The World and Thorinn

3 How Thorinn discovered that it is easier to fall into paradise than to get out again.

In the spring, when the pleasure pods were ripe, everybody in Pink Circle went on a picnic into the wildgreen along the river Wend. Grasshopper men went, two by two, arms linked as theysoared through the air; dough women with their fancymen went, panting and wallowing; the gray-bearded Knowers went, hobbling, leaning together, and sat on the grass to watch the young people.

First the unsexed little girls and boys would collect food from the foodvines that grew in the wildgreen, spicy orapples and sweet nanaberries, meatlets in clusters, hamsaniges from the hamsanige bushes. Meanwhile the young men and women would be gathering cushions from the cushionleaf trees and arranging them in circles on the cool sloping lawns, near enough to hear the pleasant gurgle of the Wend. The song-girls would tune up their vine-strung rebecks and the rewould be singing, then the food gathered by the unsexed little boys and girls would be heaped up and eaten; then there would be jumping and running contests, games for the children, jokes and argument for the elders; and finally, one by one, the people would wander off into the wildgreen until each had found a ripe pleasure pod gaping invitingly, with its soft watermelon-pink lining like a doughgirl's you know. Each one would search until he found a pleasure pod that just fitted,long thin ones for the grasshopper men, round fat ones for the dough women, short stunted ones for the children and fancymen. The pleasure pods for the dough women had to be almost on the ground, for the dough women were clumsy and could not jump; but the fancymen could scramble up the tall curled vines, and the grasshopper men could jump, twist as they jumped, and land gently on their backs inside the pleasure pods. The pods would dip a little lower with the weight of the people, hanging down from their long strong flexible vines, and the lip of each pod would slowly close until the pod was shut tight, with the happy person inside like a worm in a flossweed. What dreams they had then, what pleasures, twitching and moaning with their pleasures so that the hanging pods trembled, first one, then another, then a whole row at once!

When the skylight dwindled and the shadows turned greener in the wildgreen, the pods would open and the people would climb out, their limbs soft, their faces shining with remembered joy,eyes soft and faraway, their movements slow. But some of the pods remained shut as the people wandered back toward Pink Circle; there were some who liked the pleasure pods so much that they would not come out for a day, or two days, or a week or a week-week sometimes; and in fact, every spring when the pleasure pods ripened, there were always some dark old pods from the year before that hung, heavy and shriveled, on the dead vines, until the wind, or a boy climbing,or a heavy bird alighting knocked them down and they rolled into the carpetvines. These were old people mostly, who had nothing to gain by coming out of the pleasure pods, but there were young ones too, some every year, and even a child occasionally, who stayed in the pods and never came out.

What more can be said of Pink Circle, that long gone place, than that it was perfect, an elysium, without discord or bad food? Thus it was, thus it had always been, until that black day unforetold by Knowers, when a nonperson climbed down into the wildgreen. Yes, he came from the sky, for a doughgirl saw him: he opened the door like a yawn in the sky, and fell, and caught himself in the trees of the wildgreen; and thus he came into the world of men.

Go down, said the voice; but the puzzle was how to do it. The revolving shield was a kind of door, yet there were no stairs below, not even a pole to climb. It was a door for birds, not men. Bracing himself against the slow impalpable pressure that was trying to force him down, he put his head through the hole and saw that the nearest tree ended in a crown of tangled stalks, some green, most brown and dead, against the sky two ells away. The glare of the skylight, so close to his face, dazzled him and made dark spots float before his eyes.

He drew back, perplexed. It would be no great matter to lower himself by his hands through the hole, then swing and let go, to land in the treetop. But unless he could somehow prop the shield open, it would be moving while he hung from it, and might catch him by the fingers.

Go down.

Thorinn took off his belt and leg-thongs and tied them together as he had done before, with the sword dangling at the end. Holding the shield open, he dropped the sword and swung it in a slow arc, farther each time, until it caught in the treetop. The first time it was only lightly tangled, and came free again; the second time it held fast. When he tugged on it, a branch of the treetop nodded toward him. He knotted the other end of the cord to his wrist, then doubled his legs and swung them down through the hole. The sky above his head was one bright dazzle. The cord tied to his wrist led nowhere; he no longer knew which way the tree was. What if the sword had come loose from the branch? The shield was turning, it would close on his fingers... He let go, reached for the cord as he felt himself afloat, falling. He pulled the cord in, hand over hand; at last it tightened, and now he could see the tree like a great green hill tilting, leaning toward him. Twigs lashed him, then the tree struck like a giant club and he was clinging somehow to a branch, safe, dizzy, breathless, and triumphant, in the warm wind. The skylight was screened by leaves above him, turning the world into a shimmer of silver and green. All the leaves were in faint constant motion; the tree itself swayed slightly, rocking Thorinn back and forth as he clung to the branch. Faint and dizzy, he clambered into a more secure position atop the branch, then worked his way down along it until he could brace his back against the trunk. Some bright insect, of a kind Thorinn had never seen before, drifted by, hovered for a moment, and was gone. He saw now that there were golden fruits among the leaves. A trickle of sweat ran down his ribs. Indeed, it was warm here, and no wonder, so close under the sky.

The thong ran away slanting, disappeared among the bright leaves overhead. He tugged at it, saw a responding movement above. He untied the thong from his wrist, wrapped it loosely around a branch, and began to climb. He found the sword snugged up against a fork in the branch, and freed it. He tugged at the thong, and after a moment it came up. He buckled the sword-belt around his waist, put the thongs away in his wallet.

He had hoped to get a better view of the countryside from here, but the dazzle was so great that he could see nothing. His leather shirt was stuck to his back; sweat stung his eyes. He began climbing down the branch.

Farther down, where the limbs were bigger and closer together, he was able to drop from one to another. The glare lessened rapidly, but he felt as warm as ever; he was stifling in his leather garments. He stopped where a broad limb made a convenient perch, peeled off his shirt, and felt better at once. A breeze fingered his bare chest and back. How good it felt, and what a fragrance there was in the air!

The shirt was too bulky to go into his wallet; he tied the sleeves together and hung it around his neck. Then his legs began to feel all the stiffer and hotter because his body was so cool and free, and he took the breeks off too and tied them around his waist.

As he descended again, he began to catch glimpses of the ground through the branches. It was carpeted with vines and grass, only less green than the leaves around him. Now he began to realize how incredibly tall the tree was. He dropped from one branch to another, then the next, and still the ground receded below him.

As he paused for breath, he heard a distant shrilling of voices below. He crouched, listening. There they came again, nearer. Two piping notes, poot-toot, then a chorus that echoed them. Then a deeper voice, boom, boom, boom; then the high voices again. He could not make out the words. From where he stood, he could see a little patch of greensward between the branches. As he watched, a flash of color crossed a corner of this patch and was gone. He was not sure what he had seen—something flame-colored and moving, and an impression of a face tilted toward him. Startlingly near, a voice called in two clear notes. Boom, came the answer, not far off; then there was a rustling in the branches below.

Thorinn flattened himself against the trunk. The flash of color came again, and stopped. Down there on the grass, something round and bright was looking up at him. He could not make it out; it was more like a flower than a man, but it had eyes and a face. It made no threatening gesture, but simply stood and gazed up at him. He saw its mouth open; the lips were red. Poot-toot!

The leaves of a nearby branch threshed violently. Turning, Thorinn saw something gray and agile clasping the branch, swinging itself up, coming upright. Another thrashing sound, and another, and another. The things were all around him, and now there were more of the bright-colored ones below, all standing and gazing up, while the gray things, booming, sprang toward him among the branches. They were men or demons, gray-skinned like Goryat and his sons but impossibly thin, with arms, legs, and torsos like twigs. Boom, boom, from one side and the other, echoing among the leaves; and from below, poot-toot, twitter.

Thorinn stood with his back against the tree, sword in hand, trying to see all ways at once. But the gray things, in a half-circle around him, came no nearer. Hairless and naked, they had no weapons; they smiled and gestured, showing their empty hands.

Cautiously Thorinn put his sword away; this set off another volley of boomings around him, twitterings below. The branches swayed again; now other agile bodies came swarming up the tree. These were children, half the size of the gray men, some pink-skinned and to all appearance human, some twiglike and gray. All of them were chattering, piping, booming at once, those in the tree and those below. Thorinn swung himself down to the next branch, then the next. The children and the twigmen followed him, keeping their distance; below, as the branches thinned, the bright ones drew back. He inspected them from the lowest branch: they were not half flower and half human, as he had thought. The bright, soft parts of them were garments that might have been made from gigantic flower petals, veined, crumpled at the edges, saturated with color. Under these, their bodies were round and plump, and, indeed, he now realized, they must be women. Among them were a few gray and shriveled creatures whom he had hardly noticed before; they were clad like the women, and had bright eyes and wrinkled faces. They all stood in a polite semicircle, waiting for him to descend. Now that he knew they meant him no harm, Thorinn began to feel a new embarrassment. He had never been with strangers before—Goryat and his sons were all he had ever known. How would they expect him to behave?

When he dropped to the ground, another clamor went up; the circle moved inward, while all around him twigmen and children were dropping like overripe fruit. Thorinn was surrounded by smiling pink faces, bright petal-garments of scarlet, deep blue, yellow. When one of the women caught sight of his leg and his wounds, her face changed at once and she began making sounds of distress. In a moment the women were all around him, gently touching his withered leg, his cheek and shoulder, staring up into his face with such dismayed expressions that he could not help laughing. Anxious cries ran back and forth through the crowd; then they were all moving, carrying Thorinn with them.

The bright alien faces bobbed around him, the trees turned skylight into a rich green gloom, the grass was seductively soft underfoot and the slope led him irresistibly downward, so that everything that happened seemed to have become curiously ordinary. They passed through an explosion of bushes, waist high, with thick soft masses of white flowers. From the trees hung green and golden fruits, gourds, seed-pods like twisted ribbons. Fallen trees were everywhere, with vines growing over them. The bushes thinned to isolated clumps, the trees drew back, and now he was at the edge of a clear place, a slope of bright green grass that curved gently down to the marshy bank of a river. Beyond the silver water another green bank arose, another stand of trees; beyond them were mountains that met the sky. The air from the river was cool and fresh; on the near bank, scattered in little groups, the people were sitting, lying; children squatting, leaping up, running. Someone threw a ball of bright orange into the air; a twigman leaped after it, straight up, higher, incredibly rising; he caught it in his mouth and dropped back, to shouts of applause.

Thorinn would willingly have joined them in spite of his shyness, but the crowd urged him to the right, along the edge of the forest. After a few ells the shrubbery drew back into a little bay, in which giant vines hung looping and twisting from a tree, higher than Thorinn's head; from these vines depended soft green pods or shells, curved and fat, two ells long. Some swung lightly and were open to show a tender pink interior, while others were shut tight and hung heavy to the ground. The people urged him toward one of the empty pods, and showed him by gestures that they wanted him to lie down in it. While he stood hesitating, one of the closed pods stirred, split, began to open. A glint of pink showed within. A plump woman emerged, rosy-faced, with dreaming eyes. She was like someone just awakened from a long sweet sleep. With languorous movements she stepped out, picked up her petal garments discarded on the grass, slowly put them on. A faint smile curved her lips. She wandered away across the greensward; behind her, the pod swayed empty.

Not liking the look of this, Thorinn backed away. The women caught at his arms, touched the wounds on his face and shoulder, pointed again to the empty pod. It was as if they were trying to say that the pod would heal him.

Thorinn tried to explain with gestures that he had medicine of his own. But they were slow to understand, and at length he had to get a pinch of sky-stuff out of his wallet and point repeatedly to it, then to his wounds.

This set off a flurry of excited conversation, with much waving of arms and movement back and forth. The people brought forward one of the oldsters, who squinted wisely at Thorinn, stroked his straggly beard, and piped a few words of gibberish. At this, the whole flock of them set off again, down the slope this time, drawing Thorinn along. They led him into a circle of people gathered around a heap of fruits on the grass. Some of the people got up to make room while others sat down, and when the confusion ended Thorinn found himself seated with a plump woman on either side. A child scrambled into the circle, plucked a pale greenish ovoid from the heap and handed it to one of the women, who offered it to Thorinn. He took it dubiously; it was cool in his hands and had a strange fragrance, but he was hungry, and bit into it boldly. It was soft and pungent, the flavor sweet and acid at the same time; the cool juice ran down his chin. The exposed meat was a startling emerald green. Thorinn instinctively spat out what was in his mouth. He was thinking better of it and about to take a second bite, when one of the women took the fruit away from him gently and offered him another sort. This was flattish and pale brown, with a texture almost like bread; inside was something firmer. Thorinn bit through the soft outer layer into a salty, fibrous substance. It was a deep pink in color and tasted almost like cooked flesh of an unfamiliar sort; yet the thing was a fruit, for it had a stem and the remnants of a husk. The people watched him eat, with broad smiles and cries of encouragement. As he was finishing the bread-meat thing, a group of children ran into the circle with curled leaves in their hands. In the leaves was dark sky-stuff which they must have gathered in the forest.

One of the oldsters came forward, inspected the contents of the leaves with great gravity and care, then called for a fruit, which was given to him; it was a smallish, golden-yellow one. He squeezed it in his hand until the clear juice ran into the sky-stuff. He stirred and molded the drenched moss with his knobby fingers, then, apparently satisfied, picked up a mass of the sodden stuff, leaned forward, and began to plaster it carefully over the wound in Thorinn's cheek. After an instinctive start, Thorinn sat still and let him do it. The sticky juice made the sky-stuff cling; it felt agreeably cool on the fevered lips of the wound. When he was done, the old man called for a leaf, which he smeared with sap from a green stalk; then, carefully pinching the lips of the wound together, he spread the leaf over sky-stuff and wound, and pressed it down firmly. When he had done the same for Thorinn's other wounds, he examined the withered leg and wagged his chin sadly. Then he squatted back on his heels and made a sweeping motion over his head, three times, staring intently into Thorinn's eyes. Thorinn, although he had no idea what was meant, made signs of agreement and gratitude, and the old man went back to the other side of the circle. Thinking to repay them for their kindness, Thorinn opened his wallet and brought out a few of his treasures, pebbles of various colors, part of a weasel's skull, a bit of crystal. This last he presented to the old man, while the others crowded around twittering with excitement; then he handed out the rest at random, including a scrap of cloth that had been part of a garment of his own until he outgrew it, afterward a rag used by Goryat and his sons to polish the bosses of their harness; Thorinn had saved a piece because it had bright figures of birds and people woven into it. The people took these gifts with every evidence of pleasure. Some of the women and children offered Thorinn more fruits, each one of a different sort, and he continued to eat with good appetite.

It was clear that he had somehow got into the Highlands, though how he had done it was a puzzle; for the trees, though taller than any he had ever seen, were no more than twenty or thirty ells in height, yet they touched the sky; and even here, at the bottom of the slope, the sky seemed close overhead. But these people in their dress and appearance were nothing at all like the Highlanders Goryat and his sons had spoken of; nor had Thorinn ever heard them mention any place of such warmth and brilliance. The people were all friendly, but not one could understand him when he spoke, or utter any but their own outlandish noises. He questioned one after another, saying, "Hovenskar." "Snorri's Pipe." "the Lowlands," and making gestures, but all he got in return was a new outburst of twittering. The more he observed them, the more puzzled and uneasy he grew. There were at least five sorts, the plump wobbling women, the twigmen, the oldsters, the children of all sizes, and another sort of men whom he had taken for children at first because of their small stature; but they were wide-shouldered and well-thewed, and Thorinn saw them here and there clipping and kissing the women. Most of the women, the oldsters, and some of the little men wore petal garments, but the others were as naked as Thorinn himself now that he had laid aside his sweaty leather shirt and breeks. They had no weapons of any kind, nor, indeed, any thing made with hands. They must be persons of quality, if one were to judge by their soft hands and feet and their merry expressions; yet there were no servants or bond-slaves among them, so far as Thorinn could see. They came and went, as aimless as children. They seemed as curious about Thorinn as he about them, and there were always some few around him, fingering his skin and hair, but they all lost interest quickly and went off to join some game, or wandered into the trees.

When he had eaten his fill, he picked up his bundle of garments, not liking to leave it behind, and went to ease himself in a patch of low ground-vines at the edge of the trees, where he had seen others doing the same. The place had a rank smell, yet not so much as might have been expected; the broad brownish-green leaves were curled up and clasped into lumpy bundles here and there, and when he had accomplished his needs, he saw them crawling slowly, like crippled snakes, to cover what he had left. Thorinn watched them for a moment, marveling, then turned back down the slope. After a few paces he stopped and spread out his bundle of garments, meaning to use the leg-thongs to tie it together more compactly. At once he was surrounded by children with alert and curious faces; they squatted to watch him as he worked, reached out now and then to finger the leather of breeks or wallet, chattered and piped among themselves. Thorinn did not hinder them, except to keep them from prying into his wallet; but one boy, bolder than the rest, plucked up the sword before Thorinn could stop him and drew it half out of the scabbard. Alarmed and angered, Thorinn sprang at him, pushed him roughly, and snatched the sword back.

The boy lay sprawled on the grass, his head half lifted, his mouth an O. The other children had fallen silent and were staring at Thorinn. The boy's eyes slowly filled with tears. While the others made mournful noises and wrung their hands, he got to his feet. With dragging steps he moved away toward the shrubbery. Thorinn called after him, but he did not turn. He went to the pod-vines, stood a moment with hanging head before an empty pod, then climbed in and lay down inside it. The pod slowly closed around him.

Thorinn noticed that the other children had backed away, leaving a clear circle around him. Their faces were pale, their eyes big. A questioning call came up the slope; one of the children answered briefly. Another question, another reply. Other voices boomed, piped.

Thorinn buckled the sword-belt around his waist, quickly finished wrapping the shirt, breeks and wallet into a bundle and tied it with the thongs. Carrying the bundle in one hand, he moved down toward the river. To either side, up and down the long green meadow, he could see dots of faces turned to watch him. All the people seemed to have stopped what they were doing; they were motionless and silent. Thorinn kept going, turning now and then to look back; but no one followed him. The meadow sloped down into weedy grass and sedge, became a marsh. Thorinn waded out between heavy clumps of grass, in cool water up to his knees. Little yellow birds burst out of the marsh-grass before him, fluttered erratically for a moment around his head, then dropped out of sight. Up the river, where the stream made a gentle bend, he could see larger birds standing in the water, their long necks looping; they had red breasts and iridescent wing-feathers. Skylight sparkled in the droplets that fell from their beaks.

He stopped where the marsh-grass ended and the muddy bottom grew deeper. To his left, he could see down the river a matter of half a league or so before it disappeared between two gentle hills. To the right, the river curved only a few hundred ells away. Beyond, over the treetops, he could see distant mountains and a faint bright thread that might have been a waterfall. The river ran silver-smooth before him. On the opposite bank was another green slope, narrower and weedier than this one, then trees, then mountains. The sky was bright and blank overhead. He had hoped to see some mark in the sky, but there was none; he would have to wait until nightfall.

He hopped back through the shallow water. Above him on the slope a few of the people were standing watching him; others had gone back to their games, but the little circles around the heaps of food seemed to have broken up. He could see groups of children who seemed to be carrying something toward the shrubbery, passing other groups coming back.

As he approached, he saw that the people were making ready to leave. It was the remains of their meal that the children were carrying. They dropped their armloads in the vines, went back for more. Nearby, he could see a few pods opening, people climbing out. The people were drifting slowly together, all moving in the same direction, forming little moving groups, some with arms linked. Their voices were cheerful. None approached him as he walked up the slope, but a few smiled. One of the children, a half-grown girl, stood by the pod-vines and waited for him. She gestured toward one of the pods and said something. There was a questioning note in her voice, and she stared earnestly into his eyes.

Thorinn looked at the pod, which still hung heavy to the ground. All the others were open and empty, except one or two, farther back in the tangle, and they looked brown and old. One had fallen from its brittle stalk and lay dark on the ground; the broad-leafed vines had crawled over it, almost hiding it from view.

Thorinn turned to the pod again, thinking of the boy. "Is he still inside?" he asked. She looked at him blankly. He made a pushing motion, then touched his sword, gestured toward the pod. After a moment she seemed to understand. She repeated his gestures, then asked him something else in her piping voice. Thorinn looked around. The people were drifting away upriver; these two were the last ones left. "Isn't he coming out?" Thorinn asked. He crouched and laid his hands beside his face, closed his eyes as if in sleep. He straightened, pointed to the pod again.

The girl looked puzzled, but repeated his gestures. She came closer, looking into his face, and said something twice over, with great earnestness.

Surely he could make her understand. Thorinn crouched again, imitating the boy asleep in the pod, then mimed coming awake, the pod opening, the boy stepping out.

The girl stared at him. She spoke in a falling cadence; her eyes and mouth were sad. With one hand she made a gesture Thorinn did not understand. They looked at each other for a moment, then the girl turned away to follow the others, who were already distant down the long strip of green. The pod hung motionless on the vine. Thorinn prodded it with his foot experimentally, moved it a hand's breadth, but there was no answering movement within. He considered whether he should cut the pod open. Did she mean the boy was never going to come out?

Moving listlessly, she was nevertheless slowly catching up to the others. Thorinn hesitated a moment, then decided to leave well alone, and followed her.

Scattered along the grassy bank, the people drifted away before him in twos and threes; the children and twigmen, for the most part, had gone on ahead; the old people, the women, and the women's men strolled behind. Their voices were muted and gentle. In a few paces Thorinn had caught up with the girl; he slowed down to keep pace with her, but although she glanced at him once, she did not speak, and after a moment, losing patience, Thorinn went on ahead.

Where the long green meadow narrowed, the people were filing into an opening in the forest. He could glimpse their bright petals bobbing between the trees. The trail wound gently upward, never steep or difficult, between shrubs with unblemished bright leaves, flowers, vines, trees with hanging clusters of fruit; here and there it curved to avoid a fallen tree. The ground was softly carpeted everywhere. The bushes had no thorns.

Thorinn slipped past the ambling women and old people where he could do so without rudeness on the narrow trail, and eventually had passed all but the twigmen and children, who were now out of sight. The trail was still plain, and he followed it for half a league until it emerged in a wide green meadow, which at first appeared sickle-shaped, curving away from him; then, blinking in the late skylight, he saw that in fact it formed a ring around a clump of slender trees.

People were moving at random around the bases of these trees, where Thorinn saw a huddle of curious round structures of withy and vines. Up in the branches, a flash of movement caught his eye, and he saw platforms there with people on them.

As he approached, he found that some of the bulbous structures around the trees were little bowers; what he had taken for withies were simply the stalks of plants that had been bent together and secured with interlaced vines that still bore their leaves and blossoms. Children were squatting in a few of these. Other huts, somewhat larger, were covered almost to the ground by a solid green skin which, on examination, he found to be composed of broad leaves, overlapped and somehow sealed tightly together at their edges. Peering into the doorway of one of these, he saw heaped flowers and a few gourds; otherwise it was empty.

Voices piped behind him; the rest of the people were emerging from the trees. They crossed to the meadow, a few glancing at him but making no sign. They gathered around the base of the trees in little groups. A few disappeared into the green huts or climbed to the platforms above; then a few more. Thorinn, who had waited in vain for any invitation to follow them, withdrew a little and watched. Now only two of the people remained, a woman and her little man. Arm in arm, they entered one of the green huts.

The birds in the treetops had fallen silent. Thorinn looked up. Silent and swift, an edge of darkness was sweeping across the sky. It was not high-arched, like the sky-scythe of Hovenskar, but straight as a string. In two heartbeats it had passed and the sky was dark. Kneeling in the darkness, feeling the cool breeze that presently began to whisper across the meadow, Thorinn began to suspect that he was farther from home than he had reckoned.