A Deepness in the Sky

He entered the stream, the water spraying high in both directions. The big one in the trees pounced. One long arm scratched down the side of the auto, but the creature landed to the side of Sherkaner's path. And then Underhill had reached the far bank, and was rocketing upslope. A real ambush would end in a cul-de-sac here. But the road continued on and somehow his hurtling progress did not carry him off to the side. There was a final scary moment as he emerged from the forest canopy. The road steepened and his Relmeitch tipped back for a second, rotating on its rear tires. Sherkaner threw himself forward from his perch, and the auto slammed down, and scooted up over the hillcrest.

He ended up under stars and twilit sky, parked beside the home he had seen from the far side of the dell.

He killed the engine and sat for a moment, catching his breath and listening to the blood pounding in his chest. It was that quiet. He watched behind him; no one pursued. And thinking back...it was strange. The last he had seen, the big one was climbing slowly out of the creek. The other two had turned away, as if uninterested.

He was by the house he had seen from the other side. Lights came on in the front. A door opened, and an old lady came out on the porch. "Who's there?" The voice was sturdy.

"Lady Enclearre?" Sherk's voice came out in kind of a squeak. "The postmaster gave me your address. He said you had an overnight room to rent."

She came round to the driver's side and looked him over. "That I do. But you're too late for dinner. You'll have to settle for cold sucks."

"Ah. That's all right, quite all right."

"Okay. Bring yourself on in." She chuckled and waved a little hand toward the valley Sherkaner had just escaped. "You sure did come the long way, sonny."

• • •

Despite her words, Lady Enclearre fed Sherkaner a good meal. Afterward they sat in her front parlor and chatted. The place was clean, but worn. The sagging floor was unrepaired, the paint peeling here and there. It was a house at the end of its time. But the pale glimmer lamps revealed a bookcase set between the screened windows. There were about a hundred titles, mostly children's primers. The old lady (and she was really old, born two generations earlier than Sherk) was a retired parish teacher. Her husband hadn't made it through the last Dark, but she had grown children—old cobbers themselves now—living all through these hills.

Lady Enclearre was like no city schoolteacher. "Oh, I've been around. When I was younger 'n you, I sailed the western sea."A sailor! Sherkaner listened with undisguised awe to her stories of hurricanes and grizzards and iceberg eruptions. Not many people were crazy enough to be sailors, even in the Waning Years. Lady Enclearre had been lucky to live long enough to have children. Maybe that was why, during the next generation, she settled down to schoolteaching and helping her husband raise the cobblies. Each year, she had studied the texts for the next grade, staying one year ahead of the parish children, all the way to adulthood.

In this Brightness, she had taught the new generation. When they were grown, she was truly getting on in years. A lot of cobbers make it into a third generation; few live the length of it. Lady Enclearre was much too frail to prepare for the coming Dark by herself. But she had her church and the help of her own children; she would have her chance to see a fourth Bright Time. Meanwhile she kept up with her gossip, and her reading. She was even interested in the war—but as an avid spectator. "Give those bleeding Tiefers a tunnel up their rear, I say. I have two grandnieces at the Front, and I'm very proud of them."

As Sherkaner listened, he stared out through Lady Enclearre's broad, fine-screened windows. The stars were so bright up here in the mountains, a thousand different colors, dimly lighting the forest's broad leaves and the hills beyond. Tiny woodsfairiestick ed incessantly at the screens, and from the trees all around, he could hear their stridling song.

Abruptly a drum started beating. It was loud, the vibrations coming through the tips of his feet and chest as much as through his ears. A second banging started, drifting in and out of synch with the first.

Lady Enclearre stopped talking. She listened sourly to the racket. "This could go on for hours, I'm afraid."

"Your neighbors?" Sherkaner gestured toward the north, the little valley. It was interesting that, except for her one comment about his coming the "long way round," she hadn't said a thing about those strange people in the dell.

...And maybe she wouldn't now. Lady Enclearre scrunched down on her perch, silent for the first significant period since he'd arrived. Then: "You know the story of the Lazy Woodsfairies?"

"Sure."