I think these thoughts and write these words, but do not understand them. Are men as baffled by emotion as I am? And if they are, how do they live their days in such confusion?
December 14
Tonight we stopped to rest in a barn. Instead of making her bed yards away, Lily lay down close, although not close enough to touch me.
“I have been unkind to you, Victor. At the butcher’s, in the graveyard.”
I held my breath, afraid to nod.
“And I … I was not kind to you in the cottage.”
Tears hovered on her lashes, and her voice was nearly inaudible.
“Have we ever been kind to each other?”
Desire stirred within me; also distrust. I was certain there would be another word from her—because there was always another word, the single word that upturned her kindness to cruelty—but she said nothing more.
I lost all desire in the waiting. In its stead I found fear.
I was afraid.
I made my bed in the farthest corner of the barn.
Walton’s diary. I no longer understand what moves him:
Here in Dhallatum death hangs in the very air. Cremation ash drifts down like black snow.
The women were young and beautiful, ripe for marriage. Why would all of them have taken their own lives? No one here could say.
Only I know the truth. He was here, had come for them in the night. By dawn they saw, felt, knew they had been violated. In taking their own lives they showed such bravery as I had not thought possible of savages.
He has done this terrible thing to spite me. He shows off his strength, knowing he has rendered me helpless. I had thought it lost, my finger, my ring, but now believe he must have returned for it and now carries it like a souvenir. And why not? Why should the blackest sea be an impediment to him when nothing else has been? Like a diver searching for pearls, he plumbed the depths and found the heart of me.
One girl was not touched by the madness, the people say. She had been away from home visiting a cousin and thus was not here when the others took their lives. I say she is a coward! Or else she lusts for more than life. I see clearly how my duty has for the moment changed.
I never jumped into the sea for Walton’s finger.
I never heard of Dhallatum.
I never traveled to India.
How much evil has he wrought in my name?
December 15
Last night Lily and I took shelter under an old stone bridge. Quickly I gathered a pile of downed branches, each coated with frost. At last a smoky fire grew under my practiced touch. Steam hissed from the damp wood. The flames grew bright and sent my shadow dancing against the bridge’s stone supports.
She sat close to the fire, hugging herself.
All day my feelings for her have swung between desire and rage, compassion and callousness.
I began to pace, my steps short, my turns abrupt. Rain poured on us a baptism of misery. My steps slid on the slippery ground, provoking my temper. I pointed at Lily, who sat dreaming, and roared, “You know nothing of me!”
She leapt backward at my outburst. Sparks flew in a white arc to her lap. She batted at her breeches to extinguish them.
No sharp reply, only a whisper: “I cannot know you, Victor.”
I lifted my face to the night sky. The rain could not cool my thoughts, even though it was changing to sleet. Again I pointed at her as if she had hotly disputed my every utterance.
“I took you to the slaughterhouse,” I said. “I took you to the graveyard. My every bone, my every muscle and vein and organ was selected separately—from some one, some thing—and assembled like a block city put together by a child. Do you understand?”
I stretched out my hands for her, my two different hands. In the firelight every huge joint looked dissimilar, as if every finger, too, had had its separate source. I could feel the pull of a thousand souls clamoring at me.
“When the parts were fit together, I lay waiting in brine—for what am I but a piece of meat?—waiting for what my father called a ‘life spark’ to leap from the living to the dead. He tortured healthy animals to animate me.”
I crouched by the fire, blown low by the wind, seized Lily, pulled her face close to mine.
“I am just a twitch, a shudder. What animates me is the mute cry—for he must have muted the animals first, don’t you agree?—the mute cry of a burnt paw, a scratched cornea, a flayed udder, a severed fetlock. Now all this pain is my own and I can never let it go. It is the very thing that gives me life. Do you understand? How can you then speak of kindness?”
Lips parting, Lily closed her eyes and leaned back. For a moment, her expression resembled that of Lucio’s wife in the moment of spending. I grabbed her chin and tilted her face till she looked at me again. Her eyes did not show the ecstasy I expected. The drops on her cheeks were not rain.
I shivered and told myself it was the wind.
“Why do you stay with me?” I asked.
“So neither of us will be alone.”
As I squatted, throwing twigs and branches into the flames, she touched my leg and rested her head against my thigh. The night was too lonely; her words, her gesture, too intimate. I no longer tried to resist her. I sat against the bridge’s stone support and pulled her shivering body within the folds of my cloak. I had held the corpse thus.
“Has there ever been anyone for you?” She rested her face against my chest, her hand by her mouth balled in a fist.
“What do you mean?” I asked. Suspicion flared up. “Have you so quickly forgotten my whore, as your uncle called her?”
Lily fingered the charms of the necklace I wore on my wrist. She shook her head.
“I mean, were there other creatures like you? A creature … for you?”
I was surprised by anguish as the images rose up, so real as to be a waking dream—my father’s face distorted with repulsion; her face, that of his other creation, lifeless, but full of coming life.
I told Lily the story, whispering the words close to her ear as the wind keened and whipped the fire to darkness. I whispered how I had begged for a companion and, in the telling, once more felt the tears of my youth. I whispered how my father put off this task over and over until he at last fled his home. I was “born” in Ingolstadt. For this new horror, now that he knew what he was creating, a barren, storm-lashed rock in the Orkneys was better suited.
“The Orkneys!” Lily said, now understanding something of what drove me northward.
Following him, spying on him, I saw how he created her—my sister, my wife—how he must have created me. I saw how he destroyed her. Why had he been so violent? Why not simply stop, refuse to grant her life? She was already dead. Why destroy the body before my eyes, hacking it apart with savagery?
He was too cruel. Yet I was the monster.
“What did you do?” Lily asked.
“I swore I would be with him on his wedding night. And I was.”
A long, low sigh escaped her. She buried her face against my chest and breathed rapidly as if in great distress. When she was quiet, she looked up and, with feathery touches, stroked my face, the scars on my cheeks; she lightly shut my eyes, she traced the outline of my lips.
“He ended your life there, the life you might have lived. Take me there. Take me to the very spot, Victor, and I will give you back your life.”
Slipping her hand behind my neck, she drew my face down to hers and kissed me. Her thin lips were raw and chapped beneath mine, wet with sleet. Hungrily I pressed her closer. I wanted her now, not so much for herself, but because tomorrow she might hate me again.
As I expected, she said, “No,” and tried to pull away.
“What difference can a few days hold for you?” I asked.
“Not here, Victor,” she insisted softly, kissing me a final time. “You would have had your wedding night there, and there you shall have it still.”
Who was this woman? Was she so unnatural she would of her own volition lie with me?
Did that make her mad? What blame for it must I take?
And do I care, as long as she does as she says?
December 19
Four days since last I wrote. I am like a man possessed as I travel northward. If I were alone, I could make the journey in seconds, propelled by lust, but I must keep pace with Lily’s ebbing strength.
Tomorrow I will steal a horse for her.
December 21
Lily has not spoken of her intentions since promising herself to me. Tonight, roasting a rabbit I knew she would not eat, I tried to approach the subject by asking how she felt.
“I am weary of travel,” she sighed, rearranging her jeweled barrette to push back her hair.
“Oh? Since I stole the horse, you have held it to a gallop.”
“I thought perhaps …” She searched for words, then clenched her fist. “I am weary! I need say no more.”
“What more could you say?”
“Is that not enough?” Her eyes narrowed. “It is the worm, isn’t it? You would make sure it does not cheat you of your prize.” She pressed her stomach. “Galloping away, I have one moment of forgetfulness and you bring this evil to my mind once more. Don’t worry. I am still with you, am I not? Content yourself with believing you know my reasons.”
“Why? Have you lied to me?”
She chucked me under the chin. “You would not know if I lied, would you? You wouldn’t allow yourself to know. I could tell you anything and you would believe me.”
My face must have betrayed the danger to her, for she let her hand linger on my cheek. This time when she spoke her voice was soft: “Silly Victor. Believe me if you must, for belief is good for you. I can see how it soothes those high-strung nerves that must have once belonged to a fine racehorse. In the end I will do as I want. Neither you nor I will know what that is until the time comes. So believe, and I will believe, too.”
Anger ran through my veins like floodwater through well-worn canyons carved over time. I forced myself to remember: I am not my words.
That is what I will believe.
And from Walton:
Once I understood life. I knew my place in the world and, though that place seemed to slip lower and lower, I could recognize what led to my decline and still had hope of lifting myself up.
Now I ask who I am, where I am, what I am doing, why, and the answer frightens me: There is no longer a why, a where. There is no longer a who.
December 25
“What day is it?”
Lily has asked me that all week, her eyes overly bright with the question, her lips smiling at each reply.
Today, when she asked, I said, “December twenty-fifth.”
She clapped her hands.
“At last! Merry Christmas, Victor!”
“Christmas?”
I looked around us. All day, the mountains had loomed, slate gray against a dreary sky, like hostile giants lumbering toward us. We were in a treacherous stretch of bog: oozing swamp, slime-coated trees, rushes and sedges—every puddle a possible deathtrap, hiding quicksand. The place oppressed me beyond my ability to fight it.
“No, Lily,” I said softly. “Christmas does not come to such places as this.”
“Yes, Victor, it’s Christmas! We shall have goose and bread sauce and Brussels sprouts! Mince pie and roast apples and pudding in brandy!”
Grimacing, she clutched her stomach. When the spasm passed, her eyes glittered.
“And we will have a Christmas play from the Mummers! The Plowboys—that’s the best one for today. The Fool is killed by his children, but do not worry,” she whispered, a finger to her smiling lips. “He is resurrected at the end. There are fancy costumes and sword dances, singers and pipers. There is even something special for each of us: For you, there is so much verse, in the end you will feel like a child sick on trifle. And for me, there is a character called Wild Worm, who jumps in unexpectedly to frighten the audience.” She began to sing:
Come in, come in, thou bonny Wild Worm!
For thou hast ta’en many a lucky turn.
Sing tanteraday! Sing tanteraday!
Sing heigh down, down with a Derry Down A!
“Shhh.” I cupped her chin with my hand and brushed my thumb over her mouth to silence her. “We will celebrate later, Lily. But for now, as soon as the ground is firm again, we will stop so you can rest.”
On the other side of the bog, I tied the horse, lifted her from the saddle, and sat with her on my lap so the damp ground did not chill her. She leaned against my chest and slept. I thought her mood would pass, but when she awoke, she sang, very softly: “Sing tanteraday! Sing tanteraday!”
I wanted to stop up the words, but if I did, would they not just remain in her, growing and festering like the worm itself? I let her sing herself to exhaustion and she slept once more.
This time when she woke, she was calmer.
“Today is Christmas, Victor. Christmas comes to every place, no matter where. I made you a gift.” She reached inside her clothes and pulled out a plait made from long thin stalks. One end was finished; the other, not, with many inches of stalk left unworked.
“I made it from dry cattail stems,” she said. “All week I was certain you’d see me making it but you didn’t. That both pleased me because of the gift and vexed me because of your inattention.” She spoke the words with no vexation at all.
I fingered the fine braid.
“Thank you, Lily. What is it?”
She wrapped the plait around my wrist. It was not long enough. Quickly she plaited the unworked stems until the braid fit me, then she worked the ends securely into the rest.
It was a bracelet.
She slid her fingers beneath the cuff of my shirt, found Mirabella’s necklace, and smoothed the two side by side. I jerked my wrist from her. I wanted to cry out that Mirabella was dead and so she must not put her gift next to mine. But she would only smile and say that she was dead, too.
December 26
The sea! We are just outside the town of John o’Groat’s from which we will arrange passage to the Orkney Mainland. And from there …
December 29
Though from John o’Groat’s to the Mainland is only twenty miles, crossing proved difficult. We offered our stolen horse as payment but were refused, once with a gesture to ward off evil. The superstitions of the land are a trifle to those of the sea: Lily and I were simply too strange to bring aboard.
I had come so far only to be stopped within sight of the islands! I dared not put a boat in the water myself with Lily as mate. In an instant we could be struck by a wild winter gale, and she might drown.
In the end it was a gale that set us back on course.
Two days ago, near dusk, the sky lowered, showing an unnatural orange beneath the gray. In minutes the wind doubled, tripled in strength. Everywhere people raced to secure their boats, fasten shutters, collect children, herd pigs and chickens into their homes. Doors slammed at my request for shelter till only Lily and I were alone on the street.
The rain was a sudden driving onslaught that washed the color from her face. Hail flew sideways with the wind, beat her cruelly, and made her stagger beneath its force. I tied the horse to a fence and hammered against the nearest door till its wooden lock splintered, then I pushed Lily inside and stood her shivering body before the fire. Squawking chickens and an old woman in a corner chair were the only occupants. At our violent entrance, the woman grabbed a knife.
“Help! Help! Murderers!” she cried, her voice too thin to be heard over the storm. With the latch broken, I set a bag of grain before the door as a stop for the wind.
“I mean you no harm,” I said. “No one else would help and the woman is ill. Surely you would not send us back out?”
“Murderers!” the old woman repeated, now less with fear than sly delight. Her tiny black eyes shone, and she shook the knife. From the kettle at the hearth, I ladled out a bowl of soup for Lily. The old woman leaned forward. “And thieves, too.”
She said nothing else, not even when I removed my cloak to dry it before the fire.
For hours the storm battered the cottage. The wind whipped smoke down through the chimney so often I put out the fire despite the cold. Hail and sand pelted the shutters and drove through the tiniest cracks to sting my face. From outside I could hear our horse fighting its confinement till I heard a snap, then galloping.
At last, the storm passed, giving us several quiet hours before dawn. Lily slept, while the old woman and I eyed each other. I asked her name, where we might find passage to the Mainland, and whether she preferred her murderers beheaded or hanged.
“Is it over?” Lily asked, waking. “Can we make it to the island today?”
“No one will take us,” I said, slipping on my cloak. “We’ll have to go up the coast.”
“Ask for Doughall MacGregor,” the old woman said, startling me. “Tell him his granny says to take you over as a favor.”
“Why?”
“For nae murderin’ me.” She grinned, showing a single tooth.
Though the horizon was just beginning to pale, the town was awake. People busied themselves setting right the damage; even more hurried to the shore with baskets. MacGregor was one of them. Large and muscular, black haired and bearded, he possessed the same beady eyes as his grandmother.
“Mr. MacGregor,” I called to the man who had been pointed out. “I’m looking for a ride to the Orkney Mainland. Your grandmother said we were to ask you.”
“Did she now?” Without slowing his step, he looked at Lily, then at my hooded face. His friends looked at us with the same curiosity. “And why would my granny say that to two oddities such as yourselves?” When I could not answer, both he and the other men laughed. “I’m to do it because you did nae murder her, am I right? Do nae worry. My granny is nae murdered a good three, four times a year, and afterward she always sends the poor soul down to me. I’m waitin’ with my breath held for when she realizes she’s nae murdered every day of her life.”
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