by Carol Emshwiller

* * * *

Ursula K. Le Guin has called Carol Emshwiller a “major fabulist,” and the truth of that compliment is eminently clear in her subtle new tale for Asimov’s. Carol’s next book, a collection of her most recent short stories with a cover by her late husband, Ed Emshwiller, will be coming out in England from PS Publishing.

The first night in the wild I find a cave in among a pile of fallen rocks. It’s so small I have to crawl in backward so as to be facing the right direction in order to get out. It was fine for that one night. I actually sleep a bit. But it’s in a low place. If it had rained I’d have gotten wet. Something small had lived there and hadn’t been careful not to foul its nest. I don’t smell that good now myself, though I don’t expect I’ll meet anybody.

But I want a higher place—for lots of reasons. I’d like a view of the valley below. I start climbing. Several times I see berries. At first I don’t dare eat any. Then I try them. If they taste good, I keep eating.

I have to climb, up and down and up and down, all day and most of the next to find a place I like. When I find it I don’t have time to look for shelter. I sleep where I fall. At least I’m high up and a hard climb away from everybody and everything.

In the morning, not far from where I lie, I find an overhanging rock for shelter. I start making a wall around it. Then I go back down to the tree line to find more berries and nibble on greens. I catch a fish by hand and eat it raw. I climb back to my mountain to sleep. There’s not much up there but boulders and on every side but one there’s riprap. Hard for anyone to climb up to me, on one side the scary cliff, on the other those unstable shoebox size rocks.

The next day I start on a tower. I already have a pretty good view if I stand on my sheltering rock, but I want an even better one. The view is spectacular. Far below there’s a red cinder cone, lower, a marshy green lake, across the valley, more mountains where there’s always odd cloud formations.

I’m not ever going to finish my tower. I want to go on and on with it for the pure pleasure of moving stones. Already in just these few days, I’m stronger than I ever was. My arms hardly look like my arms. I have a start on a beard.

When my tower is about five feet above my sheltering rock, I stop, go lower down to a marshy pond and gather a reed and make a flute. It only has four holes, but that’s enough notes for me.

Every morning I climb my tower and study the hills and valleys. Then I start my day: Moving rocks, playing the flute, and then I go down below the tree line to eat and drink.

* * * *

But one morning, I see somebody climbing up toward me. I hope he’s just testing himself, climbing as high as he can, getting cold and worn out, teetering on the riprap, and then going right back down. I already tested myself in those ways. I understand the need.

I look around to make sure nothing of my living here shows. My tower could be a natural formation. I deliberately made it to look that way. I’m not worried it might be discovered.

Then, as the person nears, I hide.

* * * *

I’ve always hidden. First from Mother and Dad and from my three older brothers. Hiding was my way of life from the beginning.

I ducked and slunk along. I hunched over. I never looked people in the eye. I grew large, but I wanted to be small. Though I finally grew even larger than my big brothers, I never dared to challenge them.

And then ... suddenly ... suddenly ... I found the wilds. First I stepped slowly, wondering at it, marveling, and then I ran. Straight into it vowing never to leave. I shouted, I jumped from rock to rock, hid from tree to tree, walked the, then, empty trails. I began to sing. (I never had before.) I kept time by tapping a stick against my knee.

I couldn’t bear to leave—even to go back for supplies. I don’t have a pan or a flashlight or a knife. I left the car by the side of the road. A rented car. I had said to myself, I’ll just take a little walk. I saw rocks with bright orange lichen and trees, all leaning to the left, and a cliff with a stony path zigzagging up it. I wondered what it would be like to be in among all that.

Now I take only what the wilds gives me. It feeds me and teaches me. I trained myself to eat what it gives, insects and snakes. Tiny eggs. When you want to live here, you have to learn new ways.

The first I ever ate insects was because my brothers forced me to. Raw goldfish, too. I was afraid I’d get sick so I researched what might be poison. Now I live on bugs and raw fish and worse things than they could even think of. Mouse or rat-like creatures. Slugs.

I have to go down my mountain to get those bugs and snakes. Also berries and roots. Down there is where I set my traps.

But even as I swallow little snakes, I’m singing.

* * * *

But here’s this person climbing my mountain. I can’t imagine someone being here except to test themselves as I used to do.

I have plenty of stones for weapons. Except I’ve never fought in my life.

He stumbles up the last riprap, and does just as I did when I first got here, collapses on the rocks. That can’t be comfortable. He’s so worn out he wouldn’t have noticed me if I’d been standing right in front of him.

I dare to come closer. I hold a rock. I peer down at ... Him? Her? What’s she doing way out here all by herself ?

I put down the rock. Being rid of her would be the safest for keeping my place and me a secret—bang her head with a rock and toss her off the steep side. It would look like a bad fall.

She’s small and thin. There’s a blondish ponytail coming out from under her red cap, there’s red nail polish on her dirty broken nails, she’s wearing the wrong shoes for climbing. Besides her canvas pack, she has a small red purse sideways across her shoulder.

Her pack looks stuffed. Usually people have pans and canteens and a lot of dried food. I’m hoping for things like that. I quietly, carefully, unbuckle the pack. Odd, It’s not an ordinary backpack, but more like a mailman’s bag.

Out comes money. A lot. Packages of hundred dollar bills.

I’m not being careful anymore. I’m looking for something I can use ... anything at all. I shout with frustration and scrabble in the bag. The money is in packets. Some come apart. It’s always windy up here. Some blow away in packets and some blow away as single bills.

She hears me yell. Jumps up and grabs at the bills. Gets a couple. Then turns and tries to close the pack on what’s left.

There’s not one thing in there that’s of any use to me. I’d even settle for toilet paper.

It’s good I don’t have the rock anymore. What I do is slap her. So hard that she’s flat out on the rocks.

When have I ever slapped anybody? At once I say I’m sorry but I’m really not. She doesn’t let me help her up and I don’t blame her. Who knows what I’m going to do next.

“Is this all you brought?”

“It was almost fifty thousand.”

“No food?”

She starts counting up the money that’s still left in the sack. She shields it from the wind with her body and tries to keep everything deep inside the bag as she counts. Says, “Oh no, oh no,” over and over.

“No food?”

“Oh no. Only a couple of thousand left.”

She rests her head on the money bag and takes deep breaths. If she had the energy she’d be crying. Or maybe attacking me. Then says, “Can I have a drink of water?”

“You’ll have to go back down for it.”

“I’m so worn out. Could you get me some?”

“I don’t have anything to carry water in. I have to go down to drink, too. I was hoping you’d have a canteen or at least a cup.”

She lies back, hugging the money pack.

We’re silent.

She looks too delicate to be out here. I do like her looks. And that makes me think how I’m a hulk. I’m nice and thin now, but still a lumpy man. I’m suddenly conscious, as I used to be when out with people, of my big hands and feet, my hairy arms, my bony face. I’ve been called a big dumb lug and not just by my brothers.

“Is that cap waterproof ? I could get you a little bit in that.”

“I don’t think so.”

We’re silent again.

Then she asks, “Do you have any food?”

“Nothing to carry that in either. I suppose I could bring something up for you.” I don’t say, Maybe a little snake you can choke down whole. Maybe a pocketful of bugs.

I do want to shock her though. I want her to realize money isn’t worth much out here. Maybe good for tinder. I haven’t been building fires, though if I catch a fish, I suppose she’ll want it cooked.

“When you’re feeling rested I’ll help you down. Maybe catch you a fish. I don’t suppose you have any matches.”

“No.” So faint I can hardly hear it.

We’re quiet again. Then she says, “I haven’t had anything to eat for two days. I’ll give you a hundred dollars if you get me something.”

I laugh.

“Two hundred? Three?”

“I’d do it for a knife or a pan.”

But I take pity on her. “Soon as you’re rested, we’ll go down.”

* * * *

First she takes pains to hide the money. There’s only one good place: my overhang. She puts it way in the back and covers it with sand and scree. She doesn’t notice my flute. It doesn’t look like much more than a dry stick.

It’s a hard climb down, but just the first part. As I’m helping her, we see a couple of hundred dollar bills stuck to the cliff out of the wind. She wants me to get them, but it’s too steep. I’m not going to kill myself for money.

Helping her, I’m conscious not only of how unkempt I am. I don’t have a comb. I can’t imagine what my hair looks like. And my beard. I only have these clothes. I know I must smell though I do wash them now and then. When I do, I tramp around the forest wearing nothing but my shoes, though I am working on hardening up my feet. Then I’ll really feel part of the wilds. You can sense a lot through your feet.

I notice her hand next to mine. Her long, slim fingers.... No hands could be more different.

Along the steepest ledge, I hold her by the back of her pants. Her hips, her slim waist, her warmth.... I haven’t been near another person for a long time.

We finally get down into the trees. I take her to my usual spot, beside my stream where it forms a still pool. First she drinks. Then I show her how I catch a fish, bare hands, close to the bank where there’s an overhang. I see admiration in her eyes.

I know I’ll have to make a fire or she won’t eat it. I suppose that old way must work—tinder and a stick on a punkish piece of wood. I wonder how long it takes.

Before I even have the punk and dead grasses all gathered into a pile, she says, “You’re a real man of the forest.”

I lick my finger and put it down on a big black ant, scoop it up and blatantly eat it.

She flinches. Says, “I guess you are.”

Then I confess I’ve never tried to build a fire until now. “We’ll see if I really am,” I say. Though, actually, aren’t I more a man of the forest if I don’t cook my food?

But it does work.

She eats as if she hadn’t eaten for days and of course she hasn’t. Though it smells good, I let her have it all. Does she even notice that? I make do with skink and one small garter snake. This time I eat them out of her sight and after she’s lying back, satisfied.

She says, “I feel much better, but I don’t think I can climb back up there tonight. Will you stay with me?” She looks worried—she’d rather not be alone down here. “Though I suppose you’re up there because it’s safer.”

“Less buggy, too.”

But I say I’ll stay.

She picks a place close to where the fire was. I pick one a discreet distance away. I help her make a bed of ferns. A few minutes after we lie down she says, “Do you think you can help me get some of the money back? You owe it to me. It’s your fault it blew away.”

I don’t want to think about the money. I just grunt.

She’s frightened in the middle of the night. I hear her move from the far side of the fire, closer to me.

Down here, not only more bugs, but more noise. Owls hooting or shrieking.

She moves even closer, whispers, “What is that screaming?”

“Just baby screech owls calling to be fed.”

Then she gives a little shriek. “Something ran right over me.”

“That’s how it is down here.”

* * * *

In the morning, right away, she wants to go back up to look for more of the money. Her eyes have dark circles. She’s in a bad mood. “We have to,” she says. “And it’s all your fault the money blew away.”

I say, “I’m eating and drinking first.”

She says, “I’m not,” and takes off.

It isn’t as if I could offer her a hot cup of tea before she goes.

I catch a fish and this time cook it for myself. There are still hot coals in the fire ring so it’s easy to start it again. I haven’t had cooked trout since I got here. It’s delicious but I feel ungrateful and disloyal for all the wild has done for me.

I catch up with her when she’s almost to the cliff. She’s been climbing slowly, looking for money along the way. Her face is dirty and tear-streaked. I’ll bet she’s thirsty now.

She says, “I found a packet of hundreds, and a couple of single bills, but that’s all.”

I say I’ll help.

“You owe me thirty or forty thousand dollars.”

I can’t help but laugh again. “Good luck,” I say. “But I will help.”

She stops to rest and I go off looking for more money. I find three more packs. Not without taking risks. I keep wondering, is a pack of hundred dollar bills worth a bad fall?

I come back for her to help her up the last steep cliff. At the top, she gets her pack, puts in what we found, and starts counting, while I climb down the other side to see what I can find over there. The loose bills are as if alive, waiting till I’m almost up to them and then blowing away, but I do get some.

It’s late and I’m hungry. She must be even more so, what with rushing off with no breakfast.

She keeps saying, “This won’t do,” and, “It was hardly worth it.”

I’m still angry that she brought nothing but money, but I’m trying to be nice. “Come on, we’ll go down and eat.”

I didn’t want to yearn for anything of that old life but now I do in spite of myself. Mostly for the foods. Is the rental car still on that side road waiting? But then I’m thinking: If I could bring down a deer.... Then use the skin for a carrying case. But I wanted the freedom of not doing all those things. I wanted to be naked. I wanted to be an animal.

“Can we stay down there again tonight?”

She’s meek now. I suppose she’s beginning to realize where she’s landed. And it sounds as if she looks up to me, but that’s because I’m the only person she can rely on for help. Or is it because I’m risking my neck climbing around looking for the money?

“We’ll stay down there all day tomorrow. We’ll make a basket and bring up fish, and maybe find a way to carry water.” I don’t dare say, Let’s use your money bag for carrying fish.

What am I doing? I don’t even know her name and I’m not sure I want to.

Even though I’ve been out here hardly a month ... (I’m guessing. I haven’t kept track. And, actually, I want to be done with time.) ... I’ve gotten used to being alone. I was happy with my view and my four note flute. I particularly don’t want somebody around who stole money and is hiding out with maybe police following her. Maybe I should just go find another mountain top that isn’t afloat in hundred dollar bills. But, “Come on,” I say. “You must be hungry.”

We round the cliff to the scary ledge. I grab the back of her pants again but I don’t look this time. Still, I feel her bare skin. I feel her warmth.

On the way down I see a few more single bills but I don’t mention them. I don’t know if she sees them, too, but she doesn’t say anything either.

We get back to the clearing by the stream. We sit and rest there a few minutes. The jay is squawking. The stream is bubbling along. She says, “It’s nice here.”

I’m thinking, Damn right, and it was even better before you came.

Then we get to work.

She knows enough to pick willow branches along the stream. I give up and do the fishing and fire-making. I have a little rat-like creature caught in one of my traps—still alive. I don’t want her to see it until it’s skinned and cut up.

This time we both eat cooked fish and tiny scraps of tough meat. There’s extra but how hide it from other hungry creatures? I don’t know what the Indians did. I decide to bury it with stones on top of it.

But I’m changing and I don’t like it. Am I looking at my view and playing my flute?

With her around I need different things. I know where there’s obsidian, I could make myself some knives. Maybe make some arrowheads. I could begin civilization over again from the bottom. Reinvent a hut, an animal-proof storehouse, a bow, find clay.... But I don’t want any of those.

When we sit down to rest, she hands me a hat. She’s woven it in the same way as the basket, but with the leaves left on. A wide, green leafy hat. She’s proud of herself. I can see that as she gives it to me. She wants to be thanked. I put it on, but I don’t really want it. I don’t like what’s happening. I came here to live as part of the forest.

On the other hand this hat does look to be part of the forest. It’s like wearing a bush. But I’m too angry to thank her.

“So what do you need all this money for?”

She turns away. I think she’s starting to cry again.

“And why bring it way out here to a mountain top? Are you expecting to stay until people forget about you? How did you expect to live?”

No answer. Of course no answer.

“Why here? Why my mountain? And it would have been nice if you’d brought just one little thing I could use. Just one thing.”

She’s still turned away.

“Without me you’d already be dead.”

She whispers, “I know.”

“If you want a car to get away in, I’ve got one.”

Is it still there? Could I find the keys? I tossed them in the roadside bushes first thing in my joy at being away from it and people, and everything civilized. Especially people like she is.

“This isn’t what I wanted to do, spend all my days helping you. You’re the one owes me. At least an answer.”

I slap my hand on the ground so hard I hurt myself. “Answer!”

And she does.

“It was just sitting there. I picked it up. I thought it should have been guarded and they deserved to lose it. And then I was thinking: It belongs to the people not the bank. I wasn’t going to use it all for me.”

“That’s not true.”

It probably is, but I’m feeling contrary.

“I’ve never done anything like this before.”

“Maybe.”

That’s most likely true, too.

“That first night in the woods I walked all night. I mean I ran. I must have fallen down a hundred times. I never knew it could be so dark. I was scared. I didn’t know what it was like way out here.”

“You took it for yourself.”

“But I thought they’d catch me right away, so first I bought myself this purse.”

She holds up that useless little red purse. She’s kept it hanging on her shoulder all this time even as she slept.

“It’s a Gucci. I thought maybe they’d think it was mine from before I took the money and would let me keep it. And when they still didn’t catch me, I went to eat in a fancy French restaurant. Stuff I’d never had before. Snails and champagne. I thought they’d pick me up any minute. I wanted to get in one really good meal first. They couldn’t take that away. But hours went by and when they didn’t come I started thinking I could get away with it, so I bought the car.”

“You left a car?”

“A red convertible. But I was driving too fast. It went off the road on one of those hairpin curves. I couldn’t believe I wasn’t hurt. I don’t think they’ll find it for a while though. It’s kind of hidden. I got these shoes, too, but look, they’re ruined.”

I flop back, squashing my new hat I’m sure, and look up into the trees.

“What do you have in that little purse anyway?”

“Money. But if I’d known I was going to end up here, I’d have bought myself some boots. I’d have brought you things, too. I’m sorry I didn’t. I really, really am.” Then she gets all dreamy. “I was going to take my mother out for a French meal, too. I wanted her to have snails. Though I suppose she wouldn’t even taste them. I was going to get her a new car. It wasn’t all just for me.”

I’m thinking of snails and of me eating slugs.

She says, “I wonder if they found the car. I wonder if they even know the money’s gone. They were so careless. They deserve not to have it.”

I’m still looking straight up the tree trunk. Not how you usually see a tree. Very nice. And I’m dreamy, too. I wish she’d keep quiet. This is all exactly what I ran away from.

I want to ask her, how long is she going to stay and why right here with me? If they’re not chasing her why doesn’t she go back to where she can have the kind of life she obviously likes? Where little red purses are.... But then I wonder if it holds water? Not much, though.

I get up. I need to get away and think. Or maybe play my flute and not think.

My feet aren’t yet ready to go barefoot, but I take off my shoes anyway, on principle, though I don’t know what principle, and walk away. I hope she has enough sense not to come after me. I shed my clothes. That’ll keep her away. I find a sheltered spot and sit alone and eat ants for a while. One at a time.

I stay away all night. I miss my mountain top, but I don’t go there in case she does. Though I don’t know how she’d manage crossing that ledge by herself. Maybe she’ll go around to the far side and crawl up the rocks as she did when she first came.

For bugs I cover myself with mud. In the morning I eat roots. I eat raw minnows that I chase into the shallows. Then I make two new flutes, a big one and a little one. Four holes in each. After playing them for a while, I hide them in the crotch of a tree. I’m wonderfully calmed down. Living as I do is soothing.

In the afternoon I head for my mountain. I leave the mud plastered all over me. First I check on our resting place by the stream. But she’s gone. There’s the hat she made me. I put in on but I leave my shoes there though my feet are in bad shape. Again, it’s the principle of the thing. I don’t know why.

Mud and big hat like a bush, scraggly beard, naked, bloody feet, limping, lurching ... I’m enough to scare anybody. Especially a person already scared.

I don’t mean to. I’m thinking about my poor feet ... of my soft sandy bed under the overhang. I’m hoping she won’t be there. Though where else would she feel safe at night all by herself ?

She screams. Throws up her hands. Then off she goes, backward, over the steep side.

* * * *

The camping season begins. The place is full of hikers, though not so many this far out. No one comes to my mountain. It’s not an important peak and there’s no decent path to the top. Nobody likes climbing up unstable piles of shoebox-sized stones.

My feet are hardened by now. I can even leap up the rocks. All I wear is a leafy hat and a little red leather purse across my shoulders. (In it there are hundred dollar bills.) Otherwise I’m dressed in mud. I smell of ferns. I have a flute in the notch of dozens of trees. Some sound high and squeaky and some are low and mysterious—scary in the middle of the night. I see people come out of their tents on moonless nights to listen and wonder.

I could have stolen knives or canteens and ordinary food dozens of times. All summer long, I could live off the campers, but I don’t. I don’t want anything they have. I’m finished with all that. I do the opposite. I leave hundred dollar bills. I put them in shoes or in a pocket of their packs. If they’ve left their hats handy, I stuff one or two into their hat bands.

When I lean to drink, as an animal would, I see myself, shaggy and plastered with mud. I look at my reflection and I see exactly who I am.