Poroth grinned. 'You sure you don't want to try your hand at this?' He held the scythe out in either invitation or challenge.
Freirs sighed. 'Oh, why not?' he said. 'Might as well see what I've been missing.' Making his way through the tall grass, he took the tool from Poroth's hand.
'You hold it like this,' said Poroth, twisting the blade around so that it was poised to cut, 'and you swing it like' – he demonstrated with his hands – 'this.'
Feeling as if he were gripping a bicycle, Freirs aimed for a clump of weeds and swung. The long curved blade, gleaming in the sunlight, swished harmlessly past them and almost caught him in the leg.
'You're trying too hard,' said Poroth, concealing whatever amusement he may have felt. 'Don't twist your body so.'
Freirs tried again; the tool still felt awkward in his grasp, but the blade caught the bottom of the weeds and whipped right through.
'You keep this thing pretty sharp,' said Freirs, staring at the blade with new respect.
Poroth reached into his back pocket and drew forth a thin grey rectangle of stone. 'Sharp as a razor,' he said. 'I whet the edge a dozen times a day. But mind you keep the blade up there, or you're going to strike against a rock, and 'twill be of no blessed use to me then. I've yet to clear this part of the field.'
Freirs brought the blade higher, but it was a more difficult position to maintain, putting more strain upon his shoulders. By the time he took a few more swipes, his shoulders ached.
'God!' he said, his pleasure draining away, 'they ought to make this thing smaller, with a lighter blade. I don't like the way this one's designed. You can't swing it without whirling yourself around.'
Poroth smiled. 'My friend, they've been using that design for a thousand years or more without a change. What you want's a sickle. It's a smaller tool, for a single hand to use. I've got one back at the house.'
'Fine,' said Freirs, rather dubious. 'That can be my next lesson.' He handed the scythe back to Poroth. 'Now I've had enough of playing farmer for the day. I think I'll play explorer.' He waved and began moving off.
Poroth watched him go. 'Mind you watch out for copperheads. They say the woods are thick with 'em this year. Brother Matt says he saw a pair last week, around three miles downstream. Don't go sticking your foot in any holes or clumps of brush, and don't go turning over rocks.'
Freirs stopped and looked suspiciously at the ground. 'What happens if I get bitten?'
Poroth shrugged and brought the scythe back up into position. 'You won't die,' he said. 'But you won't like it.' He began swinging the blade in a determined rhythm.
Freirs headed downstream with considerably less enthusiasm. He was aware that Poroth took pleasure in doomsaying, perhaps even in unnerving a visitor from the city, but the lure of exploration had diminished.
The worst thing, he discovered, was the mosquitoes. They hadn't been so bad up by the house, but down along the brook the air was thick with them, and he found he was continually fanning them away with every step. There were caterpillars, too, fat green ones that burst if you stepped on them, and little yellow ones that hung from every tree on invisible filaments of silk. Several times he found himself forced to take off his glasses when bugs and bits of leaf got caught between the lenses and his eyes.
For a hundred yards or so it was hard to tell where the fields left off and the woods began. He had to stick close to the brook, following an indistinct little trail that ran along beside it, for elsewhere the undergrowth made walking difficult. He was glad, at first, that he'd brought the field guide with him; here and there he stopped to look up various flowers – at least the ones he hadn't already squashed underfoot.
Crouching down, he identified the buds of a swamp rose mallow, which he remembered from Forbidden Games, and something called a great St-John's-wort, which the book rather unnecessarily warned him not to eat. A lot of things, it seemed, were poisonous in these woods. He was careful to memorize the three-leafed shape of poison ivy. At one point, noticing a large, exotic-looking flower, he half wondered if he'd stumbled upon some rare black orchid out of Tim Tyler's Luck, but it turned out to be nothing more than skunk cabbage. Soon afterward he began encountering massive clumps of the stuff; there was a moral here somewhere, he decided.
By this time he had lost interest in looking up any more names. The woods were getting thicker, with tall trees arching overhead, blotting out the sunlight. As he moved still deeper into them, attempting to follow the stream's path through branches that impeded his progress and snapped in his face, he discovered that he'd have to get his feet wet, for the trail had completely disappeared and the underbrush grew right down to the water's edge. Rolling up his pants, he hesitantly dipped one sneakered foot in, then the other. It was like stepping into an underground spring, and made him think of caves of ice deep beneath the earth. He gritted his teeth and walked on. Soon the cold seemed to go away; either he was getting used to it or his feet were numb. Ahead of him, like a bridge across the stream, rose a low archway of decaying boughs and vines. He ducked under it and continued forward, his sneakers sloshing in the water.
On the other side of the arch he saw that, as the stream curved west, it had formed a small circular pool with banks of wet sand surrounded by statuesque oaks, their roots thrust below the surface. Obviously a watering place, he decided; there were animal tracks in the sand – deer, no doubt, and what may have been a fox or perhaps some farmer's dog. He wished he'd brought his tracking manual with him; it was going to be difficult to check such things from memory.
The place, as he moved forward, seemed surprisingly familiar, but he wasn't sure just why. Had he dreamed of it?
He waded toward the center of the pool, the water rising past his ankles. Everything was silent but the birds, and they were few, calling to each other in the trees overhead. The air around him echoed with the sound.
Somehow he felt soiled here, impure, as if he himself were the impurity, the thing that made the birds cry out. He was suddenly conscious of his body: of the oily juices flowing from his pores, the noisy rush of air in and out of his nostrils, the foulness of the city that clung to his hair, the foulness of his flesh, the foulness deep within him. He had no business being in this place; his mind – a human mind, any mind at all – did not belong here. This pool was not for those who thought; thought defiled it. He felt the alien shoes upon his feet, the canvas, dye, and rubber, the filth of the city that had spawned him. And he looked down at himself, and saw the water lapping round his ankles, and his own reflection…
For an instant the two beings stared at each other, forest man and city man. And during that instant all sound, all movement, ceased. And he laid himself full length in the pool.
Afterward he stood, freezing water dripping from his shoulders and his hair. He heard the birds once more, singing with fury or joy, he couldn't tell which, and he saw the sunlight lancing down between the leaves in shimmering gold bars. A longing gripped him: he felt a strange pull to the west. And when, like the needle of a compass, he turned in that direction, looking westward from his fixed point in the center of the circle, it was as if the trees had opened. He could see the brook stretch endlessly ahead, shining into the heart of the forest like a thin silver line, pointing toward places only the birds and the animals knew. When he saw this he yearned to go farther, and dreaded to go farther, and was suddenly so tired that he turned and went running up out of the pool and lay exhausted in the sand.
As the afternoon drew on, the sky became overcast again. Rain hung like a promise in the air. He breathed deeply, found his feet, and took the homeward path, realizing, as he left it, where he'd seen the place before. It was in the Dynnod, on the card marked The Pool. The resemblance was uncanny.
The sky remained overcast all day, but the rain did not come. At night the sky was cloudy, and all the stars were hidden.
At dinner I was famished, thanks to the day's exertions, amp; found myself agreeing to a second helping of pie. So much for willpower! Wouldn't be surprised if I put on a few extra pounds before the summer's over.
Sarr and Deborah seemed a bit jumpy; I think we all felt Carol's absence. Or maybe it was the weather, that feeling of tension you get before a rain, a sense of something holding back. I certainly never saw them lose their temper at a cat before, as Deborah did tonight. For the past week she's been trying to convince Sarr to put bells around the cats' necks – she feels sorry for the mice and birds they kill – amp; so tonight, when Toby showed up at the door with feathers sticking out of his mouth amp; a tiny yellow leg among them, she almost had a fit; she snatched up the bread knife amp; chased him down the steps and halfway to the vegetable garden before she turned around and came back, looking very ashamed of herself. I thought for a second she would really run him through.
'Happy Fourth of July,' I said, but that didn't go over well. They regard the day as primarily a war holiday, a celebration of the military amp; an excuse for people to avoid work. You certainly get no feeling of the holiday out
