Suddenly in the Depths of the Forest

12

And after the fish had gone, they could see the shock and fear on each other's faces: the mouth that dropped open, the eyes that gaped, the white-as-a-sheet paleness that spread over their forehead and cheeks. Tell me, Maya said, did you hear what I heard? Tell me, Matti said, did you hear it too? Had they really heard three or four muted, dreamlike sounds rolling down from far, far away beyond the valleys and slopes, from the edges of the steep forests on the northern cliff of the mountain ridge, low-dark echoes that sounded like the barking of dogs, then faded quickly?

Maya and Matti had heard how dogs bark in Emanuella the Teacher's stories, but was there anyone who didn't make fun of poor Emanuella the Teacher, who went after every man but, in the whole village, had never found herself even the shadow of a husband who would deign to glance in her direction?

And now, a little while after seeing the fish, Maya and Matti thought that the faint sounds coming from the northern ridge sounded a bit like barking. Or maybe it wasn't the barking of real dogs? Maybe it was just a distant rockfall? Or a trick of the treetops panting with excitement, beginning to screech and sigh with the onslaught of the gusting wind?

Who would believe that Maya and Matti had seen a live fish in the river? Or that, at almost the same time, they had heard the sound of dogs barking in the distance? Was there anyone who wouldn't laugh at them? Sometimes, one of the children would come to the schoolyard in the morning and try to tell the others about how he heard — he swears he heard it — a sound that might have been a chirp. Or a buzz. Not for a second did the children believe the boy who told those stories, and they made fun of him and teased him and said, You better stop it, and fast, before you end up like Nimi the Owl.

Perhaps because ridicule protects the ridiculers from the risk of loneliness? Because they ridicule in groups, and the one they ridicule is always alone?

And the grownups? Perhaps only because they tried so hard to silence an inner whisper? Or were ashamed of a certain guilt they felt?

Matti and Maya went back to that place many times, bent over the pool, their faces so close to its surface that their noses almost sank into the water, but the little fish never appeared again. In vain they searched every one of the dozens or hundreds of the river's small pools scattered here and there in the banks alongside the flowing torrent, among the rocks, in hidden bays, in places where water plants concealed the golden sand of the riverbed.

But once, toward evening, it happened that something suddenly passed very very high over their heads: something glided high in the darkening sky, something sailed by, slight and illuminated like a single cloud in the evening air, back and forth from the forest, completely transparent, slowly and silently passing high over their heads, then back to the forest, and faded almost before Maya and Matti realized they were seeing it.

Almost — but not before they managed to see that something was there and had passed over their heads, soaring and silent, floating onward, very high above the village and river, high above the dark forests. And Maya's and Matti's eyes met and they both shivered.