Lightfall (23 page)

“Not yet. We haven't said good-night.”

He gave an amenable shrug and came back up. Digging his hands into the pockets of his jeans, he trailed in her wake as she entered the tidy house once more. She was mostly giving Michael time to draw his herd away. She hadn't known she was going to keep the scene in the field a secret till she saw the moment pass when she might have said it. Better that Roy and the others should know the enemy in broad daylight. The night side was too volatile.

The others hadn't even missed her. They turned and smiled, they nodded good-night, but they had no burning questions. Somehow they'd managed to put behind them the serenade of the children. They lingered now at the last of the brandy. Maybeth sat on the window seat with Felix. Polly stood looking into the fire, while beside her Dr. Upton made a laborious point. Everyone seemed reluctant to take things one step further.

“What shall we do tomorrow?” Emery asked in a sprightly tone, as Iris bent and kissed his cheek. “Why don't we have a picnic?”

“You better have it catered, then,” Maybeth offered dryly. “All I do is dinner. And breakfast Tuesday morning.”

“I'll get a few things at the general store,” retorted Emery, prepared to dismiss all problems.

“It's closed,” Jeff said.

“Not to
me
it's not,” the old man protested, poking his chest with a finger. “I own the lease.” He beamed around the group. “There's reasons for being rich, you know. Even here.”

“Maybe we shouldn't make plans,” said Iris. “Who knows what will happen tomorrow?”

“All the more reason,” insisted Maybeth. “Besides, I don't want to be alone.”

“In the park, then, shall we?” Emery rubbed his hands with pleasure. “Say around noon. We can all go sailing afterward.”

There was a general murmur of agreement, in the midst of which they turned once more to quiet talking, two by two. They seemed enormously relieved to have Sunday settled. That left only Monday.

“But what about the others?” Iris asked. She made a helpless gesture, as if she'd caught at a ball and missed. “Isn't there something we can do?”

She saw a vague and patient smile ripple round the group. Anyone might have answered, but it was Polly who said, with the greatest care and irony: “Everyone's welcome, Iris. We can always make room.”

“Of course,” said Dr. Upton crisply. “We'll be twice as many by morning. They can't
all
be fools.”

Iris took it no further. For one thing, she hadn't a better idea. For another, she couldn't stop thinking: What did he mean, he'd save her? For what? To live here with him afterward? How did he plan to keep the world away between eclipses? She tried to imagine it: four hundred years in the empty village, with a wall of magic all around. Of course he would leave her alone. She could have the days to herself, and he would have the nights.

They began to gather their things and say good-bye—each to each, like people clinking glasses. They swore they would all be together again, next day at noon, by the light on the point. They stood shoulder to shoulder, going out of their way to be nice. Iris knew she had to leave. Connections and arrangements were at hand. Emery was maybe too old to care; Jeff stood sullen and young. The rest were bent on making do.

She hurried out arm in arm with Roy so they wouldn't have to walk with anybody else. The moon was fleeced with a furl of clouds, and the field beyond the gate was still. She wondered if Michael had kept them tight in a group, children and beasts together, or whether he'd let them wander off. Were there cubs and calves rooting around in the garbage pails?

“You horny?” Roy asked as they walked the dark street.

“Sure. Why not?” She was listening so hard to the wilderness that the sudden hoot of an owl made her jump. She wondered how full-grown it was.

“Maybe you got other plans,” he said.

She realized now: he wasn't touching her. There was a good foot between them as they walked. She turned with a puzzled look, her focus all on him. “Like what?” she asked.

“Like somebody else.” He spoke with a clear-eyed dignity, not hostile or reproachful. “Listen, you got work to do. All you want from me is a little action now and then. That's okay. Just holler—I'll be there.”

She was stunned. “Hey, I don't want you to
leave.
Don't think that.”

“I don't think anything, Iris.”

There was the flick of a movement in the grass behind him. She darted an eye to catch it. Its eyes gleamed yellow and stared straight at her. Its fur was striped like a tiger.

“But I love you,” she said, and forced herself to look him in the eye.

He tilted his head as if to hear her better. Then he sighed and seemed uncomfortable. Perhaps he thought she was lying. Really, she wasn't. It was just—

“Maybe so,” he said carefully. “But you probably wish you didn't.”

“Why?”

He shrugged. “I guess because you think I'm not going to make it.”

It wasn't what she expected, and she shied away from answering. She looked off into the tree that shaded the porch of the general store. There on a leafless lower branch she saw a monkey dangling by his tail. His lips curled back on his chattering teeth. He seemed to want to be fed. He clicked and clicked, getting crazier by the minute. How did Roy not hear it?

“You may be right,” he said with quiet irony, seemingly undisturbed by the silence that had gripped her. “I sure didn't make it the last time. I was the first one over.”

“I don't know what you mean,” she said. “We're the survivors, aren't we? Isn't that why we make these plans?”

He shook his head. “The rest of us failed you, Iris. You were the only one who made it out alive.” He paused a moment, then added with an odd reluctant sorrow: “You and him.”

Of course, she thought as she watched two kittens chase about in the alley beside the store. He was absolutely right. She suddenly saw how the last days had gone, as if the missing piece of the diary had turned up whole at the back of a drawer. She remembered now: as the summer ripened, Michael had managed to draw them all into his power. Except for seven or eight, who stood with her and would not yield. In the end they had no choice but to flee.

“How do you know?” she asked in a whisper, as if to keep the animals from hearing.

“It's all coming back,” he said with an easy shrug. “I figure, by Tuesday morning we'll know everything.”

A Tuesday morning, was it? She recalled how they loaded their horses to go. They were heading up the meadow, just short of the crest of the hill—and inch by inch, the sky shut tight like a coffin. The horses reared. The packs worked loose and spilled to the ground. They thrashed around like cavalry. From far out on the point, they heard the sound of people breaking free.

It was irresistible. In a moment, her loyal few had turned to join the rest. They were terrified of being left behind. They galloped away downhill, racing against the moon. Just once before the world was done, they had this wish to fly. They dismounted and ran and leaped without fear, right into the black of the sun. All their screams were intertwined, like a choir on a final chord.

By the time the light came on again, everyone else was gone. Michael stood out on the lonely cliff. High up the ridge, she rode a spotted horse.

“Then what happened?”

“You mean afterward?” he asked, bewildered. “How would
I
know? That's between you and him.”

Everywhere she turned, the shape of time came down to this: Michael and Iris all alone, in a world washed clean of years. She must stop thinking she had a choice. Life was tuned to an old idea, requiring only bodies. The animals stretched in the darkness. They fed on the grass and nosed about in the attics. What was she trying to win? She was just a puppet.

“I'll deal with him tomorrow,” she said.

“Fine with me,” replied the ranger, smiling. He rolled his shoulders like an athlete, eager to go. Somehow he'd tossed off all the difficult talk. He was satisfied again. “Listen, I'm sticking as close to you as I can.
I'm
still planning to get out of here.”

She gave a startled grin, as if she'd finally got the drift of things. Without another word they turned and continued down the street. As she took his hand, she realized it was just ten minutes ago she'd dropped it. Ten minutes lost was costly here.

“Where will you go, do you think?” she asked.

“Me? I'm going to travel,” he said, snapping a sprig off a bush as they passed. “I've never been anywhere else but here.”

“Daytona Beach,” she said idly, snatching at what she knew.

He snorted a one-note laugh. “I'm talking about the
world
,” he said, and started to spin a voyage fit for Marco Polo.

Suddenly they walked along as if they had a future, as if nothing dark had intervened. She saw it was his nature not to look too deep. He had no more taken in the rough patch they'd traversed than he had the beasts that roamed the village. He went his way through life. Didn't brood or hold a grudge. The wilderness inside him was sufficient.

It didn't matter that foot-long snakes were swishing away in the gutter as they came by. That fledgling birds and field mice hid in the tufts of grass below the lampposts. She found that as long as she listened to Roy—as he laid out his vast itinerary, from Turkestan to Stonehenge—she didn't have to see the nightlife whirling at the edges of the town.

By the time they reached the boardinghouse they were arm in arm again. He had started to whisper adolescent passion in her ear. She stopped on the porch and sank against him, then looked up at the shatter of stars. They kissed till they could hardly stand. Till the clock in the tower of the church struck twelve.

“Sunday,” she hissed in his ear, with a pang of wild desire.

It was like a game. They had to be naked before the last bell rang. They tore into the house and chased up the stairs. By the seventh stroke they were safe in her room. By the tenth, he had stripped her sweater over her head. They were fumbling at one another's pants when silence fell on the village again. They did not ask how long they had. They owed nothing to anyone, alive or dead. The midnight hour was upon them, and they thrived.

VII

THEY BEGAN TO GATHER
in the dew-soaked grass beside the church at a little after six. By six-thirty-five they were over a hundred. Just then, a certain glow in the sky tipped the color from pearl to palest blue. A shiver of excitement seemed to touch them, though their voices never rose above a whisper. It was what they called “false dawn”—a trick of the light on the water as the sun crawled up to the rim. They shifted and searched the distance, as if they could hardly breathe before the new day broke. When the tower clock struck seven they formed a line, the oldest at the front. There would not be room for all of them inside.

Michael had no idea it was time for the morning service. The moment the first gray tinged the dark he had gone out into the cemetery to rid himself of years. He threw off fifty stones in as many minutes. He would have kept working—he wasn't tired—if the bell had not reminded him. Forty-eight hours, he thought, when the seven chimes were done. Then he turned and headed back, zigzagging through the chilly mist that smoked beneath the pines. He was as naked as he had been the previous night.

He could see the crowd building before he reached the gate. He stopped, shrank back, and moved under cover of mist to the side door. He let himself into the robing room at six minutes after. He realized now he was meant to start at precisely 7:11. He went to the rector's closet and poked among the vestments. The heady odor of mildewed serge had a marvelous tang. He pulled out a black wool gown, then a starched white smock and a goldworked hood. He slung the outfit over his arm and turned to the rosewood box where the rector kept the wafers.

These he'd been eating compulsively for the last two days. It was only after he'd emptied the box that he knew what he had to have it for. He had taken it down to the harbor with him the afternoon before. There, in the hollow skull out in the bay, he filled it full of fungus—scooping the spores from the nooks and corners, brushing them out of Joey's eyes. He carried the little casket under his arm now as he ducked through the curtains and into the church proper.

He stood on the altar steps a moment, wishing the room would stay empty. Then he dropped his garments to the floor and sat on them, thinking to rest while he still had time. As the din outside began to build he let his eye wander over the beams and stone-work, the narrow deep-set windows. The sleepless night must have finally hit him. He began to think he was in a fort, and no one would ever get in.

The mayor saw to it that the doors at the rear were opened right on time. They creaked back ceremoniously, and the congregation filed in. Michael watched. From the way he hunkered down, he might have been peering in through a chink in a wall. He'd completely forgotten to dress, but ceased to care. All they wanted was a little fix. He needn't waste his time on speeches.

But a curious thing began to happen. The first ones had hardly reached their seats when they started to take off their clothes. Just seeing him sitting there—elbows on knees, chin in hand, like a cloistered satyr—seemed to let them know what the next step was. The old ones looked like the damned in hell, with their wattles and sags and swollen joints. Michael was shocked. He stood up as if he would cast them out.

The more he saw, however, the more he felt a certain fascination. The wreckage of flesh, as the villagers stood revealed, showed him just how merciful he was. They were like a race of slaves that wanted leading out of bondage. There was something almost wonderful about the way they threw aside the past. Everyone followed without a word: stripped off everything, folded it neatly, and made a little pile. The seats were all full. They were jammed three deep at the rear, and the rest craned in at the door. Apparently, there wasn't any limit to what they'd do. Whatever he liked.