Lightfall

by Paul Monette

  Their eyes in the pearly light, rolled up into their heads, were cold as stone and the color of milk.

  Iris stepped backward, out of the group. She could see the kitchen clock through the doorway: 11:25. She saw how the next ten minutes would go. They would take it very hard because they’d lost the only child. Soon they would move back into the parlor, shaken, and find what solace they could in one of their own number. Roy would take her hand. Murmur some desire.

  She backed away to the door, and no one noticed. She turned and strode through the house, fetching her shawl from the hat rack in the hall. As she pushed out onto the porch she had some notion of going home to work, as if her room at the boardinghouse were an office. She’d lost her bearings and didn’t know it. She imagined there were files to put in order, tapes that had to be transcribed, surfaces to clear. If Roy still wanted her, let him come.

  Keep it simple, she thought as she passed down the fieldstone walk. She reached for the gate. What would it solve to love him? All they needed was what they could get. She clicked the latch in the picket fence and passed through. The women, she thought, would learn by watching her.

  As she stepped out into the lane, an animal squealed and jumped away. With a startled cry, Iris staggered against the fence. She groped to go back in, but the terror of being bitten made her spastic. She couldn’t think to scream. Then, just as she closed her hand on the latch, she saw who it was.

  It was Michael.

  He stood not three feet off, and stunned as much as she. Stark naked, so his skin was white and livid like the moon. He cupped his genitals, monkeylike. It seemed he had just been passing by. All he wanted to do was go his way in the realms of night, yet something made him wait to be acknowledged. Perhaps he needed to know if she could see him.

  “They don’t really need us,” she said with a weary shrug. “You know that, don’t you?”

  She spoke in an oddly wistful way. The animal terror a moment ago might have been no more than the chill night air. To her it seemed they were not enemies at all. The world had passed them by in equal measure.

  “Go home, then,” Michael answered mildly.

  “What do you want?”

  “Nothing,” he said—like a reflex, almost. He was just as sad as she was now. Perhaps he’d been thinking the same thing, that events were set in motion on their own. Perhaps the place did not require a genius. As if he could trust her, he said: “This place is mine. I’ve been looking for it all my life.”

  “I know,” said Iris quietly. She edged toward him. He held his balls a little tighter, but otherwise he didn’t move. She reached up a hand and brushed the sweaty hair off his forehead. She drew her fingers down along his cheek. “Michael, why don’t we send them all away?”

  He gave her a curious look. For a moment he seemed to try to see it—just toe two of them, here alone. He smiled. “They wouldn’t go,” he said.

  “Look, I’m the one you want. Take me.”

  Though the smile never left his face, a twinge of sorrow passed across his eyes. Even as she watched, his vision seemed to clear. For a second or two he gazed at an ancient dream. Iris knew she had never looked this blankly at the light. She knew she couldn’t. At the same time she was filled with a burning wish to surrender, she felt a pang of honor for him. It wasn’t a lie. He did have powers.

  It vanished as quickly as it came. He looked her in the eye, his fixed and glassy smile in place, and said: “But don’t you see? You’re the only one I don’t want.”

  With that he released his genitals and clasped his hands behind his back. The flaccid state of his organ seemed to do him proud. Iris, looking blankly at it, couldn’t deny the relief she felt. For a little bit the night reined in. Then, as if she’d caught the first faint pulse of a pain deep down inside, she became aware of a curious flinching in her heart. Her spirit sank, as if to the shriek and impact of a crack-up down the road. Before he was through he would violate them all.

  “Do you remember who you are, Michael?”

  “I don’t care,” he said pointedly, rising on his toes.

  “Edward Dale,” persisted Iris. “Earl of Pitt. You’re the only one with a name.”

  “My name is legion,” Michael said, and he lifted his head to the breeze as if he’d caught the scent of something. He had ceased to be alert to her, perhaps because she wasn’t any danger. It was as if the very words they spoke dispelled some aura, like the sun on the morning mist.

  “When you landed here,” she said, “there were people on these cliffs. You made them think you were God.”

  He was tensed and waiting now. There was movement on the meadow slope above them. She could hear it: the rush of the grass against an animal’s flanks. She did not know how she knew that Michael had played divine. She was just guessing. But she had the faintest recollection of them kneeling while he fed them. She’d read the account in his journal where he stole the spores of the mountain tribe in Chile. Drugs was how he did it.

  “Then you started to hate them,” Iris said. “I don’t know why. I wish you’d tell me.”

  But he didn’t know anything. He was all sucked out from a day of revels. He had walked his dark domain all evening, keeping clear of houses. The last four hundred years receded like a row of graves. Time was as nothing. And yet, if she’d asked him how long they had, he would have answered most precisely: “Fifty-six hours.” At midnight, fifty-five. Till what, he couldn’t say.

  “Can’t we try, Michael? Let me come up to your room tonight. You’ll see—there’s so much to remember. It’s like another world.”

  Still his head was cocked to the rustle in the breeze. His ears were flat against his skull, listening like a beast. “I have no room,” he whispered.

  “Please—” she said.

  But she never got to finish what it was. A train of baby skunks came snaking down the lane and passed between them. Iris stepped back, startled. She wasn’t scared; they were too young to feel any danger here, and they kept their ink to themselves. As they disappeared into the grass beyond, she only thought to wonder where the mother was.

  Michael’s eyes were shining. He chewed at his lower lip impatiently. Iris felt herself grow quiet, as if she sensed the wind had shifted. Michael was lord of the wilder slopes. She had no range in the woods. A pair of fawns on wobbly legs shied by them, then a bear cub, half asleep. Iris had so little say, as they tumbled out of the dark, that the best she could do to stand her ground was to not look surprised.

  “I never seem to learn the name of anything,” Michael said.

  But for all his air of apology—as if life slipped through his fingers all day long—he glowed with delight at the flow of creatures. Two pup mountain lions and a whimpering moose. A litter of chipmunks, none any bigger than a man’s thumb. He almost could have been dreaming them.

  “Tomorrow, then,” she said. “We’ll go for a walk. You can show me your favorite places.”

  “All right,” he said with a small indifferent shrug. He watched the night above the path, waiting the next appearance. Perhaps he’d agreed with her all along. He just needed to hear the right proposal.

  She reached to touch him a second time, like a friend. No threats. He would have let her, but a thing came barreling down the hill and she jumped. It lumbered into view. A lizard four feet long with a great hump on back of the neck and a nose like a bony hammer. She’d never seen anything like it. It didn’t come from here; it came from someplace old as the ocean. She realized with a shock of horror: this was a baby too.

  Right behind it a long-necked pig, its skin like leather, trundled in beside a skittering line of chicks. These last were some kind of gull, too young to fly. They had to scramble to get out of the pig’s way. Except it wasn’t a pig, really. It looked like a baby dinosaur.

  “I’m leaving now,” she said. “Where should we meet?”

  He looked after this last improbable beast as if he’d produced a unicorn. She thought he hadn’t heard her. He’d left her f
ar behind. But then he said: “Tomorrow’s Sunday.”

  “Yes, I know. You want me to come to the church?”

  He frowned. “No, not there,” he said. He almost seemed embarrassed. “You wouldn’t like it.”

  “I don’t mind. I won’t try to take them away, if that’s what you’re worried about.”

  “Look at it, will you?” He pointed impatiently down the field toward the cliffs. He was sick of all this talking.

  She could not see at first. She didn’t want to. It was a great commotion of some kind. The animals had gathered in a bunch, as if they had been corralled; but they weren’t protesting, not at all. She could hear them—twenty, thirty feet away—cooing and neighing and murmuring. Michael turned and loped across the grass. She could have been through the gate and back in the parlor in a couple of seconds. She’d find him tomorrow; he couldn’t go very far. She thought: Leave it alone now.

  But she couldn’t help but hear the children laughing. It was more than just the animals. She stepped off the path, as if at the whim of a dream. She followed the pale of Michael’s body into the dark. When he stopped, she walked up next to him. She knew he would not protest her coming close. He had ordered her to watch.

  It was nothing, really: just a bunch of kids in a field, playing with animals. The children must have finished chanting out behind the house and circled around to the front to greet this sudden menagerie. One girl held a small black bear tight in her arms like a teddy. The bear didn’t mind. Two boys pulled at the ears and tail of the gawky moose, and he butted them playfully, snorting tough. No one was hurt. The animals loved it. It looked like a school for the damaged, designed to return the furthest gone to the thick of life. The pig rode three kids bareback, all at once.

  “What does it mean?” she asked Michael quietly.

  “Nothing,” he said. He bent down and scooped up a baby raccoon. He held it out on the palm of his hand, stroking its tiny head with a finger. Michael made a purring sound as he blew his warm breath on the downy fur. The animal arched and yawned, shivered with pleasure, and made as if to burrow in to sleep. Michael reached it across to Iris, touching his hand against hers. “Here,” he said gently.

  “No, thanks.”

  She felt quite foolish. It wasn’t as if she feared it would put her under his spell. Indeed, she saw she would do much better to share a thing like this. But she thought of the tiny band in Emery’s house—how they made not the least concession, but tried to find their reason in one another. She dared not cross certain lines, lest she leave the rest behind.

  “Where are their mothers?”

  “They’re coming,” he said, in an absentminded way. He was much more interested, just then, in setting the sleeping animal down on a tuft of grass away from the noise.

  Two or three children led their pets away. Iris could see what they meant to do. First, they would find a spot in the cliffside grove and spread out their blankets to stake the ground. Then they would curl to sleep, with their lions and fawns to keep them warm. There was nothing in any of this to inspire the slightest dread. She wondered again: What was she fighting?

  She silently turned from the playing field. In front of her was an elephant calf, and a spindle-legged colt so young it didn’t seem weaned. She stepped between them, restraining the hand that longed to stroke them. She could see beyond the hedge the glow of the oil lamps in the parlor. Someone was leaning out the window, watching the sky. It was Roy.

  As soon as she saw him she quickened her pace. It was as if she had just come to from a slug of anesthesia. Her body shimmered with desire. Every step she took, her feet sent up the fragrant crush of grass. When Michael called, she pretended at first that she didn’t hear. She grasped the gate latch, heard the click of it opening, and looked back over her shoulder with a smile.

  “I’ll save you,” he cried, “I promise. All you have to do is ask.”

  For an instant she stood quite still, neither in nor out. The smile never flickered. He rose like a shepherd above his flock. If she’d given him even the barest hope, he might have sent them loping back to the woods. But just as suddenly she was gone, through the gate and up the walk. The deal would have to wait.

  Roy, the moment he saw her, grinned and bolted across the house to let her in. She rushed up the steps to the porch, and the blood seemed to pound in her ears as if she’d been running for miles. The door swung open. She fell into his arms.

  As he spun her around, she recalled the exact sensation out of one of her vanished lives. His mouth sought hers, and they breathed each other in. This, she saw, was her proper orbit: having it out with a man. She wondered how much time she’d lost. She wondered if she had it in her to love with the old abandon. Hungry as she was, she was assaulted by a hundred doubts—but not with regard to him. She could see that he loved her more than anything. They drew back to stare into each other’s eyes, and all across the hills, whatever was still out and hunting could watch them in the lantern light.

  “When you leave like that,” said Roy, setting her back on earth, “I never know whether you’re coming back.”

  “I know,” she answered quietly.

  “Let’s go home,” he said, moving forward off the porch. He was holding one of her hands, and he felt it slip from his grasp when she didn’t follow.

  “Not yet. We haven’t said good-night.”

  He gave an amenable shrug and came back up. Digging his hands into the pockets of his jeans, he trailed in her wake as she entered the tidy house once more. She was mostly giving Michael time to draw his herd away. She hadn’t known she was going to keep the scene in the field a secret till she saw the moment pass when she might have said it. Better that Roy and the others should know the enemy in broad daylight. The night side was too volatile.

  The others hadn’t even missed her. They turned and smiled, they nodded good-night, but they had no burning questions. Somehow they’d managed to put behind them the serenade of the children. They lingered now at the last of the brandy. Maybeth sat on the window seat with Felix. Polly stood looking into the fire, while beside her Dr. Upton made a laborious point. Everyone seemed reluctant to take things one step further.

  “What shall we do tomorrow?” Emery asked in a sprightly tone, as Iris bent and kissed his cheek. “Why don’t we have a picnic?”

  “You better have it catered, then,” Maybeth offered dryly. “All I do is dinner. And breakfast Tuesday morning.”

  “I’ll get a few things at the general store,” retorted Emery, prepared to dismiss all problems.

  “It’s closed,” Jeff said.

  “Not to me it’s not,” the old man protested, poking his chest with a finger. “I own the lease.” He beamed around the group. “There’s reasons for being rich, you know. Even here.”

  “Maybe we shouldn’t make plans,” said Iris. “Who knows what will happen tomorrow?”

  “All the more reason,” insisted Maybeth. “Besides, I don’t want to be alone.”

  “In the park, then, shall we?” Emery rubbed his hands with pleasure. “Say around noon. We can all go sailing afterward.”

  There was a general murmur of agreement, in the midst of which they turned once more to quiet talking, two by two. They seemed enormously relieved to have Sunday settled. That left only Monday.

  “But what about the others?” Iris asked. She made a helpless gesture, as if she’d caught at a ball and missed. “Isn’t there something we can do?”

  She saw a vague and patient smile ripple round the group. Anyone might have answered, but it was Polly who said, with the greatest care and irony: “Everyone’s welcome, Iris. We can always make room.”

  “Of course,” said Dr. Upton crisply. “We’ll be twice as many by morning. They can’t all be fools.”

  Iris took it no further. For one thing, she hadn’t a better idea. For another, she couldn’t stop thinking: What did he mean, he’d save her? For what? To live here with him afterward? How did he plan to keep the world away between ec
lipses? She tried to imagine it: four hundred years in the empty village, with a wall of magic all around. Of course he would leave her alone. She could have the days to herself, and he would have the nights.

  They began to gather their things and say good-bye—each to each, like people clinking glasses. They swore they would all be together again, next day at noon, by the light on the point. They stood shoulder to shoulder, going out of their way to be nice. Iris knew she had to leave. Connections and arrangements were at hand. Emery was maybe too old to care; Jeff stood sullen and young. The rest were bent on making do.

  She hurried out arm in arm with Roy so they wouldn’t have to walk with anybody else. The moon was fleeced with a furl of clouds, and the field beyond the gate was still. She wondered if Michael had kept them tight in a group, children and beasts together, or whether he’d let them wander off. Were there cubs and calves rooting around in the garbage pails?

  “You horny?” Roy asked as they walked the dark street.

  “Sure. Why not?” She was listening so hard to the wilderness that the sudden hoot of an owl made her jump. She wondered how full-grown it was.

  “Maybe you got other plans,” he said.

  She realized now: he wasn’t touching her. There was a good foot between them as they walked. She turned with a puzzled look, her focus all on him. “Like what?” she asked.

  “Like somebody else.” He spoke with a clear-eyed dignity, not hostile or reproachful. “Listen, you got work to do. All you want from me is a little action now and then. That’s okay. Just holler—I’ll be there.”

  She was stunned. “Hey, I don’t want you to leave. Don’t think that.”

  “I don’t think anything, Iris.”

  There was the flick of a movement in the grass behind him. She darted an eye to catch it. Its eyes gleamed yellow and stared straight at her. Its fur was striped like a tiger.

  “But I love you,” she said, and forced herself to look him in the eye.