Gaal the Conqueror (2 page)

"Quite safe. Rabbie says it must be four feet thick by now. There are subterranean springs at one or two points near the
shore, but even those spots should be safe. You needn't be
scared. Try it. It feels rock solid." He stamped his foot hard on
the ice. Carefully John joined his father.

"It's Rabbie I'm scared of, Dad. Does he often get drunk?"

"Until today I didn't know he ever did."

"I was real scared when he chased Eleanor out of the cabin
with a knife. You should have seen him. I couldn't believe my
eyes. Will he go on drinking?"

"Probably. His problem-according to his wife-is that he
can't stop. The thing has him in its power. I was in two minds
whether to come out for a walk or not, but I think she wanted
us out of the way. She's worried about Eleanor. Seems to think
she's so scared that she'll stay out all night."

"Hm. I wouldn't blame her if she did."

"But on a night like this she could freeze to death."

Rabbie MacFarland was a trapper and an old friend of Ian
McNab's. He had invited John and his father to his cabin on
Black Sturgeon Lake for a week of trapping and ice fishing
when they unexpectedly bumped into each other in Winnipeg
the previous week. Ian and Rabbie had not been together since
they were in France during the Great War, fifteen years before.

Ian McNab continued, "Rabbie seemed fine when we met,
and he drank very little in the army. If I had known that anything like this would happen . . ." For several moments they
continued to walk in silence, following a line parallel with the
shore, taking care not to slip though the ice was not very
slippery. Intense cold had made it almost tacky.

"I wanted to sneak outside when he got so mad with Eleanor.
Dad-it was awful."

"It must have been. What bothered me was all his talk about
power. Did you notice?"

"You mean on the trip when he was telling me that power
belongs to men and boys, and that that's what makes us differ ent from women and girls?"

Ian McNab nodded. After a moment John said, "Do you
think he does that often-I mean get mad with Eleanor?"

"I wouldn't be surprised. She seems cowed, scared of her own
shadow."

"I tried to talk to her, but she didn't seem to want to talk.
Where do you think she's gone?"

"She can't have gone "far. Mrs. MacFarland says she usually
walks along the lake this way. So far I've seen no footprints.
There must be some other way down to the lake. We should see
her soon." They paused and peered ahead. The lake was eerie
and still. Pine woods and rocks rose steeply from the little bay
around them. They stood on a desert of ice and snow as flat
as the icing on a Christmas cake. But they could see no sign
of a girl. "Let's push on further. It can't be more than half a
mile to the point."

"How old is Eleanor?"

"Eleven, I think-no, ten."

"What will we do when we find her?"

"I'll take her along to a farm round the next point. Mrs.
MacFarland told me how to find it. The people there know her
and they understand the situation. It's often happened before."

John did not reply immediately. Moonlight deepened the
lines of worry on his face. Eventually he said, "What's going to
happen to her? She can't go on living there if her father ..."
He was about to say "keeps trying to kill her," but the words
sounded too shocking. "I mean something might happen."

Ian McNab sighed. "I'm sorry you had to see it, son. I had
no idea what the situation was like. Mrs. MacFarland tells me
that she has made arrangements for Eleanor to stay with her
aunt in Winnipeg. She's to set out tomorrow. I volunteered for
us to accompany her."

"Good! There's no way I want to stay after what happened."
For a few moments the two continued to walk in silence.

"I'm sorry about the ice fishing trip. I should have guessed
what would happen when I saw the two twenty-sixes of rye
whiskey under the seat."

"That was some ride!" John said, referring to the trip from
Winnipeg in a horse-drawn sleigh that had been borrowed
from the nearby farm. The trip had begun fairly sedately but
had become progressively more riotous as the first twenty-six
was consumed. ("You need something to keep the blood circulating in this chill," the trapper had said repeatedly.) Ian
McNab had tried in vain to persuade Rabbie to quit.

"He was funny!" John laughed. "I thought we'd all get
thrown out of the sleigh."

"I didn't see the funny side then-and I don't now. The man
could have killed us. I'm amazed the farmer let him have the
sleigh."

"He didn't."

"He didn't?"

"No, I heard Mrs. MacFarland telling him off about it. He'd
`borrowed' the horses and the sleigh without asking. She took
them back herself."

Ian McNab snorted in dismay. "He was never like that in the
army. He was the best NCO I ever had. I was the one with the
drinking problem in those days. Many's the time he covered for
me when I was drunk."

"Were you ever... "John hesitated, embarrassed. "Did you
ever get-like him?" He knew his father had been in serious
trouble by drinking in the army. He had learned the fact in
their shocking last moments together in a world far away, a
world in another time and space. But they had never discussed
the matter.

"I got into fights. The stuff is poison to me. In one fight in
a Paris nightclub I struck a senior officer and was court-marshalled. I haven't thought about it for years, but this-this terrible business makes the nightmare real again." He seemed strangely agitated, and for a few moments they continued in
silence. After a moment Ian McNab murmured, more to himself than to John, "Those are memories I'd be happy to be rid
of."

John said nothing. Hardly realizing what effect it was having
on him, he had nevertheless begun to absorb the beauty
around them, and its magic made all ugliness seem unreal and
distant. "I couldn't believe it at first," he said at length, his gaze
strangely remote.

"Believe what?"

"That I'd found you."

"Found me?"

"You know-in Anthropos. It was so unreal-I never
thought-"

"No, neither did I. It was strange, wasn't it? Traveling to
unknown times and places to meet a son I never knew existed."
He threw his arm round his son's shoulders as they began to
cross a patch of wind-whipped snow, breaking the fragile layer
of ice that covered both the snow and the more solid ice beneath the snow.

Suddenly the night was filled with awesome sound. A deep,
booming note resonated through the air. It seemed to come
from the lake below and yet also from the hills all round. It was
a majestic, musical note, like the drawing of a giant bow across
a lake-sized base fiddle. Then it was gone and even the trees
seemed to listen in silence. John grabbed his father's arm.
"What is it?"

"Only the ice. Tremendous, isn't it? I used to hear it in the
north of Scotland when I was a boy."

"Is it dangerous?"

"No. It comes from the ice expanding. There are joints where
the ice from one shore meets the ice from another. They rub
against each other sometimes."

They were still crossing the patch of light snow. "Look, John! Those must be her footprints." Footprints could clearly be seen
on the patch of snow they had just begun to cross. They bent
over them, examining them excitedly. There was no clear outline in the prints-for the delicate layer of ice covering the
snow prevented it. But it was clear that the prints were smaller
than those of John's father, and perhaps a little smaller than
John's own. In any case the region was so isolated that the
footprints were unlikely to belong to anyone but Eleanor.

"She seems to have been making for the point."

"Perhaps she is going to the farm herself."

"Let's follow and see."

They straightened themselves, and with a pace quickened by
excitement began to follow the tracks. Wherever the snow
lacked its filmy cover of ice the tracks were clear. Larger patches
of snow made their task easier as they approached the point.
Even so there remained wide spaces where the wind had swept
the ice clean and tracks were almost nonexistent. At one point
they searched for several minutes, fearing they had lost them
or that the girl had decided to stick to the areas of ice and to
avoid the snow.

"Here they are, Dad!" John had decided to examine a patch
of snow further into the lake.

Ian McNab looked up, startled and uneasy. "Then she isn't
making for the farm," he muttered, hurrying to join his son.

For several minutes longer they continued to track the footprints as they led them across patch after patch of snow toward
the center of the lake, until suddenly, in the center of the
largest patch they had crossed so far, the tracks stopped dead.
At this point the prints were perfectly clear. The snow was thin
and the footprints clean. Beyond and all around them the snow
lay undisturbed. Father and son stopped, staring in bewilderment, scarcely realizing the implication of what they were looking at.

"She-she must have jumped." The words tumbled out of John's mouth before he could stop them.

"So where did she land?" His father's voice was not mocking,
only amazed. It was obvious that she had not "landed." It was
as if the owner of the tracks had been snatched into the air and
had never come down.

"Could she-could she have gone through a hole in the ice?"

"Can you see one?"

John did not answer. The snow lay smooth and undisturbed.
There was no sign of a hole or even of a crack. "Then what
happened?" John asked.

His father was shaking his head still, his eyes wide and staring. "In the name of... what in the world ..."

"She can't have

Blankly they stared around them. Behind them three sets of
tracks led to the point where they stood. Beyond them one set
of tracks continued for five or six paces further, only to end
suddenly and inexplicably. Cautiously they moved forward, and
as they did so Ian McNab placed a restraining hand on John's
shoulder. A sense of danger made him say, "Easy, boy. Let's not
be in too much of a hurry."

"But Dad, we gotta look around."

"For what? She could neither have jumped nor flown."

"Mebbe the wind has blown snow over her tracks."

"There is no wind, John."

There was a long pause. Slowly over John's mind there crept
an idea that both frightened and yet excited him. He would be
scared, very scared. But would his father let him? Not if he saw
that he was afraid, to be sure. Therefore, he must hide his fear.
At length he said, "Dad..."

"Yes, son?"

"Oh-nothing. It was a dumb idea."

"Perhaps. And perhaps not. What's on your mind?"

Still John hesitated. Finally, he said, "You remember when
we were on the ship coming over to Canada?" His father nodded. "Well, you said it looked as though I would be going
back to that other world, to Anthropos-because I had the
Mashal Stone and pross stone in my blazer pocket still." They
had stopped moving forward. The older man said nothing, and
John continued. "I know it's crazy. But it happened to both of
us. We were taken to Anthropos somehow, like magic-and
both of us had been running away from something." He
paused. "You're thinking the same, aren't you? You're not saying anything, but that's what you're thinking, isn't it? So mebbe
... Dad, we know where she's gone. I can feel it. It's tingling
inside me now. If I so much as put one foot beyond those
footprints . . ."

Ian McNab said nothing. He stood staring at the far horizon,
his face a mask. "Dad..."

The man drew in a deep breath. "Yes, John?"

"Dad, you said that if you went back you'd-you'd die."

"Yes, I did say that. I could have been wrong, of course."

"You weren't wrong-you were almost dead when we left.
Your time there had ended-you know that. If you went there
again you'd never come back. Dad, you won't-you just mustn't
go there again-you mustn't. I'll go. I'll find her and bring her
back. O.K?"

Again the man said nothing. "Are you all right?" The boy's
voice was tense and anxious. "You don't look good. Your faceare you O.K?" Ian McNab nodded. Suddenly John seized him
round the waist, pressing his head against his father's shoulder.
"Dad, you're shaking!"

"I'm cold, John. I'm just shivering a bit. It's thirty below zero,
remember. Don't worry-I'm fine."

There was another long pause. "Dad, is it O.K for me to go?
I'll have to. It's the only way."

"Unfortunately." The man's voice was flat, expressionless.

"Then I'll go-O.K?" Ian McNab straightened himself and
placed his hands on his son's shoulders. His face was pale, but he was smiling. "You're becoming quite a Canadian."

"What do you mean?"

"You've learned to pronounce words like O.K and mebbe and
gotta-and you use them all the time now."

"Oh, Dad! Look-you'll let me go-O.K?"