The thought-patterns faded away, leaving nothing for a moment. Then Petra came in. Whatever she may have failed to make of the rest, she had caught the last part all right.
‘That’s me,’ she proclaimed, with satisfaction and totally unnecessary vigour.
We rocked, and recovered.
‘Beware, odious smug child. We haven’t met Hairy Jack yet,’ Rosalind told her, with subduing effect. ‘Michael,’ she added,’ did all that reach you, too?’
‘Yes,’ Michael responded with a touch of reserve. ‘Condescending, I thought. Sounded as if she were lecturing to children. Still coming from a devil of a long way away, too. I don’t see how they can come fast enough to be any help at all. We shall be starting after you in a few minutes now.’
The great-horses clumped steadily on. The landscape continued to be disturbing and alarming to one brought up in respect for the propriety of forms. Certainly, few things were as fantastic as the growths that Uncle Axel had told of in the south; on the other hand, practically nothing was comfortably familiar, or even orthodox. There was so much confusion that it did not seem to matter any more whether a particular tree was an aberrate or just a miscegenate, but it was a relief to get away from trees and out into open country for a bit – though even there the bushes weren’t homogeneal or identifiable, and the grass was pretty queer, too.
We stopped only once for food and drink, and for no more than half an hour before we were on our way again. Two hours or so later, after several more stretches of woodlands, we reached a medium-sized river. On our side the level ground descended in a sharp, steep bank to the water; on the other stood a line of low, reddish cliffs.
We turned downstream, keeping to the top of the bank. A quarter of a mile along, at a place marked by a grossly deviational tree shaped like a huge wooden pear, and with all its branches growing in one big tuft at the top, a runnel cut well back into the bank and made a way for the horses to get down. We forded the river obliquely, making for a gap in the opposite cliffs When we reached it, it turned out to be little more than a cleft, so narrow in some places that the panniers scraped both walls, and we could scarcely squeeze through. There was quite a hundred yards of it before the way widened and began to slope up to normal ground level.
Where the sides diminished to mere banks seven or eight men stood with bows in their hands. They gaped incredulously at the great-horses, and looked half-inclined to run. Abreast of them, we stopped.
The man in the other pannier jerked his head at me.
‘ Down you get, boy,’ he told me.
Petra and Rosalind were already climbing down from the leading great-horse. As I reached the ground the driver gave a thump and both great-horses moved ponderously on. Petra clasped my hand nervously, but for the moment all the ragged, unkempt bowmen were still more interested in the horses than in us.
There was nothing immediately alarming about the group. One of the hands which held a bow had six fingers; one man displayed a head like a polished brown egg, without a hair on it, or on his face; another had immensely large feet and hands; but whatever was wrong with the rest was hidden under their rags.
Rosalind and I shared a feeling of relief at not being confronted with the kinds of grotesquerie we had half expected. Petra, too, was encouraged by finding that none of them fulfilled the traditional description of Hairy Jack. Presently, when they had watched the horses out of sight up a track that disappeared among trees, they turned their attention to us. A couple of them told us to come along, the rest remained where they were.
A well-used path led downwards through woods for a few hundred yards, and then gave on to a clearing. To the right ran a wall of the reddish cliffs again, not more than forty feet high. They appeared to be the reverse side of the ridge which retained the river, and the whole face was pocked by numerous holes, with ladders, roughly made of branches, leading to the higher openings.
The level ground in front was littered with crude huts and tents. One or two small cooking fires smoked among them. A few tattered men and a rather larger number of slatternly-looking women moved around with no great activity.
We wound our way among hovels and refuse-heaps until we reached the largest of the tents. It appeared to be an old rick-cover – the loot, presumably, of some raid – fastened over a framework of lashed poles. A figure seated on a stool just inside the entrance looked up as we approached. The sight of his face jolted me with panic for a moment – it was so like my father’s. Then I recognized him – the same ‘spider-man’ I had seen as a captive at Waknuk, seven or eight years before.
The two men who had brought us pushed us forward, in front of him. He looked the three of us over. His eyes travelled up and down Rosalind’s slim straight figure in a way I did not care for – nor she, either. Then he studied me more carefully, and nodded to himself, as if satisfied over something.
‘ Remember me?’ he asked.
‘Yes,’ I told him.
He shifted his gaze from my face. He let it stray over the conglomeration of hutches and shacks, and then back again to me.
‘Not much like Waknuk,’ he said.
‘Not much,’ I agreed.
He paused quite lengthily, in contemplation. Then:
‘ Know who I am?’ he inquired.
‘I think so. I think I found out,’ I told him.
He raised an eyebrow, questioningly.
‘My father had an elder brother,’ I said. ‘He was thought to be normal until he was about three or four years old. Then his certificate was revoked, and he was sent away.’
He nodded slowly.
‘But not quite right,’ he said. ‘His mother loved him. His nurse was fond of him, too. So when they came to take him away he was already missing – but they’d hush that up, of course. They’d hush the whole thing up: pretend it never happened.’ He paused again, reflectively. Presently he added:
‘ The eldest son. The heir. Waknuk should be mine. It would be – except for this.’ He stretched out his long arm, and regarded it for a moment. Then he dropped it and looked at me again.
‘Do you know what the length of a man’s arm should be?’
‘No,’ I admitted.
‘Nor do I. But somebody in Rigo does, some expert on the true image. So, no Waknuk – and I must live like a savage among savages. Are you the eldest son?’
‘The only son,’ I told him. ‘There was a younger one, but -‘
‘No certificate, eh?’
I nodded.
‘ So you, too, have lost Waknuk!’
That aspect of things had never troubled me. I do not think I had ever had any real expectation of inheriting Waknuk. There had always been the sense of insecurity – the expectation, almost the certainty, that one day I should be discovered. I had lived too long with that expectation to feel the resentment that embittered him. Now that it was resolved, I was glad to be safely away, and I told him so. It did not please him. He looked at me thoughtfully.
‘You’ve not the guts to fight for what’s yours by right?’ he suggested.
‘If it’s yours by right, it can’t be mine by right,’ I pointed out. ‘But my meaning was that I’ve had more than enough of living in hiding.’
‘We all live in hiding here,’ he said.
‘Maybe,’ I told him. ‘But you can be your own selves. You don’t have to live a pretence. You don’t have to watch yourselves every moment, and think twice whenever you open your mouths.’
He nodded slowly.
‘We heard about you. We have our ways,’ he said. ‘What I don’t understand is why they are after you in such strength.’
‘We think,’ I explained, ‘that we worry them more than the usual deviants because they’ve no way of identifying us. I fancy they must be suspecting that there are a lot more of us that they haven’t discovered, and they want to get hold of us to make us tell.’
‘An even more than usually good reason for not being caught,’ he said.
I was aware that Michael had come in and that Rosalind was answering him, but I could not attend to two conversations at once, so I left that to her.
‘ So they are coming right into the Fringes after you? How many of them?’ he asked.