Ursus of Ultima Thule (18 page)

The nain watched him as he leaned far over, holding the elk about the neck, and grasped up a handful of snow; then did the same. “It seems wetter,” Arn said. “Heavier …”

“Twill soon melt,” said the nain. And soon melt it did, for every day the sun was somewhat longer with them and no fresh snow fell. The pines grew blacker and blacker and thicker and thicker upon the flat ground. They saw fewer living things, for no grass grows, snow or no snow, where the pine needles fall full thick. No deer pawed for browse, no tracks were seen, save only here and there the light ones of a bird. Mostly the pines were bare of limbs till far from the ground, but presently they came to one so bent and gnarled that it was fair easy for Arn to climb. He had grown uneasy at having no hills to look about from.

Still the land was flat and nothing new did he see, till turning to scan the last fourth of the landscape, he observed smoke, and a thick smoke, so that at first he thought the forest was afire, or the grass: then realized it could be neither at this season: and next he saw that it did not act, somehow, as smoke did. So he considered that it must be mist. And so considering, descended, very thoughtfully indeed. Tall Roke looked wistfully at him, still too stiff to be mounting trees. Arn said, “That way lie the Death Marshes.”

Their faces grew grom at this. Then Corm said, “Well, we must pass what we do not want to, come whither we do.” He let his fingers rest a moment lightly upon the case which carried All-Caller. Then he smiled, though it was a thin, pale smile.

Roke said, “Always I heard, ‘A-well, a man dies once only,’ and fool word I thought it then. But now I find it a great comfort, for having already died once …”

Bab rubbed his hands gently upon the elk he rode. “It is a time yet,” he said, “before we are to meet the Death Marshes. And I do not think that the marshes will go from their place to meet us before time.”

Am mounted again. “I saw no crows,” he said. And thought to himself that twould be fortunate indeed if he saw nothing worse. The air grew warmer, flatter, staler, the snow thinner, and finally vanished after some miles of a thin, bubbly skim which lay upon the ground, neither snow nor frost nor ice. They eyed this with mistrust, fearful that its end meant mud, that mud meant marsh; but the ground still stayed hard and firm. The trees were now less tall but, as though to make up for that, were thicker, both on the ground and round about each twisty boll. And black as ever. Next it came about that they could see the mists without having to climb, and he who climbed next (twas Corm) returned to flat land paler than before and announced that there was now mist afar off to another side as well. And so, as though at its own pace, slowly the marshes came to meet them.

They still walked on firm ground, but this had shrunk so that it seemed a road; there were still trees to either side, but they were now canted at odd and painful angles and sunken in pools of dirty, sluggish mist, which now and then cleared away to reveal pools of sluggish, dirty water. The trees seemed to be drowning, struggling and writhing in anguish to keep above the filthy and murderous surface of the marsh.

And next it seemed that they could hear them drowning, a thick, panting, bubbling noise, from behind the squalid mists; a hissing and a squelching sound, and then other sorts of sounds, of which not all were describable and all were horrid. Then horror slid out of the mists. It seemed to slide towards them without actually moving, then it stepped out of the mists and, walking on its now visible feet swift and stiff-legged, it opened horrid jaws and hissed and rushed upon the nain, who was as was his custom walking first. He cast his flint at it and they heard the blow and saw the sleek grinning serpent-head yield a bit and bleed a bit and hiss more and show teeth, but still it came on swift and stiff-legged. The head came down and the nain leaped up — how beyond all speech the wonder of that leap — catching with each hand the horrid lip on the under-jaw on each side, and the horror which had come out of the mist began to make croaking noises quite dreadful and dismaying to hear, tossed its head and again, tried to shake off this which would become prey, tried to reach it with one great claw-foot, and slipped, and tried again, and brought the grom slant head down close to the ground and raked the nain with its talons. Arn seized the flint-quartz and struck where he saw two bones that moment outlined between head and back, and struck again and again and struck again, and felt the talons ripping at his own body, and saw the slant head and its rolling serpent-eye and stinking teeth, and slid and slid and struggled for balance and slipped, and then was down and the head of teeth dived at him and vanished, and then as though hands had been plucked from his ears, he heard everyone screaming, shouting, the earth quagged and trembled, and he slid into the marsh and caught a glimpse of the head again.

Everything stopped there. Everything stopped. Very slowly then he climbed out of the marsh. Something was thrashing about hugely and heavily and gouts of mud and blood and water fell all about. This was not well, so Arn walked away from it and he saw his uncle lying on one arm and watching the thrashing and he, Arn, very respectfully and without urgency helped his uncle up and they went on their way. The next thing they saw was Roke and Corm and the nain all on their knees and scrambling in the muddy road and in the pools of blood and water for the great piece of flint, and it most seemed that they might fight over it — and this would not be well.

Arn said, “This is not well, Roke and Corm. The flint is the nain’s.”

So Roke and Corm ceased grappling and grasping and the nain alone reached and took it and grumbled and said, muttering, “It is filthy.” Then he slowly arose with it in his hand and looked about him, hand poised to strike. He blinked. Everything was almost silent now. There was a splash. After a long while, another splash. After a long while, another splash. Slowly, they all gathered round the nain and looked. Something rather like a huge fish or eel or perhaps snake came slowly up out of the water on one side and slowly fell into the water on the other … with a splash. It lay there. Then it began to rise. Then the nain stepped forward, and as though trained as a team, the other four stepped beside him, step — step — step — But there was nothing more for a long while. And after a long while the mists parted and they saw the horror lying quite twisted and broken across the ridge of dry land.

“Be get us gone,” someone muttered. “Do it have a mate …”

The Bab, in a voice which now for the first time sounded old and tired, said, quite calmly, “At this season of the year no such creature has a mate. Still,” he added, as though considering a rather nice point, “still, I see no why to linger.”

But linger they did, and the nain gave over his flint to Roke and Roke proceeded to skin the dead beast, and to cut the skin into manageable pieces which they wrapped wet side inside and bound about with strips of the same. Then they went on. Gradually the road (as they had come to think of it) widened and the marshes retreated, with their drowning trees and strange bubbling and other sounds. It is true that not all of the party quite shared Bab’s belief that the great swamp beast (Corm called it “dragon”) had no current mate, and Roke muttered there might be others lurking, even if not related at all. They watched carefully and looked over their shoulders till long after the last mists had died away.

• • •

The country the other side of the Death Marshes had no particular name; it was very much like their own country in the south of Thule, save that it seemed to have no manfolk dwelling in it, and their companion said that there were no nains there, either. He had considerably abated the withdrawn manner which had seemed habitual to him at first: when you have all been slithering in the muck and trying to escape dragon’s teeth and claws, there seems little reason not to be friends: and he at length informed them, with a hint of a shaggy smile, that his name was Eër-derred-derred-eër.

As for the elk, witchery-summoned to their aid or not, they had fled at first sight or sound or perhaps scent of the swamp-monster, and for true, no one blamed them. It was heavier work walking and carrying their gear, scant though it was, but the increasing geniality of the weather made up for much. The long, cold hand of winter was relaxed from their throats, and they all felt easier. They had eaten their winter rations without much knowing how long it would be before they got more: it had been eat or perish. And now game was seen again, and green shoots to chew on; and there were fish in the streams. One by one the streams flowed into larger streams, and one day, there before them was the river of the hide map.

There before them was clean water running deeper than they had long seen, and they looked at each other and they laughed to see how dirty they all were. Roke declared that mere washing in water was not enough, and he set to a-building of a hut for steam-baths, Corm helping him. Corm was certainly more at home with witchery than before, but a steam-bath was a familiar thing, and perhaps in acknowledging how much he had missed it he was admitting how much he had missed other familiar things. He too had left boyhood behind him, and a soft down had begun to creep along his cheeks.

While Roke muttered fussily as he put the ridged crown on the small hut and Corm gathered wood and stones to heat in the fire, Eër-derred-derred-eër, who had selected a spot in the water which came breast-high when he sat in it, sat in it and bobbed himself back and forth, going under each time, coming up bubbling and burbling and spouting like some strange sea creature. Arn looked and laughed, cast his clothes at the brim, walked in until he felt the waves tickling his ribs, and then gave a whoop and dived forward. He swam and floated and dived and whooped and did some spouting of his own, and it was as he gave a spectacular spout and turned over on his side that he saw the woman in the pool.

• • •

He felt the sun warm upon his skin and he observed her standing in the shadow of the birch trees; a faint calm smile she wore, and her naked flesh shone silvery in the dappled light. It was the easiest thing to swim over to her and to stand beside her under the shade of the birches, dappled with the same light, and to smile on her. Suddenly there was a flash and before he could so much as blink, she had gone, but he saw her under the water, her figure oddly distorted but still gleaming and flashing; and he dived after her.

Long, long they dallied and played in that river, chasing and pursuing one the other, and she showed no fright as he first touched her. He felt so many things. She was new, and had seemed so rightly to have become a new companion. She was so fair and beautiful, and he hungered after beauty more than he ever knew or would ever know till long later. And there was more, so much more that he felt, and barely realized. And he followed her and swam side by side with her, and presently he observed without alarm that others were in the water with them, like her, enough to have been her full sibs. So, then, the land was — or, smiling to himself as he conned the thought, at least the river was — not after all without inhabitants.

They seemed not alarmed by his being so different from them — he so rough, so much pelt, and they all so smooth and silvery. They smiled her same calm faint smile, swam slow circles round and round about them, he and she.

There seemed some faint disturbance in the water … in the air … he heard and felt a wind start up, heard suddenly a multitude of sounds … looked up, looked back, and saw with a slow coldness in his loins and limbs that they were all quite close to him, they were almost touching him, they seemed about to dash at him. They were not smiling now and they were changed, greatly all were changed, yet clearly still he recognized them: their jaws were long and their teeth were sharp and still they gleamed silvery with red-brown glints and in that moment when all motion ceased he saw them truly for what they were.

Saw them to be undines, all of them, salmon-folk, the eternal enemies of the salmon-eating bear.

Their skins had been near them in this water all the time, but his was far away, so far away, on land, the land from which he heard clearly now that call which no fright nor chill could stay. Teeth flashed, they rushed — he leaped, caught the shadow which was the overhanging branch, stayed not to watch lest he lose all sway and fall back in, and heedless of roughed skin made his way upside down along the branch till he could be sure there was land beneath.

There on the bank not a hundred steps away stood Corm. The sun was very far down the sky — how could he have been in the water this long? — the sun was not warm at all upon him now. Corm’s cheeks were distended and he wound the great fey horn, and the sky sounded with the trumpet of the great swans and all multitudes of birds, and elk and red stags belled in the woods, the foxes barked, and all creatures sang and sounded.

Arn walked, he staggered, he saw Corm see him and the calling ceased and he walked forward on his knees, only now feeling in loins and all his limbs shaken with sudden gusts of feeling. He saw the dark outline on the grass and he fell forward and laid his hands upon the bearskin.

It was not that day but the next day that he sat between the shallows and the deeps and slew the salmon by the score.

Roke laughed and then for a moment the laughter seemed about to turn into some other, infinitely less-pleasant sound, then it was once more a laugh. Long he laughed, and loudly, throwing back his head and sticking his chest out. Between the river and the steam-bath and the soapy herb old Bab had found and prepared and which all had used, all were clean now, but Roke seemed at that moment cleaner than any. His hair, which had grown dark and matted, was again light and the ends of it waved in the wind. Ugly reddled marks were still on his skin, but already much faded from when last they had seen them. And the red mark of the Star Bear glistened on his breast.

Eër-derred-derred-eër, who had never left Nainland before he had left with them, and so had never before seen smoothskins in full-exposed smoothness of skin, looked and wondered and opened his mouth as though he would laugh, too. His own shagginess was quite sleek and was lighter than the familiar chestnut-brown of the older nains. “Tall Roke, why do thee so much laugh?” he asked.