Mariposa

The air had changed. It was outside air: not cold, nor hot, but with the possibility of rain. She felt wind on her face, and stepped forward, her feet crunching on a layer of something dry over something muddy. She was on a slope. She could still hear the whispering of the people below her on the square floor. She wondered why it was so dark. Perhaps it’s going to thunder. Putting out her hand, she touched a rough pillar. She moved her hand up, and felt leaves, branches. And that was the whispering: wind in the trees.
No, this is impossible, she thought, and groped behind her for the door. It was gone. She caught branches, limbs of trees, her nails scraped bark, no door handle, no door. The building she had stepped out of was gone. The bells were gone. The town was gone. She was alone in the middle of a strange forest.
She sank down onto the ground in dead leaves and ground mulch. In the half-light she could make out shapes of more trees, fungus faintly luminous on an old stump. She moved until her back was against a tree trunk.
I’ll wait here till morning, she thought, trying to convince herself she wasn’t scared. Then I’ll see where I am. Towns don’t just disappear.
There was a heavy noise from behind her, something vast crashing through the trees, splintering branches. The earth shook, the trunk she leaned against creaked and yawed. She leapt to her feet, arms out, turning in a wild circle. She heard a howl or laugh of anger or glee, smashing and ripping as if a great beast were trying to free itself of the forest, as if it were trying to be born from the air. A hot rush of air like close breath swayed the trees, they pitched and leaves shook loose and pattered down around her. Then the noise was gone, unseen, trampling away down the slope, into the distance.
She was trembling. She began to move, with no fixed direction, feeling from one tree trunk to the next, heading along the slope in the opposite direction to the noise. She found herself remembering words: lion, wolf, bear. Blundering on, she stepped unexpectedly into something painfully cold, and gasped. Light glinted as if off metal. She put down her hand to feel her foot, convinced she had trodden in a gin or steel-jawed man-trap. Then she heard the dancing sound of water on stones, and realised she had stepped into a thin stream that burned its way over rocks down the steep slope.
She bent down and dipped her fingers in the icy water, and licked them. The shock had calmed her. She could see the stream shining as it headed down between the trees, and she began following it. She knew water was important, she seemed to remember knowing that a long time ago.

She walked for a long time, always expecting dawn to come, but it never did. It did get lighter, though, the darkness easing into a strange, dim yellowish light, like the torn glare of sodium over cities at night. It was just enough for her to find her way downwards, along the bright track of the stream. Very soon her bare feet were sore and aching, and she splashed into the stream to cool and numb them.
As she went on she remembered words, names of things, but there was still no memory of who she had been or where she had come from. Perhaps, she thought, I never was anywhere, before I woke up. Perhaps I never was anyone else. But me. But now.
The trees were tall and had few branches, their trunks were wet and dark, and the bark hung in ragged strips from them. Their leaves were deep green, almost black. Birds moved above her, and here and there small things hissed and scuttled away under rocks, out of her path. Once she heard the same terrible howl, almost a laugh, and stopped still, but it was far away and not repeated. Caught on some brambles she found pale gold hair, very fine and with a rank stink that stuck to her hands long after she had dropped it.
At last she came to where the stream dug itself a deep cleft in the ground. The slope around it began to rise again, and the trees thinned out. The rocky ground cut her feet so that she sometimes had to go on hands and knees. Just as she had almost decided she could not get any further that night, she saw the edge of the crag: a broad plain, covered in long yellow grass. The stream dropped away through a cutting in the rock: a short, bright waterfall. The way down was a scramble.
For the first time she could see the sky. It was covered in terrible, ripped clouds, dark purplish and red, like bloody bandages. The dark clouds stirred slowly, like huge muscles of a strange beast all vapour and fire. Here and there a star showed like a sharp eye. Somewhere there had to be light, she thought, behind all the clouds. When the storm was over she would be able to see where she was. That gave her energy to climb down the rocks, by the side of the noisy waterfall, down to the grassy plain. The sound of the waterfall was so loud that she did not notice the men until she was standing right on the plain and turned round and saw them, three short, dark, ugly men, with spears levelled at her.

“Who are you?”
I understood them! she thought, astonished, and had to grope for words. “Mariposa,” she said, carefully. She wanted to get it quite right the first time.
“Mariposa.” They looked at each other, and shrugged. They wore brown woollen suits worn smooth and rusty at the elbows and knees. One of them wore a silver helmet with a crest of magpie feathers. She thought: they don’t look like modern people. She looked down at their feet. All but the man with the helmet wore dirty, old, brown boots, laced with red cord. The man with the helmet wore leather sandals that seemed to be home-made.
The man with the helmet stepped forward.
“Open your mouth,” he said. Mariposa stared at him. He took hold of her jaw and squeezed gently, so she had to open her mouth. He peered inside. Then he put his finger in and felt around her back teeth and under her tongue. Mariposa coughed and pulled back. His finger tasted of sweat and dust. For some reason she was reminded of white coats and chemicals.
“No devils there,” he said to the others. “But this hair - that will have to go, I‘m afraid.” He tugged at Mariposa’s tangled hair.
“What are you doing?” She backed away, frightened. “What’s wrong with my hair?”
“Probably nothing,” he said, gently. “But we must be sure. Devils can hide anywhere, you know.”
“Devils?”
“Oh yes, devils. They catch in your hair like a leaf or a burr. They can scratch you and poison you with a sharp thorn. They can even eat into the soles of your feet and hide there. One day you find yourself walking the wrong way - off a cliff, perhaps. By then it’s too late.”
She thought of the noises she had heard in the forest. But that was something big. It couldn’t hide inside you.
“Where did you come from?” It was another of the men who spoke, looking at her curiously.
“I was in a hospital,” said Mariposa slowly. “Then I was in a place where people were - were whispering.” There was another word for it, but she could not at once remember what it was.
“Everyone here has some strange story to tell,” said the man with the helmet, who seemed to be the leader. “Don’t worry. We’ll send you to the City on the Deep River, where there will be people who can help you. We are only the border police. It is our job to see that no devils get over the border. That is why we have to be careful.”
“We still have to cut your hair, though,” added the other man, holding up a pair of scissors. “You have been through the forest, and there might be devils caught in there.”
Mariposa laughed. She suddenly felt very tired, and her hair did not seem important.
“Okay.” She allowed the man to come up to her and hack away at the curly hair with the scissors. He was gentle, and she only felt the lightening of her head as the locks of hair fell to the ground. When most of it had gone, he took out a large razorblade, and began to shave her head. The last of her hair shore away, and she felt the cold wind bathing her whole scalp. Her head felt loose and light and wobbly, as if she no longer knew how to balance it.
The man who had not yet spoken handed her a fur cap. She pulled it onto her head. It was warm. A moment later drops of rain began to fall.
“We should go.” The leader looked up at the darkening clouds. He went behind the rocks, into a cleft, and led out three strong little ponies, roped together and hobbled. He untied them, and each man mounted one. He lifted Mariposa up behind the man who had had the scissors. I wonder if I’ve ever been on a horse before, she thought. It doesn’t feel like it. It seemed a long way off the ground.
“Now you will have to hold on,” the man said over his shoulder, “because we go fast.”
Mariposa nodded, and tightened her grip on his waist. She thought she heard someone behind her, and turned her head, but there was no-one there. Instead, she thought: suits, and spears. There was something odd about that, but she could not remember what. Her mind was a deep comfortable darkness, a soft blanket of nothing, of no memory. Even the pressure of the hand on her shoulder had faded at last. As they trotted along, soon breaking into a gallop, she felt her light head lolling, herself slipping into sleep, and leaned her head on the man‘s back to steady herself. As she did so, she thought she heard someone riding beside them, heard something like hoof beats, almost in time with their own, something like a heart beat, almost in time with her own, a breath that seemed to catch on the end of hers, tag along with it. Through her closing eyelids she seemed to see some dark figure galloping alongside, but when she opened her eyes it was gone.
She said sleepily “Where is the fourth man?” and did not hear her companion’s reply. Later, after a long time, it seemed, she opened her eyes to see the same long, yellow grass swishing past, the same darkness, and said loudly. “When will it get light?” This time she did hear the reply: “Never.”