“You’re sure?” she asked with relief.
He nodded, and stood up. He crossed the little stream, and they went on. It was dark under the close, dark trees. There
were no distances, there was no choice, there was no time. They went on. The trail descended gradually now. All its turns veered farther to the right than to the left as it led them around the mighty contour of the mountain westward. It will get darker as we go farther west, Hugh thought.
Irena pulled at his arm: she wanted him to stop. He stopped. She wanted him to sit down and share food with her. He was not hungry and could not stay there long, but it was pleasant to rest a little while. He got up, and they went on. Steep streams crossed the path now and then in the dark infolds of the canyons, and Hugh knelt to drink at each, for he was always thirsty, and the water roused him for a minute. He would look up and see the sky between the black jagged branches, and look beside him at the quiet, soft, severe face of the girl kneeling next to him at the stream’s edge; he would hear the sough of wind above and below them on the mountainside. He would be aware of these things, and perhaps of the small ferns and water plants beside his hands. Then he would get up and go on walking.
There was a place where the air was lighter, a stand of some round-leafed, pale-trunked trees. There the trail forked. One branch turned, going left and downhill; one went straight on.
“That one might go down to the south road,” Irena said, but he knew from her saying “that one” that it was not the right one.
“We should stay on this one.”
“It keeps going on. We must be going west by now. Maybe
it just goes around the mountain and comes back out at the High Step. It just goes on and on.”
“It’s all right,” he said.
“I’m tired, Hugh.”
It was no time since, it was a long time since they had stopped to rest or eat. He wanted to go on, but he sat down and waited there at the fork of the trail under the pale trees while she ate. They went on. When they came to a stream, they drank, and went on.
The way went uphill now. Those were the only directions: right and left, uphill and downhill. The sense of the axis was long since lost, meaningless. There was no gate. The trail became very steep, zigzagging in and out of the ravines that scored the mountain’s bulk, always uphill.
“Hugh!”
The name he hated came from a great distance in the silence. The wind had ceased to blow. There was no sound anywhere. Be quiet, he thought with a dull stirring of anxiety, you must be quiet now. He stopped walking, unwillingly, and turned around. He did not see the girl at all for a while. She was far down the path behind him, down the long, dim, steep path under the crowding trees, her face a white patch. If he had gone on a few steps more they would have been out of sight of each other. That would be better. But he stood and waited. She came very slowly, she toiled up the slope, that was a word from books, toiling, working, it was hard work to walk this road. She was tired. He felt no tiredness, only
when he stopped and had to stand still, as now, that was hard. If he could go on he could go on forever.
“You can’t just keep going,” she said in a breathless, harsh whisper when at last she had come up to him.
It was a great effort for him to speak. “It’s not much farther,” he said.
“What’s not?”
Don’t talk, he wanted to tell her. He managed to whisper it, “Don’t talk.” He turned to go on.
“Hugh, wait!”
The anguish of fear was in her whispered cry. He turned back to her. He did not know what to say to her. “It’s all right,” he said. “You wait here a while.”
“No,” she said, staring at him. “Not if you’re going on.” She started past him up the narrow trail with a kind of plunge forward, walking with a jerky, driven gait. He came behind her. The path turned, and climbed, and turned, under the dark firs, under the rock faces. They went round a corner that jutted out over immense, dim, dropping forests, and saw all the evening land beneath them darkening into the distant west. They did not pause but went on, entering under trees, into leaf and branch, into the mountain, under rock. To the right the walls of the summit buckled, overhanging. The trees among the scarred crags and boulders grew short and sere. There was rock underfoot now, and the path went level.
Irena’s heavy, jerky pace faltered. She stopped. She took a
few steps and stopped again. As he came up beside her she whispered, “There.”
They faced a cliff wall, around which the trail passed on the outside, narrowing. Hugh went those few steps more, and turning the corner saw the inner curve of the cliff, a rock face overhung by half-leafless bushes. In the rock was the mouth of a cave. There it was, of course; this was the place. He stood gazing at it without fear or any emotion. He was here. At last. Again. He had been coming here all his life and had never left it in the beginning.
It only remained to walk the few steps down to the stony level ground before the cave, and go in. In the cave it was dark. Not twilight: darkness. From the beginning of time until the end.
He started forward.
She ran past him, the girl, pushing past him on the narrow path, running down and across the stony level to the cave mouth, but she did not enter. She stooped and picked up a stone and flung it straight into the dark mouth, screaming in a thin voice like a bird, “All right then, come out! Come out! Come out!”
“Get back,” Hugh said, coming beside her in three strides. Holding the sheath with his left hand he drew the sword with his right, for there was no other help. The cold breath sighed out of the cave, and from the cold dark, wakened, came the huge voice, the gobbling howl. And the face that was no face, slit and eyeless, was lunging out, thrusting blind and white, groping down upon him. Holding the sword grip in
both hands Hugh pushed the sword upward into the white, wrinkled belly and dragged the blade down with all his strength. The whistling sob rose into a scream. In a gush of pale blood and glistening intestines the creature reared up writhing, pulling the sword out of his hands, and then crashed down on him, crushing him as he tried, too late, to throw himself aside into the clear.
I
t still moved. The jerking of the arms—small, like a lizard’s forelegs, against the mass of the body, but shaped like human arms and hands—was rhythmic, a reflex without intent. Human arms, a woman’s arms, and those were breasts, pointed like a sow’s teats, between the arms and lower down the belly, there where, as the pulsing spasm of the body went on, the wound was brought into view again, and again, and again, and the grip of the sword protruding from the wound. Irena, on hands and knees, crouched down lower and vomited on the rocks and dust. When she could raise herself up a little she began to crawl away, to get away from the dying creature and the reek of the opened belly. But Hugh was lying there under the thing and how could she leave him there? But he was dead too or dying and she was frightened, there was nothing she could do. She could not even stand up. She kept trembling and making a queer noise
like “Ao, ao.” When she had crawled up close, under the twitching arms, so close that she could see the entrails sliding inside the wound, and Hugh on his back pinned under the huge wrinkled leg and body, she could not even get hold of him. She could not tug him out. She had to move the dragon thing, to try to push it off him. When she set her hands against the white wrinkled side she screamed aloud.
It was cold, a dead coldness. It was inert and stiff, the spasms running through it mechanically. She pushed, her head down and her eyes shut, weeping. It moved a little, rolled under her push, rolled slowly over onto its back, freeing Hugh’s body lying in a gush of slime and blood. The thin white forearms were now raised up into the air. Their twitching, fainter and faster, was in the corner of Irena’s vision as she crouched beside Hugh. He lay on his back, both legs bent to the side, his face masked, effaced with blood. She tried to clean the stuff off his face with her hands, to get his nostrils and mouth clear, for he was breathing, a gasping shallow breath at intervals; but he lay motionless and his face felt cold. The dragon thing had fallen on him and lain on him too long, chilled and stifled his life. He was broken. If she could get him out of this mess, the blood and the burst intestines and the white shuddering bulk she would not look at, if she could just get him somewhere else and get him clean and make a fire and get warm, both of them get warm. But she could not move him. If his back was injured she could kill him trying. She did not dare even move his legs, afraid they were broken.
“What shall I do?” she whimpered aloud, and felt her tongue dry and swollen in her mouth. She had been thirsty for a long time, for miles before they came to the cave, for hours while Hugh went on at that remorseless steady pace, never stopping, driven or drawn, and she could only stay with him because she knew that neither of them would ever get out of this country alone. And the way had gone higher and higher, and there had been no more streams, and they had come to the cave. But her mouth was like dry plaster, and there must be water somewhere. She sat back on her heels, looking with half-seeing eyes about the stony level in front of the dark gap of the cave mouth, the bare slopes and cliffs above, the treetops and rising ridges across the gorge. She would not look at the white thing, but the tremor of the forearms was always at the edge of her eye; it had almost ceased, a running shudder. She tried to wipe her hands on stones, for they were sticky and growing stiff with slime and blood. She heard the breath catch in Hugh’s throat. He moved his hands and coughed, a small, thin sound like a child. His lips worked, and presently he opened his eyes. There was no mind in them at first, but as she crouched beside him and said his name he looked at her, she saw his blue eyes, his soul alive.
“Can you move, Hugh? Can you sit up?”
The breath whistled in his chest.
“Wind ’ck’d out,” he said very faintly.
“It’s all right. You got knocked down. If you can move, we’ll be able to get a ways away. I can’t move you.”
“Fat,” he said. “Wait:”
He shut his eyes, then presently opened them, set his lips, and got himself propped up on both elbows, his head hanging over his chest. “Hang on,” he said to her or to himself. “That’s it,” she told him, holding his shoulder, “that’s the way.” He got up onto his knees with a lurch. There he stayed for a while. He showed no awareness of where he was, did not see the dead thing shivering beside him; he could go no further than his own body now. When he tried to stand up, Irena could help him, getting her shoulder under his arm as a crutch. He was very heavy, shambling, not seeing. She guided him in a staggering shuffle around the body of the dragon creature, across the level, into the thin trees that grew beside the cave wall. The trail went on there. Almost at once it turned sharply left and downward, descending so steeply that Hugh could not keep his feet. At least they had got past the cave. She was going to have him sit or lie down there on the trail while she went to find water, when she heard the sound of water running; and she thought then that all along she had heard that sound, while they were in the stony place in front of the cave. She got Hugh to shuffle on around the turn of the path. The trail ran down among high ferns. Above it water slipped in a clear film over boulders, crossed it, and vanished among ferns and moss down the mountainside. “Here,” she said. As soon as she ceased to support him Hugh went down onto his knees again, and then onto all fours. “Lie down,” she said, and he let himself slip down on his side among the ferns.
She drank and washed her hands and face in the little ceaseless, clear rilling, and gave Hugh water in her hands, a swallow at a time, the best she could do. She tried to get him to sit up so she could get his coat off. He did not cooperate. “It’s all covered with blood and, and tripe, Hugh, it smells—”
“I’m cold,” he said.
“I’ve got a blanket, a cloak. It’s dry, you’ll be warmer.”
His resistance was not conscious, and by persisting she got the leather coat off him. He cried out twice with pain as she tried to work it off his shoulders, so that she thought his shoulder was broken or dislocated, or his arm injured; but he said clearly enough, “It’s O.K.” All the front of his shirt was sticky, pale brownish-red; she got that off him too. She could see no injury on him. His shoulders, arms, and chest were heavy, smooth, and strong, very white in the dusk place among the ferns. She got him wrapped in the red cloak, and when she had washed out his shirt she used it to clean his face and throat and hands better; then rinsed it again, craving and healed by the water, the touch and cool and clarity of it. When she let him be, he lay with his eyes closed. His breathing was still shallow, but quiet. She sat with her hand on his, for his comfort and her own.
The immense gorge they overlooked was still. All the mountain was still, except for the small constant music of the spring.
It was a good place, this nook beside the path: the ferns,
the boulders, the film and the glimmer of water, the steady dark branches of the firs. She looked up. The path had turned sharp round; they must be directly below the stony level and the cave mouth. The spring must rise beneath the floor of the cave. It came out here into the light. They were in front of the cave here, but on beyond it, past it. You never think of going on past the dragon, Irena thought. You only think about getting to it. But what happens afterwards?
She began to cry again, noiselessly, painlessly. The tears ran down her cheeks in a film like the spring water. She thought of the piteous, hideous arms, the pointed white breasts; she put her face in her arms and wept. I have passed the place of the dragon and I can’t go back. I have to go on. It was my home, the light in the window, the fire on the hearth, I was a child there, I was the daughter, but it’s gone. Now I’m only the dragon’s daughter and the king’s child, the one that has to go alone, go on, because there is no home behind me.
The water sang, small and fearless. She curled down at last to sleep, worn out. It was a damp place they were in: the touch of the ferns was chill, the ground moist. She could not get warm. There was nothing nearby to build a fire with and she felt too weary, having once half relaxed, to go gather wood and make a fire. Hugh lay fast asleep. He had turned partly onto his face and his arms were drawn in close for warmth. A corner of the red cloak had caught on the ferns and pulled free. She crawled in under it, back to back with
Hugh. That was no good. She turned over and put her arm over his side under the fold of the cloak. That was warm, that was comfort. She fell asleep, like a stone falling.
Waking, she lay lapped in warmth some while, rocked in the mild rhythms of Hugh’s breathing and her own, entirely tranquil. Memories began to shape themselves, intruding like the angles and pebbles of the streambed; again she ran down the thin, steep way to the cave mouth, crying defiance, and again, and slipped on the rocks and fell—and sat up, struggling out of the folds of the red cloak. For a while she sat, still sleepy, and looked around at the ferns and the stream, the trees down the gorge, the bluish depths and far ridge lines, the uncolored sky. She crawled over to the stream and crouched to drink where the water rilled over a grey boulder’s curve, and washed her face and the back of her neck to clear her mind; then went along the path and off it among the trees to piss. When she came back, Hugh was sitting up huddled in the cloak, hunched over. His thick, rough, fair hair, stiff from her attempt to wash the blood out of it, stuck out from his head; the stubble on his jaw was thick; he looked heavy and haggard. When she asked him how he was it took him a long time to answer. “O.K,” he said. “Cold.”
She unwrapped bread and meat for them. She offered him his share, but he did not get his hand out from under the cloak to take it. He hunched up miserably. “Not now,” he said.
“Come on. You never ate … yesterday, whenever it was.”
“Not hungry.”
“Drink something anyhow.”
He nodded, but did not move to go drink at the stream. After a while he said, “Irena.”
“Yes,” she said, chewing smoked mutton. She was starving hungry, already eying his untouched share.
“The … Where …”
“Up there,” she said, pointing to the thick-grown slope above the spring. He looked up uneasily.
“Did it …”
“It was dead.”
Hugh shuddered: she could see the tremor run right through his body. She felt sorry for him, but she was at the moment mainly concerned with food. “Eat something,” she said. “It tastes so good. We ought to get going before too long. If you feel all right.”
“Going,” he repeated.
She attacked a piece of hard dry bread. “Away. Out. To the gate.”
He said nothing. He picked up a strip of dried meat, gnawed at it half-heartedly, then gave it up. He went over to the stream to drink. He moved awkwardly, and spent a while levering himself down so that he could drink. He drank for a
long time, and finally got up, laborious, holding the red cloak around his shoulders. “I need my shirt or something,” he said.
“See if it’s dry. I had to wash it. Your coat too.”
He looked down at his jeans, stiffened and blackened in streaks with dried blood, and swallowed. “Right. Where is it?” He saw it where she had spread it out over a big fern to dry, and shrugged off the cloak to put the shirt on. Irena watched him, seeing the beauty of his heavy, gleaming arms and throat. Pity and admiration filled her. She said, “You killed the dragon, Hugh.”
He finished buttoning the shirt, and after a minute turned towards her. Among the grey boulders and the arching ferns he stood still, and she still between rock and fern, looking at each other.
“You went ahead of me,” he said slowly, remaking the moment at the turn of the high path. “You ran down—you called ‘Come out.’ How did you—What made you do that?”
“I don’t know. I was sick of being frightened. I got mad. When I saw the cave. When I saw it I knew she was in it and you’d go in after her, go in there and never come out, and I couldn’t stand it. I had to make her come out.”
He tucked his shirttail into his jeans, wincing as he moved.
“You call it ‘her.’” he said.
“It was.” She did not want to speak of the breasts and the thin arms.
He shook his head, with a sick look, his pallor increasing.
“No, it was—The reason I had to kill it—” he said, and then put out his hand groping for support, and staggered as he stood.
“It doesn’t matter. It’s dead.”
He stood still, his face averted, watching the stream.
“Is the sword …”
“The belt and sheath’s somewhere here in the ferns. The sword is …” She must have looked as sick as he did, for he broke in: “I don’t want it.”
“Hugh, I think we ought to go on. I want to go. If you’re feeling well enough.”
“What happened to me, anyway?”
“It fell on you.”
He drew a deep breath; his face was bewildered.
“You don’t feel like anything got broken or anything?”
“I’m all right. I can’t get warm.”
“You ought to eat.”
He shook his head.
“Maybe we could go, then. It’s damp here. Maybe walking will warm you up.”
“Right,” he said, coming down to where they had slept among the ferns. Irena organized things: strapping the packet of food and the still damp leather coat so that she could carry them easily, and giving Hugh the red cloak. “Put it on right, see, it ties at the neck. I’ll carry your coat like this till it dries out.” He moved so clumsily that she said, “Is your shoulder all right?”