“You killed a tree; and then the tree killed you.”
Dirk waited. Motes of dust revolved in the lamplight. The drawn curtains gapped at the top, revealing a dart of dulled sky. He said at last, “That isn’t a question.”
“You went to a forest. It was not a forest of the mortal world.”
“Dreams are not of the mortal world, Herr Doktor.”
“If it was not a dream, where did you go?”
“If I have no answer, it must have been a dream.”
“You spoke to someone? A spirit of some sort, maybe a spirit of the forest? What the Greeks called a dryad? Or was she called Pythia?”
“These are questions?”
“Did you speak to a wood-nymph?” Then: “If you don’t want to say, tell me this: Did you talk to someone else?”
“You’re making fun of me. You’re horrendous.”
“Young man. I know what it means to be ridiculed. I wouldn’t turn against someone the same weapons that have been raised against me.”
But Dirk couldn’t quite believe him, believe any of this. He got up and left the room without replying, or even nodding farewell. Tore down the stairwell of the seedy Heilig-Geist Spital, past the suffering old souls with their whimpering or catatonia, and threw open the door into the safer, untheoretical world.
46.
The closed drapes of Herr Doktor’s chambers had hidden from Dirk a change in the weather. He found himself slipping on a doorsill and sliding several steps into a street gone ghostly with snow.
At this time of the year! It must have raged in across the lake. A few dark ravens swooped at the height of attic windows from one end of the lane to the other, like spies on a mission. Otherwise the neighborhood was deserted.
He stumbled any which way, circling through the Schlossplatz and under the archways into the Marktplatz. For a moment the sun was a white thumbprint upon a blue-white pane of ice. Then, skirls of snow rose and fell again, until the curbs, the hitching posts, even the timbered window lintels and iron lamp-posts disappeared in annihilating impasto.
He sensed the opening up of the square, somehow, perhaps by a characteristic of echo if nothing else. Though how to move across it diagonally to find the right lane that would lead back to Nastaran and her sons—that was impossible and would remain so until the squall moved on. He ought just stop and stand, or lean against a building. A surprised blue sky would blink overhead momentarily and citizens would start to come out and laugh at the assault.
He moved sideways with his left arm out, to find the nearest wall and then trace it to a doorway or portico where he could huddle a moment, but no wall rose quickly to steady him. He tried to remember if a set of steps led out of the square. The old town had its drops and climbs. He didn’t want to lose his footing. He couldn’t remember. This wasn’t his town. He would never know it intimately enough to be safe here.
It seemed for an instant that the sun had swollen and come nearer, trying to find him through the storm. A disc of white gold bumbled above him, hovering and uncertain. A touch of pale apricot, a circlet of dissolved flame—it was hard to draw into focus. He couldn’t determine what it was as it plunged, nearly overhead, with a noise separate from that of the wind.
Then he was knocked sideways off his feet by a carriage of some sort, a sledge without horses or the like. Propelled by some arcane and invisible hand, it bumped and scraped and even bounced along the snow-gritted cobbles at a velocity unusual in a town square. Dirk fell heavily against a doorway—and caught the whiff of balsam and of some strange incense, a charcoal opiate. He felt himself lift, then drift, as if he were an integument of the wind. Absorbed into the separate whiteness of unconsciousness.
47.
The snow parted, retreating and lifting like ranks of theatre curtains. It didn’t stop falling, but it became less swirling and blinding. The forest emerged, crept forward. In a clearing a few inches above the white ground hovered a basket of woven wicker and bramble, large enough for Nastaran and her husband and her sons, though not perhaps for Dirk.
He approached the carriage. No wings, no stilts or feet, no cord or pulleys—just a rustic box in the air, a tray with high sides, hovering and slipping sideways.
Either his eye became accustomed to the light or the figures just appeared, colored shadows printed upon the obscure landscape. Within the vehicle: a woman with fierce coppery hair, her pale hands upon the balustrade of the basket. Next to her, crouched upon the rail, a hunched wizened figure, scowling. The woman wore green, the brave irresponsible color of new ferns. The other creature looked blackened as if by smoke.
Dirk stood, he didn’t approach them, but the basket drifted nearer.
“How long will you take?” she said to him.
“To do what? To die?” he asked.
“To live, to give us life.” She was cross and fiery.
“He’s the wrong one, he hasn’t got what it takes either to live or to die,” muttered the squatting creature.
“You have a spark inside you,” she said to Dirk. “Let it go out or let it loose, one or the other. What is your life for? You chose to live, you chose this world! What is this half-living? Even a mouse has more intention.”
The sour companion interrupted. “Mercy on the human. He didn’t ask for us or our demands. Leave him be, leave him alone. We’re fucked.”
“I don’t know what you are asking of me. I don’t know who you are,” Dirk replied.
“You have the means to find out.” She folded her arms. “You don’t try.”
“Open your heart, open your mind. Open your mouth,” said the gnome-thing. “Open your trousers. Open your ears. Open your eye.”
“You took the knife,” said the one perhaps called Pythia. “You took it from us. What is a knife for but opening?”
“A knife can be used for killing, for severing,” said the henchman. He began to stand up. “Or for cracking open the nut-case and finding the kernel. Someone has to do it.” At full height, standing on the rail, he was only a little taller than the dryad or goddess. He lifted his head from where it crunched into his neck. His flanks were ragged fur, and from his matted hair could be noted two curving horns. “Aren’t you ashamed to be so lost? We have our own sorry excuse, but you?”
“I died a long time ago,” said Dirk. “The old man tried to kill me, but I died before he could manage it.”
“Listen to me.” The woman spoke in a cold voice. “We’re all severed—we are, the forest is, you are—it’s the nature of the world. Some agents can recover. For themselves, for us, for others. What are you waiting for?”
“Lost is not an address, it’s not a permission to fail, it’s not an excuse.” With shocking vigor, like that of a young warrior, the creature hopped upon the ground and approached on cloven hoof. “It’s a reason to read the world.” His breath was meaty, his animal nakedness unnegotiated. “Panic,” he said, either a prediction or a directive. “Panic.” Leaning backward so the goat-man wouldn’t be able to press his hands upon his lapel, Dirk stumbled. “Open panic, open the past, open something,” snarled the creature.