CHAPTER XI. THE EVIL WOOD

I fell fast asleep, and when I woke the sun was rising. I went to the

top again, and looked back: the hollow I had crossed in the moonlight

lay without sign of life. Could it be that the calm expanse before me

swarmed with creatures of devouring greed?

I turned and looked over the land through which my way must lie. It

seemed a wide desert, with a patch of a different colour in the

distance that might be a forest. Sign of presence, human or animal, was

none--smoke or dust or shadow of cultivation. Not a cloud floated in

the clear heaven; no thinnest haze curtained any segment of its circling

rim.

I descended, and set out for the imaginable forest: something alive

might be there; on this side of it could not well be anything!

When I reached the plain, I found it, as far as my sight could go, of

rock, here flat and channeled, there humped and pinnacled--evidently the

wide bed of a vanished river, scored by innumerable water-runs, without

a trace of moisture in them. Some of the channels bore a dry moss, and

some of the rocks a few lichens almost as hard as themselves. The air,

once “filled with pleasant noise of waters,” was silent as death.

It took me the whole day to reach the patch,--which I found indeed a

forest--but not a rudiment of brook or runnel had I crossed! Yet through

the glowing noon I seemed haunted by an aural mirage, hearing so plainly

the voice of many waters that I could hardly believe the opposing

testimony of my eyes.

The sun was approaching the horizon when I left the river-bed, and

entered the forest. Sunk below the tree-tops, and sending his rays

between their pillar-like boles, he revealed a world of blessed shadows

waiting to receive me. I had expected a pine-wood, but here were trees

of many sorts, some with strong resemblances to trees I knew, others

with marvellous differences from any I had ever seen. I threw myself

beneath the boughs of what seemed a eucalyptus in blossom: its flowers

had a hard calyx much resembling a skull, the top of which rose like a

lid to let the froth-like bloom-brain overfoam its cup. From beneath

the shadow of its falchion-leaves my eyes went wandering into deep after

deep of the forest.

Soon, however, its doors and windows began to close, shutting up aisle

and corridor and roomier glade. The night was about me, and instant

and sharp the cold. Again what a night I found it! How shall I make my

reader share with me its wild ghostiness?

The tree under which I lay rose high before it branched, but the boughs

of it bent so low that they seemed ready to shut me in as I leaned

against the smooth stem, and let my eyes wander through the brief

twilight of the vanishing forest. Presently, to my listless roving

gaze, the varied outlines of the clumpy foliage began to assume or

imitate--say rather SUGGEST other shapes than their own. A light wind

began to blow; it set the boughs of a neighbour tree rocking, and all

their branches aswing, every twig and every leaf blending its individual

motion with the sway of its branch and the rock of its bough. Among

its leafy shapes was a pack of wolves that struggled to break from

a wizard’s leash: greyhounds would not have strained so savagely! I

watched them with an interest that grew as the wind gathered force, and

their motions life.

Another mass of foliage, larger and more compact, presented my fancy

with a group of horses’ heads and forequarters projecting caparisoned

from their stalls. Their necks kept moving up and down, with an

impatience that augmented as the growing wind broke their vertical

rhythm with a wilder swaying from side to side. What heads they were!

how gaunt, how strange!--several of them bare skulls--one with the skin

tight on its bones! One had lost the under jaw and hung low, looking

unutterably weary--but now and then hove high as if to ease the bit.

Above them, at the end of a branch, floated erect the form of a woman,

waving her arms in imperious gesture. The definiteness of these and

other leaf masses first surprised and then discomposed me: what if they

should overpower my brain with seeming reality? But the twilight became

darkness; the wind ceased; every shape was shut up in the night; I fell

asleep.

It was still dark when I began to be aware of a far-off, confused,

rushing noise, mingled with faint cries. It grew and grew until a tumult

as of gathering multitudes filled the wood. On all sides at once

the sounds drew nearer; the spot where I lay seemed the centre of a

commotion that extended throughout the forest. I scarce moved hand or

foot lest I should betray my presence to hostile things.

The moon at length approached the forest, and came slowly into it: with

her first gleam the noises increased to a deafening uproar, and I began

to see dim shapes about me. As she ascended and grew brighter, the

noises became yet louder, and the shapes clearer. A furious battle was

raging around me. Wild cries and roars of rage, shock of onset, struggle

prolonged, all mingled with words articulate, surged in my ears. Curses

and credos, snarls and sneers, laughter and mockery, sacred names and

howls of hate, came huddling in chaotic interpenetration. Skeletons and

phantoms fought in maddest confusion. Swords swept through the phantoms:

they only shivered. Maces crashed on the skeletons, shattering them

hideously: not one fell or ceased to fight, so long as a single joint

held two bones together. Bones of men and horses lay scattered and

heaped; grinding and crunching them under foot fought the skeletons.

Everywhere charged the bone-gaunt white steeds; everywhere on foot or

on wind-blown misty battle-horses, raged and ravened and raved the

indestructible spectres; weapons and hoofs clashed and crushed; while

skeleton jaws and phantom-throats swelled the deafening tumult with the

war-cry of every opinion, bad or good, that had bred strife, injustice,

cruelty in any world. The holiest words went with the most hating blow.

Lie-distorted truths flew hurtling in the wind of javelins and bones.

Every moment some one would turn against his comrades, and fight more

wildly than before, THE TRUTH! THE TRUTH! still his cry. One I noted who

wheeled ever in a circle, and smote on all sides. Wearied out, a pair

would sit for a minute side by side, then rise and renew the fierce

combat. None stooped to comfort the fallen, or stepped wide to spare

him.

The moon shone till the sun rose, and all the night long I had glimpses

of a woman moving at her will above the strife-tormented multitude, now

on this front now on that, one outstretched arm urging the fight, the

other pressed against her side. “Ye are men: slay one another!” she

shouted. I saw her dead eyes and her dark spot, and recalled what I had

seen the night before.

Such was the battle of the dead, which I saw and heard as I lay under

the tree.

Just before sunrise, a breeze went through the forest, and a voice

cried, “Let the dead bury their dead!” At the word the contending

thousands dropped noiseless, and when the sun looked in, he saw never a

bone, but here and there a withered branch.

I rose and resumed my journey, through as quiet a wood as ever grew out

of the quiet earth. For the wind of the morning had ceased when the sun

appeared, and the trees were silent. Not a bird sang, not a squirrel,

mouse, or weasel showed itself, not a belated moth flew athwart my path.

But as I went I kept watch over myself, nor dared let my eyes rest on

any forest-shape. All the time I seemed to hear faint sounds of mattock

and spade and hurtling bones: any moment my eyes might open on things I

would not see! Daylight prudence muttered that perhaps, to appear, ten

thousand phantoms awaited only my consenting fancy.

In the middle of the afternoon I came out of the wood--to find before

me a second net of dry water-courses. I thought at first that I had

wandered from my attempted line, and reversed my direction; but I soon

saw it was not so, and concluded presently that I had come to another

branch of the same river-bed. I began at once to cross it, and was in

the bottom of a wide channel when the sun set.

I sat down to await the moon, and growing sleepy, stretched myself on

the moss. The moment my head was down, I heard the sounds of rushing

streams--all sorts of sweet watery noises. The veiled melody of the

molten music sang me into a dreamless sleep, and when I woke the sun

was already up, and the wrinkled country widely visible. Covered with

shadows it lay striped and mottled like the skin of some wild animal. As

the sun rose the shadows diminished, and it seemed as if the rocks were

re-absorbing the darkness that had oozed out of them during the night.

Hitherto I had loved my Arab mare and my books more, I fear, than live

man or woman; now at length my soul was athirst for a human presence,

and I longed even after those inhabitants of this alien world whom the

raven had so vaguely described as nearest my sort. With heavy yet hoping

heart, and mind haunted by a doubt whether I was going in any direction

at all, I kept wearily travelling “north-west and by south.”