Earth and Air

by Peter Dickinson

  She ran for the door and headlong down the bank, and dived. No thought had taken place, but something in her had guessed at the speed of the current, so that she hit the water about twenty yards below the dinghy. The same something controlled her swimming, prolonging her dive and then driving into a breaststroke as it slowed, so that she could stay submerged as long as her breath held. Her eyes were wide open, searching. Immediately around her the water, a sky-reflecting mirror from above, seemed almost as clear as the outer air, but shaded into dimness at any distance. Straight ahead of her, close in against the rock shelf, on the border between the light and the shadows, something went surging past.

  It was almost the same colour as the rock, so she saw it only dimly, and couldn’t make out its shape. But its movement, the powerful pulse of the legs that drove it upstream, told her what sort of thing it was. Something like a frog or toad. A toad the size of a large cow. As she fought to follow, the current carried her out of sight.

  She surfaced, changed to a racing crawl, and reached the shelf. As soon as the current ran less strongly she turned upstream. As a child, before she’d given up competitive swimming, she’d done better at the longer distances than the sprints. Now, automatically, she struck the fastest pace that came naturally to her. Every few strokes, instead of twisting her head to gasp for air, she kept it submerged, peering for some sign of the thing that had taken Dick.

  That was what had happened, she was sure. Again it was the glimpsed movement of the creature that had told her, the action of the near forelimb as it swam—something awkward about it—the other limb wasn’t being used to swim with, because it was clutching Dick—clutching effortfully—Dick had been struggling still . . .

  There! Less than a glimpse this time, a shadow-shift only, uncertain, but she put on a spurt, not bothering to peer below until she had counted thirty strokes, and then only briefly. But yes, she was gaining. Her heart slammed, the air she gulped rasped in her throat and wasn’t enough. By now, if she’d been merely racing, her stroke would have been losing its rhythm, but strength came from somewhere, came with a passionate energy that told her it would keep on coming until she caught up.

  She had no thought about what would happen then, no fear for herself. Indeed, since the first violent shock of horror as the grey arm had come out of the water, she’d felt nothing at all except the urgency to do what she was doing, to follow the thing that had taken Dick, and take him back. Nothing else existed, not pain, not exhaustion, not the cold of the deep tarn water, nothing.

  Ahead, the nature of the river changed. A steep stream fed in from the left just where the main river spilt down a slope of rock, a natural weir right across its width. Their confluence had scooped out a deep, turbulent pool. Only two days ago Mari had sat beside it under a parasol, reading and thinking and dreaming and watching Dick fish. Now, as she reached its lower edge, the creature that had taken him rose from the water on the further side of the pool, close against a vertical slab of rock that divided the river from the stream. If Mari hadn’t seen it emerge she wouldn’t have known it was there, or rather, all she’d have seen was a rounded boulder projecting from the water. There was no sign of Dick.

  She switched to a breaststroke so that she could watch the creature while she swam towards it. After a couple of strokes either the boulder changed, or her perception of it. An inch above the water two wide-set eyes gazed steadily at her. She swam straight on. It erupted through the surface, turning as it did so, reached up with a long-boned arm, grasped the top of the slab behind it, and heaved itself out of the water, scrabbling for toeholds with paddle feet. Dick’s body dangled inert from under its other arm. Without looking back at her it disappeared.

  She turned, chose a landing spot, and scrambled out and up the bank. The thing was clearly visible thirty yards up the steep side-stream, its huge-haunched hind limbs driving it on through the tumbling water with a powerful, toad-like waddle. Dick’s inert body was draped over its shoulder. Mari’s legs were rubbery and stupid with their own sudden weight, but she forced them forward, climbing like the creature straight up the stream bed, rather than try to wrestle her way through the heather thickets on either side.

  Mostly the creature was hidden by the cragginess of the slope, but then she’d see it again, though she didn’t dare snatch more than the odd glimpse for fear of missing her footing. At first she seemed to be gaining, but then she started to fall back as her muscles drained their reserves away, however her heart slammed and her lungs convulsed in the effort to feed them.

  The creature reached a waterfall, paused, and for the first time glanced back, looking, she thought, not at her but at the hilltop behind her. The movement twisted Dick towards her. Just below his head there was a yellowish streak down the dark grey rib cage. The creature turned back and plunged into the white curtain. Through the foam she saw it starting to climb. She couldn’t go that way, but there was a heather-free slope to her right which reached to the ledge from which the fall spilt. As she stumbled slantwise across it the creature emerged at the top of the fall, stood erect, and looked back, again not apparently at her, but at the eastern ridge behind her. She saw it clearly against the skyline, lit by the almost risen sun. The yellow streak was gone. With a surge of hope she realised what it had been. Dick’s vomit. The jolting of the climb had worked like emergency resuscitation and made him throw up. So he was alive. Oh God, let him not now have choked on it! The thing paused only an instant and hurried out of sight.

  Mari knew where it had gone, knowing what lay beyond the ridge. She raced on up, reached the top, and stood there, recovering her breath. Desperate though the haste was, she must wait and do that. Breath might be life, both hers and Dick’s.

  Now, as she waited, searching the unruffled surface for some clue to where the creature had taken him, the sun rimmed the sky behind her. Its long light sluiced across the tarn. She felt its touch on her shoulders, and knew there was another blazing day coming. An instant connection formed in her mind, without any process of thought. All her life, since she was a small child, she had liked to be up very early on days like this, because later on, as soon as there was any strength in the sunlight, she would need to be indoors, or cowering under a parasol or smearing herself every twenty minutes with sunblock. It was part of her inheritance, her troll blood. And the creature too. In its haste to climb the hillside it hadn’t been running from her, but from the sunrise. When it had looked behind it, it hadn’t been interested in her pursuit, nor in the hill behind her, but in the light itself, spilling above the far ridge. How much longer before the deadly moment? Sunfearer. Troll.

  Though the thing she had seen was nothing like any troll she had read of or imagined, the identification came to her with complete assurance. Furthermore there would be a lair in the tarn, a cave with an underwater entrance. Something like that was necessary anyway, if Dick was to be still alive when she found him. He wouldn’t survive more than another few minutes underwater. Where? Not where she stood, on what seemed almost a natural earth dam holding the tarn in against the hillside; but over to her right and beyond, where the higher ground reached the water, was a line of low cliffs.

  She stared towards them. There! Close in below the dark rocks, more to her right than straight across, the utterly still surface was broken by a sudden ripple and swirl, much like a large fish might make, rising almost to the surface to take a fly and then changing its mind and twisting suddenly back. There was a dip in the cliff just this side of the place. Using that as a landmark she jogged round the edge of the tarn, deliberately choosing a pace that wouldn’t instantly run her out of breath again. She dived in where the cliffs began and swam on, still well below a racing speed. The water was degrees colder than that of the river below. At the point she had marked, she stopped, gulped air, kicked herself upwards, and jackknifed into a dive. In the increasing dimness the cliff ran on down, still almost sheer. A good twenty feet below the surface she reached a floor of black, peaty ooze. She turned to
her left, and just before her breath gave out glimpsed ahead of her a darker patch on the vertical rock. Madness to try it now.

  She pumped herself to the surface and trod water, gasping for air. As soon as she dared she dived again. Yes, an opening in the rock, a triangular cranny like the entrance to a tent. Counting the seconds she swam straight into the darkness, and on through the blind black water. The tunnel seemed to run almost straight, and she could feel her way by the touch of her fingers against the rock on either side. Sometimes when all the family had been swimming together, they used to have timed contests to see who could stay under water longest. In those days she could last a minute and a half, but not swimming vigorously as she was now. Call it a minute, she thought, or a bit over. It would be quicker coming out. Forty seconds in, then . . . She reached the moment, and swam on.

  At fifty-five, well past the point where there was any hope in turning back, she saw a change in the darkness ahead. At sixty the change was faint light. At sixty-eight she broke the surface. Retching for air she stared around.

  The light was daylight of a sort, seeping in through a narrow crack overhead. It wasn’t a light to see by, no better than might have been shed at night in the open by a half moon behind a layer of cloud. She guessed she must be in some kind of cavern, part of the fault that Dick had talked about, perhaps, but in the dimness she could make out neither walls nor roof. She swam forward a few strokes and her feet touched bottom, a shelving rock ledge. As she climbed from the water the only sounds in the stillness were the heaving of her own breath and the patter of drops falling from her hair and limbs, and their fainter echoes.

  Not six feet in front of her, a voice spoke. Not a human voice, a soft, deep, booming sound, a drum note that boomed back at her from the cave walls. But its note of questioning surprise told her that it was articulate speech. The thing in the darkness repeated the sound with a different intonation, this time confirming what it had seen. A single word. The strangeness of the voice blurred the two syllables, but she could hear they had not been English. An echo in her mind repeated the sound, and she knew what the thing had said.

  “Woman?” And then, “Yes, a woman.”

  “Who’s there?” she whispered.

  “I do not tell my name,” said the voice.

  “Troll,” she said.

  “Rock-child,” said the voice, correcting her without anger.

  Given its voice to focus on she could make the creature out now, a vague dark mass about six feet from her. Its head seemed to be about level with her own, or a little higher, so she guessed it might be squatting, toad-like, on its haunches just above the waterline. It still hadn’t crossed her mind to be afraid, but now a shudder of cold shook her body, and she realised how far she had chilled through, and how little reserve of strength she had left to reheat herself.

  “Where is my husband?” she said. “You took him. Give him to me.”

  “He is here.”

  The creature moved, a sudden sideways shuffle, revealing a paler shape that had lain behind it. Mari waded forward, stumbled up the slope and knelt, feeling for Dick with numbed hands. He was lying facedown on the rock so she heaved him over, felt for his face, and laid her ear against his mouth. Nothing. Her fingers were too frozen to find his pulse, but he too seemed to be deathly cold. She straddled his body and started to pump at his chest.

  “What do you do, woman?” said the troll.

  “I bring his breath back,” she panted. “Else he dies.”

  “He sleeps,” said the troll, uninterested.

  “Rock-child,” she said, gasping the words out between pumps, “. . . we are . . . sun things . . . Sun’s heat . . . gives us life . . . Cold

  long . . . we die . . .”

  She stopped pumping, knelt by Dick’s head, pinched his nose, and forced her breath between his lips. She backed off, let the lungs collapse, and tried again. And again. The effort was warming her, but she had little more to give. Even with her full strength, she wouldn’t have been able to keep this up for more than a minute or two. She straddled Dick’s body again and resumed pumping.

  “Go to the sun, then,” said the troll.

  “I must take . . . my husband . . . under the water . . . Too

  far . . . we die . . . Oh, troll . . . rock-child . . . help me . . . I am of . . . your blood.”

  Desperate, she flung herself round to breathe again into Dick’s mouth. Nothing. Nothing.

  A huge, cold hand gripped her shoulder and hauled her upright. It turned her and she found herself facing the creature, held by both shoulders, looking up at the enormous head. The light seemed stronger now. Perhaps the sun had risen far enough to shine further into the opening, but she could make out the wide-set bulbous eyes and the V-shaped mouth that seemed to split the face from side to side.

  “My blood, sun-child?” boomed the troll.

  “It’s a story in my family,” she gabbled, desperate to get back to Dick, but at the same time not to waste this first apparent wakening of the creature’s interest. “One of my forefathers—his daughter was taken by a troll . . .” She raced through the first half of the tale . . . No, not the stupid Christian end—that wouldn’t mean anything to it. On impulse, she switched to the fragments that could be gleaned from the Gelfunsaga—the inconclusive contest in the cave, the oath-taking—and wrenched herself away, but then crumpled to the floor. She managed to crawl back to Dick but couldn’t raise herself to start the resuscitation again. She collapsed against him and lay there.

  A voice was booming overhead. With a huge effort she concentrated on the syllables.

  “Child of my blood, rock-born and sun-born, I give you your man back. Go now to your place. Wait there. The sun must set. I will bring him.”

  She managed to raise her head.

  “Rock-child,” she sighed. “I am too weary. I cannot swim so far. I cannot hold in my breath so long beneath the water.”

  She felt herself being turned over and lifted. With limp muscles she struggled against the creature’s grip.

  “My man will die,” she protested. “It is too cold in this place.”

  “Woman, we are oath-bound,” said the creature. “He will live. I will bring him this dusk. Now, breathe deep.”

  She closed her eyes as it carried her into the water, and concentrated on making her breath last as long as possible. As soon as they were under the surface it shifted her to beneath its left arm so that her body could trail against its own. She could feel the steady driving pulse of its hind limbs, and tell from the flow of the water against her skin that they were moving faster than any human swimmer could have done. It wasn’t long before the grip changed again, held her beneath the arms, pushed her forward and let go. As she opened her eyes she was already swimming.

  There was light ahead. She was at the tunnel mouth. Weakly she swam on and up to the silvery surface.

  She made it to the shore beyond the cliffs and climbed out, shuddering, too weak to stand. But the sun was warm enough now to be some use, and life began to come back to her as she crawled round the edge of the tarn. By the time she reached the outflow she could just about totter to her feet. Painfully she climbed down the way she had come, first across the grassy slope by the waterfall and then in the stream bed. By the time she reached the pool at the bottom she could feel her skin beginning to scorch. She slid into the water, and barely bothering to swim let the current carry her home.

  Already she had decided there was nothing she could do except trust the creature and wait till nightfall. No point in going for help, to the police, to the water-baillie. How could she hope to persuade them that though Dick had fallen into the river just outside the house the place to look for him was in the tarn halfway up the hill? But at least she could get herself warm, and then fed, and rested. She went to the bathroom and turned on the shower. As the kindly heat seeped into her she realised there was indeed something she could do.

  There was no instant hurry. Doctor Tharlsen had set times for all
he did. He wouldn’t look at his email until Helge brought in his luncheon tray. Mari went into the kitchen, turned on the kettle, made herself a pot of tea and a Marmite sandwich, and carried them into her desk. Her patient window cleaner was still repetitively saving her screen. “Thanks,” she whispered, as always, when the touch of her hand on the mouse made him vanish.

  She had post, but not from Doctor Tharlsen. Monday, he’d said. She downloaded, not bothering to read more than the subject headings, wrote out her brief message and sent it off. Then she finished her sandwich, set the alarm, and lay down on the bed, not knowing whether she would sleep or not. She did so, almost instantly, and forgot everything.

  It came back the moment the alarm went. She went at once to the PC. While she waited for the server to connect she looked, just as she had done that morning, out of the window. Noon blazed down on the moving river. The dinghy bobbled, empty, on its rope—without Dick’s weight in it the current flowed smoothly beneath it and it hadn’t shifted more than a few paces downstream. She herself felt like that, empty, weightless, with a powerful current sweeping by and herself unable to do more than float on its surface, waiting, waiting . . .

  The server connected. Yes, she had post. Only the line of her address, and the note that there was an attachment. Her fingers moved steadily over the keys, and the text came up. Runes, of course, four four-line verses, one more line of verse and three of prose. She started to read, translating in her head as she went.

  Then spoke Raggir, the rock-born marvel,

  “No longer yours, O Jarl, is the woman.

  “Mine I have made her in my mountain hall.

  “A dark cave her body. There breeds my son.”