She was beautiful in an eerie sort of way—tall, taller than he was, her wide head covered with a crest of white feathers contoured to cover her head smoothly, the way a bird’s do. Her face was covered with an even finer growth of gray feathers. The long, powerful fangs projected down from a rather small jaw. Her body—he could see enough of it through her golden mesh tunic and long pants—was covered by feathers also, all the way down to the feet, which were rather slender claws, like a bird’s. Even the backs of the long fingered hands were feathered, looking curiously nude when she opened them, showing the palm and fingers. Her eyes were a bird’s also, light brown with a black ring around the iris; and the pupil could contract to a pinpoint in one instant, then expand into a black well the next.
“Everything here is dead?” he asked. “Even you?”
“Yes!”
“So there is life after death,” he said.
“No,” she answered. “There isn’t, but there is something—at least, for me there is. I cannot say what others will find, but whatever they do, it is not life. Of that you get only one. Use it well.”
The wind blew a little harder and the trees murmured as the very fine, feathery leaves and branch networks were tossed around by it. Arthur rested his hand on one of the dark green trunks. It was lightly ridged with a complex pattern of leaf scars. But then, that was how they grew and he saw they were very simple plants, because there were saplings next to the river’s rocky bed. Even when small they came straight up out of the ground, the growing points at the top differentiated into many fine branches, which gave way to equally fine, soft leaves, rather like the soft, loose feathers of a plume.
As the herb… bush… tree—somehow it managed to be all three at the same time—grew, the stem at the base expanded from within, not the way a tree grows along the outer bark but at the soft curve. And the reason they could grow so close together was that they were top to bottom, even in the deep shadows of the high canopied forest—all green.
“What are they?” he asked, caressing the smooth, ever living trunk.
She ran her eye over the nearest, a two hundred foot giant decorated along its length by scattered masses of plumed foliage.
“Moss,” she answered. “Moss. Not much different from the soft carpet you tread on.”
He glanced down at the mosses at his feet, some as fine as deep green velvet. Others, coarse like tufted cushions, occupied the spaces between the velvet covered boulders. Just then the sun vanished, wrapping the world in green gloom, and the rain began sending its misty silver curtains among the tightly packed trees. The trickle of water at the center of the stream where they walked grew wider and reflected the gray above, then blue as the storm clouds passed, blown away by the wind.
A crackling, snapping sound spread through the forest, a simple statement amid the omnipresent silence. All around him the aisles and aisles of trees, dense, almost impenetrable, echoed with the sound.
“What is it?” he asked.
“They speak their souls,” she said. “After the rain, the female cones—the ripe ones, that is—open and give their spores into the wind. See? If you look closely, you can pick them out against the soft leaves.”
And indeed, he could. Dozens and dozens of them massed the green feathery cushions of the giant trees.
“Hush,” she whispered. “Hear them.”
So many cones were cracking, they echoed like a drumroll, as though an invisible army rode the wind through the moss forest.
“Life,” he said. “This is a tale of life, but you are the Queen of the Dead.”
“That is what death speaks to—life,” she said.
He woke in the dark. The pitch dark.
I am indeed riding the wheel
, he thought.
Then, when he tried to shift his body, he felt an instant thrill of revulsion. He tried to express this in sound; it came out a hiss.
Well
, he thought.
What else can you expect if you are a snake
?
Death. She had spoken of death. Death woke the… snake he was.
It didn’t mind dying. It didn’t mind much of anything. It was far too simple.
But such stark simplicity opened the doors to other realms. It was old. The mind of the creature, even the fish’s mind, hadn’t seemed so terrifyingly old.
I am, I was, I will be? were all the same to the snake. There are the many and then the one. I am the one, unless death reaches me.
There are many deaths, but all one and, like me, death is one and many. There is the death from above without warning, hawk or rock slide the same to the snake. Death from below with warning, but inescapable nonetheless. Death by predator—pig, weasel, otter, wolf, cat, human. Death by torpor and cold. This threatened the snake now.
Winter was ended. The tongue flicked out and tested the air. The den was still cold, but outside the sun was shining. The air the snake tested was warm.
Feed or die. Things are simple to a snake. But he knew the creature elevated paranoia to a high art.
Lord, this thing could move well. Point the head, the rest follows. The snake cleared the den slowly, carefully, testing, testing the air all around for the spike of heat that would indicate the approach of a large predator.
No! Nothing!
Ah, warm.
The snake coiled on a bed of brown pine needles before the den mouth. Warm, he felt his body and his senses quicken as the sun seeped into him.
Ah, warm!
Simple. The man Arthur had not known simplicity could be this absolute, this pure. The gratification so intense, the experience so all encompassing.
Do not think, but be.
Yet, after a time, there was such a thing as enough. He moved forward toward a patch of new green grass shaded by a domed rock.
Test the air; taste the air every few seconds or so. The forked tongue and deep mind mapped the world. A rock sun warmed on one side. A pool, not a very big one, but big enough to hold a dangerous inhabitant. On the other side, the forest. The living things there were glowing spots of heat. Birds, baby birds in a nest in the lowest branches of a pine.
Too high.
A fallen tree, still half green, a maple, branches glowing with a thousand new green leaves. That spot on the base, on the rotten side, mice— a whole family. They gnawed their way into the tree, the hole they made too small to admit him.
Keep that, and the memory was placed among the rest, only a few like beads on a string, each discrete, complete, embodying all the meaning it would ever have. The tree was rotting; the chamber the mice inhabited was fairly large. At the moment, they were safe, the tree bark still intact. He could not gnaw. But the wood would rot.
The pond to the left of the domed rock. Winter killed brush filled the shallows near the rock, clustered around one fallen willow sapling. Willow like it was still alive and formed a curtain of branches, cutting off the pond from the brush. The trunk was canted.
A perfect resting place? The man’s mind questioned the mind of the snake.
Taste the air. No. Nothing. No bird. No otter. Cool water, warm trees, and reeds.
Moving cold—fish, frogs, insects.
Feed tonight. Feed or die.
We
hate them,
the man thought—Arthur thought.
We do not begin to understand them, but we hate them nonetheless.
He peered into the deep, dark well of the snake’s mind. Sought approval—found it, and moved toward the broken willow. Point the head, the body follows. Can snakes climb trees? Actually, they are rather good climbers.
He reached one of the willow branches. It was leaning against the rock. Now warmed by the sun and moved by hunger, he went quickly, head out, around and around the slender branch, his body vanishing against the gray green bark.
Look up.
Ah, the man thought. The snake noted the bird. The tongue flicked—warm.
Arthur’s mind stumbled. The snake was so wholly
other
.
Of course. That was the death without warning—he was looking at it. He knew the snake had to be faster than the bird.
No, faster is dangerous.
Drop?
No. Too much noise. Other things live in water. They can hear. He must move and hope the bird didn’t see him.
He turned bonelessly as a rope, clasped the slender branch, and flowed toward the ground as his body turned around the center of the branch. First one eye, then another looked up. The bird began to fall.
But he held himself steady, understanding why now. As long as he moved at one speed, the bird’s eyes might not see him clearly. Any sudden jerk would trigger a flash of certainty in the hawk’s mind. The slow, steady movement managed to convince the hawk he might be mistaken, but he had seen enough to drop down and take a closer look.
The snake gambled. It must eat to live. To stop now, give in to his terror, might well be a death sentence. Stop now, and he would be caught in the open by the hawk. Even a small hawk was deadly to most snakes. Arthur had seen them kill and knew they were born knowing how. If at all possible, they landed behind the snake’s neck. Even as the talons embedded themselves in the body, the sharp, efficient beak snipped off the head.
A snake was a lovely kill. No waste; they ate him nose to tail. All of him.
One thing to admire efficiency in the abstract; another to contemplate it with respect to one’s self.
But the snake’s cold cunning was as much inborn as the bird’s skill. It commanded the pace, and he entered the water before the bird drew close enough to see the snake clearly and snap into its stoop, the closed wing fall of a bird of prey when it strikes its chosen victim.
The snake moved through the green, watery gloom—it was warm— beyond the fringe of branches on the willow. And from the shadows, stealth dictated he could see the afternoon sun illuminating the central area of the pond. There were minnows at the surface. Water striders were already present, their feet dimpling the thin layer of molecules neither water nor air, which floats between the two worlds. Dragonflies, a lot of them, darted like the spangles of a jeweled gown.
The snake reached the recumbent willow trunk and moved, belly scales expertly catching the rough fissured surface of the bark until he rested several feet above the water, concealed by the smooth, leafy wands of branches hanging from the fallen tree. Arthur had seen them lying as he was on summer days when he forded rivers and streams. He had never bothered one, and now was glad.
The snake took a dragonfly with blinding speed. Not very good tasting. The minnows had been better. Like the fish’s, his teeth were to the back.
Now! The dragonfly had been an appetizer only.
Arthur was uncomfortable. He couldn’t let himself sink into the serpent the way he had into the fish. He didn’t want to be part of such a being. But he sensed that if he allowed himself to become simply an observer, the creature might perish. And that was the test.
This was borne out when he saw the shadow of the viper swim past below the log through the sunstruck water. It was only an outline in the murky green translucence, but he clearly saw the flat head, broad at the back, a wedge set on a narrow neck that tapered into a thick body, wider across than high.
The venomous have their own profile. It belongs only to them.
The serpent had accepted his judgment and come to hunt here. It remained to be seen if the true proprietor of this puddle would overlook his trespass or not. The viper was twice the size of the vermilion hunter he occupied. His companion would be a good dinner.
Vipers. Now, where there was one, there usually was another. But he didn’t move—even a human eye would lose him along the bark.
Where oh where was the other?
His eyes roved over the winter killed reeds and sedges, the fading brown stalks of cattails, the faint traces of green on the knot grass growing through the water at the margin of the pond.
Then he knew. If she wasn’t anywhere else, she would be…
Behind him.
If there’s one thing snakes can do, it’s move fast. The turn he made was an arc. She was already striking.
His head swung wide, toward her tail, and he hooked the very tip with his recurved teeth. She swung like a flying whip. He was in the air, but it didn’t matter. He tightened every muscle and jerked his head to the left. He felt her neck snap.
There were only stars. He lay in the sea of stars, and there was no up no down, no earth, no sky. Only the arch of the star road, the Milky Way, over him. He was very tired, but it was good to have arms and legs and be a man. He was unbelievably dirty, his clothing in rags, part of his hair and beard singed away.
She was standing not far from him. He got to his knees. His arms were shaking, and it was difficult to push himself up.
“Did the snake live?” he asked.
She laughed. “What does it matter? In the end, you won’t—live, that is. No man can ride the wheel for long.”
“It matters to me,” he said.
“Then, yes, it did. After its struggle with the viper, it took some small fish and a frog. Not a lot, but enough to allow it to survive the next cold spell. Later that year, it mated and bred.”
He looked down at his dirty clothing. Even in the starlight he could see how tattered it was.
“When we walked in the forest…” he began.
“We weren’t really there,” she said. “No more than you were with the fish or the snake.”
“But I’m here now?” he asked.
“I cannot say,” she answered.
“I have only a small need,” he said. “But I hope I am present in such a way as to gratify it. I would like a drink of water.”
Abruptly, he found himself in the forest, just below the plateau where he had first been imprisoned. He was standing in the same jumble of rocks where he had seen the strange bowl that seemed to bring him back for a moment to Tintigal. She was standing there with him.
The bowl was at his feet. He made as if to kneel.
But she said, “No. Reach down and rest your fingers on the inside of the rim. Just touch it, but don’t put your hand in too deep and touch the zone of power at the bottom.”
He reached down with his right hand and touched the inside of the rim. There was a soft click, and the bowl came free of its place in the rocks and stuck to his fingers as he lifted his hand.