The Mantooth Part 29

'He never knew, because I didn't. . .how much I loved him.' She lowered her head and cried silently. 'How could I have been such a fool?'

Feeling awkward, for all their time together, he gently took her hand and rubbed it. For a time neither spoke. Then he said sincerely.

'If there is a G.o.d, he knows now.'

She looked up at him, so grateful, then embraced him with all the mingled love and sorrow for persons and places forever lost, and others found. He held her warmly, and after a time he added.

'At least the season is mild and safe. Perhaps the safest of the year. We will be free to move about with less worry.'

'And a month from now?' she could not help asking. Then she looked up quickly, hoping she had not repaid his kindness unfairly.

'It's all right,' he said, knowing her enough by now to read this in her face. 'In a month I will think of something else. I ask only this: that you don't punish yourself for what is gone, and what can never be..... Don't worry for the future, at least today.'

'All right.' She turned toward him, taking both his hands in hers.

'Did I ever tell YOU, Kalus? That I love. . .you?' She looked into his eyes, her spirit naked before him.

'Yes, my sweet Sylviana. Though you never said the words like this, you told me many times. You showed me.' He struggled. 'You know that I would die for you---' She put a finger to his lips.

'Live for me, instead.' And they quietly embraced.

A moment later, Sylviana saw beyond his shoulder the outline of what appeared to be a stalking predator. The image yet unresolved through her tears, it dropped slinking down into the gorge.

'Kalus. Something's coming this way.' He turned quickly, and she pointed. He drew his sword, and put her behind him with his arm.

He was about to tell her to withdraw, when something in the shadowy movements struck a familiar chord inside him. His eyes brightened, then he smiled outright. Once more the mad happiness engulfed him.

'It's Avatar!'

'Yes.'

'And there's no trace of a limp. He's moving the way a great cat should. See him climb!'

But as the striped form drew on, showing no sign of either fear or recognition, she felt a tremor of doubt. Surely the tiger they had known was not so large and supple. Yet as it slowed its movements and broke again into sunlight, she recognized the eyes and striped markings of their friend. Before she could ask, Kalus answered her.

'He's nearly full grown now. A few more months and no grizzly will dare to stand up to him.' Looking at the powerful creature so close at hand, she found this easy to believe. For all her familiarity and trust, she could not help but feel a certain awe and fear. Even the muscles in Kalus' arm tensed involuntarily, as it came to a halt perhaps a dozen feet away. But the tension was not lasting. Sheathing his sword, he spoke its name and began to advance toward it.

But at this the tiger turned away curiously, as if to retreat. Once more he gestured and spoke to it, but upon trying to come closer the result was the same.

'I think he wants me to follow him. I don't understand his urgency, but I think that I should. Will you be all right?'

'Yes. Be careful. What about Alaska?'

'Keep her here with you, until I find out what he's trying to tell me.' Turning one last time. 'I love you.'

'Go on, will you? And watch where you're going, you're going to break your neck.'

'All right. Goodbye.' He slowly disappeared among the shadows of the gorge.

The tiger had begun by leading him southward along the bottom of the gorge. He kept waiting for it to turn away westward, or double back upon its tracks, since the sandstone hills that formed the southern border of his world were the unsleeping realm of the mountain cats. And though the tiger was the match of any unaltered creature of the winter forests, these powerful, saber-toothed throwbacks were not to be tested.

And at the point where the sandstone and granite ridges met..... He could not even think about that. With every step he became more leery, and whispered as loudly as he dared for the tiger to stop and turn back.

But to his utter dismay, it held fast to the deepening gorge until the end.

Like a nightmare Kalus' felt his fears surround him, and all hope and safety slip behind. The walls at either hand became too steep to climb.

His messenger and guide, who for its own sake he dared not abandon, refused to heed his warnings. The shadows grew deeper, and up ahead he began to describe, half in fearful imagination, half in stark reality, the outline of the darkest shadow that yet lived in all the Valley.

Like a hole broken in the side of some ancient subterranean dungeon, straight ahead of him, larger than natural life, he saw the yawning blackness of the Commodores' cave. Only once before, as an adolescent, had he observed it, from the high western wall. And when the side-winding, forty foot reptile had sauntered out, tasting the hot summer air with its tongue, he had run like the fleetest antelope, oblivious to the singular (and dangerous) spectacle he made, his one desire to be as far from the killing serpent as possible. His more recent encounter had only galvanized his fears.

Yet here he was, after years of struggle on the brink of a personal victory, with love and hope in sight, being drawn irresistibly to the one place above all others that he was loathe to go. Indeed, it was the peril of these Winter-sleeping creatures that made him most uneasy in thoughts of the coming Spring.

His anger and fear merged into maddening exasperation, but still the tiger plodded forward, heedless. It reached the dark overhang of sandstone and gazed back at him. Yet again he repeated the gestures of withdrawal, made unable by the consequences to speak. The tiger nodded its understanding, or seemed to, but then to his horror and final consternation, dove headlong into the grinning maw of death.

Once again Kalus was faced with the terrible choice: loyalty to one he loved, or survival for himself. He stood trembling on the threshold, frozen with fear and burning with inner conflict. He looked back upon the sunlit world and thought of his home: of his woman, and the cub.

But what kind of home would it be if he abandoned his friend at greatest need? Swallowing hard a cry of rage to deaf G.o.ds, he drew out the ready steel of his sword, and plunged into darkness.

The hollow funnel of the pa.s.sage had been worn flat by the years, and by the constant pa.s.sing of the inscrutable reptiles. Kalus saw and heard nothing---only the pounding of his heart, and the gentle rasp of his fur boots against the life-dry sandstone. He moved by sense of feel and air, in times of doubt probing ahead of him with the sword. How far ahead the tiger had gone he had no way of knowing. And more and more he began to feel that if he must come upon the scene of its shadow-sprung peril, he would at least come upon it after, and in silence. He crouched lower and (if possible) stalked more quietly, advancing in a state of warlike readiness.

How far he walked he could not say. But suddenly, or perhaps only made sudden by the final acceptance of a half believed message from his eyes, he became aware of a soft light in the distance. This morning-like glow held fast at the edge of sight, and as he drew closer, began by slow degrees to reveal its source. Ahead of him the funnel reached its narrowest point, a squarish hole still broad enough for five men to pa.s.s abreast, that opened into a deepening expanse. Coming toward the rising, hard-rock lip of it, he went down on his belly, crawled forward, and looked over into the heart of the thing he feared.

There are times when a man's worst fears are justified, and when he cannot, with any hope of survival, confront them. But often through patience, perseverance, and the fullness of time, the ant.i.thesis of his life can be worn down, altered, or made in the end less terrible. And while it is the height of foolishness for any man to laugh in the face of death, neither must he deify the many smaller deaths of Fear.

There in the sunken center, the stage, as it were, of this vaulted subterranean amphitheater, stood the tiger on a patch of sandy earth, among a tangle of living scrub. A soft and warm light shone down on him through a broad opening in the stone overhead. Nor was it a mere hole to the world beyond. Through one of the many wonders of Nature, a vein of crystalline quartz interceded, allowing the sun's light to pa.s.s, while gathering and holding a fair measure of its warmth.

All these things he observed in the time it took for his eyes to adjust to what seemed a blinding glare, though in reality it was many shades lighter than the unfiltered sunlight. He had not yet seen the shadows: the tiger was not alone.

There, stretched lengthwise amid recessions in the descending, stair-like levels, as if the whole of a deceased family among the layered shelvings of a crypt, a full score of the dreadful reptiles lay sleeping. It was a sight to freeze the blood, but for one odd detail which their considerable girth clearly ill.u.s.trated. THEY DID NOT BREATHE. Or if they did, it was so infrequently that in the considerable time he watched he never saw it. No heave or swell of the elastic ribs and dry, loose-fitting skin could be seen, even where an entire flank stood out against the unshaded light from above. BUT SURELY THEY WERE NOT DEAD. No sign of decay could be seen on them, nor any apparent cause of death.

Sylviana had told him of the aquatic lizards of the Galapagos Islands, who when diving for the sea vegetation which sustained them could hold their breath for an hour or more, even stopping their heartbeat to do so. But even this did not fully explain the phenomenon by which these enormous, cold-blooded creatures could remain suspended for the nearly six month period when the world outside became to them untenable, or reveal the inner clock that told them to wake once more, and slowly revive into a living state.

The tiger, who had discovered this place on that first, bitter wandering from the man-child's cave, being drawn by its warmth and shelter, had no need for such questions, and simply accepted the fact. He had returned one time since, and in his animal way reasoned that these, like all hibernating creatures, would not be stirring until the weather turned warm. And now that the time had come for him to return again northward, to the long forests where Winter hardly waned, he desired to give some last gift to his friend, who had helped bring him back to the world of the living. This gift was the magic of the green, budding cactus which on that troubled night had opened his mind to show him that his own feelings, as well as the strange company who had taken him in, could be trusted. He looked up at the Kalus placidly, waiting for him to come down.

Kalus stood regarding the scene some moments longer. Though he slowly reasoned that the danger was remote, or at least not immediate, a den of dragons, be they live, dead or sleeping, is not to be entered lightly.

And he could not imagine why the tiger had brought him here. At last he began to descend, though warily, all the time watching the silent shapes for any sign of movement or consciousness. There were none. He came to the dry, earthy disc in the bowl's center, and approached the tiger.

His expression and body language were taut as he said. 'Why, Avatar?

Why, of all the places you have ever been, did you bring me here?'

In mute reply the tiger carefully took one of the buds in his teeth and plucked it free, as on that night he had done, seeking the moisture and sustenance within. Then began to chew, curling his lip and tongue in reaction to the bitter taste. But the taste had been bitter on that first night as well.

Kalus knelt to examine the plant, and the special part that his friend had eaten. YOU BROUGHT ME HERE TO TASTE THE FRUIT OF A GNARLED DESERT?

he thought curiously. For so it seemed to him. But looking into the deep, mysterious eyes of the tiger, and again at the strange plant he had never seen, he wondered. Using the hunting knife he carefully cut away several of the buds, placing them in his pouch. He was tempted to put the last in his mouth, but something warned him off. Not until I am free of this place, he thought, and the tiger seemed to understand.

Together they withdrew, to ride the dragon's wing.