Children of Tomorrow by Arthur Leo Zagat (little readers .TXT) 📕

in these woods an’ there is nothin’ else here that could have taken Tomball an’ Marilee without leavin’ a sign. Stop talkin’ foolishness an’ use your eyes, an’ you will find some sign of what took ‘em, or of which way they went.”

“Maybe,” Danhall grunted. “Maybe you can, Dikar, seein’ you’re so smart.”

“Maybe I can,” Dikar answered. “Wait here, an’ I’ll try.” He turned from them, moved to a big tree near which they were standing, ran up into its top as swiftly and easily as any squirrel. Thick boughs made steps for Dikar’s feet, leaves rustled against his face, stroked his body, and then his head came out through the roof of the tree into a sunlight strangely ruddy.

The top of the forest stretched away from Dikar, a strange, bright green in that light, and solid seeming. About as far from him as from the clearing to the edge of the Drop, the forest ended and past its end the ground rose in a hill that was neither green nor stone—gray like any other ground Dikar remembered ever seeing, but a pale yellow that seemed to be striped.

Up through this yellow ground a wide brown stripe curved to the top of the hill, where, sharp-lined against the darkening sky, was a house not as long as the Boys’ House but higher, its roof curiously shaped. Midway up the front of the house another roof stuck out, and the outer edge of this was post-propped like the roof of the eating place.

Just above this smaller roof, a row of windows flashed red as though there was fire within, but no smoke rose from the house, so Dikar knew this could not be.

Dikar’s eyes came back to the leafy canopy of the woods. A low exclamation guttered in his throat. All that green stretch swayed a little with the wind, but, quarter way between him and the edge of the forest a tree swayed against the wind, and then another, just beyond, did the same.

Dikar marked the direction in which the trees moved so strangely, and dropped down to the waiting Boys. “Found ‘em!” he cried. “They’ve taken to the treetops. They’re goin’ that way.” Dikar threw out his arm to show.

“Come on then,” Bengreen cried.

“Not in such a hurry,” Dikar checked him. “They don’t know we follow ‘em, an’ they’ll be goin’ slow, not sure of what is ahead. We can take time to think, an’ we must, for remember Tomball has the gun an’ can kill us, one by one, before we get near enough to him to bring him down with our arrows.”

“What then, Dikar?”

Dikar told them the plan that had come into his head, and, as he had ordered, they spread out wide either side of the path Tomball and Marilee traveled, wide of each other because that way there was less chance of making noise to warn Tomball. Then they moved in the direction those they hunted moved, swift and soundless as when they hunted a deer downwind.

Now that Dikar was alone he needed no longer to pretend to be unafraid. These woods were fear-filled, as Danhall had sensed, but not for the reason Danhall had named. The Old Ones did not prowl them, nor were there any other strange beings in them that could make a Boy vanish.

The dread that lay heavy here was the dread that lay over all this far land, of Them who were more cruel than any beast, of their fists and whips and guns and the fearful things they did to the people who once had lived peacefully in this land.

There was no longer an endless, rolling thunder in the sky, such as Dikar remembered from his dream of the Long-Ago, but in the sky was a dark, dark cloud, unseen but very real, that laid over all the land, over the forests and the fields and the cities, a night of the soul that had lasted long, too long.

Only on the Mountain had there been any light, this long time, any hope of a tomorrow. Dikar was thinking of his dream, as he ran naked and silent through the woods, was thinking of the Voice he had heard in his dream, the Voice that had spoken to the mothers who, with their very littlest children and the very oldest of the men, were the last ones left in the last city untaken by the hordes, the city there no longer had been any hope of saving from them.

“This is the dusk of our day,” the Voice had said, “of the America we lived for, and die for. If there is to be any hope of a tomorrow, it must rest with these little children in an attempt to save whom you are about to sacrifice yourselves. If they perish, America shall have perished. If by some chance they survive, then, in some tomorrow we cannot foresee, America will live again and democracy, liberty, freedom, shall reconquer the green and pleasant fields that tonight lie devastated.”

The little children of whom that Voice had spoken, all of them who survived the flight from the city, had grown now to be the Bunch on the Mountain. And now, when almost they were ready for their task of bringing that tomorrow to these once green and pleasant fields, two of them swung through the treetops to betray them to their enemies, and destroy them.

It was of this that Dikar thought as he ran through the woods. Had Tomball been only his own enemy, only one who had taken his mate from him, if Marilee had been only the mate who was false to him, Dikar would have sent Danhall and Henfield and Bengreen back to the Mountain and pursued them alone. But it was the enemies of the Bunch he hunted, the enemies of an America, love for which, though he had never known it, was part of Dikar’s blood, part of his breath, part of his soul.

And so Dikar came to the edge of the forest and fell to his hands and knees and crawled a little way out into the high, yellow grasses that striped with yellow the hill beyond the forest, and lay there waiting.

Somewhere in these grasses, Dikar knew, along the front of the woods, lay the three others, their eyes on the tops of the trees, on the green brush that met the grasses, arrows fitted to their bows, as his was. For this was his plan.

When Tomball and Marilee came to the edge of the woods, and came out into the open, the nearest Boy would shoot them down at once, before they were seen, before Tomball had a chance to use his gun. That they would come into the open, Dikar did not question. Had not Tomball tried, last night, to show the flame of the fire stick to the plane? Tomball was not afraid of Them. Tomball had come down to the far land to look for Them.

If only it did not get too dark to see Tomball, and Marilee, before they came out of the woods. The sun no longer lay on the grasses here. It just touched the roof of the house, there on top of the hill, soon would leave that too.

The sun no longer lay on the grasses, here where Dikar hid, but the hot smell of the sun was in his nostrils, and the ground was still warm with it. The ground was warmer than the ground on the Mountain ever got, it was warm as the body of Marilee when Marilee lay against Dikar’s body, and the scent of the grasses was like the scent of Marilee’s breath.

A lump rose in Dikar’s throat. He was waiting here for Marilee, waiting to send an arrow into her slim, brown body. As so many times he had waited hidden in the forest to kill a deer, he was waiting to kill Marilee.

In that very instant that her lips lay on his, burning, Marilee had been thinking how she would find Tomball, how she would tell him of the rope that hung over the edge of the Drop! With her arms about Dikar, she had planned how to help Tomball kill Jimlane and Billthomas!

If ever anyone deserved to be killed, it was Marilee!

The ache in Dikar’s breast was not an ache but a terrible, tearing pain—his muscles tightened. His head lifted, his lips tight-pressed within his beard, his nostrils flaring, ears and eyes straining.

Dikar started to ease, tensed again. No, that rustle in the treetops was not made by the wind. It came nearer. Nearer. Something brown, moving, showed among the leaves. Vanished. An’ arm it had been, of this Dikar was sure, though he could not be sure whether it was Marilee’s or Tomball’s. They had come straight to him. He it was who must kill Tomball. Who must kill Marilee.

The pain within Dikar was as if someone had plunged an arrow into his vitals, was twisting it—

Dikar saw a form, crawling out on a thick bough. It was screened by the leaves at first, then Dikar saw black hair, a thick-lipped face. Tomball! Peering out of the tree with narrowed eyes. Dikar leaped erect, his bow taut—

Whang!

A feather quivered where Tomball’s eye had been. Tomball, sprawling, black-shaggy, tumbled out of the tree, thudded into the brush beneath. A scream, a Girl’s scream, came out of the tree and Dikar had another arrow laid across his bow, was tautening his bowstring once more. Shadowy in the treetop he could see Marilee. Marilee’s voice came out from among the leaves. “Dikar!”

Marilee was out now, where Dikar could see her plain. Erect on the bough where Tomball had been, she held to an upper bough with one hand, stretched the other out to Dikar.

She was crying his name again. Her long hair was caught back among the leaves out of which she’d come, and Dikar could see her satin body, her lovely body he had held in his arms. His eyes fastened on the flowery circlet over Marilee’s left breast. He would shoot her there—

“Dikar! What are you doing, Dikar? You’re not going to—” Marilee’s cry was checked by the arrow that was in her side, caught by its head in her flesh. She swayed, started to fall. Dikar’s shot had gone wrong!

Dikar hadn’t shot at all. His arrow was still across his tautened bow! Marilee fell! She caught the tree’s lowermost bough with blind hands, hung from them, red streaking her side from where the arrow was caught in it. Someone else had shot her with that arrow. One of the other Boys. Marilee’s left hand dropped from the bough by which she hung. The right hand let go and she fell—

Into Dikar’s arms, somehow he was under the tree in time to catch her. Her weight crashed him down into the brush, but he fell sitting, with Marilee in his arms.

“Dikar.” Her lips were white, her nostrils flaring. “You killed Tomball.” There was pain in her brown eyes, but they were shining. “I’m glad. He was awful. I saw him shoot Jimlane and Billthomas, an’ then he turned the gun on me—said he’d shoot me if I didn’t go with him. He had the gun an’ Jimlane’s bonarrer, an’ he’d found the rope long ago. First I was going to let him—kill me—but then I went with him, hoping to get a chance to take the gun away from him an’ shoot him before—before—he told Them—”

Marilee’s voice, strong at first, faded away. Her head rolled sidewise to Dikar’s shoulder, lay there. She lay limp in Dikar’s arms, as so often she’d lain asleep. But she wasn’t asleep now. She was—

“Dikar!”