Mountain Spirit
- Автор: Энтони Пирс
- Язык: английский
- Жанр: Научная фантастика
Электронная книга - «Mountain Spirit». Краткое содержание книги:
But Heroe had an inkling of a notion, knowing that sort of thing could happen here. He ran in a circle, and the fire followed. He completed the circle, leaping over the stream of lava, and ran on. The lava intersected itself, took itself for an enemy, and fought itself. In a moment it was a whirling column of fire, as each part of it tried to surmount the other.
Heroe did not stay to watch the fray. He got out of there quietly but swiftly. Another threat evaded.
His next challenge was a sheer icy rock face leading toward the summit. It was almost vertical, impossible to climb barehanded. He opened his pack again and fetched metal pitons and a small hammer. He hammered in the first piton, then a second. The mountain shivered with ire, as if its flesh were being punctured, but it couldn’t stop him from making his slow climb, piton by piton.
But Mt. Miracle was hardly through. A wind came up, becoming a storm that blasted sleet at him and tried to dislodge him. He hung on, and when there was a pause, hammered in another piton. The storm raged, but could not stop him.
Finally, cold, tired, and hungry, he made it to the top of the ice face. Not far beyond he saw Faire, hovering just above the rock, eye-splittingly lovely, beckoning him. From there it was relatively simple to mount the peak itself. He had made it.
But he paused, suffering another premonition. This was too easy. So he got down on his belly and crawled toward the gesturing mountain spirit. Sure enough, there was a ledge, concealed by illusion. Had he walked straight ahead he would have fallen off it and been killed. As it was, he was able to navigate it by feel, get beyond it, and make it to the peak. Now he had truly won.
Part Four, conclusion, satisfying
“You made it!” Faire exclaimed, kissing him ardently. “You have won me. I feared you would not. I hated having to beckon you, but it was part of the challenge. Who are you?”
“I am Heroe, from Bog Village, some way distant. I will love you passionately, and cater to your slightest whim. I will take you on a tour around the world, so that everyone may see and envy your beauty.”
“This interests me,” she confessed.
“But first there is a detail we must attend to.”
“A detail?”
“Lead me to the mountain fastness.”
“As you wish.” She took his hand, and the pair of them flew gently down to the rock face he had so effortfully navigated. She touched it, and a door opened. They entered.
Inside the mountain was a chamber wherein floated dozens of lovely maidens in suspended animation. These were the sacrificial girls of all the prior occasions, locked in forever as they had been in life, not aging at all. All were pristine, but many had clothing and hair styles that bespoke prior ages. In fact some were centuries old, by exterior reckoning. It was like a historical museum. Faire had expected to come here herself, if not rescued. The mountain had assured her, non-verbally, that it was not an arduous confinement; it would seem like only an instant before she woke. The maidens were merely being saved.
“Wake,” Heroe said, and clapped his hands.
Immediately all the young women snapped out of stasis. “Oh!” they exclaimed almost together. “Have we been asleep long?”
“A decade at least,” Faire said. “Millennia at most.”
They were amazed. “It seems like only an instant.”
“Exactly,” Faire agreed.
“Listen up, girls,” Heroe said. “I am Heroe. I have conquered Miracle Mountain. But before I depart with my phenomenally lovely bride I must assist the mountain in solving the village problem. They desperately need lovely, talented, and obliging young woman to marry their farmers, millers, and mechanics and bear their children. Women who will not be tempted to flee to the big city for show business.”
The women looked confused. “What is show business?” one asked.
“That is where pretty women don revealing garb and prance around a stage, inciting leering men to pointless lust, as they are not allowed to touch the women.”
“Eeuu,” the girl said.
“What’s a big city?” another asked. She wore a dinosaur hide robe and evidently dated from a time before cities evolved.
“A huge collection of people, far away from here.”
“Ugh!” the girls chorused in horror. Then one explained: “We are Mountain Spirits. We must remain near the mountain, and commune on its slopes daily, for it sustains us. If we go away from it, our true ages will quickly manifest, and we will become old crones, age 28 at least. So we wish only to make loving families close by, and raise our dear children to be mountain spirits too.”
Heroe saw that the mountain had indeed solved the village problem. These girls would remain here, and so would their children. “But what of you, Faire?” he asked his new beloved.
“I have not yet become a full Mountain Spirit, though I have felt the passionate lure of it,” she replied. “You rescued me too soon. I still want to travel and see the sights. But once I get with child, which should not take long considering the sustained effort we will make, I will want to return here to stay. I am no longer interested in show business, just in fulfilling my natural destiny as a wife and mother.”
Heroe liked that answer. “You shall have it,” he said, kissing her.
“Oooo,” the maiden spirits ooooed, jealous. “We want men of our own to kiss and fondle and support.”
“This way,” Heroe said. He led them out the stone doorway. Then they all spread their arms and floated gently down toward the village, where a number of louts were about to become happier than they perhaps deserved.
Once again, Mt. Miracle was responding in full measure. There would of course be future crises, when it would resume its collection of sacrificial spirits. The mountain took the long view, having plenty of time.