by Paul Monette
Gritting his teeth, he shifted Joey’s head. The skin wobbled against the skull. Where it creased, it tore. There wasn’t any blood. It was just that the thing was open here and there, and sending out an awful suppurating odor. Michael choked. He worked his fingers underneath the shoulders, then just under the knees. The flesh was thin as a rotting plum. No matter where his fingers touched, the body fell apart a little more. He could go no further. He’d have to make do with what he’d got.
Numb with loss, he stumbled away and stood on the brink of the long road home. He had his ball of sleep in his hands. The shining girl lay waiting on the hill. And suddenly he was struck with doubt: how could he ever, in this frail world, go back across the water? Just the thought of it made him shrink from climbing in again. He would wait right here till morning. When the dark was gone, he would swim in on the harbor tide. The sun would be out, and the white birds piercing sharp in the after air.
He was glad he’d made this midnight trip, to see where all things ended. Here in the middle of the bay, in the silent hollows where Death lived, the forces had given him one last warning: nothing stayed. The world could turn in its grave at any moment. Iris and he were the lucky ones. They didn’t need tonight, for they already had the promise of forever.
The only reason to go back now was if that promise was a lie.
He stood there, cupping his dream in his hands. He blinked his eyes and cocked one ear. What if it was a trick? What if they only needed him to deliver the town to the moonstruck sun? How could he be sure they’d follow through? He went over and over it in his mind, but of course he couldn’t be sure at all. It was purely a matter of faith. You had to believe in something.
No you didn’t.
He stepped off into the icy wave that lapped below the landing. He held his hands high as he walked out into the lonely bay. It had been pitch dark in the cavern, with only the weird uranium light of the fungus. Next to that, the night stood blinding clear. He saw the pier like a broken bridge, beyond it the glimmering beach, then the high sheer cliffs and the darkened light up on the point. He danced across the bay, heading in like an angel.
Iris’s face blazed across his soul till it lit him up like moonglow. He knew his doom was there with her, and the end of his ancient solitude, like a castle round his heart. She didn’t even love him yet. Still he walked on water, certain as a saint. He believed where there was nothing. He would do the loving for both of them, if he had to. All they needed to do was stand together once, exactly on the present. Time didn’t have a prayer.
He must have walked through a hundred waves. When he came to land, with the seafloor rippling beneath his feet, the old sad terror seized him. He’d always felt it at journey’s end. He stood for a moment in the surf, like a creature come to the point of choices—whether to live in air or water. He held the golden succulent in his hands. He looked up the long steep cliff with a sober eye and saw how blameless the land was. He knew that if things were to shift a hairbreadth, his own death could be waiting on the heights.
Yet he didn’t think twice. He stepped out onto the wrack-strewn beach. He had to go to Iris.
Heading uphill, he sniffed the air and caught the summer roses. In his own head he had gone both ways. He had taken her back to England, where they rode all day in a vast park from which nothing ever escaped. The lawns were neatly clipped, and they drank sweet sherry out of a goatskin. But he had just as surely stayed with her here in a stone cottage, and they tended bees and lived on honey and never went more than a mile from this one spot. A man could live forever in either one of those ideas. Michael had both.
Michael had both of everything, for that was the drift of his vision.
He came around onto the cliff, where the wind was riffling the tops of the firs. As he made his way through the vanished town, his people were still mute in the fields. Nobody did a thing. The last houses were down; the work had been abandoned. They were right at the moment where they could have used another shot of the drug. Not desperate or anything; just on the edge. When they saw him pass, they hardly noticed he was holding something.
Of course it had a mad perfume that he couldn’t hide. The wind caught it up in a drunken reel. Yet they made no move toward him, even when they figured what it was. They dared not beg. They let him walk the whole way up the street to the church, trusting he would ease their need when he was ready. A man and a woman sat dazed on the steps. When he passed, they shrank like puppies against each other, almost as if he would punish them. The power was all on Michael’s side. Why did he feel such a strange insistence? What was it trying to warn him of?
Why should he shut the door?
He didn’t. He just kept walking up the aisle, to where Iris lay like a sleeping nymph. He started to eat the drug—put a finger of it on his tongue and felt a stroke of music in his brain. He didn’t care what the people did. He thought he would carry Iris out to the field and lay with her there. Maybe all the villagers would watch them while they dreamed. He certainly didn’t plan to stay inside. But when he bent to Iris on the altar, he knew—as if he had eyes at the back of his head—the man and the woman at the door were watching. Michael kissed his beloved’s cheek, and then he saw the look on the yokels’ faces.
It was horror.
He knew, though the drug had started to hit him, he only had a moment now to make them safe. He shook the residue from his hands. Like a fistful of suet, it slapped the floor. He groped his way to the front. The man and woman jumped up screaming—running to tell the others, now they knew the truth. Michael’s heart was pounding when he reached the double doors. He stretched his arms like wings to pull them shut.
The whole process was nightmare slow, like trying to dam a river. He saw the villagers mobbing in the fields. They turned and came this way, as the doors closed inch by agonizing inch. He grunted with strain and threw his shoulder. Still there was a crack. The crowd began to pick up stones and hurl them as they lunged toward the church. A rock the size of an apple struck Michael in the chest. The first of the mob had already reached the steps as the door clicked shut. He just had a second to throw the bolt before they landed like a tidal wave.
He had been in such places before, of course. The angry mob yelling for blood, pounding to come inside. The total isolation. Everything turned on its head. All his voyages went this way: for three days he was God. Then overnight, they turned him into the devil.
People were crazy. They always were, no matter where you went, and so you learned to have a stone building ready. Then they could rail and beat on the walls as much as they liked. Batter the door and make it groan. Shriek till they spit up blood. No one was going to get in.
He backed away up the aisle, knocking his thigh on the corner of a pew. He grinned at the sound of assault outside, for nobody had a weapon or even a tool anymore. Michael had to laugh, because he’d never yet managed to get himself trapped with someone he loved before. He turned to run to her and kiss her all night long. He didn’t care about the masses. Let them starve. They were going to die anyway, weren’t they?
He had almost reached the altar when the wolf walked out of the shadows. Calm and completely unruffled, though perhaps its ears perked a little at the crash of sticks and stones against the walls. Michael wasn’t afraid. The wolf was a given. They approached each other as equals. It helped the prophet to stop being blind: of course they weren’t safe. If he didn’t do something right away, the door would give. They’d be torn to shreds.
“All right,” said Michael, as if the wolf had made a proposition.
He knelt to the floor, where the spores had spilled like a bowl of junket in a nursery. He scooped some on his fingers as the wolf stepped up. He commenced to smear it on and rub it into the fur. The wolf turned around obediently so he’d get an even coat. They were not the least like man and dog. They were like two spies on a mission. Life itself was narrow as a gunsight.
When the balm was gone, the wolf shook free of the stroking hands and made for
the door. Dozens were drumming their fists against it, rhythmic as a tribe at war. Somehow they took it in that there was something in the air, for they suddenly shut up and stepped back, leaving him room to surrender. As Michael reached the door, he could hear the stillness, poised to spring. He drew the bolt quickly, before he dared give it a thought. Then he barely cracked the door, and the wolf squirmed out.
The ring of villagers gasped when the beast stepped down among them, glowing gold with a sheen of spores. For a moment they gazed at the wolf dumbly, as if Michael had changed in front of their eyes. The prophet only caught a glimpse before he shut the door. He saw the wolf bound through the crowd and spring out onto the field. A little ways off he stopped like a dog and turned—impatient, mad to be on his way. Smiling, they ran to catch him with open arms, a sound like chanting on their lips. The last thing Michael saw, the wolf was leading the chase up into the trees.
Again he bolted the door, though he knew the danger was past. He tried not to think how it all would end, when they finally got the animal cornered. In a way, it was his own flesh they would rend and suck and ravage. That was as it should be. The wolf was one of his priests—in half an hour, would be one of his martyrs.
The drug was done. There wasn’t so much as a spot on the stone. Michael was feeling slightly blurred, giggling a bit and scratching his balls as he strolled about. He knew he’d never get to sleep. Not as deep as Iris, lying there in a perfect stillness, secret as a sea cave. Instead of lying beside her and wandering all the mountains in her arms, he watched her like a sentry, guarding her from the enemy.
He stood about eight feet back from the altar and pointed his finger at her like a wand. Nothing happened. Sparks didn’t fly, and no one rose in the air. The magician and the enchanted princess looked the same as ever. Surely it was a fantasy of his, that he had stopped the clock in her. There was no way to prove it; he didn’t especially jump for joy. But he seemed to feel that he’d done it. She was still as the rocks beneath their feet. Not a second dared go by.
Now he came close and tipped his head to study her gentle features in repose. He didn’t have any idea how long he could make it stick. In a short eight hours, the world was going to shed itself. Nothing was sure. He might have to lift the spell before it gained her half a day. She might never know the difference if he couldn’t stake a claim. Eternity was no use without a kingdom.
Still, it was lovely to think she would wake tomorrow morning out of time. If he’d done it right, she would hardly be aware that she was charmed. She’d stay the same forever, and never know whom to thank. There was nothing like her now in all creation. Though he had till the end of time himself, he wasn’t caught like she was, frozen in a moment. Michael changed like the weather. He was no one thing and never would be.
But Iris was. Season after season she would wander the cliffs and meadows, the hills and forest floor, seeing all things exactly in their time. She would not grieve like he did. All the fear would go, and with it all the power of death. Michael would learn from watching her and by-and-by recover what he’d lost, when he first saw the hands creep forward on a clock. In the midst of an awful emptiness, he had found a magic worthy of her. She, at least, was saved. If he’d never done anything else, he’d done that much.
For Iris’s sake, he smiled and touched her hand. He thanked whatever god it was that brought them back together. His love for her was perfect in its way. Yet deep inside, he swore he had been cheated. Even now, with the dream of his life in hand, he couldn’t let go the bitterness. He’d always thought that once he found his love, she would make him glad of who he was. It wasn’t so. The longer he stood in her light, the more he seemed to grow pocked and ragged and vile.
Why couldn’t he be Iris too? What did they need him for?
If he could only think of a way to get inside her head, he thought, he’d happily leave himself behind. Iris could stay in an endless sleep, and he would be her daylight. He capered about his cell, flinging bits of magic at the walls, to see if he could get the proper mix. Here and there a stone turned into a diamond. Music played on the spiderwebs. A rainbow shot the transept, washing his naked body pink and green and lavender. Honey seeped up through the cracks in the floor. The mice turned solid gold.
Soon he was so caught up in his tricks, he no longer felt the minutes slip away. It had turned into a circus now. He’d held back all his life: never once touched a blind man’s eyes or stopped a bullet or a speeding car. The maker and the healer in him were trapped like everything else. But now he had nothing to lose, so he spent his powers lavishly. The forces poured from his agile fingers, game for anything once. It wasn’t any use, of course. He’d already hypnotized the only one who might have loved him for it. But that was the rule of logic, and logic had no meaning here.
He walked up the walls like a daredevil kid, then stopped to peer from the highest windows, hovering like a hummingbird. He stood at her feet and did a hundred changes, turning into a tiger, an eagle, a monkey, a swan, a coyote. Nothing worked. Before the night was half gone, he was so obsessed it had slipped his mind exactly what he wanted here. He was like a jester, turning himself inside out to get the queen to laugh, when what was needed was a king.
The more she slept, the madder he got. Love was meant to make them one, but something had gone wrong. If only he’d had an enemy to pluck her from, he would have been a hero. As it was, he caromed around the walls till he couldn’t even see her. Given half a chance, he could have spilled out jewels by the thousand, till the two of them stood hip-deep in the vast-ness of their power. He could have made roses bloom in caves. All he wanted to do was be himself.
And since he wasn’t, he threw it all away till the hours had no choice.
They ate him up and ran for daylight.
She woke to a piercing ray of sun that shot through the high round window in the tower. She smiled as she squinted up at it. At first she thought they’d made it through. The dark was banished. Then, as she came up on one elbow and saw Michael standing haggard at the door, she realized they were nowhere yet. Night and day were not the issue. A jolt of panic shook her as she slid down off the altar—still a little wobbly from the drug, but wouldn’t show it. She was halfway to Michael before he turned. His look was so shy and powerless, even Iris was surprised.
“What time is it?” she asked him gruffly.
“What do you care?” he answered like an idiot, putting on a gentle smile that made her want to slap him.
She had no fear that he’d bar the way. She barreled by and shouldered through the doorway, stopping on the steps. The sun was directly in her eyes, shooting across the hills as if it had dug in on the highest point. The moon was nowhere in sight, but then it was meant to be invisible until the thing began. She still didn’t know if it came at once or gradually. And where had she learned that they lasted seven minutes? Was it something one of the boys had told her, studying up for school?
What boys?
“You sure you want to watch?”
“No,” she said deliberately. “I want to stop it.”
And though he gave a contemptuous laugh, she did not flinch or waver. She leaped down three stone steps to the gravel path and raced ahead to the street. The fields were completely empty. She couldn’t at first see out to the park on the point, on account of the stand of firs that clustered at the brook. But she already had a picture in her mind: all of them strung in a line at the edge, holding hands and staring out to sea. Nobody blinked. They’d reached the zombie stage. Their eyes would be fried before they ever saw the lip of darkness. She could do all the shouting and shaking she liked, for all the good it would do.
Suddenly, Michael was at her side, trotting to keep abreast. “How do you feel?” he whispered.
“Get away from me,” she snapped, shoving him aside. She could see the park was crowded now. All of Michael’s people were huddled on the lawn. At least they had not yet gone to the brink.
“But Iris, they don’t need you,” i
nsisted the prophet, touching her arm.
She jerked it away with a snarl. They passed beneath the sighing firs. She could see them in groups like picnickers. Like families. They turned their ashy faces toward the sun, as if to get a little color. Iris went up to the nearest group. She reached to grab a woman about her age, when Michael gripped her arm and spun her around.
“Listen,” he seethed, his temper frayed, “they don’t need me either. My part’s over. Can’t you understand? You’re not like them anymore.”
She bent down and bit his knuckles where he clutched her. He drew back his hand with a gasp. Thrilled that she’d made him mad, Iris turned and yanked the woman to her feet. She was streaked with clay, her lips were cracked and festered, and she stunk of loose bowels. “Go!” bellowed Iris, shaking her till her teeth rattled. “Go to the woods and hide!”
Briefly, the glaze in the woman’s eyes appeared to break. She looked at Iris and nodded with a smile. Then she made off across the park, weaving among the assembled bands. She laid her hand in passing on a couple of shoulders, as if to give some others courage. Iris was seized with triumph. She was sure she’d done it: the woman was going to retrieve her loved ones. The forces had gotten it wrong. These people didn’t want to die. Iris made a move toward the next—a woman half her age. She helped her up and, because she was shaky, held her close and rocked her like a daughter. She stared out over the woman’s shoulder, choked with hope.
But something didn’t work. The first woman didn’t stop after all, not till she reached the very edge. There she stood at attention, toes out over the cliff, as if she were following orders. Iris, in her confusion, loosed her grip on the one she was holding. She drew a breath to shout the woman back, and the young one slipped away and ran across to the verge. At first it looked as if she meant to fetch the stray, but all she did was stand beside her. A titter passed between them as they gazed at the cloudless sun.
