The Celestial Steam Locomotive (The Song of Earth) (30 page)

The dog whined. “No! I’m not real! The moment I set foot in the real world, I shall cease to exist!”
 

Zozula said, “Let me get this straight. You won’t let us leave you, and you won’t come with us—is that it? You want us to stay here forever.”
 

“I love you,” said Roller.
 

“What kind of a reason is that?” Zozula bent down, speaking quietly into the dog’s floppy ear. “I’ll tell you something, my friend. Either you do as you’re told, or I’m going to unstrap those wheels of yours, right now. And where will you be then? Answer me that!”
 

“All right. All right.” All the stuffing had been knocked out of the dog. He stood shivering, tail between his wheels.
 

“We leave at first light.” Zozula wedged himself down into a cleft of rock, dragging dried vegetation over himself.
 

“Don’t do it...”
 

“Don’t do what? Who said that? Was that you, Manuel?”
 

“It was the Girl. She’s awake!”
 

They knelt beside her and Manuel saw her eyes were open and glistening. Something about her expression made him shiver; there was a terrifying blankness there. Her lips moved.
 

Manuel had to bend close to hear what she had to say.
 

Don't do it—not that Train.
 

You might fall under a spell
 

Or into a bottomless well
 

Eighty percent of the passengers purchased a ticket directly to Hell!
 

“What did she say?” asked Zozula.
 

“Nothing... Nothing that made sense. She’s rambling, Zozula. You’re right. We’ll have to get her back home.”
 

It was suddenly cold, and Manuel covered the Girl with dead twigs and leaves. In the gathering darkness he could see that her eyes were still open, but he couldn’t tell whether she was looking at him.
 

Zozula yawned, pulling his robe about him. “We don’t have to do anything right now,” he said. “A night’s sleep will do us all good. The Girl’s resting easily.”
 

“She’s watching me, Zozula. Her eyes look different—not like her at all.”
 

“Go to sleep, Manuel.” Zozula wriggled back into his cleft, pillowing his head on his hands and blinking at the stars.
 

“All right.” Unhappily, Manuel composed himself.
 

Soon they were both breathing slowly and evenly, and the dog, whimpering and twitching, was fleeing from dream enemies.
 

The Girl got quietly to her feet and walked away. Her eyes were open, but they were not connected to her mind.
 

Somewhere in a swamp in mystic crocodiles’ domain,
 

Live Loneliness, Humiliation, Loss and Death and Pain.
 

—The Song of Earth
 

The Girl found she was wading through water-logged ground between trees, but after a while she felt firm ground beneath her feet. Although daylight had arrived, the canopy of leaves and thick, twisted branches was so dense that very little light filtered through. The leaves dripped a continuous rain, however. Worn out, the Girl fell to the ground.
 

Later she awakened with a feeling that someone was watching her. She raised her head slowly. Had Zozula and Manuel arrived to take her back? The trees stood silently around. She turned her head sharply at a slight sound to the right and caught a glimpse of a slender naked form before it slipped behind a tree. The drizzle from above made it hard to see clearly, but just for a moment she’d thought... Did the creature have wings? A faunlike face appeared around the trunk, but was quickly withdrawn. The creature was frightened.
 

“Come here!” the Girl called. “I won’t harm you.”
 

The face popped out. The eyes were wide and scared.
 

“Come on!”
 

Now a leg appeared, slim and pale, tense and ready to jerk back. Then the body. One hand still held the trunk. It was a girl, a very beautiful young girl about thirteen physical years old. She hung onto the knotted trunk as though her hands and feet had different ideas. Then at last she let go and stood poised, slanting eyes darting anxious glances around before they regarded the Girl.
 

“Are you sure you won’t hurt me? I couldn’t stand it if you did.”
 

She had wings, gossamer things that looked too fragile to bear a kitten aloft, let alone a girl.
 

“What... what are you?” asked the Girl wonderingly.
 

“I’m a flaiad. I live here in the Forest of Fear. It’s a terrible place—there are all kinds of things that hurt you.”
 

“I know. Can you really fly?”
 

“Not very well. The trees... We bump into the branches and fall to the ground and... and it hurts so much!”
 

“We? Are there more of you?”
 

“Five...” The flaiad was gaining confidence. Now she was looking at the Girl with curiosity. “And what are you?”
 

“I’m a girl.”
 

“No, you can’t be.
I’m
a girl. Look at me. This is what girls look like.”
 

“I know,” said the Girl with undisguised envy. “But I could have looked like you, once. This isn’t my real body, I’m sure it isn’t. They try to tell me it is, but I don’t believe them.” Oddly, she felt a kinship to this winged girl.
 

“You must be almost as unhappy as we are. You
look
unhappy. You have lines between your eyes.”
 

“Here.” The Girl extended a hand. She was about to ask the flaiad to help her to her feet, but the creature had backed away, flinching as though expecting a blow. “What’s the matter?”
 

The pose was studied, almost ritualistic. One forearm was flung across the small face, the other arm was extended, palm flat, toward the Girl. The flaiad froze like that. “Don’t... hurt... me.”
 

“I wasn’t going to.” The Girl crawled to her feet, brushing down the ragged remains of her dress and wishing she had the courage to go naked like the flaiad. “Don’t run away,” she added. The other seemed poised for flight, regarding her as though she were an unpredictable animal.
 

“You’re so... huge. You could hurt me a lot, if you had a mind to.”
 

“Well, I don’t have a mind to.” Changing the subject, which was becoming tedious, the Girl said, “Let’s go and find your friends. Where are they?”
 

“By the lake.” The flaiad was still wary, but after a while she relaxed a little and led the Girl through the woods.
 

“What’s your name?” asked the Girl conversationally.
 

“Pain.”
 

“Pain? That’s an odd name for a pretty child.”
 

“It has its meaning. What... what’s yours?” asked Pain shyly.
 

“I’m just called Girl.”
 

“That’s an odd name, too.” And the flaiad actually smiled.
 

“I think I have another name, and one day I’ll find out what it is. Until then, I’ll stick with
Girl
. It means something—like your name.”
 

Then the trees became more spaced out and dark water glistened before them, motionless under the canopy of branches.
 

“This is where we live,” said Pain.
 

The Girl could not recall ever seeing a more dismal place.
 

The lake was about one hundred meters across, dark and malodorous. Little patches of brown scum floated on the surface, which was in tiny trembling motion from the raindrops. In many places the trees actually stood in the water, their branches intermeshing overhead. Pain and the Girl stood in a small clearing at the water’s edge. Here the underbrush had been cleared back and the sticks and leaves woven into a rough hut.
 

“These are my sisters,” said Pain, introducing four more flaiads, who stood or sat in varying attitudes of dejection beside the water. “Loneliness, Humiliation, Loss and Death.”
 

As though discouraged by the sound of their own names, the flaiads assumed attitudes that, like Pain’s flinching, appeared almost formal. Loneliness sat with arms huddled about herself; Loss wept, with knuckles pressed to her eyes; and Death simply shivered. Only Humiliation struck no noticeable pose, but after a moment the Girl realized that the flaiad was blushing deeply.
 

“You don’t seem very happy,” remarked the Girl after this had continued for a few moments.
 

“Would you be happy living in such a dreadful place?”
 

“No. In fact I’d probably leave. Why don’t you?”
 

At this the poses became intensified, and Pain backed off as though the Girl had struck her across the face. “We can’t leave,” said Humiliation, blushing crimson. “This is our destiny—to remain here and suffer forever.”
 

The Girl’s pity was changing slowly to irritation. “That’s ridiculous. If you don’t like it here, you could walk out just as easily as I walked in.”
 

“But what about the Swamp of Submission?”
 

“If you mean that patch of boggy ground out there, what’s wrong with getting your feet wet? It’s a small price for escape.”
 

“There are crocodiles in the swamp.”
 

“I didn’t see any.”
 

“They are there. They let you in—but they won’t let you out. Such is the way of the Swamp of Submission and its dreadful creatures.”
 

The four other Fears postured afresh at this pronouncement from Death, and Loss’s weeping became a shrill wail. Humiliation said, “You must have been looking for this place yourself, otherwise you wouldn’t have arrived here.”
 

The Girl was silent.
 

“Now you’re here, do you like it? You say our destiny is ridiculous, but your own destiny guided your feet through the swamp.”
 

The Girl said determinedly, “You could fly over the crocodiles. You could walk to the edge of the swamp and take off, and fly through to the end of the forest; then up and over the rest of the swamp.”
 

“We cannot fly well enough to avoid the trees,” said Loneliness. “We’ve lived on the ground for so long that the powers have almost left us.”
 

The Girl almost screamed in frustration as the wailing broke out afresh. “Well, if you can’t do anything else, at least change your names!”
 

Pain seemed to be the most controlled of the flaiads at this point and, although flinching, she said, “I repeat—don’t you like it now you’re here? Are you renouncing the attitudes that brought you here?”
 

“I wasn’t brought here by my attitudes,” said the Girl, annoyed. “I was poisoned by the May Bees and I woke up here.”
 

“The May Bees only attack those who invite them.”
 

“Nonsense!”
 

“Then try to leave.”
 

“No. Not now. I’ll stick with it for a while.” The Girl’s lips pressed together as she stared around the clearing, beginning to realize her own stupidity, even more annoyed with herself than with the miserable flaiads.
 

Legend does not relate how long the Girl stayed in the Forest of Fear, eating raw fish and weed from the lake, sleeping fitfully in the crude hut while the never-ending rain dripped through the roof, listening to the incessant whimpering of the flaiads. Some say she remained there for many years, although our knowledge of her character makes this difficult to believe. It is perhaps sufficient to say that she awakened one day knowing it was time to go.
 

She stirred the flaiads with her foot. “Get up!” She was slimmer now—her simple diet had seen to that. She could never be as beautiful as the flaiads, though; physically she was a big baby and would remain that way for a long time yet. She resented the flaiads’ beauty, and she was not gentle when she roused them. “Get up!” she cried, a new restlessness running through her.
 

“You’re hurting me!” cried Pain.
 

“You’re going to leave us, I can tell!” wailed Loneliness.
 

“No—you’re all coming with me. We’re all leaving. Today. Now.”
 

“But we told you why we couldn’t leave!”
 

“And I told you your reason was ridiculous. Now I’m going to prove it to you.”
 

“How?”
 

“We’re going to the shore of the bog and we’re all going to hold hands, and we’re going to walk out into the mud, out past the trees. And”—she held up her hand as Death was about to object—“we won’t be killed by the crocodiles, simply because there
are
no crocodiles—they are creatures of your own fears. I know that now. I know what this place is, and how people get here, and how they get out again.”
 

“A lot of them don’t get out. They drown in the lake, or get eaten by the crocodiles.”
 

“If they’re stupid enough to believe in the crocodiles. I’m not that stupid.”
 

“But I am,” said Humiliation quietly.
 

Later they stood at the edge of the Swamp of Submission, strung out in a line, hand in hand. The mud had a thin coating of water and ripples showed—and what might have been dead logs, but then again might not.
 

“Walk!” the Girl commanded.
 

Loneliness cried, “Wait! Don’t go! Don’t leave me alone!”