“See if it’s dry. I had to wash it. Your coat too.”
He looked down at his jeans, stiffened and blackened in streaks with dried blood, and swallowed. “Right. Where is it?” He saw it where she had spread it out over a big fern to dry, and shrugged off the cloak to put the shirt on. Irena watched him, seeing the beauty of his heavy, gleaming arms and throat. Pity and admiration filled her. She said, “You killed the dragon, Hugh.”
He finished buttoning the shirt, and after a minute turned towards her. Among the grey boulders and the arching ferns he stood still, and she still between rock and fern, looking at each other.
“You went ahead of me,” he said slowly, remaking the moment at the turn of the high path. “You ran down—you called ‘Come out.’ How did you—What made you do that?”
“I don’t know. I was sick of being frightened. I got mad. When I saw the cave. When I saw it I knew she was in it and you’d go in after her, go in there and never come out, and I couldn’t stand it. I had to make her come out.”
He tucked his shirttail into his jeans, wincing as he moved.
“You call it ‘her.’” he said.
“It was.” She did not want to speak of the breasts and the thin arms.
He shook his head, with a sick look, his pallor increasing. “No, it was—The reason I had to kill it—” he said, and then put out his hand groping for support, and staggered as he stood.
“It doesn’t matter. It’s dead.”
He stood still, his face averted, watching the stream.
“Is the sword…”
“The belt and sheath’s somewhere here in the ferns. The sword is…” She must have looked as sick as he did, for he broke in: “I don’t want it.”
“Hugh, I think we ought to go on. I want to go. If you’re feeling well enough.”
“What happened to me, anyway?”
“It fell on you.”
He drew a deep breath; his face was bewildered.
“You don’t feel like anything got broken or anything?”
“I’m all right. I can’t get warm.”
“You ought to eat.”
He shook his head.
“Maybe we could go, then. It’s damp here. Maybe walking will warm you up.”
“Right,” he said, coming down to where they had slept among the ferns. Irena organized things: strapping the packet of food and the still damp leather coat so that she could carry them easily, and giving Hugh the red cloak. “Put it on right, see, it ties at the neck. I’ll carry your coat like this till it dries out.” He moved so clumsily that she said, “Is your shoulder all right?”
“Yeah, it’s my side, I guess I sprained something.”
“What about walking?” she asked sharply, alarmed.
“It’ll wear off when I warm up.” He was apologetic.
“I don’t know where we are,” she said.
They stood on the path, just beyond the hands-breadth slip and murmur of the stream crossing and dropping away into fern and moss among tree roots down the mountainside.
“The only way we could be sure of where we’re going would be to follow the whole trail back.” She gestured uphill towards the cave. “Past there, and all the way back to the High Step, and then back down to town and onto the south road.”
“No,” Hugh said.
“Well,” she said, much relieved but unable to admit it, “I don’t want to either. It was an awfully long way. But I don’t know where the gate is from here.”
“If we go down,” he said, “maybe we’ll pick up the sense of the axis, the direction, again.”
“O.K. If this is the south side of the mountain we’re on, this path leads east. If we can keep going pretty much east or southeast, we ought to cross Third River somewhere down at the foot. And follow Third River to the road; and then on to the gate. It shouldn’t be half as long as going clear back around.”
He nodded; and she set off down the path under the spindly, crowded firs. She was cheered by walking, cheered by the decision not to go back; she had been afraid he would want to go back. “Go without looking back…”
The white figures stood silent on the dusk road, long ago now, and always, changelessly.
The path was narrow and rocky, a mild downhill grade. It was pleasant to walk, working the knots and sorenesses out of arms and legs, her breath coming easy. All that endless way from the High Step to the cave, all that day or days of being afraid and going on and on, she had not been able to breathe right: there had been a pressure on her lungs from below. Now she felt breathing a pleasure as deep as the pleasure of drinking cool water. I breathe, am breathed, am breath; I am so, am so. So walk, so go on earth, am earth, breath; and beneath all, joy.
They had come a long way when the path reached the bottom of the gorge. It was dark twilight here, a silent creek running under overhanging shrubs and ferns, a slippery dim crossing. Hugh came slowly across. She saw that he did not walk easily. She saw that on this side of the canyon the path turned back, going west.
If it was west.
All confidence slipped from her down in the dark slippery place. If they had come farther than she had counted on, and the cave of the dragon was on the western face of the mountain, then all her directions were off. They were in country she knew nothing about. Anirotembre, the land behind the mountain, the name was all they had ever said of it. If there were towns there they were not spoken of. What had Hugh once said about the west? Something about the sea. That was no good. She must decide what to do. This trail they were on might be a circle. It was the same trail they had been on since they left the High Step, it was the dragon’s way. It might go zigzagging in and out of the ravines and up and down the slopes around the mountain and back at last to the High Step. Days walking, maybe, and Hugh already standing here, his head down a bit, glad to stop. It was no good going in circles. They had to get off the dragon’s path, and get out.
“I think maybe we should leave the trail here,” she said, speaking low, for the deep place was awesome. “We’ve got to try to keep heading east.”
He looked up at the dark slopes overhanging. “It’ll be hard to keep any direction, off the trail.”
“This river’s running east. I think. We can keep following it.”
“O.K.”
“I’m just guessing it’s east,” she said shortly. “I don’t know.”
“There’s no way to know.” He absolved her without question. “I’d never get anywhere,” he said, looking at her across the dark air, “not by myself.”
“Out again Brautigan,” she said. “Maybe. If only this river is running the right way.”
“Not a river at all, it’s a creek,” he said amiably.
“I call them all rivers. You want to rest here a while?”
“No. Ground’s too wet. Let’s go on.”
It was unnerving to step off the path deliberately, to choose pathlessness, as if you knew your way. At least the going was not hard at first. The trees on this side of the gorge were mostly big old hemlocks, without much underbrush between them, once they were up out of the streambed. The slopes were steep. Before long she wished her right leg could be taken up a couple of inches. But they were making good progress, and there was more light here.
The stream began to descend more steeply. Irena did not try to follow close to the water, but struck up to the spine of the ridge, where the walking was easier and the direction still the same as the flow of water. She had had some hope of seeing the way ahead from the ridgetop, but as always the trees grew too close. Had they been fools to leave the path? Maybe, but she was not turning back. All they could do was take their chance. She was hungry. It seemed too soon to stop, until she thought back to the place below the cave where they had slept—hours ago, way back up the mountain. She turned and said, “I’d like a break,” to Hugh, plugging along behind her. He halted promptly. He looked around and pointed out a level bit of ground between the roots of two great, shaggy trees, and they headed for it. He wore the red cloak, which made him look rather like a grandmother from behind, but stately in front view. They found convenient roots to sit on, and Irena unstrapped and unwrapped the packet of food. “I thought maybe we’d go light this time, and next time we stop eat more. Are you very hungry yet?”