The Last Days Of The Edge Of The World by Brian Stableford Page B

already out of sight. He listened for the sound of her whinnying, or even the sound of her grinding her teeth… but there was nothing. Except, of course–-
    But he shut his ears to that sound and went on.
    And on.
    And on.
    The little toadstools broke beneath his feet and were squashed into pulp.
    Ewan kept licking his lips. He wanted to talk, to let some of the tension that was tightening his every muscle ebb away in the sound of his voice, but the grey mare was no longer there, and for some unknown reason he could not bring himself to talk to the empty air. It was not that he was afraid that no one was listening… but
    rather the reverse….
    The silence was unbearable, and that other sound, when it came, even more so. The only course possible was to take out the little reed pipes and begin to play.
    Considering that he was the son of an instrument-maker and had grown up surrounded by devices for making music, Ewan was not very good. There were a number of simple tunes he could pick out on any of a dozen instruments, but they were repetitive dance tunes and the rhythms of nursery rhymes. He knew nothing that really seemed appropriate to his present predicament. He could manage no stirring martial music, nor anything soft and beautiful.
    And so he played “Baa, baa, black sheep” instead. In situations like his, you have to do what you can. He played it over and over and over. There was no one to sing the words, but he imagined them inside his head. He also imagined children dancing to the sound. At first it was just his little sisters, but then he added himself and his mother and his father. After a while, he brought in a few passers-by, and then invented a carnival troupe. He realized that the process could go on for ever, and ultimately he had the entire population of Jessamy, including the ministers and the royal family, dancing in his head to “Baa, baa black sheep.” As an afterthought, for good measure, he added a trio of trained elephants and the old grey mare.
    He didn’t count the paces he took or keep any track of time. He just kept on, and he ignored the fact that he was dog tired and that his feet ached terribly. He might have gone on for ever.
    Eventually, though, he had to pause. His fingers and his lips just couldn’t keep it up. “Baa, baa black sheep” stopped. The dancing horde inside his head stopped, and then faded away. Into the silence there came a new noise— neither the neigh of a horse nor the perpetual slithering. It was laughter. Cool, cruel, cackling laughter. And it came from behind him. A bolt of fear struck straight into his heart. He could feel the blood pounding in his veins. He couldn’t bear to look back. He knew he had to, but he couldn’t.
    The slithering was suddenly loud and all around him, mingling with the laughter, mixing and dissolving into it. He realized at last what the slithering was.
    It was the branches, creeping like snakes, writhing as they knotted and kneaded, tangled and touched, quivered and quaked.
    And the laughter was the laughter of a million shivering leaves, rattling and chuckling, rustling and giggling. Then a branch reached out, closed cobwebbed finger-leaves about the wick of the candle, reaching through the hole cut in the glass. The light went out.
    Ewan quivered, just once. He felt faint. He dropped the lantern. He stood quite still and waited.
    Soon, he realized that he could see again, by pale greenish-white light. The branches of the terrible trees were alive, not merely with their own sinuous movement, but with glow-worms that crawled from every crack and cranny. They came from the murky depths which surrounded him to make a cocoon of radiance.
    He looked round, awed and quite unable to understand.
    The way ahead was still waiting. But it was no longer a tunnel getting ever narrower and leading nowhere. It was a doorway to a clearing. In the clearing, illumined by a chandelier of glow-worm infested branches, was a mound of stones, and