Lightfall (37 page)

She couldn't think of a single answer. All that he said seemed perfectly sound. If she'd thought about it at all, she'd have let them go in a second, so she didn't think. She just kept counting, knowing she had the strength for these few minutes and nothing more. Once the sun was clear again, she swore she would never have another moral notion. Not if all the murderers were kings.

“Iris, Iris,” he crooned through the floor. “Please—do it for love.”

She glanced outside to see how far the matter of the light had gone. The sun was two-thirds covered. Geysers of lava raged around the moon. The earthlight turned quicksilver, and the shadows on the cliff were beaten gold. The families waiting to jump now sang a hymn, Christian of course, in several parts like a tidy choir.
For those in peril on the sea
, as if they were going down on a ship. There was nothing they could do about it except be noble. Noble became the way of the second wave.

She looked at the others still clustered on the lawn. Many were full of terror and shrinking back. The leaders of the third group were having to pull their people up and shrill at them. It seemed the pace of things was falling behind. Those on the edges crept under the bushes and up the trees. By the time they got to the fifth minute, thought Iris, Michael would have to push. Nothing was perfect, even now. She laughed to think how crazed he would be before the fall of light was done.

Two things happened then. The prisoners heard her laughter, and they lunged, beating the lid like a battering ram. And when she shrank away against the wall, Michael came around the outer door and stepped inside. Her eyes went wide with fear. Frantically, she patted her pockets and combed the stairs. She bent down and felt in the dust on the floor. No luck. Then she looked back at Michael, who dangled the key between two fingers, shaking it like a bell. He grinned from ear to ear.

“Don't,” she pleaded, putting out a supplicating hand.

“You free them, Iris,” said Michael gently. “They're yours.”

“No,” she whimpered, rising frightened to her feet. “They don't know what they're doing.”

“Who does?”

The hammering was so loud she couldn't think. She snatched the key from his hand, which only made him laugh. She stowed it in a pocket. As her fury grew, the fear left her. Things would hold if she could stay angry. “What about
yours?
” she defied him. “They don't look so happy.”

“But they don't count,” he replied with a shrug. “They were dead the day they were born. How are you feeling now?”

“Oh, don't worry. I'll survive.”

Everything she said only seemed to delight him more. “Well, of course you will,” he purred at her. “That's the whole point.” He gestured vaguely at the park outside. “The next one comes in about six hundred years,” he said. “We'll watch it together, shall we?”

Because she couldn't follow him, she stepped to the door to check the sun. They had reached the full corona. The villagers had ceased to jump. The willing ones were gone; now the others dug in. The whole idea had ground to a halt, even as the chromosphere ringed the moon with a million conflagrations. She thought of the children, free somewhere. Then she squinted her eyes and stared directly at it, for after all she would never see another. Just a few more minutes now.

And yet she would have thought there would be
something
, now that they'd reached the eye of it. Some certainty. Some victory. Something more than a ring of light and zero in the heart.

“Iris?”

He sounded so happy, she couldn't help but turn. For a moment her eyes were dazed. She saw the ring like a vision, superimposed on everything—like a halo round the prophet's head. Then her focus cleared: he was holding a revolver. Smiling, he shot a single shot point-blank, directly at her heart.

The force of it nearly knocked her over. The wind went out of her lungs. She gripped her heart as Michael howled with laughter. It only took a moment, and she knew she wasn't dead. She stared at her hands: no blood. She didn't feel a thing.

She looked over at him strangely. Now he held a knife. The very same she had used on Emery Oz, she thought with the oddest sense of calm. He danced up close as she flattened herself against the curving wall. He raised it above his head and slashed down and plunged it in her stomach. She saw it go in and come out, but as if from a point outside herself. She hardly winced. The sweater was torn to the waist, rather as if she were ripping off her clothes, but that was all. Her belly was white and smooth.

The clamoring had stopped, meanwhile, in the well below the floor—as if the prisoners thought better of coming out to a sudden change of rules. Even now she kept on counting. She would not have to face it at all, if she could just get through the next three minutes. Shyly she stared at the floor. She never would have met his eyes if he hadn't slipped a cord around her neck. Her head snapped back as he pulled it taut. His face was an inch away.

“See?” said Michael with flashing eyes.

She couldn't speak, but not because she was choking. She breathed in and out the same as ever. Though the cord bit deep and seemed about to sever the windpipe, Iris found she wasn't even startled. Only speechless. She had a sudden horror that the victory was here.

“Think of it, Iris,” he murmured at her, pulling the rope so tight that it turned his fingers blue. “We can do anything now.”

The only thing in her favor was how much he needed to talk about it, as if he had to get her approval before the eclipse was done. Now he let up on the pressure, to give her a little room to say. What would she like to do first?

She slipped from the noose and bolted. She ran outside and slammed the door. Still ticking off the seconds in her head, she stalked through the last of the villagers. They crouched and lay about, some of them almost fetal. As for the sun, she was used to the trick by now. The shock was over. When she glanced up to see how far the moon had waned from dead center, nothing induced her to stop and stare. She only meant to check the time.

Of course, she knew he'd follow her, but really, shouldn't he be getting the rest of his people over? A kind of torpor had overtaken them, even those who up till now had been his brave lieutenants. She knew the way it was written—after all, she'd
been
here before. Michael could not claim her till he carried out the rest. It was still a world of laws, even as it fell apart.

So why was he throwing it all away? There must have been fifty people left. Why, when she turned, did she find him lumbering toward her, not even glancing left or right? It was as if he'd given up. She was pricked by a sharp dissatisfaction, to think she'd won so easily.

As he drifted toward her smiling, his myriad weapons cast aside, she could not help but smile herself. Almost as if she would dance for joy, she opened her arms to gather him in. Why not? It was only for the next three minutes. He might as well have a taste. He'd lost, he'd lost—she knew it deep down. There wasn't any danger anymore. The ruins of his plan lay all about them.

Then came the sound of thunder, down the moonstruck hill. She turned to look, her arms still open, and saw the ravening herd in its final headlong run, racing toward the cliffs. She froze in horror—tricked again—as Michael rushed into her stunned embrace. Out in front of the vast stampede, she saw the village children riding bareback. Each had picked the beast of his wildest nightmare. A ten-year-old, the spit of a boy she'd left behind, straddled a trumpeting elk. Then a girl on a spotted gazelle, babbling the names of God. The zebra carried twins. The timid girl from Emery's sat proud on a long-toothed tiger.

These four, out in the lead, came prancing into the park like a scouting party. The pitiful villagers scrambled, trying to mass together in a wedge, but it wasn't any use. The tide of animals, thousands strong, sailed over the brook and crashed through the grove of firs. There was no place left to hide. As the children trotted over and formed a ring around Michael and Iris, the forsaken began to keen and back away to the edge. Some were trampled. Some were gored. The beasts went over the cliff like a river, bearing the frail away.

Iris, half mad, looked up at the sky. The sun had only a minute to go. She tugged and pulled away from Michael, trying to work her way between the tiger and the elk. The animals pouring over rumbled like an avalanche.

“Where are you going?” Michael called. He gripped her arms so tightly it didn't matter. She wasn't going anywhere.

“With
them
,” she bellowed, and strained toward the cliff. She kicked at his ankles and tried to bite his hands.

He genuinely seemed bewildered. He glanced up at the watching children, as if to get a clue. He had to twist her around and make her wince to put her in a bear hug. Still she fought, till he cried in her ear: “But you
can't.
I've freed you from all of that.”

“
Free?
” she screamed. “You call this
free?
”

His face had fallen, but she couldn't see because he was behind her. All she could see was the beasts of the earth, leaping out into the air. Michael didn't know what to say. He only knew to hold on tight because suddenly he was afraid.

As they came to the end of the herd, the flow of creatures abated. They were loping off the cliff in ones and twos. The moon had meanwhile slid half off the sun, drying up like a patch of snow.

“Iris,” he pleaded, “I need you. I can't do it all alone.” He held her in a panic, trying both to pin her and embrace her. He'd done the drug, he'd done the spell. He'd tried out all the killings. What did she want? “Just give it time,” he whispered gently.

The shadows had lost their purple. The park was nearly empty. He heard her yelling over and over: “I hate you, I hate you.” More than the sound in his ears, he could feel the helpless rage that racked her body. It seemed to him he was holding something dying.

And now they were down to forty seconds.

“Iris, Iris,” moaned the prophet. “Forget about me—I'll leave. We'll try it again next time.”

“Change me,” she seethed, in a frenzy in his arms. “Take it back!”

The children edged their beasts away. The dazzled lovers before them, locked in a strange embrace, didn't need protecting anymore. Besides, the moon had only a bite left of the sun. The babbling children trotted to the edge, where the herd had dwindled to the barest trickle. They jumped all four together, somersaulting off their mounts as soon as they'd cleared the cliff. For a moment in the pearly air they seemed to float.

Thirty seconds now.

Michael wept. He clung to her, moaning wishes that made no sense. She could have pulled away easily, but it was no use. No more than if she leaped, or holed herself in the lighthouse with his weapons. She would not die.

She twisted in his arms and gripped him. Over his shoulder she saw the last of the moon, holding the light by its fingernails. She spoke with an awful tenderness as she wiped the tears from his shining cheeks.

“Michael—it's time now. Take the spell away.”

He nodded his head and began to sob. It seemed he had expected this.

She stroked his shoulders to calm him down, murmuring encouragement. “It's better this way,” she whispered, and smiled at him so knowingly that he felt no fear at all.

He thought his heart would burst. He stumbled back till he stood four feet away, then pointed at her openmouthed, like a lost explorer sighting land. Nothing appeared to happen, but she laughed and clapped her hands as if some kind of pain had stopped. Delirious and shivering, she stood not a stone's throw in from the edge. She hugged herself. So rich was the air with musk that she seemed not to notice where the time had flown. He watched her as if he'd seen through a chink in a wall into heaven.

“Now you,” said Iris thrillingly.

Her voice was irresistible and throbbing with complicity. Michael smiled in a shy, coquettish way. He shrugged and showed his empty palms, like a sorcerer who'd gone through all his tricks. Right off, she knew what he wanted. He meant her to point as he had and speak the command that would finally release him. He begged to be mortal like she was.

“But I can't,” she protested. “I don't—”

Believe
was what she almost said. The prophet frowned ironically, as if to say that all faiths were overwrought and imprecise. Then he made a kind of beckoning motion, begging her to try.

You would have had to know the moon was there, to see it now. A blip of shadow rode one edge of the disk, but the brightness was too vast to have an edge, so it hardly counted. The park at the top of the cliff, the meadows, the firs, the lifting hills—everything fairly quivered. Six long centuries lay ahead, with nothing to prove but day and night.

Fifteen seconds. Ten. This far away, she couldn't be exact.

It was true he was just a child. She didn't know why she ever found him threatening. More and more she understood it was she who threatened him. She raised her finger and pointed at him. She felt nothing.

Yet almost as if to mimic her, Michael laughed and clapped his hands—as if he'd learned to do it in a mirror. There wasn't a thing in his head just then, beyond his sight of her.

He reached across the daylight, dream to dream. She grabbed his hand—clutched it as if he were drowning—and then they ran. He didn't resist, but Iris led the way. She could feel he was the barest beat behind, so she took him in a circle. Not that she had the time: she didn't look up anymore, for fear she'd break the thread. A hairline flaw of shadow shimmered still at the heart of things. Somehow the moon had held its breath. It wasn't over yet.

She led him across the lawn and through the holy ring of stones. Then under the swaying firs to the brook and on across to the fields where the lean-tos dotted the slopes and faced the lonely sea. Though here and there a cookfire smoldered, though her own horse grazed the crest above, she didn't for an instant focus on her people. They might have all been away in the woods, or down in the harbor fishing. She only knew that this was
her
land.