Land and Overland - Omnibus (54 page)

"I have to do this quickly in case she guesses what is happening," he said. "Please be ready to go in immediately."

Harro nodded. Bartan turned the key with a single twist and moved aside as Harro brushed by him and into the room beyond. In the half-light from the doorway and the shuttered window he saw Ennda Phoratere standing in the far corner, back pressed to the wall. Her black hair was in wild disarray around a face that was dehumanised by the white-corona'd eyes and the blood caked on her chin. Brownish stains dappled the upper part of her nightdress.

"Who are you?" she shrilled at Harro. "Stay away! Don't come near me!"

"Ennda!" Harro darted forward and seized his wife despite the flailings of her arms as she tried to fight him off. "Don't you know me? I only want to help you.
Please,
Ennda."

"You can't be Harro! You…" She broke off, staring into his face, and pressed a hand to her mouth. "Harro? Harro?"

"You had a nightmare, but it's over. It's all over, dear one." Harro drew his wife towards the bed and made her sit down, at the same time nodding meaningfully towards the window for Bartan to take heed. Bartan went forward and opened the shutters, expanding a central sliver of brilliance into a wash of sunlight. Ennda looked all around the room, mistrustfully, before turning to her husband.

"But your
face!
Look what I did to your poor face!" She gave the most anguished sob Bartan had ever heard, lowered her head and—on seeing the bloodstains on her nightdress—began to tear at the thin cotton material.

"I'll fetch some water," Bartan said hastily, leaving the room. He saw Crain Phoratere standing just beyond the front entrance and made a pushing gesture against the air to warn him to remain outside for the time being. His glance around the kitchen located a green glass ewer and basin on a sideboard. He poured some water into the basin, gathered up a washcloth, soap and towel, taking as much time as possible over the operation, and returned to the bedroom door. Ennda's nightdress was lying on the floor and she was swaddled in a sheet taken from the bed.

"It's all right, lad," Harro said. "Come in."

Bartan entered the room and held the basin while Harro cleaned and dried blood from his wife's face. With the disappearance of the scaly disfigurement Harro showed an uplift in his spirits, reminding Bartan that some nursing procedures were as much for the benefit of the caring as the cared for. He too began to feel a sense of relief, though with a twinge of conscience over his own selfishness—his special day had been threatened, but the threat was lifting. Ennda Phoratere had had a very bad dream, with unfortunate consequences, but life was now settling back into its pleasant routine and soon he would be dancing with Sondeweere, belly to belly, thigh to thigh…

"That's better," Harro said, dabbing his wife's face with the towel. "It was only a nightmare, and now we can forget all about it and…"

"It wasn't a nightmare!" Her voice had a thin, wailing quality which somehow checked Bartan's rising tide of optimism. "It was
real
!"

"It can't have been real," Harro said reasonably.

"What about your face?" Ennda began to rock gently backwards and forwards. "It wasn't
like
a dream. It seemed real, and it seemed to go on for ever … for ever and ever…"

Harro tried being jocular. "It can't have been worse than some of the dreams I have had, especially after a supper of your suet cakes."

"I was eating your face." Ennda gave her husband a calm, dreadful smile. "I didn't just bite your cheek, Harro—I ate up all of your face, and it took hours. I bit off your lips and chewed them up. I pulled your nostrils off with my teeth and chewed them up. I gnawed the front off your eyeballs and sucked the fluid out of them. When I had finished with you, you had no face left … nothing at all … not even ears…

"There was just a red skull with some hair on top. That's what I was doing to you during the night, Harro, my beloved—so do not try to tell me about your nightmares."

"It's all over now," Harro said uneasily.

"Is that what you think?" Ennda began to rock more vigorously, as though driven by an invisible engine. "There was more, you know. I haven't told you about the dark tunnel … crawling under the ground in the dark tunnel … with all the flat, scaly bodies pressing on me…"

"I think it would be better if I left," Bartan said, turning towards the door with the basin.

"No, don't go, lad." Harro raised a hand to detain Bartan. "She's better with company."

"…they had many legs—and I was the same… I had many legs … and a trunk … a tentacle … growing out of my throat…" Ennda suddenly ceased rocking, tucked her right shoulder under her chin and extended her arm forwards. It made a gentle, boneless rippling movement which was mimicked by something in the deeps of Bartan's consciousness, making him unaccountably afraid.

"Well, I'll just put the basin away," he said, feeling like a traitor, knowing that he intended to get out of the house and leave the two unfortunates to deal with their own problems, none of which had anything to do with him. He evaded Harro's hand, walked briskly into the kitchen and set the slopping basin down on the sideboard. He turned and was on his way to the bright sanity of the front entrance when he was snared by Ennda's psychic web. She had risen to her feet, unmindful that the sheet was slipping down her torso, and could have been performing a strange new dance, her arm snaking and wafting before her.

"It began oddly," she murmured. "Very oddly indeed, and it's wrong to call it a beginning because I kept going back to the house. It was an ordinary farmhouse … whitewashed, green door … but I was afraid to go in … and yet I
had
to go in…

"When I opened the green door there was nothing there but some old clothes hanging on a hook on the wall … an old hat, an old cloak, an old apron … I knew I should have run away at that stage, while I was still safe, but something made me go in…"

Bartan halted at the bedroom door, chilled.

Ennda looked straight at him, through him. "You see, I was wrong. There weren't any old clothes. It was one of
them
… that tentacle reaching towards me … ever so gently…"

Harro closed with his wife and gripped her shoulders. "Stop this, Ennda. Stop it!"

"But you don't understand." She smiled again, her arm coiling around his neck as the sheet dropped to the floor. "I wasn't being attacked, dear one … it was an invitation … an invitation to love … and I
wanted
it. I went into the house and I embraced the horror … and I was happy when I felt its pale grey penis entering me…"

Ennda surged against Harro, her naked buttocks pumping and contracting. With one imploring glance towards Bartan, Harro used his weight and size to force his wife down on to the bed. Bartan stepped into the room, slammed the door behind him and threw himself down against the couple, helping to imprison Ennda's threshing limbs. Her teeth clicked as she bit the air and her pelvis drove upwards again and again, but now with diminishing power. Her eyelids were drooping wearily, peace was returning to her body. Bartan took the initiative and covered her, using the sheet that had fallen to the floor, but his mind was elsewhere, wandering in a strange continuum of doubt and confusion.

Could coincidence ever be stretched far enough to explain two people dreaming the same thing at the same time? Perhaps, if the subject were a very commonplace one, but not when …
And at first mine was not a dream!
Bartan's brow prickled coldly as he remembered that he had been to the house and had walked through the green door in actuality. But in reality his monster had been a delusion, and in Ennda's delusion her monster had been a reality.
The universe does not work this way,
Bartan told himself.
Something has gone wrong with the universe…

"She looks better now," Harro whispered, stroking his wife's brow. "Perhaps a couple of hours of proper sleep is all she needs. In fact, I
know
that is what she needs."

Bartan stood up, trying to anchor his thoughts in the solid present. "What of the celebration? Are you going to send everybody away?"

"I want them all to remain here. It will be best if Ennda has her friends around her when she awakes." Harro got to his feet and faced Bartan across the bed. "There's no need to talk too much about all this, is there, lad? I don't want people to think she has gone mad—especially Jop."

"I won't say anything."

"I'm grateful to you," Harro said, leaning forwards to shake Bartan's hand. "Jop has no time for all this talk of dreams and nightmares that we've had of late. He says that if people worked as hard as they ought they would be too tired to dream at night."

Bartan forced a smile. Were other members of the community having bad dreams? Was this what Reeve Karrodall had foretold? Could this be only the beginning, the beginning of something terrible, something which could drive the new wave of settlers away—as had happened to their predecessors?

"When I lay my head down at the end of the day," he said ruefully, pushing aside his memories of the night's disturbing dream, "I experience a small death. There is
nothing
until daybreak."

"Anybody who tried to start off a whole section on his own is entitled to be exhausted, more so somebody who wasn't brought up to this work."

"I get some help from the neighbours," Bartan said, eager to talk of commonplace things while he strove to come to terms with his new internal picture of the world. "And after I'm married there will be…"

"I must put a bandage on my war wound," Harro interrupted, gingerly prodding his cheek. "You go outside and say I want to know why they are all standing around with both arms the same length instead of preparing for the festivities. Tell them this is to be a day to remember."

News had come that Jop Trinchil and his family would not be arriving until near the middle of the day, so Bartan passed the time by joining in where he could with the various preparations going on around the farm. His efforts were received with good humour, but the women soon made it clear to him that he was hindering rather than helping, especially as he was abstracted and prone to error. He withdrew to a bench facing the kitchen orchard, where several men were already sunning themselves and sharing a jug of green wine.

"That's right, lad," Corad Furcher said companionably, handing Bartan a full cup. "Leave the women to get on with it by themselves." He was a middle-aged man whose yellowish hair betokened a blood relationship with the Phorateres.

"Thanks." Bartan sipped the sweet liquid. "It's all confused back there, and I did seem to be getting in the way a little."

"There's the source of the trouble, up there." Furcher made a gesture which took in the clear blue dome of the sky. "The onset of littlenight was the obvious time to begin a revel when we lived on the Old World, but here the sun goes on shining and shining and shining, and you can't regulate yourself properly. It isn't natural, you know, this living on the outside. I'm as loyal as the next man, but I still say King Chakkell was interfering with the right way of things when he scattered us all around the globe. Look at that sky! Empty! It makes me feel I'm being watched all the time."

The men farther along the bench nodded in agreement and began a discussion about the disadvantages of being on the hemisphere of Overland which was permanently turned away from the sister planet. Some of the theories they put forward about the effects of the uninterrupted day on crop growth and animal behaviour sounded highly dubious to Bartan. He found himself longing for Sondeweere's company more than ever, and in between times wrestling with the problem posed by Ennda Phoratere's terrible nightmare. Coincidence had to be ruled out, but perhaps the key to the mystery lay in the very nature of dreams. Was it possible, as some claimed, that the mind roved out from the body during the hours of sleep? If it were, then perhaps two discarnate personalities could meet by chance and commune briefly in the darkness, influencing each other's dreams.

Bartan was reluctant to abandon his vision of a perfectly happy future, and the new idea seemed to offer its salvation. As the strong wine began to do its work he began to see the episode as rare and unpleasant but perfectly explicable, a manifestation of some of nature's complexities and subtleties. The resurgence of his optimism was aided by the sight of Ennda emerging from the main house and taking part in the seemingly endless preparations for the forthcoming party. She was a little sheepish at first, but soon she was laughing with those around her, and the message for Bartan was that the black humours of the night were dispersed and forgotten. The day would be all the more joyful in comparison.

He was unaccustomed to drinking wine, and by the time the Trinchil wagon appeared in the distance he had reached a state of lightheaded euphoria, an enhancement of the one he had known in the early part of the day. His first impulse was to go out and meet Sondeweere, but it was superseded by a playful desire to surprise her with a sudden appearance. He went to where the other farmers had parked, stationed himself between two of the tall vehicles and waited until the new arrivals had rolled to a halt close by. There were more than a dozen of the Trinchil family on the wagon, and the noise level in the area increased sharply as they spilled over its sides, the children vying with the adults in the calling out of greetings to friends. In spite of his bulk, Jop Trinchil was first to reach the ground. He strode off immediately towards the laden tables, obviously in a boisterous mood, leaving the women to supervise the unloading of infants and some small hampers.

Bartan was enchanted to see Sondeweere wearing her best dress, a pale green tailored garment with an olive filigree pattern, which complemented her fair coloration and reaffirmed his impression of her as being in a class apart from all the other women of the community. She was the last to quit the wagon, languorously rising to her feet in a kind of voluptuous slow-motion shimmy which set Bartan's heart racing.

He was about to go forward when he saw that one of Jop's sons—a precociously muscular seventeen-year-old named Glave—was waiting by the wagon with arms upraised to help Sondeweere descend. She smiled down at him and swung her legs over the side, permitting him to encircle her waist with his large hands. He took her weight easily and lowered her to the ground in a deliberate manner which brought their bodies close together. Sondeweere gave no sign of being offended. She allowed the intimate contact to continue for several seconds, all the while gazing into Glave's eyes, then shook her head slightly. Glave released her immediately, said something Bartan was unable to hear and loped away in the wake of the rest of his family.