Marianne, the Matchbox, and the Malachite Mouse (2 page)

‘People,’ he said vaguely. ‘They do, you know. Disappear. All the time. Young people run away from home, and older people get disgusted with life and go off to start over. It’s a well-known phenomenon, and no one in authority gets overly concerned about it.’

‘So?’

‘So this: lately a great many people seem to have been disappearing in ways no one can seem to explain! Threes and fours of them at a time. The disappearance rate has almost doubled.’

‘Here? In Alphenlicht?’

‘No. Not here. Not that I know of, at least. But in quite a lot of places. In the eastern part of the United States, particularly. And in England. And, funnily enough, in Japan. Some other places, too. None of the underdeveloped countries, however, which is rather interesting. At any rate, it’s become worrying enough that the United Nations is attempting to gather some data. I have a great, complicated questionnaire which a group of the Kavi are going to fill out this morning, and afternoon, from the look of the thing. Then, when that’s finished, we have a religious holiday to plan for.’

‘You always have at least one of those.’

‘Quite right. Every good theocracy should have at least one religious holiday looming on every horizon, and I’d better get to it or I’ll find myself supplanted by someone else …’

He kissed her and bustled out, and a moment later Marianne saw the long, silver car slide effortlessly down the drive and away behind the apple trees of the distant orchard.

‘Would you care for anything else, ma’am?’ The serving maid was standing politely by the buffet, her hand on the silver coffeepot.

‘Thank you, Bella, no. You can clear. And would you find Aghrehond for me. And my secretary.’

‘My secretary.’ The words sounded slightly pretentious. It would have been better to say, ‘Janice,’ or ‘Thomas,’ or some other name. Except that she didn’t know what her secretary’s name was today. It would be one of the Kavi, one of the ruling class of Alphenlicht, probably a young one, though, on occasion, it had been someone old enough to be her grandparent. It was their way of getting to know her; their way of influencing her, giving her Alphenlichtian values.

‘You asked for me?’ said Therat, her slender young form poised gracefully in the doorway.

‘Therat! Don’t tell me you’re playing amanuensis!’

‘Um, well, I had a premonition.’

‘I wasn’t counting on a premonition.’ Marianne smiled warily at her, feeling more than slightly uncomfortable. Even though she had teased Makr Avehl about his attitude toward Therat, Marianne knew just how he felt. Therat might well have had a premonition; she was that kind of person. ‘But since you had one, what did it say?’

‘That you’d be taking a trip, that you’d want to visit the Cave first, and that you’d be somewhat troubled about it.’

Wordlessly Marianne picked Great-aunt Dagma’s letter from the table and held it out. Therat took it, turning her piercing eyes upon it and letting Marianne off the hook of scrutiny she had felt herself hanging on ever since Therat came into the room. No, Therat was not surprised. Makr Avehl was quite right: Therat was never surprised at anything. Just once, Marianne would like to surprise her. Somehow Marianne could not imagine Therat being astonished. She couldn’t imagine Therat in love, or Therat pregnant, or Therat shaving her legs, or Therat taking a bath. She had tried, without success, to imagine Therat doing anything personal and intimate. One only saw the eyes, felt the mind, and was vaguely aware of the body that carried these around, like a kind of vehicle.

‘Do you care greatly for her?’ Therat asked. It was typical of her that her voice contained no sympathetic tones whatsoever.

‘Yes. I do.’

‘Then I grieve for you.’ And it was equally typical that one knew she did, in her own way. ‘You’re going? When? Tomorrow?’

‘Whenever my “secretary” can call the Prime Minister’s office and check on the travel arrangements.’ Marianne smiled.

‘I’ll take care of it. However – Marianne …’

‘Yes, Therat.’

‘This tone in your great-aunt’s letter. Is she possibly involving you in something tha … in your present condition …’

‘Makr Avehl says to find out what she needs. I can always take care of it later, after I’m not in my present condition.’

‘Ah.’ Therat didn’t sound convinced. ‘Well, we’ll see what the Cave has to say.’

‘Will you ask someone to send a message, please, telling my great-aunt that I am coming.’

And after that she took the time to speak to her maid Renee about packing. She did not want to make a major production of it. It was not to be a very social visit, after all. She would need something flowing and pretty for dinners. She would need several practical things – equally flowing, considering her shape – for daytime. Despite Renee’s expostulations, Marianne insisted that she keep the luggage to a minimum: one case and a makeup kit.

In midafternoon, Marianne went with Therat to the Cave, driven by Aghrehond the first part of the way, walking up the last bit of winding path to the tunnel mouth. As she always did when she came here, Marianne stood for a moment on the doorstep of the mountain, looking up and around her at the prominence beneath which the Cave lay. A hill, large and pleasantly wooded, full of little valleys and gullies, decked with clearings and copses, wandered over by deer and goats and occasional hunters. Beneath the hill, far beneath, was a cavern, and winding down to that cavern were hundreds of twisting worm holes lined with mica which reflected the surface light deep into the cave that lay at the center of the mountain. Holes that reflected light, here and there. Now and then. On this spot and on that.

And there, far underground, every square inch of the cavern was carved and painted with symbols and pictures and words and numbers, so that the light fell, inevitably, on some sign or omen. Never twice the same, so said the canon of the Kavi.

And certainly Marianne had never seen it twice the same. She shook her head at the sunlit foliage and followed Therat into the lamplit tunnel and down it into the lantern-spotted darkness.

‘Ah, pretty lady,’ said Aghrehond, ‘it makes a spookiness, does it not, a kind of ghosty feeling to come into this darkness.’

‘Reverence,’ said Therat in a no-nonsense-now kind of voice. ‘That would be a more proper emotion.’

‘Perhaps proper, for members of the priesthood, for those worshipful ones who guide and protect us, but for me, a driver of vehicles, a mere carrier from place to place, for me it makes a genuine shiver, Therat.’ His large form quivered beside Marianne and he grinned at her as he put one great hand beneath her elbow, guiding her. To hear Aghrehond, he was the worst coward in the country. To recall what he actually did – that was another matter.

A simple stone altar stood at the center of the cave. They set their lanterns upon it and turned them off. Marianne, with only partial success, tried to assume the vacant, waiting frame of mind which the Kavi asserted was appropriate for visits to the Cave. Aghrehond, beside her, seemed under no such stricture. He was humming, very softly, under his breath. From Therat, not a sound. The darkness was full of darting spots of light, false impressions of light left when the lantern was turned off. Gradually the darkness took their place.

Marianne breathed deeply, folded her hands, and went through the formula silently. ‘I seek guidance. I seek knowledge. I seek that which will avoid harm to living things. I seek not for selfish purposes but for the good of all …’

‘A roadway,’ said Therat in her emotionless voice. Marianne searched through the darkness, finding the beam of light at last where it swam with dust motes. The cave wall where it made a tiny, irregular circle was carved with something. Marianne would have said it was a snake, but Therat knew every symbol. If she said it was a road, it was a road!

Marianne breathed deeply again. A usual reading was considered to be three or four signs.

‘A leopard,’ said Therat, sounding puzzled. ‘No, a demon, no, a leopard.’ There was something in her voice that made Marianne think Therat would have used an obscenity if they were somewhere else. Then she said, ‘I don’t understand this one at all …’

There was silence for a moment. ‘And finally a rope,’ said Therat finally, leaning forward to turn on the lantern once more.

‘Was it a cat thing or a demon thing, Highmost Kavi,’ asked Aghrehond in his bantering tone. ‘You seemed unable to make up your mind.’

‘Look for yourself,’ said Therat. ‘Here,’ she pointed to a place on the wall where a carved leopard – one assumed it was a leopard, as it had a spotted coat – was surrounded on three sides by devil faces. ‘The light overlapped. First on the cat, then on the face, then back again, wavering. Most unusual. Not the most unusual thing about this particular reading, however. Look over here. The light lit this place.’ She pointed.

‘There’s nothing there,’ said Marianne in surprise.

‘Exactly. There’s nothing there. There was something there until last week. There was a carving of a flowerpot there. But the man who came in to clean the floors knocked over his little cart, and it bumped just there, knocking the carving to bits. So! Does this reading mean that the flowerpot was supposed to be there? Or that nothing was supposed to be there? And if nothing, then what does that mean?’ Therat sounded excessively annoyed.

‘A road and a rope, a cat demon, and a vacancy?’ asked Marianne, trying not to sound amused.

‘The meaning may be something quite different,’ Therat answered her stiffly. ‘As you know, Your Excellency.’

‘Oh, Therat, don’t Excellency me. I’ve told you I hate it. The signs meant nothing to me, I’m sorry. I will rely on you to figure it out and let me know.’

‘The journey should be postponed until I have accomplished that,’ said Therat.

‘The journey can’t be postponed,’ Marianne answered. ‘You read the letter. You know. I know enough about the Cave to know there were no omens of destruction, Therat. I’ve at least skimmed through the great lectionary, so I do know that. And from what I’ve gathered from the lectionary, spotted cats and roads and ropes do not constitute serious warnings.’

‘Perhaps,’ the Kavi assented grudgingly. ‘I’ll study the implications. If I come up with anything, I’ll let you know.’

Marianne barely had time to get back to the Residence and dress for dinner before the arrival of four visiting dignitaries from neighboring countries. She spent the evening being a polite and accomplished hostess, and then, at last, was able to retire to the quiet of the master suite.

‘So you’re leaving tomorrow morning?’ Makr Avehl said, holding her close. ‘What did the Cave say?’

‘Something about roads and ropes and a spotted cat. Not even a black cat. Even I could have interpreted that.’

‘Call me if you need me,’ he said. ‘You know.’

She did know. She could call Makr Avehl without using any technological assistance. This was one of the
individual
abilities Great-aunt had been referring to in her letter. Marianne had several of them, and Makr Avehl had others.

‘Are you taking the … you know?’ He was referring to the timetwister, a device which Marianne had obtained on a former quite dangerous and mystical adventure.

From her pillow, she shook her head. No. No mystical devices. She might be tempted to use it if she had it, and using such things could be dangerous. She yawned.

He nodded his satisfaction with that. ‘Just find out what’s needed, love. Don’t get yourself involved in anything right now, but assure Dagma we’ll take care of it at the earliest opportunity.’

‘Mmmm,’ she assured him, drowsily.

He, hearing her sleepy breathing, did not insist that she promise him. Later, of course, he was very much to wish that he had. Though it might not have made any difference at all.

At Heathrow Airport, Marianne and Aghrehond had over an hour to spend between flights, and they wandered about, stretching their legs, shopping for magazines and Marianne’s favorite type of fruit gumdrop, which she couldn’t find.

‘Damn,’ she fussed. ‘You’d think any country with a confectionary industry could make nice, soft, fruit-flavored gumdrops instead of these rubbery awful things.’

‘Ah, pretty lady,’ sighed Aghrehond. ‘I know a place in Boston they may be had.’

‘I know that place, too. They import them from England! So why aren’t there any here?’

‘Possibly because the confectionary has been supplanted by that,’ he said, waving his hand at a brightly festooned store, obviously newly opened.

‘Cattermune’s,’ she read. ‘Now what in heaven’s name is that.’

‘We shall go see,’ he said ponderously, tucking her hand beneath his arm.

She started off obediently enough, but then the annunciator began its thunderous chatter, among which she heard the flight number and airline name she had half been listening for.

‘Our plane,’ she said definitely, turning about with Aghrehond tugged behind. ‘Come on, my friend, or we’ll miss it and be stuck in England overnight.’

Staring over his shoulder, Aghrehond complied. Cattermune’s. A very bright, festive store which seemed given over to games and amusements. Pity they didn’t have time to see it. Perhaps they could take time on the way back.

Arti and Haurvatat Zahmani, Marianne’s mother and father, met the plane and talked Marianne’s ear off most of the way back to the estate while Aghrehond sat placidly beaming. Marianne peered out at the green countryside and asked questions about all her friends and neighbors and her horse.