Silverlock (Prologue Books) Read online

  Madness is a distrust of reason. The bitter faith that I had in mine kept my brain from cracking. Yet it also shut out comfort. A mad man can ease his griefs by outlawing facts. There was in my case no use in telling myself that such a thing could not happen to a man, because I knew it had happened to me.

  Nevertheless, comfort of a sort was at hand. My squeals awakened other inmates of the sty to come snuffling and grunting around me. At first I scorned their overtures, but when I had worn myself out trying to avoid them, they gathered about me again. Having worked myself into a sweat, I was cold when I gave up. Their bodies pressed against mine felt good. We spent the night heaped together, hog-fashion, and by morning I had made terms with my new life. What was to be gained by arguing with reality? I still had fits of melancholia, but the business of being a pig was absorbing most of my time. All my associates were swine, too, so it didn’t seem so bad.

  Just the same my philosophy failed me when I heard human voices. Ashamed, I slunk into a far corner of the pen; warily, too, for I recognized the tones of my hostess of the night before. She was accompanied by Golias, whom she was apparently taking on a tour of the premises.

  “And these are my swine,” she was saying. “Wait; I’ll bring them nearer.”

  With his help she dumped a huge basket of acorns into the sty, and I heard myself giving a grunt of satisfaction. Fear, hatred, and shame made me loth to get closer, but my stomach was master. In a jiffy I was shouldering my way through the dozen or so hogs which had quickly gathered.

  The woman laughed delightedly. “Aren’t they beauties?”

  Keeping an eye on them as I champed, I saw that Golias’ face was drawn. “Your animals are very interesting,” he said, “but I’m looking for a man.”

  “H-m-m, so am I,” she responded. She was not the quiet housebody she had been with me. Now she was playfully arch, canting her head as she laughed at him. “Have you seen one about?”

  Trying to give a grunt of warning while I chewed, I choked on my acorns; but Golias inched away. “I’ve been on Aeaea before,” he said huskily.

  Instantly her face hardened, and her eyes blazed at him as they had so dreadfully at me. “What are you doing here, if you know better?”

  Golias was nervous, but he stood his ground. “A fellow was cast ashore with me, Circe. I tracked him here.”

  I remembered how I had lied to cheat him out of her hospitality, and she did, too. “He didn’t share your feeling of comradeship,” she informed him. “He would have let you die.”

  “But I wouldn’t let him die,” Golias told her. “I took it upon me to save him in spite of himself, and now I’m bound to him. Where is he?”

  “Not far away, if that’s any comfort to you.”

  “One of these! Why?”

  She met his look of horror with a cold smile. “I don’t really change men very much, you know. All I do is bring about conformity between a state of being and the skin which holds it. Your friend cared only for food and fornication, so I did him a favor. As a swine he’ll have no distracting influences.”

  “But he couldn’t help desiring you,” Golias smoothed his voice as he spoke. “It can be no news to you that you’re lovely.”

  “Then I want to be loved in the way of my lions; or to meet with a lust I can take personally, in the way of my wolves. But he — ” She bared white teeth and clicked them. “He looked at me as if I were an oyster he was about to slide past his palate. If I’d thought faster, I would have made him something lower.”

  “You weren’t able to,” he asserted.

  Thinking about me, she had worked herself into a bad humor. His remark brought it to a boil.

  “Oh, you think I wasn’t? I tell you he got off easy, and as for you — ”

  “What?” He wasn’t happy about the change of subject, yet he looked at her steadily. “I haven’t touched your damned doped food.”

  “Maybe I can do nothing with you,” she conceded; but the admission made her more furious than ever. “But I could have turned your friend into something a pig would look down on, and I still can.”

  “You’re bragging,” he insisted.

  I listened anxiously, wishing Golias wouldn’t aggravate her. About then, however, I lost track of the dispute. The acorns had been thinned out, and the competition was getting stiff. I nipped a hog that was trying to beat me to a small pile of them, but while I was gobbling the prize, he counter-attacked. Squealing with rage, I rushed him to the fence and pinned him there. I had just got my teeth set in his ear when I felt myself being hoisted by one of my own. Before I knew what was happening I was grabbed by a hind leg and dragged over the top rail of the pen.

  “Come on!” Golias cried as he dumped me in free territory. “Start running!”

  No doubt he meant well, but there was no sense to it that I could see. As long as I remained a hog the best place for me was the sty. Hearing the other pigs still grubbing acorns was more than I could stand, and I made a clumsy attempt to jump back over the fence. Once again Golias took me by the ear, lifting my forelegs from the ground as he turned me to face the other way.

  “Damn it, get moving!” he roared. “She’s gone for her wand! She’ll turn you into a bug or a dirt-eating worm!”

  That reached me both as a man and a pig. As a man, the thought of further degradation was revolting. As a pig, the thought of lowering my eating standard was equally horrifying. I started to run, but he grabbed me by the tail.

  “Not that way! Follow me!”

  A lean boar, I was gratified to discover, can run fast. I had need of foot speed that day. When we reached the forest, I slowed down in spite of Golias’ urgings. We seemed out of danger, and I wanted to keep my eye out for some food. I lost interest in foraging, though, when a conglomerate howling reached us.

  “She’s fired their natures against us,” Golias gasped. “The whole menagerie will be on our trail.”

  The last words had to catch up with me. He didn’t have to tell a pig what to do when wolves howled and lions gave the hunting roar. I scuttled along, never deviating for anything less than a palmetto. At first I distanced Golias, but I found myself a sprinter only. Soon the knowledge that the hunting cries were nearer was all that kept my hoofs working.

  Golias took the lead, panting occasional words of encouragement. “We’ll make it. Keep coming! It can’t be much farther.”

  I didn’t know what ‘it’ was, though I assumed he knew of a place to hide. Unable to see far ahead or to look over my shoulder, I doggedly worked my legs, kicking up leaves in a treadmill of terror.

  Because of my short range of vision we were almost at the ocean before I was aware of it. Golias was already in the water, and I saw my doom. There was no refuge but the sea, which for me was no refuge at all. My strength exhausted with running, I knew I could not swim far enough to do any good.

  Slowing, I looked up and down the beach. Finding nothing helpful, I peered behind me. Somewhere in the rear I could hear wolves, but in this short run the cats were having the best of it. The leading pair of leopards, one a pace behind the other, were not fifty yards away.

  That was all I needed to see. A man might reason that the sea was a sure death trap, but a pig had to save his meat from the hunters while he could. Groaning, I gathered myself for a plunge into the water. I didn’t move. Frantically I churned the sand with my feet, but I got no traction.

  I could hear the soft thudding as the leopards bounded toward me. It seemed to me that I could hear their jaws snapping. My flesh winced in advance from the pain of their rending talons. Still I made no progress, and I knew myself lost. Throwing all the rest of my life into a cry of protest, I shut my eyes and squealed.

  When I felt a grip on my ears I thought it was one of my pursuers until I felt fingers grip one of my legs. “Close,” Golias panted as he waded into the sea with me. “I’d forgotten you couldn’t leave under your own power while she had her spell on you.”

  If he added anything to that rema
rk, I didn’t catch it. For the second time in two days I blacked out.

  3

  A Map of the Commonwealth

  WHEN I CAME out of it I was human again, but I wasn’t glad of that or anything. After I had finished vomiting acorns, I was still sick. Yet physical malaise was but a small part of my grief. The complacence around which I had been moulded had been torn from me, leaving me propless.

  My only philosophy, if you could call it that, had been a contempt for life backed by a pride in that contempt. Now even those cold allies had deserted me. It had not been contempt for life which had made me run so hard and which had squeezed that scream out of me when I thought my case hopeless. Every labored breath I had drawn through my snout had seemed precious to me, and I still shook from relief at my escape.

  As for my pride, it bled from too many wounds to make any of them seem worth staunching. One alone was enough to be mortal. The cynic’s vanity — the one which gives him license to be scornful where other men delight — is the assumption that he knows the inner workings of things. The fact was that I had reached a region where I didn’t know the score at all.

  “How do you feel?” Golias asked, when I finally pushed myself up to a sitting position.

  I peered to get my bearings. We were obviously on the other island, a hilly one in contrast to flat Aeaea, which was again capped with mist. Then I glanced at my companion out of the corner of my eye. He was lying down, still breathing hard from the effort of towing me across the intervening channel. His right arm, the one I hadn’t troubled to move into the shadow for him while he slept, must have pained him with every stroke he took. It was an angry red.

  “Oh, all right for an ex-pig, I guess.” I neither turned my face toward him nor offered a hook on which to hang further conversation. Instead I lay down, closing my eyes, and to my relief he let me alone.

  Better yet, he soon murmured something about taking a look around and walked off along the shore. As soon as he was out of sight, I also left the spot, heading in the opposite direction. He had seen me exposed too completely as a skunk and a fool to make the idea of association tolerable.

  The island turned out to be little else than a mountain jutting out of the ocean. Near the sea the slopes were free of timber here and there, but for the most part they were hidden by jungle. The chief visible inhabitants were goats, a variety of birds, and sundry sea creatures. Ready to serve were clams, crabs, and turtle eggs, though I would have preferred the last two cooked. Enough streams and runlets twisted down from the mountain to solve the problem of obtaining fresh water.

  I learned that much the first day. It took me several more, picking my way along the rocky shore in my bare feet, to walk around the island. It would have been simpler to make a survey from the top of the mountain, but I was leery of entering woods whose livestock was an unknown quantity. If I had learned nothing else on Aeaea, I had learned caution.

  What I was seeking was human society — any society except that of Golias’, that is — but when I did find a footprint in a patch of moist sand, it scared me. The print was a huge one, much too big to be made by the man I was sulkily dodging. If the foot had been shod, I would not have been alarmed; but it wasn’t. Notwithstanding my own shoelessness, bare feet represented savagery. This was fitting to a jungle-covered mountain; and where there was one such man there might be hundreds. It was only mid-afternoon when I made the discovery. Nevertheless, I holed up at the next possible hiding place while I thought things over.

  I spent a bad night, caused only in part by the footprint. For one thing my mind was fighting with my vanity. The issue was whether I should eat crow. My reason for considering the diet was that I could tell from the relative position of Aeaea that I had nearly circled the island. Meanwhile I had found no sign of civilized residents, nor any indication that ships called there. As things stood, my only possible companion, or ally in the event of trouble, was Golias — if he was still willing to put up with me.

  Breakfasting moodily on raw turtle eggs, I suddenly saw that it was perhaps too late. A man who knew the ropes as well as Golias did might have found a way to get off the island. Alarmed, I set out in search of him. My feet had toughened somewhat, so it was no longer hard for me to make time.

  He was not far from where we had landed, just emerging from a dip in the sea, when I came upon him. Making it easy for me, he greeted me as if he had seen me within the hour. Yet I couldn’t take his fellowship again with nothing said. I scowled at him.

  “By the way, thanks for helping me the other day. I wouldn’t have done it for you.”

  He shrugged. “We’ll see when the time comes.”

  This man whom I had once scorned as a pipe dreamer held the upper hand in every respect, but I wasn’t going to let him think it mattered to me. “With one chance to double-cross you I batted a thousand,” I reminded him. He made no comment, and I reluctantly asked a question to which I had to know the answer. “Of course, it’s nice to be recognized, but how did you pick me out from that bunch of hogs?”

  The skin crinkled around his eyes, though he didn’t quite grin. “There was only one that was dark-haired with a patch of silver on his noggin. It had to be you.”

  I fingered the white streak in my hair. “Well, I’m glad it wasn’t a special smell or something.” Desperately as I hoped he wouldn’t refuse, I meant to show him I wasn’t tagging after anybody. “Look; I might not let you down again — or I might. Do we stick together?”

  “Why do you think I came after you? The indications are plain that the Delian’s given us to each other for a while, for whatever may come of it.” Before I could comment, he was speaking again. “You walked all around the island?”

  “Yes,” I nodded. “And I didn’t see anything good.”

  “Anything bad?”

  He listened with interest while I told him about the footprint. “I thought it possible when I took a look from the peak; but it’s been so long since I was in this part of the Archipelago I’d forgotten where this isle stood from Aeaea.” He gazed up at the mountain thoughtfully. “I’m inclined to think that the footprint was left behind by a transient.”

  I gave a grunt of relief. “Then from what I’ve seen, we could have the place, if we wanted it.”

  “It’s got us,” he corrected me. “No matter what island you’re on, the trick is to get off it, and it’s never an easy trick.”

  While I watched in mild astonishment he removed his loin cloth. In one of its folds was a knife in a brine-cracked leather sheath. Drawing the blade, he cut the simple garment in two and handed me half.

  “A man,” he observed, “can carry almost everything he really needs in his mind except food and pants.”

  My shorts hadn’t followed me through my transformations, a fact which had increased my sense of helplessness. A little of my self-confidence returned when I had rigged myself a sort of diaper.

  “Speaking of food,” I said, as I knotted it in place, “have you found anything to eat here except raw sea food?”

  “Cooked sea food, for one thing.” Unable to tuck his knife away again in his reduced loin cloth, Golias pointed with it to indicate a grove of palms not far back from the shore. “Come on over to my camp, and I’ll show you.”

  We didn’t get that far. Crossing an intervening stretch of meadow, we heard a snort. A young goat which had been taking it easy in the high grass jumped to its feet and returned my look of surprise. Possibly it had never seen a man before, and certainly it never saw one again. Golias’ hand snapped back in a motion which shook the sheath from the blade. When his hand snapped forward again, the knife sped through the air to land in the kid’s throat. The animal only made about thirty yards before dropping at the edge of the beach.

  “Lunch,” my companion remarked. “We ought to have something to go with it, though. How about going up hill and bringing in some grapes — I saw lots of them when I was reconnoitering — while I take this fellow out of his hide?”

  “Shal
l I bring them to your camp?” That seemed an unnecessary question, but I wanted to stall a minute. I still thought it likely that things which would feed on me were as common in the jungle as anything I might consider edible.

  “No use in going any farther, when we have everything to hand here.” Golias nodded to where a runlet dribbled out of the meadow, then looked at me enquiringly.

  Afraid he would guess why I hesitated, I started the ascent. I didn’t walk very far into the jungle, but that wasn’t necessary. Among the vines which swarmed among the trees I discovered wild grapes, just coming ripe. Delighted at making good so easily, I picked half a dozen huge bunches and hastened back to the edge of the meadow. There delight gave way to soberer feelings.

  In that section of the mountain the jungle began well up the slope. Emerging from the trees higher up than my point of entry, I found myself on a ridge falling away to the ocean on both sides. My hope that we might be near a sea lane died as I looked. Around either shore swept an immensity of water, barren of ships. Moreover, the very notion that a ship could come from those empty horizons seemed untenable.

  When I had been lost in the ocean, it had not daunted me; but I was daunted now. The shock of my recent experience was still with me. Having worn lesser garments, I could feel my humanity around me and knew its needs. Those needs could not be serviced in solitary confinement, which was the sentence I read on those otherwise blank waters. In an unguarded moment I opened my mind to the promised years. My reason raced down them and threatened not to come back.

  As I fought with horror, I caught sight of Golias, still busy where I had left him on the beach. I stopped sweating, and my heart ceased to pound. At least my solitude was not complete. Unwontedly eager for companionship, I hurried downhill.

  The kid was gutted and skinned. Golias had gathered driftwood also, and was in the act of laying a fire when I rejoined him. I had forgotten to ask him what he was going to do about a fire, but he had an answer. With a chip of flint he made sparks against the back of his knife. One of them caught in the tinder he had gathered, and careful breathing turned the glow into a flame. Salted with sea water, a haunch was soon roasting above it.