Carolyn looked at the sad woman bustling about in her kitchen and felt something stir inside herself. It was compassion, though she did not recognize it as such. It was not something she felt often. “Oh,” she said softly, “I see.”
“She thinks that if her son were to come home now it would be like waking from a dream. She would feel again. But the boy will not come home, and though she will not allow herself to know this, she knows it anyway. And so she makes brownies for the memory of her baby. She can’t help herself—faint comfort is better than no comfort at all, you see? Her world is very cold, and this is the thing she warms herself over with.”
Jennifer looked at the old woman cooking eggs in the kitchen and smiled sadly. “It is a heart coal.”
“We should do something,” Carolyn said. Her right index finger trembled, just the tiniest bit. “Rachel could find her son. Even if he’s dead, you could—”
Jennifer looked at her, surprised. “That’s kind of you, Carolyn.” She shook her head. “It wouldn’t help, though. It never works out the way you would think. The problem with a heart coal is that the memory always diverges from the actual thing. She remembers an idealized version of her son. She’s forgotten that he was selfish, that he enjoyed giving little offenses. It wasn’t really an accident that they saw him and the other man fucking on the couch. If he came back now it wouldn’t help. He would be gone again soon enough, only this time she would no longer have the comfort of the illusion. Probably that would destroy her. She isn’t very strong.”
“What then? Is there anything that can be done?”
Jennifer shook her head. “No. Not for this. She will either find a way to let the boy go, or she will die of the memory.”
“I see.” After that they sat in silence. Jennifer drank her coffee and asked for seconds. Carolyn sipped her lemon soda.
The others were waking up, drifting in. Carolyn translated breakfast orders between them and Mrs. McGillicutty, relayed thanks, helped wash things when it seemed appropriate. Then she announced that she was going to go for a walk and slipped into the woods heading west, toward the bull.
As Carolyn walked, she felt the coal of her own heart acutely. She wondered if she had ever hummed or sung around Jennifer. Certainly she wouldn’t have done so in the last ten years, not since the plan began to come together, but before that she just couldn’t remember. If Jennifer knew, she gave no sign, but…She turned it over in her mind for a little while, then put the question aside. Jennifer might know, or she might suspect. Or she might not. It didn’t matter.
It was far too late to turn back now.
III
An hour later she stood on the ridge of the clearing, overlooking Highway 78. On the far side of the road down below, the weathered wooden Garrison Oaks sign creaked in the wind. It was ostentatious, in the way of real-estate signs, but now the raised wooden letters were silvery and cracked with age. Perfect, really. Among his other skills, Father was very good at camouflage.
She was a bit early, so she stopped there to collect her thoughts. The bronze bull loomed behind her, shiny clean and horrible, not quite out of sight behind the trees. That was where they were to meet, but she didn’t want to be near it for any longer than she had to.
She was thinking about Nobununga. It was crucial that this informal meeting go well, and she was trying to think of things she might do to ingratiate herself with their noble guest. Ideally, she would have liked to have brought along Steve’s heart—currently marinating in a Ziploc bag in Mrs. McGillicutty’s vegetable crisper—but of course that would tip David off that things were taking place behind his back.
Beyond that, she couldn’t think of much. She and Nobununga had never met, and she didn’t know much about him other than what she’d heard from Michael. He apparently had an appetite for raw meat, as did many of Father’s ministers. There was the bit about “thunder of the east,” of course, but that was a long time ago. A very long time, actually. Unlike most of Father’s early allies, Nobununga had never fallen from favor, never been stripped of his rank. He will be loyal, then. Unshakably so. Of course, there was more to it than that. Supposedly he and Father were friends as well, which was strange to think of. But Michael loved him without reservation, so probably he was a decent sort. And he was reputed to be clever. Possibly we can—
Far behind her, from deep in the forest, came the sound of cracking wood.
Carolyn tilted her head, suddenly alert. That sounded big. She remembered enough from her time with Isha and Asha to be certain that this was not a falling tree. No. That was a branch cracking. Cracking under the foot of something very large indeed, by the sound. Barry O’Shea, maybe? Surely it’s too soon for—
She twisted on the rock to get a better angle, then let her eyes unfocus. She put all of herself into the act of listening. On the road below a car passed by, pleasantly distant. Not far off a whippoorwill called out something that she couldn’t quite understand at the moment. It sounded urgent. Michael would know.
Crack.
This time it was closer.
She hopped down off the boulder, suddenly wary. Isha and Asha had lived in fear of bears. She had never seen one, but Michael agreed that there were a few around, and a few unnatural creatures as well—pneumovores and the like. They weren’t any danger when Father was nearby, but now…time to go, I think.
Even so, she wasn’t especially worried. Anything unnatural would smell the Library on her, and be afraid. About the worst possibility was a hungry bear, and after the week she’d had she couldn’t quite manage to be afraid of something like that.
Another crack.
The whippoorwill screamed again. A rabbit darted out of the underbrush, panicky, heading for the bluff.
Whatever it is, it’s definitely coming my way.
She sighed and set out toward the bull at a trot. She moved with all the craft Isha had taught her, and more she had learned on her own. She was very quick, and she made absolutely no sound. She still wasn’t especially worried. The bull had a presence on several planes other than the physical. Animals sensed this more than humans, and it made them uncomfortable. No natural beast would approach it. If she got within a stone’s throw she would be safe.
Off to her side she heard a rustling, slight but unmistakable. Is that…is it stalking me?
Surely not.
Then, a hundred yards away, half-hidden behind a stand of crocus, she saw what was hunting her.
A tiger? Really? In Virginia?
Their eyes met. The tiger nudged aside the spiky leaves of a datura stem that had broken up the lines of his face. He allowed her a brief look at the whole of him—orange fur, black stripes, white underbelly—then set out toward her. He trotted, hypnotically graceful, green eyes flicking here and there. His nostrils flared. Three feet of tail swished gently in his wake.
Her instinct was to skid to a stop and run the other way as fast as possible. Instead, she turned toward it and sped up a little, involuntarily, as the adrenaline hit. She drew the obsidian knife from its sheath in the small of her back. Now she did scream, but it was a war cry, not panic, a low and brutal human sound.
The tiger’s eyes widened ever so slightly.
Then, suddenly, she was gone from its sight. With a single bound she broke left, hidden behind a thick pine. When she could no longer see it—and, more important, it could not see her—she launched herself at a second, smaller pine. She hit it a good five feet off the ground, wrapped her legs around it, then her arms. She began to shimmy up. The bark was rough against her chest, her belly, her thighs. It crumbled into her eyes as she climbed.
A few seconds later she chanced a look down and was surprised to see that she was almost thirty feet up in the air. The ground below her was empty. For a moment she entertained the thought that she had imagined the whole thing, that it was—
Nope, she thought, that’s a tiger, sure enough.
It sidled out from behind the thick pine, languid. Even listening closely, sh
e could hear no sound. It must have been toying with me earlier, she thought. Making little sounds, cracking branches, to see what I would do. It must have been—
The tiger looked up at her and roared. Carolyn fought the urge to wet herself. She moved two more feet up the tree, as high as she dared. The trunk was getting thinner here, and she was concerned that her weight might—
The tiger sat back on its haunches. It lifted one massive paw, inspected it, gave it a lick.
A moment later, Michael stepped into view. “Carolyn?” he said. His speech was stilted, halting, the way it was when he had been conversing with animals. “Why are you in the tree?”
She squeezed her eyes shut, gritted her teeth. “Hello, Michael,” she said. “I’m just out for some fresh air and exercise. I thought it might be fun to climb a tree. How are you today?”
“I am well,” Michael said, clearly confused by the anger in her voice. “You should come down, Carolyn. You look silly.”
“Yes. Yes, I don’t doubt that I do.” She began to inch her way down the tree.
When her feet touched the earth Michael and the tiger watched her for a moment. Michael nodded at the ground. She looked blankly at him, not understanding. He pointed at the ground again, then patted his belly.
Oh, Carolyn thought. Right. She lay on her back and showed her belly to the tiger. He nuzzled her, taking a sniff here and there. When that was done Carolyn stood.
“Our Lord Nobununga honors us with his visit,” she said.
Michael translated, surprisingly deep rumbles booming from his small chest.
Then, as an aside to Michael, “You might have told me he was a fucking tiger, Michael.”
Michael blinked at her. His expression was blank, guileless. In that moment she could have strangled him and smiled as she did it.
“You didn’t know? I thought everyone knew.”
IV
With Nobununga’s blessing, Carolyn backtracked a little bit to meet Peter and Alicia. She wanted to give them a bit of warning about Nobununga, spare them the sort of fright she’d had. Everyone was on edge already. She intercepted them at the bluff, half a mile or so back, walking together. That was a surprise.
“What did you tell David?” she asked. Peter’s catalog was mathematics. Alicia explored the permutations of the future. She could think of no business that might plausibly have required both of them to go out together.
They exchanged a glance.
“We, ah…” Peter began, then trailed off. He was blushing.
Alicia took his hand, laced her fingers through his. “We’ve been taking little walks together every so often for a while now, Carolyn,” she said dryly. “No one thought much of it today. I just sort of assumed that you knew?”
“Why do you take—oh! I, ah…oh. I see.” Carolyn rubbed her forehead. “Sorry. The evidence is mounting that I need to be a bit more observant. But never mind that. Nobununga is here.”
“He is? Where?”
Carolyn pointed down at Highway 78. Nobununga was padding down the eastbound lane. A car zipped by in the other direction. The driver, Carolyn saw, was yawning. Father had done something to make sure the neighborhood never seemed very interesting to Americans, but no one was quite sure what.
“That’s him?” Alicia said.
“He’s a tiger?”
“Oh, sorry guys,” Carolyn said brightly. “I just sort of assumed that you knew! Yeah, that’s him. Quite the specimen, isn’t he?”
“I don’t think I’ve ever seen a tiger up close before,” Peter said.
“You have,” Carolyn said. “Me too, actually. There was one at the feast when I got back from…from my summer away.” Her summer with Isha and Asha. “That almost had to have been him. But I left early. If we were introduced, I don’t remember it.”
“Oh, right,” Peter said. “I remember now.”
“That’s what—who—Michael has been apprenticing with?” Alicia said. “I thought Nobununga was, you know…a guy.” She watched him walk for a moment. “Wow. Just…wow.”
“Not only Nobununga, I think,” Carolyn said. “Every time I talk to Michael he’s back from somewhere different—Africa, China, Australia—but Nobununga always makes the introductions. He’s well regarded.”
“Fierce-looking fellow, isn’t he?”
Carolyn nodded. “Yeah. Really, you have no idea.” She paused. Then, almost idly, “I wonder if it might have been him.”
“What do you mean?”
Carolyn rubbed her temples. “I hate to admit it, but David has a point. Father has never been away this long.” She gave them a long, level look. “It’s conceivable that something has happened to him. Something bad. Fatal, even.”
“You don’t seriously think—”
“I just said ‘maybe.’ ” Her fingertips were trembling again. She pressed them into her palm. “But…I think you’ll agree that the pool of creatures who might do violence to Father is relatively small. Off the top of my head I can think of only three—David, the Duke, and Nobununga.”
“There might be others,” Alicia said. “Some of the ones we don’t see much. Q-33 North, maybe?” But she was looking at Nobununga, thoughtful.
“Is he the one with the tentacles?”
“No, that’s Barry O’Shea. Q-33 North is the sort of iceberg with legs, remember? Up in Norway.”
“Oh, right.”
“I still think it had to be David,” Peter said. “You remember what—”
“I remember,” Carolyn said. “On balance, I think I agree with you. It almost had to be David. That’s why I suggested that we meet—if David has moved against Father, he must have some sort of plan for dealing with Nobununga as well. Nobununga needs to be made aware of that. He could be walking into a trap.”
“Nobununga is old,” Alicia said. “Some say sixty thousand years. Some say a lot more. I myself am not quite thirty, Carolyn. In his eyes we’re barely children. Are you sure he needs advice from us?”
“Father was old too,” Carolyn said. “Where is he now?” She waited, but no one had an answer for that. “Come on,” she said finally. “We don’t want to be late.”
They set out toward the bull, following along the edge of the bluff. All three of them watched Nobununga as they walked, fascinated. He had walked down the steps and across the road. He was standing in front of the Garrison Oaks sign. A pickup truck zipped by on Highway 78. The dog in the back gave a couple of bewildered barks, but the driver didn’t seem to notice.
Nobununga paced back and forth in front of the sign—once, twice, three times. Peter was enchanted by the sight of him. Alicia had to pull him back from walking off the edge of the bluff.
When they were about two hundred yards away, Nobununga roared, calling out to Michael. Michael scrambled down the steps and across the street to attend his master. They spoke to each other for a time, deep growls that Carolyn couldn’t quite hear, and gestures. Then Nobununga rubbed his shoulder against Michael’s chest.
Michael flailed about, wild, obviously upset. The tiger let him carry on for a moment, then roared. Michael went silent. He walked back across the road and squatted down on the lowest of the steps to the bull, head in hands, dejected.
I wonder what that was about.
Nobununga turned his back to the highway. He faced Garrison Oaks and set one massive paw on the road that led to the Library.
Slowly and deliberately, he began to walk forward.
“Wait…what’s he doing?”
“What does it look like?” Alicia said. “He’s going to look for Father.”
“But,” Peter said, “if the…whatever-it-is…”
“Yes,” Carolyn said. “There is that.” She called out to Michael. “Michael, did you tell him about—”
“Be quiet, Carolyn!” Michael screamed. Carolyn was a little alarmed to see that he was crying. “Be quiet! He has to concentrate!”
Carolyn nodded, more grimly this time. “He is. He’s doing it. He’s going to look
for Father.”
The sign at the entrance to the subdivision marked the boundary of the barrier keeping them from the Library. A step or two past the sign and you’d begin to feel the effects—headache, numbness, shortness of breath, sweating, whatever. It was different for everybody—everybody affected by it, at least. Not everyone was. The others held their collective breath, waiting to see whether Nobununga would be immune. Carolyn, fingertips trembling under the weight of her lies, pretended to hold hers as well.
Nobununga walked past the sign slowly, with no obvious symptoms of distress.
“He’s really doing it,” Alicia said, awed. When she’d tried, she had made it two steps past the sign. There her eyeballs began to bleed. She turned back after that, and though Jennifer had stopped the bleeding, she hadn’t really seen well for days.
David made it the farthest—eight steps. Then he turned back, blood streaming out of his ears, eyes, nose. He hadn’t screamed—it took a lot to make David scream—but at the farthest point, just before he turned back, he had made a little moan, a suffering animal noise.
With four long strides Nobununga was past the point that had stopped David.
“It doesn’t seem to be affecting him,” Peter said.
“Possibly not,” Carolyn said.
It was about three blocks from the gateway to the entrance to the Library. Nobununga made his way down the first block without showing any signs of distress. He stopped at the first intersection and looked back over his shoulder at Michael.
“This is reissak ayrial,” the tiger called out. He spoke not in the language of tigers, but in their common language of Pelapi. His voice was a little growly, but perfectly understandable. “I understand this now. It is the will of Ablakha that I hunt the token—and destroy it, if I am able.”
The Library at Mount Char Page 7
