Pandora's Genes (9 page)

Now Orin was fumbling at his own belt, making soft noises to himself. With a last desperate effort Evvy pulled her right arm free and grabbed the first thing her hand came to, which turned out to be a sharp, thick piece of wood. Without thinking, she brought the stick forward into the face of the highwayman and saw it go into his left eye.

For a moment everything stopped – all noise, all movement – then blood began to spurt as Orin let out an inhuman-sounding bellow of pain and surprise. He fell back onto his knees, both hands to his face. Evvy only stared in horror, all will to move suddenly drained from her.

Orin moaned. “Look what you’ve done!” he cried. The moan changed to an incoherent cry of rage and he pulled out a knife. Once again he lunged at her, foam flecking the corner of his mouth. Evvy quickly moved away from him, but she became tangled in her torn trousers.

“I’ll kill you,” he was muttering. “I’ll kill you.”

Evvy began to kick at the trousers, trying to get free. Orin stabbed once, into the ground, missing her by several inches. She realized that he couldn’t see what he was doing and rolled clear.

All at once she heard a high-pitched whistle, and then the sound of hooves on stone. She looked up at the same moment as Orin to see the mount rearing, whistling in her own rage.

“No!” cried the highwayman, but it was too late for him to get away, and the sharp hooves of the mount came down with all its weight on his chest. There was a noise like the sound of kindling breaking, and the man screamed. He turned his knife on the mount and she whistled in anguish as he slashed at her, drawing a great fountain of blood. Again she reared and again she came down, her legs buckling as she fell across the screaming man.

Evvy finally managed to break away from the tangled ruin of her trousers, and wearing only her short tunic, began to run as quickly as she could. Her only thought was to get away from the horrible sounds of dying man and beast, each uttering cries of final pain as they killed each other.

She continued to run, tripping over exposed roots, slipping in the mud, each time picking herself up and running further. At last she slowed, her legs trembling so that she could hardly stand, and realized that the only noises were the ordinary ones of the forest. She squatted where she stood and vomited, little coming up but the roots she had chewed the previous evening for dinner.

There were no more tears left in her, and after a moment, shakily, not knowing what else to do, she continued to walk, directionless, her mind as blank as a wall. There was nothing she wanted to think about: all that seemed important was to get as far away from that horrible scene as possible.

She drank from puddles from time to time, though curiously she felt no hunger. At last she decided that she must be dying, and if the ancient religion was right, that meant she would soon be reunited with Zach. But perhaps he wouldn’t want to see her, even in the beyond. She had broken her promise to him and now had lost his flint and seal ring. She heard herself whimpering as she continued to walk, stumbling, her soft boots sodden and full of mud, her bare legs scratched and icy with cold. She had found a sort of path and began following it, without aim or thought. Gradually she became aware of a scuffling sound and a faint, high-pitched mewling. Her heart thumped heavily in her chest as she realized that she must have walked in circles back to the scene of death at the base of the tree. She stopped moving and put her hand to her mouth. She bit heavily on her knuckles, certain that she was about to die.

Something moved in the underbrush, and she stood, waiting for whatever it was, even the blinded ghost of Orin. All at once the leaves shook as if they had been suddenly drenched with water, and a small, furry, orange animal leaped out onto the path in front of her. Evvy took a step backward, her legs quaking. She knew from the extraordinarily large, pointed ears that the creature must be a fox-cat, though she had never seen one before.

The creature did not attack, but stood quizzically looking at her, its pale eyes wide, its moist brown nose twitching as it sniffed her from a distance. Then it put its bushy tail straight up in the air and walked up to her. Evvy braced for the attack, but the animal turned and rubbed against her legs. She almost laughed in relief: it was a baby.

“Hello,” she said, her voice a nasal croak. It was the first word she had uttered since that morning. She bent down and cautiously put out her hand, half expecting to be bitten, but the fox-cat sniffed her fingers, then again rubbed against her legs, emitting a soft, high-pitched growl.

“Where’s your mother, little fox-cat?” she asked, her voice still sounding strange to her. The animal answered with another of its half growls and walked directly away from her toward the underbrush, then stopped and looked back expectantly. Again it uttered its growling noise.

Evvy knew that she should get away before the mother came looking for its baby, but she couldn’t take her eyes off the little animal, which stepped cautiously forward, then stopped again. When she still didn’t move, it trotted back to her and stretched its paws up against her legs. She stepped back in alarm, but the fox-cat moved between her legs and took the top of her muddied boot in its mouth and began to tug at it. It let go the boot, growled again, then again pulled, this time at the other foot.

Evvy was more perplexed than frightened now. “It’s almost as if you want me to go with you,” she said. The animal immediately bounded off in the original direction, again stopping at the edge of the underbrush and looking back expectantly.

“Well, why not?” said Evvy. She followed the fox-cat to the edge of a dense, thorny bush, and pushed herself past it. The fox-cat stayed a few paces ahead of her, stopping every few steps to make certain she was following. The ground was becoming marshy, and more than once Evvy’s feet sank into mud over her ankles. She followed the fox-cat only because it seemed easier than deciding on her own what to do.

At last the baby animal stopped and began mewling, steadily and without ceasing. Evvy could see ahead of her a shining silvery ribbon edged with green: the lake!

In gratitude she looked back at the baby fox-cat and saw now that it was standing next to a stake-trap in a partially concealed hole. Inside the trap, its once-golden fur matted with dirt and blood, lay the lifeless body of an adult fox-cat, its body pierced with sharpened stakes. The baby continued its pitiful crying, and Evvy realized that the larger animal must be the little one’s mother; that the small creature had been asking her to help it.

Pity for the baby’s loss welled up in her, and she sank to her knees beside the trap. “It’s too late,” she said, stroking its short, thick fur. “Poor baby.”

She looked at the trap in disgust, wondering what to do. She knew how such traps worked, having watched her first-father set them for small game near her home. A conical pit was set with slim, strong, pointed sticks, often tipped with the poison of the fire-berry. Shorter stakes were then set at an angle pointing downward at the top of the pit. Finally a bait of food was tied with vines to a solid-looking cover of twigs and leaves. Any animal unlucky enough to take the bait would tumble through the false top, becoming trapped at the narrow bottom. Impaled, the animal would exhaust itself struggling and die.

“We can’t do anything for her now but bury her,” said Evvy. Somehow it seemed important to give the animal a proper burial, as she had seen her mother and second-father do for her first-father. She considered trying to remove the animal from the spikes, but was afraid of the poison that might still be on the wooden tips. Using her hands and a flat piece of wood, she began to fill in the hole from the soft earth around her. The baby fox-cat had stopped crying and now sat on its haunches, watching quietly as she worked.

It seemed to take a very long time to fill the pit completely, and from the corner of her eye Evvy could see that it was beginning to grow dark. But she worked steadily, thinking of nothing but the task at hand, and at last she finished, patting down the sodden earth in a gently curving mound.

She looked at the baby fox-cat, which was now resting on its outstretched limbs but still watching alertly, and sat back.

“In the name of the fathers and mothers,” she said, remembering as well as she could the long-ago ceremony, “I put you to rest. God be with you as you are with him.” Slowly, she made the sign of the spiral, her hand circling as she touched her forehead, her chin, and then her chest.

The baby fox-cat yawned, then stood and touched its right paw once to the mound as if to dig. It drew back the paw and approached Evvy, rubbing against her knee, then growled and looked up at her as if to say, “What next?”

T
HE DYING SUNLIGHT GRAZED THE
trees and bounced off the lake into the now-thinning clouds, turning lake and sky into a single golden fluid streaked with palest, almost greenish blue. The colors seemed unnaturally vivid to Evvy, as did the dark outlines of the trees, their leaves and branches forming a pattern against the sky like a delicate tangle of hair. Ever since she had buried the mother fox-cat, her vision had been unusually clear. She imagined that she could see everything, even the damp, chilling air in front of her.

She felt as if she had lived longer in this single day than she had in all her life before, that her former life was a dream, only dimly remembered. Zach had been part of that dream, and waking, she would never see him again.

At the thought of Zach an ache spread from her throat throughout her body, filling her with emptiness and longing. If Zach no longer lived, then how could she, or any other creature, be living?

Over and over she remembered how Orin had drawn his finger across his throat, and said that Zach was gone to where he would cause no trouble.

But Orin had not said that Zach was dead.

Quite suddenly Evvy realized that Orin had lied to her, or had not known in truth what had happened to Zach. Perhaps he had escaped after all. If not, then maybe he was a prisoner of the highwayman’s brother or, worse, was lying wounded, in need of help, by the bridge.

Zach was alive and needed her. She was certain of it, as certain as of the strange clarity of the air. And she was certain too what she must do. With renewed strength she began to walk along the shore of the lake, following it to the north, her body trembling with cold, her legs soaked and scratched, and with a single thought in her mind: to get to the Garden, the place where Zach had told her to wait for him. She had no idea what the Garden was, but had no doubt that she would find it, and that the people who lived there would return with her to the bridge and to Zach.

From time to time she heard splashing in the water around her, and saw that the baby fox-cat was still following her, apparently confident that she knew where she was going. The little creature was feeding, snapping at insects along the water’s edge, its movements quicker than her eyes could follow.

“Why are you staying with me?” she asked it once, and the baby immediately rubbed against her leg and then bounded off. Zach had told her that fox-cats, like many other new creatures, had once been animals that lived with humans, and after the Change had become wild and learned to live on their own. Maybe the baby remembered the earlier times when its ancestors had been friends of men.

True night had nearly fallen, and Evvy became aware how tired she was. She knew that no poison-bats lived so far South, but she began to imagine that every dancing shadow was ready to swoop down on her. The noises of leaves rustling and birds bedding down became human voices, talking to her. Once she was certain that she heard the song of the feathered lyre, and stopped, her heart pounding, but it was only the sound of wind rubbing tree against tree.

Since the light had left, it had become steadily colder, and her skin began to prickle and her teeth to click together. Once she stumbled in the dark and, putting out her hand to steady herself, felt the fur of the fox-cat baby. She lingered a moment to let the warmth of its body move into both her hands, while the baby made a soft buzzing noise and then licked her fingers, its little tongue as rough as the sand on a river bottom.

She kept the lake to her right and continued to walk, her legs responding ever more slowly. She smelled wood smoke long before she saw anything, and then suddenly a large dark shadow appeared ahead of her, the faint glow of firelight just showing over its edge. She ran toward the structure, which was so large that it was farther than she had first supposed, and put out her hands when she reached it. Her fingers closed on thick prickly vines, and she pulled back, stung by the brambles. She turned away from the lake and began to move around the great vined wall, certain that an opening must appear. From within she could hear faint murmurs and high-pitched, melodious laughing. Her vision had blurred in the dark and she wondered if she were imagining the voices, the wood smoke, and the wall itself.

The wind had begun blowing, and Evvy realized she was losing feeling in her legs and hands. The urge to lie down and curl up next to the vines grew stronger, but she forced herself to keep walking, for Zach’s sake. She reminded herself that every step her reluctant feet took brought her that much closer to him. At last she came to a break in the vines and a massive wooden gate. She pushed and pulled, but it was locked and so heavy that she could not budge it.

“Let me in!” she called, as loudly as she could, but her voice was no more than a croak, and it was taken from her mouth by the roaring of the wind. She beat on the gate, sobbing without tears, calling Zach’s name again and again. Without noticing, she sank to her knees and then lay down on her side, curling up tightly. She was no longer cold-she was, in fact, beginning to feel warm and relaxed. She would try again later, when she had rested a little and her voice was stronger. Her whole body throbbed pleasantly, and the events of the day passed through her mind in vivid pictures. Zach’s face was in the pictures too, smiling at her.

As she gave herself up to delicious sleep, she became aware of the fox-cat pawing at her, mewling. “Go away,” she said crossly, pushing the little animal away and snuggling closer to herself.