Peter Beagle - The Line Between

«To the place of our stand.» The voice had no laughter in it, but no fear either. «To the place where we turn and meet them all. Yours and mine.»

It was long ago, that moment. I am reasonably certain that I did not say anything bold or heroic in answer, as I can be fairly sure that I did not shame myself. Beyond that … beyond that, I can only recall a sense that all the skin of my face had suddenly grown too tight for my head. The rest is stories. He might remember exactly how it was, but he lies.

I do recollect his response to whatever I finally said. «Yes, it will come to that, and we will not be able to avoid facing them. I thought we might, but I always look circumstance in the eye.» (And would try to steal both eyes, and then charge poor blind circumstance for his time, but never mind.) He said, «Your Hunters and my Goro — " no more sharing of shadows, apparently — «there's no shaking them, none of them. I would know if there were a way.» I didn't doubt that. «The best we can do is to choose the ground on which we make our stand, and I have long since chosen the Mihanachakali.» I blinked at him. That I remember, blinking so stupidly, nothing to say.

The Mihanachakali was deep delta once — rich, bountiful farmland, until the Nai changed course, over a century ago. The word means black river valley — I suppose because the Nai used to carry so much sweet silt to the region when it flooded every year or two. You wouldn't know that now, nor could I believe it at the time, trudging away from Druchank (which was just as foul a hole as he remembered, and remains so), into country grown so parched, so entirely dried out, that the soil had forgotten how to hold even the little mist that the river provided now and again. We met no one, but every turn in the road brought us past one more abandoned house, one more ruin of a shed or a byre; eventually the road became one more desiccated furrow crumbling away to the flat, pale horizon. The desert had never been anything but what it was; this waste was far wilder, far lonelier, because of the ghosts. Because of the ghosts that I could feel, even if I couldn't see them — the people who had lived here, tried to live here, who had dug in and hung on as long as they could while the earth itself turned ghost under their feet, under their splintery wooden ploughs and spades. I hated it as instinctively and deeply and sadly as I have ever hated a place on earth, but the old man tramped on without ever looking back for me. And as I stumbled after him over the cold, wrinkled land, he talked constantly to himself, so that I could not help but overhear.

«Near, near — they never move, once they … twice before, twice, and then that other time … listen for it, smell it out, find it, find it, so close … no mistake, it cannot have moved, I will not be mistaken, listen for it, reach for it, find it, find it, find it!» He crouched lower and lower as we plodded on, until he might as well have taken the fox–form, so increasingly taut, elongated and pointed had his shadow become. To me during those two days crossing the Mihanachakali, he spoke not at all.

Then, nearing sundown on the second day, he abruptly broke off the long mumbled conversation with himself. Between one stride and the next, he froze in place, one

foot poised off the ground, exactly as I have seen a stalking fox do when the chosen kill suddenly raises its head and sniffs the air. «Here," he said quietly, and it seemed not so much a word but a single breath that had chosen shape on its own, like a Goro's dream. «Here," he said again.«Here it was. I remembered. I knew.»

We had halted in what appeared to me to be the exact middle of anywhere. River off that way, give or take; a few shriveled hills lumping up that way; no–color evening sky baking above … I could never have imagined surroundings less suitable for a gallant last stand. It wouldn't have taken a Goro and two Hunters to pick us off as we stood there with the sunset at our backs: two small, weary figures, weaponless, exposed to attack on all sides, our only possible shelter a burned–out farmhouse, nothing but four walls, a caved–in roof, a crumbling chimney, and what looked to be a root cellar. A shepherd with a sling could have potted us like sparrows.

«I knew," he repeated, looking much more like his former superior self. «Not whether it would be here, but that it would be here.» It made no sense, and I told him so, and the yap–laugh sounded more elated than I had yet heard it. «Think for once, idiot! No, no — don't think, forget about thinking! Try remembering, try to remember something, anything you didn't learn at that bloody asylum of yours. Something your mother told you about such places — something the old people used to say, something children would whisper in their beds to frighten each other. Something even a fool just might already know — remember! Remember?»

And I did. I remembered half–finished stories of houses that were not quite … that were not there all the time … rumors, quickly hushed by parents, of house–things blooming now and then from haunted soil, springing up like mushrooms in moonlight … I remembered an uncle's absently–mumbled account of a friend, journeying, who took advantage of what appeared to be a shepherd's mountain hut and was not seen again — no more than the hut itself — and someone else's tale of bachelor cousins who settled into an empty cottage no one seemed to want, lived there comfortably enough for some years, and then … I did remember.

«Those are fables," I said. «Legends, nothing more. If you mean that over there, I see nothing but a gutted hovel that was most likely greatly improved by a proper fire. Let it appear, let it vanish — either way, we are both going to die. Of course, I may once again have missed something.»

He could not have been more delighted. «Excellent. I must tell you, I might have felt a trifle anxious if you had actually grasped my plan.» The pale yellow glow was rising in his eyes. «The true nature of that house is not important, and in any case would take too long to explain to an oaf. What matters is that if once our pursuers pass its door, they will not ever emerge again — therefore, we two must become bait and deadfall together, luring them on to disaster.» Everything obviously depended on our pursuers running us to this earth at the same time; if they fell upon each other in their lust to slaughter us, so much the better, but he was plainly not counting on this. «Once we've cozened them into that corner," and he gestured toward the thing that

looked so like a ruinous farm–house, «why, then, our troubles are over, and no burying to plague us, either.» He kicked disdainfully at the stone–hard soil, and the laugh was far more fox than human.

I said, as calmly and carefully as I could, «This is not going to work. There are too many unknowns, too many possibilities. What if they do not arrive together? What if, instead of clashing, they cooperate to hunt us down? Much too likely that we will be the ones trapped in your — your corner — with no way out, helpless and doomed. This is absurd.»

Oh, but he was furious then! Totally enraged, how he stamped back and forth, glaring at me, even his mustache crouched to spring, every white hair abristle. If he had been in the fox–shape — well, who knows? — perhaps he might indeed have leaped at my throat. «Ignorant, ignorant! Unknowns, possibilities —you know nothing, you are fit for nothing but my bidding.» He stamped a few more times, and then turned to stalk away toward the farmhouse — toward the thing that looked like a farm–house. When I made to follow, he waved me back without turning his head. «Stay!» he ordered, as you command a dog. «Keep watch, call when they come in sight. You can do that much.»