The Mantooth | Page 9

unusually benevolent. 'There is a small cave just ahead. We will
be safe there.' Taking her by the hand, they climbed the remaining distance carefully,
coming at last to the wide, shoulder-high cavity that had given him refuge once before.
He searched it quickly before letting the girl enter. But finding it uninhabited, he helped
her up, then lay down and basked in the first real safety he had known for several days,
seeming to take no further notice.
But Sylviana could find no such release. Crouching on one knee in the light of the
smaller cave's entrance, she could think only of her friend, the gentle wolf, trapped
beyond all help in the lower cave.
Realizing there was nothing more she could do, she remained there in uncertain
melancholy, her mind buried deep in her thoughts.

Chapter 5
Peering down at the entrance of the larger cave, Sylviana kept her vigil. Kalus had long
since fallen asleep, something which troubled her deeply. She could not understand how
he could be so indifferent about the fate of her only friend. She herself had remained on
the lip of rock just beyond the smaller niche for what seemed an eternity, and still had
seen no sign of either wolf or spider.
She had passed much of the time by studying the awesome landscape that opened so
broadly before her, her first unobstructed view. And she could summon just enough
geology and topography to be both puzzled and intrigued by the inexplicable diversity of
it.
To the left of them, due south at a distance of roughly five miles, lay a massive sandstone
ridge, descending from a high central erg in two long arms that reached out west and
southwest beyond the edge of sight. Eroded by wind and water, it reminded her most of
photographs she had seen of Monument Valley in the west, though not so old or well
defined.
Then there was the phenomenon of the line of granite cliffs from which she now
surveyed the valley. As nearly as she could tell it ran directly north-south at an altitude
varying from five- to fifteen-hundred feet. At its base, directly below them, a shallow

gorge crept slowly southward to end in a shadowed overhang at the foot of the sandstone
ridge. How the two lines of vastly divergent rock had come together to form such a neat
corner she could not guess. Perhaps violent flooding had deposited the sand during a
great turmoil of the sea, then left it to slowly age and weather through the intervening
centuries. How many she dared not even think. The contrast between the two was like
day and night.
And to the southwest there occurred yet another bizarre conflict. Directly in front of them,
across the gorge, lay a vast and gentle-hilled grassland, dotted with muddy pools and
small clusters of wide, African-looking trees. Large herds of grazing animals sauntered
across it at a distance which defied close description. But at the foot of the sandstone was
only cactus and desert prairie. The meeting of the two, in a long zig-zagging line between
rows of opposing hills, was awkward at best.
And farther west, beyond the savanna larger hills appeared, covered with trees and high
bramble, leading away out of sight. The horizon to the north was similar, but here the
hills were sharper, velveted with pine, and broken by stark projections of weather-worn
granite, apparently the oldest and most ‘natural' part of the Valley. That is, she thought,
they seemed the least out of place.
She tried hard to read its subtle clues, but still the riddle of conflicting landscapes eluded
her. The only certainty was that the nuclear holocaust had been everything its foretelling
prophets had said it would be: a complete annihilation of the world she had known, with
a savage and unpredictable rebirth.
Like echoes of a mournful dream, all manner of warm and painful memories now seemed
to come to her from out of the day, phantoms of a past too beautiful to be real. She
thought of her peaceful home in the wooded, northeastern town. Her father, her friends.
All dead. Why had she been left to go on living? She remembered the words of the Spirit:
'glorious struggle,' and 'the flame within.' But where was the glory when all she could feel
was pain and emptiness? Where was He now? And as she looked out upon the scene that
Nature played before her, she realized for the first time and with crushing certainty that
life was finite. Physical reality . . .was real. The message hammered into her relentlessly:
all things must one day pass. She would die, as a hundred billion creatures had died
before her. DIED.
It all became too much. Seeking escape, her