He knew it was impossible for him to survive; he must resign himself to being crushed and buried under the landslide. It was pointless to protect his head with his arms as he was doing, it was pointless to run at all. His mind surrendered, only his body continued to fight against destruction. He could not believe his mind didn't really know fear; at a point like this communication was cut off; instincts and reflexes took over.
The roar of the fall became a rumble and then a crackle diminishing into silence as the last fragments rolled and settled. He was almost at the mountain's foot, in a sort of natural quarry hemmed in by palisades on three sides, open only the way he had come down—and this was paved with loose stones in uneasy disarray. It was impossible to scale the sheer cliffs; even at the risk of causing another avalanche he had to go back. Cautiously he began the ascent. Though the rocks turned and shifted under his feet they did not crumble. Picking his way with exaggerated lightness he covered perhaps a hundred, a hundred and fifty feet. He began to hope he might reach a point where he could strike out and away from the incohesive slope.
With a loud report a rock shot from the palisades behind him, arched over his head to crash in front and come bounding down toward him. He jumped aside. It tumbled all the way to the foot of the precipice. From near where it landed another stone discharged itself to fall just behind him. While it was still moving, a ragged bombardment from all three sides began, increasing in intensity till the air was filled with missiles. Fresh slides were started by their impact; the entire mountainside seemed to be converging on him with varying speeds, diving and plunging, lurching and sprawling. He crouched and cowered. An immense chunk shattered nearby, showering particles and dust.
The palisades erupted in staccato explosions, echoed when the projectiles hit the slide and increased its velocity. He was shaken to realize that the rocks were sentient, individually or collectively, and he was their intended target rather than an endangered spectator. He was doomed; though they missed him a hundred, a thousand times, on the hundred and first or the thousand and first, chance would expose him, make him vulnerable, destroy him. Even if the ground held firm he could not climb out of range before he was felled. And the ground was not holding firm.
There was no escape; who could control the unswerving malice of the rocks? Who indeed? Suddenly he stood erect and held up three fingers in the sign of the letter Shin, the initial of the name Shaddai.
Instantly the mountainside became still. Birds soared overhead, grass sprouted through the rubble and in the crevices of the rocks, clear brooks wound sinuously from the mountaintop, lizards basked on flat spaces, insects moved speculatively from object to object, sheep wandered in search of food.
He threw himself down on a bed of ferns, newly sprung into life. The soft, spiraling ends of the fronds touched his cheeks and hands gently. He moved guardedly, unwilling to crush the tender stems. Raising himself on his elbows he peered down at the pale, feathery snails, the stiff, spotted leaves, the hairy stalks. His throat tightened with wonder and gratitude.
He got up, walked slowly over the solid ground. When he had climbed higher than the palisades he struck out for a plateau, bare of vegetation but not desolate. Shallow ponds sparkled, crystal pinnacles glittered, mounds of quartz reflected the light. Snakes and crocodiles, strange and nameless reptiles in bright, jeweled colors moved smoothly out of his path. A tinted mist rose from one of the ponds, taking the shape of Mattie. All the women he had known showed themselves in wisps and shreds of vapor. Some were laughing, some wistful, pleading, tempting; all dissolved as fast as they formed. He fled.
He fled from the plain into a forest where leaves made an umbrella against the light, through fields where grain was turning black, past rutted gray roads and decaying rail fences. He passed clumps of berry bushes, bare of fruit, whose thorns raked his hands and face. He stumbled over plowed furrows where the dried clods were woven together with spiderwebs and made his way through harrowed fields where the exact lines were blurred by rebellious weeds, rooted at random.