As we passed the mound with the silver tree, its clusters of flowers and the long banner-like leaves began to ripple. A wind of high force might have been tearing at them. Yet the trees at the flanking mounds showed no such troubling. Finally that tearing snapped a small branch heavily weighted with a ball of flowers. It did not fall to the ground, but rather whirled over and over through the air until it was thrust as one might thrust the pointed head of a spear, the splintered end down, into the ground at my feet.
Oomark cried out and backed away. On impulse I stooped and caught at the branch under the nodding flower cluster. It was like grasping a rod of ice, so cold was the sting from it that ran up my arm. Yet I could not let it go. Instead I pulled it from the grip of the soil.
The gale that had broken it free from its parent tree and brought it to me had ceased as if it had never blown. And – my fingers – !
The brown, hard crust over them was cracking, flaking away like a dusty powder. The flesh so uncovered was still brown, but it was the skin I had always known. Though my hand was still cold, I had no desire to throw the branch from me. Instead, I made it fast to my belt.
Oomark retreated again. “Throw it away – back to where it came from!” He gestured to the now quiet tree. “It will hurt you!”
I flexed my fingers and saw with awe and gratitude the normal flesh. “Such hurt I will take gladly. See, Oomark, my hand is now as it always was!”
He cried out and ran from me as he had fled from the hairy creature. I might now have been a horror, hunting him.
9
He easily eluded me and sprinted away, paying no attention to first my commands and then my pleas. Rather, he sped as if with a definite refuge in mind. I was seized by the idea that his desertion could cut two ways: not only would I lose the child for whom I was responsible, but I myself would be lost without a guide as well.
Somehow I managed to keep sight of him, passing the last of the mounds. Beyond were more earthworks. Only they were not as sharply defined as the mounds, being more rolling.
Oomark did not avoid these, but ran into the midst of them. Well grown with grass, they raised on either side, now hiding him. I speculated, even as I ran, as to whether I was now in what might have been the last remnants of a great city. If so, very little remained to mark its walls and buildings.
Here and there, sometimes growing in small thickets, were stunted trees bearing the evil purple fruit – although that was shriveled-looking. Much of the harvest had fallen and lay rotting in the grass, a stench rising from it to plague the nostrils.
In fact, as more and more of such trees came into view, I found myself choking and coughing, having to slacken speed. Now I had lost sight of Oomark, who had gone beyond the barrier of the mist.
I started to run again, as fast as I could, calling out his name. Only the echoes of that, distorted as if mouthed back at me by lips never intended to utter human speech, came to my ears. Then I heard a flapping sound, a croaking, and I looked to the left.
There stood several of the fruit trees; In them, under them, waddled, perched, and fed some feathered creatures. Or at first I thought them feathered until I saw better. They had the clawed, scaled feet of some domestic fowl. But supported on those were yellow bodies ending in long, supple tails. Necks, not so long but as limber, ended in pointed heads crested by four horns or growths of white, giving the creatures the appearance of wearing a small crown. The eyes were red and seemed to glow. Sharply pointed wings were feathered with broad yellow quills. And the creatures were ill-tempered, lashing at one another with those tails, threatening with beak and claw as they fought over the rotting fruit.
Though they were not large, there was a malevolence about them that promised ill for one attracting their attention. I stopped calling abruptly, hurried by, watching them carefully even after I passed, since I had an uneasy feeling they were only pretending to be so engrossed in feeding and were ready to trail me.
It must have been during those moments when I was intent upon the flying things that I lost my last hope of catching up with Oomark. Only a short distance beyond I faced a split into three of the ways I had followed. It was impossible to see any tracks on this thick turf to tell me which I should take.
Both the mist and the height of the barrows and mounds limited my sight. And, in addition, two of the ways, the one ahead and the one to the left, curved a little beyond, hiding their direction. Perhaps that made me decide upon the right fork, which seemed to run straighter.
Only, as I continued, those piles of turfed debris, or whatever the mounds might be, grew taller, until they were well above the level of my head. And the road did make a curve. I paused to listen now and then, hoping to pick up some sound to assure me that my choice had been right. It was during one such pause that I sighted a scraped place where the turf had been torn off a stone – a trace that someone, or thing, had passed that way.
It caught my eye because the stone under it glowed so that it was noticeable even in this half-light that was dusk among the mounds. I approached, hoping to find it a footprint, and the glow deepened into a silvery radiance.
But it was only a scuff mark, having nothing to tell me, save that it was new done, and I wanted to believe Oomark had left it.
Having taken the first curve, I saw that my road became a baffling twist of in and out ways between towering mounds, much of it shadowed murkily. I began to fear that I had no hope of ever finding one who wished to remain hidden here. The way branched again, and again it was a root from which innumerable small rootlets sprang. Then it, too, narrowed and grew less.
I halted. The mounds that walled me in were perhaps twice my height, and the dusk in which I stood was almost as great as the danger period of indrawn mist. I did not like what I saw ahead – better to go back to the original branch and take one of the other ways. It would perhaps not put me on the boy’s track – 1 could not hope for such good fortune – but it might take me out of this haunted place.
Haunted it was – I would have sworn to that. I was sure that things flitted just beyond my range of sight or lurked spying on me. Sometimes I heard a ghostly, far-off twittering, like the rustle of breeze through dried leaves, which made me think of alien voices whispering. Also, though nowhere else in this world had I been conscious of a change of temperature, here there was a rising warmth. Only it carried no comfort with it. Rather it made me feel that I walked a thin skin of safety over consuming fires.
I licked my lips and thought of water. My feet moved almost of themselves, scuffing the earth, those long, thin toes writhing within the bandages, as if to free themselves and dig in, seeking the energy that had so frightened me when I had first taken off my boots.
But when I turned to retrace my way, I discovered the full extent of my folly. All the winding ways looked alike, and I could not be sure which had brought me here or even of the general direction from which I had come. I felt trapped, and with that realization came panic, shattering my control. I ran along the nearest path and, when it split, went right, and when it split again, left, my heart pounding, my mouth dry with fear, my wits so overborne that I would have been easy prey in that moment. That I was in a place inimical to my form of life, I no longer doubted, just as I did not doubt that I was watched, with a dreadful sniggering anticipation such as I could not put name to, nor imagine form for.
The hardest thing I have ever done in my life was to make myself halt, gasping for breath, really look ahead, and force my brain to override emotion. It was true all ways looked alike, but I fiercely battled panic. I could not keep my feet still. They pounded and dug at the soil, as if they had a life of their own and were no longer under my command. And the desire to tear off the wrappings I had adjusted with such care, to feel the soil, was such an agony that I do not know how I held out.