Suddenly in the Depths of the Forest Read Free Page B

and understand what was happening in front of his nose, he used to cock his ears forward so they were almost touching. When he cocked his ears this way, that dog looked serious and hugely intelligent and thoughtful, for a moment like a dedicated scientist concentrating as hard as he can, nearly, so nearly about to unlock one of science's secrets.
    And sometimes Zito, Almon the Fisherman's dog, could read his master's mind. That dog could guess what his master's thoughts were even before he began thinking them: He would suddenly get up from where he was lying in front of the stove, cross the room, and stand resolutely at the door less than half a minute before Almon looked at the clock and decided it was time to go out to the riverbank. Or that dog would lick Almon's cheek with his warm tongue, lick it with love and compassion to comfort him when a sad thought was just about to settle in his brain.
    Despite all the years that had passed since that night, the old fisherman had not been able to reconcile himself to the dog's disappearance: after all, they'd been connected to each other by a love filled with tenderness and care and trust. Was it possible that the dog had suddenly forgotten his master? Or perhaps something terrible had happened to him? For if Zito were alive, he would surely have escaped from whoever had kidnapped him and made his way home. Sometimes Almon thought that he could hear the muted echo of a thin howl calling to him from very far away, from the heart of the thick forest: Come, come to me, don't be afraid.
    It was not only Zito who disappeared that night, but also a pair of small finches that used to sing to Almon the Fisherman from their nest of twigs on a branch that gently grazed his window whenever the wind blew. And the woodworms that used to fill Almon's sleep at night with the sound of their quiet gnawing as they ceaselessly dug their tunnels through his old furniture. Even those woodworms had been silenced forever since that night.
    For many years, the fisherman had been used to falling asleep every night to the gnawing sounds those woodworms made as they munched away at the innards of his furniture in the dark. That's why, since that terrible night, he hasn't been able to fall asleep: as if the depth of the silence is mocking him from the darkness. And so, night after night, Almon the Fisherman sits at his kitchen table till midnight, remembering how once, at that hour, the forlorn cry of foxes used to filter in through the closed shutters and the yard dogs would answer the forest foxes with angry barks that would end in a howl. At those times, his beloved dog used to come and rest his warm head on Almon's lap, look up at him with an expression of deep understanding, an expression that radiated a silent glow of compassion, love, and sadness. Until Almon would say, Thank you, Zito. Enough. I'm almost over it now.
    So Almon would sit, thinking alone in the night silence, missing his dog, missing the finches and fish and even the woodworms, and write and rub out words in his notebook, sometimes hearing from a distance the thin voice of Little Nimi as he ran alone from yard to yard in the dark, making whooping noises that sounded from afar like sobs. At those moments, Almon the Fisherman would begin to berate his pencil, argue loudly with the stove, or riffle the pages of his notebook to try to block out the clamor of the night and the roar of the river.
    Almon wrote in his notebook that without any living creatures, even the clearest summer nights sometimes seemed overlaid with a murky fog, a fog that descended on everything and almost buried the village, the heart, and the forest under it. Summer-night-haze, Almon the Fisherman wrote in his notebook, not spongy and soft like winter-frost-vapor, but dusty, dirty, and depressing.
    Since that night when Nehi the Demon took away all the creatures, pulling them along behind him to a hiding place on the mountain, the villagers lived and cultivated their