A mile or so further down the track, and Lucia lost two more buttons. Her shirt was now open down most of its front, and she knotted it as Caterina had done. All three girls had turned up the hems of their trousers, and it was clear they were suffering considerable discomfort.
Helward called a halt in the lee of the ridge, and they set up camp. Once they had eaten the girls took off their tattered clothes and went into the tent. They teased Helward about his own clothes: were they not going to be torn up too? He sat outside the tent on his own, not yet sleepy and not wishing to sit inside the tent with the girls.
The baby started to cry, and Rosario came out of the tent to get it some food. Helward spoke to her, but she did not reply. He watched her as she added water to the dried milk, looked at her naked body in a wholly unsexual way. He had seen her naked only the day before, and he was certain she had not looked like this. She had been almost as tall as he was, yet now she seemed to be more squat, more plump.
“Rosario, is Caterina still awake?”
She nodded wordlessly, and went back into the tent. A few moments later Caterina came out, and Helward stood up.
They faced each other in the light from the camp-fire. Caterina said nothing, and Helward did not know what to say. She too had changed… A moment later Lucia joined them, and she stood at Caterina’s side.
Now he was certain. Some time during the day the girls’ physical appearance had changed.
He looked at them both. Yesterday, naked beside the stream, their bodies had been long and lithe, their breasts round and full.
Now their arms and legs were shorter, and more thickly built. Their shoulders and hips were broader, their breasts less round and more widely spaced. Their faces were rounder, their necks were shorter.
They came across to him, and stood before him. Lucia took the clasp of his trousers in her hands. Her lips were moist. From the entrance to the tent, Rosario watched.
7
In the morning Helward saw that the girls had changed even further during the course of the night. He estimated now that none of them stood more than five feet high, they talked more quickly than before, and the pitch of their voices was higher.
None of them could get into the clothes. Lucia tried, but could not get her legs into the trousers, and split the sleeves of her shirt. When they left the camp, the girls’ clothes were left too, and they continued on their way naked.
Helward could not take his eyes off them. Every hour that passed seemed to reveal a more obvious change in them. Their legs were now so short that they could only take small steps, and he was forced to dawdle so that he would not leave them behind. In addition, he noticed that as they walked their posture was bedoming more and more at an angle, so that they appeared to be leaning backwards.
They too were watching him, and when they stopped for water there was an uncanny silence as the strange group passed the canteen from one to the other.
Around them there were outward signs of an inexplicable change in the scenery. The remains of the left outer track, which they still followed, were now indistinct. The last clear impression Helward had seen of one of the sleeper-pits had been more than forty feet in length, and less than an inch in depth. The next set of tracks, the left inner, could not be seen; gradually the strip between the two had widened until it was over to the east by half a mile or more.
The incidence of stay-emplacements had increased. Already that morning they had passed twelve, and by Helward’s calculations there were only nine more to go.
But how would he recognize the girls’ settlement? The natural scenery of the area was flat and uniform. Where they were resting was like the hardened residue of a lava flow: there was no shade or shelter to be seen. He looked more closely at the ground. If he moved his fingers through it firmly he could still make shallow indentations in the soil, but although it was loose and sandy soil it felt thick and viscous to the touch.
The girls were now no more than three feet tall, and their bodies had distorted even further. Their feet were flat and wide, their legs broad and short, their torsos round and compressed. In this perception of them they became grotesquely ugly, and he found that in spite of his fascination with the physical changes coming over them the sound of their twittering voices was irritating him.
Only the baby had not changed. It was still, as far as Helward could see, much as it had always been. But in relation to its mother it was now disproportionately large, and the squat figure that was Rosario was regarding it with a kind of unspoken horror.
The baby was of the city.
Just as Helward himself had been born of a woman from outside, so was Rosario’s baby a child of the city. Whatever transformation was coming over the three girls and the coun tryside from which they came, neither he nor the baby were affected by it.
Helward had no conception of what he should do, nor what he should make of what he saw.
He felt a growing a fright, for this was beyond any comprehension he had ever had of the natural order of things. The evidence was manifest; the rationale was without terms of reference.
He looked towards the south, and saw that not too far away was a line of hills. From their shape and overall height he assumed they must be the foothills of some larger range… but then he noticed with a surge of alarm that the tops of the hills were white with snow. The sun was as hot as ever, and the air was warm; logic demanded that any snow that could exist in this climate must be on the tops of very high mountains. And yet they were near enough — no more than a mile or two, he thought — for him to judge that at most they were only above five hundred feet in elevation.
He stood up, and suddenly fell.
As he hit the ground he found he was rolling, as if on a steep slope, towards the south. He managed to stop himself and stood up unsteadily, bracing himself against a force that was pulling him towards the south. It was not a new force; he had been feeling its pressure all morning, but the fall had taken him by surprise and the force seemed now far stronger than before. Why had it not affected him until this moment? He thought back. That morning, with the other distractions, he realized he had indeed been aware of it, and he’d felt in the back of his mind that they’d been walking downhill. But that was clearly nonsensicaclass="underline" the land was level as far as the eye could see. He stood by the group of girls, sampling the sensation.
It was not like the pressure of air, nor even like the pull of gravity on a slope. It was somewhere between the two: on level ground, without noticeable air movements, he felt as though he were being pushed or dragged towards the south.
He took a few steps towards the north, and realized he was bracing his legs as if ascending a hill; he turned towards the south, and in conflict with the evidence of his eyes he felt as though he were on a steep slope.
The girls were watching him curiously, and he went back to them.
He saw that in those last few minutes their bodies had distorted still further.
8
Shortly before they moved on, Rosario tried to speak to him. He had difficulty understanding her. Her accent was strong in any case, and now her voice was pitched high and she spoke too quickly.
After many attempts, he got the gist of what she was saying.
She and the other girls were afraid to return to their village. They were of the city now, and would be rejected by their own kind.