The larger blankness abruptly shivered back into life. It leaped up and smacked its rudimentary hands together. "Go now. Hurry."
"But. . . ." Renie looked down. !Xabbu was moving. One of his sim hands clenched fitfully, as though trying to catch something that had flown away.
"You can take him back now. And you must take this, too." The stranger plunged one arm inside itself, then pulled out something that glimmered with a soft amber light. Renie stared. The stranger reached and took her hand with its other arm, peeled open her clenched fingers, and dropped the object onto her palm. She wondered for a moment at the mundane and unremarkable touch of the ghostly presence, then looked down at what had been given to her. It was a round yellow gem, cut into hundreds of facets.
"What . . . what is it?" It was becoming hard to remember much of anything. Who was this gleaming white shape? What was she supposed to be doing?
"No more questions," it said sharply. "Go!"
Renie stared for a moment into the void where its face should be. Something swam through her mind, down deep, and she struggled to identify it.
"Go now!"
She squeezed !Xabbu a little tighter. He felt as slender as a child. "Yes. Of course. Exit."
The garden popped like a soap bubble.
Everything was very dark. For a moment Renie thought they had become stuck in transition, until she remembered the headset. She lifted her arm, gasping at the painful effort, but managed to tip up her visor.
The view around her improved only a little; she still saw mainly gray, although now there were dark stripes as well. Then she understood that the blurry verticals around her were the straps of the Harness Room. She was hanging in place, swinging slightly. She turned. !Xabbu was dangling beside her, but it was the real !Xabbu in his real body. As she watched, he shivered convulsively and lifted his head, eyes rolling as he tried to focus.
"!Xabbu." Her voice sounded muffled. She was still wearing her hearplugs, but she couldn't work up the strength to lift her arm again. There was something she needed to tell him, something important. Renie stared at him, trying to remember, but her head was beginning to feel very heavy. Just before she gave up, it came to her. "Call an ambulance," she said, and laughed a little at the oddness of it. "I think I'm dying."
CHAPTER 12
Looking Through the Glass
NETFEED/NEWS: California's "Multi-Marriages" Now Law
(visual: two women, one man, all wearing tuxedos, entering Glide Memorial Church)
VO: Protestors howled outside as the first of California's newly legalized multi-partner marriages took place at a church in San Francisco. The man and two women said it was "a great day for people who don't have traditional two-person relationships."
(visual: Reverend Pilker at church rostrum)
Not everyone agrees. The Reverend Daniel Pilker, leader of the fundamentalist group Kingdom Now, called the new law "indisputable evidence that California is hell's back door. . . ."
Paul stepped through and out. The golden light faded and he was in emptiness again.
The mist stretched away in every direction, as heavy and empty as before, but there was nothing else. There was no Finch or Mullet either, which was a great relief, but Paul had been hoping that he would find something more on the other side of the gateway. He wasn't quite sure what "home" meant, but in the back of his mind he had been hoping to find exactly that.
He sank to his knees, then lowered himself until he lay stretched on the hard and featureless earth. The mists swirled around him. He closed his eyes, exhausted, without hope or ideas, and for a while gave himself to the dark.
The next thing he was aware of was a quiet whispering, a thin papery sound that grew out of the silence. A warm breeze stroked his hair. Paul opened his eyes, then sat up, full of wonder. A forest had sprung into being around him.
For a long time he was content just to sit and stare. It had been so long since he had seen anything but blasted fields of mud that the sight of unbroken trees, of thickly tangled branches still bearing their leaves, soothed his spirit like a drink of water to a thirsty man. What did it matter that most of the leaves were yellow or brown, that many had already fallen to the earth and lay ankle-deep around him? Just the return of color seemed a gift beyond any price.
He stood. His legs were so stiff that they might have been things discarded by someone else that necessity compelled him to use. He took a great breath of air and smelled everything, damp earth, the scent of drying grass, even the faintest tang of smoke. The scents of the living world coursed through him so powerfully and so richly that it awakened hunger inside him; he suddenly wondered when he had last eaten. Bully beef and biscuit, those were familiar words, but he could not remember what the things they named were. In any case, it had been long ago and far away.
The warm air still surrounded him, but he felt a moment of inner chill. Where had he been? He had a memory of a dark, terrifying place, but what he had been doing there or how he had left had slipped from his mind.
The very lack of things to remember meant that their absence did not worry him long. Sun was filtering down through the leaves, making spots that swam like golden fish as the wind moved the trees. Wherever he had been, he was in a living place now, a place with light and clean air, a carpet of dry leaves, and even—he tilted his head—the distant sound of a bird. If he could not remember his last meal, well, that was all the more reason to find himself another. He would walk.
He looked down. His feet were shod in heavy leather shoes, which at least felt familiar and correct, but nothing else in his attire seemed quite right. He wore heavy wool stockings and pants that ended not far below his knee, as well as a thick shirt and waistcoat, also of wool. The fabric seemed strangely rough beneath his fingers.
The forest stretched away in all directions, revealing nothing that looked like a road or even a trail. He pondered for a moment, trying to remember which direction he had been traveling when he stopped, but that, too, was gone, evaporated as completely as the bleak mist, which was now the only thing that he remembered with certainty had existed before the forest. Granted an open choice, he noted the stretching shadows and turned to put the sun at his back. At least he would be sure of seeing his way clearly.
He had been hearing the intermittent birdsong for a long time before he finally saw its author. He was kneeling, freeing his stocking from a bramble bush, when something brilliant glided through a column of sunshine just ahead of him, a flash of green both darker and shinier than the moss crawling on the tree trunks and stones. He straightened, looking for it, but it had vanished into the shadows between trees; all that remained was a trill of piping music, just loud enough to claim a single echo for its own.
With a stiff tug he pulled himself out of the bramble bush and hastened in the direction the bird had gone. Since he had no path, he thought he might as well follow something pretty as plod on with no better destination in mind. He had been walking for what seemed hours and had seen no sign of change in the endless forest.
The bird never came close enough for him to see it completely clearly, but neither did it disappear from sight. It flitted from tree to tree, always just a few dozen paces ahead. On the few occasions where the branch it chose for a resting place was in sunlight, he could see its emerald feathers shining—an almost impossible glow, as though it blazed with some inner light. There were hints of other colors, too, a dusky purple like an evening sky, a hint of darker color along the crest. Its song also seemed somehow less than ordinary, although he could remember no other bird's song for comparison. In fact, he could remember very little about any other birds, but he knew that this was one, that its song was both soothing and alluring, and that was enough to know.
Afternoon wore on and the sun passed out from behind the gaps in the treetops, sliding toward the hidden horizon. He had long ago stopped worrying about what direction it shone, so caught up had he become in his pursuit of the green bird. It was only when the forest began to
darken that he realized he was lost in a trackless wood with night coming on.
He stopped, and the bird alighted on a branch not three steps from him. It cocked its head—there was a dark crest—and gave voice to a melodic trill that, though swift and bright, had something in it of a question and something in it even less definable, but which made him suddenly mournful for his lost memory, for his directionlessness, for his solitude. Then, with a flip of its tail that revealed the midnight-purple brushing underneath, the bird spread its wings and spiraled up into the air to disappear among the twilight shadows. A last thread of song floated down to him, sweetly sad, diminishing to nothing.
He sat down on a log and put his head in his hands, overcome with the weight of something he could not define. He was still sitting that way when a voice made him jump.
"Here, none of that. These are good solid oaks, not weeping willows."
The stranger was not dressed much differently than he, all in rough browns and greens, but he wore a broad strip of white cloth tied around one arm like a bandage or a token. His eyes were a strangely feline shade of tawny yellow. He held a bow in one hand and a skin bag in the other; a quiver of arrows stood up behind his shoulder.
Since the newcomer had made no hostile moves, he felt it safe to ask him who he was. The stranger laughed at the question. "The wrong thing to be asking here. Who are you, then, if you're so clever?"
He opened his mouth, but found he could not remember. "I . . . I don't know."
"Of course not That's the way of this place. I came in after . . . I'm not certain, you know, I think it was a deer. And now I won't remember my name until I'm on my way back out again. Queer, this forest" He extended the skin bag. "Are you thirsty?"
The liquid was sour but refreshing. When he had handed it back to the stranger, he felt better. The conversation might be confusing, but at least it was a conversation. "Where are you going? Do you know that? I'm lost."
"Not surprised. As to where I'm going, it's out. Not a good place to be after dark, these woods. But I seem to remember something just outside the forest that feels like a good destination. Perhaps it will be the kind of place you're looking for." The stranger beckoned. "In any case, come along. We'll see if we can't do you some good."
He quickly rose to his feet, afraid that the invitation might be rescinded if he took too long. The stranger was already pushing through a tangle of young trees which had made a hedge around the wreckage of their toppled older relative.
They traveled for a while in silence as late afternoon twilight gradually deepened into evening. Fortunately, the stranger held down his pace—he seemed like the sort who could have traveled much faster if he chose—and remained, even in the dying light, a dark shape only a few steps ahead.
At first he thought it was the night air, that the colder sharpness was bringing a different kind of sound to his ear, a different kind of scent to his nostrils. Then he realized that instead it was a different kind of thought that was suddenly drifting through his mind.
"I was . . . somewhere else." The sound of his own voice was strange after the long time without speaking. "A war, I think. I ran away."
His companion grunted. "A war."
"Yes. It's coming back to me—some of it, anyway."
"We're getting near the edge of the forest, that's the reason. So you ran away, did you?"
"But . . . but not for the normal reasons. At least I don't think so." He fell silent. Something very important was swimming up from the depths of his mind and he was suddenly frightened he might grab at it too clumsily and lose it to darkness once more. "I was in a war, and I ran away. I came through . . . a door. Or something else. A mirror. An empty place."
"Mirrors." The other was moving a little more quickly now. "Dangerous things."
"And . . . and. . . ." He curled his fists, as though memory could be tightened like a muscle. "And . . . my name is Paul." He laughed in relief. "Paul."
The stranger looked back over his shoulder. "Funny sort of name. What does it mean?"
"Mean? It doesn't mean anything. It's what I'm called."
"It's an odd place you come from, then." The stranger fell silent for a moment, though his legs still carried him forward in long steps that had Paul hurrying to keep up. "I'm Woodling." he said at last. "Sometimes Jack-of-the-Woods, or Jack Woodling. That's my name because I do tramp all the woods near and far—even this one, though I don't like it much. It's a fearful thing for a man to lose his name. Although perhaps not so much so when the name doesn't mean aught."
"It's still a fearful thing." Paul was straggling with the new ideas that were suddenly skittering through his head like beetles. "And where am I? What place is this?"
"The Nameless Wood, of course. What else would it be called?"
"But where is it? In what country?"
Jack Woodling laughed. "In the king's land, I suppose. The old king's land, that is, although I trust you've got the sense not to call it that among strangers. You may tell Her Ladyship I said so, though, if you meet her." His smile blazed briefly in the shadows. "You must be from somewhere far away indeed, that you concern yourself with such schoolmasterish things as the names of places." He paused and pointed. "There it is, then, as I hoped it would be."
They had stopped on a high place at the edge of a narrow valley. The trees fell away down the gradually sloping hillside; for the first time Paul could see some distance in front of him. At the bottom of the valley, nestled between the hills, a cluster of lights gleamed.
"What is it?"
"An inn, and a good place." Jack Woodling clapped him on the shoulder. "You will have no trouble finding your way from here."
"But aren't you going?"
"Not me, not tonight. I've things to do and elsewhere to sleep. But you will find what you need there, I think."
Paul stared at the man's face, trying to make out the expression through the night-shadows. Did he mean more than he said? "If we are going to split up, then I want to thank you. You probably saved my life."
Jack Woodling laughed again. "Don't put such a burden on me, good sir. Where I go, I must travel light. Fare you well." He turned and moved back up the hillside. Within moments Paul could hear nothing but the leaves rustling in the wind.
The sign swaying in the wind over the front door named the inn "The King's Dream." It was crude, as though it had been put up hurriedly to replace some earlier insignia. The small figure painted below the name had his chin on his chest and his crown tipped low over his eyes. Paul stood for a moment just outside the circle of lantern glow puddled in front of the door, feeling the great trackless weight of the forest breathing like a dark beast at his back, then stepped forward into the light.
Perhaps a dozen people were ranged about the low-ceilinged room. Three of them were soldiers in surcoats as bloody-red as the joint that turned on a spit over the fireplace. The young boy tending the spit, so covered with soot that the whites of his eyes were startling, gave Paul a furtive look when he came in, then quickly turned away with an expression that might have been relief. The soldiers looked at Paul, too, and one of them inched a little way down the bench they shared, toward the place where their pikes leaned against the whitewashed clay wall. The rest of the denizens, dressed in rough peasant clothes, paid him the attention any stranger would receive, staring as he made his way to the landlord's counter.
The woman who waited for him there was old, and her white hair, disarranged by heat and sweat, looked something like the fleece of a sheep kept out on a bad night, but the forearms bared by rolled sleeves looked strong and her hands were pink, callused, and capable. She leaned on the counter in obvious weariness, but her gaze was shrewd.
"We've no beds left." She wore an odd smirk on her face which Paul could not immediately understand. "These fine soldiers have just taken the last of them."
One of the red-smocked men belched. His companions laughed.
"I'd like a meal and something to drink." A dim memory of how these t
hings worked wriggled into Paul's thoughts. He suddenly realized he had nothing in his pockets but air, and no purse or wallet "I have no money, I'm afraid. Perhaps I could do some work for you."
The woman leaned forward, inspecting him closely. "Where are you from?"
"A long way away. The other side of . . . of the Nameless Forest"
She seemed about to ask something else, but one of the soldiers shouted for more beer. Her lips thinned in annoyance—and, Paul thought, something more.
"Stay here," she told him, then went to deal with the soldiers. Paul looked around the room. The hearth urchin was staring at him again with an intensity that seemed closer to calculation than curiosity, but Paul was tired and hungry and did not much trust his own overstrained perceptions.
"Let's talk about work you might do," the woman said when she returned. "Follow me back here, where it's less noisy."
She led him down a narrow stairway to a cellar room that was clearly her own. The walls were lined with shelves, and they and every other surface were crammed with spools and skeins, jars and boxes and baskets. Except for the small pallet bed in the corner and a three-legged stool, the room looked more like a shop than a bedroom. The landlady sank onto the stool, fluffing her rough woolen skirt, and kicked off her shoes.
"I'm that tired," she said, "I couldn't stay on my feet a moment longer. I hope you don't mind standing—I've only the one stool."
Paul shook his head. His attention had been captured by a small, thick-paned window. Through the distorted glass, he could see water moving and glinting in the moonlight outside. The inn evidently backed on a river.
"Now then," the old woman's voice was suddenly sharp, "who sent you here? You're not one of us."