“And never will, thanks to you.”
“Don’t blame me, Meredith,” Shingo sneered, cocking an eye up at Glen’s still unconscious form, “I’m not the one who told troll-boy up there to burn the place down.”
“What I don’t understand, Shingo,” Meredith said, “is what did the box have to do with us? Why would something you found in a library suddenly make it okay to marry me?”
A sly look crossed his face. “Would it interest you to know that it involves your father, or should I say, Vasily?”
“What about him?”
“He’s not your father at all.”
“So?”
That took the black out of his powder. “What? You know? How did you know that …”
“June told me, just last night. Vasily told him, the night before he died.”
Shingo thought about that, chewing on his lip.
“That’s fine,” he said, crossing his arms. “It’s all over and done, and it’s not important now, anyway.”
“What does Vasily not being my real father have to do with whether or not you and I could be together?”
“Never mind,” he said angrily. “I said, it doesn’t matter now.”
“Is that because your mother is dead?”
“It doesn’t matter.”
Meredith took a leap of intuition. “Is it because she’s the one who killed him?”
Shingo whirled around, and looked up, surprised. “What made you say that? Why would you say that, Meredith? Why?”
“I’ve seen the sword, Shingo. I know she knew how to use it. Did you see her kill him?”
“She would never have killed him, Meredith. Never. She hated violence.”
“But, your father, June said …”
“Screw what he said. He wasn’t even a man enough to do what had to be done.”
“What are you telling me, Shingo?”
“She didn’t kill your father, Meredith,” he said plainly. “I did.”
***
Chapter Seven
Sun’s Day
Of the stories that can be told, it is one of the oldest; but it was not until it was too late that Meredith realized it. The signs had been there, all along; all the indications that the activities and machinations of the small people in a small town were in truth something greater—the retellings of histories and mythologies, writ large on a canvas that was as big as the world.
Arms crossed, Shingo slowly began circling the scaffolding, and telling the tale—though it seemed as if Meredith needn’t have been there to hear it at all; it was a story that he’d been playing and replaying in his head for months.
“I was walking back from a soccer game at Brendan’s Ferry, when I saw Vasily coming towards me from the other direction. I waved, but he didn’t see me. Then, suddenly, he stepped off of the road and into the woods. I was curious, so when I got to the place where he had been, I followed him into the trees.
“At first, I thought he might be hunting, though he didn’t have a gun, and nothing was in season. I stayed back just far enough that he couldn’t see me, and had just about decided to call out, when I saw … I saw …”
“When you saw what, Shingo?”
“My mother. He had gone there to see my mother.”
Meredith nodded numbly. She suspected she knew what Shingo saw next.
“You saw them together.”
His lip curled in a grimace, and he closed his eyes. Then, composing himself, he looked at her and nodded, once.
Meredith shifted position on the bars, to look at him more directly. “They were having an affair?”
“No!” Shingo shouted, swinging a massive fist against the still-steaming scaffolding, which rang and swayed under the power of the blow. “He had to have forced her to do it! She would never have betrayed my father like that!”
“You knew him for your whole life—had he ever forced anyone to do anything before?”
Shingo didn’t answer.
“Did it look as if he were forcing her?”
“Aaaahhhh!!” Shingo screamed, throwing another hammerblow to the bars, which were beginning to twist. “He … he had to have forced her …”
“Did thinking that make it easier to kill him?”
“Dammit, Meredith, I didn’t want to kill him. I killed him to defend the family honor. I thought you’d understand that—especially when I found out who your real father was.”
“How does that matter?”
“I realized that I could marry you, Meredith, because I could finally free myself of the guilt I felt in killing Vasily. I loved you, but I knew that there was no way I could betray you by being with you when you didn’t know what I’d done. But if he wasn’t your father after all, then I could. I could marry you.”
“Shingo, are you insane? You murdered someone I loved my whole life—why would I feel any differently just because he’s not my real father?”
He shrugged. “I just thought you would, that’s all.”
A few pieces still didn’t seem to fit. “Shingo, I believe that you’re probably good with the sword,” Meredith said, “but from everything I’ve been told, he was a huge man, but there was no sign of a struggle. How did you …?”
“That was the twisted part—he offered me his life. He said he wouldn’t even struggle, on two conditions: that I kill him with a single strike, severing his head from his body, and that I ensure his head is not found.”
“Why wouldn’t he want anyone to find his head?”
Shingo shrugged, a gesture that with his many spiny appendages, looked like a crowd at a football game doing the wave. “Beats me. But how could I refuse, seeing how cooperative he was being with my wanting to kill him?”
“What did you do with it?”
“I smuggled it home in my coat, then wrapped it up in a box along with Delna’s recipe for braised gopher stew, and put it on a Canadian cargo ship that was headed to Spain.”
Meredith choked back a sob, not knowing whether to laugh or cry. “Spain?”
“Yeah. If that’s not far enough for him, well, he’s dead anyway, right?”
She closed her eyes. “And no one ever suspected you?”
He grunted, a dismissive noise. “Here? In this one horse town? Dad is the most powerful man in Silvertown—even when that dog led them to the library, they didn’t push it. No sense rattling the gentry. I mean, if he had done it, that ass of a Mayor would’ve apologized for not having the band play while it happened.”
“Shingo, the night she died, did you tell her? Did you tell your mother what you’d found?”
“Why would it matter to her who your father was? I just told her I was proposing to you, and that seemed to mess her up enough. I can’t imagine what she’d have done if she found out I killed her Russian Romeo.”
A thought suddenly occurred to Meredith—a notion that, in a very twisted, Oedipal way, made a lot of sense of the tangled mass of relationships here.
“Shingo, didn’t you ever suspect that Vasily and your mother had a relationship? I mean, did they ever do or say anything that might have clued you in?”
Shingo’s eyes narrowed, and he began to breathe faster. “Do? They did everything together. He and my parents were best friends. When Dad was wrapped up in his painting, Vasily and Mom ate dinner together, sometimes every night, and …”
Meredith pressed further, feeling more confident in her insights. “Did they travel anywhere together? Without June, I mean.”
“Only on day trips, to Brendan’s Ferry and over to …”
He stopped again. His breathing was coming in rapid gasps, now, ragged.
“Did you never see anything in the way she looked at him, or touched him?”
No answer, just breathing, and a faint trembling which was spreading to his arms and fists.
“They were having an affair—it just began a lot sooner than you think.”
The giant figure before her said nothing, but now began to tremble violently, the growths fann
ing out around his head and shoulders like a ceremonial headdress. Suddenly, the last pieces fell into place, and Meredith knew she was right.
“You did know, didn’t you? Or at least, you suspected. The affair began years ago …”
Check …
A light of terror—or was it fear?—flashed in Shingo’s eyes.
“… Began, I’m willing to bet, at least nine months before you were born.”
… And mate.
“RRRRAAAAAAAAGGHHHHHH!!”
Shingo bellowed his pain and rage, then focused it in a devastating two-fisted blow aimed (intentionally or not, Meredith didn’t know) at the scaffolding’s supports which burst apart and flew across the room.
There seemed to be a cartoon-quality delayed reaction, as the reality of the situation worked its way up the framework to where she clung.
Then, the world began to tip, and to topple.
The framework struck the ceiling lamps and ripped them from their moorings, including the one where Glen was just stirring to consciousness. His eyes snapped open just as the weight of the bars struck and smashed him downwards. “A crocodile!” He yelled, arms flailing, “It’s a damned croco …”
He hit, then was buried under a pile of debris. Meredith threw her arms across her face, and waited for the impact …
… Which never came.
At the top of the scaffold where June kept his materials had been a large rectangular steel canister, identical to the ones that the Beecrofts kept their food stores in. June used them to store his pigments for the painting, and this one, though singed, was intact and still had the black marble rolling pin he used to grind the colors. Casting about for a handhold when the scaffold began to topple, Meredith had grabbed the canister and pin, and now, instead of being crushed and lying broken among the rubble, she was hovering some thirty feet in the air above a speechless Shingo.
A few seconds’ experimentation bore out the amazing fact—the canister seemed to be supporting her weight in midair; and tipping the rolling pin inside altered the pitch, yaw, and altitude. And pulling the pin out completely dropped her to the floor like a hundred-pound apple on Newton’s skull.
Dazed, Meredith looked up as Shingo screamed and hurled himself across the room in a single flowing leap, his shadow arcing up into the dome then swooping downwards as he dropped on top of her and sank his teeth into her shoulder. Meredith struck back with a strength she didn’t know she possessed—and apparently, neither did Shingo; it was several seconds before he had the presence of mind to block her blows, and by that time, she had inflicted a fair amount of damage. Enough, at least, to drive him to the other side of the hall, where he knelt, nursing his wounds, and to shock him back to his senses.
“Why did she have to die, Meredith? Did someone tell her what I did? Did someone say something to her that night that made her want to die?”
“Yes—you did, Shingo.”
That got too deep—she could see the fury rising in him again.
“Think about it Shingo—you had just told her that you wanted to marry me; and she was the only one who knew who your father really was. To her, our marriage was impossible—but to prevent it meant destroying the reputations of herself, her husband, and her lover, not to mention devastating your life.”
“She … she killed herself, because she thought …”
“Because she thought that we were brother and sister, Shingo. She died of shame, because she couldn’t bear the thought that Vasily’s son would marry Vasily’s daughter; and the only way to prevent it would be to admit her infidelity.”
“You mean, she died because we were … because …” His eyes widened. “That’s incest, Meredith …”
“Shingo, you idiot. Like you said—he wasn’t my father. I never knew. June only told me the truth yesterday. Vasily was your father, but he wasn’t mine.”
“Then, then we’re really not …”
“No. And you killed a good man for nothing. You killed your own father, Shingo. And if you’d been truthful about that, or at the least told them what you’d discovered about me, then your mother would probably still be alive, too.”
At just that moment, Herald, with George Daves’ dog Oly close behind, burst through what remained of Soame’s front door, panting. “Hey—Mrs. Beecroft … I need the biggest googly-moogly espresso you ever …”
“Well, I’ll be damned,” said Oly.
Herald suddenly stopped, and for the first time, noticed the destruction around him. He blinked at Meredith a few times, peered up at Glen’s still unconscious form draped over the chandelier, then focused on Shingo’s massive, bleeding form still slumped against the wall across from his friend. “Holy moly!” said Herald. “You guys having a spat, or what?”
“Herald! Thank God! But, I thought you were … I mean, I saw a wolf …”
In answer, he held up his left arm; it ended abruptly six inches from the elbow, and was wrapped in strips of cloth that were sticky and glistening. “Yeah, well,” Herald said, “if I’d gotten away without a scratch, I wouldn’t have had a very good story to sell Mr. Janes now, would I?”
At that Shingo laughed, the sound harsh and abrupt. Herald’s brow knotted in confusion, and he looked to Meredith for an explanation.
“Herald …” She began.
He nodded and looked around the charred and smoking ruin that was Soame’s. “I think I understand—he got caught in the fire, didn’t he?”
Shingo laughed again. “Something like that.”
“But, Herald,” Meredith asked, “how did you get away from the wolves?”
“When I got back into Silvertown proper,” he said, “I ran across Oly here, who helped me lead them exactly to where I wanted them to be—into my traps.”
“Traps?”
“Noose snares,” said Herald. “The wolves are all hanging upside down in the trees around old lady Watkiss’ place.”
“But how did you …?”
Herald smiled and pulled a small book out of his jacket: Peter and the Wolf. “I just knew this would come in handy sooner or later,” he said, tossing the book to the ground at Shingo’s feet. “So what in Heaven’s name happened here, anyway?”
Shingo laughed again, and Meredith realized he wasn’t laughing because he was amused, but because he had gone utterly mad. Slowly, he got to his feet and wrenched free two of the twisted metal bars from the debris. “It doesn’t matter, now,” he said, a grim smile spreading across his features. “One for you, and one for the dog.”
Oly took a defensive stance and crouched against Herald’s shins, a low growl forming in his throat. Herald dropped into a weighted stance, his good arm at an angle above his head. “Watch it, dude—I know the Death Touch of Kim Yul Brynner.”
Oly struck first, leaping at Shingo’s crotch, and locking a good mouthful between his jaws. Shingo doubled over in pain, swinging wildly.
“Ouch!” said Herald, “that’s one mean-ass three-legged dog.”
It didn’t last long. Shingo ripped Oly away and threw him against the wall. He fell to the ground, motionless but still breathing. Herald roared and swung at Shingo, who wrapped a single massive hand around Herald’s head and picked him up off of the floor. He looked at his captive a moment, like a cat playing with a mouse, or a bug—then delivered several blows to his chest and abdomen. Meredith could hear bone breaking, then meat ripping, then Herald just made soft noises. When Shingo dropped him, Meredith realized she had been screaming.
Incredibly, Herald kept his feet; he stood there, looking at the blood soaking his shirt and trousers, dripping on the floor.
“Herald?”
He looked at her and gave a lopsided grin. “Shock is a grand thing, Reedy. Although when the pain finally kicks in, I think I’m screwed.”
Shingo sneered. “Right. I’m going to eat your … What the …?”
A terrible howling filled the street outside, and it was quickly coming closer to Soame’s.
The wolves had gotten free.
Shingo and Meredith both looked at Herald, who shrugged and grinned sheepishly.
“Well, hey—it was the first time I’d ever done noose snares.”
Suddenly, a dozen massive gray and brown bodies hurtled through the gaping doorway, knocking Herald violently to one side, where he struck his head on a table, then shuddered and lay still, dazed. Growling, the wolves slowly encircled Shingo and Meredith …
… Then, they stopped, noses high, sniffing the air …
… and turned to look at her.
They were asking for permission.
Whatever it was she had become, Meredith suddenly realized that she was no longer strictly human—and whatever parts of her had changed were powerful in strange and unorthodox ways. She could fly. She was strong, although not so strong as Shingo. She was more resilient and less vulnerable to injury. And apparently, she held some sway over these creatures standing before her.
She looked at Shingo, who had been reaching many of the same conclusions in his own head, and had suddenly begun to question the previously indisputable outcome of the Battle of the Pickle Factory. Against Meredith, he could prevail easily; add the trolls, and he still held the upper hand. But against a pack of wolves …
Herald stirred, moaning.
Meredith looked at his prostrate form in concern, then back to Shingo in time to see the loathing reflected in his eyes.
“You wouldn’t dare,” said Shingo, eyes narrowing.
Meredith nodded. “Maybe I would.”
For a heartbeat, no one moved, then Shingo tightened his grip on a twisted piece of metal—he was readying a strike—and in response, Meredith tipped her head at the wolves.
In a single effort, they fell onto Shingo, jaws ripping and tearing flesh. He killed several before the numbers overwhelmed him, forcing him down; and when two enterprising wolves hamstrung him, that was the end of it. He was bleeding from a hundred wounds, most of his legs had been chewed away, and his throat and face were badly torn.
Respectfully, the wolves moved to the far end of the hall; whatever had gone before, they realized this was Meredith’s conflict to conclude as she would.
Oly growled, standing protectively over Herald’s broken body. “You guys just stay the blazes on your own side,” said Herald, squinting suspiciously at the wolves.
Mythworld: Invisible Moon Page 15
