by Tanith Lee
It had never occurred to him that the world’s fire end might only refer to its inevitable dash, centuries hence, into the sun.
He had gone deaf from the noise, and he saw the sky was red. With some sponge-like joy, he held out his never-lit cigarette, and lit it at the falling embers.
In the Beehive, Connor had been eating lasagne and chips, and drinking beer, when there was a distant roar and all the lights went out. A bomb?
In the sticky black, he heard a scared woman say, ‘It’s like Quatermass.’
But in Quatermass the dialogue, Connor thought, would have been better.
He stroked Viv, and she snuggled up to him. He fed her chips. Someone brought candles to the bar, and suddenly it was Victorian London, with girls in mini-skirts, and tattooed men, and that lurker by the men’s toilet door who had already tried to interest Connor in an illegal substance.
The candlelight also, however, made him think of Miranda. He saw her on some candlelit floor in some vast room, in a high tower, above the sea. But he was going north tomorrow.
In reality, Miranda was at the top of the Scarabae house, where she had climbed with the two black-and-white cats.
She looked out towards the sea of London, which normally was a panorama of lights. Tonight a swathe of the lights had died on a breath of sound like a prestigious cough.
Miranda had been watching Blood from the Tomb. At the vital moment, the instant of blood-drinking, this sound of the world had distracted her.
The cats had toyed and hunted round her up the house, and now both sat on the attic sill, gazing out as she did.
But to the cats, the sudden dark meant nothing, nothing at all.
Rachaela, as she was opening her third bottle of the night, sitting on the floor before the television, heard of the blackout of sections of the capital on the news. A suspected terrorist bomb.
It made her think, without prologue, of her demon daughter, of Ruth, the fire-raiser and murderess. And then, quite as irrationally, of Uncle Camillo.
But then these things swirled off from Rachaela, in the empty cave of the house. Swirled off like Althene’s uncommunicating silence, and the disappearance of Anna; like all things.
Wine can conquer all.
She drank. As usual, there were several more bottles ready in the fridge.
Chapter Thirty-One
While he waited by Sofie’s black door, Bus had space to watch three vehicles pass on the canal. She was a long time coming down. Or Grete, for that matter. Somehow he knew Sofie, not Grete, would eventually open the door.
He was right.
‘Hi, honey-bun,’ said Bus.
Sofie was crazy, he had always known that, nuts. But also she was always immaculate. Today, Sofie was a mess. She wore a pair of old slacks, with powdery marks down them, and a skimpy jumper with a little hole up by her collar-bone, like an ornament. No other jewellery, and no make-up. Had she even combed her hair? Her blue-green eyes looked nuttier and older. She goggled at him.
‘What do you want?’
‘To see you, baby. To see my girl.’
‘Not now, Bus.’
‘But honey, you wouldn’t turn me away. I mean, I came by before and Grete said you couldn’t see me. That was bad, Sofie. No way to treat a guy.’
‘Grete’s gone,’ said Sofie, randomly.
Bus was again surprised. ‘How d’ya mean?’
‘I sent her away. To her sister in Utrecht.’
‘Why d’ya do that, honey?’
Sofie said, ‘I’m sorry, Bus. You must go.’
He squared up, towering over her with his big ungainly, manly frame. ‘Nope. I guess I won’t. I want to see my girl.’
Then Sofie glanced anxiously out at the street.
In the cold, cold day, the water still looked like the ice it had been a month ago and might presently be again. The bare trees stood rigid, afraid to move. A man walked his dog over the bridge.
‘Come in then,’ she said, ‘quickly. Just for a moment.’
‘That’s it, honey,’ said Bus, and ambled into the cold, cold house.
She took him into the salon, up the stairs.
‘Please wait here, Bus. I don’t want you to go out of the room.’
‘What goes on, huh? What are you up to?’
‘Just do as I say, please, Bus. I’ve got something for you. I’ll bring it. But you must stay here.’
Bus shrugged. He sat on the leather sofa. The fire was not on and the house, as usual, seemed more frigid than the city outside.
He heard her patter away.
What game was she playing now?
He stayed put, more from inertia than a wish to please. And in any case, now she was not very long.
‘Look, Bus. I want you to have this. There won’t be any trouble this time.’
‘What is it?’
She held out the object under his nose.
It was a ring, made for a small and slender finger. In gold was set a skull of yellowish white material, and in its eyes were chips of sapphire, and chips of diamond spiked its teeth.
‘That’s weird,’ said Bus.
‘It’s very old. Seventeenth century. It’s made of bone.’
‘You mean ivory?’
‘No. Human.’
‘Get away,’ said Bus, frivolously.
‘There won’t be any trouble for you, Bus,’ Sofie repeated. ‘They never knew I had it.’
‘The family.’
‘The family. It’s very valuable.’
‘How much?’
‘I can’t say. Perhaps priceless...’
‘Well, I’ll check it out.’
‘Yes, Bus. Go and check the ring. Go now.’
‘I find this hurtful,’ said Bus, ‘you pushing me off like this. You got some other guy upstairs?’
Sofie laughed abruptly. She looked like an insane owl. ‘No, Bus.’
‘Well, I guess you dames gotta have your secrets. But you know ol’ Bus’ll think it through. You know I’ll figure out what you’re up to, huh?’ Bus paused. He said, ‘Where’s the faggot?’
Sofie tensed. ‘My son has gone.’
‘Oh, yeah? When’d he go?’
‘Last week,’ she said.
Bus thought that this then was the answer. The fairy was upstairs, and Sofie and the fairy were up to something. Maybe the fairy had an interesting habit, something less legal than drugs or buggery. But it was best to let it rest, for now, lull her. When she got excited, she could be a pain.
‘Okay, sweets. I’ll leave you alone. But I’ll be back. Can’t go too long without I see my girl.’
She let him out into the streets of Amsterdam with furtive, mouse-like movements.
After the door shut, he stood and looked up at her pink house. There was no clue. No lights in the dullness, not even drawn curtains. The attic attracted his eye for some reason, but nothing was there. At least, nothing he could see.
The yellow east-bound tram, waving its feelers, picked up Bus and bore him through the afternoon.
At the Zwartkerk, a man got on and went to sit in the rear of the tram. He was young, twenty-three or—four with a few prickles coming through his milky cheeks. He wore a brown leather jacket and a square cap.
After a minute, Bus heaved himself up and went back into the tram, sitting down across from the man.
‘I wondered if you still did the run, Sparky.’
‘I still do it.’
Sparky was the name the Americans had for the young man, unable to pronounce his real name, or at least the name he had been used to give.
Sparky smelled of the icy street, and of Gauloise.
He sat impervious, looking straight ahead as the tram rattled on in its organized career. Sparky rode the tram every third or fourth day, getting on at the Zwartkerk and off at the Rubbish Market. Those that knew, knew.
‘Got this,’ said Bus. ‘Like to know what ya think.’
Sparky held out his hand. His nails were very clean, and rather long. He to
ok the skull ring. Looked at it without comment.
‘Well?’
‘Where did you get this?’
‘Same place the other thing. She says, no problem.’
‘She says.’
‘Well. Give me something for it and you can take it. Ask around. I know I can trust you, Sparky.’
‘Of course. Here then.’
Sparky passed Bus a brown envelope from inside his coat, for Sparky always travelled well prepared. The junks knew better than to mug him.
Bus quickly fingered through the envelope; more than a thousand guilders.
‘So you think it’s worth something, huh? More tomorrow, yeah?’
‘If we like it.’
‘You’ll be on the tram.’
‘I will be on the tram.’
They rambled over the serpent coils and the tram hissed in by the Rubbish Market, where books were sold. Pea-green Telecom boxes shone out of a deepening gloom, as unlike the mood of Bus as could be.
A crowd of women and elderly men got into the tram and Sparky slipped through them and away.
Bus pushed the money envelope into his own leather jacket.
Bus let himself get high. He sat for an hour drinking Grolsch and smoking some good, good stuff, lavish to himself.
It was not just the ring. The more he smoked and drank, the more Bus could see that something new and useful was lying on the line for him. Sofie had got herself into some kind of mad fix. For Christ’s sakes, maybe she had even killed the fairy, and had the body stowed. She would need Bus’s help, and when he had helped her, she would need to keep Bus quiet. Because Bus would have pangs of conscience. It had happened before.
He was on a winning streak.
When he had had enough marijuana, for the time being, Bus went to a bar where they did a meaty sizzling hamburger. Here he found a spaced-out English girl, about nineteen, slim and leggy, with dyed black hair and a black-and-white-striped zebra skirt that amused him.
The girl told Bus, in a vague yet concentrated way, that she had some beautiful stuff at her place, the place where she was staying, and Bus gathered it was stronger stuff than the smoking variety.
When they left the bar, the sun had only just set, and the sky was a blank lavender over the city, the buildings darkening, the waters like silver foil, cut with red and yellow neons.
The girl led Bus down a couple of back streets, and then they came out again at the tree-lined canal-side, and she said some blurred touristy things that made Bus laugh.
They stopped after this and lit up a joint.
As they were doing it, Bus became aware of one of the million cyclists of Amsterdam pedalling along the cobbles towards them.
The man looked, of all things, like a crow, his dun overcoat flapping around him, as the cycle precariously jounced and wobbled. In the basket at the front rose something large and long, like a portion of meat.
Bus watched, amused again.
The girl drew on the magic cigarette with slitted eyes.
Then the bicycle swerved level and something happened.
Bus caught a flare of a long, bony, wooden face, surmounted by a black beret, and then the cycle seemed to unbalance, and Bus thought it was going to crash right into him. He saw the rider’s stick-like arm, which seemed too long, flail out, and realized it would catch him in the chest.
‘Hey!’ reprimanded Bus.
Roman, the hurdy-gurdy player, who served Malach, but also the family of the Scarabae, slewed his hand forward regardless, and with the big knife in it, cut Bus’s throat clean through to the spinal column.
Before any fluid jetted, swinging in his arm again, the cyclist was gone.
The girl sprang back to avoid the blood.
Bus reeled on the path, gazing at her, gargling.
The girl, who had earlier noticed the envelope in his jacket, darted quickly to him and pulled it out. As she leapt back a second time, and ran, Bus circled calmly over and dropped into the canal with a puffy splash. The water closed over him swiftly, leaving only one red oily circle, turning black.
Chapter Thirty-Two
The storm.
Under heaps and cloaks of living fur, the man lay, holding his soul against the agony of the night. The dogs, too, whined, growled, burrowed deeper. There is a whiteness which is a darkness. This they had. Snow mixed with black nothingness. No moon. No stars.
Sometimes he spoke to them, gently, and they responded, wagging their tails under the hillocks of ice that had fallen on them.
They held him close, their paws under his hooded, goggled and masked face. Their bodies packed against his.
Set came with the storm. Came in all senses. Arrival, climax. But that was the hot desert. This, the white desert. Yet.
White wickedness thrust and strafed them.
They were a mound, a tiny mountain. The snow, blustered against them, made a wall.
The dogs were silent now. And he, Malach, knitted into their skein of living warmth. Silent too.
Her hair had covered over the hills...
He had been some time, searching.
Then, finding.
She. Anna. Ruth. None of these. Herself. She.
And after this, the journey, the ships and planes, hot places, mercenaries, guns, and chilled lemonade. And the last plane. The ice. And then the Russians, met in the green twilight on the snow. Dobroye utra, they politely said, laughing at him in their blue and black.
They had brought the dog-team. He took and mastered it. The leader, one hundred and ten pounds, was almost black. He loved the dog, as if he had found again a brother. They had fought in the snow, and he bit the dog, through its double coat of fur and oil. Then, it was his.
At night, under the black sky luminous as a saucer of radium, stars and stars. Sagittarius the Archer. The Eagle.
They drew near.
And so, the storm.
The storm.
The dogs howled and ran together. He banked with them. No tent. No covering beyond the thermal clothes, mask, the lenses over the eyes. For the dogs, only fur.
Malach, whose hair was also white as these hills. The dogs were his warriors.
The two females came slithering to him in the night. He held them, their faces pressed to his. So sweet, their meaty sullen breath.
It was love that kept him alive.
Had it always, then, been love?
In the morning, an emerald sky, drifts of whiteness, like cotton-wool pulled through eternity.
The dogs howled and barked. The other tumult was over.
The dogs pissed in the snow, which steamed.
He fed them bricks of food.
The sled was wood, with plastic runners, and he dug it out, the female dogs, and his dog, helping him.
He consulted the sextant.
Then he called to them, arrayed in their line before the sled. They were tired. He used a voice from his heart, and their white tails wagged.
Whatever was done to him, they would be well treated. They were precious as silver, in the place to which they went.
As the sled drew him forward, faceless, he beheld the dish shape of the world go up on the turquoise air.
But he was like the shape of Man. Universal, and for always. Straight and lean. Under the hood the stream of white hair. His eyes hidden by the polarized goggles. And his heart, from which he had spoken, hidden by the swords of years.
Chapter Thirty-Three
Evening came to the bright city, and the procession moved with it, under the sinking coppery sun.
There was such a sea of light in the air, the tops of buildings and of sunbeam obelisks capped by gold, catching and flashing back the net of sunlight.
Over the River, birds wheeled lazily, with honey wings.
But the shadow of the advent of night passed softly through the streets.
Out of the shadow, every sistrum raised into the air spangled and sparkled, and the head of the great white fan, borne before the image of Sekhmet the Lioness, dipped and
burned up. The goddess too was marvellously luminous. She stood on her sled in an open house of green and red and gold. She was of pinkish stone, smooth as water, her face golden, a golden collar on her naked breasts, a golden apron over her pleated skirt of yellowish linen.
Behind Sekhmet the goddess, on a gilded litter, rode the human Sekhmet.
Like the goddess, she was clothed in yellow linen, her breasts bare, high and round with youth. She was the colour of the blondest acacia wood finely polished. Her face was hidden by the mask of the goddess, made of gold; the wig that reached her shoulders was heavy and stiff with henna, Sekhmet’s colour, ripe with knots of gold.
Her arms and shoulders, wrists and fingers, had gold all over them. She was clasped in it, enfolded by it.
The priestesses sang their clashing song.
They told how Sekhmet went to her husband, to his palace, which was the Temple of Ptah.
And the people standing by the road, and on the roofs of houses, echoed the song. Some threw flowers, convolvulus the bloom of love, lotus, the lily made for the dead.
Sparrows flew up from a purple street into the fire of the air.
They passed the slanting doors of the small temple of the Glory of the Solar Disc, and the winged sun above blinded the girl as she looked at it, and in turn her own face of gold blinded the people on the street.
She bowed to the temple.
Then the procession wound around the coloured houses with their steps and pillars and inscribed lintels hung with flowers and reeds, between the steep walls, past the first Great Wall, and out into the broad space before the place of Ptah, Father of Men-Nefer, Haven of the Good.
Two colossal pylons, maybe a hundred feet high, sloped up towards the blaze of Heaven. The gate between was wide open, only the line of priests standing there in their robes of white linen crossed by the skins of dead animals.
They greeted the visitor, Sekhmet, with gestures like the swooping of the birds above the River, then stood aside to let her in.
Simply by coming here, as was the custom, Sekhmet the female had married the male, Ptah. As she went in under his lintel, and the litter of the girl priestess after her, marriage was made.
