They had come a long way when the path reached the bottom of the gorge. It was dark twilight here, a silent creek running under overhanging shrubs and ferns, a slippery dim crossing. Hugh came slowly across. She saw that he did not walk easily. She saw that on this side of the canyon the path turned back, going west.
If it was west.
All confidence slipped from her down in the dark slippery place. If they had come farther than she had counted on, and the cave of the dragon was on the western face of the mountain, then all her directions were off. They were in country she knew nothing about. Anirotembre, the land behind the mountain, the name was all they had ever said of it. If there were towns there they were not spoken of. What had Hugh once said about the west? Something about the sea. That was no good. She must decide what to do. This trail they were on might be a circle. It was the same trail they had been on since they left the High Step, it was the dragon’s way. It might go zigzagging in and out of the ravines and up and down the slopes around the mountain and back at last to the High Step. Days walking, maybe, and Hugh already standing here, his head down a bit, glad to stop. It was no good going in circles. They had to get off the dragon’s path, and get out.
“I think maybe we should leave the trail here,” she said, speaking low, for the deep place was awesome. “We’ve got to try to keep heading east.”
He looked up at the dark slopes overhanging. “It’ll be hard to keep any direction, off the trail.”
“This river’s running east. I think. We can keep following it.”
“O.K.”
“I’m just guessing it’s east,” she said shortly. “I don’t know.”
“There’s no way to know.” He absolved her without question. “I’d never get anywhere,” he said, looking at her across the dark air, “not by myself.”
“Out again Brautigan,” she said. “Maybe. If only this river is running the right way.”
“Not a river at all, it’s a creek,” he said amiably.
“I call them all rivers. You want to rest here a while?”
“No. Ground’s too wet. Let’s go on.”
It was unnerving to step off the path deliberately, to choose pathlessness, as if you knew your way. At least the going was not hard at first. The trees on this side of the gorge were mostly big old hemlocks, without much underbrush between them, once they were up out of the streambed. The slopes were steep. Before long she wished her right leg could be taken up a couple of inches. But they were making good progress, and there was more light here.
The stream began to descend more steeply. Irena did not try to follow close to the water, but struck up to the spine of the ridge, where the walking was easier and the direction still the same as the flow of water. She had had some hope of seeing the way ahead from the ridgetop, but as always the trees grew too close. Had they been fools to leave the path? Maybe, but she was not turning back. All they could do was take their chance. She was hungry. It seemed too soon to stop, until she thought back to the place below the cave where they had slept—hours ago, way back up the mountain. She turned and said, “I’d like a break,” to Hugh, plugging along behind her. He halted promptly. He looked around and pointed out a level bit of ground between the roots of two great, shaggy trees, and they headed for it. He wore the red cloak, which made him look rather like a grandmother from behind, but stately in front view. They found convenient roots to sit on, and Irena unstrapped and unwrapped the packet of food. “I thought maybe we’d go light this time, and next time we stop eat more. Are you very hungry yet?”
“Not hungry at all.”
“Eat something, though.”
She set out portions that looked shamefully meager to her, put up the rest, and fell to. She thought she was chewing slowly and making it last, but it was gone at once, gone before he was half done. He did not even eat the bread. She looked at him uneasily. He was pale, but the haggard look was mostly unshaven beard. His expression was not strained. In fact he looked easy and contented, gazing off among the trees. Evidently feeling her gaze on him, he looked round at her. “You work, or go to school, or what?” he asked.
At first the question seemed crazy, senseless, she could not answer it, here lost on the dragon’s mountain. Then the impulse that had moved him asserted itself in her, and she saw nothing strange in what he asked. “I work. Mott and Zerming. I’m an errandperson.”
“A who?”
“An errandperson. They have all these affiliates and subsidiaries in town, and a whole lot of correspondence and memos and a lot of blueprints and stuff—they’re partly in engineering—and it pays them to use people to carry it around to the different offices instead of using the mail. It’s a pretty big outfit. But they’re still local and Mr. Zerming still pretty much runs it. He likes to use people who have their own car. But I get all my gas free.”
“That’s crazy,” he said approvingly. “So you drive around all the time?”
“Some of it’s easier to do on foot, the downtown offices. Or use the bus. Some days it’s all driving. It’s kind of weird. I like it because of being on my own and sort of doing it my own way. I hate doing things when somebody else says how to.”
“Trouble with most jobs.”
“The trouble with this one it’s really a kid’s job. Sort of unreal—you know. You never really do anything. Go and go and get nowhere.”
“What would you like to do?”
“I don’t know. I don’t mind this one, you know, it’s all right. Just a job. But I guess what a person really does is different. Ought to be different. Like a farm. Or teaching. Or kids. But I’m not there. You have to have some real dirt and a tractor. Or get a teaching degree or a nursing degree or whatever.”
“You can go to night school at a community college,” he said meditatively. “And work daytime. Starting, anyhow. If…”
“That sounds like something you’ve thought about. Or would you have to go to a special college?”
“What for?”
“Library work, you said.”
He looked at her again, a slow look. “That’s right,” he said, and she knew beyond reason or question that she had recognised something that had been slighted, done something absolutely and permanently right. She did not know what it was, but the effect delighted her. “Crazy,” she said. “All those books. What would you do with them, anyhow?”
“I don’t know,” he said. “Read them?”
His smile was purely good-natured. She laughed. Their eyes met, they both looked away. They were silent for a while.
“If I was just sure we were really going east, I would feel so good!…Are you feeling O.K. now?”
“I’m fine.”
He always spoke quietly, but she was aware of the resonance of his voice, muted; a beautiful singing voice, it might be.
“Sore as hell here,” he remarked with some surprise, exploring his left side with a gingerly touch.
“Let me see.”
“It’s all right.”
“Well, let’s see. I thought you moved kind of stiff on that side.”
He tried to pull up his shirt but could not raise his left arm. He unbuttoned the shirt. He was embarrassed, and she tried to act detached, doctorly. At the level of the elbow, on the edge of the ribcage, was a greenish-black spot the size of a coffee-can lid. “My God,” she said.
“What is it?” he asked, apprehensive; he could not see it clearly.
“A bruise, I guess.” She thought of the grip of the sword protruding from the belly of the white creature. Her own body tightened and shrank together at the thought. “From when the—when it fell on you.” All around the livid spot the skin was yellowish, and there were other bruises and discolored streaks running up towards the breastbone. “No wonder it feels sore,” she said. She felt the heat of the bruise on her fingertips before, very lightly, she touched it.
He caught her hand with his. She thought she had hurt him and looked up into his face. They did not move, she kneeling by him as he
sat with one knee drawn up.
“You told me never touch you,” he said, his voice husky.
“That was before.”
His mouth had softened and slackened, his face was intent, profoundly serious, as she had seen it once before. She had seen on other men’s faces that same mask, that made them all alike, and had hidden her own face. Now unafraid, awed but curious, she watched him, and touched his mouth and the hollow of the temple by the eye as gently as she had touched the black bruise, wanting to know this pain and this desire. He held her to him, but awkwardly and timidly, until she put up both her arms, feeling herself go as soft and quick as water. Then he held her and mounted on her, overcoming; yet her strength held and contained his strength.
As he entered her, as she was entered, they came to climax together, and then lay together, mixed and melded, breast against breast and their breath mingled, until he rose in her again and she closed on him, the long pulse of joy enacting them.
He lay there, eyes shut and head turned aside, three-quarters naked, his jeans pulled down. She touched the long splendid line from hip to throat, looked at the peculiarly innocent, fair silky hair in the pit of his arm. “You’re cold,” she said, and managed to get the red cloak pulled over them as they lay. “You’re beautiful,” he said, his hands trying to describe that beauty in caresses, but without urgency, tenderly, sleepily. He lay with his face against her shoulder. Half asleep, she saw the unmoving leaves of the hemlocks against the quiet sky. The comfort they gave each other was very great, but it was all the comfort they had. The ground was rough. She felt shivering go through him as he slept. She drew away from him. He protested, saying her name, relapsing for a minute into sleep.
She pulled on her clothes, shivering a bit herself, and as he roused she got him to wear the leather coat, which had finally got fairly dry, and the cloak on top of that. “It’s shock that makes you feel cold,” she said.
“The shock of what?” he asked with a placid smile.
“Shut up. It does make you cold—shock from injury.”
“I think we figured out how to get warm.”
“Yes, all right, but we can’t get to the gateway by lying here and screwing, Hugh.”
“I don’t know if we can get there by standing up and walking,” he said. “At least we can enjoy the rest stops,” he added, and then looked at her to make sure he had not hurt her feelings or offended against modesty. His own modesty, his vulnerability, were entirely admirable to her. She was much cruder than he was, she thought, and if he judged her he must disapprove; but he did not judge her. He did not come to her with judgments, or with a place for her or a name or a use for her. He came with nothing at all but strength and need.
He was looking at her. He said, “Irena, you know, that was the best thing that ever happened to met.”
She nodded, unable to answer.
“I suppose we ought to go on,” he said. He felt his left side with a thoughtful and disgusted expression. “Wish that would wear off.”
“It’ll take a while. It’s an awful bruise.”
He was looking at her again, uncertainly; then, with resolution, came to her, touched her hair and cheek, and kissed her mouth—not expertly, and not very passionately; but it was their first kiss. Better than the kiss she liked the touch of his large hand. She wanted to tell him that he was beautiful and that she liked him, but she was no good at saying things.
“Are you warm enough?” he asked. “I’ve got all the clothes on.”
“I always warm up right away walking.”
He waited for her to start off, making no pretense of knowing where they should go. She set off with a new access of confidence along the ridgetop, continuing their course beside the stream in the direction she was resolved to call east.
They walked steadily without speaking for a long way. The ridge, a long, lean spur of the mountain, curved somewhat to the left as they went; its back rose and fell, but the slant over all and always was downhill. The woods on the spine of the ridge were sparse, making easy going, and there were some long open stretches where it was pleasant to walk in the short, dry, brownish grass out from under the dark overhang of branches. At last the spur began to descend steeply, then abruptly. Failing to find an easier way they had to scramble down, clutching at roots and forced sometimes to slide. They fetched up at the bottom, in the streambed, a steep-sided, thickly overgrown ravine. They made their way at once down to the stream to drink.
Irena climbed back up the muddy bank to a clear place made by the falling of a big tree, and stood there considering. This stream was about the same size as Third River. If it was Third River, all they had to do was follow it and they would cross the south road—but this wasn’t Third River. This was the same stream they had been following all the way from its source, the spring among the ferns, below the dragon’s cave. It was flowing east or southeast, down off the mountain, in this canyon. Third River flowed west, past the mountain. This must be a tributary; it would meet Third River somewhere. It was running toward the left and Third River would run to the right, from this side, if she was facing south now—
She stood trying to work this out, how the streams could be running opposite ways, what direction she must be facing. A knot came into her throat. The names of the compass, north, west, south, east, were words without meaning. Whichever way she faced could be south. Or could be north.
Hugh came up beside her. “You ready for a break?” he asked. He put his hand on her shoulder. She flinched away from the touch.
He moved away at once, crossing the little clearing. He sat down with his back against the massive trunk of the fallen tree, and closed his eyes.
When she came to sit down by him he said, “Maybe we should eat something.”
She opened the pack and laid out the food that was left. There was more than she had thought; certainly enough to get by another day on. That gave her courage to say, “I don’t know where we are.”
“We never did, did we?” he said, impassive. Then, with visible effort, he moved, opened his eyes, asked questions and made suggestions. They discussed following this stream on as they had been doing, since it must join one of the larger streams eventually.
“Or if we’re going the wrong way we’ll come to the sea,” he said, meaning to joke, but his voice died off on the last word.
“The other possibility would be to turn left here,” Irena said, working on a second strip of mutton jerky and feeling enlivened by it. “Because I keep thinking we aren’t going east enough. And so long as we stay on the mountain we aren’t completely lost—at least we know where the mountain is.”
“But we don’t get any nearer the gateway.”
“I know. But the mountain is really the only landmark we have. Since we lost the sense of where the gateway is.”
“I know. It’s all alike. Like when I went past the gateway. I guess…I guess what I’m afraid of is that that’s happened again. The gate isn’t there any more. There’s nothing to find.”
“That’s never happened to me,” she said, defiant. “It’s not going to. I’m not going to stay here.”
He was pushing fir needles into patterns on the ground beside the fallen tree.
“That’s yours,” she said, trying to keep her eyes off his share of meat.
“I’m not really hungry.”
After a while she said, “You’re not leaving more for me, or something creepy like that, are you?”
“No,” he said, candid, startled; he smiled, looking up at her. “I just don’t feel like eating. If I did you wouldn’t stand a chance.”
“You can’t fast and do a long walk like this too.”
“Sure. Live off my fat, like a camel.”
She frowned. She wanted to move closer beside him and touch him, his rough hair and tired, stubbly cheeks, his big, powerful, yet childlike hand; but she was prevented by having flinched away from his touch a few minutes before. She wanted to deny his self-denigration but did not know what to say.<
br />
His eyes were closed or closing; he had leaned back against the fallen tree. She said nothing, locked in self-consciousness and a deepening depression of spirits. When she glanced at him again he was asleep, his face slack, the hand on his thigh lax.
They ought to go on. They had to go on. They couldn’t sit down and sleep, or they would never get to the gateway. “Hugh,” she said. He did not hear. Then her anxiety melted in the fearful, passionate tenderness it had risen from. She went to him and pushed him over gently to make him lie down. He roused. “Go to sleep,” she said. He obeyed her. She sat beside him a while. As she sat she listened to the sound of the stream nearby, which she had not paid attention to before. It ran quiet here, flowing softly on sand or mud, the gentlest murmur. She began to realize that she was tired. She got the red cloak, which he had not worn once he had warmed up in the leather coat, and put it over them both as a blanket, and fitted herself against Hugh, and went to sleep.
When they roused up both of them were stiff, slow, unready. Irena went back down the bank to drink from the stream. She washed her hands and face, and the cool water was so pleasant, and she felt so ingrained with travel-dirt, that she found a shallow pool downstream and took off her clothes and bathed. She was shy of Hugh’s seeing her, and got dressed again quickly. He came down the bank farther upstream, where it was low, and knelt ponderously to drink. “Have a swim. I did,” Irena called, buttoning up her shirt, shivering pleasantly.
“Too cold.”
“You still feel cold?” she asked, joining him on the ferny, muddy shore.
“All the time.”
“It was that—the dragon thing—It was cold. I felt it.”
“I just want to see the sunlight,” he said. There was a ring of despair in his voice that frightened her.
“We’ll get out, Hugh. Don’t—”
“Which way?” he asked, standing up. He used a knotty bush growing from the bank to help pull himself upright.
The Beginning Place Page 17