Enchanted Forests (25 page)

of sculptures had been especially demanding. Like the Auschwilz

crossbeams, each piece incorporated a score of twisted faces, a

hundred twisted limbs. Drawing them out had exhausted me. I

could hardly stand to look at them.

The wood had come from Cambodian trees.

The gallery was full. Patrons had wineglasses in their hands as

they went from one piece to another. Sometimes an art opening

is noisy as a cocktail party. Mine tend to be subdued. This one

was silent.

Nina and the gallery owner had already seen the pieces, and I

was relieved to find, as I stood in the middle of the room with

them, that they, like me, were in the mood for something else.

anything else. We managed to hold a conversation in the middle

of the room, focusing on each other, ignoring the little wooden

hells that were all around us. And it worked. Before long we re-

ally did forget ourselves.

The gallery owner said something that struck me as funny. I

laughed. I put my head back and roared.

A woman wheeled from one of the sculptures and shouted,

"How can you laugh in here? How can you?"

It is easy for me to find the spot on the ridge where I had

found him. There's the stump of the pine tree that I felled while

he was still unconscious.

"Stand there," I say. "Right where I found you."

He doesn't move.

I wave the pistol and say, "Come on."

He looks at me, hesitates, then steps sideways to the spot.

"I don't know about you," I say. "I don't know how far gone

you might be, how you got started down this path."

"You won't—"

"Shut up," I say. "It doesn't matter whether I know or not. I

only have one answer. There's only one thing for me to do about

you and others like you."

I toss him the canvas bag. Catching it, he drops the box of

crackers.

"Open it up," I say, and he does. He takes out the sculpture of

the hand, and he doesn't know what to make of it until he turns

it the right way, can see the meaning of the outstretched fingers,

die unmistakable gesture.

Please. I'm hurt. I'm down. No more. Please.

THESE SHOES STRANGERS HAVE DIED OF 165

"I took it out of the tree," I tell him, nodding at the stump.

With his free hand, he touches his side where his ribs still

ache. His expression seems more angry than sad, more vengeful

than softened with wisdom. But who knows?

He opens his mouth, begins to form a word.

"No," I say. "It doesn't matter. We're finished already."

He looks at the boots on his feet. The boots strangers have

died of. When he looks up, I'm pointing the pistol at his chest

I watch his face. His expression is impossible to read-

1 turn away, begin to retrace my steps. I, too, wear boots. The

lustrous leather clings to my calves like a second skin, and melt-

ing snow beads up on the blackness to glint like the stars coming

out. One point of light. Then another. Then one more. Soon, they

will be numberless as the dead. And as cold.

The Clearing

by Lots Ti'kon

Lois Tiiton has recently completed her fourth novel. Ac-

cusations, set in the universe of the television series

Babylon 5. More than forty of her short stories have ap-

peared in magazines and anthologies featuring the genres

of science fiction, fantasy, and horror.

The forest's breath was cool and damp, with a scent of old, de-

caying leaves. Cat moved silently through sunlight-dappled

shale, soft-footed like the striped forest hunter he was named

for. Pigment streaked his bare arms, and two broad lines of it

across his cheekbones to below the comer of his eyes: a cat

mask.

There were others with him: his brothers, the men of his tribe,

all armed as he was with short bows carved from the striated

heartwood of the yew and stone-tipped arrows. Cat could see the

movement of his brother Leaping Hare through the trees ahead

of him on his right, and behind him the shadow of Wolf-the-

Hunter on his left. The rest, unseen and unheard, followed, intent

on their path.

Suddenly, as the breeze shifted slightly. Cat caught the scent,

halted, raised a hand to signal to the rest, and they all paused at

the thin, acrid taint of woodsmoke in the air: fire, which the

forest-dwellers always feared.

Now the faces of the men were grim as they advanced through

the dense, old-growth trees, and their bows were in their hands,

arrows ready to be nocked into the string, for Cat had warned

them what he'd seen. As they went forward, the smoke hung

THE CLEARING             167

more thickly in the air, until it obscured vision and made the

hunters' eyes sting. There was a repeated sound also, like a

woodpecker's beak striking a tree. but dull and echoing. Then,

ahead of them, even though the smoke, the glare of bright sun-

light was visible, sunlight unfiltered through the translucent

leaves of the forest canopy, a light bare and raw and harsh to the

eyes.

Leaping Hare, closest to the clearing, spoke a curse of anger

and disbelief. And Cat, creeping forward, saw again what he had

seen before and clutched the catskin bag that hung around his

neck. It held the teeth and claws and polished bone of the striped

forest cat that had come to him in his naming-dream. It was his

most potent protection, for with it around his neck, the cat

walked with him, his spirit-brother: shadow-stealth, quick-

striking.

And he felt the need for protection now, for what he saw—

what he had brought the others to see with him—was an

enormity so great it passed all comprehension. A man might cut

a tree, for wood, to make a bow. A man would make a fire for

warmth in winter, and to cook his meat. But what kind of men

would lay a whole hillside bare so nothing was left but haggled

stumps and bare dead ground? What kind of men would heap the

hacked-off branches into a pile as high as their heads and light

a fire to send black smoke rolling up like stormclouds?

But they were men, of that there was no doubt—dark-skinned

men, their bare muscular backs gleaming with sweat as they

swung their axes into the trees still standing. That was the sound

the forest tribe heard now, the bite of axes into the living wood.

Chips and wedges of it flew, then one of the men gave a cry of

warning, and a great tree swayed, its fibers cracked and snapped,

and it fell to the ground like a crash of thunder.

But elsewhere on the hillside, other men continued their labor,

other axes chopped on, the sound of their blades striking wood

and ringing off the denuded slope. It made Cat shake inside to

see it.

The forest men were familiar with war, when one tribe would

encroach the hunting territory of another: quick raids, swift

strikes, sometimes an enemy's head to show as a trophy, some-

times widows scarring their faces in mourning. This, though, this

was war on the forest itself, killing it tree by tree, so no animal

could live, no hunter stalk, no woman gather the nuts that fell

from its branches.

None of them questioned what they must now do, so they

168

Loia luton

withdrew to prepare, and Cat and Leaping Hare both took paint

and renewed the totem marks on each other's face and body.

Then each man went apart by himself, and Cat took the catskin

bag from around his neck and reverently laid each object out in

front of him on the ground, praying to the spirit of the cat: Walk

with me, brother—give me your quickness, give me your strength.

It would be his first war, the first time for him to face another

man with intent to kill. He was the youngest of them, only come

into his name this spring. If he died, his mother and sisters would

cut their faces with their skinning knives, but he had no wife to

bleed for him. He glanced through the trees to where his brother

was praying to his own spirit-brother. Leaping Hare had two small

daughters, tf he died tonight, it would be up to Cat to provide for

them, to move into the widow's tent, since he had no wife of his

own. Cat thought that it might be better if he were the one to die,

and he felt shame that he hoped it wouldn't be so. He almost

wished now that he'd never come to the edge of the forest, or

smelled me smoke, or seen the ax-blades flashing in the sun.

As dusk fell, the hunters gathered, looked down again on the

strange men, who had finally ceased their work of destruction

and gathered around a high, leaping fire. They had meat roasting

there—the scent of it made Cat's belly twitch.

They attacked from three directions, creeping silently toward

their enemies under the cover of darkness. Their arrows fell

on the woodcutters, who bellowed in rage and pain and snatched

up their axes to defend themselves, charging their enemies. The

two forces closed, and then there was no more room for bow-

work.

But the woodcutters had the advantage at close quarters with

their axes and their other weapons, great knives as long as a

man's forearm. Cat watched in horror as one of the blades

slashed across his brother's belly, and blood gushed and entrails

swelled out like a gutted deer's. Leaping Hare staggered, still on

his feet, arms clutching his life, until an ax took him from behind

and he went down- The enemy turned on Cat next—Cat, armed

with only his stone knife, and he couldn't make himself face that

terrible blade. He took the first step backward, then another, but

me axeman cut him off, swung his weapon, and the crushing

blow sent Cat to the ground.

When it was all over, they found him, still trying to crawl

back to the safety of the forest A hand wrenched his head back

by the hair, he felt a sharp blade at his throat, but someone

barked sounds that were words, and they dragged him back to

THE CLEARING

169

their fire, tied him hand and foot, and left him to his agony

alone,

In the morning, they pulled him to his feet, struck him, tried

to make him stand, but he could not, and they left him again. All

that day he suffered, tied and staked under the naked, open sun.

His fair skin burned, his limbs had passed from torture to numb

lifelessness, and the effort of every breath cost his broken ribs

terrible pain. But the worst misery was the thirst, as me sun beat

down on his unprotected head, baked him like a fire, cracked his

lips. and dried his throat to ashes.

All throughout that day, the sound of the axes filled the hill-

side, blow after blow, bite after bite into the bleeding sapwood of

the trees, pounding, ringing, echoing against the ache in his head.

On and on and on, unceasing, relentless- When would they ever

stop? In his anguish, Cat felt the catskin bag still tied around bis

neck, and he prayed to his spirit-brother for help, for the strength

to break away, to escape into the cool familiar safety of the for-

est. to his tribe.

But when the sun fell low in the sky, me sound of die axes

ceased. Once again the loggers built up a roaring fire, so great

that Cat could feel the heat of it licking his sunburned skin. He

could smell flesh cooking, and he wondered if they meant to spit

mm over the fire like a deer and bum him alive, if that was why

they'd kept him tied all the long day, to save him for the ordeal.

Someone kicked him to make him move, but he couldn't, he

could only moan in his pain and thirst. He heard voices quarrel-

ing above him, opened his eyes enough to make out a man with

a long blade, gesturing with it, and Cat understood that he

wanted to cut his throat or gut him, like Leaping Hare had been

gutted. But another man, with an ax, struck his fist to his own

chest angrily as he argued back. A moment later he was back,

with water in a clay bowl. He splashed it onto Cat's head and

face and made him drink the rest. and soon after that. Cat could

lift his head and see what was happening.

They were throwing the bodies onto the fire- No, there were

two fires, and the bodies they were throwing onto the larger one

were the dead of his tribe. So many of them! Cat wept for his

brother and all the rest of them, killed so horribly and now de-

nied the burial rites to free their souls from the dead flesh. There

were corpses burning in the other fire, as well, dead limbs writh-

ing in the flames, but Cat could take no joy in the enemy's

losses, not in the face of his own,

They kept him tied again that night, but in the morning his

170                      Lois Tilton

bonds were cut, and when he could finally move, the man with

the ax threw him a chunk of meat, but Cat couldn't eat it, not

knowing what kind of flesh it was. The axeman swore at him,

then pushed him and gestured that he was to work, and he did,

all that day, hauling the brush to the fires that burned constant-

ly, fouling the air. When he stumbled, they beat him until he got

back to his feet But though the smoke stung his eyes, he could