Half a Sky: The Coscuin Chronicles Book 2

by R. A. Lafferty

  “‘Wake up, Dana Cuisse-Quinaud,” Angelene Domdaniel spoke to him softly but powerfully in her sultry and throaty voice, this when the sun was about an hour lower. “Dana the girl-rider and lap-cavalier. You have been afternoon-dozing in the laps of the ladies long enough. Do you not know that I am a witch woman who can look into your dreams as another might look into a window?”

  “Nobody can see into my dreams,” Dana said, not awake yet, not completely asleep.

  “Can I not?” Angelene mocked him. “Have I not just watched you ensconced on the nice knees of one Magdelena? And riding the writhing limbs and loins of a serpentine Condessa? Played you not at Wild Mares with an Elaine? (Who is she? What trouble is she in? You do not know it, so I can know it only dimly.) Played you not also at Dance of the Unbreakable Dolls and at Mountain Bridges with one Margaret at Hendaye, a big jolly girl? Were you not a moment ago on the lively thighs and ventre of the Catherine? I love her best of them all.”

  “Somebody gave me a potion to make me dream these things,” Dana defended himself.

  “Some of them you only dreamed. Some of them you did.”

  “And who was I about to play with when you woke me up?”

  “With Celeste of this island. Of her I am jealous, so I spoke.”

  Dana sat up. The colorful Angelene was sitting on one of the stones with which Dana had begun to outline his house. The perfume of the plant and the potion, which was said to be a species of the mandragora, was about her aromatically and erotically.

  “If you can see into my dreams as into a window, Angelene, did you see a thunderous dead man who came to threaten me?” Dana asked.

  “The creature named Ifreann? Yes, I saw him both inside and outside your dream. Why didn't you afternoon-dream about my lap, Dana?”

  “I don't know. How could you have seen Ifreann outside my dream when he lies dead in a foreign country?”

  “I can see dead people as well as living. I can see ghosts also. Many have seen Ifreann in Basse-Terre today, though, and they say that he has returned to his estate. But tomorrow they will see him thinly like a shadow, and the next day they will not be able to see him at all. They will believe he is a ghost. He has been here before both as ghost and man. Why didn't you afternoon-dream about riding me, Dana? I'd love you to ride me with rowel spurs till the blood ran down my flanks.”

  “It is simply that you didn't enter into my dreaming, Angelene. Can one see herself in a dream if she looks into that dream as in a window.”

  “Certainly I can see myself in others’ dreams, if I am there. Celeste was in your dream. You had her carry you through the surf on her shoulders. Not much shoulders she has really.”

  “This Ifreann who is dead, he does appear here sometimes as a ghost?”

  “Sometimes as a ghost. Sometimes as a live man. You say that he is dead in a far country. I say that you cannot be sure of that. There is a concurrence of events that you and he have both left name places on this island that are older than yourselves, and that you have both come here for home. But he was here several years earlier than yourself. What was the passion of the Catherine?”

  “The Green Revolution was her passion and her heart. But you wouldn't understand something like that, nor could I explain it.”

  “I not understand it? But I do understand that thing. It is deep in me.”

  “Catherine had it in her heart and in her brain. She had it all.”

  “The same thing is in my feet out of the earth. Catherine wore shoes; she never learned it from the earth through her feet. It works upward in me, as it worked downward in her. I also can teach it to you, Dana. I told you that I loved this Catherine the best of them all.”

  “You really saw her in my dreaming?”

  “In it, and out of it. She was here a while ago and stood and smiled at you. But she is shadow. She cannot come back in flesh as Ifreann can. She doesn't seem to mind you rollicking with the girls, except with Celeste.”

  “It is you, not Catherine, who dislikes Celeste. You are intruding things into my dreams that were not really there, witch woman.”

  “It is near all of us who dislike Celeste. Come here to me now.”

  “Did you have fun with Otis Ranker down in the stream?”

  “I will tell you nothing more till you come upon me here. I am an afternoon dream also. Come to my lap.”

  Dana sat on Angelene's lap on one of the outlining stones of his “house” there. Or it may be that he didn't do it at all. In future day-dreams and sleep-dreams, though, it would have happened that he did it now.

  “Yes, I had fun with the United States man,” Angelene said then. “He is shy with women, for all the rough man that he is. And I tease. He is gold-struck, and he will take ship within one week to the Isthmus and to California. You must not go with him, Dana. I have very much to teach you first.

  “I told him that if he is gold-struck, well, I know of two sunken ships full of gold that I will show him. This is true; I know of them. He said no. He wants only the gold that he pans out of streams himself. He says that is taking part in making the sun itself, this taking bright gold out of water. He does not want gold coin. Shall I show and give the ships to you, Dana? Do you love gold coin?”

  “I love it, but it must come to me in a special way; not (in my present case) from wrecked ships. Yes, I understand the passion of Otis for transmuting things to gold. To gold and to green we will transmute the world. They are having a minstrelsy and a feast this evening, and it comes on quick evening now. I go to it.”

  “Celeste will have you there and I will not …”

  “Nobody will have me anywhere, Angelene.”

  There really was something of the Green Revolution that came to Dana from Angelene's lap, and that came to her from out of the ground. Something of it had also came to Dana from Scheherazade's round belly in Amsterdam; she had given it words and story-form that had been working in him ever since. And other beginnings of it had been from the lively body and mind of Catherine, from the profound skull of Christian Blaye, from the strong rough ways of Malandrino Brume, from the Black Pope in the Carlist Hills, from the unseen Count Cyril. And Angelene was not the least of the influences; he had never before been so directly nourished by the thinking of the earth as he was through her now.

  Ideas were tumbling in Dana's head and entrails. He must quickly be about the business to which he had been appointed. He knew where he would go. He didn't know what he would do. It would be given him in those hours what to do.

  He had found a home, and a home is found only to leave it again. Dana knew that he would leave Basse-Terre within the week and that he would not be back for several years. But he did have on this island a home to come back to (though it wasn't built yet); he did have a grave here to inhabit when the time for that came (he hadn't seen the grave yet, though it was within several miles; he wasn't sure that he would see it in life).

  He rose from Angelene's lap, whether in reality or not, and started down towards the house of Charley Oceaan for party and minstrelsy. Angelene followed in a somewhat sulky manner.

  “Do not let Celeste take hold of you,” she said. “Whichever girl lifts you over the seuil, the threshold, of that house will be your belle for the party and the minstrelsy. It must not be Celeste. It must be Angelene.”

  “I will have no belle at all.”

  It was quicker dark here than they knew in Europe. Dana all but stumbled once, and he was a night man in any land.

  “Let me take you upon me, as the Gypsy girl took you once for luck. I am surefooted as a donkey to carry you; otherwise you might stumble in the dark. If you haven't ridden Angelene, you haven't ridden at all.”

  Dana laughed and passed it off. It didn't happen, of course. He did not ride on the shoulders of Angelene down the steep path in the dark. But once, several months later, in a half-dream half-waking in a jungle below Darien, it happened that it had happened. With Dana, there were often several possible presents, and only much later mig
ht one of them become more probable of having happened than another.

  They came to the group and Charley Oceaan's. Lanterns were burning inside, and the good folks had already begun to hum and sing and enter. Angelene believed that she had Dana firmly in hand.

  Then the slight, bright Celeste came suddenly out of the dark and into the moment. She cut in front of them right at the doorway. She laughed, winked, and bowed her back for Dana. And Dana vaulted onto her lithe back, and she carried him over the threshold into the house. So Celeste was his belle for the party. This was a custom of Basse-Terre, that the girl doing this should be that man's belle. This part happened in all the possible presents; it was not mere contingency or dreaming.

  “Oh the treason, the treason,” Angelene was crooning, but she was laughing also. She didn't really mind Celeste. “Of what man shall I be belle now?”

  It would be a fun feast. There was laughing inside and out. There was a rough-talking United States man outside who protested mightily about something. But he was being laughed down by the crowd. He was overwhelmed by arguments, and perhaps by force. The darkly grinning Angelene came in carrying in her arms the more-dour-than-ever Otis Ranker who was flushed even darker than herself.

  They ate, drank, played instruments, and sang in the blood-tongues of all the mixed peoples of Basse-Terre. Dana gave verses in Irish, and Damisa the Leopard in Haussa. Someone gave tunes in Passar Malaya from the islands on the other side of the world, someone gave whanging chant in the nearly forgotten Carib. And the big choruses were in Spanish and French and English. It was all one minstrelsy, though, and it went on for several hours, the double stranded story of it.

  And by the power of the Holy Ghost, all present understood it all. It was the little epic (Angelene said it was the epicene, and Dana was startled by the profundity of her pun) of the double person who was at the same time craven clown and great battler, who was skirt-minded man and mighty-minded magician, who was girl-rider and stallion breaker, who was knight of laps and who was high hero. The green tendrils were woven all through it in dozens of voices and verses, for pieces of it had come from every part of the world. The shape of the weave was somehow managed by Angelene who was a real weaver of talent.

  It was the song-story of Daniel come to judgement. And Dana was Daniel, if he should prove to be that double hero.

  So they sang and rimed it while they ate snails and pork, and drank the local rum (which is the best in the world) and the coffee (which is the worst). Coffee had not grown well on Basse-Terre. Some people there even drank the imported coffee from Turkey or Brazil, but not these poor people.

  They wove the thousand-versed tale of every compromised hero from the beginning of the world. A gay Delilah locked Dana between her knees and sheared his hair off with a great shears; Dana's hair had grown a little long during his recent travels. A Lilith looped Dana in her own golden hair, bound him in it, knotted him in, and swung him in its loops as in a swing with great strong-necked rotation.

  Dana was covered with a dozen skirts of crowding girls; he was Achilles hidden among women. It is said that the name which Achilles took when he hid among women is not beyond speculation. No need to speculate on it. The name was Danae, the same as the daughter of Acrisius; Achilles became Danae, and he was also one of the Danai whose maleness was beyond doubt.

  But there was a deep threat running through all this, a life threat; and Dana knew it. There are two sides to every coin, even this gold-minted sun coin of his identity. Whoever was forming this was forming it dangerously.

  “Is it Scheherazade?” he asked Angelene Domdaniel once. “You know her. You saw her through my mind as through a window. Is this all one of her creations?”

  “Oh, she is here, Dana. She makes it up of you and of Celeste who is the type-form, and of the stallion. I myself weave it of you. We, all of us here, create it. But can you play the part, or only half the part? It is meant to be death-dangerous, and you must play it all. Now go back and sit on the lap and belly of your belle Celeste.”

  It was a great bash of a party, but Dana did not drink too much or eat too much. He knew something of what he must face in the other part of it.

  The Son of the Devil was burned in effigy at one time of the minstrelsy. This nearly went too far, and part of the roof of Charley Oceaan's house was burned away. This was a bad sign. Dozens of people had actually seen the Son of the Devil that day. But the Son of the Devil is not the Stallion. They play different parts in this.

  It was a sort of ritual, the things that Dana should do with the belle. The old people told him what he must do, and he did it. He stood on her bowed back and her nape. He went into high handstand on her upraised hands and touched feet to the roof rafters.

  “All ride the girl well,” a man said, “but none has ever broken the Stallion. All have been pretenders. You are no more the Dana than the others have been.”

  “I am the Dana,” Dana insisted.

  “We will see.”

  The slight bright Celeste was perfect in her part, swaying gently like a reed however Dana mounted her. But she was a reed in no danger of breaking. This merry fluff-head was strong as are all the Basse-Terre girls.

  The minstrelsy was coming to the end of its first part. Dana sat on the lap of the oldest crone there and of the youngest girl.

  The church bell rang midnight.

  “Now for the Stallion,” several of the men cried.

  “The Stallion has killed twelve men,” one of them said cheerfully. “You will be the thirteenth.”

  III

  STALLION TO SPANISH MAIN

  Beginning with the laws that keep

  The planets in their radiant courses,

  And ending with some precept deep

  For dressing eels, or shoeing horses.

   — Winthrop Mackworth Praed

  Then they were all out into the night with torches, and going over the tangled steep land to wherever the Stallion might be.

  “He is enclosed on the estate named Greenfields,” Charley Oceaan explained to Dana. “He is in a large enclosure backed by bluffs and closed in with a planked fence that is twenty feet high. I know that you have heard him there today.”

  Dana had indeed heard the creature, or the uncreated weird thing. He had heard the neighing, screaming, roaring of it. It had to be more than mere horse. It was lunging hurricane also.

  “The Stallion is the ninth of his line,” Charley said, “and he is the most savage of all of them. With each stallion of the dynasty only huge and powerful mares are mated. The encounter would kill an ordinary mare. It even kills some of the extraordinary ones. But the reigning stallion sires other savage stallions which are kept in another place.

  “Every year, the most savage of the four-year-old stallions is put in with the reigning stallion, and they fight to the death. Usually the reigning stallion will not be defeated till he is quite old. But the present stallion killed his father while that father was still in his prime. That was three years ago. He killed his third yearly challenger just a month ago, they tell me. Now he is seven years old, the high prime age of a fighting stallion. And he is incomparably the most fierce of the entire line.”

  “I have broken many horses,” Dana said.

  “This case isn't as you would imagine. He will not be stalled or penned or saddled or bridled. You must mount and ride him bare-backed and bare-handed, without even a girth-band. About every ten years some man attempts the feat. All have been killed at the attempt: twelve men killed, and you are the ill-fated thirteenth. I would love and respect you less if you withdrew from it now. Still, I will be sorry to see you dead.”

  It was screaming thumping thunder as they came near the huge stockade on the estate named Greenfields. When men come there at night with torches, it is sometimes to intrude a great mare. But the stallion did not scent a mare. Why then, it would be a man and a murder, which the stallion enjoyed equally.

  “He is all teeth and hoofs,” one of the men said. “I
n my youth I saw one of the stallions slash clear through a man's neck with his teeth, and leave that man's head rolling on the ground. That was the grandfather of this stallion, but he was not nearly as fierce as this one.”

  “Really, I enjoyed the first part of the ritual,” Dana laughed, “and I expect to enjoy the final part even more. As for the first, I know that someone put the species of mandragora into a tea that I drank today. This induced my strange erotic afternoon dreaming, and it put me into the mood for the living out of some of the imaginings. But was anything put into my rum or my coffee tonight? Is there a species of plant that gives a man special courage?”

  “There is, and you were given it,” another of the men said, “You'd be quaking in your bones otherwise. The draught may be enough to get you into the arena with the devil-beast. It cannot be enough to preserve your life with him.”

  They came to the tall palisade, the heavy stockade-wall rising black and rough in the dark.

  “The gate cannot be opened for a man,” one of them said. “The gate is only opened to intrude a mare, and that with extreme caution and trickery. If the devil-beast ever broke out of the stockade, he'd terrorize the whole island. We will throw a rope with a grapple hook and you can climb up the stockade wall with it.”

  “I'll use no rope,” Dana said.

  Dana was a leaper. He withdrew a little. He ran at the rough timbered wall, ran up it, trod the very air for extra height, and hooked his fingers into the rough top of the wall. Immediately he knew what made the top so rough. The animal had savaged the top with his teeth and fore-hoofs. Imagine a leaping stallion that could slash and bite those gashes and gaps in the hard-wood paling at twenty feet height.

  Dana pulled himself up and over. The screaming beast had withdrawn about fifty yards. It was mad and lividly dark. The half-moon was near to setting; the dread battle would be by starlight and torchlight.