by Tanith Lee
Several of us had remained shattered that so far he had not seemed able to. While a few of us, certainly, once or twice over the years, may have tried to cause this to happen: Oh, have you met so-and-so, she is such a fan of your work—but no scheme bore fruit. He had gone on with her. Until this.
If only we could have undone the knots of that wicked fate which had inconceivably ensnared him—
But that, as we soon learn in this world, is as a rule out of our remit.
We must all make our own way. To Heaven, or to the Abyss.
And who could have predicted such a dreadful, vile—yet nearly laughable—thing? It was—absurd.
• • •
They had been at their house on the coast that day, as so often they were. It was a day like many they had already spent there.
It seems he painted in the morning, at a place in their gardens that overlooked the sea. It was glamorous summer weather, the temperature warm but mild, and a soft breeze blowing through the cedars and the scented lavender bushes.
They ate lunch on the patio above, a fresh salad with locally caught fish, some wine and fruit. He had laid a rose by her plate.
About three o’clock they decided to stroll inland to the town, to buy a minor item necessary for the studio; this would then be delivered later in the week. After which they might take in a movie, dine early, and about ten be chauffeured home through the long blue dusk, the full moon out and stars glittering, all well with their world.
They never reached the town.
• • •
He was found on the beach, just above the tide-line, by that unlucky cliché—a person walking their dog. It was by then about six a.m., and the sun up and streaming clear over the water. Any error was impossible.
He was covered in blood, which was not astounding. Most of his bones were broken too, also hardly inappropriate, under the circumstances.
His beauty was impaired, if not totally eradicated. He had stayed recognizable. Even the dog-walker knew him at once, if only from photographs and clips of TV footage. It seemed the dog-walker had very good prints of three of his paintings, and cried, and so the dog howled, and they cried and howled again when the police arrived.
Not long after that the beach grew very crowded.
• • •
She did not attend the funeral. It would hardly have been feasible that she could. She had vanished, disappeared rather as spent liquid slides down a drain into the sewer beneath. Had she been visible, accessible, it went without saying she must instead any way have been shut in jail, on trial, there found guilty, and either dispatched, or incarcerated for the remains of her time alive. She had killed him, her lover-husband, the painter. But why was this? Had he betrayed her with another lover? Or merely begun to be cruel, scorning her, insulting, bullying, and abusing her, like all those others from her past? No, none of those. He had stayed faithful and adorable, ever cognizant of her, appreciative, eager to comprehend and interest, to make her smile or laugh, or sigh with pleasure. The perfect and most lovely of partners. Was it then this very thing—weird irony of an imperfect earth—this very faultlessness of his in his conduct, his charming attentions, his real care of her, his joy in bringing joy to her—had it somehow sickened or driven her away from him? Had he smothered her with his loving kindness? So that, only in order to breathe again, she had thrust out her sudden hand when they stood at the cliffs wild-flowery and unrailed brink, thrust out her graceless and stumpy hand and, catching him off-balance, spun him away and downward, his fine face looking only surprised, and not even that very much. He struck his head mere moments following, and so made no complaint at all, striking all of himself next, and repeatedly, on the cliff, and ultimately the rocky beach two hundred and seventy feet below. He was already mostly dead, a task the beach had completed in six further seconds.
Or could it have been an accident?
No, it could not.
If she ever wrote about what had happened, what she had done at about half past three on that summer day, it never came to light. What happened subsequently to her, or where she had gone to—despite numerous sightings of her, all of which proved either false or too imprecise or dilatory to be of help—has never been learned. Maybe she too has died by now. Or else she is flourishing somewhere, in some theoretical country of the blind where, by a quirk of life’s madness, it turns out she, after all, has some advantage. But this seems so very unlikely.
• • •
You may still ask, nevertheless, why did she kill him?
Turn back the pages of the memory she herself had—or has. Look carefully at its pictures, which only resemble, and attain, anything beautiful when they do not deal at all with contact by actual human things: the flying birds, purring cats, bounding dogs, the leaves, the lit lamps, the mountains, the sea, the sky, the sun, the moon and the stars. Even a paper written on, perhaps, a play seen, a book read. Yes, but turn quite fast past all those. Look now as she has at the faces of humanity. Not, as you might expect, while they leer and snarl at her—but as they make those corrective attempts upon themselves. As they put on the face-pack or undergo the nose-job, as they paint in and paint out what is missing and what should not be there. Such effort. Always that effort, which sometimes somewhat, and sometimes vastly improves them, makes them so much better, appealing, silky creatures, lovable and valid. Until the mask comes off, the wig, the special brassière or controlling device. Out with the tooth-implants, the plastic breasts, wipe away the makeup. And then—they are so much less. So much more . . . her people, though they will never agree. They survive by hiding in disguise. Although she, poor ruin, so badly made—as they had always told her, and she learned their truth as she learned to read—beaten, beaten into her—she, she could never improve herself by such slender means. She had been thrown too far down that cliff of abysm. Nothing could she do. Her only consolation then perhaps, faint as a brush of pollen from some dying flower, to see that they at least must work at their survival.
But not so with everyone.
You will perhaps picture now how he was, her lover, her husband. Handsome, gracious, elegant—flawless. And to nurture this he need only—be. Asleep by night, waking in the morning, if a little unwell with a minor ailment, if sweating, hot and disheveled from too long in the sun at a painting, irritated by some difficulty in his work, or grubby from some chore, or in the paroxysm of lust, which does not always beautify its subject—then, as at all times, by dark, by light, in shadow or in glare—he—he—always perfect. And to maintain perfection, all he need do was—nothing. Nothing at all.
On that walk, at the edge of the ocean, the afternoon sun, the clarity of the air—he turned his head to look away toward the water, speaking no doubt in his beautiful voice about the picture he had been making. His shining hair, his eyes, his expression, every feature of face and body, even that half step he took, so graceful, like that of a dancer or a duelist, in utter poise, if not quite in balance, that strong and eloquent movement of his hand—do you see? Do you see? As if across vast distances, the shrill scream of the revelation must at last have reached her. All this he has, and is. Even goodness and kindness belong to him. He needs do nothing. He burns the world.
Her hand too springs out. And he—is gone.
Below the Sun Beneath
1
LIFE DROVE HIM into death, so it had seemed. It was the choice between dying—or living and causing death, to be corpse or corpse-maker. Perhaps Death’s own dilemma.
He had joined the army of the king because he was starving. Three days without eating had sent him there; little other work that winter. And the war-camp was bursting with food; you could see it from the road: oxen roasting over the big fire and loaves piled high and barrels of ale lined up, all a lush tapestry of red and brown and golden plenty, down in the trampled, white-snowed valley. He had fought his first battle with a full belly, and survived to f
ill it again and again.
Five years after that. And then another five. Roughly every sixth year, the urge came in him to do something else. But he had mislaid family, and even love. Had given up himself and found this other man that now he had become: Yannis the soldier.
And five years more. And nearly five . . .
The horse kicked and fell on him just as the nineteenth year was turning toward the twentieth. Poor creature, shot with an arrow it was dying, going down, the kick one last instinctive protest, maybe.
But the blow, and the collapsing weight smashed the lower bones in his right leg, and he lost it up to the knee. All but its spirit, which still ached him inside the wooden stump. Yet what more could he expect? He had put himself in the way of violences, and so finally received them.
The army paid him off.
The coins, red and brown, but not golden, lasted two months.
By the maturing of a new winter he was alone again, unemployed and wandering, and for three days he had not eaten anything but grass.
• • •
Yannis heard the strange rumor at the inn by the forest’s edge. The innwife had taken pity on him. “My brother lost a leg like you. Proper old cripple he is now,” she had cheerily announced. Yet she gave Yannis a meal and a tin cup of beer. There was a fire as well, and not much custom that evening. “Sleep on a bench, if you want. But best get off before sun-up. My husband’s back tomorrow and if he catches you, we’ll both get the side of his fist.”
As the cold moon rose and the frosts dropped from it like chains to bind the earth, Yannis heard wolves howling along the black avenues of the pine trees.
He dozed later, but then a group of men came in, travelers, he thought. He listened perforce to their talk, making out he could not hear, in case.
“It would seem he’s scared sick of them, afraid to ask. Even to pry.”
“That’s crazy talk. How can he be? He’s a king. And what are they? A bunch of girls. No. There’s more to it than that.”
“Well, Clever Cap, it’s what they say in the town market. And not even that open with it either. He wants to know, but won’t take it on himself. Wants some daft clod to do it for him.”
Yannis, as they fell silent again, willed himself asleep. In the morning, he had to get off fast.
• • •
A track ran to the town. On foot and disabled, it took him until noon.
The place was as he had expected, huts and hovel-houses and the only stone buildings crowded round the square with the well, as if they had been herded there for safety. Even so, at his third attempt he got a day’s work hauling stacks of kindling. He slept that night in a barn behind the priest’s house. At sunrise he heard the priest’s servants gossiping.
“It’s Women’s Magic. That’s why he’s afeared.”
“But he’s a king?”
“Won’t matter. Our Master’ll tell you. Some women still keep to the bad old ways. Worse in the city. They’re clever there. Too clever to be Godly.”
Beyond the town was another track. At last an ill-made and raddled road.
He knew by then the city was many more miles of walking-limping. And all the wolfwood round him and, after sundown, as he crouched by his makeshift fire, the wolves sang their moon-drunk songs to the freezing sky.
• • •
On the third day, a magical number he had once or twice been told, he met the old woman. She was out gathering twigs that she threw in a sack over her shoulder, and various plants and wildfruits that she put carefully in a basket in her left hand. Sometimes he noted, as he walked toward her along the path, she changed the basket to her right hand and picked with the left. She was a witch, then, perhaps even knew something about healing. There had been a woman he encountered like that, before, who brewed a drink that stopped his leg aching so much. The medicine was long gone and the full ache had come back.
“Good day, Missus,” he therefore politely said, as he drew level.
She had not glanced up at his approach—that confident then, even with some ragged, burly stranger hobbling up—nor did she now. But she answered.
“Yes, then. I’ve been expecting you, young man. Just give me a moment and I’ll have this done.”
He was well over thirty in years, and no longer reckoned young at all. But she, of course, looked near one hundred: to her the average granddad would be a stripling. And she was expecting him, was she? Oh, that was an old trick. Naturally, nothing could surprise her, given her vast supernatural gifts.
Yannis waited anyway, patiently, only shifting a little now and then to unkink the leg.
Finally she was through, and looked straight up at him.
Her eyes were bright and clear as a girl’s, russet in color like those of a fox.
“This is the bargain,” she said. “Some wood needs chopping, and the hens like a regular feed. You can milk a goat? Yes, I believed you could. These domestic chores you can take off my hands for two or three days. During which time I will teach you two great secrets.”
He stared down at her, quite tickled by her effrontery and her style. She spoke like someone educated, and her voice, like her eyes, was young, younger far than he was. Though her hair was gray and white, there were strands of another color still in it, a faded yellow. Eighty years ago, when she was a woman of twenty, she might well have been a silken, lovely thing. But time, like life and death, was harsh.
“Two secrets, Missus?” he asked, nearly playful. “I thought it always had to be three.”
“Did you, soldier? Then no doubt three it will be, for you. But the third one you’ll have to discover yourself.”
“Fair enough. Do I get my bed and board as well?”
“Sleep in the shed, eat from the cook-pot. As for your leg—don t fret. That comes included.”
• • •
During that first day she was very busy inside the main hut that was her house, behind a leather curtain; at witch-work he assumed.
Outside he got on with the chores.
All was simple. Even the white goat, despite its wicked goat eyes, had a mild disposition. The shed allotted as his bedchamber was weather-proof and had a rug-bed.
As the sinking sun poured out through the western trees, she called him to eat. He thought, sitting by the hearth fire, if her witchery turned out as apt as her cooking, she might even get rid of his pain for good. Then some few minutes after eating he noticed his leg felt better.
“It was in the soup, then, the medicine?”
“Quite right,” she said. “And in what I gave you at noon.”
He had tasted nothing, and stupidly thought it was relief at this interval that calmed his phantom leg. He supposed she could have poisoned him too. But then, she had not.
“Great respects to you, Missus,” he said. “I’m more than grateful. May I take some with me when I go?”
“You can. But I doubt you’ll need it. There’s another way to tackle the hurt of your wound. That’s the first secret. But I won’t be showing you until tomorrow’s eve.”
He was relaxed enough he grinned.
“What will all this cost me?”
“It will,” she said, “be up to you.”
At which, of course, he thought, I’d best be careful then. God knows what she’s at, or will want. But the fire was warm and the leg did not nag, and the stoop of dark beer, that was pleasant too. Well, she had bewitched him, in her way. He even incoherently dreamed of her that night. It was some courtly dance, the women and the men advancing to and from each other, touching hands, turning slowly about, separating and moving gracefully on . . . There was a young girl with long golden, golden hair, bright as the candlelight. And he was unable to join the dance, being old and crippled; but somehow he did not mind it, knowing that come the next evening—but what the next evening?
• • •
/> The succeeding day, at first light, he noticed the large pawmarks of wolves in the frost by the witch’s door, and a tiny shred or two that indicated she had left them food. There had been no nocturnal outcry from the goat or chickens. Another bargain?
Everything went as before. Today the goat even nuzzled his hand. It was a nice goat, perhaps the only nice goat on earth. The chickens chirruped musically.
When the sun set, she called him again to eat.
She said, “We’ll come now to the first secret. It’s old as the world. Older, maybe. And once you know, easy as to sleep. Easier.”
Probably there was more medicine in the food—his resentful leg all day had been charming in its behavior—but also tonight she must have put in some new substance.
He woke, having found he had fallen asleep as he sat by her fire, his back leaning on the handy wall.
She was whispering in his left ear.
“What?” he murmured.
But the whispering had stopped. She stood aside, and in the shadowy sinking firelight she was like a shadow herself. The shadow said, in its young, gentle and inexorable voice: “Easy as that, soldier. Nor will you ever forget. Whenever you have need, you or that wounded leg, then you can.”
And then she slipped back and back, and away and away, and he thought, quite serenely and without any rage or alarm, Has she done for me? Am I dying? But it was never that.
He floated inward, deep as into any sea or lake. And then he floated free . . .
• • •
Children dream of such things. Had he? No, he had had small space for dreams of any sort. Yet, somehow he knew what he did. He had done it before, must have done, since it was so familiar, so known, so wonderful and so blessed.
He was young. He felt twenty years of age, and full of health and vigor. He ran and bounded on two strong, eloquent legs, each whole and perfectly able. He sprang up trees—ran up them, impervious to pine-needles and the scratch-claws of branches, leaped from their boughs a hundred feet above and flew—wingless but certain as a floating hawk—to another tree or to the ground below. Where he wished, he walked on the air.
