He left her crying at the door, between the two naked effigies of herself in her more full-figured days. Lee had created those, through her, to his taste. Sherret realized now how much he had unconsciously resented that. He walked grimly along the path leading out of the garden. Momentarily, he was expecting a pulverizing blow between the shoulder blades hurled at him in anger and despair.
But it never came.
And so he resumed the trek to Na-Abiza, a free man again. He knew that the path led to the northwest, through the mountain pass where Lee might still be, living or dead. And where the Three-people were.
If Lee could face the Three-people, then so could he. It was something Rosala had admitted she would not care to do. It would show her the stuff he was made of. He walked at a furious pace. Maybe this energy was generated by the feeling of sudden release. He tried to believe that. Maybe he was trying to put enough distance between himself and Rosala to weaken the temptation to return to her. He tried not to believe that.
There was little in the landscape to divert his attention. The distant foothills were darker than the mountains and appeared to be wooded. Between him and them, however, stretched leagues of flat and mostly barren land. Small chance of meeting anyone on the way. Rosala had explained why the river country was neither popular nor populous.
Under a cloudless, burning orange sky he marched until he was lurching with fatigue. He rested, then set off again. At last he reached the first slopes of the foothills when Red reigned supreme and all the world was drenched in a crimson sunset glow.
It made the woods look black and sinister indeed, and by now he had become wary of trees of any kind. He camped some distance from the woods and slept again. He awakened to see the high frosted peaks looking like pale green icebergs afloat on the smooth, greener ocean of the sky.
The sky-sea ran down into a V-shaped bay—the pass, and the gateway to Na-Abiza. He made his way up the slopes towards it. The woods closed around him. The trees were all unfamiliar types, hung with blossom, and in this cooler light they looked not so much threatening as indifferent. All the same, he remained cautious.
The undergrowth was so thick in parts that he had to do heavy work with the machete.
Steadily, he climbed higher.
After several hours, every arm and leg muscle was aching. There was another worsening ache, also—for Rosala. Perhaps rest and time would cure it, too. He was looking around for a likely clearing to camp in, when he came across some further Amaran phenomena.
There was a dead tree split neatly down the middle, its two halves leaning apart. Struck by lightning, he thought. But the split was unusually clean. It was as though some giant, seeking firewood, had taken a swipe at it with a razor-edge axe, then left it.
Then he noticed several other trees had been sliced, all cleanly but not all down the center. Some of the trees had fallen clear apart. Others merely had boughs lopped off. The giant hadn’t bothered to collect any of the kindling; the ground was cluttered with branches of all sizes.
Some of the cuts were obviously old and new twigs were sprouting from the stumps. Others were so recent that the oozing sap was still sticky. He shrugged, and continued his ever-slowing climb. Very soon he came upon what he was looking for—a wide clearing, open to the sky. He wasn’t going to sleep under any trees. He spread his waterproof and tried to get comfortable. It was chilly at this altitude. Moreover, a cold north wind was pouring steadily through the mountain pass and there was no escaping it.
He swore, trudged back down the slope, returned with a load of the smaller chopped branches. He built and lit a fire, rigged the waterproof on a couple of branches to form a screen against the wind, and settled down between it and the fire. He rested and ate. Life became tolerable. He yawned and lay back. Sleep came fast, and with it dreams.
Dreams of Earth, of deep space and the stars, of a garden crowded with statues of Rosala. The dreams took a nightmarish turn. The Melas trees were all around him again, and he had no strength to run and no breath to scream. Then, smashing among the trees, snapping off branches right and left, stamping with feet of steel, came a giant. A blood-drinking ogre from long ago, frightening nursery nights, all teeth, staring eyes, and black hair, crying as he came, ridiculously yet chillingly,
Fee, Fi, Fo, Fum.
For my wood I come.
The ground shook under the nearing feet, and Sherret quivered with it, a terror-stricken child again.
Thump. Thump. THUMP.
At the last and heaviest thump, Sherret started awake and stared around, wild-eyed. Beneath a tree at the very edge of the clearing a massive branch was rocking gently on the scanty grass. It had just fallen, and had been amputated neatly at a crotch.
He sat rigid, watching it. It rocked itself to stillness. Now nothing was stirring anywhere. There was dead silence in the woods.
He must have slept long, for the light had changed and all things were blue-washed.
Cautious and trembling, he got to his feet, peering all around the clearing. He didn’t know what he was looking for, but he felt that something was there. Belatedly, it occurred to him that he’d seen neither animal nor bird in the woods. Did they shun the woods because they knew they were dangerous to life?
Was something hiding behind the trees, watching him covertly? Yet, if the something had sliced these trees as though they were carrots, it must be huge. Too huge to be able to conceal itself behind any tree.
Something invisible, then? A monstrous vandal, mutilating senselessly? But anything of that size must surely have left its tracks on the ground, even if it were itself invisible. He had noticed no tracks.
He stuck a B-stick between his teeth, gripped his machete and tip-toed over to the fallen branch. Beyond it, among the trees, he saw other newly severed branches, mostly large, recently fallen. His dreaming mind had interpreted the impacts of their landing as the thumps of approaching feet.
That realization was a relief. He began to clutch at straws. Probably the monster was all imagination. Could be the trees had some disease which caused them to rot and fall apart in this peculiar manner.
But could this happen to a number of individual trees almost simultaneously? The odds were against that.
Common sense told him to waste no more time in speculation, but to get to hell out of the woods. He went back to the still smoldering fire, gathered his things, shrugged on his rucksack. Then he quitted the clearing, intent on making for the pass.
He’d gone maybe fifty yards when from close behind him came Thump. Thump. Thump.
And the swishing of leafy boughs and the crackle of breaking twigs. He spun around.
A great invisible knife was stalking him, blazing its trail as it came—literally. Slices of bark were falling from the trees as it cut its way after him, and, emphatically, whole major limbs. These evidences showed it was pursuing an implacably straight line—that was aimed directly at Sherret.
Frozen, he watched it. The very evenness of its pace was unnerving. It threatened an inevitable doom, as though the unseen wielder of the knife were thinking, “Run if you like. Run till you drop, But I shall catch up with you… in my own good time.”
A tree just in front of him, not twenty feet away, was suddenly completely bisected. The halves fell apart and crashed.
He came to life with a yell of alarm and leaped aside. There was a rapid blur of movement and a row of saplings beyond the tree were simultaneously uprooted and flung down.
What had moved? It had been lightning quick. In the dull blue light of these shadowy woods, it had been impossible to discern a definite form. Now it was a totally invisible again.
Sherret gulped, turned, and ran.
And met it approaching from the opposite direction. Thump, thump, thump went the slices of tree-wood, falling steadily along the new path towards him. He slid to a halt. “Oh, God!”