He lay in the woods at the mountains’ base, his cheek on his wrist; tears ran across the bridge of his nose, slippery over the back of his hand. Breath jerked into his lungs every half minute.
He lay in the leaves, gasping. His eyes boiled in their bone cauldrons. His teeth clenched so tightly, it was surprising the enamel of one or another molar did not crack. His body shook now and again, as if someone struck him hugely, on the head, on the foot. What kept going through his mind was, mostly, names. Names. In the dark woods, he tried to remember all the names he had spoken that day, from the time he’d first reached the field to the time he’d stood in the common. He would start to go through them, get lost — then try doggedly to start again, to remember them all this time. (What were they, again? What were they…?) Because, he knew, a third of those names — children’s, mothers’, fathers’, friends’—were no longer names of live people. And they mustn’t be forgotten. But his body, finally, shook a little less. They must not… Without his mind ever really stilling —
— dawn struck Rahm awake with gold.
He rolled and stood in a motion, blinking to erase unbearable dreams. He stood a long time. Once he turned, looked down the wooded slope, then off into the trees either side. He began to shake. Then, possibly to stop the shaking, he started to walk — lurching, rather, for the first few minutes — upward. Possibly he walked because walking was most of what he’d been doing for the past week. And the relief from walking, the feeling of a wander at its end, the astonishing feeling of coming home — something terrible had happened to that feeling.
Rahm walked —
Once in a while, he would halt and shake his head, very fast — a kind of shudder. Then he walked again.
The trees thinned. As Rahm stumbled over the higher stones, bare rock lifted free of vegetation, to jut in crags around him — or to crumble under uncertain handholds. Soon he was climbing more than walking. After an hour — or was it two? — he came round a ledge, to find himself at a crevice. Fifteen feet high, a cave mouth opened narrowly before him.
CHAPTER IV
FROM inside, a flapping sounded — as of a single wing. Rahm eased along the ledge. Still numb, he had no sense of danger. His motivation was a less than passive curiosity — more the habitual actions of someone often curious in the past.
A fallen branch, split along its length, lay on the rock. Morning light reflected on the clean, inner wood, still damp from the breaking. Like metal. Like a polished sword gleaming in firelight —
Rahm grabbed up the stick, as if seizing the reality would halt the memory. He shook it — as if to shake free the image from it. Then, a moment on, the shaking turned to a hefting. One hand against the stone wall, the other holding the stick, Rahm stepped within the cave mouth, narrowing his eyes. A slant beam from a hole toward the roof lit something gray — something alive, something shifting, something near the rocky roof. That something moved, moved again, shook itself, and settled back.
Rahm stepped further inside. Looking up, frowning now, he called out — without a word.
A mew returned.
Rahm took another step. The gray thing made the flapping sound again.
As his eyes adjusted to the shadow, Rahm could make out its kite shape. It hung in a mass of filaments — one wing dangling. A tangle of webbing filled most of the cavity. Ducking under strands, Rahm took another step. Leaves ceased to crumble under his heel. Within, the softer soil was silent. He glanced when his foot struck something: a bone chuckled over rock. Rahm looked up again, raised his branch, brought its end near the trapped creature.
He didn’t touch it. Between the branch’s end and the leathery wing were at least six inches. But suddenly the mewing rose in pitch, turning into a screech.
Rahm whirled — because something had flung a shadow before him, passing through the light behind:
Suspended nearly four feet from the ground, a bulbous… thing swayed within the cave entrance, dropped another few inches — much too slowly to be falling — then settled to the ground. It scuttled across the rock, paused, made a scritting noise, then danced about on many too many thin legs. Rahm jabbed his stick toward it.
Mandibles clicked and missed.
It ran up the wall, then leapt forward. Rahm struck at it and felt the stick make contact. The thing landed, spitting, and hopped away, one leg injured and only just brushing the earth. Behind it trailed a gray cord — the thickness, Rahm found himself thinking, of the yarn Hara might use on her loom.
It jumped again. Rahm swung again.
Only it wasn’t jumping at him; rather it moved now to one side of the cave, now to the other:
Two more cords strung across the cave’s width.
And the cave was not wide.
Backing from it, Rahm felt his leg and buttock push against some of the filaments behind, which gave like softest silk. But as he moved forward again, they held to him — and when one pulled free of his shoulder, it stung, sharply and surprisingly.
This time, when it leaped across the cave, Rahm jumped high and, with his branch, caught it full on its body. It collapsed from the arc of its leap, landing on its back, legs pedaling. Rahm lunged forward, to thrust his stave through the crunching belly. Seven legs closed around the stick (the injured one still hung free): it scritted, it spat. Then all eight hairy stalks fell open. One lowered against Rahm’s calf, quivered there, stilled, then quivered again. The hairs were bristly.
Blood trickled the stone, wormed between stone and dirt and, as all the legs jerked in a last convulsion — Rahm almost dropped his branch — gushed.
Rahm pulled the stick free of the carapace and stepped back, breathing hard. He looked up at the thing trapped in the webbing above. He looked down at the fallen beast on its back. And above again — where cords, leaves, sunlight, dust motes, and movement were all confused. He raised the stick among the filaments. He did not bring the end near the creature, but tried to pry among the threads in hope of breaking some — possibly even freeing it.
The branch went through them rather easily. The creature shifted above. Its free wing beat a moment.
Then, in a voice like a child’s, but with an odd timbre under it not a child’s at all, it said distinctly: “Use the blood!”
Rahm pulled his branch back sharply.
“To free me,” the voice went on — strained, as though its position was manifestly uncomfortable, “use the blood!”
“Thou speakest…!” Rahm said, haltingly, wonderingly.
“Just like you, groundling! Big voice but stuck to the earth! Come on, I tell you… use the blood!”
Rahm stepped back again. Then, because his foot went lower down (on that slanted rock) then he expected it to, he looked back sharply so as not to trip.
The cave-beast’s blood had rolled against one filament’s mooring on the stone — the cord’s base was steaming.
Now the filament came free, to swing over the cave floor. On a thought, Rahm pushed the stick’s bloody end against a clutch of cords beside him. There was a little steam. Half the cords parted. When he felt something warm by his foot, Rahm looked down: blood puddled against his instep. But, though it parted the cords, against his flesh it didn’t hurt or burn.
Rahm spoke, once more. “Thou wilt not hurt me if I free thee…?”