The man stopped at the edge of the chalk line, beside Prospero's head. And, when he spoke, he had the voice of a boy, panting and wincing in pain.
"I am under that stone. I was his servant. They killed me. Let me go."
Prospero, frightened, lying there staring at a sky containing only one or two weak stars, spoke.
"I did not call you. But, if I can set you free, I will."
The boy spoke again. His wet lips were almost touching Prospero's ear. "Go north and kill him, Go north." His voice had an awful rising wailing sound.
Prospero clenched his hands and sat up, looking away from the thing that crouched or floated near him. Now, he put his hands to his face and tried to think, and finally, he spoke the words he had to speak, one at a time in a shaking voice. He turned his head slowly and looked at the shape, which now began to melt into the hard ground like a spreading lump of gray dirty snow.
But, nothing evil left the forest. Prospero stared at the ring of trees and realized that he could feel their limbs growing tense. He shook his head to get rid of the pulsing fuzziness in his eyes. Had he said the right words? He sat up straighter, and then bent down over the stone, trying to read the letters by the starlight. For some reason, he began to trace the letters with his finger tip, trying to imagine how they looked, and how the wavering lines of square deep-cut symbols ran.
"I thought so!" he said out loud, and he pounded on the stone until his hand was sore. Now, he knew the reason for those ragged rows. The rise and fall of the letters, the extra spurs and flourishes the carver had put in, had knit together a curse too strong to be undone by a few mumbled words. Prospero, lying full length on the stone, painfully bent his head backward and looked at the dark sky.
"I wonder what I have done," he said. "I wonder what I have done."
The answer came. As he watched, something like a cloud, but too low for a cloud, moved over the circle of sky. Now, even the light of those distant stars was going. It felt as though someone were sliding the lid onto a vault, and Prospero could almost hear stone grinding and sliding overhead. Now, it was really dark, a shut-in, musty-closet dark. He felt that if he reached out he would touch hanging cloth, old clothes that he did not want near him. Choking, blinding, afraid even to take a deep breath for fear of what he might draw into his lungs, Prospero started to stumble out of the circle, moving his hands in front of him. He felt nothing there, but he sensed something slipping past his arm and trailing down his finger tips. Now, he started to run, and his head hit against a tree trunk with a sickening jolt. He turned, and his left cheek was scratched all the way across by what might have been a branch.
Prospero came to a shuffling stop in the leaves that smelled more strongly than ever of black-green rot. Hanging at his belt was a small quartz globe with a brass rod running through it. He unhooked it and held it up, rubbing it. For years, he had used this globe; he had used it on the darkest caves under mountains, and it had always sent out a bright orange light that made fire shadows on the rough stone walls. Now, it glowed a foggy green, giving Prospero a thin misty halo to walk in. He saw that he was in the middle of several tall dark trunks, and that the clearing was out of sight, although it might be only a few yards away. What he wanted was the path that led back to the gate. Of course, the path was not there, so he started to walk through the trees, holding the weak lamp in front of him. A vine swished down from a tree, and Prospero reached up to fend it off. His hand closed on sticky, slippery rope, and he pushed the thing away.
Suddenly, he saw the path. It might not have been the same one, but anyway it was there, and Prospero took it. The hooked branches pulled back as he walked along in the black silence. No noise now, but his soft footsteps on the flattened grass. It seemed to be the same path; at least, he thought he recognized a little black bush that grew almost across it. As he approached the bush, it slumped across his way with a rustle and what sounded like a little cry. He stopped and prodded it with his toe-it squealed and ran away. And then, there was a hand on his arm.
A voice breathed in Prospero's ear with a wet-leaf smell, and what that voice said, Prospero has never told anyone. He turned, and he grasped an arm, but his hand sank into mud-mud with a center like bone. Frantically, Prospero jerked his hand away, and with his other hand, he shoved the ball of quartz at this breathing, man-sized form. The globe burst with a flash of chilly lightning, Prospero closed his eyes tight and began shoving mechanically at what he could no longer feel. The smell was gone, and Prospero opened his eyes to find that the forest around him was full of fireflies, the last pale magic of the vanished globe. He could see to get out, but he would have to run to make it, because the little dots of light were already going out.
He ran along the path, trying not to look at the things that were going on around him, and as the last fireflies went out, he reached the gate. Outside the fence, the clearing lay in calm starlight. His hand was on the latch when he heard another voice-not the whispering leaf voice, but a little girl's weak cry.
"Help me! I can't get out!"
He turned and ran to where he saw a small white blur under a willow tree. But, when he clasped the child to him, her head crunched under his hand and the whole body turned to crackling fluttery paper. In the air, someone was laughing, and the laughter was more horrible because it was a child's-wet, gulping, and somehow harsh. It did not take long for Prospero to reach the gate again, and this time he slammed the gate open with both hands so hard that it rebounded from the stone post. He caught it from the outside, pulled the iron ring, and the latch hooked.
All the rest of the night Prospero walked up and down in the clearing, watching the forest. It was like something seen through glass, engraved and still, like frost-plants on a windowpane. As soon as it was light, he got up and walked back to town. He did not care about the townspeople's hatred now. Outside the city wall was a blacksmith's shop, and Prospero walked up to it calmly, like an old customer. The blacksmith looked up in fear.
"Give me a hammer and a chisel," said Prospero, "or I'll tie all your horseshoes in bowknots."
The man gave him the tools. Prospero went back to the forest and kicked open the gate. He marched straight to the clearing, where he found his hat, bag, and staff untouched in the scuffed yellow circle. With the chisel, he hacked away enough of the lettering to undo the awful curse that some local magician had made with rising and falling rows of letters. But, even though he had–he hoped–wiped out the curse, he did not want to stay in this place, and in a little while, he was on a north-running road–after he had returned his tools to the startled blacksmith.
6
6
Prospero had been walking for several hours on a road that was little more than a pair of yellow ruts, overgrown with bunch grass and gold-enrod, that wound between high weedy banks from whose crumbling sides twisted roots stuck out, groping at nothing. Now, as the red flattened sun sank into a wide bar of blue-black cloud and the oak trees atop the banks began to darken with twilight, he started to wonder how far away the next village was. The shadowy banks drew closer together now, and he walked on through overhanging leafy arches, looking for a signpost of some kind It was full dark night, moonless and starless, when Prospero stopped at the top of a small hill to examine something planted a little way off the roadside. He swished away some tall wet grass and straggly bushes with his staff, until he could get to the object that had attracted his attention, and when he struck a match, its faint sulphurous light showed a worm-eaten gray post to which a sign was nailed. The signboard itself was so encrusted with yellow dirt and bird droppings that at first it looked blank. But, when Prospero had scraped some of the filth away from the warped board, he could read the fading black letters: FIVE DIALS.