Peter Dickinson - Earth and Air

Mostly the creature was hidden by the cragginess of the slope, but then she’d see it again, though she didn’t dare snatch more than the odd glimpse for fear of missing her footing. At first she seemed to be gaining, but then she started to fall back as her muscles drained their reserves away, however her heart slammed and her lungs convulsed in the effort to feed them.

The creature reached a waterfall, paused, and for the first time glanced back, looking, she thought, not at her but at the hilltop behind her. The movement twisted Dick towards her. Just below his head there was a yellowish streak down the dark grey rib cage. The creature turned back and plunged into the white curtain. Through the foam she saw it starting to climb. She couldn’t go that way, but there was a heather-free slope to her right which reached to the ledge from which the fall spilt. As she stumbled slantwise across it the creature emerged at the top of the fall, stood erect, and looked back, again not apparently at her, but at the eastern ridge behind her. She saw it clearly against the skyline, lit by the almost risen sun. The yellow streak was gone. With a surge of hope she realised what it had been. Dick’s vomit. The jolting of the climb had worked like emergency resuscitation and made him throw up. So he was alive. Oh God, let him not now have choked on it! The thing paused only an instant and hurried out of sight.

Mari knew where it had gone, knowing what lay beyond the ridge. She raced on up, reached the top, and stood there, recovering her breath. Desperate though the haste was, she must wait and do that. Breath might be life, both hers and Dick’s.

Now, as she waited, searching the unruffled surface for some clue to where the creature had taken him, the sun rimmed the sky behind her. Its long light sluiced across the tarn. She felt its touch on her shoulders, and knew there was another blazing day coming. An instant connection formed in her mind, without any process of thought. All her life, since she was a small child, she had liked to be up very early on days like this, because later on, as soon as there was any strength in the sunlight, she would need to be indoors, or cowering under a parasol or smearing herself every twenty minutes with sunblock. It was part of her inheritance, her troll blood. And the creature too. In its haste to climb the hillside it hadn’t been running from her, but from the sunrise. When it had looked behind it, it hadn’t been interested in her pursuit, nor in the hill behind her, but in the light itself, spilling above the far ridge. How much longer before the deadly moment? Sunfearer. Troll.

Though the thing she had seen was nothing like any troll she had read of or imagined, the identification came to her with complete assurance. Furthermore there would be a lair in the tarn, a cave with an underwater entrance. Something like that was necessary anyway, if Dick was to be still alive when she found him. He wouldn’t survive more than another few minutes underwater. Where? Not where she stood, on what seemed almost a natural earth dam holding the tarn in against the hillside; but over to her right and beyond, where the higher ground reached the water, was a line of low cliffs.

She stared towards them. There! Close in below the dark rocks, more to her right than straight across, the utterly still surface was broken by a sudden ripple and swirl, much like a large fish might make, rising almost to the surface to take a fly and then changing its mind and twisting suddenly back. There was a dip in the cliff just this side of the place. Using that as a landmark she jogged round the edge of the tarn, deliberately choosing a pace that wouldn’t instantly run her out of breath again. She dived in where the cliffs began and swam on, still well below a racing speed. The water was degrees colder than that of the river below. At the point she had marked, she stopped, gulped air, kicked herself upwards, and jackknifed into a dive. In the increasing dimness the cliff ran on down, still almost sheer. A good twenty feet below the surface she reached a floor of black, peaty ooze. She turned to her left, and just before her breath gave out glimpsed ahead of her a darker patch on the vertical rock. Madness to try it now.

She pumped herself to the surface and trod water, gasping for air. As soon as she dared she dived again. Yes, an opening in the rock, a triangular cranny like the entrance to a tent. Counting the seconds she swam straight into the darkness, and on through the blind black water. The tunnel seemed to run almost straight, and she could feel her way by the touch of her fingers against the rock on either side. Sometimes when all the family had been swimming together, they used to have timed contests to see who could stay under water longest. In those days she could last a minute and a half, but not swimming vigorously as she was now. Call it a minute, she thought, or a bit over. It would be quicker coming out. Forty seconds in, then . . . She reached the moment, and swam on.

At fifty-five, well past the point where there was any hope in turning back, she saw a change in the darkness ahead. At sixty the change was faint light. At sixty-eight she broke the surface. Retching for air she stared around.

The light was daylight of a sort, seeping in through a narrow crack overhead. It wasn’t a light to see by, no better than might have been shed at night in the open by a half moon behind a layer of cloud. She guessed she must be in some kind of cavern, part of the fault that Dick had talked about, perhaps, but in the dimness she could make out neither walls nor roof. She swam forward a few strokes and her feet touched bottom, a shelving rock ledge. As she climbed from the water the only sounds in the stillness were the heaving of her own breath and the patter of drops falling from her hair and limbs, and their fainter echoes.

Not six feet in front of her, a voice spoke. Not a human voice, a soft, deep, booming sound, a drum note that boomed back at her from the cave walls. But its note of questioning surprise told her that it was articulate speech. The thing in the darkness repeated the sound with a different intonation, this time confirming what it had seen. A single word. The strangeness of the voice blurred the two syllables, but she could hear they had not been English. An echo in her mind repeated the sound, and she knew what the thing had said.

“ Woman? ” And then, “ Yes, a woman. ”

“ Who’s there? ” she whispered.

“ I do not tell my name, ” said the voice.

“ Troll ,” she said.

“ Rock-child, ” said the voice, correcting her without anger.

Given its voice to focus on she could make the creature out now, a vague dark mass about six feet from her. Its head seemed to be about level with her own, or a little higher, so she guessed it might be squatting, toad-like, on its haunches just above the waterline. It still hadn’t crossed her mind to be afraid, but now a shudder of cold shook her body, and she realised how far she had chilled through, and how little reserve of strength she had left to reheat herself.

“ Where is my husband? ” she said. “ You took him. Give him to me. ”

“ He is here. ”

The creature moved, a sudden sideways shuffle, revealing a paler shape that had lain behind it. Mari waded forward, stumbled up the slope and knelt, feeling for Dick with numbed hands. He was lying facedown on the rock so she heaved him over, felt for his face, and laid her ear against his mouth. Nothing. Her fingers were too frozen to find his pulse, but he too seemed to be deathly cold. She straddled his body and started to pump at his chest.

“ What do you do, woman? ” said the troll.

“ I bring his breath back, ” she panted. “ Else he dies. ”