The Book of Lost Things(31)
“The raven and the wolf hunt together. This one was leading the pack to us. They would have fed our eyes to it as its reward.”
He looked back in the direction they had come.
“They will have to rely on scent alone now, but they are closing on us, make no mistake. We must hurry.”
They continued on their way, moving now at a slight trot, as though they themselves were tired wolves at the end of a hunt, until they reached the edge of the forest and emerged onto a high plateau. Ahead of them lay a great chasm, hundreds of feet deep and a quarter of a mile wide. A river, thin as a length of silver thread, wound through it, and David heard the cries of what might have been birds echoing from the canyon’s walls. Carefully, he peered over the edge of the crevasse in the hope of getting a better look at what was making the noise. He saw a shape, much larger than any bird that he had ever seen, gliding through the air, supported by the updrafts from the canyon. It had bare, almost human legs, although its toes were strangely elongated and curved like an eagle’s talons. Its arms were outstretched, and from them hung the great folds of skin that served as its wings. Its long white hair flowed in the wind, and as David listened, he heard it start to sing. The creature’s voice was very high and very beautiful, and its words were clear to him:
What falls is food,
What drops will die,
Where lives the Brood,
Birds fear to fly.
Its song was taken up and echoed by other voices, and David could make out many more of the creatures moving through the canyon. The one nearest to him performed a loop in the air, at once both graceful and strangely menacing, and David glimpsed its naked body. He looked away immediately, ashamed and embarrassed.
It had a female form: old, and with scales instead of skin, yet still female for all that. He risked another look and saw the creature descending now in diminishing circles, until suddenly its wings folded in, streamlining its form, and it fell rapidly, its clawed feet extended as it seemed to head directly for the canyon wall. It struck the stone, and David saw something struggle in its claws: it was a little brown mammal of some kind, scarcely bigger than a squirrel. Its paws flailed at the air as it was plucked from the rocks. Its captor changed direction and headed for an outcrop beneath David in order to feed, shrieking in triumph. Some of its rivals, alerted by its cries, approached in the hope of stealing its meal, but it struck at the air with its wings in warning and they drifted away. David had an opportunity to examine its face as it hovered: it resembled a woman’s but was longer and thinner, with a lipless mouth that left its sharp teeth permanently exposed. Now those teeth tore into its prey, ripping great chunks of bloody fur from its body as it fed.
“The Brood,” said the Woodsman from nearby. “Another new evil that blights this part of the kingdom.”
“Harpies,” said David.
“You’ve seen such creatures before?” asked the Woodsman.
“No,” said David. “Not really.”
But I’ve read about them. I’ve seen them in my book of Greek myths. For some reason, I don’t think they belong in this story, yet here they are…
David felt ill. He moved away from the edge of the canyon, which was so deep that it gave him vertigo. “How do we get across?” he asked.
“There is a bridge about a half mile downriver,” said the Woodsman. “We’ll make it before the light fades.”
He led David along the canyon, keeping close to the edge of the forest so that there was no danger of them losing their footing and falling into that awful abyss where the Brood waited. David could hear the beating of their wings and, on more than one occasion, he thought he saw one of the creatures briefly ascend above the rim of the canyon and regard them balefully.
“Don’t be afraid,” said the Woodsman. “They are cowardly things. Were you to fall, they would pluck you from the air and tear you apart as they fought over you, but they would not dare to attack you on the ground.”
David nodded, but he did not feel reassured. In this land, it seemed that hunger inevitably overwhelmed cowardice, and the harpies of the Brood, as thin and emaciated as the wolves, looked very hungry indeed.
*
After they had walked for a little while, their footsteps echoed by the beating of the harpies’ wings, they saw a pair of bridges spanning the gorge. The bridges were identical. They were made from rope, with uneven slats of wood for the base, and they did not look terribly safe to David.
The Woodsman stared at them in puzzlement. “Two bridges,” he said. “There was only ever one bridge at this spot.”
“Well,” said David, matter-of-factly, “now there are two.” It didn’t seem like such a terrible imposition to have a choice of two ways to cross. Perhaps this was a busy spot. After all, there didn’t seem to be any other way to get across the chasm, unless you were able to fly and were prepared to take your chances with the harpies.
He heard flies buzzing nearby and followed the Woodsman to a small hollow just out of sight of the chasm. The remains of a cottage and some stables stood there, but it was clear that the property was deserted. Outside one of the stables lay the carcass of a horse, most of the meat already picked from its bones. David watched as the Woodsman peered into the stables, then looked through the open doorway of the house itself. With his head lowered, he walked back to David.
“The horse dealer is gone,” he said. “It looks as if he fled with whatever horses survived.”