‘Herr Hans!’
The gangly man’s shout filled his ears. Hans felt hands dragging him, and he stumbled back. Otto pulled him off the side of the Road. Hans felt his head burning, but the bird didn’t attack again. At length they found a haystack, and the farmhand helped Hans clamber up to the top.
They lay upon the haystack and caught their breath.
Otto sat up and began hugging his knees. He looked up and down the Road. Tears were bleeding from the man’s eyes and he was shivering.
‘So, Herr Hans,’ he said, and his voice was breaking, ‘what you said back at Groening-stead — the trees, the trees from the Black Forest … they grew so fast … they pulled down the Forester’s house?’
‘I told you.’
The gangly man put his head between his knees and rocked back and forth on the haystack. He was moaning all the while, ‘Ah no … no, please no…’
Hans felt his head. Part of the scalp was sore and hot and sticky. The bird’s talons had opened it. But Hans knew the bird could have done far worse. He would have liked to think that he had been quick enough to duck but he knew the bird could have swooped lower quite easily and taken out his eyes, or even half his face. ‘No,’ Hans thought, ‘it only meant to give me warning of some kind. But of what, I wonder?’
His stomach growled, and he recalled he had eaten nothing for hours. ‘Otto,’ he said. He tugged on the gangly man’s shoulder until Otto turned his head around and faced Hans with great tormented eyes. ‘Otto, let’s eat.’
The fool only shook his head. Again he moaned, and Hans gave up.
‘If you aren’t hungry, I am,’ he said, and he rummaged in his pack for the good things Mother Groening had given him. He laid them out on a kerchief on the hay: bottle and bread and cheese and sausages and cake.
Hans ate, but the gangly man went on moaning and carrying on until Hans felt it gnawing at his nerves. ‘Can’t you be quiet for two shakes?’ he asked, and he put a crust of bread into his hands. ‘Eat that and stop your groans.’
Like a child the gangly man brought the crust before his mouth and chewed on it. All the while his eyes stared at Hans. They cast back the light of the new moon hanging low just over the treetops, and the light in the farmhand’s eyes struck Hans as wicken in its own right. Was the fellow mad? Or did the wild things in the woods stake a claim over his soul now that he sat so close to them and the darkness overtook the Earth?
Hans moved away from him as far as he could get on the haystack. He thought about getting down, but his ankle was stiff again and sore, and Hans feared the ground and the trees even more than the strange man before him.
The gangly man finished the bread and took up the bottle. He drank the wine off with a few loud gulps. Hans watched the man’s throat bobbing up and down as he drank the bottle dry; then the farmhand looked at the empty bottle in his hands, and mumbled some words of a song:
‘A pittle, a pottle,
My only friend’s the bottle,
Though dogs desert me
And women will hurt me
And men cut my throat for gold,
The bottle will feed me
And stand by if need be,
All my life until I grow old.’
There were other verses. On and on the gangly man chanted it, in a drunken mumbling way, in a way that made Hans feel his hair stand on end. The gangly man seemed to be drifting away into madness, into a sort of wicken-spell, and beneath the words Hans heard a rising tone of despair and fever, a working-up to some fearsome deed – maybe even murder.
‘Oh be quiet, can’t you shut up?’ he shouted at last at the farmhand. And Hans was surprised that the man did stop his tongue and turn his pale round eyes to Hans.
It was then that Hans became aware of another sound in the night. It came on the breeze that blew the ground fogs up in long streams from the direction of the woods. It was a grinding, scraping sound.
‘Ah!’ shouted the gangly man. ‘What’s that? What is it?’
‘Shut up! Don’t tell it where we are!’ Hans said, and he was so overwhelmed with panic he took hold of the farmhand and wrestled him down. Hans covered the man’s mouth with his hands and lay on top of him, panting and listening.
The grinding, tearing sound grew louder. It grew closer. Hans could feel his heart knocking on his ribs.
‘It’s the trees,’ he whispered in the farmhand’s ear. ‘Just like on the other night. They are–’ he swallowed hard. ‘They are growing again.’
The gangly man’s eyes grew even bigger with fear. Hans could see them reflecting the starlight like broad beast’s eyes.
‘You should go into the Schwarzwald, Herr Hans.’ The farmhand’s voice was steady now, but it sounded oddly hollow.
Hans got off the man and backed away. ‘What are you saying?’ he asked.
The big eyes blinked. ‘Your father is dead, Herr Hans. You are the Forester now. It’s right for you in the Schwarzwald. It is your place.’
The grinding of the trees was like a roaring wind now. It filled the black night air around them.
‘The Schwarzwald is wicken,’ said Hans. ‘Wicken and bad. It’s no place for men, can’t you hear the gnawing and gnashing of the trees?’
‘I tell you, you should go, you must go! And go you shall!’ The gangly man’s limbs thrashed about and for a moment Hans feared he would attack him. Otto started up and Hans raised his staff, his only weapon. But the gangly man saw the gesture, or sensed it, and Hans heard him plop back down on the hay. For a time he went on muttering, strange sounds, not proper words at all. At last he was quiet.
Hans sat and stared into the blackness. There was nothing he could see. His ears pricked up for the smallest sound that should warn him if the gangly man tried to creep toward him.
He knew surely now the man was wicken, and mad.
