BEYOND THE FEARFUL FOREST
By Geoff St. Reynard
No hunter had ever dared to follow the great Knifetooth
Bear into his Fearful Forest. For beyond it lay
a greater peril—the land of The Nameless....
[Transcriber's Note: This etext was produced from
Imagination Stories of Science and Fantasy
April 1951
Extensive research did not uncover any evidence that
the U.S. copyright on this publication was renewed.]
The bones lie light in the fertile soil of Sunset Fields. You can prodthem out with a few thrusts of your bare toes. The roots of the bigluxurious tree ferns carry skulls and skins and back-bones up to thefrond-filtered shining of day, and even the delicately questing purpletendrils of the burrowflower may drag an occasional finger or toe bonefrom its uneasy rest, so light they lie.
The bones do not decay. Nobody knows why. Animal bones decay. Theskeletons of our own revered dead fall away to powder in a generationor two. But the bones of Sunset Fields are like the unchanging graniteof the jagged cliffs, and of them we make our arrow points and lanceheads, our hammers and our needles. It is more difficult to work thebones, to chip and flake them into form, than it is to shape our toolsof metal; for we have ways of heating and molding these, subtle methodshanded down from the far olden times of our fathers' fathers. There isno way to heat and mold a bone.
Our singers tell a legend that—oh, many years ago!—a man went bystealth and slew another man with his lance. Not many of us believedthe legend even when we were children. To kill a man! Our singers saythat he possessed a beautiful woman whom the slayer desired. Who woulddesire the woman of another man? Such a thing seems incredible andchildish, even to a child. There are women for all men, men for allwomen, and do we not each love all others equally, reserving a speciallove only for our own mate? But the legend is sung that after thisbloody deed was done, many men fought because of it, and their curstbones lie in the earth of Sunset Fields forever, a memorial to theirfantastic stupidity.
It is a legend of the singers. Nobody really knows why the bones donot decay.
Beyond Sunset Fields run the three brooks: the Gray, the Blue, andthe Crimson. Far to the south they meet, and there become the WideRiver that flows turbulently on until it reaches the silver dusk thatencircles the world. There was a man of our people who once set out tofind the end of the Wide River, but he never came back.
Beyond the trio of brooks there rise the first grim ranks of theFearful Forest, line after line of tall broad-leafed trees so evenlyspaced you would think they had been planted by design. Pass thepalisades of this forest and brave its terrors, its darkness and greatangry beasts, and you will come after a time to the other side; andthere, beyond a black plain where nothing grows save crawling vines andnauseous weed patches, you may see the towering cliffs of the countryof The Nameless....
I am a hunter. My father was a singer, and his mate also; but I have apoor voice, good for little except to shout across the valleys to myfriends, so my father, affectionately calling me Bear-throat, counseledme to become a hunter; and this I did.
I am strong, of course. My arms are brown as a deer's hide and theyswell with muscle. My legs are sturdy and, though not thickset, cancarry me at a run for the space of a day without tiring. I do not boastwhen I say this, for after all I