The Map of Time (Trilogía Victoriana #1)(29)

Ten months later, Tremanquai burst into their offices, days after a memorial service had taken place with the permission of his wife—loathe to don her widow’s weeds. As was only to be expected, his appearance caused the same stir as if he had been a ghost. He was terribly gaunt, his eyes were feverish, and his filthy, malodorous body hardly looked as if he had spent the intervening months washing in rosewater. As was obvious from his deplorable appearance, the expedition had been a complete disaster from the outset. No sooner had they penetrated the jungle than they were ambushed by Somali tribesmen. Tremanquai was unable even to take aim at those feline shadows emerging from the undergrowth, before being felled by a cascade of arrows. There, in the stillness of the jungle, far from the eyes of civilization, the expedition was brutally massacred down to the last man. The attackers left him for dead like the rest of his men, but life had toughened Tremanquai, and it took more of an effort to kill him than those savages had made. And so he roamed the jungle for weeks, wounded and feverish, using his rifle for a crutch and some of the arrows still stuck in his flesh, until his pitiful wanderings brought him to a small native village encircled by a palisade. Exhausted, he collapsed before the narrow entrance to the fence, like a piece of flotsam washed up by the sea.

He awoke several days later completely naked, stretched out on an uncomfortable straw mattress with repulsive-looking poultices on the various wounds mortifying his flesh. He was unable to identify the features of the young girl applying the sticky greenish dressings as belonging to any of the tribes he knew. Her body was long and supple, her hips extremely narrow, and her chest almost as flat as a board. Her dark skin gave off a faint, dusky glow. He soon discovered that the men possessed the same slender build, their delicate bone structure almost visible beneath their slight musculature. Not knowing what tribe they belonged to, Tremanquai decide to invent a name for them. He called them Reed People, because they looked slim and supple like reeds. Tremanquai was an excellent shot, but he had little imagination. The Reed People’s otherworldly physique, as well as their big black eyes darkening their exquisite doll-like faces, was a source of astonishment, but as Tremanquai’s convalescence progressed, he discovered further reasons to be amazed: the language they used to communicate with each other, a series of guttural noises he found impossible to reproduce despite being accustomed to imitating the most outlandish dialects, the fact that they all looked the same age, and the absence in the village of the most essential everyday instruments, as though the life of these savages took place elsewhere, or as if they had succeeded in reducing life to a single act: breathing. But one question above all preyed insistently on Tremanquai’s mind: how did the Reed People resist the neighboring tribes” repeated attacks? They were few in number, they looked neither strong nor fierce, and apparently his rifle was the only weapon in the village.

He soon discovered how. One night, a lookout warned that ferocious Masai tribesmen had surrounded the village. From his hut, together with his carer, Tremanquai watched his otherworldly saviors form a group in the center of the village facing the narrow entrance, which curiously had no door. Standing in a fragile line as though offering themselves up for sacrifice, the Reed People linked hands and began chanting an intricate tune.

Recovering from his astonishment, Tremanquai reached for his rifle and dragged himself back over to the window with the intention of defending his hosts as best he could. Scarcely any torches were lit in the village, but the moon cast sufficient light for an experienced hunter like himself to be able to take aim. He set his sights on the gap in the stockade, hoping that if he managed to pick off a few of the Masai the others might think the village was being defended by white men and flee. To his surprise, the girl gently lowered his weapon, indicating to him silently that his intervention was unnecessary. Tremanquai bridled, but the Reed girl’s serene gaze made him think again. From his window, he watched with trepidation and bewilderment as the savage horde of Masai spilled through the entrance while his hosts carried on their discordant incantation as the spears came ever closer. The explorer steeled himself to witness the passive slaughter. Then something happened which Tremanquai described in a quavering, incredulous voice, as though he found it hard to believe the words he himself was uttering. The air split open. He could think of no better way to describe it. It was like tearing a strip of wallpaper away, he said, leaving the bare wall. Except in this case, it was not a wall but another world. A world the explorer was at first unable to see into from where he was standing, but which gave off a pale glow, lighting up the surrounding darkness. Astonished, he watched the first of the Masai tumble into the hole that had suddenly opened between them and their victims, and vanish from reality, from the world Tremanquai was in, as though they had dissolved into thin air. Seeing their brothers swallowed up by the night, the rest of the Masai fled in panic. The explorer shook his head slowly, stunned by what he had seen. Now he knew how these people managed to resist the neighboring tribes” attacks.

He lurched out of his hut and approached the hole that his hosts had opened in the very fabric of reality with their chanting.

As he stood facing the opening, which flapped like a curtain, he realized it was bigger than he had first thought. It rose from the ground, reaching above his head and was easily wide enough for a carriage to pass through. The edges billowed over the landscape, concealing then exposing it, like waves breaking on the shore.

Fascinated, Tremanquai peered through it as if it were a window.