Wildwood

by Farris, John

  Josie was quiet for a few moments, content, mulling the phenomenon she had described. Terry stroked a wing, which left his fingertips faintly iridescent. He touched them to his lips. Her wing quivered lightly, ecstatically, her heart was loud in his ear. Her breast had warmed beneath his cheek.

  "Travers and the Jewman—"

  "Who are they?" Terry interrupted.

  "Mr. James B. Travers is the architect who designed the chateau. He was one of the first Walkouts; also it was himself who built this town for us, so that we might be something more than half-daft creatures living in caves and treetops. He saw to it that we had a community. And he has always given us hope that someday the travail will end. The Jewman is Mr. Schwarzman, an archaeologist. He is large and blue-eyed, with a wild black beard—"

  "Hey, I know him! My dad and I talked to him at Fulcrum's Cafe. He studied at the Sorbonne, he said. He spoke good French."

  "Yes, Schwarzman. He knows more than Mr. Travers about the sorcery. Once he rashly predicted a time when the chateau would retarn, but it did not happen then. Because of the bitterness his failed prophecy engendered, he was no longer welcome in Walkout Town. But I believe he sincerely wished to help us, and that someday his theories will be proven. The chateau will retarn."

  "What'll happen then?"

  "We have all talked and talked about the prospect. But no one knows. There are some who believe the sorcery will be reversed and all will regain their human shapes, and it will be as if these years in the wild wood did not happen. We will remember nothing."

  Her eyelids closed heavily again; but again she rejected sleep.

  "Yes, and it might happen just that way. But things that seem too good to be true, they say, usually are."

  Terry sat up slowly, troubled by the import of this remark.

  "You mean you won't go back? Even if you can?"

  Josie smiled. "Once I met an eagle in the air, white-capped, with an eye as bright as God's evening star, and forever fierce. He might have ripped me with his talons but instead we soared together, companions, down the gildered day. Terry . . . I have known such heavenly silence, and the grace of eagles."

  Terry said nothing. She continued to smile at him, comfortingly.

  "The only thing I have lacked that I truly long for is the love of a fine lad, as much like yourself as ever I could imagine."

  Terry lowered his eyes, then raised them, more boldly, to stare at her.

  "This morning I admired the purity of your body. And I'm after thinking, you can at least stand the sight of mine."

  He nodded.

  "Do you know what to do?" she asked him, mildly apprehensive. "There's so very much of you, in a manly way. And have you done it ever?"

  "I know what to do," he said.

  "Would you be after calling it a shameful wickedness, and meself a hoor?"

  "No!"

  "Well, may God forgive me, I know that I ought to fear the flames of hell, but I do not. As there's no priest to advise or wed us, then must we advise each other, plight our vows in this time and place according to our truest feelings. What is the meaning of sin, once we are all taken to the heartless peace of our graves? Could an hour of making sweetest love do such terrible injury to our souls?"

  Terry couldn't speak, but he shook his head.

  "And would you be thinking it unseemly should I wish to keep me eyes on you, whilst you are taking off your clothes again?"

  Her wing trembled against his cheek. He rubbed it lightly, up and down, then rose and stripped off his sweater, unbuttoned his shirt.

  For a long time after he was naked he didn't make a move toward her.

  "I don't promise," he said shyly, "that it'll be better than flying."

  "Oh Terry, me cupidon. I'm dry as death. Water me with your rain."

  He lay down with her in the hammock. Her wings rose to form a tent over them, dimming the light of the lantern in the hut.

  Chapter Twenty-Nine

  Through trial and error Whit Bowers found his way out of the caverns, emerging from a hideaway gate within a ravine of what appeared to be natural stone, but wasn't. It was night. Within a sky of black glass deep flaws, linked like organisms in a primordial sea, glowed intermittently—shades of rouge and spectral yellow, nickled blue and blooded lime. Walking through a windy drift of evergreen, he stumbled across a lax conquistador beneath a fir tree. The figure in garish pewter stirred, losing his grip on a halberd: the helmeted head turned, revealing a jackal's snout.

  The voice, in contrast to the glittering animal eyes, was youthful; meek.

  "Did I go to sleep?"

  Before Whit could say anything, the armored creature rose in an awkward clashing of metal against the tree trunk.

  "I'm sorry, Mr. Travers. I didn't mean to fall asleep. I'll get right back to where I belong. You are Mr. Travers, aren't you?"

  "No," Whit said. Watching, but only half-listening to him: he also heard an orchestra, distant as the susurrus of the sea, like sad tidings.

  The jackal looked around in total confusion, then gaping alarm, prominent nostrils flaring.

  "I thought you were. Everything's hazy. What's the matter with the sky? Which way is the chateau?"

  "I don't know."

  "But I have to get back!"

  "You can't," Whit told him, feeling a cramp of pity. He was little more than a costumed boy, a servant. Soon he would go mad. Whit turned away.

  The aviary was nearby, its glass repeating the colors of the sky. He walked toward it, hearing the conquistador sob as he blundered off in a different direction. He went into the stinking aviary and looked around. Scores of live birds remained, huddled in nervous sleep. He was relieved to find that Jacqueline and the baby in the perambulator were gone. Someone must have come for them, as Jacob had predicted.

  But where were they now? And where was he? He wasn't much better off than the young conquistador with the jackal's countenance, lit up in swashy metal, tracing a leftover line of melody to an unearthed orchestra, demesne of the ghost chateau.

  There was someone Whit knew he had to find, if he existed in this wood: the architect he had been mistaken for. They must be living somewhere nearby, he thought. The Walkouts Jacob had described.

  The queerly illuminated night sky was bright enough so that he could have a look around. But if any of the Walkouts were as dangerous as Pamela or (perhaps) the black goatman, then he wanted to be armed before he went any farther. His choices seemed severely limited: a stone, a club. Then he remembered the halberd which the jackal-faced young man had left behind, and wondered if it was real.

  Whit found his way back to the place where he had stumbled across the armor-suited Walkout and saw the halberd gleaming on the ground. He picked it up. The weapon was authentic, not a costume prop. It consisted of a straight shaft of some hard wood that was six and a half feet long, topped by a sharp ax blade and a steel spear point. It would be somewhat heavy and awkward to carry on a sortie through thick and unfamiliar woods, but he felt better having it in his hands.

  Circling the aviary for a sign of those who had taken away the body and the child, he discovered a track that seemed to have been trampled recently, by many pairs of feet, and the ruts from a wagon or cart. He followed this track downhill, coming to a waterfall suspended from a jagged cliff like a chandelier of brilliant, prinking, columnar crystal; where it rilled, light riffled over the surface, resembling candle flame on glazed red oil. He was reminded of a shelled cathedral, or a wake. He wondered what had happened to Arn. He was thirsty but afraid to drink here. He crossed the rill on steppingstones, holding the halberd horizontally for balance, and entered an estate of evergreens so steeply massed and silent and bitter in its darkness that he felt abruptly grim, and death-bound. Yet he believed, or was afraid, that he could hear the distant orchestra behind him, weaving in and out of consciousness: a fade away trombone, a wander lost rhythm. He pressed on, breathing hard, twisting the halberd this way and that as it hung on tough springy boughs.
>
  Somehow he lost the track, and almost immediately tumbled over a low cliff into a pit.

  The fall knocked the breath out of his lungs, the music from his mind. He saw glints of red in pitch blackness. His ribs pained him.

  When he could breathe again he rolled slowly onto his back, gasping. The sound of labored breathing, echoing from rock walls, was louder, grunting, bestial.

  He saw, as his vision cleared, shapes moving around him, and he heard guttural threatening voices. Above him the obsidian sky, crazy-cracked with lurid light. Next to his head, a stinking bone. Six feet away a lowered tapering head, the curved razor tusks of a wild boar, four feet high at the shoulders.

  He was surrounded by them. He had fallen into their den or feeding ground. He knew only one thing about them, that they were dangerous.

  Where was the halberd?

  They were coming closer: muttering, muttering murder.

  If he continued to lay there, then they would be all over him, rooting, tearing him to pieces. He'd seen what domestic hogs, roaming around a ravaged countryside in Belgium, could do to the corpses of soldiers.

  If he moved, then he must move the right way, and fast; but which way was that?

  He felt around him with his hands, keeping his eyes on the boar who appeared to be closest. A miracle that he hadn't fallen on the blade of the halberd, and cut himself seriously. But if he had been bleeding, the boars would have smelled it; already they would be eating him.

  His groping right hand touched the haft of the halberd. Closed on it.

  A chance.

  He was so numbed by terror he wasn't sure he could move quickly enough, find some high ground in the dark, keep them at bay. The lean and hot-tempered boars. How fast could they move? And how many were there?

  Whit decided it would be a fatal mistake to try to run. He must hold this piece of ground, or else.

  Screaming to release adrenaline, hoping to startle or panic them momentarily, he rose to his knees and pulled the halberd to him, gripping it with both hands. Then he jumped to his feet, screamed again, swung the ax blade at the nearest boar, cleaved a haunch to the bones.

  God, they were monsters!

  As the wounded animal went down he sensed a charge from another direction, wheeled and drew blood from a snout with the point of the halberd. Hauled it back and slashed at another swiftly moving shape. Sent it bowling away and shrieking in blood throes, the din a Hadean nightmare. Even as he whirled and feinted and slashed, sobbing, everywhere that pig eyes flared, he fought with a sense of dread and hopelessness, knowing he must be overrun, brought down beneath their keen little hooves.

  "This way, sir!"

  He was so shocked to hear a human voice he almost gave up his life.

  There was a gunshot, or at least it sounded like a shot; and a boar that had leaped for his exposed side as he half-turned to look around was seized in mid-air and snatched away just as its tusks grazed him.

  "I'm behind you; stand them off and continue to back up. No, don't look for me; I'll try to protect your flanks—there, to your right!"

  Whit pivoted and slashed, the blade of the halberd jarring deep against a haggish skull; blood sprayed him.

  He jerked the halberd from the fallen boar and retreated. Some of the boars had become interested in the flesh of their wounded companions, milling around as if they were part of a blood carousel, romping and storming. But the rest were pressing to the perimeter of his jabbing staff, too many, too many—

  He slipped and went down with a cry of despair, his arms aching, too tired to lift the cumbersome weapon anymore.

  Something huge flew over his head and landed in the midst of the boar pack. The body of a horse, hooves flailing and raising dust, blocked access to Whit. There was another shot.

  "Get up! Climb the cliff! You're almost there!"

  Whit stumbled to his feet, dragging the halberd, and scrambled to the base of the cliff, looking back at the vicious melee, unable to believe what he was seeing through the haze of dust.

  The glimpse he had of the rider showed him to be a gray-bearded man, with muscular arms and a bare torso. He was well forward, leaning across the horse's head, with what appeared to be a blacksnake whip raised in one hand. But, no, that wasn't right, because the horse he rode had no head. And the man wasn't astride the horse at all—great God almighty, he was the horse!

  Squealing and snorting, most of the wild boars were routed, sprays of their blood imparting a pinkish tinge to the dust boiling sky-high. As he wheeled to crack his whip the centaur lost his footing and lurched to his front knees. Another boar attacked, where the body of the man joined the body of the horse. Whit charged from the ledge on which he had found breathing room and speared the boar in its side; grunting from strain, he hurled the kicking animal to the ground but this time could not unstick the point of his halberd from rib and gristle.

  The centaur, getting to his feet, loomed over him. "Quick, on my back! I'll get us out of here."

  His flowing hair was as long as his beard. Whit grabbed a handful and mounted the centaur, was thrown forward, and almost unseated as the centaur galloped away, roughshod over the boars that remained in his way, sparks flashing from iron shoes on stone beneath the mast that covered the floor of the ravine.

  The centaur's back was slippery from blood. But if he had been injured, he seemed not to notice, or care: he was hollering for joy, arms raised exultantly, the sleek whip flashing in the night. They were headed downhill, and Whit had to grip the coarse long hair of the centaur's head with both hands to keep from being jarred to the ground.

  "Where are we going?"

  "What do you care? A minute ago you were pigmeat."

  But they stopped soon enough, the graybeard winded and trembling, showing a limp when he broke stride. His torso streamed blood and sweat. Whit slid down from his back.

  "Are you hurt?"

  "They chewed on me a time or two, but they couldn't hobble me. I like my bacon, sir, but that is getting it—the hard way."

  There was a gleam of swift water in the vale where they had paused. The centaur kneeled ponderously, sighing, on the moss bank. He laid down his coiled whip and bathed vigorously, throwing up handfuls of water, drenching his locks and beard, coughing and muttering to himself. Whit washed the boar blood from his hands, drank from the cold clear stream. They looked at each other frankly, man and manbeast, strangers but comrades thrown together by ordeal. The sky above them shimmered, ghostly and vaporous; there was foxfire all around. Their eyes glowed from it.

  "You're one hell of a fighter," the centaur said. "I've taken on Rooshians before, but I'm afraid I lack the stamina to handle a large pack of them. I was already getting old before I was born, if you know what I mean."

  "No," Whit said, still feeling a little numb and shaky from his escape, and strangely childlike in the presence of the centaur. "What's a Rooshian?"

  "European wild boars, imported and set loose in these mountains by so-called sportsmen in the twenties." He shook his grayed head angrily at this murderous violation of a wild sanctuary. "As if we didn't have enough problems surviving."

  "You're—a Walkout."

  "What else?" the centaur said with an ironic smile. "Call me Jim."

  Stunned, Whit ventured, "James—Travers?"

  His smile vanished, the aging face hardened. "That was someone else, in a time beyond recall. Jim will do. And what do you know of Travers?"

  "He—Jacob seemed to think that you—may be my father."

  The gelded centaur limped closer, eyes narrowed to see Whit better.

  "It can't be. Not you. You're no Walkout."

  "I'm not sure. Maybe—I am. They found me wandering in the desert. Texas, late afternoon, 21 June 1916. That's the first memory I have, although I was at least six years old at the time. But all my life I've dreamed—"

  "Of what? Of whom?" the centaur demanded. The large equine body, cold with scars and fresh wounds, trembled impatiently.

  "I dre
am of a man who was a great magician. And a woman, dying. Calling for me. But for some reason, I—hate her. I don't know why."

  "God help us!" In his excitement the centaur reared, and Whit backed away from the threat of hooves, the coiled blacksnake in a knotted fist. But the centaur settled down with a windy sigh, eyes watering from strain. "No, don't be afraid. Let me look at you! If it's there, if you haven't had it removed—"

  "What are you talking about?"

  The centaur leaned forward, a trifle unsteadily, from the waist, his large ungroomed prophet's head coming within inches of Whit's face. He had two very different eyes, one intelligent and sharply appraising, the other blooded and blurred as if by madness, adrift in its socket. He stared at Whit, then withdrew to a height of contemplation, muttering to himself.

  "What did you see?" Whit asked crossly.

  "Yes, it is there. Edgar's mark. You had it as a child. No, this may not be a coincidence. But how, in the name of the almighty—"

  Whit touched the small mole on his jaw near the left earlobe.

  "This? My son has one too."

  "The lightness of your eyes—" The centaur's trembling became unendurable. He wheeled and began to run in circles, galloping across the creek in a brutal ecstasy, crying out incomprehensibly. It was like a running fit, a terrible seizure. The power of wild horses had always unnerved Whit. Again he was afraid of being trampled; he looked for an outlet, a way to escape the runaway creature. But before he could move to safer ground the centaur stumbled and fell hard, lay shaking and blowing on his side.

  "Alex!" he shouted; and Whit heeded the call.

  "Are you all right?" he asked the centaur, looking for trouble, the jagged edges of a smashed leg bone. But there was no apparent damage.

  "Old—too old for such—nonsense. Losing control. But nothing—in the past thirty-one years has prepared me for this night. You must be Alex. I'm sure of it."

  "His son? Not yours?"

  "We will speak—if you please—of a man named Travers. Who, for all practical purposes, died on Midsummer Eve, 1916. I knew him well, his genius, his flaws; but my period of mourning is long over."