The hunt for him was still on, of course, but momentarily he must have slipped the clutches of authority. By now, perhaps, Daniels would have figured out what must have happened and now they’d be looking, not for a wolf alone, but for him as well.
He reached the top of the hill and ahead of him, down the slope, he saw the trees, not just a little grove of trees, but a wood that covered the greater part of the steep hillside on either side of the road. Below, where the valley levelled out, were fields, but beyond the valley the farther slope also was clothed with trees. Here, he realized, the folded hills began to rise too steeply for cultivation and that this alternating of cultivated valleys and wooded hills might be a pattern that would go on for miles.
He went down the hill and at the edge of the wood his eyes caught a furtive movement. Alerted and puzzled, he watched for it again. It could have been, he knew, a bird hopping from one branch to another in a low-growing shrub, or, perhaps, an animal. But the wood now was quiet, except for a slight stirring of the many-coloured leaves by the whisper of a lazy wind.
He came opposite the edge of the wood and something hissed at him.
He stopped, half frightened, and shifted around to stare into the underbrush beneath the trees.
‘Over here!’ whispered a high and squeaky voice, and it was then, guided by the voice, that he saw the Brownie – brown fur and dark-green trousers – camouflaged within the forest growth.
Another one of them, he thought. Good God, another one of them and this time he had no food to offer.
He stepped quickly off the shoulder of the road, across the ditch, and into the edge of the wood. The Brownie remained only a dim outline, blending with the wood, until he was quite close to him.
‘I’ve been watching for you,’ said the Brownie. ‘I understand you’re tired and might want a place to rest.’
‘That is true,’ said Blake. ‘There was nothing, until now, but fields.’
‘You then,’ the Brownie said, ‘are welcome to my home. If you do not object to sharing it with an unfortunate creature which I offered my protection.’
‘Not at all,’ said Blake. ‘This other creature?’
‘A raccoon,’ said the Brownie, ‘chased most pitilessly by a pack of hounds and cornered and mauled considerably, but managing to escape. In these hills, you must understand, there is a popular human sport, which you may have heard of, known as coon hunting.’
‘Yes,’ said Blake, ‘I have heard of it.’
But he knew, well enough, that he had not remembered it until the Brownie spoke of it.
Once again, he thought, a phrase had triggered another memory, unsuspected until this moment, and another piece of his human background had fallen smoothly into place. He became aware of that memory, sharply aware of it – the lantern-lighted night, standing on a hilltop, with a gun clutched in one hand, waiting for the dogs to pick up the trail and then, suddenly, the far-off bugling of a hound that had struck a scent. And in a moment other dogs joining in until the hill and valley rang with baying. He smelled again the sweet, peculiar odour of frosted, fallen leaves, saw once again the bare branches of the trees against the risen moon, and the thrill of following the chase as the hounds ranged up the hill. Then the headlong plunge down the slope, guided only by the feeble lantern light, hurrying to close in with the hounds and not be left behind.
‘I have tried to explain to the raccoon,’ the Brownie said, ‘that if you came you would be a friend. I am not too sure, however, that he understood. He is not too bright an animal and he is, as you can well imagine, still suffering a trauma.’
‘I will try not to alarm him,’ Blake assured the Brownie. ‘I will make no sudden moves. Will there be room for the both of us?’
‘Oh, most assuredly,’ the Brownie said. ‘My home is a hollow tree. There is a great deal of room in it.’
Good Lord, thought Blake, could this be really happening – standing out there in the wood, talking to a thing that should be snared inside a children’s book, being invited to den up in a hollow tree and share it with a coon.
And from where had come the memory of the coon hunt? Had he ever, actually, been on such a hunt? It seemed impossible. For he knew what he was – a chemically-processed human, and processed for one purpose and for one purpose only, and it seemed unlikely, in view of that, he’d ever hunted coon.
‘If you will follow me,’ the Brownie said, ‘I will lead you to the tree.’
Blake followed the Brownie and it seemed to him that he had stepped into a mad painter’s fairyland. Jewel-like leaves of every shade of gold and red hung on all the undergrowth, the saplings, the shrubby bushes, the very woodland plants -matching in finer detail and more delicate and brighter colours the riot of autumn pigments in the overhanging trees. And once again the memory of another place, or perhaps many other places, such as this, came back again to him. Memories with no detail as to time or place, but breath-catching in the remembered beauty of another wood on an-other day, caught in that instant of time when the autumn hues were at their brightest and their best, before the first hint of deterioration had touched them, at that exact moment before they would begin to fade.
They followed a faint trail, so faint that few eyes could have picked it out.
‘It is pretty in here,’ said the Brownie. ‘I like autumn best of all. I understand that on the old home planet there was no such thing as autumn.’
‘You still know about your planet?’
‘Of course,’ the Brownie said. ‘The old stories are passed on. It is still our heritage. In time, I would imagine, we will forget about it, for Earth then will be our planet. But, as yet, we must maintain a solid grip on the both of them.’
They came to a mammoth tree, a mighty oak eight feet or more across its trunk, gnarled and misshapen, twisted, with the heavy scales of lichen colonies turning its bark into brown and silver. Around its base grew heavy ranks of ferns. The Brownie pulled the ferns apart.
‘In here,’ he told Blake. ‘I apologize, but you must get down on your hands and knees and crawl. It is not a place that was designed for humans.’
Blake got down and crawled. The ferns rubbed across his face and brushed his neck and then he was in a soft, cool darkness that smelled of ancient wood. From some place up above a little light filtered down to break up the darkness.
He twisted carefully around and sat down cautiously.
‘In a little time,’ the Brownie said, standing at his elbow, ‘your eyes will become accustomed to the gloom and you can see again.’
‘I can see a little now,’ said Blake. ‘There is some light.’
‘From knot-holes higher up the trunk,’ the Brownie told him. ‘The tree is dying of old age. It is nothing but a shell. Once, long ago, it was scarred by a forest fire and that gave the rot a chance to work. But unless it is shaken by too great a wind, it will last for many years. And, in the meantime, it serves as a home for us, and, higher up, there is a home for a family of squirrels. And the nests of many birds, although by now most of the birds have left. Through the years this tree has been home to many things. Living in it, there is a feeling of belonging.’
His eyes had become somewhat adjusted to the darkness and now Blake could see the inside of the tree. The inner surface was fairly smooth; all loose rot apparently had been removed. The hollow core rose like a shaft above his head and, far up this tunnel Blake could see small areas of brightness where knotholes let in the light.
‘You will be undisturbed,’ the Brownie said. ‘There are two others of us. I might suppose in the human terminology they would be described as wives. But they are rather shy of humans. And there are some children too.’
‘I’m sorry,’ Blake said ‘I would not think…’
‘No need of sorrow,’ said the Brownie. ‘The wives will turn their time to much good use in the gathering of roots and nuts and the children never stay here anyhow. They have so many woodland friends that they spend all their time with them.’
Blake looked about the tree. There was nothing in it.