Читать книгу Vixen - - Страница 13

I strike south-west, outskipping Death. Only when I pause for breath do I realise how hectic has been my dash from the Great Mortality. My feet are worn out from dancing, my tongue a clapper of wood from all the jokes I’ve had to tell.

I stand at the gate of the forest and beg safe passage.

‘Oh, grandmother, let me in, and I’ll bring you the head of a charcoal-burner!’ I cry.

She opens to me straight away, for wood-burners are her greatest enemy.

‘Show me the path away from clever folk, and into the arms of simpletons,’ I add, for it pays to be specific when asking favours from powerful persons. ‘Do this, and I’ll steal a hundred axes, and throw them into the sea.’

She shakes her branches and a swish of laughter ripples overhead. She knows it is a brazen boast, but my heart’s-wood is behind it.

‘Lead me away from Death,’ I say, and she falls quiet.

I take it as a good sign. She makes no promises, nor does she make merry at my fear. It’s as good an answer as I’ll get from trees, so I content myself with it and press further into her labyrinthine belly. She draws me into her arms and I let her rock me. Death tries to follow, but her shadows conceal me from His eyes. I am safe under the swing of her cloak, for she is fearsome only to those who do not know her.

The forest is my song, the best kind: no words, but all manner of music. I tune my ear to her particular melody and she rewards me with all I need to know. I listen for clues, for knowledge, for information, for the sheer pleasure of it. Overhead, boughs rustle; dead leaves crunch underfoot and warn of pitfalls that can swallow your foot and snap it sideways. She guides me more clearly than any gazetteer, instructs me better than any primer, delights more than any gold-splashed psalter.

Most of all, she is peaceful. Where there are people, there is greed. Thievery. Falsehood. Murder. When beasts kill each other, they do so simply to eat. What I have seen of men is that they kill to clear a bigger space at the world’s table for themselves.

I pick my way with the tiptoe step of a deer, so delicate that when I come upon a herd, they lift their heads without fear. Some of the does are heavy-bellied, flanks quivering as the fawn within stirs in its wet sleep. In me they see a cousin crippled with two legs instead of four, not someone come a-hunting. I am to be pitied and not scurried from, so they bend their necks and return to the more important business of grazing.

I almost trip over a fawn. He lies still as a stone dropped from Heaven and marked with the thumbprints of the angel who threw him. I stare at him; he stares at me, eyes bigger than my fist and blacker than the bottom of a well. His nostrils flare: he catches my scent and presses his nose into the fork between my thighs. If he is seeking milk, he finds nothing but the scent of the sea.

‘You won’t hurt me, will you?’ I ask, and he trembles his answer.

His dam crashes through a bush and glares her jealousy. He droops his head, guilty for falling in love with another so fast, him not even weaned and her not gone five minutes.

‘And you,’ I say to her. ‘You’ll shake your head and stamp your hoof, but that’s all.’

She answers by doing both. The fawn sighs and takes her teat. Her envious glare melts into satisfaction. She’s not yet lost him to another female.

‘There are arrows far more deadly than those of love,’ I whisper, but she is deep in her trance of milk-giving and does not hear my warning. ‘Rest easy,’ I say. ‘I’m away.’

I’m as good as my word. With beasts there is no need for lies.

I am safe here; safe as anywhere on this unreliable earth. There are rabbits to snare, raven’s nests for my larder. Death cannot reach me. Perhaps I could hide in the trees and wait for Him to pass over.

But Death wants for amusement and so do I. I stuff my belly with eggs, laugh at the birds as they flap useless wings. Their blunt beaks cannot hurt me. What next for me? Who shall be my next fool? Where can I find me a dupe? So do I lie, sucking yolk from my fingers, head blooming with dangerous fancies. I ought to know better. I should be careful of what I wish for.