Tide Marks by H.M. Tomlinson — Read

The forest changed our thoughts as soon as we were in it. We began to climb southwest of the Golok Valley through a tunnel in the jungle. It was a day-somewhere, anyhow, it was day, though hardly there, for the valley was deep and the morning was early. The woods might not have been there. They looked unbegotten. The trunks were contorted and askew. They reclined in a watery light, wet and rotting, and rocks like unplumbed reefs in a submarine deep had to be climbed. One would not expect to hear a sound there, and in fact there was no sound in that twilight unreality. I stopped to listen. There was but a noise in my head, which I tried to shake out. But this delay left me far in the rear. Then I could not hear even our party, and so could not reach them. They might have floated upward to the surface out of it. As I crawled on along the interminable floor, looking for signs of them, I had a distinct inclination to glance backward over my shoulder to see if anything were following me. But what could have been following me?

By noon we were near the height of the divide, and paused for a rest. A stream was beside us, unwinding slowly past hindering trees whose roots were like outcrops of weathered rock. The water was black, like the roots, till I noticed spectral fish, vividly dyed, suspended low down among the buttresses of what could have been a column of basalt. The water was really clear. Yet the fish could have been an illusion, so unlikely were their circumstances; but I was too tired for any verification. One becomes weary to the point of moribundity on rough ground in a forest of the equatorial rains. You don't care any more.