ‘We’re not to go into the gully. Charlie said.’

  She yelled the answer over her shoulder. ‘We’re just going backwards and forwards across the mouth. And you’re keeping your eyes skinned in case you see anything move. Hang on!’

  She switched on the headlights. The tractor gave
a series of ear-splitting explosions, bang… bang … bang, and then bang-bang-bang as it moved slowly forward west across the lap of the mountain. Edie was a jerky and hesitant driver; the draw-bar bounced and jerked, and Simon clung on for his life. A little way beyond the gully she began to turn, showing a tendency to panic as the wheels turned downhill and picked up speed; the engine noise dropped to a phut… phut… phut while she forced the tractor round and rose to an anxious bang-bang-bang as she hurried it back on course. They were running east towards the fence, passing the mouth of the gully and going a little beyond.

  Simon wondered how in this noise they would ever know that the bulldozer had started, if it did start. He supposed it would not matter if they never did know. What mattered was to search the gully and the dark face of the mountain for a black, misshapen mass that was coming the wrong way.

  Edie went into her second turn, with the same moment of panic on the downhill run when the motor almost died, and the same crescendo of bangs as they scrambled back on course. In the quieter moments Simon strained his singing ears for a sound of the bulldozer, and heard none. The swinging headlights fanned out in front and they were running west again.

  Simon’s eyes were screwed up with peering into the dark behind the lights. Passing the gully mouth Edie peered too, slowing the tractor almost to stalling and then, to make up for it, bounding on past. In the stalling stage Simon listened as well as peered. He did not expect to hear anything, yet he listened with stretched ears.

  He listened again at the turn, waiting for Edie’s regular moment of panic while his eyes followed the sweep of the turning lights. Nothing that he could see; nothing that his singing ears could hear. Yet behind the noise of the tractor he felt again that stillness of the night when he had met the Nargun: that second when his mind and skin and blood all listened to the waiting silence.

  They swung back east – and that was surely a flash of light from the end of the mountain? Charlie’s torch? Simon banged Edie’s shoulder and pointed. She nodded hard – she had seen it too. But now they were passing the gully, which they should have been watching instead of Charlie’s torch. Simon screwed up his eyes again; Edie slowed to a crawl while she craned anxiously; the tractor stalled. Silence closed on them like a trap.

  ‘Curse!’ muttered Edie, fumbling with the controls; and Simon whispered, ‘Shush! Not yet!’ He stilled the singing of his ears to listen. There was something deep and strong, too low to hear: a whmp, whmp, whmp that was not his heart. Was that what he had felt in the silence? Could it be the Nargun? He knew at once that it was not. Nothing about the Nargun had that machine-like regularity; it might be the bulldozer, perhaps. But what was that other sound that he could not hear? What else was there?

  All his life and being reached out listening to the night. No feather floating down from any tree; no cricket moving under any stone. Was it the mountain stirring? … darkness flowing? What moved?

  In one more heart-beat he knew. Edie had managed to start the motor, bang … bang … bang. Simon shrieked, ‘Edie! Jump! And the cry of the Nargun sprang at them from the gully.

  Nga-a-a!

  Simon leapt from the tractor and dragged at Edie who was tumbling out. They dragged and pushed each other behind a tree while the great dark shape thudded at the tractor. Stumpy limbs crashed at metal, the motor spat and roared and died; headlights swung as the tractor toppled over. Rock fists smashed at it, and the Nargun raised its snout and bellowed at the stars.

  Terror turned Simon’s hands to steel, grasping at Edie and dragging her through the dark to a farther tree. They saw Charlie’s torch wobbling fast across the mountain and that was another terror – he would go stumbling straight into the monster! Simon dragged out his own torch and flashed it once; that was all he could do in case it brought the ancient monster thundering after himself and Edie. He crushed her against the tree, and her own hands were steel holding him there too. They breathed jerkily.

  Charlie’s torch had vanished. There was darkness except for the overturned headlights; and then a tearing and leaping of flame that lit the gully mouth and made the trees jump. The tractor was burning, and the Nargun lurched erect in the flames and bellowed with pride. The stars wavered. Simon’s heart leapt and shuddered as Edie did. He watched and listened as though every nerve was separately alive.

  The flames grew ragged, leaping and falling so that the Nargun appeared and disappeared, at one moment rearing its crooked head to the stars, at another crouched low against the ground. Then, as the flames leapt again, it was moving: dragging itself with heavy power east along the mountain.

  Simon and Edie inched each other round the tree. The fire was only a red glow making the darkness darker. Away from it, towards the fence, a dark uneven shape rose against the stars and dropped down again. Simon dared to flash his torch once again for Charlie. His legs and arms were no longer steel but ordinary shaking limbs; and through his feet he could feel the whmp, whmp, whmp of the bulldozer. Edie was breathing fast.

  They waited and heard nothing except a twanging of wires from the fence. Then there were trees swaying and hissing overhead: the Turongs were stirring excitedly. Soon after that Charlie’s torch flashed close by. Simon flashed back, and Charlie came stumbling out of the dark and grabbed at them both and felt them all over while they clung to him.

  ‘You’re all right, then. Worst ten minutes I ever spent. Never been so glad to see a torch. Had to wait till the thing went past before I could get here.’

  ‘Charlie, did you see? The tractor -’

  ‘Blast the tractor. The thing’s gone round the mountain. That fence would’ve done no good, it was making short work of the boundary when I left. I’m going after it to see what happens, but I’ll see you both to the house first if you can make it. Or would you rather lie low somewhere here till you get your legs back?’

  ‘We’re staying together,’ said Edie. ‘We’ll come.’

  ‘Well … are you up to it? We’ll have to hurry.’

  ‘Better get a move on, then.’

  They went as quickly and quietly as they could, stopping now and then to look and listen. They saw no great misshapen shadow, but the whmp, whmp, whmp of the bulldozer grew stronger under their feet as they went. When they had passed between two leaning fence-posts where broken wires lay slack and curled, they began to hear with their ears a booming that matched what they had felt in their feet.

  ‘It’s not too loud, is it?’ whispered Simon. ‘What’s it like inside?’

  ‘Enough to bring the mountain down,’ said Charlie. ‘The passage is acting as a muffler. It’s good enough to draw your Nargun, mate. That’s where he’s headed.’

  They crept on with greater care, sure that the Nargun would reach the outer cave but not sure how or when. Outside the cave Charlie took the risk of using his torch; its beam went prodding through the dark and found nothing. They could hear the bulldozer clearly. Charlie made Simon and Edie wait while he went into the cave. They waited tensely till he came to the edge and lit their way in with the torch.

  The cave was empty. They moved nervously aside from the black hole that led into the mountain, pressing themselves against the rock and listening to the bulldozer’s muffled boom.

  ‘Put your ear on the rock,’ whispered Simon.

  With their ears pressed to the rock they could hear the big machine pounding and vibrating; Simon felt at last the power of that engine unleashed in full roar. A monster against a monster; it was worth that journey along the Potkoorok’s dark roads. The bulldozer shouted a challenge – and underneath the shouting was another sound, just heard. The heavy grating of rock across rock as the Nargun went, slow and heavy, to meet the challenge.

  ‘It’s in there,’ whispered Simon. ‘What’ll happen?’

  ‘Not what we planned, anyhow,’ said Charlie. ‘And I’m not going in to find out. Bad enough with a torch and no Nargun.’ They waited and listened, now one and now another putting an ear to the rock. Outside the cave the hills dr
ew away, dark and tall against the sky like giants thinking. Overhead were the far, cold stars.

  Then, for the last time, they heard the Nargun cry.

  Its cry came hollow from the passage, wild and savage as always; full of hate that was love, of love that was hate, centuries of emptiness, anger hungry to destroy. As always, Simon felt something curl up inside him. He had always thought it was naked fear, but now he was not sure. It might be naked pity. He pressed his ear to the rock as Edie and Charlie had done.

  Into the thunder of the bulldozer came a dreadful jangling of rock against metal. The night air was sucked past them into the passage and came rushing out again. There was a great blast of sound, and in a moment a great blast of heat. Then came a thunder in the mountain’s side, a shaking and rumbling that died little by little. After that there was silence, thick and dead.

  They stood away from the rock, shaken and shocked. Charlie turned his torch into the mouth of the passage. A drift of dust curled and twisted, eddying into the cave.

  ‘Rock’s fallen in the passage,’ said Charlie to the stares of Edie and Simon. ‘Thought it might, with the vibrations. There was loose soil on the floor, and cracks above – I was glad to get out. I’ll have a look tomorrow, but I reckon your Nargun’s walled in for good.’

  fifteen

  Towards morning the Nyols came back, slipping into the mountain by their own invisible ways. First one or two came, shyly like shadows, afraid that their mountain might still be invaded and ready to flee in a moment – for the Rainbow Snake was one of those who had been worshipped by men, and small elf-spirits must make room for these great ones. When the first few who slipped between the rocks did not come out a few more followed, and others after those. Long before the eastern sky had begun to glow like a black pearl, hundreds of Nyols had crept inside the mountain.