Beguilers (14 page)

I took out another jub and ate it on the march, falling into a dogged rhythm as I climbed up the packed snow of the track. After a while I realised that I was moving much more freely than I would have expected to. The beguiler wasn’t exerting the same kind of drag on me as it had before, and I wondered what had happened. Maybe the third nut had given me extra strength, or the beguiler was somehow weakened by the strong sun blazing down on to the mountainside. Maybe I had at last achieved mastery over the thing and could now do as I wished. I began to feel optimistic, and wondered whether the worst might not be behind me after all.

I walked on, making surprisingly light of the climb. Ahead of me I could see the top of the pass, and at my current speed I was going to make it in good time to begin the descent while the light was still strong. I mightn’t make it all the way out of the snow that day, but if I was overtaken by darkness I would cross that bridge when I came to it.

My heart was soaring, so full of exuberant optimism that I was completely off guard when I found myself walking along a ridge of crumbling snow that overhung the precipitous edge of the mountain. I scrambled back; flung myself flat on my face as the thin, icy crust gave way. My feet were dangling out over empty space. I was so close to the edge that I didn’t dare move; hardly dared breathe. But even in those desperate moments I found myself able to reflect on how clever the beguiler had been. It had been helping me up the hill, lulling me into a false sense of security. Then, while I strolled along with my head in the clouds, it had led me a full twenty yards from the path. I had walked through deep, untrodden snow to get there without any awareness of doing it.

Inch by inch, I dragged myself on my belly through the snow. It was coated with a thin layer of ice which broke into tiny sharp fragments as I crawled through it. When I finally found the courage to get to my feet, my hands and arms were scratched and reddened. With weak knees I made my way back on to the path. I was afraid to stand still because of the cold, and afraid to go on in case I was lured back to that terrifying brink. The compromise I came to was a sort of crab-like shuffle which allowed me to keep my eyes on the place where the land dropped away. Even that didn’t work. Within minutes I found that my mind was wandering again and my feet along with it. Time after time I found myself approaching the brink, and time after time it was only with a supreme effort of will that I escaped and regained the path. Eventually, exhausted and afraid, I threw myself down in a patch of snow on the safe side of the path and closed my eyes.

My spirit was as hollow as a drum. I wasn’t going to make it. That was all I could think. I wasn’t going to make it. Dabbo and Shirsha weren’t weaker than me; they were stronger. They had resisted their beguilers’ efforts to lead them over the edge. But I couldn’t. If I went on, I was surely walking straight towards my death.

I longed for Dabbo’s hut. I might have headed back towards it, driven by my terror, but a sound intruded into my confused consciousness. I could swear that I felt the beguiler’s frustration as it backed off. As the sounds came closer, I recognised the steady crunch of oncoming footsteps.

I knew that it was a group of porters, but I didn’t dare look up. What could they do for me, anyway, apart from giving me a brief respite from the beguiler as they passed? I felt their eyes on me; heard the secretive murmur of words that I might have understood if I had dared to listen.

I looked out and saw the first pair of feet walking past on the furthest edge of the track, as far from me as possible. Some of the men were still talking under their breath, and I knew they were saying awful things about the mad girl crouching like an animal against the hill-side. But before the last of the men had passed me I heard another voice close by; one that was unexpectedly familiar.

‘Where?’ it said. ‘Where is she?’

Almost simultaneously I felt a soft touch on the side of my head and I looked up. It was Marik, and the minute I saw him I understood why it was that he slept outside the tents at night and had no fear of beguilers. I had never seen him properly before but now, in daylight, it was all quite clear. His pale eyes were looking towards me, but not at me. There was life in them, and energy, but no sight. Marik was completely blind.

I stood up and took his wandering hand.

‘You made it?’ he said.

‘I haven’t made anything,’ I said. ‘I have a beguiler, but I can’t …’

The truth about the position I was in came home to me and I choked back tears.

‘Can’t what?’

‘I can’t get home. It keeps trying to pull me over the edge. I don’t think I have enough strength to resist it.’

Marik was still holding my hand. Now he let it go and pulled the headband of the heavy load up over his forehead. He crouched quickly, and let the sack down gently in the snow.

‘What are you doing?’ said one of the men. The others had gone on ahead, but he was hanging back, waiting for the boy.

‘You go on,’ said Marik. ‘I’ll catch up with you when I can.’

‘You will not,’ said the man, in a threatening tone. ‘You’ll heft that load again and get back on the trail.’

Marik shook his head and turned back to me. ‘I have something for you.’

He put his hand into his pocket and I heard the heavy jingle of valuable coins.

‘You sold the jubs?’

But before he could answer the man had returned to his side and launched an attack upon him. His clenched fist was like a lump hammer and Marik had no way of knowing that it was coming. He staggered sideways and fell over his pack, landing on his face in the snow. Without even knowing it, I was on my feet and launching myself like a cornered snatcher at the porter.

He could have swatted me like a buzz-bat, but he didn’t. It seemed crucial to him to stay out of my reach, as though I carried leprosy or some other dreadful infectious disease. I stood between him and Marik, and although he swore and tried to order the boy back to work, he didn’t dare come any closer. Eventually he hurled a last mouthful of obscenities at Marik, turned on his heel and set out after the others.

Marik got to his feet. He had a nasty red mark on his cheekbone, but otherwise he seemed unharmed. He smiled at where he thought I was and I stepped round in front of him.

‘I hope you haven’t lost your job.’

‘We can worry about that later,’ he said. ‘The first thing we have to do is to get you home.’

He felt around in the air beside him until he found his pack, then he opened it. He took out a thick shawl for himself and a spare jumper, which he threw in my direction. From a side pocket he pulled a long thin cotton scarf and a packet of food, which he set about opening immediately.

‘My mother’s cooking,’ he said. ‘Butter-rice and some cinnamon bread. Good for energy. We ate at the lodge last night so I didn’t need this.’

The rich oil from the butter-rice was leaking through the papery leaf and the sight of it made my mouth water.

‘Eat,’ he said.

I didn’t need to be asked twice. I pressed him to share it with me, but he declined, and stood with a satisfied smile on his face as I wolfed down the first cooked food I had eaten since I left the village. It was cold and soggy, but it was still the best meal I had eaten in my life and I didn’t leave a scrap of rice for the black corbies who circled us in the heights.

Marik was feeling around in the snow. ‘Can you see my stick?’ he said.

I retrieved it for him and put it into his hand. He parked it under one arm and began to unwind the cotton scarf. ‘One end around your wrist,’ he said. ‘And the other around mine.’

I helped him tie the knots, but I wasn’t at all sure what we were going to do next.

‘I don’t know if this is a good idea,’ I said. ‘I’m not going to be much of a guide to you. The beguiler is likely to pull us both over the edge.’

Marik laughed and shook his head.

‘I learnt to tread these paths like this,’ he said. ‘Coupled up to my father. But I don’t need it any more. I know the mountain way inside out. I can feel the path with my feet, you see.’

I couldn’t believe my luck. The only person in the world who could have helped me had come along at exactly the right moment. Perhaps there were forces working with me as well as against me.

F
OR THE FIRST STRETCH
I concentrated hard, watching Marik like a hawk in case he made any errors on the path and keeping the scarf loose between us. But it didn’t take long for Marik to prove that he knew the mountain path inside out. He trod it easily, feeling ahead with his stick and keeping to the dead centre. He was strong and fit from months of portering, and he told me that without his load he felt like a brindlehound that had slipped its leash. He strode on up the mountainside with ease and confidence, and seemed as happy as I was about the sudden change in our circumstances.

But after a while the pace he was setting became too much for me, and I began to drag behind like a reluctant child. He slowed to make things easier for me, but by then I was beginning to take his lead for granted and, as my concentration became less focussed, the beguiler began to tug at me again. I would wander in Marik’s steps for a while, then gradually begin to waver and move towards the edge, so that he had to haul me in beside him. If anyone had seen us from a distance they would have thought I was the one that was blind.

We made the top of the pass by dusk and, although the gathering dark made no difference whatsoever to Marik, it made me anxious. I knew that the beguiler’s power would be intensified in the night, and although I trusted Marik, I was still uneasy about not being able to see where we were going. I suggested that we stop and, reluctantly, Marik agreed. Wrapped in our shawls, we huddled together in the scant shelter of a clutter of boulders beside the path. I gave Marik a jub and helped him to crack it against one of the rocks. He beamed with delight when he tasted it.

‘So that’s why they make such a fuss about these things,’ he said.

‘Haven’t you ever eaten one before?’

‘Where would I get a jub nut? On the wages I earn?’

‘But you had all mine. Are you telling me that you didn’t even eat one?’

He seemed appalled by the idea. ‘Of course I didn’t!’ He felt in his pocket again and pulled out the coins.

‘You look after them, Marik,’ I said. ‘We’ll divide them when we get to the village.’

His face darkened. ‘I’m not doing this for money,’ he said. ‘I don’t want it, all right? I don’t want any of it.’

‘All right,’ I said. And then, after a pause, I went on, ‘Why are you doing this then?’

‘I don’t know,’ he said, softly. ‘There are things in the world, and people too, who are just, somehow … right. Do you know what I mean?’

I wasn’t sure I did.

He went on. ‘It’s not that they’re better, or more holy or anything like that. You know the way wild fruit in the forest is always more satisfying than what the farmers grow. It’s not bigger or sweeter. It’s just right. What it ought to be. That’s what I felt when I first met you. You were authentic; you were true to something within yourself that no one else could hear. And even if everyone hated you and feared you, you were going to follow your own path.’

I thought it sounded a bit grand, but I didn’t say anything.

‘I always wished that I would get a calling like that,’ Marik said. ‘Ever since I was a child I listened and waited for the opportunity to come my way. To prove myself. Not to anyone else, but to me.’

‘Now you have,’ I said.

He smiled. ‘Now I have,’ he said.

We are taught never to go to sleep in the snow, no matter how tired we are. We all learnt the story of the snow wizard who steals the breath from all living things who forget to look after it, and we know that it happens, too; that people who get caught in the snow grow tired and go to sleep and never wake up again.

I tied Dabbo’s twine between my ankle and a jutting rock. Before I had finished, Marik was sound asleep, wrapped up tight in his jacket. I was too excited to be tired, and I resolved to stay awake and keep my guard well up against the beguiler. But my exhaustion overcame me within a few minutes of settling down, and when I woke, some hours before dawn, I knew for certain that the snow wizard was only a story.

But the beguilers weren’t. The moon must have been new while I was among the mists of the cloud mountain, for now it was waxing. It gave good light, particularly up there among the snows, but it was not enough to hide the beguiler.

It was the first thing I saw when I sat up and looked around. It was hovering between where I lay and the path, as though it had been there all night, waiting for me to wake up, faithful as any chuffie. I turned my eyes away from it and checked the twine on my ankle and the rock, then reached for Marik’s stick. I knew that the stick had no power to protect me, but it was comforting to hold it and know that I was no longer alone.

There were still so many questions that I couldn’t answer. What were the creatures made of and how did they survive? Did they eat, and if so, what? Or was their only hunger the one which needed a human life to be satisfied? Gripping the stick with both hands, I studied the beguiler. It stared unblinkingly into my eyes for several seconds, and then it began to dance. As I watched, I knocked the end of Marik’s stick hard against my chest, hoping that the physical discomfort would help to protect me against mesmerisation. But this time I seemed to have no desire to follow. Instead, I was pulled into the dance itself, remembering my dream and how, when I was the beguiler, the reason for the dance had been to see myself. Was it so with this one? Did it dance in the effort to get round behind itself and learn to know what it was?

And how, I wondered, did it see me? Did I appear just as I was, a human figure, four-square, solid as the rest of the world around? Or was it, in some way, only my soul that it perceived, or my life, the way a snatcher senses only blood and doesn’t have much awareness of who owns it. As I watched, I realised that although the beguiler was unlikely to leave me, I hadn’t really caught it at all, not in the way that I had intended. I’d had an idea that I would contain it in some way and bring it back in a bottle or wrapped in my shawl so that we could study it and find out what it was. As I thought about that, I noticed that the beguiler’s dance was bringing it steadily closer to me and an idea began to form in my mind.