Metro Winds (7 page)

‘What is it?' whispered the girl, numb with dread. ‘Where did it come from?'

‘From dreams, like all of the others,' said the woman. ‘They are the shape of our yearning.'

‘Why do they come? What do they want?' The girl felt thin and insubstantial, as if she were a dream.

‘To be taken in,' said the woman. ‘To be known. To be free of those who dreamed them. We let each of them run for as long as we can bear their desperation, and then we hunt and end them. Out of love and mercy. Join us. We saw at once that you were one of us.'

‘Is there no way to save this one?' asked the girl.

The old woman looked at her then, squinting as if to see her better, and her eyes widened. ‘For most of us, there is no way. But for one who is pure and empty, an unused vessel, there may be a way. If you have the courage for it.'

The girl did not understand what the woman was saying. The wild, deadly dance was coming to a crescendo, and through the faltering movements of the capering figures she saw the beast, white and trembling, foam about its lips and nostrils.

‘Tell me,' she said, her heart yearning and yearning towards the beast, till she thought she would die of longing. She was astonished to find she was weeping, for she had never wept before.

The old beggar woman took her cold fingers and squeezed them to draw her eyes from the beast. ‘You must go to it and claim it. But there is no going back once you begin.' The girl nodded, and the woman reached into a battered bag and drew out a garland of dried red roses, regarding it with wonder. ‘I have carried this for long, long years, ever since I came here as a girl. I had not the courage to wear it, but I could not bear to throw it away.' She set it upon the girl's head. ‘Do not baulk or flinch or cry out when you face the beast,' she said. ‘Only courage will avail you.'

The scent of the ancient roses was very strong. The girl thought of the flowers sent by her father, his frowning concentration and big bony wrists as he laid the sheaf of roses in their box.

She thought of her mother, packing the white dress in layers of fine tissue, singing softly in a darkened room. She pitied them and marvelled at their love for her, despite their frailty, their short, short lives.

The dance ended.

‘Go,' the old woman cried. ‘Before it is too late.'

The girl moved towards the tattered men and women, who stood panting and sweating and gasping from their exertions. But they drew back and fell silent when she came among them, white as a votive candle in their midst.

‘You are mine,' she told the beast.

Hearing the words, it ceased to sway and its gaze fixed upon her. Its eyes glowed like hot coals in the firelight, fierce and terrible and beautiful. They looked through skin and bone and into her essence. Moving closer, she saw herself reflected infinitely in its eyes; the short life that had been and all that might be and her death as well. She did not turn away from it, because she would never see its like again. Whatever it cost to see it, and to save it, she would pay.

She realised it was waiting and that words alone were not enough. She stopped and opened her arms, and at last it came to her. It lowered its head, it pierced her through, white dress, white flesh, red heart. The pain was immense, monstrous, impossible. But she did not scream. She clenched her teeth and closed her arms about the beast's head, embracing it, holding herself up by it as her life and strength flowed away. The world dimmed to grey and she dropped to her knees. The air was full of the smell of blood. Then flames leapt and churned in the air as the beast began to pour itself into her. It burned to take the beast in, for she was only flesh. Then she felt the hot red gush of blood within and without, for she could not contain him. Her back split and blood fountained out, but that scarlet gush was not wet and it was not blood. She was on the ground on her hands and knees, gasping and rocking with the pain.

The old beggar woman knelt before her in the sand, seamed and withered face shining. There was wonder and terror in her eyes. She reached out to touch the girl's cheek with papery reverent hands.

The saxophone man and the hunchback stood either side of her. They lifted her to her feet, grunting with the effort. Miraculously the blood had ceased to pour from her chest and the skin was smooth and unbroken, though the torn bodice of the dress was drenched and crimson. But there was a dragging heaviness at her back as they released her and bowed. She staggered under an unfamiliar weight as a great softness moved and unfolded behind her. She craned her neck to look over her shoulder and saw what knowledge of the beast had done to her. Wings emerged from the shreds of cloth. Not white but red as the dawn sun, red as fire, red as a beating heart.

‘I am changed,' she said.

‘How could you not be?' asked the beggar woman. ‘There have been others, it is said, who claimed one of the horned beasts, but never did I see it. Never did I speak to anyone who saw such a one. Rare and rare they are. You are.'

‘Where did the others go?' asked the girl who was no longer a girl.

‘Up,' said the gypsy. ‘Out into the world to fly fearless in the sunlight. Alone and complete.'

The girl who was no longer a girl smiled at the beggar woman and at the other poor, dim, ragged people gazing at her, and they lifted their hands before their eyes and reeled back. Knowing she would blind them if she stayed, she spread her wings and the metro wind rose to carry her up and up and out into the dark world where she would haunt the dreams of the fearful, stir secret wings in the hearts of poets, sing lullabies to the dying and reveal herself to those who dared to see her.

T
HE
D
OVE
G
AME

I
t was hot in Paris.

The minute Daniel stepped from the air-conditioned cool of Charles de Gaulle airport, the sun dropped a hammer on his forehead. The unexpectedness of it stopped him dead, and a woman in a white dress that looked like a silk petticoat wove around him, her thin arms and long neck a glowing pink. He had never imagined people getting sunburned in Paris. The heat seemed wrong here, misplaced, as if he had somehow brought the aridity of the outback with him.

He was to catch a Roissybus to Avenue de l'Opéra in the city, and then take a taxi to his hotel. A queue extended from the closed doors of the bus, through which the driver was visible reading his paper. He took his place behind the elderly couple at the end. It was evident that they were arguing. Daniel thought of the comfortable bickering of his own parents, which had always seemed to him like two old warped boards rubbing together whenever the wind blew from a certain direction.

The woman stabbed a finger towards a mound of baggage and Daniel wondered what could possibly fill so many cases and bags. The rest of the people in the queue also seemed heavily laden. He carried only a half-empty canvas bag. Perhaps it was because he did not need his luggage to anchor him when he was only staying for a few days.

He found himself remembering the look on the face of the travel agent when he said he needed to be in Paris for one day. Her eyes had flickered with faint confusion over his dusty jeans and faded flannel shirt, but she had said nothing, so he pressed on and asked if she could book him a room in a specific quarter.

The girl – she had been little more than that, for all her thin black suit and the slick vermilion smile painted onto her lips – had taken out a map. Daniel could have pointed to the street because he had looked it up to make sure it existed, but she had been absorbed in the mechanics of her own efficiency.

‘It must be an important occasion,' she said, pecking at her computer. Her eyes flicked up, inviting him to explain, as if it were part of her job to offer curiosity so that travellers could talk about their plans and be admired for their adventurous spirits; or maybe so that they could be reassured they were doing the right thing.

‘It's the right thing to do,' he had said, and been startled to find he had spoken aloud.

‘I'm sure it is.' The girl had smiled, offering the possibility of a week in Hong Kong or in Singapore as a stopover. Daniel had shaken his head, saying again that he only needed to go to Paris for one day and would like to return to Australia the next day.

She had regarded him with fleeting severity, as if she thought he was making some sort of joke.

‘I'm afraid that is not possible,' she had said finally. She looked at her computer screen and began to type rapidly. Her face grew smooth and her expression bland, as if the computer had consumed her personality. Then the quick, slick smile again. ‘The soonest I can get you home is five days from the date you fly. There are already heavy bookings because it will be the European summer, and there is a World Cup game. If you could go on another date . . .'

‘No,' he had said softly.

In the end, he had agreed to the extra days, but the decision had made him uneasy because it had been forced on him. The travel agent had explained that countries wanted more tourists, and there were various kinds of inducements and controls. But Daniel had felt that under the little pat of truth were the bones of something harder.

In the Roissybus, he took the back seat because it looked as if his long legs would fit better there. He found himself pressed between a teacher from a Friends school in Baltimore and a German geneticist. He was amazed at how easily and quickly they told their business to one another and to him.

‘What about you?' the American teacher on his left asked with friendly insistence.

‘What is a jackaroo?' the geneticist asked when Daniel had told them his job. The faint slurring of the edges of words that was her accent made her sound gentle, and she looked like someone's elderly aunt, but Daniel reminded himself not to be taken in by appearances. He knew what a geneticist did.

‘Mess with the business of God, they do,' Teatree had said wrathfully one night by the campfire when someone had started talking about the sheep they cloned. ‘Scientists think they can do anything. Splitting the atom and cloning Hitler. Growing crops of arms and legs and eyes,' he had said indignantly.

‘A sort of Australian cowboy,' the American told the geneticist.

Daniel struggled to think of a question to ask them, because his indifference seemed impolite. A teacher had once written on one of his reports that he had a lazy mind. He didn't know if that was true or not. The geneticist told the American she had been presenting a paper at a conference in Brisbane on the future of corn and regretted there had been no time to visit the outback.
Ouwtbeck
, she said. The American teacher said he had been on a short exchange to an Australian Quaker school in Tasmania.

Daniel said he had a meeting in Paris. ‘Not a business meeting,' he added, to short-circuit the questions.

‘Personal business.' The geneticist smiled and the teacher fell silent. Abruptly Daniel decided to tell them the truth.

‘I'm going to meet someone in place of a man who died. I promised to go in his place and explain.'

‘How sad,' the geneticist exclaimed softly. ‘He will come to meet his friend and learn that he is dead.'
Det
, she said.

‘It's a woman,' he said.

The teacher gave Daniel a look of sober approval. ‘You are a good friend. To go all that way, instead of giving her the news over the telephone.'

I was not his friend, Daniel wanted to protest, but the bus lurched to a halt at a huge roundabout where many streams of cars flowed. It was as if someone had decided to tie a knot in a highway. Horns were sounding, brakes screeched and the noise was such that conversation was impossible.

His two companions were gone by the time Daniel emerged from the bus. There were at least thirty taxis lined up along the kerb and people from the Roissybus and other buses were streaming to join the line at one end and climbing into taxis at the other.

On impulse, Daniel turned on his heel and set off in long, loping strides, determined to find a quiet café and check the map, then walk to the hotel. He was soon deep in a maze of streets hemmed on either side by buildings with ornate facades and a multitude of statues. He was struck by their beauty, but also oppressed by the weight of time they represented. No building in Australia was more than two hundred years old, but some of the buildings around him now looked as if they might have been there for many hundreds of years, especially the ones with crumbling, black-streaked stonework.