Land of Unreason Read online

  Besides, it was not very likely that he would find any more natives abroad from whom he could obtain directions. Better rest up. He trotted over to the nearest hedge, rolled under its spread on the cushiony grass, and fixed the wand, point up, among the branches, to keep him dry. Just as he drifted off to sleep, he heard the pattering raindrops cease.

  When he woke it was to find the sun already low, the moon up and challenging it. A few minutes brought him to a fork which must be the one Cyril had mentioned. Go left, he had said, since the day was Monday; a piece of reasoning which struck Barber as so characteristic of the place that he stood for a moment wondering whether it was still Monday and, if not, which was the right direction. Finally deciding Cyril would have made allowance for the lapse in time, he took the left fork. The way led down and round a long curve; climbed a steepish rise, and brought him out on the crest of a low hill, with a broad meadow between him and a dark wall of midnight green—the forest, so denominated. The sun was down behind it.

  Fred Barber took a long breath and marched resolutely across the meadow into the encroaching gloom under the branches. He could feel the gentle strain at the back of his jacket where the little bulges that must really be wings pulled against it, and there seemed to be a new set of muscles developing at his chest.

  The forest was one of large trees, old as time, with neither grass nor underbrush around their trunks. It would be like the tame parked forests of Germany, Barber thought, but for the bulging of knots and scars, which in the tricky moonlight gave almost every tree some semblance of a human face. A scowling eye greeted him from the gloom ahead, a mournfully drooping mouth followed him there.

  Overhead spots of sky were scattered beyond the leaves, but walking was not too difficult on the even leaf mold. Barber peered here and there for denizens of the place to guide him. There were none, no more sound nor motion about than there had been in the park beyond Oberon’s palace. The place was in a kind of silent green golden age as though the trees themselves had absorbed all the personality of the landscape. He struggled with the thought that they might similarly absorb him, turning his body into one of those rugose pillars, his members into branches . . . It was as credible as anything else in this land of unreason.

  He was trying to follow a straight line by sighting on trees before and behind him, but could not be sure against following a wide circle.

  Something moved.

  In his familiar old world it would be an animal and perhaps dangerous. Still, Titania’s wand ought to defend him against wug-wugs, whether predacious or fawning. He was acquiring respect for that ivory stick since the incident of the cloudless rain. He took a long, leaping step forward. The figure moved again, and now he was sure of its humanity.

  “Hey!” he called.

  The figure stopped; an old woman, leaning on a stick gripped in skinny hands, her long nose and chin curving toward each other like those of a caricature. Only these were visible under a floppy hat, and her head was bent to stare at the ground.

  Barber bowed. “Beg pardon, ma’am, but could you tell me the way to the Kobold Hills?”

  The head did not lift. “ ’Tis bad loock to sleep near a apple tree. And beware o’ t’ ploom,” said a voice that was so like Mr. Gurton’s as to make him start.

  “Thank you,” he said, “but can you tell me how to get to—”

  “ ’Tis bad loock to sleep near t’ apple. And watch aht foor t’ ploom.” She showed him a shoulder and toddled off among the dark trunks.

  Barber hesitated. If she didn’t want to tell him, he had no means of compulsion, unless the wand. . . . But at least she was going somewhere, not round and round as he feared he himself was. He whirled and started after, but she had moved with surprising speed and was now no more than a flicker of motion far down the glades, held for a moment in a moonbeam, then gone completely.

  No use. He groped his way back to the space where he had met the hag—or thought perhaps he had found it. Surely that oak whose boles had twisted themselves into a face that might belong to a villainous bishop was one he had seen before. Damn! Why couldn’t Oberon have been more precise in his instructions? Doubtless imprecision as such was an element of this form of existence—if this were a form of existence and not the product of his own brain—an element as definite as vitamins in the world he knew. But if that were the case, Oberon certainly should not expect him to go to a precise place, the Kobold Hills, and perform a delineated action. The thought occurred to Barber that, if he acted on Fairyland precedent, he would be performing his mission by helping Jib write a commentary. It caused him to smile till a twig snapped somewhere in the moon-blue gloom and fear ran up and down his spine on little cold feet.

  Something there, moving with him, parallel. No, it was not just the twig, he told himself, realizing that the small sound had been closer than the presence he suspected. The snap had called his attention to that presence, roused him from his own unawareness. It was there. Perhaps imagination? No, an almost imperceptible rustling, moving when he moved, stopping with him. No—imagination; nothing could synchronize its movements so exquisitely to his own. No, not imagination; that coordination could be achieved in this mad Fairyland where the physical laws in which he had been brought up didn’t hold water.

  “—didn’t hold water,” he caught himself saying the words aloud. This would never do, he was letting it get him. Ahead there was a little cleared space, with moonbeams slanting down across it. He raced for it, reached the edge, and stood gasping for his equilibrium; then jumped a foot, as a figure moved at the far side. It was clad in flowing garments and took a step toward him. He clutched the wand in both hands, like a bat.

  “Why, you’re frightened!” trilled a soprano voice that ended in two notes of a laugh. “Don’t fear me, mortal. I heard you in the forest, far away, and came to help you. Are you lost?”

  Barber’s muscles relaxed and he let the stick down as she came toward him, her face shadowed by a chaplet of leaves. “Yes, I am,” he confessed. “I’m trying to get to the Kobold Hills. Perhaps you can help me find the way?”

  Again the lilt of laughter. “But surely! Ah, none without the pure fairy blood can find their way without help through the forest. Come.”

  She had reached his side and taken his hand in her own, small and cool. The fear-feet were dancing on his spine still, but light as thistledown; there was something thrilling and pleasant in the frank contact of her hand, she led the way under the dark trees so straight and sure. He had stumbled across a root and came against her with shoulder and hip.

  “Sorry,” said Barber.

  Her head turned and in the dark he thought she was smiling at him. “It’s all right—how could you know the footways as I do? . . . You’re very strong.”

  “I never thought so,” said Barber practically, and then as this seemed an ungracious response to a conversational lead, added: “It’s awfully good of you to—take charge of me like this.”

  “Not so. We of the forest are often lonely. To feel the pressure of a friendly hand is—sweet.” Her fingers gripped his tighter for an infinitesimal part of a second.

  She must have a cat’s eyes for dark places, she was hurrying him along so fast. He wanted to go on talking to her, explore further this mysterious and rather attractive personage, about whom hung a faint sweet perfume of—what was it? . . . At least, he assured himself with a sudden return to the caution acquired by several years of social duties in the service, he wanted to get her into a light bright enough to make sure she didn’t have buckteeth or piano legs. Even sausage makers’ daughters from Milwaukee with halitosis and letters of introduction seemed to feel it a duty to turn the glamour on a diplomatic employee when they could get him alone under the fine moon of Europe. He remembered—

  His guide suddenly swung him round a big tree with a crack-the-whip effect and stood facing him.

  “Oh,” she said, “here is the very door of my place. Will you not stay and rest for a few moments?” And as Ba
rber groped for a formula of reluctance that would allow him to change his mind and accept with the least urging, she added: “If not for your own sake, at least for mine. I’m suddenly so tired.”

  An alarm bell rang in his head. That was a lie. She was not in the least tired. But Fred Barber was utterly lost now in this immense wood, and if she was lying to him, it was also likely that she had taken him far from his direction. He could only string along and find out.

  “Why, I don’t know,” he said. “I really must be making progress.”

  “Ah, I understand.” Her head lowered and she let his hand fall. “I’m but a poor woods thing, and you used to great courts . . .” The fluting voice trailed off with an accent of the edge of tears.

  “Oh, no; I was just going to say that I must be making progress, but I’ve already made about enough for tonight, so I can stop for a few minutes.”

  She took his hand again and led for half a dozen steps. A deeper black that would be a bank loomed out of the dimness ahead; his guide stooped and pulled aside a curtain of leaves. Warm fingers of yellow light reached from a short tunnel at whose far end Barber could see a room. He ducked through the door and followed her. At the far end she turned, laughing, and took both his hands in hers.

  Neither buckteeth nor piano legs, but a good if somewhat well-developed figure, clad in a sheer dress splotched batikwise in red, yellow, green, with a massive jeweled belt clasped round the waist. A blond head, cheeks cosmetic-red, though he could swear not from cosmetics, and eyes of a pronounced and startling green. Nice features, full lips; Barber smiled approval.

  Her eyes widened in response; a little smile played across her lips as she drew his hands round till they met at her back. Her fingers slid up his biceps till they reached his shoulders, where they clung with a tingling pressure and her head tipped back. . . . “We in the wood are so lonely—so lonely,” she sighed into his lips after the first contact. “Oh . . . you’re strong. I didn’t know a mortal could be so strong.” Her eyelids fluttered against his throat; the perfume of her hair was intoxicating.

  Was there something a trifle too rapid in this approach? The girl sighed and pulled his head down to meet her lips again. “Loose my girdle,” she whispered.

  His fingers fumbled with the clasp, and he undid it with pounding pulses. She slid from his arms a moment and tossed the belt clanking into the corner.

  Fred Barber said: “I really ought to know your name.”

  She put up her arms again: “I have no name, my love.”

  The alarm bell rang again, loud and clear this time. She was lying. But why? And what did it matter, with this fascinating vision pirouetting slowly between him and the light? Barber remembered that there had been occasions when he threw a shoe at the alarm clock. Unfortunately, he also remembered there were usually consequences when he did it, and briefly cursed a temperament that could not take the moment without question as she slid into his arms again.

  “No, really, what do people call you?”

  “You may call me Malacea. Ah, love—”

  Another bell jangled with a different timbre, far back in memory. The name ought to mean something, he could not think what. He talked desperately between long kisses. “How do you live? I mean, do you stay here always?”

  “You will see. You’ll stay with me. . . . We can be so happy, we two alone.”

  She’s lying.

  “Are you all by yourself?”

  “Until you came.” That’s a lie. “But now we’ll be together—forever.” That’s another. She tilted her head back. Again it came between him and the light, a curious light that flowed without visible source from a little bowl of bark, and Barber noted with a nervous shock that his hostess was ever so slightly transparent. There was something wrong—very wrong. He pulled away suddenly and sat down on the bed, which was of moss and let him sink into it. Think fast, Barber!

  “Listen sweetheart,” he said, reaching for her hand and holding it tight, “let’s do this right. They warned me that all sorts of terrible things would happen to me if I didn’t hurry up this mission I’m on, and I believe them. Can’t you come with me as far as the Kobold Hills? It won’t take long, and then we can both come back here . . . I like your woods.”

  Her eyes twitched and around her mouth little lines sprang into being that left her expression not half so attractive. “Oh, stay,” she said, with a throaty sob in her voice. But Barber noted that the fingers of her other hand, resting against the wooden door pillar, were tap-tapping an irregular telegraphic beat, and her head cocked as though to hear an expected sound.

  “How can I? You wouldn’t want me to—turn into a frog in your arms?”

  Tap-tap . . . and then, a duller sound, something approaching the cave with slow, heavy tread.

  Malacea wrenched her hand free, snatched up Barber’s wand, and raced down the tunnel.

  He sprang to his feet and after, plunging through the leaf curtain with a rustle. For a moment he hung there, utterly blinded by a change from lighted room to tree shadows where only a few drops of moonlight filtered through, and out of that dark came the girl’s voice: “No—no. Please! You have the wand—that’s all you need—ooh!”

  The girl, just visible ahead of him, stumbled and fell as though strongly pushed. Between them moved a shadow, whose opposite side was outlined by a shaft of moon to the likeness of a leafless branch, shaped like a huge, gnarled hand. It was coming toward him.

  Barber ducked, dodged behind a tree and looked up. Above him towered a figure, human in form, barklike in texture, twice his own size, semitransparent where it got between him and the moon. Its eyes held a dead fire of hate and cruelty, and the scraggy arms were reaching for him.

  He turned and ran as he had never run in his life, dodging like a deer among the moon-splotched trunks. A root tripped him; he took three sprawling steps, recovered and went on; almost lost his footing over a small depression. Behind him, getting no nearer but certainly not receding, he heard the swish and crackle of the ogre’s pursuit.

  He slipped round one tree and was caught across the head by a low-hung branch, hard enough to bring a blinding flash across his vision. He kept on, feeling rather than seeing his way till sight cleared.

  Another staggering trip must have cost him yards of the small lead he held over the monster, and a trick of position threw the shadow of that clutching hand across a broad slash of moonlight before him. He could feel the wing-stumps quiver with instinct on his back; useless—and his second wind was going.

  Racing on, he risked a sidelong glance. One of the huge hands was almost abreast, its fingers spread. Before him the forest suddenly opened into brilliant light and there was a stream, with flashing rapids right and left. A dark pool loomed before. Fred Barber put his last ounce of strength into a soaring broad jump.

  He lost a shoe at the water’s edge, and fell forward. In a last burst of vitality, he heaved himself to a knee and groped for something with which to defend himself.

  The ogre towered from the other bank, looking down with those lidless eyes, its mouth working. It was partly transparent; the flooding moonlight on the thing cast only the thinnest of shadows through its shapeless carcass. For a few ticks of the watch, man and spook stared at each other across the rippling water. One of Barber’s hands found the stone he sought.

  The ogre turned and moved off among the trees, thump-thump on the leaf mold. If His Transparency wanted to call the matter quits, Fred Barber, was certainly in no mood to pursue the matter further. It was not till the monster had disappeared from sight and sound that he remembered Oberon’s words: “brooks . . . plagued ungainly obstacles to us of the pure blood, who must seek round by their sources or fly high above.” That was why the pursuit had been given up. Or perhaps it had not; perhaps the ogre was on his way now to circle the stream at its headwaters.

  Barber staggered dizzily forward. His forehead was growing an imposing bump and ached dreadfully.

  He had not taken more than a do
zen steps when the pinwheels before his eyes ran together and he collapsed into a faint. The last thing he remembered before going out was Malacea’s perfume. It was apple blossoms.

  CHAPTER VII

  Exhausted nerves and muscles must have turned his faint into normal sleep. He came to himself on his back, staring straight up. The incredible moon was already losing some of its light to a paling sky. He felt hungry, sore and abused. The ground, oozy-damp beneath, had left a trail of discomfort along his spine, and his head ached vilely, but he felt better.

  The fact was, Barber told himself, lying there staring at the intaglioed surface of the earth’s sisterstar, and not caring to move lest it make the headache twinges worse—the fact was that being hunted through the woods by a translucent ogre out of a nightmare was a useful experience. It restored one’s confidence in the reality of objective existence. Also in the ability of the corporeal senses to bear true witness of that existence, however their testimony might disaccord with preconceived notions of what it ought to be. His experience held no precedent for that wild chase through the forest, but lack of precedent was no reason for rejecting the memory—or his thoroughly physical bruises—as spurious. There had been no precedent for his first seasickness, either, but he had escaped from that when the ship reached dock. There didn’t seem to be any docks on the shores of the sea of incertitude on which he was now launched.

  No, it was real enough, and he did not doubt that if the ogre’s woody fingers had closed about him they would have been real enough, too. So was the pressure of Malacea’s breasts, round against him as he kissed her, though she was semitransparent. Well, the forest hag warned him against the apple—though how could he have known? The little bitch! . . . The thing to do was to learn the rationale of this system of existence into which he had somehow been projected, as one learned the new diplomatic code or the proper form of address for a first First Equerry. He—