As he walked along, Prospero noticed more things that he did not like: Clumps or mangy and worm holed ivy covered what looked like stumps from the fire. But, when he tried to scrap the vines away with his staff, the whole tangled mass fell into the ground with a faint plop. There was never any stump, only a damp hole smelling sickly of rotted plants. And, what the Register of Wizards revealed was true. This was the Empty Forest. Once or twice Prospero stopped at a tree to look at some small speckled bug stuck in a crevice of bark. When it didn't move, he touched it lightly with his finger. The dead shell flicked away to the ground. And once, he thought he saw the amber eyes of a small animal staring at him out of a hollow in the side of an old broken tree. When he went up close to look in at the unwavering stare, he closed his eyes and turned away. The small animal, whatever it was, stood on its hind legs, hunched, mummified, long dead. Eyes that should have rotted had by some awful magic grown hard, like cloudy yellow marbles, and the matted hair was shrunken on the bones.
Prospero walked on into the musty leaf-green light that grew deeper and darker as he went farther in. The trees were very large for a second growth, even a fifty-year-old second growth, and some looked much older than they possibly could have been. Had the whole forest really burned down? It would have taken many years for those thick pebbled humps to grow on the wide, splitting trunks. A very strange place. Then, as he was trudging along through wet clotted leaves, staring at the shelf growths that sometimes laddered the whole north side of a tree, he looked up and found that he was at the edge of another clearing.
It was a wide sunny circle of grass, and in the middle, something white and hard caught the afternoon light. Prospero walked out to where the white shape was, and found that he was standing over a long flat stone, a grave marker covered with square chiseled letters in ragged rows. Some of the letters were filled with dirt, though the slab itself was amazingly clean-no bird droppings, no leaf stains, or weather streaks. What the inscription said was this:
'Under this stone, we have placed the burnt body of Melichus the sorcerer. He did great wrong. May his soul lie here under this stone with his body and trouble us not.'
"That is a terrible curse," said Prospero, looking at the quiet branches all around him. "I hope it did not come true, for his sake."
Now, he had to wait for dark. All the long afternoon Prospero sat there by the stone, listening in vain for some bird, some squirrel, some fat hovering bumblebee. He did not hear anything, but the uneasy leaf rustling that started suddenly and built to a nervous thrashing, as though someone took a bough in his hand and shook it. Then, quiet again. And, he knew that, when darkness finally came, he would not hear crickets. Out in this central circle the queer vagueness of the forest was not so strong, but when Prospero looked for very long into the confusing crisscross of branches, he found that he had to look away, at the blank blue sky or at the bleached grass, or at the familiar green bag that lay beside him.
Night came at last, chilly and damp, but no dew beaded on the flat face of the stone. When the rough-edged half moon began to climb to the center of the little circle of sky, Prospero got up and opened his bag. The copper hinges squeaked, and he jumped back as if he had been shocked. He tried to laugh at his nervousness, but his own dry chuckle only made him feel more strange. He walked back and forth a few times and wiped his hands on his dusty robe, and then he went back to the bag. He took out a pair of brown beeswax candles and lit them, placing them a few feet apart on the carved stone. Between these, he opened his large book to the place he had marked the night before. Then, he went to the bag again and took out a square glass jar full of saffron-colored chalk powder, Going back to the book occasionally to check the words, he sprinkled the chalk in two concentric circles around himself and the stone, all the while whispering verses. Sometimes he would speak a word aloud, and then stop to listen before going on. In the space between the two circles, with the same yellow powder, he made signs: Hebrew letters, zodiac symbols, old complicated figures that every magician knew. One wide empty space was left, and in it he slowly wrote "Melichus." First, he traced the letters in the dirt with his finger, then, he poured in chalk. He got up, took a compass from his pocket, and sprinkled water from a metal jar to the north, the south, the east, the west.
Now, he was kneeling over the book again, and he read the same passage aloud three times, each time in a louder voice. Finally, he stood up and took his staff in his hand. He tapped the name "Melichus" three times and spoke in a firm voice.
"Melichus, by the power of this circle, and the water I have thrown to the four points, and the words I have spoken, I command you to rise before me. Come forth, you that are dead."
Silence in the moonlit circle, and the two candle flames burned straight up. Prospero waited, but all he heard was a creaking branch. He spoke the same formula again, and again there was nothing. The moon passed slowly out of the circle overhead, and the candles spread into brown maps on the cold stone. Prospero pulled his bag toward him and put the book and bottles in it. The clink of jostling bottles made him laugh a little. Here he was in the night with his absurd fat satchel, stealthily conjuring over an empty tomb. He laughed till the nervousness was gone, and then, he stirred around the things in his bag till some of the softer items were on the outside. It wasn't a very good pillow, but he slept. His body was just inside the circle.
When he awoke, it was still night, and as he lay there half asleep, he began to notice the swaying of the branches. They ought not to move that way, was all he could think. The forms they were tracing bothered him so much that he sat up on his elbows. He turned his head slightly and saw that something in tattered moon-gray was crawling out of the dark grass at the edge of the wood, A man on all fours, making no sound as he scrambled over the dry grass. Prospero closed his eyes and said over and over to himself, "It cannot come into the circle. It cannot..."
The man stopped at the edge of the chalk line, beside Prospero's head. And, when he spoke, he had the voice of a boy, panting and wincing in pain.
"I am under that stone. I was his servant. They killed me. Let me go."
Prospero, frightened, lying there staring at a sky containing only one or two weak stars, spoke.
"I did not call you. But, if I can set you free, I will."
The boy spoke again. His wet lips were almost touching Prospero's ear. "Go north and kill him, Go north." His voice had an awful rising wailing sound.
Prospero clenched his hands and sat up, looking away from the thing that crouched or floated near him. Now, he put his hands to his face and tried to think, and finally, he spoke the words he had to speak, one at a time in a shaking voice. He turned his head slowly and looked at the shape, which now began to melt into the hard ground like a spreading lump of gray dirty snow.
But, nothing evil left the forest. Prospero stared at the ring of trees and realized that he could feel their limbs growing tense. He shook his head to get rid of the pulsing fuzziness in his eyes. Had he said the right words? He sat up straighter, and then bent down over the stone, trying to read the letters by the starlight. For some reason, he began to trace the letters with his finger tip, trying to imagine how they looked, and how the wavering lines of square deep-cut symbols ran.
"I thought so!" he said out loud, and he pounded on the stone until his hand was sore. Now, he knew the reason for those ragged rows. The rise and fall of the letters, the extra spurs and flourishes the carver had put in, had knit together a curse too strong to be undone by a few mumbled words. Prospero, lying full length on the stone, painfully bent his head backward and looked at the dark sky.
"I wonder what I have done," he said. "I wonder what I have done."
The answer came. As he watched, something like a cloud, but too low for a cloud, moved over the circle of sky. Now, even the light of those distant stars was going. It felt as though someone were sliding the lid onto a vault, and Prospero could almost hear stone grinding and sliding overhead. Now, it was really dark, a shut-in, mu
sty-closet dark. He felt that if he reached out he would touch hanging cloth, old clothes that he did not want near him. Choking, blinding, afraid even to take a deep breath for fear of what he might draw into his lungs, Prospero started to stumble out of the circle, moving his hands in front of him. He felt nothing there, but he sensed something slipping past his arm and trailing down his finger tips. Now, he started to run, and his head hit against a tree trunk with a sickening jolt. He turned, and his left cheek was scratched all the way across by what might have been a branch.
Prospero came to a shuffling stop in the leaves that smelled more strongly than ever of black-green rot. Hanging at his belt was a small quartz globe with a brass rod running through it. He unhooked it and held it up, rubbing it. For years, he had used this globe; he had used it on the darkest caves under mountains, and it had always sent out a bright orange light that made fire shadows on the rough stone walls. Now, it glowed a foggy green, giving Prospero a thin misty halo to walk in. He saw that he was in the middle of several tall dark trunks, and that the clearing was out of sight, although it might be only a few yards away. What he wanted was the path that led back to the gate. Of course, the path was not there, so he started to walk through the trees, holding the weak lamp in front of him. A vine swished down from a tree, and Prospero reached up to fend it off. His hand closed on sticky, slippery rope, and he pushed the thing away.
Suddenly, he saw the path. It might not have been the same one, but anyway it was there, and Prospero took it. The hooked branches pulled back as he walked along in the black silence. No noise now, but his soft footsteps on the flattened grass. It seemed to be the same path; at least, he thought he recognized a little black bush that grew almost across it. As he approached the bush, it slumped across his way with a rustle and what sounded like a little cry. He stopped and prodded it with his toe-it squealed and ran away. And then, there was a hand on his arm.
A voice breathed in Prospero's ear with a wet-leaf smell, and what that voice said, Prospero has never told anyone. He turned, and he grasped an arm, but his hand sank into mud-mud with a center like bone. Frantically, Prospero jerked his hand away, and with his other hand, he shoved the ball of quartz at this breathing, man-sized form. The globe burst with a flash of chilly lightning, Prospero closed his eyes tight and began shoving mechanically at what he could no longer feel. The smell was gone, and Prospero opened his eyes to find that the forest around him was full of fireflies, the last pale magic of the vanished globe. He could see to get out, but he would have to run to make it, because the little dots of light were already going out.
He ran along the path, trying not to look at the things that were going on around him, and as the last fireflies went out, he reached the gate. Outside the fence, the clearing lay in calm starlight. His hand was on the latch when he heard another voice-not the whispering leaf voice, but a little girl's weak cry.
"Help me! I can't get out!"
He turned and ran to where he saw a small white blur under a willow tree. But, when he clasped the child to him, her head crunched under his hand and the whole body turned to crackling fluttery paper. In the air, someone was laughing, and the laughter was more horrible because it was a child's-wet, gulping, and somehow harsh. It did not take long for Prospero to reach the gate again, and this time he slammed the gate open with both hands so hard that it rebounded from the stone post. He caught it from the outside, pulled the iron ring, and the latch hooked.
All the rest of the night Prospero walked up and down in the clearing, watching the forest. It was like something seen through glass, engraved and still, like frost-plants on a windowpane. As soon as it was light, he got up and walked back to town. He did not care about the townspeople's hatred now. Outside the city wall was a blacksmith's shop, and Prospero walked up to it calmly, like an old customer. The blacksmith looked up in fear.
"Give me a hammer and a chisel," said Prospero, "or I'll tie all your horseshoes in bowknots."
The man gave him the tools. Prospero went back to the forest and kicked open the gate. He marched straight to the clearing, where he found his hat, bag, and staff untouched in the scuffed yellow circle. With the chisel, he hacked away enough of the lettering to undo the awful curse that some local magician had made with rising and falling rows of letters. But, even though he had–he hoped–wiped out the curse, he did not want to stay in this place, and in a little while, he was on a north-running road–after he had returned his tools to the startled blacksmith.
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Prospero had been walking for several hours on a road that was little more than a pair of yellow ruts, overgrown with bunch grass and gold-enrod, that wound between high weedy banks from whose crumbling sides twisted roots stuck out, groping at nothing. Now, as the red flattened sun sank into a wide bar of blue-black cloud and the oak trees atop the banks began to darken with twilight, he started to wonder how far away the next village was. The shadowy banks drew closer together now, and he walked on through overhanging leafy arches, looking for a signpost of some kind It was full dark night, moonless and starless, when Prospero stopped at the top of a small hill to examine something planted a little way off the roadside. He swished away some tall wet grass and straggly bushes with his staff, until he could get to the object that had attracted his attention, and when he struck a match, its faint sulphurous light showed a worm-eaten gray post to which a sign was nailed. The signboard itself was so encrusted with yellow dirt and bird droppings that at first it looked blank. But, when Prospero had scraped some of the filth away from the warped board, he could read the fading black letters: FIVE DIALS.
"Five Dials sounds interesting," he said aloud. "But, how far, for heaven's sake?"
One end of the sign was carved into an arrow, but the other end was ragged, as if a part of it had rotted or broken off. The missing piece might have told the mileage, but if there was such a piece crumbling in the mud and nettles at the side of the road, Prospero could not find it. After several minutes of match striking and weed stamping in the mosquito-infested darkness, he straightened up, gave a loud "Phah," and walked on down the road. But, he had not gone a mile when he was very pleasantly surprised by the sight of the village lights, tiny yellow blots glowing in the valley ahead. From the hilltop where he stood, Prospero could see a cozy little cluster of thatched roofs, slate roofs, gables, and copper chimney pots. Over the huddled houses rose the pentagonal clock tower that gave the town its name. The shining dials said ten past seven, but the clock, picturesquely out of order, clanged hoarsely seven times as Prospero stood on the hilltop and listened. He laughed to himself and started down the gently sloping hill into the valley whistling an old Scotch piping tune.
A few minutes later, Prospero was standing in one of the narrow streets of the little town, looking for someone who could direct him to an inn. Everyone seemed to be indoors, probably having late supper. Pots clattered and people laughed in the distance. Prospero wandered around the town, and as he passed the rear of the humped stone church, he noticed that one of the clock faces was missing. The other four glowed like little moons, but the fifth was a black hole.
"Ought to change the town's name," he chuckled as he kicked a pebble down the street.
At last, he saw a villager coming. Straight up the middle of the cobbled street tottered a comical-faced little old man, who stopped and smiled fatuously at Prospero The two stood in silence for a minute, and then Prospero spoke.
"I beg your pardon, but could you recommend a good inn here in town?"
The old man pointed his crooked cane toward a shadowy side street and worked his jaws a couple of times before speaking. When he did speak, it was in a wheezy voice.
"Well, ye'd have yet best luck at the Card Player. Go down that alley and turn right Ye'll see the sign. Mern crost brig."
Prospero cupped his ear. "What was that last thing you said?"
The old man looked flustered and shook his head, mumbling.
"'S no matter. G'by
, Dirks in cairn."
He hustled unsteadily on, turned the corner, and was gone.
"Funny old man," said Prospero. "Well, I hope his instructions were right."
The wizard walked briskly through the dark alley, dodging a small dog that plunged past him. In the next street, which was better lit than the other he saw at once that the old man had not been wrong. Between two dark shops with high scalloped false fronts was a slate-roofed two-story inn. The four green windows on the first floor were whorled and spiraled with light, and from within came the clatter of silverware and the clank of pewter mugs on wooden tables. As Prospero paused under the gently swinging signboard, he noticed the picture on it: a conjuror with four cards face down before him on a table. The fifth he held up, and it was blank.
Prospero rapped on the brass-fitted door with his staff. Almost immediately, the door opened and a bar of light streamed into the street. A slightly plump middle-aged woman in an apron stood half in shadow, holding the door. Prospero could see enough of her bland round face to see that she was smiling kindly.
"Welcome!" she said. "You look like a weary traveler. Take a seat near the fire! Either fire! Would you like something to drink?"
Prospero, delighted by the hospitable air of the hostess, entered and found himself in a long smoky common room with a fireplace at either end. There were blazing wall torches, and, overhead, wheel-shaped chandeliers with dripping white candles hung by chains from the square oak beam. Prospero took out his stubby brier pipe, lit it from the fireplace, and settled on a stool near a little group of quietly talking people. The hostess brought him a cold sweating tankard of ale, and he leaned forward to catch the conversation near him.
The Face in the Frost Page 7