There was a small man sitting there alone, his back to Maya, busily tending to the fire. He probably didn't even know Maya was there, standing behind him, wary, poised to turn and run off in an instant.
The little man was prodding the fire with a stick, roasting himself some potatoes and onions, very gently rolling the roasting potatoes from side to side among the coals, kindling the embers, speaking amiably to his fire as he did so, encouraging it with kind words and congratulating himself on his success. And so he tended to his fire and spoke almost endlessly, never noticing Maya bent over, watching him from close by while Matti peeked out at them. Frightened, Matti watched Maya's back from within his rock-fold, unable to decide what he should do now. His legs begged to run away from there as fast as they could, while his feelings demanded that he go and stand next to Maya. The struggle between his legs and his feelings took so much energy that he was stuck there in the crevice between the rocks, fairly close to Maya's back but not as close as she was to the stranger, and slightly closer than she was to the opening of the cave.
Suddenly the stranger turned around and smiled easily, not the least bit surprised, as if he'd known the whole time that unexpected guests had arrived and he'd only been waiting till he could stop tending his fire for a moment to act like a proper host and welcome them:
Maya? Matti? Would you like to sit down? Rest awhile? How about some roast potatoes? I also have vegetables, fruit, mushrooms, and nuts. Come and sit here.
16
Matti and Maya were shocked to see that the man wasn't a man, but a child, and not a child they didn't know, but, of all people, Nimi, the boy everyone called Nimi the Owl, Nimi, with the constantly runny nose, who used to insist on telling everyone his dreams—shoes that turned into hedgehogs in the middle of the night, or a rubber hose that turned into a snake or an elephant's trunk—and everyone used to laugh at him. Nimi, who once went into the forest alone, where he must have come across something that frightened or shocked him so much that he came down with whoopitis. The disease had made him stop talking altogether and begin wandering around the village, whooping, his front teeth with the gap between them sticking out, one eye constantly weeping. And ever since, he'd been roaming around the village day and night, winter and summer, without a home, without a friend. Maya and Matti couldn't help him. Even his family was ashamed and gave up on him.
And here, in this cave, Matti and Maya found Nimi: not the Nimi who whooped, not the Nimi who ran away from people and climbed trees, making strange faces from up on the highest branches, but a Nimi who spoke and touched them both on the shoulder and even asked them to share his roast potatoes and onions browned in the fire. Even his weepy eye smiled at them affectionately.
Later, when the three of them sat together around the coals, full and relaxed, Nimi told them that his owl-whoops weren't a sickness at all, but a decision: He had been fed up with the taunting, the humiliation, and the ridicule, and decided he would lead the life of a free child alone, without parents, neighbors, classmates, with no one to hurt his feelings, no one in the village or the whole world to tell him what to do or not to do. He decided to live all alone. To live in comfort and freedom. True, he has a too-large gap between his buck teeth, but at least he has a head behind his stupid teeth, not a poison mushroom like all those people who make fun of him. Sometimes he goes down to wander around the village yards and whoop a little and everyone runs away from him, scared they'll catch his disease. But this is his home, this is where he lives, in this cave where he keeps all sorts of things he collects from people's backyards: books and jars, ropes and rusks, magazines, candles, fruit and vegetables, and pieces of clothing he snatches off the clotheslines. And Almon the Fisherman lets him dig for potatoes in his garden at night and pick as much fruit as he wants from the trees and gather vegetables from the garden.
How come you're not afraid of the forest? Of Nehi?
Sometimes I really am a little scared, especially at night, but not of Nehi, said Nimi. In fact, when I'm here in my cave, I'm a lot less scared than when I'm with the kids who hate me and whoop and throw stones and roof tiles at me, or when I'm with the grownups who point at me and say look-here-comes-that-sick-little-whooper-pity-his-poor-parents, and always warn the smaller children to keep away from me.
Tell me, Nimi, have you ever seen any living creatures here in the forest? No? What about Nehi? Have you ever seen Nehi? And tell us something else: is there really such a sickness as whoopitis?
Instead of answering that question, Nimi the Owl got up, stretched, waved at them, inhaled his snot, smiled with his crooked teeth and one weepy eye—smiled to himself, not at Maya and Matti—jumped between them, and squeezed his way to the opening of his cave. Then suddenly he let out a long, trilling, ear-splitting whoop that sounded despairing and belligerent at the same time. He raced out of the cave into the thick trees, whooping with joy at the top of his lungs, his voice fading as he moved farther away until it was swallowed up in the depths of the forest.
When the fire died in Nimi's cave, Matti and Maya decided to continue climbing the forested mountain road that grew steeper and more tortuous, more and more like a narrow dark tunnel in the tangle of dense bushes.
Very soon, there were no more paths or cobwebs of forest trails, only a dark, dense labyrinth filled with thick plants, more black than green, that blocked out the light. Some pricked and some burned, and some stung the skin like poisonous bites.
Matti and Maya tried hard not to get too far away from the river, but they couldn't stick too close to its twists and turns because in several places the river flowed through two sheer cliffs or was swallowed up under the ground, only to reappear in a totally unexpected place. But the sound of the river's flow helped Maya and Matti navigate their way up the mountain, as if it were an angry, noisy guide that was never silent: sometimes it ground its teeth as it ran over the pebbled riverbed, sometimes it growled faintly as it wandered among the cliff walls, and sometimes it roared wildly in foamy cascades.
After a few hours, they lost the river. They couldn't hear even a distant murmur of its flow. Instead, they began to hear other echoes from the hidden depths of the forest, squeals, sighs, splutters, as if something somewhere were inhaling, exhaling, and whispering, something fairly close, and yet—invisible. And not far away, something else was stifling a cough, and yet another thing was sawing away stubbornly, or gnawing with strong teeth. It would stop for a moment as if it had grown tired, then begin gnawing again.
Maya and Matti figured it must be evening already and they wanted to find themselves a cave where they could wait for morning to come. They thought it strange that daylight still filtered through the treetops. Matti stopped to take a breath of air and shake off some of the thorns and dry pine needles that were stuck in his clothes. Maya, who was almost always a few steps ahead, stopped to wait for him. She suggested that they continue up the mountain as long as there was some light. Then, because she could guess what his answer would be, she stated more than asked, You want us to go home.
In his heart, Matti did want to go home, but the suggestion to give up and go home had to come from her, not him.
So he asked her: What do you think, Maya?
And Maya said: And you?
He hesitated for a moment, then said in a gallant, firm voice: I think we should do whatever you say.
And Maya said: It's good that we ate with Nimi, around the fire, but I'm hungry again now, and a little tired.
Matti said: So we go back?
And Maya: Maybe. Yes. Okay. But not home. Let's go back to Nimi's cave and stay there till morning. Then in the morning, we'll keep climbing.
So they turned back. And this time, Matti was the one in the lead, struggling to pave a way for them through the thick vegetation. But the vegetation grew thicker and thicker. The more they propelled themselves forward like tired swimmers battling strong waves, the denser the bushes grew. Instead of going down, they found themselves still climbing the steep, forested sl
ope. Again it seemed to them that the day was beginning to fade and darkness was probably not far off, and they would never find Nimi's cave again.
A low, dark shadow suddenly passed over their heads in the total silence, sailed right over the treetops and almost touched them, hovering and darkening the tangle of trees and shrubs for a moment. Then a moment later, it moved away into the distance without a sound. As if for a while, a heavy black blanket had covered everything. And for a moment, their hearts filled with fear at a huge magic trick, fear of a day that wasn't day and a night that wasn't night. But neither Maya nor Matti said a word about it. They were silent and kept climbing, till they reached a place on the mountainside where they could rest and make plans. Maya went alone to see what lay ahead because she thought she heard the whisper of the river in the distance.
There, on the mountainside, between two rocks, Matti bent to examine a small stone, a curled stone that reminded him of a picture of a snail, or maybe this was a fossilized snail. Meanwhile, Maya climbed farther up the mountainside toward what seemed to be the murmur of the river. Suddenly, Matti couldn't see her anymore, couldn't even hear the sound of her steps, but he was afraid to raise his voice and call her. And when Maya turned to look, she didn't see Matti either. He had vanished among the trees, and she too was afraid to call him because they both had the feeling that they mustn't shout here because they weren't really alone; someone was waiting for them in the depths of the forest. Or hovering above them. Or perhaps just standing silently, unmoving, among the shadows of the dense forest, never taking his eyes off them. Within the deep silence that lay heavily on everything, Matti suddenly thought that he wasn't the only one listening to the pounding of his heart, but whatever was standing in the shadows and watching him could hear it as well. And when he put the curled, snail-like stone down on the flat rock and looked for Maya but couldn't see her, another snail, not a fossilized one, crawled near his shoe. But by the time Matti looked back at it, the snail had vanished as if it had never been. Swallowed up in a crack.
17
After some hesitation, Matti decided that he should stay and wait for Maya there, at the foot of the rock that looked a bit like a large ax, because what would happen if he went to look for her? She might come back on a different path while he was gone. And if she didn't find him there, she might start wandering around the forest looking for him and get lost among the hills, and they'd be looking for each other like that until darkness fell. So he sat leaning against the ax-rock and waited, trying to listen as hard as he could to pick up every rustle and murmur.
From so high up, the expanse of forest looked like a large, dark screen dotted with illuminated spots that were green: mottled green and gray-green and yellow-green and a green so dark that it was almost black.
Matti's eyes searched the distance, far below him, for the tiled roofs of the village, but the village had disappeared. Matti conjured up a picture of Almon the Fisherman's fruit trees. In his imagination, he saw the vegetable garden clearly and even the scarecrow standing in its beds. And he could describe to himself how the old fisherman walked slowly past, sighing, limping his way among the beds toward his wooden table, missing his dog Zito, and the finches and the fish and even the woodworms that used to gnaw away at the innards of his furniture every night. He was probably scolding the scarecrow now or arguing with himself as he walked. He always had the last word, muttering some unanswerable response from under his thick gray mustache. And there, not far from the ruins, Emanuella the Teacher was standing alone hanging laundry on the line in the backyard of her small house. Matti knew from the gossip—the whole village knew—that Emanuella the Teacher, not a young woman, had been trying for years to win the hearts of the men of the village, single and married, young and not so young, but not one of them gave her a second glance. Sometimes, Matti would join those who made fun of her and called her Emanu-no-fella. But now he regretted that: her loneliness and desperation seemed almost painfully sad to him now. When he thought about the narrow street under his parents' house, Matti pictured Danir the Roofer and his two young helpers sitting astride the beam of a tiled roof, hammering away and laughing because they'd managed to match the beats of their three hammers to the rhythm of a jolly marching song.
And he pictured Solina the Seamstress stopping in the middle of her walk and bending over her invalid husband's pram, maybe to straighten his blanket or change a wet diaper, or maybe just to stroke his head covered with its sparse gray hair, while from the depths of his lost memory, Ginome bleated thinly, heartbreakingly, because he thought he was a kid and his wife was a surrogate mother sheep.
And maybe at that very moment, as he sits there imagining life in the village, Lilia the Baker, Maya's mother, is on her way from the bakery to the village's only grocery store in the square. And maybe she meets Solina there, wheeling her husband in the pram. Lilia stops as she always does to exchange a few words with Solina, to tell her how hard it is to raise a stubborn child like Maya who is as cheeky as a devil, yes, but definitely not cruel. The whole problem is that my little girl has an overly strong and spirited nature. She knows everything better than I do and much better than everyone else, so everything always has to be exactly, but exactly, the way she wants it. Then Lilia will probably brush off her apron, apologize—because, for no reason at all, she always lowers her eyes and says she's sorry—and she'll say goodbye to Solina and Ginome and continue on her way down the narrow alley, push-rolling her old bread cart, whose wheels need to be oiled or maybe even replaced.
And actually, why shouldn't I oil them for her myself? Matti thought. Who cares if people talk. Let them talk. They can make fun of us as much as they want. After all, Maya and I saw something they never even dreamed about. And when we come out of this forest, maybe we'll know something the village doesn't know ... or has been trying very hard not to know. Or maybe the whole village knows and is just pretending, the way Little Nimi pretends to have whoopitis on purpose so he can stay free?
If only we get out of this forest in one piece. It should be nighttime already and the whole world should be dark, but strangely, it doesn't come, it's holding back, as if under a spell.
And what if Maya has gone very far away?
What if she gets lost?
What if we both lose our way inside the cobweb of the dense forest?
And how long do we have, if we have any time at all, before it gets dark?
Maybe they haven't started worrying about us at home yet. But they'll start soon.
Matti sat that way for a long time, looking down at the valley from high up on the mountain, sunk in thoughts and imaginings. But he was actually trying to push away the fear that kept growing sharper every minute, creeping under his skin and making chills run down his spine: because Maya didn't come back and she didn't come back afterward, and even after that, she still hadn't given a sign. He was getting more and more cross with her: Where had she vanished to like that? Could she have gone back down to the village without him? And you know what, it would serve her right if I take off too and run back home right now before it gets dark.
Then his anger at Maya turned into cold fear as he listened to the rustling of the tall trees, the silence, and the wind. He could already sense in the air the faint smell of the end of afternoon or the onset of evening, and the twilight wind began a whispered conversation with the rustle of the trees in the forest. Matti had already stood up and was planning to run home as fast as his legs could carry him when, through the whirring and whooshing of the wind in the pine needles, he thought he heard the barking of dogs again, coming from far, far away. For a moment, he also seemed to hear Maya calling faintly to him again and again all the way from the thick forests on the mountain above him: Matti, Ma- a- tti, come he-e-ere, co-o-ome Ma-a-atti, co-o-o-ome, co-o-o-ome...
And he didn't know which was the most terrifying choice: to ignore the cry that might be a desperate call for help, or to go bravely up into the forest toward the voice that might only be a trick to
lure him into a dangerous trap, a voice that was coming not from up on the mountain, but from inside his head, born of the fear and desperation that had already begun to darken his heart and choke his breath like a foot in a heavy shoe pressing on his chest...
18
Finally Matti decided to climb up the rocks. The trees of the forest around him became denser and darker as if they had crowded together deliberately to block his way. But again he found a kind of path or narrow trail among the tree trunks that wound its way up the mountain and led him to the steep slopes and into a tangle of black bushes. The path kept climbing up and up in sharp hairpins toward the top of the mountain till the sun sinking over the ridges began to paint the sky above the treetops the color of an immense fire, then of wine, then of burning embers. Soon the sky and earth would be covered over with a cloudy curtain of ash.
Now he saw a stone wall with a gate made of thick tree stumps, and from inside, above the wall and the gate, a cloud illuminated by many colors rose and hovered, and many strange sounds came from it, high sharp sounds and deep faint sounds, and delicate soft sounds like snowflakes, whistling, chirping, panting, croaking sounds, grating sounds and soothing sounds, sounds Matti had never heard in his life, and yet he recalled them and knew they were the sounds of animals and birds, gentle mooing sounds and low growls and chorus after chorus of tweeting-twittering-singing voices. And among them was Maya's voice, clear and ringing with joy, What's wrong with you, Matti, don't stand outside like that, open the gate and come in too.