He strode out at once. If he had hesitated now, he would never have been able to go on. The ground between the trees was springy with leaf-mould; it yielded underfoot, an oddly intimate sensation – he felt as if the forest were accepting him. He was striding so determinedly that Isaac had to hurry to catch up. 'This way, you think?' Isaac said, and it was only then that Alan realized that he was acting as if he knew.
He glared about. He couldn't know, there was nothing to recognize, it was all the same: the moist green velvet light, the looming juicy green of vegetation, screams and leaping overhead, snakes like liberated vines. Fruit bats dangled, furry blotches in the dimness; they hadn't been in his dreams. He was walking in the direction the jeep had been going, that was all. 'It's as good a way as any,' he muttered. He mustn't stop, he mustn't falter; above all, he mustn't think about what he'd done in his dream.
The trees went on for ever. The world had turned into forest. The darkening path felt warm and soft as fur. A whirring overhead made him glance up. He'd thought it was a flock of bats, but it was a helicopter, invisible above the mass of foliage. It seemed a promise of help, until he realized that it could never land in the forest. The sound was already fading away to his left, away from the path he had to follow.
He couldn't know that; there was nothing to show that it was. His dream meant nothing, he mustn't trust a dream. But there was one thing he couldn't ignore: that long before his meeting with the chief, he'd already dreamed of doing what the chief had told him he must do. His innards were struggling now, rebelling. Just because the path was darkening, that didn't necessarily mean he was near his goal – but he would be there eventually, he had no choice but to act out his dream. He felt as if he weren't so much walking now as stumbling forward under the weight of that thought.
Isaac halted him. The translator was gazing about, holding up one hand for quiet. He stood for a while, then he shook his head. It had only been the helicopter. 'We should be stealthy now,' he whispered, 'in case we are near.'
Alan found his own voice was too shaky to control. 'Do you think we are?'
'I don't know. But we ought to be careful.' Isaac was gazing at him as if to discover how Alan would face what lay ahead. 'I told you that they may hunt in packs – if they are the last traces of the original Ju-ju.'
But now it was Alan who was gesturing for silence. He'd been staring ahead between the trees, where the path darkened progressively. Now he saw why. A quarter of a mile or so further on, the foliage closed in, a tangle of young trees and creepers and vines. There was no longer a path.
He knew what that meant. In these last days in the forest, such places had been the only signs of humanity they had found: deserted native farms, cleared areas where plants and small trees had taken over. Why did the sight of this latest one make his throat grow dry and burning?
He was stumbling forward before he knew it, hardly aware of the leaf-mould beneath his feet, hushing his footsteps. As he approached the tangle of vegetation, not only dimness but silence closed in, as if the green wall could soak up sound as well as light. After the incessant clamour of monkeys and birds, the silence was suffocating. He could hear his heart, which sounded large, juicy, very soft. He felt intensely vulnerable and, despite Isaac, quite alone.
But the faint track was turning. It bypassed the impenetrable confusion of trees and undergrowth. For a moment he felt as if he'd been reprieved, as if he wouldn't have to do what his dreams and the chief and Isaac had all told him he must. He glimpsed dim conical shapes through chinks in the foliage.
'It's just another deserted village,' Isaac said.
Did he sound relieved? Nevertheless he was still whispering. 'Abandoned,' Alan corrected him, and halted, legs suddenly trembling. He had seen a gap in the tangle, a way through.
It took him a long time to step forward. He could see that it was the hidden entrance to a path. It had been made since the perimeter of the village had become overgrown – since the village had been abandoned. The place was not deserted.
As he took one stumbling step forward, more to keep his balance than out of any wish to go on, a fragment of the undergrowth scuttled away from him. It was a chameleon that was turning into jungle. The shock brought him back to himself: he no longer felt he was sleepwalking. Isaac was fully aware of what he was doing, coming all this way for Alan, away from his wife and his bright-eyed daughters. If he could do so much for Alan, surely Alan could do what he must for his own family? Perhaps he could if he didn't think about it. He stepped forward and squeezed between the fat moist trunks of the trees that formed the gap.
They felt like sweaty flesh. Thick rubbery leaves stroked him, cold wet caresses. A mass of flies buzzed out of the knee-high undergrowth and crawled over his face and arms. Though the path was short, he was ready to tear his way through before he'd struggled to the end, to splinter the trees, anything to fight the silence, the congealing dimness, the flies that he hadn't room to beat off. By the time he reached the end of the path he was so desperate for freedom that he almost fell.
It was even dimmer here, and more oppressive. Though the trees and the undergrowth had been cut back, branches and dense foliage stooped overhead. He had to stand on the squelching grass while his eyes adjusted, and then he stood gazing. If he let himself feel anything, it would be relief. Thank God, this wasn't like his dream at all.
There were perhaps a dozen huts in the clearing, squat conical buildings, little more than a roof and a circular wall with an open doorway that faced into the compound. Some of the roofs had collapsed. As the huts took shape from the dimness they made him think of giant mushrooms, swollen by the climate, or by magic. They were grey with dimness and moisture, and seemed to glisten like snails. They looked as if they hadn't been lived in for years.
In that case, why was he afraid to go forward? It was only a primitive village, the trees were nothing but trees… Yet he already felt as if they were creeping forward to surround him. What was that clutter of thin whitish sticks in one hut? Were they bones? If he stepped forward he might see, but he felt as if something was waiting for him to move.
He mustn't be afraid, not now. There wasn't even a reason for him to be. Good God, what would he be like when there was? Fury made him step forward, a fury that left no room for thought, lie stopped halfway between the huts and the way through the trees, his head twisting back and forth as if he were a beast in a cage.
He was still trying to decide what the whitish sticks were when a sound behind him made him swing round, his empty hand snatching at the air as he realized that he had no weapon. The sound had only been Isaac, but as Alan turned, he saw what was wrong with the trees. A red shape had been painted on the trunk on each side of the gap.
He had to peer before he could make it out, and yet he felt as if he knew it. It was a thin crouching shape, the shape of a man – or almost a man. It had been painted in blood, which looked fresh. A man composed of blood, or covered in it – where had he encountered that before? He was struggling to think when Isaac whispered 'That's it. That is what they believed would hunt with them.'
Alan couldn't think. His inability to think, combined with the thickening gloom, maddened him. As he peered at one of the bloody paintings, he realized that the crouching shape was stirring, ready to leap at him. No, a mass of flies was crawling on it; that was why its limbs were squirming. He turned to Isaac to ask him to explain what he'd said. But Isaac was gazing beyond the huts. He was gazing as if he couldn't look away.