The boy lay sprawled on the grass, his head half lifted, his mouth an O. The other children had fallen silent and were staring at Thorinn. The boy's eyes slowly filled with tears. While the others made mournful noises and wrung their hands, he got to his feet. With dragging steps he moved away toward the shrubbery. Thorinn called after him, but he did not turn. He went to the pod-vines, stood a moment with hanging head before an empty pod, then climbed in and lay down inside it. The pod slowly closed around him.
Thorinn noticed that the other children had backed away, leaving a clear circle around him. Their faces were pale, their eyes big. A questioning call came up the slope; one of the children answered briefly. Another question, another reply. Other voices boomed, piped.
Thorinn buckled the sword-belt around his waist, quickly finished wrapping the shirt, breeks and wallet into a bundle and tied it with the thongs. Carrying the bundle in one hand, he moved down toward the river. To either side, up and down the long green meadow, he could see dots of faces turned to watch him. All the people seemed to have stopped what they were doing; they were motionless and silent. Thorinn kept going, turning now and then to look back; but no one followed him. The meadow sloped down into weedy grass and sedge, became a marsh. Thorinn waded out between heavy clumps of grass, in cool water up to his knees. Little yellow birds burst out of the marsh-grass before him, fluttered erratically for a moment around his head, then dropped out of sight. Up the river, where the stream made a gentle bend, he could see larger birds standing in the water, their long necks looping; they had red breasts and iridescent wing-feathers. Skylight sparkled in the droplets that fell from their beaks.
He stopped where the marsh-grass ended and the muddy bottom grew deeper. To his left, he could see down the river a matter of half a league or so before it disappeared between two gentle hills. To the right, the river curved only a few hundred ells away. Beyond, over the treetops, he could see distant mountains and a faint bright thread that might have been a waterfall. The river ran silver-smooth before him. On the opposite bank was another green slope, narrower and weedier than this one, then trees, then mountains. The sky was bright and blank overhead. He had hoped to see some mark in the sky, but there was none; he would have to wait until nightfall.
He hopped back through the shallow water. Above him on the slope a few of the people were standing watching him; others had gone back to their games, but the little circles around the heaps of food seemed to have broken up. He could see groups of children who seemed to be carrying something toward the shrubbery, passing other groups coming back.
As he approached, he saw that the people were making ready to leave. It was the remains of their meal that the children were carrying. They dropped their armloads in the vines, went back for more. Nearby, he could see a few pods opening, people climbing out. The people were drifting slowly together, all moving in the same direction, forming little moving groups, some with arms linked. Their voices were cheerful. None approached him as he walked up the slope, but a few smiled. One of the children, a half-grown girl, stood by the pod-vines and waited for him. She gestured toward one of the pods and said something. There was a questioning note in her voice, and she stared earnestly into his eyes.
Thorinn looked at the pod, which still hung heavy to the ground. All the others were open and empty, except one or two, farther back in the tangle, and they looked brown and old. One had fallen from its brittle stalk and lay dark on the ground; the broad-leafed vines had crawled over it, almost hiding it from view.
Thorinn turned to the pod again, thinking of the boy. "Is he still inside?" he asked. She looked at him blankly. He made a pushing motion, then touched his sword, gestured toward the pod. After a moment she seemed to understand. She repeated his gestures, then asked him something else in her piping voice. Thorinn looked around. The people were drifting away upriver; these two were the last ones left. "Isn't he coming out?" Thorinn asked. He crouched and laid his hands beside his face, closed his eyes as if in sleep. He straightened, pointed to the pod again.
The girl looked puzzled, but repeated his gestures. She came closer, looking into his face, and said something twice over, with great earnestness.
Surely he could make her understand. Thorinn crouched again, imitating the boy asleep in the pod, then mimed coming awake, the pod opening, the boy stepping out.
The girl stared at him. She spoke in a falling cadence; her eyes and mouth were sad. With one hand she made a gesture Thorinn did not understand. They looked at each other for a moment, then the girl turned away to follow the others, who were already distant down the long strip of green. The pod hung motionless on the vine. Thorinn prodded it with his foot experimentally, moved it a hand's breadth, but there was no answering movement within. He considered whether he should cut the pod open. Did she mean the boy was never going to come out?
Moving listlessly, she was nevertheless slowly catching up to the others. Thorinn hesitated a moment, then decided to leave well alone, and followed her.
Scattered along the grassy bank, the people drifted away before him in twos and threes; the children and twigmen, for the most part, had gone on ahead; the old people, the women, and the women's men strolled behind. Their voices were muted and gentle. In a few paces Thorinn had caught up with the girl; he slowed down to keep pace with her, but although she glanced at him once, she did not speak, and after a moment, losing patience, Thorinn went on ahead.
Where the long green meadow narrowed, the people were filing into an opening in the forest. He could glimpse their bright petals bobbing between the trees. The trail wound gently upward, never steep or difficult, between shrubs with unblemished bright leaves, flowers, vines, trees with hanging clusters of fruit; here and there it curved to avoid a fallen tree. The ground was softly carpeted everywhere. The bushes had no thorns.
Thorinn slipped past the ambling women and old people where he could do so without rudeness on the narrow trail, and eventually had passed all but the twigmen and children, who were now out of sight. The trail was still plain, and he followed it for half a league until it emerged in a wide green meadow, which at first appeared sickle-shaped, curving away from him; then, blinking in the late skylight, he saw that in fact it formed a ring around a clump of slender trees.
People were moving at random around the bases of these trees, where Thorinn saw a huddle of curious round structures of withy and vines. Up in the branches, a flash of movement caught his eye, and he saw platforms there with people on them.
As he approached, he found that some of the bulbous structures around the trees were little bowers; what he had taken for withies were simply the stalks of plants that had been bent together and secured with interlaced vines that still bore their leaves and blossoms. Children were squatting in a few of these. Other huts, somewhat larger, were covered almost to the ground by a solid green skin which, on examination, he found to be composed of broad leaves, overlapped and somehow sealed tightly together at their edges. Peering into the doorway of one of these, he saw heaped flowers and a few gourds; otherwise it was empty.
Voices piped behind him; the rest of the people were emerging from the trees. They crossed to the meadow, a few glancing at him but making no sign. They gathered around the base of the trees in little groups. A few disappeared into the green huts or climbed to the platforms above; then a few more. Thorinn, who had waited in vain for any invitation to follow them, withdrew a little and watched. Now only two of the people remained, a woman and her little man. Arm in arm, they entered one of the green huts.
The birds in the treetops had fallen silent. Thorinn looked up. Silent and swift, an edge of darkness was sweeping across the sky. It was not high-arched, like the sky-scythe of Hovenskar, but straight as a string. In two heartbeats it had passed and the sky was dark. Kneeling in the darkness, feeling the cool breeze that presently began to whisper across the meadow, Thorinn began to suspect that he was farther from home than he had reckoned.
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How Thorinn roasted two fat waterfowl for his supper, and what happened thereafter. Thorinn sat perched on a rock, chin in his hands, staring down at the smooth glassy curve of the water where it disappeared under the overhang. The voice in his head was a remote murmur, as steady and insistent as the water itself. The rocks below him were black and glistening with spray; the water made a subdued rushing sound, so constant and pervasive that it was like the sound of blood in his own veins. Twigs, then a broad leaf, rode down the shining back of the river, curved over and shot abruptly out of sight. He must go down, but he could not.
In three days he had followed the river from the western end of the valley, where it fell in a graceful cataract straight down the face of the mountain, to its exit here at the eastern end. He had crossed the river at the shallows, half a league above, and had followed the wall of mountains all the way around the valley. They were the same everywhere: sheer gray rock, unbroken, without a fissure, a ledge, a handhold. The mountains pierced the sky, or else the sky severed the mountains. There was no exit from the valley except for the chasm into which the river fell.
The sky was dimming; it was time to think of supper, and then a place to sleep. He knew what he had tried so long to keep from knowing: the mountains were not mountains, but walls of rock; the sky not a sky, but the roof of a cavern. A fool might have known as much, for he had traveled steadily downward from the Midworld... but who could have believed that there were trees, a river, a sky underground?
He went into the forest and picked fruit, but the sight and smell of it made his stomach knot, and he threw it into the bushes. Thinking of the water-fowl that nested along the riverbank, he turned with sudden resolution. If nothing else, he could at least hunt his own food and have a meal fit to eat. The river was witchily green with reflected skylight among the dark tussocks. Wading, he moved with caution, stopping at every step to listen. A rustle from the clump ahead; as he plunged toward it, he heard a sleepy note and saw a crested head appear. He got his hands on the warm feathered neck and wrung it, cutting off the bird's sudden squawk. Another body thrashed up from the grass, wings flapping; he lunged, got that one too. With the plump bodies slung over his shoulder he waded ashore. Just as he reached the bank, the night raced overhead and the world fell into breathing blackness. He searched the forest for fallen limbs, tore them loose from the vines that clung to them with a thousand suckers, and kindled a fire on the greensward, not far from the pod-vines. He plucked and cleaned his two fowl—one was a cock, the other a young hen—then contrived a spit between two forked branches thrust into the ground, skewered his birds on it and roasted them over the fire. A faint pattering began around him; a cool drop struck his nose. Thorinn got a big leaf from the forest to cover the spit, and another for himself. In the ruddy light, the greensward was another place, walled in by darkness. Raindrops bombarded his leaves and rebounded pale in the firelight. The crisp skin curled, wept grease that sizzled in the flames; the smell that came from it made his mouth fill with water, and he ate the first fowl with raging appetite before it was properly cool enough. Nothing had ever tasted so good. He carried the second bird into the shelter of a tree and ate a leg and a breast of it; then weariness overcame him; he dropped the rest and stretched himself out. Rain rattled in the leaves high overhead; beyond the lower branches, in the faint glow of the fire, he saw it streaming coppery against the black air. He was up at first light, washed in the river, then breakfasted on the remains of the second bird. Lazy and replete, he lay down and dozed again.
Some time later he woke with a start. Half a dozen of the older children were staring at him across the ashes of his fire and the little heap of feathers, bones, and offal. Among them was the girl he had spoken to before, or one like her. Their faces were white.
Questioning voices came from behind him; more people were emerging from the forest. The children turned and ran toward them, screaming as they went. A crowd formed around the children; it grew momentarily larger and noisier. Thorinn saw faces turned toward him, staring eyes, open mouths. Bewildered, he got up, but already the people were turning away. Their voices dwindled; the whole crowd was moving back into the forest. The last of them disappeared.
When he awoke the next morning, the presents he had given them lay in a little heap at his side—pebbles, crystal, weasel's skull, scrap of cloth.
Goryat's pride, which he had taught Thorinn, was in three things only, never to turn his back on a foe, never to break an oath, always to repay an injury. Beyond this Thorinn had no idea of right and wrong, only a strong sense of justice and injustice. By his lights he had done nothing that was either wrong or unjust; yet it was obvious that he had somehow offended the people of the cavern. They no longer came to the clearing by the river, or even into the forest above it. At dusk on the seventh day, stealing down the path to the village, he had spied on them from the trees, and had seen them coming back from the opposite direction, from upriver, where they must have found a new playground. He dared not show himself, for fear they would think he had polluted their village as well by his presence. The forest was changing. For half a league around the playground, leaves hung limp and shabby from the trees; fruits still grew, but now the unripe ones were withered and hard, the rest had a bloom of corruption and gave off a nauseous smell. He began to detect the same changes in other places where he had slept and cooked his meals. He spent more and more of his time at the mouth of the river, staring at the smooth curve of the water as it fell over the lip.
He began to think of a boat, something made perhaps of the huge leaves the people used to build their huts. In his mind he saw himself floating down the current in such a boat, faster and faster... the cavern opens its mouth, the boat dives into darkness, then capsizes, and he struggles for breath in the roaring water.
No, a boat would not protect him; but what if he made two boats, and sealed them together like two halves of a nut, with himself inside? The idea aroused him, and he went into the forest for leaves of the proper size. He found them in profusion, and carried an armful down to the riverbank, but as he squatted turning them over, planning in his mind a framework of saplings on which the leaves could be stretched and gummed in place, he saw himself once more drifting down the current in his green shell... the boat strikes a rock, bursts open, the water floods in, and the man is struggling, drowning. He cast the leaves aside, angry with himself and the gods, for it seemed to him that the answer was almost within his reach. Deep in thought as he wandered upriver, he found himself again at the deserted playground. He paused, looking up the slope, and his skin prickled. He went up to the forest's edge and stood before the pod-vine. Here like green thoughts hung the very things he had been imagining: they had been here all the time, yet he had not really seen them until now. The vine was still green and fresh; one pod hung heavy; the rest were invitingly open.
He tested an empty one by striking it repeatedly, first with a stick, then with a heavy stone. It resisted his blows; the outer shell of the pod was thick and resilient. He slashed it with his sword; even then, the tough fibers within held it together.
He imagined himself cutting a pod, taking it to the river where the current was swift, lying down inside it... But would it close then, when he had cut it from its vine: and if it did, how was he to get the pod into the river?
Another, equally alarming thought: what if the water made the pod open? This, at least, he could find out by trial. He went back to the vine, grasped it above . the closed pod, chopped at it with his sword. The blade rebounded at the first blow, then bit in; a milky sap oozed from the wound. Thorinn smote again, slashed the vine through.
The pod remained closed. Thorinn dragged it down the slope into the water, where it floated sluggishly among the reeds. He sat on a tussock and watched it. For a long time nothing happened. Bored and hungry, he got up and began to forage, coming back frequently to look at the floating pod. At last he found a nest of four speckled greenish eg
gs in one of the tussocks. He punctured one and sniffed it: it was strong-smelling but fresh. As he was tilting his head to drink the egg out of its shell, he heard a distant splash.
He turned. Nothing was to be seen, but from the direction of the pod came a thrashing sound in the water, then a choked cry. Thorinn dropped the egg and hurried. Before he could reach the spot, he saw a human form flounder upright among the reeds.
It was the boy. He stared wildly at Thorinn, then whirled and tried to run. He fell almost at once in the shallows, but was up again and struggling to the shore. Thorinn saw him reeling up the slope; at the forest's edge, he turned a white face for an instant.
Thorinn found the pod awash among the reeds. It was open and full of water; the soft pink inner surface was already swelling and slimy to the touch.
He knew, then, that the pod would remain closed long enough to carry him down the river, and then release him; but the problem of getting himself into the pod, then the pod into the river, was still unsolved. Except for this, his plans were complete. He had found the place, a steep grassy bank on the far side of the river, where the water was deep and swift. Nearby in the forest was a healthy pod-vine. When he was ready, he had only to cut a pod, take it to the bank... and then what? He saw himself getting in, the pod sliding as it slowly closed around him; the pod splashes into the river, not yet fully closed; water enters it, then it closes: and the man inside, as the pod darts down the current—is he drowning, asleep, helpless?
World and Thorinn Page 5