A False Moon

The water went into the ground, but it did not go away.

He crouched where the stream narrowed beneath the roots, he had followed it here before. Beyond the roots was a black opening too small for his shoulders and behind that opening the water struck metal. He could hear it falling. When he pressed a hand into the mud, the sound traveled up his arm. Farther down, he listened as something turned without stopping. He withdrew his hand.

There should have been deeper water beyond this place. He expected the stream to widen and the trees to draw back from its banks. He had memories of wind blowing upstream, cold against his wet muzzle. Here the air pushed through the leaves beside him, warm and faintly bitter. It carried the smell of people underneath the earth.

He had dug for them. Under the roots and stones he had only found the same hard surface as under the room where they had held him. His fingers had slipped on it. Wherever he went, there was more of that surface, even though they had put a forest over it and a sky above that forest.

The Moon was still there. Its light lay on the trees, but the sky around it looked shallow, like the ceiling of the room when they darkened it. He stared, searching for the depth he remembered beyond the branches. His jaw began to ache. He lowered his head, but the pull remained.

Upstream, a deer entered the water. He heard each hoof settle among the stones. Its scent reached him in a warm thread, and his mouth filled. He shifted forward. The deer stopped drinking.

Something had struck the bridge. He stayed low, his hands drawn beneath him. A man had come out of the trees, carrying things that touched one another with each step. Metal against metal. He waited.

The man stopped.

“Steady now.”

He knew those sounds. For an instant he expected a hand against his shoulder. He could almost feel its weight through cloth, although there was no cloth and nobody close enough to touch him.

He turned his head as the deer broke through the water, but the man was moving again, and the things in the bag kept knocking together. He let the deer go.

He watched through the branches as the man crossed the bridge slowly and followed the paved path toward a metal box. The man’s feet paused before taking each step, as though the ground could not be trusted. A white light came on beside the path. He recoiled sharply enough that bark pressed into his back.

The man stood under the light and put down a bag, then a small vessel. A bitter, roasted smell escaped from somewhere around it. He breathed again.

The smell brought back a table.

He remembered its worn edge beneath his hands. Someone sat across from him, close enough that he could have reached over and touched them. He tried to look up into the face, but the memory went no farther. He leaned forward among the wet leaves, drawing in the smell again.

Metal clicked beside the path. He turned toward it. He remembered pulling at the metal box when he first came up from beneath the ground. Human hands had touched it often, he had thought it might open into somewhere else. Behind its bent face there had been only hard tubes, too close together to force apart without noise. The man was kneeling beside it now.

He shut his eyes as the man passed the beam of the hand lamp over the trees. Behind his eyelids the light continued moving.

He remembered having to lie still.

When he opened his eyes, the man was standing, speaking quietly to nobody he could see. Then the man’s hand went toward the vessel.

He wanted the man away from the light.

“Anyone there?”

The words came easily. He had heard them in a passage, from a younger man who had stopped outside a closed door. There had been a cough after them. He made that too.

The man looked toward the bridge.

“Owen?”

He waited for the man to come closer. There had been an answer, but no movement.

“Anyone there?”

The cough scraped his throat.

“Hello? I’m at the pump.”

That meant nothing. He knew the sound of a person expecting an answer, though. He remained among the roots, with the strange warm air moving against his back.

He called again when the man lifted the hand lamp. The answer went on for longer this time, but he could not hold the sounds together. He watched the man’s free hand instead.

Then the man left the path.

He moved up the bank. He wanted to see the man without the hand lamp shining in his eyes. Soft earth gave beneath his feet, and once again he felt the hard floor underneath it. He climbed higher.

“Keep talking.”

He knew that too. Someone had said it when he could no longer see. He remembered trying to answer through something in his mouth. His jaw tightened.

Below him, the man stopped.

He shifted among the branches. Rotten wood broke under his hand and fell through the leaves. The beam of the hand lamp came toward him.

“Owen, is that you?”

He pressed himself against a trunk. The beam passed beneath his arm. He could smell the man clearly now: old cloth, warm skin, something sharp beginning beneath both.

“Anyone there?”

The man turned toward his voice and slipped.

He gripped the tree. The man caught a branch below him. For a moment both stayed still, holding on.

Then the man began to go away.

He coughed.

The man kept going.

“Steady now.”

His mouth shaped it slowly, with the same small drag he had heard on the bridge.

The man stopped.

He drew a long breath. He expected something to follow the words. The hand, perhaps. The smell of the bitter drink reached him again, bringing back the table. This time he remembered a cup being pushed across it toward him. The hand stayed beside the cup until he reached for it, his fingers closed around the warmth. He tried to follow the arm upward, to see the face.

He leaned forward. A twig scraped his chest, and he stopped. The cup was gone. He was still on the bank, with the man’s hand lamp shining through the leaves below him.

He could not see what had drawn the man’s gaze away from the trees.

“Who’s there?”

His lips moved, but nothing came.

He had once been able to answer that.

He came down from the tree and followed along the bank as the man backed away. When the man stopped, he stopped too, a little late. The hand lamp’s beam swept past him.

Now the sharp smell was stronger.

He knew frightened people. He knew how suddenly they moved.

When the man stepped toward the path, he moved ahead through the alders, keeping the light behind the trunks. He did not want the man to reach the open bag.

A branch caught beneath his foot.

The man heard.

He waited with one hand around a tree. His fingers tightened. The beam of the hand lamp rose, found his fingertips against the bark, and held them there.

He pulled his hand away.

The man turned toward the bag.

“What-” the man whispered. Then more sounds, strained and quiet.

The man was calling someone else.

He knew what followed. Others came. Doors opened. Until there were hands enough to hold him.

The man climbed up the bank.

He crossed the space before the man could reach it.

Under his weight the man struck the paving. The hand lamp fell and shone upward through the leaves. He caught cloth. The man pulled against him, reaching for a root. The resistance felt familiar, and he pulled harder.

The cloth tore.

He dragged him down.

There was movement beneath his hands. A heel struck the earth, stopped, struck again. He bent close. The man tried to draw breath.

The man must not get up.

He did not know where that certainty came from. It frightened him more than the hand lamp.

He clamped down and stayed until the movement ended.

Afterward he crouched beside the body, listening. The stream ran over its stones. Underneath it, the hidden thing continued turning.

The bitter smell still came from beside the open bag.

He breathed it in again, waiting for the hand beside the cup.

Above the trees, the Moon had not moved.