by Paul Monette
“I am home,” the old man said serenely, as they came in under the trees again.
He had a hand at the small of her back, guiding her toward the coffee. If she dropped her guard for even a moment, she found herself in the lull of things, like a ship on a windless sea. Abruptly she turned away. She hurried off up the park slope to-ward the street, determined to keep her silence if he followed yet again. She didn’t look back till she reached the fish house.
Only then did she see why he’d let her go. He was talking intently to Roy and gesturing fiercely in her direction. Roy shook his head no, as if he would not indulge an old man’s idle notions. Iris felt a wave of power as she broke into a trot. She went up the street burning for a confrontation.
She hardly saw the carpenters, who waved her hello and grinned as she passed. Most of them were taking a break, surveying the bare foundations of their houses. A rickety truck full of loam bore down from the high meadow. Iris saw a couple of sites where the people were already grading and raking. There was hardly anything left of the village beyond the five or six houses still in her dispensation. She had an inkling they wouldn’t be there tomorrow.
She had to find someplace else.
When she reached the church at the end of the street she knew instantly it would never do. There were too many doors. How would she keep them in? The thought was so peculiar that she leaned against the rough stone wall, as if she’d lost her balance. She shut her eyes and shook her head. Wasn’t the point to keep things out? She had a sudden longing to rid herself of buildings altogether. Like Michael’s men, she wished to find her reason in the earth.
“You look so silly, dressed like that.”
She turned to the saucer eyes of Judith Quinn, stark naked now like the others. She grabbed at the front of Iris’s sweater, yanking her off her feet. As Iris fell to her knees, her mind went icy clear: Get out. Don’t draw a crowd. She felt the other woman beating at her, blindly pulling her clothes.
“He doesn’t want you. He doesn’t want you,” moaned the doctor’s wife.
“Shh,” crooned Iris, ducking blows as she grasped the woman about the knees. She hushed her, holding on till she felt the bitter rage waver and yield to tears. The beating died away. Iris rose carefully, keeping the cool of her hands against the other’s skin. They stood for a moment like a mirror image, and Iris stroked her, whispering, “Shh.”
Judith sobbed and turned her anger inward. She rent her own flesh with her fingernails. She gasped at the air to find the breath to scream.
Iris, patting the mad woman’s throat, with a flick of the wrist got a stranglehold. She dug her thumb in the windpipe, pressing her fingers against the pulse of blood in the neck. The doctor’s wife went silent, though her mouth was open wide. Her eyes rolled up in her head. She clutched herself around the belly, seeming to fall in a trance, as if she thought this agony would break her like a bud and let her free.
When at last the naked woman slumped in Iris’s arms, she released the pressure and, lightning quick, danced the swooning body round the corner of the church. She sat her down in a clump of ivy, propped against the wall. Judith’s hand fell next to a white narcissus, as if she meant to pluck it in a dream. Then Iris saw a wave of grief and loss come storming into her face, as she registered the ceasing of her death. She was deep in a faint, but the tears welled up and splashed her cheeks. A moaning began at the back of her throat. Iris turned away with an awful pang of failure.
She stumbled through the picket gate and rushed among the pines. She had tested her final principle: she couldn’t kill. But neither she nor Judith Quinn had triumphed. All the laws were upside down. The birds were crying havoc in the trees. Holes like the burrows of animals littered the floor of the woods and the cliff side fields beyond. Even the graves weren’t safe.
She had no thought except to find a place to hide, just big enough for one. The people had gone too far. She couldn’t connect. For safety’s sake she owed herself a final shelter. She wasn’t afraid to take the blame for the way it had all turned sour, but first she had to be by herself, to see if she knew who she was any more.
As she clambered through the underbrush, she had an idea it would lead her up to a crag from which she would command the heights. She seemed to recall an overhang where a bed of last year’s leaves had sifted in. She did not take into account the raining down of the time between. How a lightning bolt had splintered the escarpment. Or the slippage along the fault, how it managed to inch the mountain off its pedestal. The incline finally flattened out, then the stream put out a branch to silt the naked rock. Before long, the creep of the woods had got a foothold.
However it was, she couldn’t have been more startled when she barreled through a knot of vines and tumbled into the meadow. She looked around as she caught her breath, on her hands and knees in a bed of ferns. Her heart leaped up at the virgin green. Why this, she thought, could be her secret place.
The moment she stood up she saw how wrong she was. There were hundreds of animals standing about in the foot-high grass. Not a single one bent down to crop the clover. They stood in a ring to the edge of the field, with another ring inside, then another and then another, like ripples. There was one of every kind she could think of. Each held high his head in a perfect poise of listening. The nearest ones were quaking with the wish to run away, but still they held their ground.
Where, she wondered, were all their mates? It was just like the night before, with the litters of babies pouring off the hill, except there it was the mothers that she missed. Suddenly, it struck her: what if these were the very creatures she had seen, grown to fullness overnight? Perhaps some cold-eyed process of selection had winnowed down each flock of infants, such that only one in every species reached its proper height.
She thought all this with a haunting coolness, making guesses as she went. She never thought to be afraid for an instant. Her terrors sprang from people: there lay the true wild edge of the world. She walked among this tatterdemalion herd—the buffalo next to the panda, the peacock strutting around the tiger—like a tourist in a dusty zoo. She wasn’t the least transported. She just kept moving, further and further toward the center of the field, thinking she still might hide here—
Then her mouth dropped open, when she saw they were in pairs. The prairie dog and the puma. The goat and the armadillo. She stopped stock-still in the grass and shivered. For a moment she looked as singular as they. She had it now: these beasts were going to mate!
In a flash they sensed a change in her. There were sudden restless stirrings. A few began to shuffle in her direction. The white-horned elk. The cheetah. The palomino. She staggered off to the side—and tripped. They were on her so fast, like a pack of dogs, that she was in their mouths before she saw it was Michael she had tripped on. A gasp of horror broke from her throat. The sheet-metal taste of death was on her tongue.
He woke with a groan from a sailor’s dream, of a soundless ship on an open sea. He saw her trapped in a cage of teeth. The fox was at her leg, the lion at her throat. The alligator had her belly scissored between his jaws. They growled like a buzz saw, ready to tear her to bits, but they hadn’t yet so much as grazed the skin. It only took the vaguest wave of his hand—as if he were brushing aside the cobwebs of his sleep—and they drew in their fangs and lifted off. They slithered and backed away.
Iris lay there a moment, taut and covered with goose-flesh. Then she shuddered once, and her teeth unclenched, and she came up on one elbow.
“What do you want?” he asked.
“I came to find out if you love me yet,” she replied in a bored, coquettish voice.
“What if I do?”
“I’m not really sure,” she said with a shrug. “But we haven’t got much time. We might as well see if we have a choice.”
“Like what?”
“Well—we could run away.”
“Where?”
“Oh, there’s places,” she said, tipping her head back as if she would laugh. H
er neck was white and quick, with a spoor of the lion’s spittle at her throat. “Lots of islands out there,” she remarked, pointing a lazy finger out to sea.
“I wouldn’t live on an island,” Michael said with a quiver of pride. It seemed he had been waiting here for just such an ill-thought proposition. He went on with infinite patience. “I have to go walk among my people. Don’t you see—there are prophets all over, in every town. They’re waiting.” He made a helpless shape with his hands, to try to get at the vastness of it. “Just waiting,” he said.
“Why?”
There was so little answer in him, it seemed he hadn’t heard. Why was like the cry of any one of a thousand creatures. Just another noise in the noonday air.
“Take me with you, Michael. Now—before this place can tear us apart. I promise, I’ll help you.”
He shook his head sternly. “No. You wait here.”
She pricked her ears and held her tongue. The most she’d ever had from him was a shy, indifferent smile. He’d never made the slightest gesture, even to show he knew about the sun. He’d certainly never come out with an order.
“You mean you’re leaving? I thought this place was journey’s end.”
He nodded. “All they need to do is touch me. Once they know I’ve come, you see, they can do the rest themselves. It’ll only take a couple of months. Then I’m free to come back. This is our kingdom, Iris.” He spoke with a winglike span of his arms. “They owe it to us.”
“But it’s not what happened before,” she declared, a ripple of panic creeping in. What was he doing knowing more than she? Till now he had been like a ten-year-old. She didn’t want to hear he had finally rooted out her name. She couldn’t think of a secret that was safe.
“Ah, but you didn’t love me back,” he said in a faintly mocking tone. The joke was all on him.
“I love you now. Isn’t that enough?”
“Do you?” he asked with a smile, and glided to his feet.
He beckoned her to follow. She scrambled up right after him, so anxious was she not to be left alone in the central ring. He moved among the beasts with a pensive frown, patting them on their rumps as he passed. He trailed his fingers along the flank of the llama, lingered over the wildebeest, as if he were looking for something special. Iris couldn’t outguess him. She stayed as near as his shadow and waited his bidding. She knew she was wholly on Michael’s ground, though she couldn’t see where she’d crossed the border.
His naked back was beet-red, his shoulders peeled and blistered. His hair had already caught a streak of yellow from the sun. He fit in here better than she did. She was tired from the climb uphill and longed to have a bath. She’d hurt a muscle falling. Next to him she was old and weary: surely he’d gotten thinner—younger, even—since he landed.
He stopped at a bright-striped zebra, grazing a tuft of buttercups. He pulled up its legs to check its hooves. He made soft noises as he went around, till the creature lifted its dull-witted head and nuzzled its master’s hand. “See what I bring you?” he asked with a grin, and it took her a moment before she knew it was she and not the zebra he’d addressed.
“Beautiful,” whispered Iris.
“Get on.”
Again there was no mistaking: this was an order. She started to pull off her sweater before she took another step. It wasn’t to do with Michael, somehow. She had as much distance from him as ever. The beast, though, seemed to demand some higher innocence. The sweater fell in the grass, and a long-nosed thing like an anteater whisked it away to bed its nest. She kicked off her shoes and dropped her jeans, not much aware of anything now but how it would feel to ride again. She was still one step behind herself as she groped her way to the other life. The ride would bring it all back.
Patting the zebra’s neck, she crooned a fragment of lullaby she’d never heard before. Then she leaped and swung into place. The feel of the beast naked, flesh to flesh, shivered her like a girl again. She caught a grip at his sharp, electric mane. They started forward, swishing the grass like a squall of rain.
The animal, bred to the heat of plains, lumbered along at a plodding pace, so Michael had no trouble keeping up. He padded beside them across the meadow, whistling an eerie tune. If the zebra had been bridled, Michael would have held the reins.
Iris was furious. She thought he meant to let her really gallop, and so recover the bounds of her ancient lands. She looked about for a way to defy him. She figured she’d wait till they reached the edge of the wood, slip off and run like crazy.
Then she began to see how the other beasts withdrew. They bowed from the path at her approach. She was part of a kind of ceremony. For a moment she was humbled by the awesome dance of forces. It was grander now than she and Michael. There wasn’t room for hate. Let go, she thought, and racked her brain to remember where she’d heard those words before.
“What’s it like?” she asked him softly.
“You mean out there?” He pointed a finger west to the water—as casual as she had, not five minutes since. “It’s like a nightmare.”
“People aren’t happy?”
He gave a brief, contemptuous laugh by way of answer. They’d reached the end of the field now, and she swung around to gaze at them, rank on rank in a holy ring. She held her breath and for that one instant saw the point of it all. They would make a place where the last of every sort—no matter how bizarre—could come and finish out his time. Like a sanctuary.
“That’s why they’re better off dead,” said Michael.
Just as he spoke, she was thinking: Wait. There really ought to be two of each, if the thing was going to work. It was as if she’d completely forgotten her earlier notion, that kind was meant to mate with kind. And it seemed she hadn’t even heard him, as to who should die and who should not. She turned back now with a beatific smile.
“So we’ll start all over, is that it?” she asked, indulgent as she dared. “You want sons, I suppose.”
“No,” he retorted, most distinctly. “I want all that to stop. We will be the last.”
They entered the grove of firs, and she had to duck her head. She was right up among the lower branches and saw the rows and rows of birds perched in the inner reaches, silent. As if they waited to hear what answer she would give.
“See, we get to live forever,” Michael added carefully, holding up a judicious finger as if he meant to gauge the quarter of the wind. He seemed to want to lighten up the prophet talk—to make a deal, almost.
“You sure have stupid ideas, for someone who’s seen the world,” said Iris. “Who the hell do you think you are?”
She plucked a pinecone off a branch and sniffed it like a flower. She felt better already, just knowing the worst. After all, it was only crazy. He simply had to be stopped. Didn’t matter how.
“See?” he asked, with a pouting sneer, “I told you you didn’t love me.”
She didn’t waste another second.
“Edward,” she said, putting out a hand to twirl a lock of his hair, “I want you to tell me what it’s like. Be honest now. Will I be happy there?”
“Oh, yes,” he said politely. “It’s very pretty, really. There’s miles and miles of woods. We’ve got deer and pheasants—” A queer, hypnotic singsong hummed at the back of his voice.
Don’t listen, she thought. Just get him.
Already they’d gone so deep into the trees that they couldn’t see out to the cliffs or fields. Only the random coin of sunlight patched the ferns on the floor below. She supposed she could use a stick, if she could just break off a branch in passing, but somehow the right thing stayed out of reach. If she jumped to the ground to get a rock, she would lose the sense of ambush. If only she had her own horse, she thought. At the least command, he’d have trampled this demon like a coiling snake.
“What will I do there?” Iris asked, trying to sound small and timid.
“Well, there’s the house,” he said. “You’ll see—there’s a lot of work to running an estate. We’ll have par
ties, of course. And people to stay. I promise you won’t be lonely.”
“But, Edward,” she persisted, crouching low on the zebra’s neck to peer into the captain’s face, “why don’t you marry one of your own?”
The line of his mouth went tight. He raised his chin to an arrogant tilt. “Because they die,” he said disdainfully.
They were coming up now on the rain-swelled stream. Banked with violets and lady slippers, it coursed like a dream through the heart of the wood. The sound of it rushing to meet the sea was charged, like something about to burst. Already the zebra shied, slowing its pace to thump one hoof in protest. “Come on,” said Michael, stroking its muzzle. He stepped into the water himself, to show it was only knee-deep. Fixing a stare between its eyes, he beckoned the animal forward.
Iris’s breath began to come rapidly. As the zebra put out a shaky foot to the mossy rock, she rose up on its back. Michael bent to pull up a tuft of greens from the bank to give the beast a prize. With a splash the zebra lurched ahead another step till it stood half in the rolling stream. Iris drew up one leg so that she was kneeling. Michael scarcely noticed her. He was still half-crouched and murmuring promises, beckoning to the beast. As the zebra lowered its head to drink, Iris leaped. She landed square on Michael’s shoulders, driving him right to the bottom.
The zebra thundered across to the opposite bank. Michael was pinned in the weeds. She knelt on his belly and gripped her hands around his throat. Her head just barely broke the water, as she gasped and choked on the current. Michael, as if to mock her, lay in an awful calm. He made no move to throw her off. He even seemed to clench the waving grasses so as not to have to touch her. His eyes were open wide, but they weren’t remotely startled. Sad, perhaps. Disappointed. His breath escaped from his puffed-out cheeks in spurts of bubbles. He was going very white. And then—
She threw back her head in the water and screamed. “No!” she cried. “No—please!” As if someone were strangling her.
She dragged him up from the bottom and clutched him in her arms. He was horribly limp and deadweight. When his face broke the surface, his tongue lolled out like a panting dog. Water gouted from his nose and mouth. She lurched for the shore and ripped her knees on the rocks. Still she kept moaning, “No,” as if she were pleading with him not to die. The current was pulling them further and further downstream, till she didn’t think she had it in her to reach dry land again. Then she caught at a tree root trailing out from the bank. She nearly yanked her shoulder from the socket, but she held.
