The Island Under the Earth (6 page)

Far down below, in a deep declivity bordering an even deeper stream, the sound of whose rushing came to them faintly now and then with the fickle wind, three aurochs filed along with ponderous grace: red, dun, white. The bosun looked wistful, expectant, doubtful. “We could have a try,” he suggested. Stag did not even shake his head.

“No time,” he said.

This was not the Bosun’s favorite word. “Time….” he repeated. For some several paces now, the aurochs being out of mind were as well out of sight, he had been looking down and watching his footing carefully, for the way just then was rough. But now it became smoother and a long glance showed it to continue so a good while. He allowed his gaze to rise and scan about the country. They were treading along a broad shelf which by an almost imperceptible decline made its way down the side of one of the half-hills, and here the whole range seemed to part and show a section and a sampling of everything lying between the present point and the distant, distant sea: and each peak and each escarpment, as its edge was outlined against the sky, seemed to have not one clear line marking it but several, distinct yet indistinct, not black alone but gray and pale red and soft violet.

“Time….” the bosun repeated, seeing but not observing this phenomenon, the common thing in his world. “Haste up to these far hills, haste back down to port again, haste back to the hills, and all in quick time. Then to wait. And how much time to wait, Captain Stag?”

For first answer his captain seized up a stone and threw it forcefully into the ravine. The sound of its fall was slow and muted. For second answer he said, “And how in Three Hells should I know? — You gobble too much.”

“Not through yet, even now.”

“Gobble on, then. Tired of haste, not tired of waste? Waste your breath some more.”

“I’ll do it. When we’ve done waiting, then what?”

“That was agreed. We try again.” To this the bosun said nothing. But his silence indicated no pleasurable consent. It was not till they were at the bottom of the grade and the path had turned under stands of flowering-yellow acacia that Stag spoke again. “But we mayn’t go to port. Why should we, if we needn’t? What’s there we’re hot to see that can only be seen there? It’s the gear I want, and it’s the gear I’m bound for, and if I find it three steps this side of port, be sure I won’t go four. And now if you are still set to talk, talk to yourself, for I’ve no ears to — ”

He had ears to hear the bellow which split the air for all about them. There, ahead, in the open glade, a sixy stood. He held his hands up, palms out. He moved slowly in a circle. Something lay on the ground. But nothing which looked like a weapon. Unless he had a cudgel or stones concealed in the leather sack … if it was a leather sack. Automatically, the two men looked quickly behind them. No one and nothing was there. The boles of the acacias were too slender for any to hide behind. The two men went slowly forward. And then both of them, so close together that, if it had not been simultaneous, neither could have said who was first, cried out their astonishment.

The sixy was the same sixy of the evening before, and yet he was very much not the same sixy at all.

The long hairs of his mane and beard and tail, the shorter hairs of his pelt, were all of the same frosted silvery tone; but whereas before the tone was lifeless and dead, the hair and pelt now glowed and rippled with the sheen of life. Yesterday he had been barely able to crawl; today he ambled and he cantered. The filmed eyes were clear now. He had washed in a stream or pond in the meanwhile, too, but evidently he had washed alone, for his hair, where his hands could not reach it at all or conveniently, was still tangled. He was restored to health; to health, not to youth. The body of old being is not the same as that of a young one, however healthy. But the sounds he made were not the sighs and groans of yester-dimlight. Rumbles of wicked amusement alone made his silvery flanks heave, and flashes of it were in his eyes and on his face. He hooted as they came and he even, for a second or two, stood upright on his hind limbs and imitated their cautious approach; then dropped heavily to his natural stance with a grunt. Then slowly backed off as they came.

“Hyah, Fouries, hyoh, Fouries,” he snorted. “Dudzn’t bringz wvines?”

The Bosun’s voice clicked in his astonished throat. “By Rahab and Leviathan! The wine
did
cure him! But it couldn’t! How could it?”

The sixy turned in a slow and ponderous movement which seemingly had something of mockery in it, lifted his tail at them, then engaged in feinting at a nonexistent other centaur. And all the while he hooted his amusement. “If it wasn’t the wine,” Stag asked, “what was it? And what’s this on the ground?” It was a deer, a small doe, dead; and the sixy gestured them to it, his mouth for a moment too full of acacia pods to talk coherently to them, made motions with his hands; then, spitting out the seeds, he invited them to “make fire and burn meat” — for the sixies have not the word
cook
.

They looked at the deer, turned it over. It seemed unmarked. Stag said, “How did he kill it?” In another instant his hand gripped the sixy’s wrist as the sixy’s hand was laid in a chopping gesture against his neck. Gripped it, held it hard, knew that if the sixy, old as he was, had meant to crack his neck with that stroke neither his hand nor any man’s hand could have stayed and stopped it. And how swift, how sudden —

“Dthat izz hyow!” the sixy said. Then, with a hoot, and a backward kick which tossed bits of turf upon them, he was off. In a moment the sound of his feet had died away.

“Start the fire,” said Stag, tossing the flint and tinder pouch. He hung the deer on a broken branch, bled and drew and partly skinned it.

The bosun made the fire, but watched the butchering dubiously. Suppose, he suggested, it was poisoned. Stag’s comment, that if the bosun thought it might be he should eat the first bite, did not much reassure him. Afterwards, though, he did say, with a comfortable eructation, “That part of it wasn’t, anyway.”

Stag wiped greasy hands, mouth and beard on a handful of grass, got up and started off. The bosun, with a half-wistful look at the supposedly still suspect half-carcass, followed. In those days, and perhaps as yet, that world was without clocks, and there was no such precise time as midnight. What man could awake and declare it to be such? But midday … noon … anyone not blind could declare. It was the unnatural hour, for it was the hour without shadows. At that time when all creatures became as those accursed through having had their shadows lost or strayed or stolen, whilest the heat was greatest, all creatures’ natural tendency was to seek shelter. Strange things went abroad at noon, when no man’s eye could know that they had no shadows, ever; and strange things were known to happen, which did not happen at other times. Had not, in fact, the attack of yesterday been at noon? And had not some curious and still mysterious augurial hints —

Stag stopped short. He looked around. He walked back, ignoring his sweating bosun, looked around again. So perturbed was his manner that the latter copied his glance. “We aren’t lost, are we?” he asked.

His captain stamped his foot and softly swore. “Worse than just lost. If we’d taken a wrong turning we could go back and expect to take the right turning. But it isn’t we at all who’ve turned.
The land has turned
.”

His man did not have to ask how it could be, he knew how it could be, for he had heard, as everyone had, of “the gathering-up of the way,” and its cognate happening, “the gathering-up of the day.” Quickly, he looked about him: no, still no shadows; it was the same time it had been. But the landscape was different — Stag was right, the land had turned. They were much lower down than they should have been, was that it? Or much higher …? And those were reeds over there, and dragonflies, and there ought by rights to be neither marsh nor bog nor swamp nor fen anywhere around here.

The trees look different
, he thought.
The rocks were not that shape nor yet that color
. He glanced at Stag, and his heart thumped to see the man’s pallor, the skin under the eyes so dark, the cold drops like grease upon his forehead. Stag gripped him and pointed. Everything seemed to waver and he wanted nothing so much as to walk or run or even drop to all fours and crawl away, anywhere away, out of the shadow-stealing sun, under a fallen tree or beneath a ledge of rock. But he looked where Stag’s trembling hand pointed. The air trembled as though it, too, was maze-struck and befeared. The figures seemed to melt a little. But he saw what he saw.

He saw men and he saw centaurs and he saw onagers. The centaurs were attacking the men and the onagers were in flight. “An ambush!” he cried. “They’re beset as we were, yesterday! Come on, Captain!” he cried. “Why are we standing here? Let’s run, let’s help them!”

Stag looked at him with sick and fearful eyes. “I fear we’d never reach that place,” he said, his voice breaking. “But even more, I fear we would….” The tiny figures moved madly about. “Go to them? I’d go to my death, sooner. Don’t you know yet what has happened? If we go down there we may meet ourselves — they are us — today is yesterday — and they are us — us —
us!
” His voice rose to a scream, he pressed his hands to his head and fled in the other direction. And the bosun screamed and the bosun fled with him.

Dellatindílla moved with step so light that even those whose ears were accustomed to his kitten tread did not always hear him coming: and then it sometimes went very ill with them, for marry men called Dellatindílla many things, but few men called him kind. His body was over-tall and over-slender for its height, and he seemed to gather up his arms and legs as he walked more like a spider or a longlegs than a man; and those who had an especial fear for those creatures often shuddered as they saw him pass.

From a distance he gave the appearance of being bald, but he was not: his thin hair was the same dim yellow as his face, and clung to his head like a close-fitting cap. His features seemed preternaturally aged, and yet he had not the familiar features of an old man: his face seemed grooved rather than merely wrinkled; a faint show of down showed against a background light, but beard or moustache he had none; and his eyelids were curious in the way they drooped. He was inquisitive and acquisitive, high and clear of voice, rich in many possessions. Yet no one envied him. He was Dellatindílla the comprador, and he was a eunuch.

Some said he had been born so and others said he had been made so. None asked him. If he missed or was even aware of the meaning of the loss of manhood, none knew. There were stories that he burned strange herbs and gums and eagerly inhaled the fumes with nose and mouth and that thereafter he would stagger about or lie upon his couch with so ecstatic an expression as might lead one to believe that he was experiencing in his mind that sweet effusion … but no one
knew
. Only Dellatindílla knew. And he never said.

Sometimes he kept his house for days, weeks on end, never seen. Sometimes he might be observed peeking through a lattice or peering out a barely-opened door. At other times he rode in his chair through the streets with servants bearing gifts, and made visits. Now and then a late stroller or a non-sleeper saw him passing as silent as a mist through the lamp-dim streets, and sometimes he had his little dwarfs with him and sometimes he had not. But of late he walked alone in level daylight and he drank in the inns and winehouse and he cheapened goods in the market and gear in shops and now and then gave orders for this and that.

He seemed especially interested in things not always procurable, for fruits and fabrics and woods and other items which came irregularly from abroad, were not staple; and when he saw them not, he did not pass on without more ado, but made further inquiries. Had no one come lately from such-and-such-a-place, where such-and-such-an-item might have been available? Perhaps such a one had brought stuff or ware with him, or even, if not to trade, for private use or transshipment, yet might in the order of things be persuaded to part with what he had for a good price … and who (all agreed with him as he said this) indeed who paid better than Dellatindílla, if he were moved to pay well? And only a few oldwives dared to wag their empty gums at him and ask who paid less than Dellatindílla, if he were moved to pay ill. He laughed his hissing laugh at them, showing all his teeth, as though to taunt them, and passed on.

He spoke these days with many people, but it was by and by observed and commented on that he showed an especial interest in talking to strangers. And though at this time no wagons or porters passed between his place and that of Tabnath Lo, whenever the eunuch passed this merchant’s place his steps seemed to slow and his neck would crane and his pale, pale eyes look all about. Many of the questions he asked, though not of the merchant himself, dealt with him; yet, when they were reviewed in the absence of either man, the many were reducible to a few. Had not Lo a new partner? Was he a partner in general or in a particular voyage or voyages? Where were these voyages to? What cargo had they brought back? What was the new partner like? Where had this new partner gone lately?

Why?

Why?

Why?

Had there been a cliff in the way of their fearful flight they would have gone over it with no more realization or hesitation than a panicked pair of sheep: fortunately for them the first interruption was in the form of a stream. And, equally fortunately, it was neither too deep nor too swift. It washed off the sweat of terror, washed clean their tear-smeared faces; it was cold, and the cold gave them an excuse for still trembling somewhat. And if the water seemed to laugh as they stood there, up to their breasts in the fortuitous pool, it was a cool and not a mocking laugh. The water was not hostile and it was not friendly, it was indifferent, and perhaps an awareness of the meaning of this helped them to put their fears in a better perspective. It was after they had climbed out and the bosun was wringing his tunic that he seemed to feel a faint tremor not of his own, and, looking up, saw something which made him reach and cover his master’s mouth with one hand while he held the forefinger of the other to his lips. Then he gestured with his eyes and head.

Through a gap in the overhanging branches they saw a stride of onagers galloping along the ridgeback of a hill, and behind them, at least as many centaurs. The glimpse was brief, and for Stag, even briefer than for his bosun. Scarcely had he sighted them when they were gone from sight. But he was sure that the onagers were laden. And he was sure that they must be his own.

Seldom had seamen, untrained to spoorcraft, any easier trace to follow. They followed it cautiously, but with far, far easier minds than they had had the hour before. This, at least, was mere danger. They followed the danger down along the ridgeback and through the borders of the marsh, they followed it under great-bolled trees and through open grassland and through trampled thicket. There were shadows now, and birdsong, and all seemed so natural that almost the two were able to avoid perplexing themselves with a wonder as to what the other
us
were doing on this today which was simultaneously yesterday … and, equally perplexing and more than a shade more alarming, if the other
us
were forever bound to live or relive the same lives being lived by the this-
us
… only one day behind … or … or …

It was better to let that drift as far as it would drift, and to concentrate on the turfs loosened by driving hooves, the occasional and still-smoking heaps of dung, the fresh-torn branches, here and there flies about drops of leaked wine. It was better, when coming near enough to hear the braying of the beasts or the hueing of the sixies, to drop behind and seek a concealment, lest one of the asses break away and double back and be pursued — and the four-limbed pursuers be discovered, and themselves pursued … or worse. On one such wait-a-bit they diverted themselves with the find of a semi-cave, a sunken ledge beneath an overhang of lichen-spotted rock, the floor conveniently deep in soft moss. Here they lay down a while until the sounds ahead should diminish; meanwhile, the rest was grateful.

Low-voiced, the bosun asked, “How much longer do you think they’ll go?” Stag shrugged. “As far as they went yesterday, I suppose….” and winced before finishing, regretting he had given voice to the unhappy and confusing notion. He gave his head a great shake, then shrugged, put a sprig of sweet grass in his mouth, lay on his side. Thus they waited, and, perhaps against their will, dozed a bit. It was warm without being too warm, it was cool without being too cool, and they had come a long, rough way.

They came awake with a start together. The voices of the sixies now predominated, but they seemed neither nearer nor farther away. And the shadows were visibly longer. Stag frowned. He slid out. Circumspectly, they made their way in hopes of seeing without being seen. And found that they might have done this a while earlier.

They found themselves looking down into a great, grassy, bowl-shaped depression. Some of the onagers below had still not been unladen. The sixies — there were about twenty of them — had however unshipped a part of the cargo and piled it together. A few pair were still grooming each other, rubbing haunches with pads of grass, plucking burrs out of tails, and untangling elflocks in manes. Most of the others had already done with these delicate attentions and some of them began a rough, discordant singing or chanting in the centaurs’ language, all buzzes and drones. Now and then they moved in a line and lifted each a foreleg in something like unison.

The chorus stopped abruptly as a chestnut-colored sixy lifted a leather sack and held it up before his mouth in both hands. The next one snatched it from him, and was at once attacked — but not before the wine-skin, rescued in mid-air, had been pressed by another pair of hands, and, in an instant, the wine-stream directed into another mouth. Nor was the victor allowed more than a few swallows, and, even while he was guzzling them, two of his fellows charged straight at him, heads down, fists flying. Eyes wide and mouth still open, throat working hard on the wine, he turned to avoid them. One, he might have managed to drive off with his midlimbs while he danced on his hind ones, but two were too many, and he lost the wine. It was hard to tell, from where the four-limbed one lay concealed, what was wine and what was blood. And so the mad game went on: now they did their rude dance and now they fought for the wine-skin, now they sang and stepped together, now they fought each other, now they drank.

“If they had sense to see,” Stag grumbled, after several sundry curses at the sight of his good vintages going down such savage throats, “there are enough wineskins to give them a few each … then they’d not have to fight.”

Bosun swallowed, thirstily. “Ah, but then there wouldn’t be near as good sport,” he conceded, a gleam in his eye.

Stag nodded a slow nod. A good fight and a good drunk: two things easy to appreciate, though of late years he had cared for them increasingly less than before. “They’ll kill each other off, at this rate,” he mused. “Then we’ll have no trouble getting the beasts and gear.” But the bosun shook his head. Weren’t they accompanying each blow with a draught of wine? And wasn’t wine a prime medicine for sixy-ills? Hadn’t they had proof of that? And once again Stag swore — to break off and roll over and half to his feet in anger as first one clod of turf and then another thudded softly upon him. Down from the outer rim of the bowl a face peered at them from the bushes. It leered, bared its teeth in a silent laugh. At first they thought it was a man. Then in another moment they saw it was a sixy …
the
sixy … the old one … but with a difference.

“ ‘Speak of rain, and it thunders,’ ” he muttered. Then, with a half-doubtful look, he slid down to where the beckoning arm reached from the high grasses’ fringe.

“Dthey dztill drinking wvinez?” the sixy asked. Stag nodded. The old centaur lifted his upper lip until the frenum showed. Silent chuckles shook his sides as the man added, “And mashing and bashing each other.”

Abruptly the centaur’s look changed to one of mock seriousness. He snorted disapprovingly, shook his head. Then his eyebrows shot up and his eyes bulged. The bosun, at whom these mimings were directed, looked down at himself to see what the cause might be. He found out in a moment when the black-palmed hand reached down and patted the ropes wound round his waist, the coil of line he had cobbled together last night back at Stonehouse Hobar. “You gyivez me dthisz,” the sixy said. It was not a request, it was a statement.

“Let him have it,” said Captain Stag. The command was scarcely a concession, as the old creature already had it. He didn’t bother with more buffoonery, simply vanished into the grass once more. They looked at the place where he had been, then at each other, then returned to their hiding-place of moments ago.

The games below had entered another stage. Two sixies, each armed with an enormous branch, had stationed themselves not far from the diminished stack of wine-skins. Three of them, arms around each other, stood off, howling something in their own language which scarcely bore any semblance to singing by now; and now and then they picked up their feet and stamped them with an irregular regularity. But most of the centaurs were watching the two with the tree-limbs. Now one of them, a big roan, suddenly detached himself from the mass and, with a bellow which echoed all about the grassy bowl, galloped directly for the heaped-up cargo.

The sixies fell silent. Only the thud-thud of the charge was heard. His attack, if attack it was, led him right between the two guardians, if guardians they were. They swung at him. One blow fetched him at the breastbone, one at the back of his head.
Tump. Tump
. His forelimbs collapsed, his hind limbs still galloped, the result spun him around and over, legs kicking, blood gushing from his open mouth. They swung again.
Tump. Tump
. And one final
tump
. One leg of the fallen sixy twitched. The rest of him lay motionless.

The others gave voice in what seemed like one great bray, stamped their four feet each upon the ground, and the ground shook and the air trembled. Stag felt the taste of bile upon his tongue. This was not even his former notion of a good fight. Animals … utter animals … bucks in rut … might maim each other, even kill each other. But not for sport. It was with an effort that he recalled, and nodded silent assent to, words said to him which might have had just such a scene to call them up when they were first framed.
Pity rather than hate the Sixlimbed Folk, for they have men minds and brute bodies, and just as much as their men minds strive to direct their brute bodies so do their brute bodies strive to direct their men minds
.

Something seemed odd, down there in the grassy bowl below. Something seemed to have changed. Were there fewer sixies than before? They swayed to and fro, heads down and lolling about, their arms sometimes on each others’ necks and sometimes hanging loosely; and in that confused mass of them it was hard for him to count them either by heads or hands or legs. He did not know. He did not know. And, along with the confused conviction that
something
was wrong, there began to grow from deep within him a sick fear that that either the day or the way had been “gathered up” again … and this time perhaps in another, and, if possible, worse form. He clutched the grass with his hands, and lay his face upon the cool earth. And then he felt a tug upon the back of his tunic.

Once again it was Bosun, and once again he had his fingers to his lips. Stag’s sick fears suddenly were overwhelmed by a feeling of intense irritation. By Rahab and Leviathan! Were they to spend all this day and perhaps other days slithering behind bushes and hushing each other like schoolgirls playing pranks behind the back of a nodding nurse? He squirmed quite around and sat bolt upright, angrily brushing an ant from his nostril. The bosun, having fully gained his master’s attention and knowing well how to read his moods, now thought it prudent to depart a ways — making, as he did so, an apologetic gesture to his left. There at the foot of the hillock which formed on this side the outer part of that great natural bowl, under the dogwood trees, stood the element missing from inside and among the sixies — the line of onagers, still laden, still (or once again) cropping the grateful grass, and now linked together by that same rope which the old sixy had summarily taken from around the Bosun’s waist.

He and the bosun stared at each other and then, wordlessly, they took the foremost beast by the bridle and led the entire caffle off into the forest.

Behind them the noise of drunkenness and strife did diminish with distance but did not change in tenor. And, gradually, the dimlight deepened.