The Tree of Life
Page 5
to life; yet danger breathed out from it so stronglythat Smith felt the hair lifting on his neck as he stared.
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It was no ordinary danger. A nameless, choking, paralyzed panic wasswelling in his throat as he gazed upon the perilous beauty of the Tree.Somehow the arches and curves of its branches seemed to limn a patternso dreadful that his heart beat faster as he gazed upon it. But he couldnot guess why, though somehow the answer was hovering just out of reachof his conscious mind. From that first glimpse of it his instinctsshuddered like a shying stallion, yet reason still looked in vain for ananswer.
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Nor was the Tree merely a vegetable growth. It was alive, terribly,ominously alive. He could not have said how he knew that, for it stoodmotionless in its empty clearing, not a branch trembling, yet in itsimmobility more awfully vital than any animate thing. The very sight ofit woke in Smith an insane urging to flight, to put worlds betweenhimself and this inexplicably dreadful thing.
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Crazy impulses stirred in his brain, coming to insane birth at thecalling of the Tree's peril--the desperate need to shut out the sight ofthat thing that was blasphemy, to put out his own sight rather than gazelonger upon the perilous grace of its branches, to slit his own throatthat he might not need to dwell in the same world which housed sofrightful a sight as the Tree.
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All this was a mad battering in his brain. The strength of him wasenough to isolate it in a far corner of his consciousness, where itseethed and shrieked half heeded while he turned the cool control whichthe spaceways life had taught him to the solution of this urgentquestion. But even so his hand was moist and shaking on his gun-butt,and the breath rasped in his dry throat.
Why--he asked himself in a determined groping after steadiness--shouldthe mere sight of a tree, even so fabulous a one as this, rouse thatinsane panic in the gazer? What peril could dwell invisibly in a tree sofrightful that the living horror of it could drive a man mad with thevery fact of its unseen presence? He clenched his teeth hard and staredresolutely at that terrible beauty in the clearing, fighting down thesick panic that rose in his throat as his eyes forced themselves todwell upon the Tree.
Gradually the revulsion subsided. After a nightmare of striving hemustered the strength to force it down far enough to allow reason'sentry once more. Sternly holding down that frantic terror under thesurface of consciousness, he stared resolutely at the Tree. And he knewthat this was Thag.
It could be nothing else, for surely two such dreadful things could notdwell in one land. It must be Thag, and he could understand now theimmemorial terror in which the tree-folk held it, but he did not yetgrasp in what way it threatened them physically. The inexplicabledreadfulness of it was a menace to the mind's very existence, but surelya rooted tree, however terrible to look at, could wield little actualdanger.
As he reasoned, his eyes were seeking restlessly among the branches,searching for the answer to their dreadfulness. After all, this thingwore the aspect of an old pattern, and in that pattern there was nothingdreadful. The tree of life had made up the design upon that well-top inIllar through whose shadow he had entered here, and nothing in thatbronze grille-work had roused terror. Then why----? What living menacedwelt invisibly among these branches to twist them into curves ofhorror?
A fragment of old verse drifted through his mind as he stared inperplexity:
What immortal hand or eye Could frame thy fearful symmetry?
And for the first time the true significance of a "fearful symmetry"broke upon him. Truly a more than human agency must have arched thesesubtle curves so delicately into dreadfulness, into such an awful beautythat the very sight of it made those atavistic terrors he was so sternlyholding down leap in a gibbering terror.
A tremor rippled over the Tree. Smith froze rigid, staring with startledeyes. No breath of wind had stirred through the clearing, but the Treewas moving with a slow, serpentine grace, writhing its branchesleisurely in a horrible travesty of voluptuous enjoyment. And upon theirtips the blood-red flowers were spreading like cobra's hoods, swellingand stretching their petals out and glowing with a hue so eye-piercinglyvivid that it transcended the bounds of color and blazed forth like purelight.
But it was not toward Smith that they stirred. They were arching outfrom the central trunk toward the far side of the clearing. After amoment Smith tore his eyes away from the indescribably dreadfulflexibility of those branches and looked to see the cause of theirwrithing.
A blaze of luminous white had appeared among the trees across theclearing. The priestess had returned. He watched her pacing slowlytoward the Tree, walking with a precise and delicate grace as liquidlylovely as the motion of the Tree. Her fabulous hair swung down about herin a swaying robe that rippled at every step away from the moon-whitebeauty of her body. Straight toward the Tree she paced, and all theblossoms glowed more vividly at her nearness, the branches stretchingtoward her, rippling with eagerness.
Priestess though she was, he could not believe that she was going tocome within touch of that Tree the very sight of which roused such apanic instinct of revulsion in every fiber of him. But she did notswerve or slow in her advance. Walking delicately over the flowerygrass, arrogantly luminous in the twilight, so that her body was thecenter and focus of any landscape she walked in, she neared her horriblyeager god.
Now she was under the Tree, and its trunk had writhed down over her andshe was lifting her arms like a girl to her lover. With a glidingslowness the flame-tipped branches slid round her. In that incredibleembrace she stood immobile for a long moment, the Tree arching down withall its curling limbs, the girl straining upward, her head thrown backand the mantle of her hair swinging free of her body as she lifted herface to the quivering blossoms. The branches gathered her closer intheir embrace. Now the blossoms arched near, curving down all about her,touching her very gently, twisting their blazing faces toward the focusof her moon-white body. One poised directly above her face, trembled,brushed her mouth lightly. And the Tree's tremor ran unbroken throughthe body of the girl it clasped.
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The incredible dreadfulness of that embrace was suddenly more than Smithcould bear. All his terrors, crushed down with so stern a self-control,without warning burst all bounds and rushed over him in a flood of blindrevulsion. A whimper choked up in his throat and quite involuntarily heswung round and plunged into the shielding trees, hands to his eyes in afutile effort to blot out the sight of lovely horror behind him whosevividness was burnt upon his very brain.
Heedlessly he blundered through the trees, no thought in histerror-blank mind save the necessity to run, run, run until he could runno more. He had given up all attempt at reason and rationality; he nolonger cared why the beauty of the Tree was so dreadful. He only knewthat until all space lay between him and its symmetry he must run andrun and run.
What brought that frenzied madness to an end he never knew. When sanityreturned to him he was lying face down on the flower-spangled sward in asilence so deep that his ears ached with its heaviness. The grass wascool against his cheek. For a moment he fought the back-flow ofknowledge into his emptied mind. When it came, the memory of that horrorhe had fled from, he started up with a wild thing's swiftness and glaredaround pale-eyed into the unchanging dusk. He was alone. Not even arustle in the leaves spoke of the tree-folk's presence.
For a moment he stood there alert, wondering what had roused him,wondering what would come next. He was not left long in doubt. Theanswer was shrilling very, very faintly through that aching quiet, aninfinitesimally tiny, unthinkably far-away murmur which yet pierced hisear-drums with the sharpness of tiny needles. Breathless, he strained inlistening. Swiftly the sound grew louder. It deepened upon the silence,sharpened and shrilled until the thin blade of it was vibrating in thecenter of his innermost brain.
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sp; And still it grew, swelling louder and louder through the twilight worldin cadences that were rounding into a queer sort of music and taking onsuch an unbearable sweetness that Smith pressed his hands over his earsin a futile attempt to shut the sound away. He could not. It rang insteadily deepening intensities through every fiber of his being,piercing him with thousands of tiny music-blades that quivered in hisvery soul with intolerable beauty. And he thought he sensed in thepiercing strength of it a vibration of queer, unnamable power farmightier than anything ever generated by man, the dim echo of somecosmic dynamo's hum.
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The sound grew sweeter as it strengthened, with a queer, inexplicablesweetness unlike any music he had ever heard before, rounder and fullerand more complete than any melody made up of separate notes. Strongerand stronger he felt the certainty that it was the song of some mightypower, humming and throbbing and deepening through the twilight untilthe whole dim land was one trembling reservoir of