Authors: Kate Thompson
‘I might be.’
I made to move on past, but he spoke again. ‘Given up, then, have you?’
I was surprised by how much his words hurt me. I didn’t know how to answer.
‘I was hoping you’d make it,’ he went on. ‘I was sure you would.’
It hurt even more. I realised I was ashamed, and I lashed out in unthinking response.
‘Why should you care?’
He sat up straighter and although I still couldn’t see him clearly, I had the impression that his gaze went straight through me and saw more than I wanted it to.
‘Because the beguilers cause so much fear,’ he said. ‘And no one really knows what they are. There aren’t many people like you. If you give up, then who will go?’
‘Why don’t you go and catch one yourself, since you’re so concerned about it?’
‘I can’t,’ he said. ‘I have my own challenges to face. But you could do it. I know you could.’
I turned away, but his words had got through to me. I understood now why my steps on the downward hill had been so heavy. I had given up too easily. For the rest of my life I would have to live with that sense of failure that was already dragging at me. I might be rich, but I would never be happy.
‘You don’t have to give up, you know,’ the boy said. ‘I could take your nuts for you and sell them. I know where to get the best price. I’d keep the money until I met you again.’
My mind was in turmoil. I looked down at the warm lights of the village in the distance, then back towards the cold white peaks shining behind me. I took a step closer to the boy.
‘I met Shirsha,’ I said. ‘She caught a beguiler, did you know that? But I don’t want to end up like her.’
‘Then don’t,’ he said, as though it were simple. ‘Learn by her mistakes. Do it differently.’
There was a moon, but it was behind the tent and threw a dark shadow across the boy’s face. All I could see were his eyes, gazing at the mountains behind me. I wished I could have seen him in the light. I thought he might be handsome.
‘I’ll be a porter all my life,’ he said. ‘Dragging up and down these hills until my back gives out, or my knees. Everyone’s like me, in one way or another. Tied to some kind of daily slog. But you could be different. You have a hunger for life’s mysteries. Why throw that away for some stupid jub trees?’
And part of me, that ignored, silent part that had been dragging against me ever since I turned my back on the cloud mountain, emerged to celebrate the boy’s words.
‘What’s your name?’ I asked him.
‘Marik. And you?’
‘Rilka.’ I emptied the nuts out of the shawl and gathered them into a neat pile beside his bulging pack. ‘Make sure you get a good price for these, all right?’
‘I promise,’ he said. ‘And I know that you’ll make it. I’m certain of it.’
I
SPENT THE NIGHT
just above the tree-line and listened to the nightangel until sleep overtook me. I felt different about it this time, and I didn’t know why. Something that had happened to me since I had last heard it had opened up some potential in my soul and now, as I listened to the varying tones of the bird’s declarations, I felt that the understanding of them might, after all, be within my grasp.
I slept long and deeply, and although I was sure when I woke that I had dreamed prolifically, none of the images remained with me.
I got up and took stock of the day. The morning was still chilly despite the strong, pale light, and my clothes were damp from the peaty ground. I beat my arms against my sides and jumped up and down until I was panting, then re-laced my boots and moved off. First I returned to my nut tree, gathering a few whisker-fruit and yellow-pips along the way to add variation to my diet. When I had restocked myself with jubs, I set out again, for real this time.
I kept further east than I had before, determined to avoid another encounter with Shirsha and her beguiler. The peak which rose above me hid the cloud mountain from view, and I would have to go right round its slopes, crossing high above the village. Much as I hated the idea of travelling through the druze, I knew that the shortest route would lead me through its higher fringes. I was full of energy though, despite the steep inclines, and I thought that by the time evening came I would have crossed the face of the mountain and come to the foot of the pass that led across the snows and down towards the sea. But I was wrong.
It took me three full days.
The druze, I now know, is even more dangerous than we had been led to believe as children. I made a severe mistake in trying to travel through it, and should have sacrificed the time to avoid it. Everyone knows that the plants are poisonous and that eating them produces depression and liver damage and sometimes death. But what is less well known is that prolonged contact with the bushes can have the same effect on a milder scale.
No birds nested in the druze, but there was life there. Slow, black flies dawdled around, feeding and breeding on the decaying remains of fallen leaves. Languid grey toads fed on the flies, and they in turn were the prey of the hideous, poisonous toad-worms. I made plenty of noise as I walked to give them warning that I was coming, and it must have worked, because in all the time I was travelling through their habitat I saw only one, sliding away from me.
There were bones there as well, strewn between the creeping suckers of the druze. Most of them were small; the remains of animals that had wandered in there to die, or that had been eaten, perhaps, by snatchers. But some of the bones were larger and less easy to identify, and they added to my unease as I traversed the were-woods.
Since there were no land-marks and nothing but the changing light to measure the passage of time, I don’t remember much about those lost days. All I know is that I was constantly wavering between a desperate need to escape and an intense sense of futility. I would have periods of great activity, weaving my way among the bushes and pressing myself through the denser growth, convinced that in a few more minutes I would emerge into the open at the foot of the pass. These would be followed by episodes of abject despair, during which I was equally certain that I would never get out of the druze and I was wasting my time and my energy in making the attempt. At such times it never occurred to me to head downhill or uphill. The best I could do was to sit on the rank forest floor and curse my tainted luck.
By late afternoon on the third day I found myself among thick, tall plants which blocked out all view of the mountainside either up or down. I had long since lost my bearings. My clothes were so saturated with the juice of the black bushes that I could no longer smell it, but I could feel it penetrating my skin and poisoning my body. My water was lasting, but my appetite had disappeared. I knew that I needed nourishment, but I couldn’t bring myself to eat and replenish lost resources.
Corpses have occasionally been found in the druze by wayfarers. Some of them have been strangers and some of them were villagers. We were always told that they were led there by beguilers and driven mad, so that they forgot themselves and ate the leaves or drank the juice that flows so freely when the druze stems are cut. But as I sat there alone in the dimming evening light I knew beyond doubt what had happened to them. They had wandered as I had and been unable to find their way out, until finally the poison had overcome them.
I knew that I had to move, to get out of there. Uphill or downhill, it didn’t matter as long as I did it now, before it was too late. But when I came to get up I found that I couldn’t. There was a great weight like a stone beneath my rib-cage which deadened my legs and robbed me of initiative. For a few moments I struggled with it, then I gave way to despair. All the effort I had made had come to nothing. My certainty that what I was doing was right had turned out to be nothing more than a delusion. Marik’s faith in me was unfounded. I was going to die, and no one would ever know what I had been through.
My fingers, wet and sticky with tears, began to stray towards the corner of the shawl where the little bag was tied. A glimmer of hope presented itself. Was this it? Was this the time to open the bag? I touched the hard, bead-like shapes through the cloth and the leather. Would they really work, rescue me in some way from this poisonous gloom? I began to pick at the knot, but as I did so I fell into conflict again. Two opposing voices emerged. One said that this must be the moment; how could anything worse possibly happen? The other urged me to wait, since what could be done now could equally be done in an hour’s time.
I vacillated, stuck in the absurd position of believing both of those thoughts. The weight in my abdomen increased, and in an agony of frustration I burst into a succession of gut-wrenching wails and sobs.
I had cried more often than anyone else in my village, of that I was certain. But I had never wept like this before. I wouldn’t have believed it was possible. And the worst of it was that now the flood-gates were open there seemed to be no way of closing them again. I couldn’t stop. Nor did I have any more chance of returning to my decision about the beguilers’ eyes. Even if I had wanted to, there was no way that I could have mustered the co-ordination to undo all those intricate knots just then. The crying had taken control of me. I had no alternative but to abandon myself to it.
T
HEY SEEMED TO COME
from everywhere at once, a sudden explosion of noise and activity in the undergrowth that had been so silent. My first reaction was extreme alarm, which took away my breath and my sobs along with it. Then they were upon me; five, ten, twenty young chuffies, lashing their tails and falling over each other in their eagerness to get close to the source of so much sadness. They knocked me on to my back in their clumsy confusion and piled on top of me, pressing wet noses all over my face and jabbering incoherently. Inside a minute my eyes were streaming with a different kind of tears and I was sneezing heartily, but never in my life had the symptoms of my allergy been so welcome. I turned on to my side and propped up my head with my elbow, resisting the jumping and shoving cubs as well as I could. For a while they continued to jostle for space, like a litter of piglets settling in to feed, but at last they quietened down and relaxed. They were already doing their job, and doing it well for such young things. My heart had been rescued and I smiled down at the indistinct bundles which were draped all over me like an irregular, furry blanket. Then I pulled my bundle of provisions under my head and went to sleep.
Warmed by the chuffies but restless and uncomfortable because of my worsening allergy, I slept fitfully. During one spell of uneasy sleep, I had a strange dream, in which I was floating high above the surface of the earth. I couldn’t understand how I came to be so light and insubstantial when I was still carrying the leaden feeling that had crippled me shortly before among the druze bushes. My sorrow was intense and there seemed to be no way of releasing it from where I hovered in the air, but I knew that I was searching for something, or someone, who could free me from it.
In the dream I couldn’t see myself. I seemed to have no limbs, no substance at all, and yet I could see all around me quite clearly. Then I hit upon the idea that if I could fly in a quick enough circle I might catch a glimpse of myself from behind. I tried it, but no matter how fast I moved it didn’t work. So I tried other aerial manoeuvres, weaving and dodging and doubling back on myself. It was then that I realised what I was doing. It was the strange and complex dance of a beguiler.
I woke with a gasp, fighting for breath. The chuffies had rearranged themselves while I slept and one of them was draped over my face. I shoved him off and struggled against the combined weight of the others until I was able to sit up. It didn’t help. I had entered into a full scale asthma attack and I was fighting for every breath.
The chuffies rolled lethargically as I pushed them away, replete with the sorrow that they had removed from me. One or two of them complained sleepily, but few of them even opened an eye. I pulled my shawl from underneath them and began to head slowly and painfully uphill away from their presence and towards safer air. Every few steps I had to stop and wait for a while until I painfully accumulated enough breath to go on. But I didn’t put down my bundle until I had put a sufficient distance between myself and the chuffies. Then, at the edge of what appeared to be a large clearing in the druze, I sank down to my knees and closed my eyes.
I was accustomed to dealing with my attacks on my own. Once I was beyond the baby stage, my mother had seldom had time for them. It wasn’t that she was any more indifferent or unkind than anyone else; just that mothers in our village didn’t have to learn the skills of comforting their children. That was what chuffies were for, after all. And if I was allergic to chuffies, it was my misfortune. My mother did what she could, but it was limited.
So I did what I always did and that was to stay still, concentrate on my breathing, and wait. I don’t know how long it took that night, but by the time the attack began to ease off the darkness was faltering and turning blue, giving way to dawn. I looked around me and what I saw took my attention away from my discomfort. I was not, after all, on the edge of a clearing. Without knowing it, without even intending to, I had made my way out of the druze. Above me was the snow-line, with the peak of the mountain rearing away, a paler blue than the sky beyond it. Over its right shoulder, barely visible in the dim light, I could see the shifting vapours of the cloud mountain. The last of the congestion eased from my lungs, and at the same time I got my bearings in relation to the lie of the land around me. I couldn’t have emerged from the druze at a better spot. A hundred yards to my right was the edge of the trading route which led through the pass towards the sea.
T
HE SUN ROSE AND
lit the brilliant snows of the pass and the mountain peak beside it. The lightness in my heart was a far more energetic and positive feeling than the sort of smug complacency that the chuffies usually leave behind them after their work. It was the happiness of perseverance rewarded and it brought with it a new optimism for the journey ahead. Now that the asthma attack had passed, my appetite returned with a vengeance. I ate three small jubs, a double handful of squishy puffberries and I kept out a whole whisker-fruit to chew along my way.