Authors: Elizabeth Hand
It was like gazing at someone who had been consumed by fire, a lovely porcelain figurine left too long in the kiln; and now all that remained was this human ash, frail and white and cold. Except for his eyes, those madly burning blue eyes that still might without warning burst into flame.
He covered my hand with his—so cold, surely he shouldn’t be this cold?
“I’m not crazy, Sweeney. I’m just not what they wanted,” he said softly. “Angelica and my father, Warnick and all the rest of them—they all wanted different things, they all wanted something from me I can’t give. They wanted me to be strong, they wanted me to give them a champion. But I can’t, Sweeney. They don’t understand. I’m not like that.
“I wanted to—”
He stopped, stared at his hands with their bitten-down nails.
“I wanted to mend things,” he said at last. He looked at me and sighed. “I know it sounds stupid, but I thought—all this bullshit about darkness, and light, and different powers for men and women—all this
fighting,
all this, this
hatred
the
Benandanti
and the rest of them have—I thought I could make it different, somehow. At least I thought I could
escape
it,” he added with a grim smile. “But I was wrong, Sweeney. I can’t. No one can. We’ll never understand each other, any of us. Not ever.”
I nodded like
I
understood, although of course I didn’t. After a moment I asked, “But—if you’re not what the
Benandanti
want you to be, or Angelica—what
are
you?”
He tipped his head and smiled.
“I’m lovely,”
he sang in his sweet quavering voice.
“All I am is lovely
…”
I laughed even as my eyes filled with tears, and touched his poor ugly scalp. “Well, you’ll be lovely again, Oliver. It’ll grow back.”
With sudden vehemence he shook his head.
“No.
Does the reed once cut return? Will the trees now barren turn again to greet the spring? What name did Achilles take among the women? Does the Eagle know what is in the pit?”
His hand shot out to grab my wrist, tightening like a wire as he pulled me to him.
“Why is a raven like a writing desk?”
“O-Oliver,” I stammered. His face had twisted into a bitter mask, still smiling, but it was a contorted smile now, and his eyes were no longer laughing.
“Sweeney? Surely you remember? It was the first thing we ever talked about.
Why is a raven like a writing desk?
Tell me the next line—”
He gripped me so hard that pins and needles darted from my wrist into my arm.
“Tell me
!” he hissed.
“I—I don’t—”
“Say it!”
“Your—your hair wants cutting.”
“There!” He cried out triumphantly and let go of my hand. I rubbed it gingerly, and moved a fraction of an inch away from him. “See, Sweeney? You remembered.”
With some effort he stood, moving slowly. He grabbed the hem of his robe and tossed it flamboyantly behind him, as though it were a flowing train. “I knew you would. Sweeney.”
He stopped and stared at me. The front of his robe gaped open and I had a glimpse of white bandages beneath, although maybe it was just his underclothes. “I know about you,” he said very softly. Once more his voice was gentle. He was gazing at me with pity, but also with great tenderness. “You’re in this by mistake—”
I shook my head desperately, but he went on. “It’s okay, Sweeney. Because even after I figured it all out, that you weren’t in on any of this—I mean, you’re not a Molyneux scholar, and obviously you’re not a
Benandanti,
and you’re not with Angelica, wherever the fuck
she
is—but, well, you’re still great, Sweeney. Anybody else would have run away screaming from all this, but you stayed, you were my friend and you stuck with me. And you’re great; you’re just so great to have done that. You know that, right?”
I bowed my head, mumbling something about
No, well, maybe …
He knelt in front of me. It must have hurt, because he grimaced as he took my hands. He held them very tenderly, his fingertips barely grazing mine.
“Sweeney.” His blue eyes were clear as water. “I’ll love you next time. I promise.”
I bit my lip. Tears stung my eyes, and I shook my head furiously. “Why not
this
time? Why her and not me? I mean, I
know
you better, Oliver, I
know
you—”
He smiled and leaned forward to kiss my cheek.
“—and
I love you.
Even if I’m not one of them! I could be better, I could be good for you, I could help you out of this—”
I gestured at the pale green walls, that humble little wooden cross, the crooked chair near the door.
“Oh, my stars! Goodness had nothing to do with it, kiddo. Listen—”
He dropped my hands and got to his feet again, pulling his robe tight. “This isn’t new for my family. It isn’t new to me, not really. The
Benandanti
waited a long time for me, but in the meantime they used my brothers for target practice. Firing off a few rounds of firecrackers while they’re waiting for the
Bearna Beill.
I saw what happened to Osgood and Vance and Waldo, just like you saw what happened to Magda Kurtz. These guys take no prisoners, Sweeney, especially now. They’ve been expecting me for a long time—but they’ve been expecting Angelica even longer. Waiting for Electra, or someone like her.”
I laughed uneasily, but Oliver shook his head. “I mean it! You read all this stuff about the Second Coming, but no one really expects it to happen, maybe not even the
Benandanti.
Especially when you consider that when the Second Coming actually
Comes,
it’s not a He but a She, and
she’s
taking even fewer prisoners than
they
are.”
He went on bitterly. “They had me all picked out, you know, they
bred
me for this. And I was supposed to just kind of go along with them, be the sacred cow, be this sort of
lure
for Her when She arrived. Like this crazy arranged marriage or something, like once She got hold of me She might just roll over for them and play dead.”
His voice rose to a desperate pitch. “But I’m not going for it, Sweeney. Maybe Angelica doesn’t understand what’s going on, but I do. I’m not the right guy for the job. And if you’re not the right kind of person, if you’re not what they expect, if you don’t do
exactly what they want,
they throw you away, they use you up and throw you out and that’s it. And I’m not going to let them do it to me.”
“Oliver, this really
is
crazy, it doesn’t make any sense—”
He slashed at the air in a rage. “No! You
saw
what happened to Magda Kurtz; Angelica told me. You know what I’m taking about—”
“But, Oliver—you can’t
hurt
yourself! I mean, you’re playing right into their hands—”
“No, I’m not, I’m not, I’m not.” His voice cracked as he paced to the bathroom. His hands kept fluttering around his forehead, making quick nervous motions as though to keep phantom hair from falling into his eyes. At the bathroom door he stopped, and asked suddenly, “Have you seen Angelica?”
“No. She’s gone. Nobody knows where she is.”
He made an anguished face. “Ahh—she’s really gone, then, it’s too late anyway—” He stopped, ran a hand across his forehead. “Jesus.”
“Do you—do you think she’ll be all right?”
“All right? Angelica?” He laughed incredulously. “She’ll be fine! I mean, probably every guy she ever meets will end up like this—”
He cocked his head, rolling his eyes with his tongue hanging out and gabbling
Ngah ngah ngah
—
“Maybe we’ll
all
end up like that, but
She’ll
be fine. Blessed art Thou among women and all that shit. Listen, Sweeney, don’t you worry about her: Angelica is destined for Big Things.” His voice dropped to a conspiratory whisper. “Very, very Big Things.”
I decided to change the subject. “I got kicked out.”
His eyebrows arched in amazement. “You did? My little Sweeney, expelled from the Divine all by herself? Congratulations!”
“Jeez, Oliver, I’m not
happy
about it.”
“You should be,” he said quickly. “Oh yes very yes, you should get out of here as fast as your little bunny legs can take you, before this thing starts to blow. Oh yes.”
He fell silent, staring thoughtfully into the empty space between us. After a moment he took a few steps, until he stood in front of the wooden chair beneath the cross. He reached up and took the cross in one hand, lifted it carefully from the wall, and turned it over thoughtfully.
He looked up at me and said, “There is nothing for me but misery.”
I started to protest but he went on as though he hadn’t heard.
“There is nothing for me but misery,
What shape is there that I have not had?
A woman now, I have been man, youth and boy;
I was an athlete, a wrestler,
There were crowds around my door, my fans slept on the doorstep.
There were flowers all over the house
When I left my bed at sunrise.
Shall I be a waiting maid to the gods, the slave of Cybele?”
He lifted the cross in front of him. Around its crossbar tiny green vines moved, twining up and over the dull wood, their leaves so pale at first they were nearly white, but then quickening to yellow and gold and finally a rich deep green. As I watched in horror the vines spread, crept along the spars of the cross and then twisted around Oliver’s fingers, writhing and creeping like elvers or tiny serpents. They covered his arm in a tracery of gold and green and brown, leaves springing out so quickly that his white flesh was completely buried beneath them and I could see a few places where his veins had burst, sea green and crimson and the pale lavender of a new bruise, and the vines fed there and swelled to the thickness of a finger, a wrist, a thigh; then burst into scarlet blossom.
“Oliver!”
Now they began to trace the outlines of his torso, his shoulders and neck and face crumbling like old stones beneath a mantle of ivy and honeysuckle, his bald scalp covered with a frail yellow filigree that quivered and darkened to emerald. From within all that greenery only his eyes still glowed, twin flashes of blue as though some bright clever jay nested there, and his voice rang out like a blade slashing through the curling vines—
“‘I regret now what I have done, too late I repent of it!
Oh dear gods, let me go free!—’
But Cybele only looks down with her red mouth parted.
Her hands close around the barrel of the whip as she cries:
‘No! Be merciless, drive him mad!
He has had the impertinence to refuse me—
Drive him insane, let the woods shake with his shrieks and lamentations!’”
I screamed. But the sound choked within my throat, as all around me there was green, a horrible livid glory of green and living things, vines coiling about my breasts and ivy everywhere, bitter leaves thrusting themselves into my mouth and their stems pulling taut around my wrists and neck and ankles; but even as I struggled to free myself suddenly all fell away, leaves and vines turning into whirling ropes and arabesques that flared blindingly and then died into grey ash and disappeared. There were no vines, no leaves, no ivy. Only Oliver standing in front of me with his twisted smile, holding a simple wooden rood.
“He that has no cross deserves no crown,” he said lightly, and tossed it to me. I shrieked and jumped back. But the cross only struck the floor and lay there, a dull brown thing as lifeless as a pencil.
“What is going on?”
Behind us the door swung open to reveal the nurse, Joe. He frowned and strode inside, glancing around quickly.
“You’re not supposed to have the door shut,” he said. He stooped to pick up the cross. “Maybe we better cut this short, okay, Oliver? You seem a little overstimulated.”
Oliver said nothing.
“I’ve kind of got to go anyway,” I said stiffly. “But could we, like, say good-bye first?”
Joe went to the wall, moved aside the chair, and placed the cross back upon its hook. “All right. But they’re starting to bring dinner around, and your friend’s had a long day—”
He turned to me so I could read the message in his eyes:
so give him a break, okay?
“—so maybe you and he could catch up some more tomorrow.”
We waited until he left, the door hanging open behind him like an unanswered question. When Oliver took my hand and led me to the bed I was shaking uncontrollably. I wanted to scream, to ask him a million things; but I said nothing, only clung to him as though he really were a tree and I was in danger of plunging to my death.
We sat together in silence for a long time. From outside the barred window I could hear faint sounds of traffic and machinery; the steady hum of the hospital’s air-conditioning system; and the rustle of voices, distant and muted as though heard from underwater.
“You won’t forget me, will you?”
At the sound of Oliver’s tremulous voice I looked up, shaking my head fiercely. “Never! I love you, you know I’ll be back tomorrow—”
“I know,” he said. He put his arm around me and hugged me close. “But in the meantime you have to be careful. Don’t sleep in the subway, button up your overcoat, hang on to your head. Don’t forget your friends, Sweeney.”
I looked down so he wouldn’t see that I was crying. “My—my friends?”
“Oh, Sweeney.” His voice was low and solemn as he tilted my head back up. He touched my cheek, drew away a finger with a tiny droplet on it, and brought it to his mouth. He touched his finger to his tongue and smiled, the same sweet crazy knowing smile I’d seen so many times before when he was out there skimming across some private sea. “You remember …”
His eyes gleamed, blue and strange as scallops’ eyes, and I knew he was looking at me from some great distance.
“You remember … you were little and you woke up on Sunday morning before your parents did and your brothers were still asleep, and outside there was that kind of golden rain that comes sometimes in the spring and the air smelled like roses and bacon, and when you looked over the side of your bed you saw him there, a little green lizard with hands like a baby, and he looked up at you and you fed him limes.”