Lightfall (22 page)

A line of perhaps a dozen children stood in the meadow below the house. The waving grass grew as high as their waists, so they looked to be adrift in open water. The night was cold, the sky black crystal. Around their shoulders were blankets, rather as if they were playing Indians. Dead in the center stood the kidnapped girl, grinning as wide as those who flanked her left and right. They sang along in a dreamy slur. It sounded like a nursery rhyme, though the words would not come clear. Perhaps it was a sailor's air; it seemed to have an ocean in it.

Their eyes in the pearly light, rolled up into their heads, were cold as stone and the color of milk.

Iris stepped backward, out of the group. She could see the kitchen clock through the doorway: 11:25. She saw how the next ten minutes would go. They would take it very hard because they'd lost the only child. Soon they would move back into the parlor, shaken, and find what solace they could in one of their own number. Roy would take her hand. Murmur some desire.

She backed away to the door, and no one noticed. She turned and strode through the house, fetching her shawl from the hat rack in the hall. As she pushed out onto the porch she had some notion of going home to work, as if her room at the boardinghouse were an office. She'd lost her bearings and didn't know it. She imagined there were files to put in order, tapes that had to be transcribed, surfaces to clear. If Roy still wanted her, let him come.

Keep it simple, she thought as she passed down the fieldstone walk. She reached for the gate. What would it solve to love him? All they needed was what they could get. She clicked the latch in the picket fence and passed through. The women, she thought, would learn by watching her.

As she stepped out into the lane, an animal squealed and jumped away. With a startled cry, Iris staggered against the fence. She groped to go back in, but the terror of being bitten made her spastic. She couldn't think to scream. Then, just as she closed her hand on the latch, she saw who it was.

It was Michael.

He stood not three feet off, and stunned as much as she. Stark naked, so his skin was white and livid like the moon. He cupped his genitals, monkeylike. It seemed he had just been passing by. All he wanted to do was go his way in the realms of night, yet something made him wait to be acknowledged. Perhaps he needed to know if she could see him.

“They don't really need us,” she said with a weary shrug. “You know that, don't you?”

She spoke in an oddly wistful way. The animal terror a moment ago might have been no more than the chill night air. To her it seemed they were not enemies at all. The world had passed them by in equal measure.

“Go home, then,” Michael answered mildly.

“What do you want?”

“Nothing,” he said—like a reflex, almost. He was just as sad as she was now. Perhaps he'd been thinking the same thing, that events were set in motion on their own. Perhaps the place did not require a genius. As if he could trust her, he said: “This place is mine. I've been looking for it all my life.”

“I know,” said Iris quietly. She edged toward him. He held his balls a little tighter, but otherwise he didn't move. She reached up a hand and brushed the sweaty hair off his forehead. She drew her fingers down along his cheek. “Michael, why don't we send them all away?”

He gave her a curious look. For a moment he seemed to try to see it—just toe two of them, here alone. He smiled. “They wouldn't go,” he said.

“Look, I'm the one you want. Take me.”

Though the smile never left his face, a twinge of sorrow passed across his eyes. Even as she watched, his vision seemed to clear. For a second or two he gazed at an ancient dream. Iris knew she had never looked this blankly at the light. She knew she couldn't. At the same time she was filled with a burning wish to surrender, she felt a pang of honor for him. It wasn't a lie. He did have powers.

It vanished as quickly as it came. He looked her in the eye, his fixed and glassy smile in place, and said: “But don't you see? You're the only one I
don't
want.”

With that he released his genitals and clasped his hands behind his back. The flaccid state of his organ seemed to do him proud. Iris, looking blankly at it, couldn't deny the relief she felt. For a little bit the night reined in. Then, as if she'd caught the first faint pulse of a pain deep down inside, she became aware of a curious flinching in her heart. Her spirit sank, as if to the shriek and impact of a crack-up down the road. Before he was through he would violate them all.

“Do you remember who you are, Michael?”

“I don't care,” he said pointedly, rising on his toes.

“Edward Dale,” persisted Iris. “Earl of Pitt. You're the only one with a name.”

“My name is legion,” Michael said, and he lifted his head to the breeze as if he'd caught the scent of something. He had ceased to be alert to her, perhaps because she wasn't any danger. It was as if the very words they spoke dispelled some aura, like the sun on the morning mist.

“When you landed here,” she said, “there were people on these cliffs. You made them think you were God.”

He was tensed and waiting now. There was movement on the meadow slope above them. She could hear it: the rush of the grass against an animal's flanks. She did not know how she knew that Michael had played divine. She was just guessing. But she had the faintest recollection of them kneeling while he fed them. She'd read the account in his journal where he stole the spores of the mountain tribe in Chile. Drugs was how he did it.

“Then you started to hate them,” Iris said. “I don't know why. I wish you'd tell me.”

But he didn't know anything. He was all sucked out from a day of revels. He had walked his dark domain all evening, keeping clear of houses. The last four hundred years receded like a row of graves. Time was as nothing. And yet, if she'd asked him how long they had, he would have answered most precisely: “Fifty-six hours.” At midnight, fifty-five. Till what, he couldn't say.

“Can't we try, Michael? Let me come up to your room tonight. You'll see—there's so much to remember. It's like another world.”

Still his head was cocked to the rustle in the breeze. His ears were flat against his skull, listening like a beast. “I have no room,” he whispered.

“Please—” she said.

But she never got to finish what it was. A train of baby skunks came snaking down the lane and passed between them. Iris stepped back, startled. She wasn't scared; they were too young to feel any danger here, and they kept their ink to themselves. As they disappeared into the grass beyond, she only thought to wonder where the mother was.

Michael's eyes were shining. He chewed at his lower lip impatiently. Iris felt herself grow quiet, as if she sensed the wind had shifted. Michael was lord of the wilder slopes. She had no range in the woods. A pair of fawns on wobbly legs shied by them, then a bear cub, half asleep. Iris had so little say, as they tumbled out of the dark, that the best she could do to stand her ground was to not look surprised.

“I never seem to learn the name of anything,” Michael said.

But for all his air of apology—as if life slipped through his fingers all day long—he glowed with delight at the flow of creatures. Two pup mountain lions and a whimpering moose. A litter of chipmunks, none any bigger than a man's thumb. He almost could have been dreaming them.

“Tomorrow, then,” she said. “We'll go for a walk. You can show me your favorite places.”

“All right,” he said with a small indifferent shrug. He watched the night above the path, waiting the next appearance. Perhaps he'd agreed with her all along. He just needed to hear the right proposal.

She reached to touch him a second time, like a friend. No threats. He would have let her, but a thing came barreling down the hill and she jumped. It lumbered into view. A lizard four feet long with a great hump on back of the neck and a nose like a bony hammer. She'd never seen anything like it. It didn't come from here; it came from someplace old as the ocean. She realized with a shock of horror: this was a baby too.

Right behind it a long-necked pig, its skin like leather, trundled in beside a skittering line of chicks. These last were some kind of gull, too young to fly. They had to scramble to get out of the pig's way. Except it wasn't a pig, really. It looked like a baby dinosaur.

“I'm leaving now,” she said. “Where should we meet?”

He looked after this last improbable beast as if he'd produced a unicorn. She thought he hadn't heard her. He'd left her far behind. But then he said: “Tomorrow's Sunday.”

“Yes, I know. You want me to come to the church?”

He frowned. “No, not there,” he said. He almost seemed embarrassed. “You wouldn't like it.”

“I don't mind. I won't try to take them away, if that's what you're worried about.”

“
Look
at it, will you?” He pointed impatiently down the field toward the cliffs. He was sick of all this talking.

She could not see at first. She didn't want to. It was a great commotion of some kind. The animals had gathered in a bunch, as if they had been corralled; but they weren't protesting, not at all. She could hear them—twenty, thirty feet away—cooing and neighing and murmuring. Michael turned and loped across the grass. She could have been through the gate and back in the parlor in a couple of seconds. She'd find him tomorrow; he couldn't go very far. She thought: Leave it alone now.

But she couldn't help but hear the children laughing. It was more than just the animals. She stepped off the path, as if at the whim of a dream. She followed the pale of Michael's body into the dark. When he stopped, she walked up next to him. She knew he would not protest her coming close. He had
ordered
her to watch.

It was nothing, really: just a bunch of kids in a field, playing with animals. The children must have finished chanting out behind the house and circled around to the front to greet this sudden menagerie. One girl held a small black bear tight in her arms like a teddy. The bear didn't mind. Two boys pulled at the ears and tail of the gawky moose, and he butted them playfully, snorting tough. No one was hurt. The animals loved it. It looked like a school for the damaged, designed to return the furthest gone to the thick of life. The pig rode three kids bareback, all at once.

“What does it mean?” she asked Michael quietly.

“Nothing,” he said. He bent down and scooped up a baby raccoon. He held it out on the palm of his hand, stroking its tiny head with a finger. Michael made a purring sound as he blew his warm breath on the downy fur. The animal arched and yawned, shivered with pleasure, and made as if to burrow in to sleep. Michael reached it across to Iris, touching his hand against hers. “Here,” he said gently.

“No, thanks.”

She felt quite foolish. It wasn't as if she feared it would put her under his spell. Indeed, she saw she would do much better to share a thing like this. But she thought of the tiny band in Emery's house—how they made not the least concession, but tried to find their reason in one another. She dared not cross certain lines, lest she leave the rest behind.

“Where are their mothers?”

“They're coming,” he said, in an absentminded way. He was much more interested, just then, in setting the sleeping animal down on a tuft of grass away from the noise.

Two or three children led their pets away. Iris could see what they meant to do. First, they would find a spot in the cliffside grove and spread out their blankets to stake the ground. Then they would curl to sleep, with their lions and fawns to keep them warm. There was nothing in any of this to inspire the slightest dread. She wondered again: What was she fighting?

She silently turned from the playing field. In front of her was an elephant calf, and a spindle-legged colt so young it didn't seem weaned. She stepped between them, restraining the hand that longed to stroke them. She could see beyond the hedge the glow of the oil lamps in the parlor. Someone was leaning out the window, watching the sky. It was Roy.

As soon as she saw him she quickened her pace. It was as if she had just come to from a slug of anesthesia. Her body shimmered with desire. Every step she took, her feet sent up the fragrant crush of grass. When Michael called, she pretended at first that she didn't hear. She grasped the gate latch, heard the click of it opening, and looked back over her shoulder with a smile.

“I'll save you,” he cried, “I promise. All you have to do is ask.”

For an instant she stood quite still, neither in nor out. The smile never flickered. He rose like a shepherd above his flock. If she'd given him even the barest hope, he might have sent them loping back to the woods. But just as suddenly she was gone, through the gate and up the walk. The deal would have to wait.

Roy, the moment he saw her, grinned and bolted across the house to let her in. She rushed up the steps to the porch, and the blood seemed to pound in her ears as if she'd been running for miles. The door swung open. She fell into his arms.

As he spun her around, she recalled the exact sensation out of one of her vanished lives. His mouth sought hers, and they breathed each other in. This, she saw, was her proper orbit: having it out with a man. She wondered how much time she'd lost. She wondered if she had it in her to love with the old abandon. Hungry as she was, she was assaulted by a hundred doubts—but not with regard to him. She could see that he loved her more than anything. They drew back to stare into each other's eyes, and all across the hills, whatever was still out and hunting could watch them in the lantern light.

“When you leave like that,” said Roy, setting her back on earth, “I never know whether you're coming back.”

“I know,” she answered quietly.

“Let's go home,” he said, moving forward off the porch. He was holding one of her hands, and he felt it slip from his grasp when she didn't follow.