Кэролайн Черри - Fortress in the Eye of Time

Who? indeed. “Tristen! Tristen is my name, Owl! Do you hear me?”

“Who?” came from the distance now, beckoning him, a known voice, if not a friendly voice.

“Owl, did you eat the mice?”

“Who?” came again.

Owl denied everything, and flew away from him, too distant now for argument. Tristen saw him, a feathered lump, far, far through the branches.

But Owl guided him. Owl seemed to hold some secret, and constantly flitted out of his reach — but Mauryl had done that, too, making him learn for himself: he knew Maurylʼs tricks.

He called out: “Are you Maurylʼs, Owl? Did he send you?”

“To-who?” said Owl, and flew away out of sight.

But the mere sound of voices, Owlʼs and his own, had livened the leaden air, an irreverent fracture of the silence, and once the deathly silence was broken, from seeing for days now only the gray and the black of dead limbs, he began to see shafts of sunlight, green moss growing, and green leaves lit by the passage of sunbeams.

Perhaps the sunbeams had always been there, working their small transformations, but Marna, when it had first come to him as a Word, had seemed a name for darkness and loss; his eyes until this moment might have been seeing only the dark. But now that he looked without expecting gloominess, Marna showed itself in a new and livelier way — a tricky and a changeable place, as it seemed.

But then, Ynefel itself ran rife with terror and darkness, so long as the Shadows ruled it — and, again, Ynefel shone warm with firelight and smelled of good food, and Mauryl sat safe by the fireside, reading. Were not both…equally…Ynefel, to his mind? And were not both…equally and separately…true?

So perhaps Marna Wood could be fair and safe at one time and have another aspect altogether when the Shadows were abroad.

And if he could think — as he had — one way and then the other about its nature, and if the forest could put on an aspect according to his expectations, then it seemed to him much wiser to think well instead of ill of the place, and to expect sunlight here to shine brightly as the sunlight came to the loft at home, to fall as brightly here as it fell on the pages of his Book when he read his lessons among the pigeons.

And perhaps other things came from expecting the best of them as hard as he could.

So immediately he drew his Book out of his shirt, stopped in the full middle of a sunbeam, and opened it and looked at the writing, hoping that if one thing had changed, if he fully, truly, with all his heart expected to read the Book, then the Words might come to him — just a few Words, perhaps, so he turned from page to page.

But the letters remained only shapes, and even the ones he had thought he understood now looked different and indecipherable to his eye. His expectation, he thought, must not be great enough, or sure enough, in the way that Mauryl expected bruises not to hurt, or Shadows not to harm them. He clearly had not Maurylʼs power — but then—

But, was the inescapable conclusion, then Mauryl had never expected him to read the Book — or had not expected it enough. That was a very troubling point. Mauryl could expect his hand to stop hurting, and it would. Mauryl could expect that the rain would come, and it would. Mauryl could expect the Shadows to leave his room alone, and Mauryl could bar the door against them, and bang his staff on the stones and bid them keep their distance; the Shadows would obey Mauryl, if not him.

Yet Mauryl had doubted that he would read the Book?

Mauryl had doubted him and doubted his ability, but all else, including very difficult things for him to do, Mauryl had seemed so certain of. He no longer knew what Mauryl had thought of him, or what Mauryl had expected.

So he tucked his Book away fearfully and kept walking; and when the sun was at its highest overhead, he sat down on a fallen log in a patch of sunlight, took out his Book and tried again to read, tried, mindful of Maurylʼs doubt, tried until his eyes ached and until his own doubt and his despair began to gray the woods around him.

But then the sun, which had faded around him, shone brightly and clearly in a new place farther down the Road.

So it seemed to him that the sun might be saying, as Owl had said, Follow the Road, and he rose up, tucked away his Book, and walked further, relying on the sun, relying on Owl, and hoping very much for an end of this place.

Came another nightfall, and the sky turned mostly gray again and the woods went back to their darkness. Tristen was growing more than tired, he was growing weak and dizzy and wandering in his steps.

He had begun, however faintly, to promise himself that at the end of the Road might lie a place like Ynefel, a place with walls of strong stone, and, he imagined, there might be a fireplace, and there might be a warm small room where he could sleep safe at night — that was what he hoped for, perhaps because he could imagine nothing else outside of this woods, and he wanted the woods to end.

Perhaps, in this place he imagined, there would be someone like Mauryl, since there surely would be someone to keep things in order. There would be someone like Mauryl, who would be kind to him and teach him the things he needed to know.

“Why did you go?” he asked that grayness inside him, speaking aloud and hoping faintly that Mauryl might be simply waiting for a question.

“What am I to do, Mauryl? Where are you sending me?”

But nothing answered him, not even the wind.

“Owl?” he asked at last, since Owl at least had been visible. It occurred to him that he had not seen Owl in a very long time, and he would at least like Owlʼs company, however surly Owl could be.

But Owl might be sleeping still, despite the dark that had fallen. Owl also failed to arrive.

So he followed his faintly visible path of fitted stones, which disappeared under forest earth, which reappeared under a black carpet of rotten leaves, which found ways along hillsides and threatened to disappear under earth and leaves altogether and forever. He was afraid. He kept imagining that Place like Ynefel. He kept thinking…of that fireside and a snug room where the candles never went out.

The Road lost itself altogether in nightbound undergrowth, where trees had grown and dislodged the stones.

“To-who?” a voice inquired above him.

“There you are,” Tristen exclaimed.

“Who?” said Owl, and flew up the hill.

He followed, trying to run as Owl sped ahead, but he had not the strength to keep his feet. He slipped at the very top, among the trees, and tumbled downhill to the Road again, right down to the leaf-covered stones.

“To-who?” said Owl.

He brushed leaf mold from his fall-stung hands and his aching knees. He was cold, and sat there shaking from weakness.

“Are you different than the other Shadows?” he asked Owl. “Are you Maurylʼs? — Or are you something else?”

“To-who?” quoth Owl. And leapt out into the dark.

“Wait for me!” Now he was angry as well as afraid. He scrambled to his knees and to his feet, and followed as he could.

But always Owl moved on. He had caught a stitch in his side, but he followed, sometimes losing Owl, sometimes hearing his mocking question far in the distance.

His foot turned in a hole in the stones, and he landed on his hand and an elbow, quite painfully. He could not catch breath enough to stand for two or three painful tries, and then succeeded in setting his knee under him, and rose and walked very much more slowly.

“Who?” Owl called in the distance. The fall had driven the anger out of him and left him only the struggle to keep walking. But he could do no more than he was doing. He hurt more than he had ever hurt in Ynefel, but that seemed the way of this dreary woods: pain, and exhaustion. He walked on until he had hardly the strength to set one foot in front of another.