Segaki (6 page)

The deeper he went through the wood, the more obscure it became. There were no more grey shapes, but there were other shapes. Under the trees a low ground mist shook and rumbled in a parody of bushes. He knew he must come to a more open place, before the fog grew thicker. He hurried his steps, until he could hurry them
no more, and heard in the distance the sound of stealthily running water. He was becoming confused. His thoughts slid both ways at once, into little fatal maelstroms of meaning that were there ready to suck him under. Fatigue was pulling downward on his legs.

He came at last to an opening, on the other side of which the fog lay in a heavy padding among the trees, through which their stems rose like glass. He knew he must rest before he could plunge in there, even though it seemed dangerous to do so. The floor of the clearing was of a spongy moss, constellated with some rubbery white stars, interrupted by lumpy rocks which bulged like the sack in the Milky Way. The stream was narrow and a vicious black. It had no gaiety. It only oozed reluctantly over the stones. He set the dog down carefully, and it curled into a vulnerable ball, wrapped its fluffy tail over its eyes, and lay there with a quiet pathos. Muchaku sat on a stump, with his hands in his skirt, and tried to slow the whirling of his head. But since one can only control a fever by entering its rhythm, he lost for a while awareness of the outside world.

Then the dog lifted its head and looked one way, and he realized that he was not alone any longer. There was something else here. He looked round him wearily, almost too tired to defend himself. The white flowers gave a dim reflected light, but even so, it was some time before he saw the thing that had blundered out of the fog. Clutching a rock, gazing at him hopelessly yet fiercely, was an angry, bedraggled young hawk, in trouble, since it had fallen too soon from its nest, but utterly beyond help. Young though it was, it could not help being savage in miniature, for since some creatures are born without
gratitude, nothing can be done for them even when they need assistance, for they are born too bitter to be mollified.

He was comforted. If even savagery was defenceless here, then maybe that was some protection. He knew the dog was too tired to go on. So was he. He lay down, drew it to him, and got some reassurance from its warmth. Its heart was pounding, but pounded less as he held it, and at last, despite itself, it relaxed, with a lazy salt lick at his hand, and fell to snoring. Unexpectedly happy, Muchaku shrugged and did the same. Somehow they had come to terms.

He had been angry. He awoke subdued, and even though his thoughts were whirling faster than ever, he thought that with the dog to guide him he could keep a steady course along the narrow path again. It was
necessary
only not to look to either side. These were the instructions his night thoughts handed him, at the threshold of consciousness. But when he stepped over that lowered sill, he blinked, for the fog was now
irradiated
, so that he felt blinded in the middle of a snowbank. The mist had conquered the clearing and the dog was gone. He sat up, alarmed, and then heard a curious
lapping
below him, in that density somewhere. It was the dog taking up water at the stream.

He called it, but having no name for it, merely called. He could hear only the anxiety in his voice, but the dog must have heard something better, for it came bounding towards him, its head and shoulders emerging quivering and eager just below his hand. He got up. The fog was up to his nipples, but he was aware of the warmth of the dog, which seemed to know its duty was to make small
noises, so that he could follow. He did not doubt for an instant that the animal knew the way.

The fog had the variable density of semen or smoke caught in a bottle, clotted in its own vehicle like the former, but shifting like the latter, so that from time to time he caught little reassuring glimpses of reality, if that was reality, a series of sumi sketches by a master hand, here one or two rocks, there a study of the boles of trees. In childhood his brother had been his security, and these stray leaves from a natural sketchbook reminded him of the object of his errand. They made it possible to go on.

The trees, too, seemed to be thinning. And then the fog, as though thoroughly bored with what it was doing, lifted with an audible effort, a foot or two above the ground, in order, he supposed, to go faster somewhere else.

It was then he heard the pattering, and caught a glimpse to the left of the trail, some five feet away, of a pair of burly legs. Both he and the dog froze.

The silence shimmered, and then split in all directions, in a long horizontal wail, and sometimes broke and flapped around some more disturbing sound, that came he could not tell from where. It seemed now far off, now close, dangerously patient, and then brutal, as though each several severed head of the enemy creaked open its twisted mouth, and uttered one oracle to join the general chorus of derision. And more than anything else the sound was dustily choked and ancient, like the creaking of a dead pine, twisted and abandoned, but longing to fall, if only someone would step into the path of its falling.

He could have laughed with relief. He was
sophisticated 
again. His head whirled a little less. This was only battle music. There were soldiers in the wood. But then he thought better of it. For one can fight the powers of darkness for an immediate decision, but men are
inexorable
, they pursue vengeance until they drop in their tracks. Turn them aside, and they come back again and again, like maddened dogs.

The legs began to run, but in another direction. Added to the music he heard shouts. Now the dog was uncertain. Dogs can only deal with one man at a time. It was his turn to lead the way.

It must have been the moon that irradiated the fog, but now that light went out. It was not dawn, it was darker than ever. No army went out before dawn. Unless it was an army lost in the wood, that music must only have been a resinous wind, or something worse.

There were ghost armies. He persuaded himself not to believe in them, squinted his eyes, and crept on. The dog was close to him now. It said nothing, but from time to time he could feel its barbed fur against his legs. Why do animals that are genuinely frightened instinctively try to form themselves into circles? The dog’s spine flipped this way and that convulsively.

Then, he did not know how much later, he knew the woods were almost over, and that he was almost home, a word he had not even thought of for twenty years. The trees spaced themselves with more decorum, a discreet distance from each other. And the mist was all at once very active, parting in panic, from a gust that blew against it from the wood itself.

Beneath him he felt the dog bristle. He had learned now to trust the dog. He looked each way.

Small white blobs were writhing through the black grasses. He saw another and another. If the dead could be so badly wounded they could only crawl into eternity, they would move like this, with a bloated white flattened stealth, as though a wind-torn piece of paper might be sodden into three dimensions. And they were all crawling towards him. He drew back, drawing into himself, even as the dog did. He was accustomed to ghosts, but these were ghouls unknown even to the night side of his mind.

They made no sound, except the rubbing of their drowned bodies, slapping against the leaves. They paid no attention to each other. But they all flowed one way.

Then he looked more closely at the nearest one. There was nothing he could do but stare. It was silky. It was white. It was thoroughly irritated, and it reached for each step with a kneading paw, just as a dancer, or a sumo wrestler, puts his foot to the ground not once, but several quick times, to emphasize that he is standing exactly there, in order to terrify his opponent before launching out at him.

It was a cat. They were all cats, tight with a fury of eviction, streaming over the level ground towards him, the residual population of an entire village, no doubt, whom something had forced to this. They kept their distance. The loose-knit blanket of them parted to flow on either side of him, but he could feel their discomfort and fury, even though they said nothing.

He went on, over slowly rising ground, but it was not until the trees began to thin even more, that he became afraid of where he now was. Shadows loomed up in the fog and slipped away like thoughts. They had the sour smell of the very poor. It was the sort of mist that has
nothing to do with weather, but is instead some sort of creature on the prowl. In an open patch he could almost hear it breathing. Suddenly the mist ripped away, like the wrappings of a parcel one is too eager to open, and he found himself standing on a rise, looking down across a vast and almost familiar valley.

He was weary and feverish and thirsty. He would have believed in anything he saw. But he knew where he was, for his family had once owned all this valley. It was not now more than ten miles to his brother’s house. And though he had never visited it before, he knew the landscape from his brother’s pictures. From being, a hundred years ago, one of their minor properties, it had become his brother’s ultimate retreat. And like any landscape from which a painting has been taken, it was subtly different, even though familiar. He paused to consider.

He judged it an hour before dawn. Either the sky was humming, or that ghost army was marching to war again. But the sky was the wrong hue to hum. It was the sullen grey colour of a dirty soapstone, and had the same slippery texture. Even the stars seemed to be inevitably losing their purchase, and slipping down and down.

It seemed to him that there were more conical
shag-roofed
grain ricks in the fields than he would have expected to see, and that they were clustered very close together, so that they resembled statues in grass raincoats and enormous hats.

The dog whimpered beside him, but when he started down from the rise, it gulped once and then agreed to follow, though from the way its rear legs gave from time to time, it had no wish to do so.

Though it was only the middle of July, the air seemed
choked with the acrid stench of some final autumn. The smoke of any autumn is melancholy enough. But what shall we say when smoke from the very last leaves also dissipates for the last time, as we look up, into the
indifferent
air? The death of a tree is more affecting than the death of a man, for a tree is nobler and more patient.

Of course there are countries without trees, but there is not much to be said for the people who live in them. Only a mountain can survive above a tree. Yet some men hate them, and would dig them up almost vindictively.

As he came closer down towards the valley road, he saw that the ricks could not be ricks, for they were moving, slowly, as quietly as they could, but moving none the less. He could hear them creak and rustle, with the sound of a moorhen in hiding. This no longer alarmed him much. He had been through too many horrors any longer to be alarmed at anything but apparent normalcy. But he was puzzled. He was used to an explicit landscape, though of course he knew that no landscape is ever explicit, for everything in it is constantly changing and therefore alive. It is merely that we do not notice that change, for rocks and trees and hedge flowers have a different
metabolism
from ours. Some live too fast for us, but most too slow. If our own metabolism were to change
unexpectedly
, we should find ourselves on a parity with things we now regard too much as our inferiors or superiors to understand either the groan of a rock, or for that matter, the bright darting mindlessness of a bird. Therefore, for a moment, he wondered if he was either vastly longer in lifespan, or unexpectedly dead.

For certainly these ricks were quivering. One or two of
them even rumbled. And there was the impression of moving cloth. All of them were coming towards him, though none used the road. He and the dog had the road completely to themselves. Perhaps, being made for man, it was forbidden to ricks. But as he went in one direction, the ricks went in the other, groaning a little, towards the woods. He had only to stop to notice the motion.

The landscape around him had been tilled so long that it had the odour of a particularly valuable garden. He rounded a bend, where the ground unexpectedly dropped, and there the dog let out such a howl, that the ricks seemed to go faster. Muchaku stopped.

It was what was in the hollow that made the dog cringe. Before him the road extended to what in the
distance
looked like a lighted inn. But he did not think of going on. He stood as though warned against something he had always trusted. The idea that he was walking through a landscape by his brother, apart from filling him with a filial warmth, had lulled him into a sense of trust, despite those ricks. But now, looking down into the hollow, he had not known his brother had seen such things.

Outwardly the hollow looked peaceful, but there were two or three ricks here, too, gathered around a tree with a blind and submissive look. There were a few cottages in the distance, if they were cottages, huddled beneath a mound covered with startled pines. Beside the charred ruins of what must once have been a small wayside shrine, rose the skeleton of a tree, on one of whose bleached limbs lay a deceptive grey moss that could not be foliage. Gathered at the base of the tree were seventeen overbred ghost foxes. They were a shadowy white, their gestures
were of the utmost elegance, and they yipped politely to each other. The ricks trembled. The foxes paid no
attention
to the ricks. On each of their foreheads was a leaping yellow flame, and as they yipped to each other, glancing contemptuously at the ricks, the flames flared up and down with a hissing and voluble intelligence. Nor was that all. The stars seemed to shrink. And from across the hollow, came other leaping lights, leisurely, like a bevy of court ladies, walking contentedly out of the dead past, but bound for the same tree. The air bore their voices from a greater distance. They were excited and pleased. One or two screamed and frothed at the mouth, running to and fro, so that the flames shot out and changed direction in a confusing pattern.