“Have – have you ever been here before, Oomark?” Was that question also infringing on forbidden territory or would he answer it?
“No. Back home – back on Chalox – there was no way to come. Bartare, she found out only a little while ago that there was a way here. She wanted to run off – just me and her – but it was too far to come. So she had to wait until there was a chance to get a ride.”
“Was that why you didn’t want her to come?”
He nodded. “She was always saying she had to go someplace. But – 1 didn’t want to come ’cause I don’t want to be here! I don’t!”
“None of us do.” I tried to suggest that it would only be a matter of time before we could return to safe Dylan.
“Bartare does. She wanted to come badly. She won’t go away again. You’ll see.”
The trouble was that I might not see, but I could feel he was right. And I had no idea what I might be able to do once I did confront Bartare. It was up to me to think seriously about a confrontation.
I rubbed my smarting eyes. The burning sensation was a real source of pain.
“Oomark, tell me how it looks, right here, I mean.”
“Well, there’s a big bush, tall as a tree,” he began, and then he paused so long that I opened my eyes. The boy was staring at a triangle of pink-yellow to our right. I averted my sight hurriedly, for its glowing color increased the burning.
“What is it?”
“I-I don’t like it, Kilda. Please could we walk-just a little way, maybe. I don’t want to stay here any more.”
“Of course.”
I got to my feet and we started on. It was not ankle nor my general fatigue that slowed us so much now, but rather my sight. I kept blinking tears out of my eyes.
We came to an open “space where there were few of the rooted colorful shapes. The absence of glaring color aided my sight a little.
Oomark halted. Before us ran a wide zigzag. On its golden surface one could detect a shimmer of movement.
“A stream.” Oomark gazed into the shimmer. “It looks deep, Kilda. And the water – it’s thick. You can’t see any bottom.”
“Do we have to cross it?”
“Bartare’s over there somewhere.” He waved his hand across the zigzag.
“Maybe we can find a place where it narrows or grows more shallow,” I suggested. “Shall we go up or down?”
“She’s more that way.” He waved his hand to the left.
“Then that way it is.”
However, as we shambled along, the zigzag did not vary in width. Oomark continued to report that it was as forbidding as ever. Suddenly he paused again.
“We’re going wrong now.”
One of the turns had made a sharper than usual angle. If we continued along, we would be heading away. But before I could consider that difficulty, Oomark faced me.
“I don’t want to go on, I don’t!”
His vehemence was marked. He turned his head from right to left and back again, as if he were backed into a corner and must find a way out.
“Oomark, what is it?”
“I don’t – I won’t go! You can’t make me – you can’t!” Hysteria was shrill in his voice. “No – no!”
The boy lunged at me, and I gave a step or two, taken so off guard that I could not reach out a hand in time to catch at him. He brushed by and was gone, running into the grayness that curdled about and swallowed him from sight.
“Oomark! Oomark!” I was afraid I had already lost him. What had forced him into flight, I could not tell, unless those we followed were so discouraging pursuit.
I listened. He had not answered, and my only hope now was to pick up sounds in the haze. I did hear such and hobbled along, putting my ankle to painful strain.
Then there was utter silence, and I called, “Oomark! Oomark!”
I heard a whimpering such as that which had first guided me to him. And I tried to steer for its source. The space here was once more filled with blazing shapes. In fact, their strident coloring was worse and kept me rubbing at my tormented eyes.
At last I ran into a parallelogram of pulsating yellow. But though I saw thus, what scratched and tore at me were thorned branches. I staggered back, crying out, my hands streaming small trickles of blood. Falling to my knees, I looked down. All I saw was velvety gray. However, when I ran my hands across that surface, what I felt was the grit of earth and sand, the softness of moss or very short-stemmed grass.
The fact that touch and sight were no longer allied did not at the moment mean so much as that Oomark was gone and now I could not even hear the whimpering. I crouched and called, listening.
“Oomark! Oomark!”
My voice roused only a faint, distressing echo like a moan. Should I blunder on? But I could not be sure of direction.
“Oomark?”
This time there was an answer – a muffled cry, from the other side of the growth into which I had run. But how far on the other side? If he would just keep on answering –
“Oomark!”
Answer he did, though I could not make out any words, only sound. I floundered on, taking care to avoid contact with any other shape, though they blazed about me until they reminded me of leaping flames.
“Oomark!”
I had been so sure my last answer bad come from a distance that I was startled when he replied from close before me.
“I’m here.”
He sat on the ground, and somehow he seemed to have taken on some of that gray hue, so that only when he moved was I able to see him. And as I dropped down, spent, not too far away, I blinked and blinked against the pain, against the tears, trying to see him better. Because there was something –
I was not mistaken about his blending so well with the gray. He must have taken several tumbles to cover himself with soil, for he was gray, all gray – Or was it my sight? Fearfully I rubbed at my eyes. No, I could still see the orange and yellow, crimson and scarlet. But Oomark was gray – and his drab hue was darkening!
“I’m not going back – you can’t make me! Bartare and the Lady, they don’t want me to! If I go, they’ll do something – something bad! I won’t go!”
“All right.” I was too tired to try to talk reason into him now. “You don’t have to.”
“You’ll try and make me. I know you will!” He was aggressively hostile, and I thought that at any moment he might take off again. If he did, I had a strong feeling I would never find him again.
“No.” I tried to be as emphatic as I could. “I won’t. I’m too tired now to go any farther.”
“That’s ’cause you wouldn’t eat the fruit.” There was a malicious note in his voice. “You don’t want to change – ”
“Want to change?” I repeated dully.
“Yes. You have to change, you know. This place doesn’t like you if you don’t. If you change – why, then everything will be all right. Truly it will, Kilda!” His voice softened. He stretched out a gray hand as if to touch mine, though he did not quite set fingertip to my flesh.
Change – perhaps it was not my eyes, then, that saw Oomark growing more and more the color of the ground on which he sat.
“Are you changed, Oomark?”
“I guess so. But, Kilda, if you don’t change, then I can’t stay with you. And if I’m not with you – I don’t want to be alone! Please, Kilda, don’t make me be alone! Please!” He reached out both hands as if he would clutch at me. Yet I noted, he seemed unable to complete that gesture. He either could not or would not touch me.
When I put out my hand in return, he shrank back. Then he arose and moved slowly backward, his face turned to me, as if he were wary of some attempt on my part to seize him.
“You’ve got to change, Kilda, you’ve got to!”
He turned and ran to one of those flames. And so much was the color like a blazing torch that I cried out. But when he retreated from the haze of light, he had in his two hands a blob of quivering stuff. This he thrust at me.
“Eat it, Kilda. You’ve just got to eat it!”
What might have led to a struggle, for he was determined, I saw, to force it on me, never happened, for from between two fiery columns sounded a strange noise.