Pallahaxi Read online

  But that was no reason to make fun of the old woman and I felt hot with shame for the two of them as they baited her endlessly—until I thought: if I’d been alone with a girl of Ribbon’s type who I was trying to impress, I might have acted the same. So then I merely felt bitter for the three of us. Browneyes I absolved from blame because she was too innocent; Squint because he was too young.

  “Look,” I said at last. “Will you two cut out the freezing funny stuff and let’s get some food?” Browneyes looked gratefully at me but that didn’t do any good; I was as guilty as the other two—or would have been, given the circumstances.

  We ate dried fish and yellowballs and washed it down with some beverage of the old woman’s making which Browneyes, our expert in such matters, assured us was non-alcoholic and therefore not likely to knock us out for the afternoon. “You can tell by the way it feels in your throat,” she said wisely.

  Afterwards Wolff and Ribbon became serious and began to discuss the purpose of the expedition, as if it mattered.

  “Are we going to reconnoitre the area around the cannery, or do you intend to play around all afternoon?” Wolff asked us sternly.

  “Reconnoitre!” shouted Squint enthusiastically, spraying particles of winternut.

  “I’ll go along with that,” said Browneyes.

  “Right.” Wolff stood on a stump, gazing about the countryside. “The cannery is over there; I can see the chimneys. The river’s between us and the cannery. And before we reach the river, it looks as though there’s some sort of swamp.”

  “I’ve heard stories about that swamp,” remarked Ribbon.

  “We’ll make for the river,” decided Wolff. “Then we’ll be able to observe the cannery from this bank without actually entering the restricted area and having to use Drove’s freezing father. Then we can make our way inland along the river bank, reconnoitring as we go, until we reach the Pallahaxi road. Then we go home. Right?”

  There was a murmur of agreement and we left the road, striking across the rough grassland towards the river. There were few trees here; the vegetation consisted mainly of low scrub of a harmless variety and, further on, tall reed. Soon the ground became soggy underfoot and before long we found ourselves jumping from tussock to tussock, flailing our arms to keep balance while water gleamed in the grass.

  “Hold it,” said Wolff as we reached a drier patch than most. “We’re getting off course. We need to head that way.” He pointed over to the left.

  “We’ll get our feet wet over there,” I objected. “The ground’s dry this side.”

  Wolff looked at me in simulated astonishment. “Are you scared of getting your feet wet, Alika-Drove?”

  It had taken me a long time to learn my lesson, but I’d got things straight now. “Yes, I’m scared of getting my feet wet,” I said firmly. “Does that bother you?”

  “Oh, well, in that case we’ll go this way and you can go that way.”

  “I’ll come with you, Drove,” said Browneyes, grinning.

  Squint regarded the two factions anxiously. “Just what am I supposed to do?”

  “You have a choice, Squint,” replied Wolff.

  “Well, thanks.” He frowned unhappily, sensing that Wolff didn’t want him in his party, yet still inclined to stay with his sister. “Get frozen, the lot of you,” he said suddenly, stumping off in another direction. I’ll go it alone.”

  Browneyes and I set off on the dry ground and the voices of the others faded into the distance; soon they were hidden from sight by reeds. A small stream lay in front of us and I jumped across, then held my hand out to Browneyes. She took it and jumped too—and this time I made sure I didn’t let go. Hand in hand we walked among the coarse grass and bushes, heading roughly east. I wondered what to do next. Conversation had ceased in the way it always did when she and I were alone.

  “I’m glad you came today, Drove,” she said at last, just when I felt like screaming at my mind for its lack of ideas. “I was worried about you. I haven’t seen you for so long and I thought maybe you’d got into a lot of trouble, you know, that night.”

  “My father doesn’t believe in alcohol. Except for the motor-cart.”

  “My mother blamed herself. She didn’t know, you see, that your father was like that.”

  It was incredible. We were holding hands, yet we were talking about our parents. Animals never had this problem; they couldn’t talk.

  “I blame my father.”

  “What for?”

  I had forgotten. I’d lost the thread of the discussion. I let her words hang there and turned my head so that I could see her face as we walked. She was looking at the ground, her expression serious. Her legs—I moved a little away so that I could see them better—were, yes, much prettier than Ribbon’s. Sturdier and more healthy looking.

  Watching her, I tripped on a protruding clump and stumbled, and her hand tightened in mine. We had stopped walking now and were standing, looking at each other. Her eyes held mine and her face tilted up just a fraction as she looked and looked, and my insides turned to shivering slush. I wanted to say something but I knew that if I tried, it would just come out as a groan, and she would laugh.

  “I…I’m glad we’re here,” she said. “It’s nice, isn’t it? Being together like this, I mean.”

  “I like it too,” I managed to say.

  “I was scared the others would be around us all the time, weren’t you?”

  “It was lucky they don’t mind getting their swamps wet,” I said idiotically. “I mean their feet.”

  “Drove…” she said, and gulped suddenly; and at last I realized she was just as nervous as I. “I…like you, Drove. I mean, I really like you.”

  I stared at her and wondered how she had managed to say that—and hoped she knew I felt the same way. I opened my mouth a couple of times and closed it again, then tugged at her hand and we started walking again. There was a scrub bush nearby and as we walked the branches formed three crosses in line with a tall tree in the distance. I’ll never forget that place.

  Soon my elation at what she’d said turned once again to impatience with myself for failing to follow the matter up. I wasn’t quite sure what I should have done, but anything would have been better than standing there like an idiot and letting a girl do all the talking.

  But we were still holding hands, and as we walked I squeezed hers and she squeezed back, so I was very happy again. We came to a large shallow lake which meandered off among the reeds and bushes, and we stood still for a while, watching it and not saying anything. This time, however, it was an easy silence because we both had plenty to think about.

  Then, suddenly, everything changed.

  I think Browneyes saw it first. Her grip on my hand tightened and she gave a little gasp—and just about that time I saw the surface of the lake tremble.

  It came around the corner, from where an arm of the lake disappeared from view; it came as an icy gleam across the surface, extending a scintillating arm of crystal, then another, an immediate filling-in of the gap with diamond shaped wedges of jewelled glitter, reaching forward, reaching out, while all the time the lake groaned and creaked and was suddenly silent, inert, crystalline solid.

  We heard a distant scream, terror-filled and shrill; then an urgent male shout.

  “There’s an ice-devil in the lake!” cried Browneyes. “It’s got somebody!”

  CHAPTER 9

  The entire surface of the lake now glittered like polished silver in the afternoon sun; the cracks of the crystalline progression had disappeared and the lake was one single homogeneous mass. Except that somewhere, under all that glitter, the ice-devil lurked…As I shifted my feet I heard a crackling. The ground, which a moment ago had been soggy and resilient was now firm, glowing through the grass with the same cold lustre. Again we heard Wolff shouting.

  “Come on,” I said, drawing Browneyes along. We trod carefully from clump to clump on the tough, coarse grass, dreading to
step on the glassy hardness all around in case the ice-devil sensed our presence. I found myself in a blind alley, teetering on an isolated tussock, knowing that the distance to the next was too far to jump. I looked around to see Browneyes, too, swaying precariously. “What shall we do?” I asked her. “Can you go back?”

  “I can…” She turned and looked back the way we’d come. There was a distant scream from Ribbon. “But I don’t think it’ll help, Drove. The ice-devil has frozen all the water around here. We’ll never get out unless we walk on the surface.”

  “Is that safe?”

  “They say it is. They say so long as you keep going, and so long as the ice-devil has something else to think of…If it wanted to capture us, it would have to let go of who it’s already caught.”

  “All right. I’ll go first.”

  I stepped on to the crystal lake. Underfoot it was rock-hard; I bent down and touched the surface nervously; it was cold, but not too frightening. It was not slippery either, not like real ice. I nodded to Browneyes and she stepped down from her tussock, holding tightly on to my hand. I remember thinking with the ridiculous sentimentality of my age: if we go, we’ll go together.

  “Whereabouts are they?” asked Browneyes. “I thought Wolff was shouting from somewhere over there.” She indicated a point where the arm of the lake disappeared from sight among the reeds. It looked a long way off. “That was where it first started going solid. Around that corner.”

  We began to walk, treading lightly in order not to disturb the monster underneath, talking in whispers. After a while we reached the far shore and followed a winding, glittering path among spinethickets and reed. Wolff yelled again and suddenly I caught sight of him and Ribbon beyond a bush, about thirty paces away.

  Ribbon’s face was white with pain and Wolff was bending over her ankle. He looked up as we approached. “The ice-devil’s got her foot,” he said.

  They were sitting on the surface of the lake itself, several paces from the nearest patch of grass. “What were you doing out here?” I asked. “You knew there were ice-devils about. I told you we ought to keep to dry land.”

  “Yes, well we didn’t, did we? It’s too late for all that, now. We ought to be thinking about what we’re going to do, instead of holding a post-mortem.”

  He was right, of course. I knelt beside him. Ribbon’s right foot was locked solidly into the lake. The leg was cut off short just above the ankle, and through the translucent crystal I could faintly see her foot and, rather pathetically, the red shoe still in position. The pressure must have been considerable and I was surprised that she wasn’t making more noise.

  “What shall we do?” asked Wolff.

  They were all looking at me and I couldn’t see why I should be expected to dream up a solution when nobody else could. “Browneyes,” I said, “would you look after Ribbon for a moment? I must have a talk with Wolff.” That way, I thought, we could discuss the hopeless situation freely, without further alarming the trapped girl.

  Wolff and I withdrew amongst the scrub. “I saw this happen to a bird the other day,” I said. I described the death of the snowdiver. “So long as Ribbon keeps moving, the ice-devil will know she’s alive, and it won’t attack. I don’t think its tentacles are very strong—not even a big ice-devil like this one. They’re just thin tendrils for wrapping around a body and pulling it down.”

  “Ugh,” grunted Wolff, shuddering. His face was pale and sweaty. “Shouldn’t we send to the cannery for help? We could get men with picks. They could chip her free.”

  “That wouldn’t work. As soon as the ice-devil felt it was losing its grip, it would liquefy and re-crystallize instantly. That way it would get a better grip on her, and maybe some of the men too.”

  “So what do we do?”

  I thought hard. There was a possible way out, but I wasn’t sure if Ribbon was capable of taking it. It was worth a try, anyway. I explained to Wolff and he looked as doubtful as I felt.

  We returned to the girls. Browneyes looked up hopefully, but on seeing our expressions she averted her eyes. Wolff seated himself beside Ribbon, taking her hand.

  “Ribbon,” I said, “I want you to try something. I want you to be as still as you possibly can. Just don’t move, not at all, for as long as you can. That way, the ice-devil will think you’re dead. Right?”

  She nodded. Her cheeks were shiny with tears.

  “Then as soon as he relaxes and the lake turns to water again, jump backwards.” I pointed. “There’s a clump of grass right there and you could just make it before the ice-devil catches on, and crystallizes the lake again. We’ll stand back there and grab you when you come.”

  She looked at Wolff. “He means I wait here until the ice-devil starts reaching for me, Wolff?”

  Wolff glanced at me. “That’s right. Ready, then?”

  We withdrew to safety and left her sitting there. She looked at us and actually tried to smile as she hugged herself and forced her body to keep still. As I watched, I knew she wasn’t going to be able to do it. The cold was striking into her from the hard lake and no matter how she tried—and she did try—she could not control the involuntary shuddering that comes with the fear that cold brings. As much as Ribbon told herself she was not frightened, her body insisted that she was, and trembled to prove it…We watched her and we sorrowed for her, we murmured encouragement and we told jokes, but it was useless. She remained trapped in the pitiless crystal.

  “It’s no use,” she muttered at last. She flapped her chilled arms and shifted about.

  I couldn’t think of any other solution. The ice-devil wouldn’t free her until she was still, and she wouldn’t be still until she was dead. Even if we could bring ourselves to knock her unconscious, the creature in the lake would still be able to sense her breathing, her heartbeat. It was expert in such matters. That was how it lived.

  We stood over her and from time to time Wolff would make an impractical suggestion and then berate the rest of us because we would not accept it. “After all,” he said belligerently after we had turned down his scheme for pounding the lake with steam-gun fire, “We’ve got to try everything. Do you want to just leave her here to die? Have you any better ideas?”

  Surely it’s better to try everything, rather than just give up!”

  Ribbon said, surprisingly, “Wolff, will you please shut up and let us think?”

  About that time I had an idea. I couldn’t tell the others the details because it might have been a stupid idea—and whether it would work or not, I wasn’t sure that they would agree to it. Wolff, for one, would condemn it as defeatism, as clutching at a straw, as the fantasy of a diseased mind.

  “I think I can get her out of this,” I said carefully. “But if this is going to work, you and Browneyes will have to go away and leave us here for a while, Wolff.” I looked away from the hurt in my girl’s eyes.

  Wolff was puzzled but relieved. He was being absolved from responsibility. He made a token gesture, of course. “I hope you know what you’re talking about, Alika-Drove,” he said. “If you fail and Ribbon dies, you’ll be held personally responsible.”

  With this threat he took Browneyes’ arm and they departed.

  Ribbon was silent as I sat beside her, then after a while she looked up from contemplation of her invisible foot and said: “Well?”

  “Do you think you can stay calm for maybe a long time, and just trust me?”

  “I…I don’t know. Look, what’s all this about, Drove?”

  “It won’t work if I tell you, because then you’ll start hoping for it and I think maybe it’s too much to expect. It’s a thing that happens sometimes when you’re in trouble, that’s all. Provided you don’t get so scared that you demand it.”

  “Oh.” She tried to smile again. “Then maybe you’d better not tell me. Uh…Drove…?”

  “Yes?”

  “Please sit closer and put your arm round me. That’s better…don’t look so worried; Bro
wneyes can’t see. Oh…” she winced, clutching her ankle. “It hurts, Drove. It hurts so much.” She tensed in my arms, then relaxed shuddering. “It’s so cold here.”

  “Talk about something, Ribbon. Try not to think too much about the pain. Tell me about yourself. You might have time to tell me the story of your life.” I tried to grin into the wan face next to mine. “Make a start, anyway.”

  “You don’t like me very much, do you? I know it’s mostly my fault, but you can be freezing irritating yourself, Drove. You know that?”

  “I know, but let’s not talk about hate. Instead think of yourself as an animal in trouble. Animals don’t hate. They don’t blame people because their foot hurts. They don’t even blame the man who set the trap.”

  She cried a little, then said, “I’m sorry, Drove. You’re right. It’s not your fault I’m stuck here, it’s mine and that fool Wolff’s. Rax. If I ever get out of this I’ll tell that freezer just what I think of him and that stupid long nose of his!”

  “Ribbon!” I reproved her. “It won’t work unless there’s no hate.” But she was right; Wolff did have a long nose. “Have you ever noticed how close together his eyes are?” I asked interestedly.

  “Frequently.” She actually giggled, but then her eyes clouded over again as the involuntary movement brought more pain.

  “Ribbon,” I said quickly, “I think you’re very nice. You’re right that I didn’t like you much when I first met you, but now I know you better I think you’re very pretty and…nice,” I finished lamely, wondering how I’d had the nerve to say that, then realizing it was because I didn’t mind too much what she thought of me.

  “You’re all right yourself, Alika-Drove, under that chip of yours.” Her eyes were blue. She thought for a long time, then said, “If I ever get away from here, you know, I’m…I’m going to try to be better. Maybe…Maybe if more people knew what I was really like, then they’d like me more. I know I give a bad impression, just like you do. Afterwards…Will you promise me something, Drove?”