The Three Suns of Amara by William Temple

Author:William Temple
Language: eng
Format: epub
Published: 2021-02-25T16:00:00+00:00

For my wood I come.

The ground shook under the nearing feet, and Sherret quivered with it, a terror-stricken child again.

Thump. Thump. THUMP.

At the last and heaviest thump, Sherret started awake and stared around, wild-eyed. Beneath a tree at the very edge of the clearing a massive branch was rocking gently on the scanty grass. It had just fallen, and had been amputated neatly at a crotch.

He sat rigid, watching it. It rocked itself to stillness. Now nothing was stirring anywhere. There was dead silence in the woods.

He must have slept long, for the light had changed and all things were blue-washed.

Cautious and trembling, he got to his feet, peering all around the clearing. He didn’t know what he was looking for, but he felt that something was there. Belatedly, it occurred to him that he’d seen neither animal nor bird in the woods. Did they shim the woods because they knew they were dangerous to life?

Was something hiding behind the trees, watching him covertly? Yet, if the something had sliced these trees as though they were carrots, it must be huge. Too huge to be able to conceal itself behind any tree.

Something invisible, then? A monstrous vandal, mutilating senselessly? But anything of that size must surely have left its tracks on the ground, even if it were itself invisible. He had noticed no tracks.

He stuck a B-stick between his teeth, gripped his machete and tip-toed over to the fallen branch. Beyond it, among the trees, he saw other newly severed branches, mostly large, recently fallen. His dreaming mind had interpreted the impacts of their landing as the thumps of approaching feet.

That realization was a relief . He began to clutch at straws. Probably the monster was all imagination. Could be the trees had some disease which caused them to rot and fall apart in this peculiar manner.

But could this happen to a number of individual trees almost simultaneously? The odds were against that.

Common sense told him to waste no more time in speculation, but to get to hell out of the woods. He went back to the still smoldering fire, gathered his things, shrugged on his rucksack. Then he quitted the clearing, intent on making for the pass.

He’d gone maybe fifty yards when from close behind him came:

Thump. Thump. Thump.

And the swishing of leafy boughs and the crackle of breaking twigs.

He spun around.

A great invisible knife was stalking him, blazing its trail as it came—literally. Slices of bark were falling from the trees as it cut its way after him, and, emphatically, whole major limbs. These evidences showed it was pursuing an implacably straight line—that was aimed directly at Sherret.

Frozen, he watched it. The very evenness of its pace was unnerving. It threatened an inevitable doom, as though the unseen wielder of the knife were thinking, “Run if you like. Run till you drop. But I shall catch up with you…in my own good time.”

A tree just in front of him, not twenty feet away, was suddenly completely bisected. The halves fell apart and crashed.

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