chapter thirty‑seven

Vincent was beating out a steady rhythm on a hollow log, this, he had previously explained, was their method of inviting the Forest‑Folk to dinner. A feast of nuts, berries and fruit had been laid out in the centre of the clearing, the rest of the green people sat in a semi‑circle around the food. Andrew and Alex stood to one side, waiting expectantly for the dinner guests.

"Have you noticed that it never gets dark, it's permanently midday," said Andrew.

"Yes," said Alex uninterested.

"Do you think it means something?"

"No."

"I haven't seen anyone sleeping, either."

Alex stared passively into the depths of the jungle.

"Have you?" nagged Andrew.

"No."

"You're very quiet."

"Yes."

"Why?"

"I'm listening."

Andrew listened. In the silences between the drum beats he could vaguely hear leaves rustling and a creaking sound as if the boughs of trees were being bent and then released again. The sounds were getting louder and closer.

"Look out!" cried Andrew.

Suddenly the air seemed to be full of gorillas. Coming from all directions they swung off branches or slid down creepers, landing at the edge of the clearing.

Andrew had sprinted half way to a tree before admitting to himself that this was not an appropriate defence method. He realized that the bear was not the only animal for which his instincts had not received adequate training.

"It's okay, Andrew," shouted Vincent as he ran over to stop Andrew from throwing the rock he had just picked up, "these are the Forest‑Folk."

"Oh," said Andrew, part of his fear turning to embarrassment. "They aren't quite how I imagined them."

"How did you imagine them?" asked Vincent returning the rock to the ground.

"Well, er, I don't know, sort of dressed in green tunics with bows and arrows, I guess."

"A little fanciful, wouldn't you say?"

"Um, yes I suppose so," said Andrew nervously; one of the gorillas had ambled over to them, walking on its feet and knuckles.

"Ah," said Vincent, "this is Wug."

"Er, hello," said Andrew trying to force a smile to his lips.

"He can't understand you," said Vincent. "Essentially they're deaf and dumb to our language, we talk in hand‑signs and drawings."

"Well no, of course not," said Andrew, "but they can tell from the tone of voice, can't they."

"All they can tell from your tone of voice," said Alex who had just joined them, "is that you're scared shitless."

The gorilla raised one arm above his head and pointed a single finger to the sky.

Andrew looked up, but couldn't see anything of any particular interest.

"What does that mean?" asked Alex.

"It's how they say 'Hi'," explained Vincent, repeating the gesture.

Andrew and Alex did likewise.

"Wug here," said Vincent patting the gorilla's massive hairy shoulder, "is the leader of the group."

"Whoop," said Alex.

Andrew and Vincent regarded him suspiciously.

"That's what you call a group of gorillas, like a school of whales," explained Alex defensively.

Vincent raised an eyebrow dubiously, "anyway, Wug is the man to talk to about finding the Design Centre. But first we eat."

After dinner, Andrew, Alex, Vincent and Wug left the main party and formed a rough circle around a shallow patch of sand which had collected in a depression in the rock. Vincent and Wug picked up small twigs which lay nearby.

Using the twig, Wug drew a crescent shape in the sand, he stretched his lips back to reveal a set of large yellowed teeth and then pointed to them with the stick.

"He says the bananas were very good," translated Vincent. "But he always says that, so I think it might be a simian social formality."

"Well, you can't expect too much in the way of after‑dinner conversation from someone who spends most of his time searching for fleas in other people's hair," commented Andrew, currently on the receiving end of just that pastime.

Vincent smoothed the sand with his hand, then drew another crescent and pointed at Wug. He repeated the whole process three times.

"That means there will always be bananas here for him."

"How the hell are you going to ask him where the Design Centre is?" said Andrew, not at all impressed by the method of communication, and even less impressed by the attention he was getting from Wug.

"We've talked about it a lot," said Vincent smoothing out the sand, "and we've developed a kind of short‑hand. This," he drew a stick man and a stick elephant in a square, "represents the Design Centre, and this," he drew a large rectangle with wavy edges, "is the Land of Endless Dream‑Time." He drew an arrow from the square to a point within the wavy rectangle, then he rubbed out the arrow and drew another pointing to a different spot in the rectangle. He did the same thing three times, finally removing the arrow and looking at Wug.

Wug gave up his fruitless examination of Andrew's head, picked up his twig, and divided the wavy rectangle into many smaller wavy rectangles. He paused, as if in thought, then drew an arrow from the square to one of the small rectangles, from there he drew another arrow to an adjacent rectangle, and from there to yet another rectangle, he repeated the action until the large rectangle which represented the Land of the Endless Dream‑Time was covered with arrows. Looking up at Vincent he shrugged his shoulders.

"Well," said Andrew impatiently.

"The small rectangles represent individual dreams, so I guess what he's trying to say is that they all move about, or maybe he just doesn't know where it is."

Vincent drew two stick men, pointed to Andrew and Alex, then drew an arrow from the men to the large wavy rectangle and then to the square depicting the Design Centre.

Wug withdrew the twig from his mouth, where he had been using it to pick his teeth, threw it over his shoulder, and then placed one huge hairy hand over his eyes.

"Well that's encouraging," said Alex gloomily.

"Ursula and I will take you through the Evening to the edge of the Land of Endless Dream‑Time, hopefully we can persuade Wug to be our guide," said Vincent.

"When will it be evening?" asked Andrew.

"Not when, where. It's about five miles west of here."

"Huh?" said Andrew.

"You'll see when we get there."

When they got there, what Andrew saw was a spectacular sunset, or at least that's what he would have seen if he had climbed one of the highest trees. As it was he had to make do with what little light filtered down through the gaps in the canopy of leaves.

The human party was moving along a narrow path in the forest, Wug was swinging through the branches above them, occasionally dropping down to the ground to give them advice when they came to a fork in the track.

"This is the Sunset Strip," said Vincent, "it's a narrow band of forest where the sun hangs, perpetually, just above the horizon. From here we move into the Twilight Zone."

"It all sounds very familiar," said Andrew with a puzzled look on his face. "This Twilight Zone has an ominous ring to it. Is it dangerous?"

"It's no more dangerous than here, the trees there do move slightly faster than the ones here, but they won't do you any harm."

"You mean they grow faster?" asked Andrew.

"No, they grow much slower because there isn't so much light. But they do move faster."

"You mean they just pull up their roots and go for a stroll?"

"No, of course not, they only move their branches, nobody knows why, but they like to pick people up. So if you stand in the same place for longer than five minutes; the branches will bend down, and gently lift you off the ground. You can easily climb out of their grasp but it's a bit of a shock if you're not expecting it."

"So," said Alex smiling, "their bark is worse than their bite."

"What," said Andrew trying to pretend he hadn't heard Alex, "happens if you don't climb out?"

"Then they pass you from branch to branch up to the top of the tree," said Vincent, "then if there is a taller tree nearby it will pass you on to that one, so eventually after about two hours you end up at the top of the highest tree."

"That's great," said Andrew, "so they take you up to see the view."

"I don't think so," said Vincent. "After they've gone to all the trouble to carefully take you up there, they just open their branches and let you drop."

"Oh," said Andrew, disappointed that the Walt Disney story had such an Alfred Hitchcock ending.

As they walked it became darker and darker and the sky turned from violet to navy‑blue, to black, somewhere above the trees was a full moon, so they were just able to follow the path.

"You know," said Andrew conversationally, "where we come from day and night come automatically, you don't have to go out of your way to find them, stay in one place for twenty‑four hours and you get the works - without even lifting a finger."

"Sounds awfully inconvenient," said Vincent snobbishly.

"Well, I suppose it is really, but you soon get used to it."

Vincent yawned. Alex yawned. Ursula yawned. Andrew yawned. Up in the trees Wug had already yawned.

"Is it much further?" asked Alex and yawned.

Vincent yawned. Ursula yawned. Andrew yawned. Up in the trees Wug yawned twice.

"No, I think we're," YAWN, "almost there," said Vincent.

Ursula yawned. Andrew shut his eyes and for a while forgot to open them. Alex yawned. Up in the trees Wug missed a hand‑hold and fell six feet before he could find another.

"We've got to go back now," yawned Ursula. "If we fall asleep the trees will get us."

"Yes, you're right," said Vincent, he tilted back his head and shouted up to the tree, "Wug ... Wug."

The gorilla jumped from a branch and was asleep before he hit the ground.

"Hey, Wug, wake up," said Vincent shaking the animal urgently.

"We'll have to drag him," said Ursula sleepily.

"Keep going," YAWN, "you two, or you'll never make it," said Vincent as he and Ursula began dragging Wug's limp body back the way they had come.

Andrew was already asleep on Alex's shoulder. Alex was about to join him, when they lost balance and toppled to the ground. Andrew ignored the event, but Alex fell awkwardly and the pain was enough to get him back on his feet.

"Andrew wake up!" screamed Alex.

"Eh? Just another five minutes," mumbled Andrew.

"Come on, move or you're dead!" said Alex, appealing to Andrew's, unusually wide, yellow streak.

"Dead? What? Oh, yeah," Andrew struggled to his feet. "Come on run."

They ran.

"God, I can't keep my eyes open, I keep running into things," complained Andrew.

"One of those things is me, cut it out."

"Hey, what's that?"

"It's an hallucination, ignore it."

But they didn't. They collapsed, gratefully, onto the two large four‑poster beds which lay in their path, and were asleep before they realized what they had done.

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