Baby Joe shrugged. “I guess we’re ready.” He and Hasel headed for the door. I started after them, then paused.
“Annie?”
Annie shook her head. “I—I don’t think I’m in for this one,” she said slowly, adding in a low voice, “This is starting to look too weird, Sweeney. I’m going back downstairs.”
“You sure?” I said anxiously. Because it was looking a little too weird, even for me. There was Hasel, eerily oblivious to Oliver’s misery, and beer-sodden Baby Joe in his ragged suit, ashes trailing him like a bad reputation. And me in my old cowboy boots and Oliver’s shirt; and finally Angelica and Oliver. Angelica radiant as ever; Oliver in his skewed formal wear. We really did look like some deranged wedding party; though whether Oliver was lunatic preacher or runaway groom, I couldn’t guess.
“I’m sure.” Annie squeezed my arm. “And Sweeney—if things get too out of hand, promise you’ll come back inside, okay? Promise you’ll come get me?”
I nodded and watched her leave, then went to help Baby Joe with the beer.
“Okay,” said Hasel. “We’re on the buddy system: everybody got a beer? Let’s go—”
Hasel had discovered a set of ancient rusted fire stairs that cascaded down the outside of the lodge. Probably we could have just gone right out the front door and no one would have bothered us, or even noticed, but something made us furtive. One by one we went down the zigzag steps until we reached the lawn. A faint wind stirred the upper branches of the trees and sent a few dead leaves spinning drunkenly to the ground. I sat down for a few minutes, and tried to calm myself by looking at the stars. The chill air magnified them until they seemed huge, brittle flowers waiting to be torn apart by the wind. Finally I stood.
A few yards downhill waited Hasel and Baby Joe, their heads craned to stare at the sky. We were on the far side of the lodge, facing the woods. Without a sound, Angelica appeared beside me.
“Let’s go that way—” Her voice rang out as she pointed to where the silvery grey lawn flowed into darkness. “Someone told me there’s a pond there.”
“Kinda cold for skinny-dipping,” called Hasel. “But I’ll keep you company!”
He laughed and gave Baby Joe a shove. The two of them loped on down the hill. Angelica nudged me and I looked back to see Oliver. I started to call out to him, but he hurried after Hasel and Baby Joe.
Angelica gave an angry sigh. “I hate the way he looks. Why’d he do that to his beautiful hair?” She spun on her heel and started down the hill. “Sometimes I really think he’s crazy.”
It was a cold, nearly windless night. What breeze there was smelled of rain-washed stone and mud. When it shifted it brought with it the tang of woodsmoke from the lodge, the harsh scent of marijuana smoke. There was still no moon. I understood nothing of lunar phases, else I would have known it was the darkest quarter, the fourth of four nights when the moon is absent from the sky. But that only meant the stars shone all the brighter.
We turned before we reached the trees. We were in rank pasture now, bordered by a tumbledown stone wall covered with matted clumps of kudzu and wild grapevines.
I slowed my steps, wondering how Angelica could walk so surely and quickly among the stones and clumps of burdock. But she merely lifted her long skirt and went on. Occasionally Hasel’s slow stoned laugh floated back to us, or Baby Joe’s. Angelica walked alone, mad at Oliver, I thought, or maybe she just wanted to be by herself.
Suddenly she stopped. She lifted her arms and let go of the ends of her skirt. A few yards away Oliver and Hasel and Baby Joe halted and stared at her. Angelica turned to me, smiling.
“Here we are, Sweeney.”
We were at the top of a wide shallow depression, a sort of bowl in the surrounding meadowland. The ground was covered with very short dry grass, as though it had been mowed or heavily grazed. Everywhere myriad tiny stones were strewn like the stones in a gravel pit, and the fragile stalks of burdock and milkweed rustled softly where we walked.
At the center of the hollow was a small perfectly round man-made pond, what in farm country they call a tank. It was like a hole cut in the fabric of the night, and so black that I was surprised to see stars floating in it, innocent as lilies. Certainly it had been put there for watering cattle, though there were no cows anywhere that I could see, and the Euclidean symmetry of the pool gave it a strange, almost supernatural appearance. It seemed unlikely that it would be spring-fed, and I saw no streams running into it. But it didn’t have that neglected-fishbowl smell I associated with small ponds. Instead the water smelled sweet, wonderfully sweet: like spring rain and apple blossom and oranges, charged like a storm ready to break. It smelled so insanely wonderful that I jumped back from its edge as though I’d seen moray eels there waiting to tear me into ribbons.
“Sweeney? What’s the matter?”
Angelica stood on the bank and watched me. She had removed her sandals and was probing the black water with a toe. The sweet fragrance was so strong that my hair stood on end—not just the hair on my scalp or neck but everywhere—every filament of my being a wick ready to burst into flame.
“Sweeney?”
About her head runnels of violet light streamed like water. I stared at her, as frightened by her matter-of-fact tone as by everything else. “What’s wrong, Sweeney?”
“Hey, ladies. Wait for us!”
Behind me I heard shuffling footsteps, Hasel’s soft drawling laugh. Out of nowhere rose a strong wind. The cropped grass at my feet rippled, and dust rose and wheeled in grey clouds.
“Sweeney—could you help me with this?”
In front of me Angelica stood with her back to the pool. She was pulling up her dress, but it had caught on a spike of dried milkweed. “Sweeney—?”
She was only inches away from me, her arms upraised, hair a long tangle of dark gold. In the starlight her skin was so pale it was as though her body was a rift in the night.
“Sweeney: please. Take the dress.”
Her voice was a whisper but also a command. I gathered her hem between my fingers and raised it. Warm velvet spilled over my knuckles like foam, and with it her scent, sweet oranges and sandalwood rushing into me like a drug. I fell to my knees, leaned forward until my lips brushed the skin just below her thigh. I kissed her, pressed my mouth against her flesh, until I could taste sweet salt and oranges, the soft pressure of her skin giving way beneath my teeth and the velvet of her skin softer than anything. The folds of her dress slipped from my fingers and I started to fall forward, pulling her down with me. But then her voice rang out sharply.
“Sweeney.”
I stumbled to my feet, cringing as though I had been struck.
“My dress.”
This time I pulled it up and over her—thighs, groin, belly, breasts, chin—all in one swift motion. Before I could drop it Angelica snatched the dress from me and tossed it aside.
“There now,” she murmured.
I crouched at her feet, my hands clutching at dead grass. Above me Angelica cast no shadow in the pale starlight. She was naked, her skin smooth as molten silver, nothing to show that she’d ever worn any clothes at all. Save only this:
A crescent like the sleeping moon above her breasts, its spars reaching toward her shoulders and the whole thing glowing as though it had just been drawn from the flame. I heard a sharp intake of breath and Baby Joe’s nervous giggle, then Hasel’s awed voice.
“Fucking A. A fucking goddess, man—”
But from Oliver, nothing. Not a sound, not a breath. I wanted to look back at them, to reassure myself I wasn’t alone; but I couldn’t. I couldn’t do anything but stare up at Angelica, my hands crushing the dead grass against my palms.
For a long time she stood, utterly silent, her slanted green eyes glowing. It was as though the rest of us weren’t even there. As if, like Magda Kurtz, she had walked or been pushed through some gap in the world and now breathed a different air than we did, finer, rarer, infinitely more precious. About her face her long
hair lifted and flowed in dark coils. Her eyes were serene, her lips parted so that I could glimpse her even white teeth. Upon her breast the lunula sent shafts of pure white light streaming into the darkness.
Without a word she turned from us, the slope of her hips and buttocks catching a glint of starlight before they faded into shadow again. Very slowly she paced to the water’s edge, and, as we watched, she walked right into it, not even hesitating at its brink, walked straight and slow as though drawn by an invisible rope toward the center of the pool. With each step the water rose higher and higher, lapping at her ankles, then her thighs and flanks, finally sliding up across her rib cage to touch her breasts with shadow. Her body was swallowed by black water like the moon in eclipse, until at last only her head remained, her hair flowing ‘round her. I had a glimpse of her eyes, hard and cold and shining, and a softly glowing core of light where the lunula lay upon her breast.
Then she was gone. Ripples spread from the center of the pool, expanded until they touched its shallow banks and disappeared, one by one; and all was still again.
I heard a whimper, tentative footsteps. I turned and saw Baby Joe and Hasel huddled together, their awestruck gaze fixed on the placid water. A few paces behind them stood Oliver. His face was utterly implacable. I could have read anything I wanted in his staring eyes—terror, relief, amazement, even complete indifference.
“Oliver,” I called hoarsely, not caring that he’d hear how scared I was. I stood, my feet scrabbling against pebbles and dead grass. “Oliver, let’s go—”
His expression changed. Like water flowing into a glass, some of the old Oliver seemed to fill him. He blinked and, for the first time, noticed me.
“Sweeney.” His voice was frail and tremulous, an old woman’s voice. “Thanks for coming.” He stepped toward me, and there was something ghastly about his smile, as though it, too, had been stolen from someone else. “I didn’t think they’d let you come, I didn’t know you were here—”
He reached for me, and when his hand closed about mine, I cried out: the flesh was so dry and loose it was like bark shifting beneath my touch.
“Don’t fear me, Sweeney.” His voice rose as I pulled away from him. “It’s still me, Sweeney, it’s still me, please don’t leave me—”
An explosive sound ripped the night. The air shattered; shards of glass rained upon us, filling the night with a sound like bells. I screamed, drawing my hands to my face; but when the splinters struck me they were not glass at all but freezing water.
“—with her.”
At pool’s edge stood a tall slender figure. Angelica, shaking her head so that her hair spun out in long black tendrils and more icy rain scattered everywhere. She was laughing. Water streamed from her uplifted hands to spill upon her breasts and thighs, and when she moved atoms of light shot from her, like sparks from a glowing forge. Upon her breast the lunula still gleamed, but its glory seemed to have been swallowed by her eyes, treacherous fox fire eyes. She turned and all their fatal splendor focused upon me.
“Oh Beloved. It is time.”
Her voice, sweet as rainwater falling upon stone. I stepped toward her, my arms opening to her embrace: what else could I do? But then I saw that she was not looking at me; nor at Baby Joe or Hasel or Oliver.
She was not looking at any of us. She walked right past me, past the others, and never said a word. It was so still that I could hear Hasel swallow when she swept by him, the dead grasses rustling beneath her bare feet. After she had passed we all turned in her wake, peering through the darkness to see what drew her.
In the overgrown meadow crouched a hulking form. At first I thought it was an immense boulder, or maybe some abandoned farm equipment.
But as Angelica approached it, her arms flung open in greeting, I saw that it was not a machine. It was a cow—no, a bull, a huge dun-colored creature with arching horns and a ponderous dewlap that hung down between its legs. When it sighted Angelica it snorted and shook its head. Its dewlap shuddered. It pawed nervously at the ground and a cloud of vapor enveloped its nostrils. It seemed merely huge, until Angelica stopped only two or three paces from where it watched her with rolling black eyes. Then it became monstrous, unimaginably vast.
My breath was coming fast and shallow. I glanced over to see Hasel staring transfixed and Baby Joe wide-eyed and motionless, a dead cigarette caught between his fingers. Beside them, Oliver was a brooding shadow, silent and minatory. In the field Angelica and the bull stared at each other, their breath fogging the chilly air. And then, very slowly, they began to move.
She took a step; it took a step. She slid sideways, it raised its front legs and came down in a furious explosion of dust. Now and then the bull would lower its head and charge her, and Angelica would drop to the ground and roll away, darting to her feet again quick as thought. She was still naked; where the dirt and grass touched her, her skin was streaked black and grey, her long legs mottled with tiny seed heads. On one breast a smudge like a handprint showed as though she had been struck.
But the patina of dust and grime didn’t make her look less beautiful. In some perverse way it made her more so, made her more arousing, gave some earthy taint of straw pallet and byre to her unearthly beauty. She ducked and darted, reaching now to strike the bull’s flanks with the flat of her hand, now to tug at the heavy curtain of flesh dangling from its throat, then leaping away to flick at its ears; once even grabbing a long stick and making a sudden lunge between its legs, striking at its shadowy member and rolling away seconds before its hooves thundered back down. With each flashing motion the bull snorted and gamboled, tossing its head and rolling its eyes in a sort of ecstasy of fear and fury, its black hooves sending up a steady rain of stones and dirt.
And still she came at it, tireless, relentless, crying out in low sharp bursts, a wordless, teasing song that was the perfect music for that dance. And dance it was, not crude or stumbling but fluid as the mad rush of water raging down a ravine, beautiful and awful and horribly, infinitely perilous.
Suddenly she stopped. She was panting, I could hear her and see how her ribs rose and fell, see how her entire body was flushed and smell her sweat mingled with that of the bull and the pungent odor of the trodden grass. When she turned I caught a flash of light at her breast, a gleam like the sun on water.
In front of her the bull was still as well. Its nostrils flared and it shook its head, no longer furiously but slowly, as though exhausted. It pawed clumsily at the ground with one foot. Every now and then a shiver would run across its entire body and its skin would ripple with a long single tremor. Its ears lay flat against its huge skull. Two long strands of spittle dangled from its mouth. Darker patches stood out against its greyish hide. On its rear right fetlock there was a small gash that bled when it moved.
And now, oh so slowly, Angelica began to walk toward it. She would take one step and halt, wait and then take another. When the bull shuddered and lowered its head, eyes madly rolling, she would become motionless and remain so for a minute, two minutes, three. Then she would step forward again. Overhead the moonless sky stretched black and boundless. The stars threw down a pale bitter light that cast no shadows, illuminated nothing but the things themselves: a beautiful girl and a bull.
Finally she stopped. The bull’s head was inches from hers, its horns reaching to embrace her. Above her breasts the lunula glowed, its raised prongs deadly as the bull’s horns, its gleaming curve radiant beneath Angelica’s face. So slowly that she scarcely seemed to move at all, she lowered herself to the ground, never taking her eyes from the bull’s; until she sat cross-legged at its feet, her head thrown back. Its dewlap hung above her upturned face. It shook its head, tail flicking at the air as though to drive away an insect. Slowly it raised its head, its huge eyes fixed upon the frozen stars, and lowed: a chilling desperate cry.
As it did, Angelica brought her hands to her throat and then snatched them upward, so quickly that all I saw was a flash of white. I gasped. In her hands she held the l
unula, grasping it so that it formed a curved blade like a scythe. Without a word she lunged, slashing at the bull’s throat. She drew back and lunged again, and this time when the animal bellowed the sound was a screaming roar, so loud I covered my ears.
But I couldn’t look away. She struck at it again, and again, and it kept on roaring, its legs buckling as it sank and kicked out at Angelica, frantic with rage and pain. Once it nearly struck her but she pulled away just in time. It staggered toward her, moaning, its head lowered so that its horns formed a dull moon to her glittering crescent. All the while its blood poured from its throat in a dark torrent.
The bull stood weaving slightly as it stared at her, its black eyes no longer bright but shrouded with blood and grit. With a coughing roar it fell onto its side. Its flanks heaved as, with a last strangled bellow, it struggled to lift its head. Finally it was still.
In front of it Angelica was frozen in a half crouch. When it was clear that the animal was dead she stood, her arms held stiffly in front of her. Slowly she turned to face us.
She was all but unrecognizable. Her long hair was clotted with blood, her face and hands and breast covered with it, a black syrup I could smell even from here. A stench that I had never known before but which was somehow, impossibly, familiar. Bile and heat and shit, the faint green fragrance of crushed grass and spring rain. But also the cloying sweetness of spoiled meat, and that unmistakable musky odor that was Angelica, sandalwood and oranges and something else, the salt smells of sweat and the sea. I stared at her in horror, as terrified and repelled as when we had watched Magda Kurtz given to the hollow land. But Angelica only smiled, her teeth red-streaked, and raised the lunula above her head.
She held it by its slender spars, so that it formed a silver arc above her. As I watched it began to glow, until it was not just a piece of glowing metal but something else, something real, its edge still black with blood, but so dazzling, so pure that I couldn’t bear to look upon it; I tried to tear away my gaze but could not. Angelica’s lips were moving although I could hear nothing, only my own breathing and the faint desperate knocking of my heart. From the small curved opening in the pendant flames danced, higher and higher, until they wreathed the entire crescent, until Angelica herself was ablaze.
Waking the Moon Page 22
