Lightfall (27 page)

“I remember now,” she said with a sudden lilt. “He fell in love with me.” She turned and smiled, but his gazing eyes were riveted on the light. “He wanted to take me away, right? To England, I guess … it seemed like the moon to me. I was terrified. I remember thinking they'd make me a slave. I'd be put in a circus.” The more she spoke, the more she seemed to understand that she was the only one who'd say it. “What if I'd gone, Emery? None of it would have happened. I probably would have died a duchess.”

The paper had burned to an ash. He flicked his eyes toward her with a puzzled look, as if he hadn't listened. He seemed about a hundred, all of a sudden. Then he spoke: “But you didn't
love
him, Iris. You had no choice.”

He seemed upset to think she questioned things that were properly dead and buried. Yet he had no power to stop her talking. Her words were like an antidote; they neutralized the forces crackling all around them.

“Well, of
course
I did,” she said with some impatience. “If I'd known about the eclipse—if I'd just listened. He warned me, Emery. He said if I didn't come, the sun would go out. He
knew”
. Emery stood there, slumped and swaybacked, eyes on the floor. With his apple core and his puzzled smile, he looked to be retarded. “If I'd said yes,” she explained with a furious patience, “we would have sailed a week before. You'd have all been safe.”

“You
had to
stay,” the old man protested, setting his jaw and puffing his chest. “We died for you, Iris.”

“That's not true, and you know it. You died like”—here she groped the air for a word—”like animals.”

“Oh,” cried Emery, full of grief, “What are we fighting for? It doesn't matter now. I love you, Iris—don't you see? We all do.”

The change was so astonishing, she almost couldn't follow it. He stepped up and threw open his arms. She knew it was an act, and yet he really seemed to believe it. His shadow fell across her. She braced in her chair and did not bolt, for she knew she was in no danger. It wasn't a killer who clasped her to him. As her face lay against his bony chest, she was glad of the respite. His languid, beckoning smile had a far more smothering force.

“You know what it's like?” whispered Emery, with a sudden choke of emotion. “It's like having my Harriet back.”

She rose as if to embrace him in return, and sidled by him before he caught the drift. He reached out a hand to restrain her as she broke away and glided to the stairs. At the same time, she spoke so fervently that she quite drowned out his throb of protest.

“You're absolutely right, Emery,” she said with a winning smile. “I just need a little time alone. I'm sure I'll be fine by tonight.”

She didn't stop when he called out “Wait,” but skipped down the stairs two at a time. She burst from the tower to the sun-struck air with a wonderful sense of release. The picnickers drifted and lounged about, their faces tipped to the light. No one had even missed her. She laughed to think how free she was—

And there he was again. She'd only paused an instant, but he was suddenly beside her as she strode across the lawn, the apple core still cupped in his hand. She could hear him puffing, just to keep up. His lungs were close to bursting, but he seemed to grit his teeth for one last chance.

“You feel it's all your fault, don't you?”

Oh shut up, she thought, I know this tack. She wondered how far they'd have to walk before he'd drop. It shocked her so to feel such rage that she slowed her pace for shame. He was just a poor old man.

“Oh, I suppose,” she said, with a melancholy sigh. “I just want us all to make it.”

“Of course you do,” retorted Emery, huge with approval. “Everything's going to be fine. Do try to remember—if it weren't for you, we'd have never had a day like this.”

“But don't you want to go home?” she cried. Even as she spoke it, the word rang hollow, mocking her. Where in the world was that?

“I
am
home,” the old man said serenely, as they came in under the trees again.

He had a hand at the small of her back, guiding her toward the coffee. If she dropped her guard for even a moment, she found herself in the lull of things, like a ship on a windless sea. Abruptly she turned away. She hurried off up the park slope to-ward the street, determined to keep her silence if he followed yet again. She didn't look back till she reached the fish house.

Only then did she see why he'd let her go. He was talking intently to Roy and gesturing fiercely in her direction. Roy shook his head no, as if he would not indulge an old man's idle notions. Iris felt a wave of power as she broke into a trot. She went up the street burning for a confrontation.

She hardly saw the carpenters, who waved her hello and grinned as she passed. Most of them were taking a break, surveying the bare foundations of their houses. A rickety truck full of loam bore down from the high meadow. Iris saw a couple of sites where the people were already grading and raking. There was hardly anything left of the village beyond the five or six houses still in her dispensation. She had an inkling they wouldn't be there tomorrow.

She had to find someplace else.

When she reached the church at the end of the street she knew instantly it would never do. There were too many doors. How would she keep them in? The thought was so peculiar that she leaned against the rough stone wall, as if she'd lost her balance. She shut her eyes and shook her head. Wasn't the point to keep things out? She had a sudden longing to rid herself of buildings altogether. Like Michael's men, she wished to find her reason in the earth.

“You look so silly, dressed like that.”

She turned to the saucer eyes of Judith Quinn, stark naked now like the others. She grabbed at the front of Iris's sweater, yanking her off her feet. As Iris fell to her knees, her mind went icy clear: Get out. Don't draw a crowd. She felt the other woman beating at her, blindly pulling her clothes.

“He doesn't
want
you. He doesn't
want
you,” moaned the doctor's wife.

“Shh,” crooned Iris, ducking blows as she grasped the woman about the knees. She hushed her, holding on till she felt the bitter rage waver and yield to tears. The beating died away. Iris rose carefully, keeping the cool of her hands against the other's skin. They stood for a moment like a mirror image, and Iris stroked her, whispering, “Shh.”

Judith sobbed and turned her anger inward. She rent her own flesh with her fingernails. She gasped at the air to find the breath to scream.

Iris, patting the mad woman's throat, with a flick of the wrist got a stranglehold. She dug her thumb in the windpipe, pressing her fingers against the pulse of blood in the neck. The doctor's wife went silent, though her mouth was open wide. Her eyes rolled up in her head. She clutched herself around the belly, seeming to fall in a trance, as if she thought this agony would break her like a bud and let her free.

When at last the naked woman slumped in Iris's arms, she released the pressure and, lightning quick, danced the swooning body round the corner of the church. She sat her down in a clump of ivy, propped against the wall. Judith's hand fell next to a white narcissus, as if she meant to pluck it in a dream. Then Iris saw a wave of grief and loss come storming into her face, as she registered the ceasing of her death. She was deep in a faint, but the tears welled up and splashed her cheeks. A moaning began at the back of her throat. Iris turned away with an awful pang of failure.

She stumbled through the picket gate and rushed among the pines. She had tested her final principle: she couldn't kill. But neither she nor Judith Quinn had triumphed. All the laws were upside down. The birds were crying havoc in the trees. Holes like the burrows of animals littered the floor of the woods and the cliff side fields beyond. Even the graves weren't safe.

She had no thought except to find a place to hide, just big enough for one. The people had gone too far. She couldn't connect. For safety's sake she owed herself a final shelter. She wasn't afraid to take the blame for the way it had all turned sour, but first she had to be by herself, to see if she knew who
she
was any more.

As she clambered through the underbrush, she had an idea it would lead her up to a crag from which she would command the heights. She seemed to recall an overhang where a bed of last year's leaves had sifted in. She did not take into account the raining down of the time between. How a lightning bolt had splintered the escarpment. Or the slippage along the fault, how it managed to inch the mountain off its pedestal. The incline finally flattened out, then the stream put out a branch to silt the naked rock. Before long, the creep of the woods had got a foothold.

However it was, she couldn't have been more startled when she barreled through a knot of vines and tumbled into the meadow. She looked around as she caught her breath, on her hands and knees in a bed of ferns. Her heart leaped up at the virgin green. Why this, she thought, could be her secret place.

The moment she stood up she saw how wrong she was. There were hundreds of animals standing about in the foot-high grass. Not a single one bent down to crop the clover. They stood in a ring to the edge of the field, with another ring inside, then another and then another, like ripples. There was one of every kind she could think of. Each held high his head in a perfect poise of listening. The nearest ones were quaking with the wish to run away, but still they held their ground.

Where, she wondered, were all their mates? It was just like the night before, with the litters of babies pouring off the hill, except there it was the mothers that she missed. Suddenly, it struck her: what if these were the very creatures she had seen, grown to fullness overnight? Perhaps some cold-eyed process of selection had winnowed down each flock of infants, such that only one in every species reached its proper height.

She thought all this with a haunting coolness, making guesses as she went. She never thought to be afraid for an instant. Her terrors sprang from people: there lay the true wild edge of the world. She walked among this tatterdemalion herd—the buffalo next to the panda, the peacock strutting around the tiger—like a tourist in a dusty zoo. She wasn't the least transported. She just kept moving, further and further toward the center of the field, thinking she still might hide here—

Then her mouth dropped open, when she saw they were in pairs. The prairie dog and the puma. The goat and the armadillo. She stopped stock-still in the grass and shivered. For a moment she looked as singular as they. She had it now: these beasts were going to mate!

In a flash they sensed a change in her. There were sudden restless stirrings. A few began to shuffle in her direction. The white-horned elk. The cheetah. The palomino. She staggered off to the side—and tripped. They were on her so fast, like a pack of dogs, that she was in their mouths before she saw it was Michael she had tripped on. A gasp of horror broke from her throat. The sheet-metal taste of death was on her tongue.

He woke with a groan from a sailor's dream, of a soundless ship on an open sea. He saw her trapped in a cage of teeth. The fox was at her leg, the lion at her throat. The alligator had her belly scissored between his jaws. They growled like a buzz saw, ready to tear her to bits, but they hadn't yet so much as grazed the skin. It only took the vaguest wave of his hand—as if he were brushing aside the cobwebs of his sleep—and they drew in their fangs and lifted off. They slithered and backed away.

Iris lay there a moment, taut and covered with goose-flesh. Then she shuddered once, and her teeth unclenched, and she came up on one elbow.

“What do you want?” he asked.

“I came to find out if you love me yet,” she replied in a bored, coquettish voice.

“What if I do?”

“I'm not really sure,” she said with a shrug. “But we haven't got much time. We might as well see if we have a choice.”

“Like what?”

“Well—we could run away.”

“Where?”

“Oh, there's places,” she said, tipping her head back as if she would laugh. Her neck was white and quick, with a spoor of the lion's spittle at her throat. “Lots of islands out there,” she remarked, pointing a lazy finger out to sea.

“I wouldn't live on an island,” Michael said with a quiver of pride. It seemed he had been waiting here for just such an ill-thought proposition. He went on with infinite patience. “I have to go walk among my people. Don't you see—there are prophets all over, in every town. They're waiting.” He made a helpless shape with his hands, to try to get at the vastness of it. “Just waiting,” he said.

“Why?”

There was so little answer in him, it seemed he hadn't heard.
Why
was like the cry of any one of a thousand creatures. Just another noise in the noonday air.

“Take me with you, Michael. Now—before this place can tear us apart. I promise, I'll help you.”

He shook his head sternly. “No. You wait here.”

She pricked her ears and held her tongue. The most she'd ever had from him was a shy, indifferent smile. He'd never made the slightest gesture, even to show he knew about the sun. He'd certainly never come out with an order.

“You mean you're leaving? I thought this place was journey's end.”

He nodded. “All they need to do is touch me. Once they know I've come, you see, they can do the rest themselves. It'll only take a couple of months. Then I'm free to come back. This is our kingdom, Iris.” He spoke with a winglike span of his arms. “They owe it to us.”

“But it's not what happened
before
,” she declared, a ripple of panic creeping in. What was he doing knowing more than she? Till now he had been like a ten-year-old. She didn't want to hear he had finally rooted out her name. She couldn't think of a secret that was safe.