by K. J. Parker
There was no reason to believe that getting out of the house would be any more hazardous than usual. After all, he’d assured Father he’d be there bright and early in the morning, and even if Father had suspected anything, there hadn’t been time for him to arrange extra security, surely. Even so, he compiled a plan of action as he filled the pillowcase. From the back door, he’d cross the poultry yard to the long barn—the yard was blind to all the house windows except the kitchen, and he’d only have to be out in the open for a matter of seconds—out through the hayloft (he’d done the jump many times and knew he could manage it) and follow the thorn hedge to the orchard gate. The trees in the orchard would give him all the cover he needed, and then he’d be in Long Meadow; he could stay in close to the hedge all the way down to the eaves of the wood. Once he was safely in there, they’d need dogs to follow him, not that he’d put that past them. Probably best to make for the forest river and walk down the bed, at least as far as the logging weir.
He considered leaving a note, just in case his mother got worried, but decided against it.
Just as well he’d taken the trouble to plan ahead. There were two of Luso’s men standing about in the poultry yard. That wasn’t sinister in itself, but he made sure they didn’t see him. As he climbed the orchard gate into Long Meadow he heard voices, which kept pace with him as he scuttled down the hedge. He heard a dog bark as he ran the few yards of open ground to the edge of the wood. Inside, he heard them again, and someone calling out instructions: “You two go on ahead, cut him off at the hunting gate. We’ll skirmish the briars and the middle. He can’t be too far in front.” As a precaution he stayed with the river as far as Big Soak and took a deer trail west, until he could see a green glow in front of him that told him he was almost at the cliff edge. Then he followed the western edge all the way round to the Gate.
And here was the problem. The Gate would be held against him, in force. He couldn’t rely on any of his usual ways of sneaking through, which depended on the guards being careless and bored. He really didn’t want to have to fight, or even hit anyone over the head from behind, and besides, he had no reason to believe he’d be capable of succeeding. As he approached the Gate he could hear several voices and Luso, clearly in a bad mood. He paused to wonder how Father could have known, but that was a pointless exercise. Father knew everything, and what he wasn’t told he deduced.
He faced facts. He wasn’t going to be able to get past the Gate. In which case, he needed another way, but there wasn’t one. To be on the safe side, he turned back and retraced his steps, venturing as close to the cliff edge as he dared go. That was risky. You could walk out of the trees and be over the cliff before you knew it, but the danger made it safer, because Luso’s men knew about it too. Another way—but there wasn’t one.
He realised he was in a part of the forest he’d never been before. He tended to think of it as a series of enormous rooms. This was Far West Room on his mental map, somewhere he’d never been because there wasn’t anything here worth the effort of reaching. He tried to picture it from the outside, and in his mind saw a sheer white cliff, unmarked by even a single reckless tree growing out of a crack. Maybe, just possibly, you could get down off Far West Room with a lot of rope and some big nails to hammer into the rock, but he was inclined to doubt it. If there was another way (and there wasn’t), here wasn’t the place where he’d be likely to find it. In fact the whole chalk side of the plateau was a dead loss. He’d be much better off crossing to the east side and trying his luck on the limestone face.
He was preoccupied, therefore not thinking properly about what he was doing, therefore careless. That wouldn’t have been so bad, but he was also walking noiselessly—second nature in the wood, and by now he was really good at it. So when he dropped between two fallen trees into a small briar tangle and found himself facing a pair of small, round eyes, he wasn’t immediately aware of the danger he’d stumbled into.
The boar looked at him.
He was lying up, the way they do. Given half a chance a boar will run away long before you see it, and hide in one of its nests till you’ve gone away. But if you’re walking very quietly and not thinking about what you’re doing, you might just possibly disturb a sleeping boar in a nest, which will almost certainly be the last thing you ever do.
He’d frozen, which explained why he was still alive. The boar, a six-year-old with one splintered tusk, was looking at him, wondering if Gignomai was really there or if he’d just imagined him. Gignomai felt his bladder loosen; his throat was blocked like a drain and he had no strength in any of his limbs. Away in the distance he could hear Luso’s dogs, which was absolutely not a good thing: dogs frighten boar, boar gets up and, as far as Gignomai’s concerned, this is the end of the history of the world, a full stop and nothing.
In his left hand, he was holding the sword. A mad impulse swept over him to draw and try and kill the boar, which was out of the question, because even if he contrived to draw and level before the boar got him, all that would happen would be that the boar would run up the blade in its determination to get at him, and then both of them would die together.
Luso persecutes these things for fun, he thought. He must be mad.
Somewhere in his mind he was apologising—to his mother, father, Luso, Stheno—I’m sorry I got killed in such a stupid, stupid way. Sorry, Furio. Sorry.
The boar was looking at him, and there was no such thing as time. (It was a myth, a lie, like when he’d been very young and asked Luso where rain came from, and Luso said it was God pissing through a sieve. What a fool he’d been ever to believe that there was such a thing as time, that moments ended and new moments began, patently absurd.) He knew he couldn’t move, even if he wanted to. The boar’s eyes held him, frozen in place, frozen in time. Perhaps he was already dead, and this was eternity. Not that it mattered particularly. If there was such a thing as time, the next moment would be the one where he moved and the boar charged.
Then the boar moved, a tiny redirection of the head, as something made a noise behind him where he couldn’t see. A dog: one of Luso’s hounds. The boar had stopped looking at Gignomai but he was still frozen solid. He heard a scrabbling noise, and the ridiculous swallowed yelp that dogs make sometimes, and the boar moved.
It lunged, straight past him, and Gignomai’s head moved with it, following, not from any command of his own. He saw one of Luso’s hounds coming towards him and the boar bursting up out of the nest to meet it. The boar’s snout was under the dog’s chest, a great heave of the head and shoulders that sent the dog flying in the air. He felt blood splash his face and knew that if he was ever going to move again, it would have to be now. There was only one direction open to him. He threw himself into the boar’s nest like a diver.
He hit a curtain of briars, which burst open. He felt the thorns cut his face like sawblades. His eyes had closed. He shoved his hands through the tangle and felt open space behind them—something he hadn’t expected. He dug his toes in and kicked, and then he felt himself sliding on his stomach down a slope.
The sensation was too much for him, and all he could do was endure until he came to a stop. He opened his eyes, but he needn’t have bothered. He tried to move his arms, but there wasn’t room. He was stuck like a cork in a bottle at an unknown depth down a steep hole in the ground.
The boar would have finished him quickly, but he hadn’t been able to move. He could move his legs, and a few frantic kicks shifted him a significant distance further down the hole. He heard himself yell, and the sound washed all around him like water. He knew that nobody would be able to hear him, deep in the ground like a buried man. Breathing was like lifting a hundredweight sack.
There was a decision to be made. He had to force himself to do it; so much easier just to let himself go, to slide into terror. He knew what would happen if he did that; he’d suffocate trying to breathe, or crush his own ribs, panicking.
He thought, I can’t go back, but I can go forward. It’s in
conceivable that going forward could make things better, but if I stay here I’ll die anyway. He tried to construe the hole, find an explanation for it, but he couldn’t. It made no sense. He thought; I might as well kick my legs and see where the hole goes. I’m not getting out of this. It doesn’t really make any odds.
He kicked, and each spasm of movement took him further than the last. His hands were still pinned hard to his sides, but he thought, Maybe if I keep going down, the hole will get wider, maybe wide enough for me to turn myself round, and if I do that, I can use my hands to claw my way back up the hole. No reason to believe it would turn out that way, but the hole was so improbable anyway that the unlikelihood of a wide spot didn’t seem to matter, because none of the rules seemed to apply any more. A wide spot was no more improbable than a bottomless hole at the back of a boar’s nest. He kicked very hard, and shot unstoppably forward, as if sliding on ice.
The slide ended when his head and shoulders ran into something hard. There was a long moment that consisted of nothing but pain, followed by the crushing weight of understanding. The way ahead was blocked. No wide spot, and he couldn’t go forward or back.
Ironically, he could breathe quite freely, and the air was better here. He kept still and held his breath, and felt air moving against his face. He knew that meant something, but for a very long time he couldn’t figure out what it was. Then it hit him like a punch in the mouth. Air was moving up the hole, so the hole must be open at both ends. It came out somewhere, and if it did, so could he. So could he, if it wasn’t for the fact that the way was blocked.
He hadn’t expected anger, and when it came it shocked him at first. But it felt warm and it made him feel strong. He scrabbled with his toes and found a ledge or a stone or something he could push against. All that got him was a jet of pain in his neck. He pushed again, not with muscles but sheer affronted rage (because it wasn’t fair that the hole should be open but blocked by one stupid obstruction), and something shifted; he was pushing his nose against a hard thing. He’d have laughed if he could. His last effort had moved him a few inches, and the only thing wedging him stuck was his stupid nose.
Well, he thought. No choice in the matter, really.
There was a foothold. He found it, settled his foot firmly against it, took the decision and kicked. He heard his nose break, felt the pain (there was, curiously, a tiny interval between the sound and the feeling) and applied more pressure with his thigh and knee muscles. He moved suddenly, as things do when they’re stuck and suddenly dislodged. He felt something sharp scooping skin and meat off the point of his shoulder, and then he was past that too. The next kick moved him freely, two more, and he was sliding again, gathering speed, moving fast enough for the friction to shred his clothes and burn his skin. He stopped with a jolt that hurt so much it didn’t hurt at all. He opened his eyes, and saw light.
For some time it was simply too bright, and he wondered if it had burned his eyes out. But gradually it dimmed, and he could make out a dark frame to it, which he deduced must be the mouth of the hole. It was quite close—ten feet, say. He tried to breathe and realised his nose wasn’t working, so he drank air through his mouth. It tasted of blood.
It took him a while and a lot of scrabbling to find a foothold firm enough to move him forward, and that was only inches. The sides of the hole were maddeningly smooth here, and his toes skidded off. But the hole was just a little bit wider and by squirming and twisting, like a drill in its slot, he managed to work himself onto his back. The roof of the hole was a little bit rougher, and he found a foothold that took him his own length closer to the light, at which point there was room for his arms to move. He laughed. He’d almost forgotten what they were for.
He twisted back onto his stomach, dug his fingernails into the sides of the hole—they were quite soft, and he remembered it would be chalk—and dragged himself into the furnace of white light. He was almost through when he realised that he’d been missing something.
The hole was pure white light, not green or brown. And there was a context, which he’d completely forgotten about.
The boar’s nest had been close to the edge of the cliff. The hole at the back of the nest had taken him a long way down and—since it had turned out to be a sort of a chute, not a sheer drop—an unknown but material distance sideways, in other words, towards the cliff face. Therefore the white hole in front of him had to be a window in the cliff, and he had no idea how high up above the ground it might be.
Not to worry, he told himself (and if it was a lie he really didn’t care). He edged forward until his head popped out into open air. He looked down. Directly below, he could see grass, with a tiny fringe of white chalk at the bottom edge of his field of vision. At a guess, about ten feet, fifteen at the most.
He wasn’t conscious of making a decision. He heard himself say, “Oh well,” out loud, and kicked hard.
There was a moment of stunned silence. Then Furio hissed, “She’s a girl.”
He realised that he’d spoken too loudly, and everybody was looking at him.
“Yes,” his aunt said crisply, “isn’t she? Furio, meet your cousin Teucer.”
His uncle was trying not to laugh. His aunt was pointedly not looking at him, the way she didn’t look at beggars, or dogs mating in the street. Aspero and Lugano, the hired men, had somehow contrived to vanish inside themselves. They stood perfectly still, waiting for something to happen. And his cousin Teucer, newly arrived from Home, smiled at him.
“Hello,” she said.
Furio made some kind of vague noise. It sounded like a grunting pig, but it was the very best he could do. “This is your uncle Marzo,” his aunt was saying; Uncle grinned like a shark. “I’ll show you your room,” she went on, putting a hand on the small of the girl’s back and shunting her towards the door.
When they’d gone, there was a moment of perfect stillness, such as there must have been at the very beginning of the world. Then Aspero and Lugano melted away, and Furio turned on his uncle like a boar facing the hounds.
“Teucer’s not a girl’s name,” he growled. “Someone should’ve told me.”
His uncle shrugged. “Sorry,” he said. “I assumed your aunt had told you, and presumably she thought I’d told you. Anyway…”
“She must think I’m a—”
“And she wouldn’t be far wrong,” Uncle interrupted. “Would she?”
Furio made his words fail me gesture, a cross between scything hay and swatting a low fly. “I’m going upstairs,” he said.
“Like hell you are,” Uncle replied kindly. “You’re going to stay right here and mind the store while your aunt and I make our guest feel at home.”
Furio looked at him. Uncle was known to be unreliable where pretty girls half his age were concerned. But he laughed. “Don’t worry,” he said. “Your aunt’d kill me. Mind the store.”
Alone with the stock, Furio tried as hard as he could to think of something else, but he couldn’t. He kept hearing his own voice, over and over again, and each time he heard it, it killed a small part of his soul. Three words, three syllables, and his life was effectively over. Then, like someone testing a sore tooth with the tip of his tongue, he thought about the smile. It had been—he took a moment to compose his mind; this called for scientific analysis—it had been like one of those puzzles, where someone cuts up a picture into random shapes, and you’ve got to fit them back together again. The smile had been the moment when the picture emerges from the jumble. As soon as he saw it, things had started to make sense, for the first time in a long time. But that was after he’d said the three little words.
It was an anomaly, an equation that refused to balance, and it was making his head hurt. He pulled open a drawer and started to count the four-inch nails.
There were 107 of the four-inch, ninety-six of the five-inch, forty-eight of the six-inch round and 128 of the six-inch square tapered. He was about to embark on the four-inch square tapered when he heard boots in the porch. He looked
up, and a man walked into the shop backwards.
The man was Rubrio Lucullo, a vague sort of man who appeared occasionally to buy wire and nails. He was walking backwards because he was carrying what looked like a dead body, his arms crooked under the corpse’s armpits. Carrying the feet was another man, familiar face, name forgotten or never ascertained. The corpse was a hideous thing, smeared all over with blood and chalk dust.
“Clear the table,” Rubrio snapped. “Quick.”
Furio didn’t move. “Mister Lucullo?”
“Clear the fucking table.”
Furio jumped off his stool, darted round the counter and stopped in front of the long, low table on which Uncle displayed his selection of quality fabrics. He hesitated for a split second, because the stock was worth money, then dragged the rolls of cloth onto the floor. With a grunt, Rubrio and the other man hauled the corpse onto the table, straightened up and winced.
“Where’s your uncle?” Rubrio said.
Furio heard him, but the words seemed to bounce off. The body on the table was Gignomai.
Rubrio repeated his question. Furio looked at him.
“Is he dead?” he asked quietly.
But Rubrio shook his head. “Get your uncle,” he said. “Don’t just stand there. Get your uncle.”
The message sank in, eventually. Furio backed away a step or two, twisted round, hit his knee on the edge of the counter, and crashed through the back-room door. Uncle, he thought, upstairs. He ran up the stairs as if they were on fire, and met his uncle on the landing.
“What’s all the racket?” Uncle asked.
“There’s been—” He realised he didn’t know how to finish the sentence. “Emergency,” he said. “Man hurt. Please?”
It was one of Uncle’s good times. The bad times were when he was greedy or cruel, or when he made a nuisance of himself with girls. The good times were when something terrible happened and Uncle kept his head and knew exactly what to do. That was when Furio forgave him for the other stuff.