Green Monkey Dreams (9 page)

‘He does not put his heart into the run; the Piper knows,' his da had once sighed to his mam in Sim's hearing.

Even now, it was all the same to him if he was last or nearly last. Surely all that really mattered was getting there, and he would not leave Sorah to limp last and all alone.

Any more than Kora would leave Floret.

Sim had always been more than a little awed by Kora before this. She had never so much as looked at him, of course, and that had been as it should be.
Each according to their place in the race
,
each to run the best they can.

But in choosing not to run the best race she could, Kora had made herself into something different. He was not the only one who thought it. The day the exodus began, a fight had nearly broken out when one of Kora's rivals said loudly that she ought not to be allowed to come. That had ended when Kora hunched her shoulders, and snarled the traditional prelude to a challenge. The other had started back in alarm and lifted her head in submission.

Kora had turned her back insultingly, as if her rival's life was nothing.

She was still formidable, though now streaked with sweat and road dust, but something had changed. Ordinarily as things went, Sim would not even have dared think of Kora for fear the Piper might strike him dead on the spot for his insolence. But her deliberate slowish lope and her gentleness with her brothers separated her from the haughty frontrunners who had only days before been her comrades.

He wondered how she felt about the Piper finally sending the song of summoning so soon after her mam died and before her little brothers were old enough to fend for themselves. A month more would have done it, yet she had never railed at her fate and even now, when the stragglers were falling further and further behind, her face gave nothing of her thoughts away.

‘If the music stops,' Lekkie was saying now to Floret, ‘we will have to run and run forever until we fall on the road and die and maggots come to gnaw at our innards and big birds with knife-beaks come to peck our eyes out . . .'

‘That is enough,' Kora said sharply. ‘There is no need to frighten him.'

‘But if he is afraid he will run faster . . .'

‘No,' Kora said sternly, and Lekkie fell silent.

Sorah stumbled, and, reaching to steady him, Sim noted with a pang that the limp had grown worse. ‘We ought to stop so that you can rest that for a bit.'

Sorah shook his head, not saying what they both knew. No one rested until the road reached up and touched the Great Blue. The stragglers had fallen behind in a little clump, and there was a widening gap between them and the tail end of the main group. The road was completely covered by the swarm of pilgrims. So many millions of them – a stream of life running ahead as far as the eye could see, all grown out of those few left behind.

‘
May the Piper pipe forever
,' Sim whispered reverently.

By the time night fell, Sorah's limp had grown much worse, and two others had fallen back with them. Liff, and his mate, fat jolly Wirun who had lived in a burrow near Sim's mam and da for as long as he could recall. In his youth, Liff had been one of the elite frontrunners. But now the endless running and the steep hills were taking their toll.

‘Is the Great Blue the sky?' inquisitive Mif asked Kora, again calling Sim's eyes to her.

‘It is, but when the road brings us to it, it will be more than that too,' she said. ‘The Great Blue is where this world dissolves and becomes something new. It is where all dreams come from, and beyond the dreams is Evermore.'

‘Mila told me that there was no such thing as Evermore,' Mif said.

‘Mila said there was no Piper either, a little while ago. And now she runs as eagerly as any other.'

So do I
, Sim thought wryly.

Sorah stumbled and righted himself again before Sim could help. He felt guilty because he ought to have been watching instead of dreaming.

‘We must go faster,' Liff wheezed. ‘The song grows fainter.'

In the moonlight, Sim saw Kora exchange a look with Wirun.

‘As the Piper wills, so plays the song,' Wirun said at last. ‘The run is a test and maybe getting to the end first is not the main thing.'

Liff gave her a disgusted look.

‘Did the Piper make the road?' Rill asked, his eyes as dark and shiny as wet black stones.

‘I do not know,' Kora said shortly.

‘The Piper made everything,' Liff said sternly. ‘He is all powerful.'

‘Then why didn't he take everyone the first time? Why didn't he just wait?' Lekkie asked, shifting his pace so that he could trot along beside Liff and Wirun.

‘The Piper plays as long as he can and it is up to us to hear and run the best we can,' Wirun said. ‘If you run your best, no matter how slow, the song will not end until the road does. But the Piper knows what is in your heart. If you do not give your best the road will never end, though the song will.'

‘Why can't we just rest a little?' Mif whined.

‘We must run when the Piper calls,' Kora said in a tone of voice that wanted an end to the conversation if nothing else.

Sim's lips twitched but his amusement evaporated when Kora gave him a hard stare, almost as if she had felt his thoughts.

‘How much longer?' Rill asked as the long night wore on. Now the land either side of the road fell into deep misty hollows, rocky and steepsided. The air felt clear and thin, and it seemed they were climbing steadily.

Liff hissed in disapproval and increased his pace.

‘You must not ask that,' said Kora.

‘Now the Piper will punish all of us!' Mif wailed, sounding on the edge of hysteria. ‘The music will stop.'

‘At least we would be able to stop if the music did,' Lekkie said with some asperity.

‘Kora!' Mif shrieked. ‘Make them stop.'

‘Shh,' Kora said. ‘Shh. Crying out like that is sure to make the Piper stop if nothing else does.'

Mif gulped down a sob.

‘The Piper hates us,' Rill said.

There was an astounded silence, and Sim felt Liff's fury
radiate back towards them. He had drawn some way ahead now, driven by outrage and fear of being tainted by the heresy of little ones. Wirun laboured along behind him,
heaving.

‘He loves us and that is why he sent his song,' Kora said,
but absently, as if her mind was elsewhere.

‘Then why does he make us run and run? Mam would
never make us run so.'

‘Hush,' Kora said. ‘Mam will be waiting in Evermore for us.'

Dawn flushed the sky with rose and violet streaks, and Sorah stumbled twice. There was a small sobbing sound in his throat as Sim came up beside him. In the night, the main body of the exodus had drawn out of sight and even Liff and Wirun had gone over the crest of a high hill rising up before them. Beyond this hill lay one even higher, and they could see the road, gleaming and empty. Sim felt a stab of fear at the realisation they had fallen so far
behind.

How long has it been?
he wondered, his arm burning from the weight of dragging the stumbling Sorah along behind him. Sorah's eyes were glazed and his tongue was hanging from his mouth. If not for Sim pulling him along, he would have fallen to his knees. would have fallen to his knees.

How many days since we began to run?

‘Better not to think of that,' Lekkie said in a conspiratorial whisper, having attached himself to them in the night after getting a clip over the ear from his sisterblood for teasing Mif. Sim shook his head, realising he had spoken his thought aloud. It would not do for him to lose his concentration.

‘Lekkie,' Kora said warningly.

‘He is all right,' Sim said. ‘I mean. We do not mind him coming along with us.'

Kora regarded him for a moment, then turned her face forward. Sim was unable to decide if she approved or not.

By afternoon they had slowed to a trotting walk. They came to Wirun, lying panting brokenly by the side of the road. It was such a shock to find her alone that Sim stopped.

‘Get up!' he urged. ‘You must not stop.'

‘I must,' Wirun said despairingly. ‘My body will not obey me and so I will die by the road. Better that than to run on and on forever.'

‘I will help you,' Sim said, seeing her bleeding pads.

‘No. One must run one's own race, and mine is done. But you have the strength to be kind, Sim, and that is rare.' She glanced over at Kora, who had stopped as well, and Sim had the feeling that something passed between the pair.

Sim turned his attention to Sorah who stood swaying beside him, a milky cast to his eyes.

‘You might as well leave him too,' Lekkie said, with cheerful ruthlessness. ‘He's not going to make it much further and they can keep one another company.'

‘No,' Sim said, taking Sorah's paw firmly in his own. ‘We will go to the end together.'

‘So be it,' Wirun sighed. ‘Run then, for the song fades.'

‘We must rest a bit,' Kora said calmly. ‘A few moments will not make so much difference. We will stay with you
for a while and perhaps . . .'

‘No,' Wirun said. ‘I will not be the cause of delaying you. Go. I do not want you here.'

And so they went on.

It was nearing dawn, and they had almost reached the top of the highest hill. They were all walking, for none of them had strength left even to trot, not even Kora. Sorah was
leaning heavily on Sim when Mif gave a wail of despair.

‘The song! It has stopped! The Piper has abandoned us.'

They all stopped, aghast, for it was true. None of them could remember the moment it had ended, and yet, for the first time in days, Sim could hear the wind in the sparse
grass alongside the road.

‘But I can hear something,' Rill said, tilting his head.

‘Something,' said Floret, speaking for the first time.

Kora looked at Sim, her eyes gleaming yellow in the predawn blue. ‘It is the wind,' she said, but there was hope
in her voice.

‘Not the wind,' Sim said certainly. ‘Maybe it is not
too late.'

‘Too late,' Floret murmured and fell silent again.

‘Come,' Kora said, and they crept up the last bit of road to the top of the hill.

And then they were gazing down to where the road stopped and the land ended as if someone had sliced it. A dark shimmering shadow lay beyond, undulating and uttering a rasping whispering growl.

‘The road ends, but what is that beyond it?' Mif whispered fearfully. ‘Has the night leaked down over the land? Are we to be drowned in the darkness?'

‘Where are the others? Where is the pack?' Lekkie asked in a voice that shook.

‘It is the Great Blue,' Sorah croaked.

Sim stared down at his friend, thinking him delirious, but his eyes were clear.

‘What else can it be?' Sorah pleaded, as if it was up to Sim whether it was or not.

‘It is black,' Rill said. ‘Like the sky at night. In the day it is blue and at night it is black.'

Sim did not know what to say. The side of the land, bitten off into a jagged cliff rearing out over the inky blackness full of drowned stars and the moon like a white hole, filled him with dread. The road had ended, but was this liquid darkness the Great Blue? And if it was, where were the others?

‘Let us go down,' Kora said, and walked forward as if in a dream.

• • •

The sun had risen in a molten ball by the time they reached the edge of the world.

‘I feel no desire to run on and on forever,' Sorah said as they sat by the road. He sounded puzzled and relieved.

‘I don't even want to walk,' Mif said earnestly. ‘Besides, the road does not go on forever.'

‘Do you suppose the Piper was here waiting for them when they came?' Lekkie wondered wistfully. ‘Imagine how the bridge would have looked going up with them all swarming over it. They will be celebrating now in Evermore. All the ones who went and the Ones Who Went Before. They will have honey and nuts.'

‘Perhaps,' Kora said. She was standing on the very edge of the jutting cliff, staring moodily down at the stones rising above the churning waves at the base of the cliff.

She looked up into Sim's eyes, and in hers, for a moment, he seemed to see the others, thousands of them, leaping off the cliff into nothing, falling down and down onto the black teeth below, drawn by the Piper, drawn by the song and their longing for Evermore.

Sim's heart beat fast and painfully as he wondered if it could be that all of the pilgrims had come here only to be swallowed by the voracious whispering dreams of the Great Blue? Had they not been warned by the darkness of it? Could it be that there was no Evermore? Had the Piper brought them to be devoured by the crashing water below?

Or perhaps after all, death was the only way to Evermore, and so the Piper had brought them there the only way he could.

‘What will we do now? The Piper will never come again,' Sorah asked forlornly. ‘Must we go back along the road as penance? We cannot go forward.'

‘Maybe we could gather up everyone who is left and maybe the Piper will send another song some day . . .' Lekkie said.

Kora looked at Sim, and her eyes were full of the bright sun and the arching sky. The dusk of uncertainty became a sharpening dawn of promise. ‘We will go back to where Wirun was, and rest awhile. Then . . .'

‘Then?' Sim asked softly, warmed by the radiance in her eyes.

‘Then, we will leave the road and see what there is in the wide world. The Piper no longer plays for us. Either he has failed us, or we him, but it is over. We are no more bound to him now than the Great Blue is bound to the earth.'

‘Leave the road?' Sorah said, sounding shaken. Even when their people had not dared tread the road, they had lived beside it for as long as anyone could remember. Waiting faithfully.