The A. Merritt Megapack

by Abraham Merritt

  Jean Meredith saw, or thought she saw, the incredible.

  Where fox had been, stood now a woman! She was tall, and lithe as a young willow. Jean Meredith could not see her face, but she could see hair of russet-red coifed upon a small and shapely head. A silken gown of russet-red, sleeveless, dropped to the woman’s feet. She raised an arm and pointed at the pock-faced leader. Behind him his men were silent, motionless, even as Jean Meredith had been—and it came to her that it was the same ice of terror that held them. Their eyes were fixed upon the woman.

  The woman’s hand dropped—slowly. And as it dropped, the pock-faced Tibetan dropped with it. He sank to his knees and then upon his hands. He stared into her face, lips drawn back from his teeth like a snarling dog, and there was foam upon his lips. Then he hurled himself upon his men, like a wolf. He sprang upon them howling; he leaped up at their throats, tearing at them with teeth and talons. They milled, squalling rage and bewildered terror. They tried to beat him off—they could not.

  There was a flashing of knives. The pock-face lay writhing on the steps, like a dog dying. Still squalling, never looking behind them, his men poured down the steps and away.

  Jean Meredith’s hands went up, covering her eyes. She dropped them—a fox, all silken russet-red, stood where the woman had been. It was watching her. She saw its green eyes sparkle, its white teeth bared as though it smiled—it began to walk daintily up the steps toward her.

  Weakness swept over her; she bent her head, crumpled to her knees, covered again her eyes with shaking hands. She was aware of an unfamiliar fragrance—disturbing, evocative of strange, fleeting images. She heard low, sweet laughter. She heard a Soft voice whisper:

  “Sister!”

  She looked up. A woman’s face was bending over her. An exquisite face… with sea-green, slanted eyes under a broad white brow… with hair of russet-red that came to a small peak in the center of that brow… a lock of silvery white shaped like the flame of a candle wavering in the wind… a nose long but delicate, the nostrils slightly flaring, daintily… a mouth small and red as the royal coral, heart-shaped, lips full, archaic.

  Over that exquisite face, like a veil, was faint mockery, a delicate malice that had in them little of the human. Her hands were white and long and slender.

  They touched Jean Meredith’s heart… soothing her, strengthening her, drowning fear and sorrow.

  She heard again the sweet voice, lilting, faintly amused—with the alien, half-malicious amusement of one who understands human emotion yet has never felt it, but knows how little it matters:

  “You shall have your vengeance—Sister!” The white hands touched her eyes… she forgot… and forgot… and now there was nothing to remember… not even herself.…

  It seemed to Jean Meredith that she lay cushioned within soft, blind darkness—illimitable, impenetrable. She had no memories; all that she knew was that she was. She thought: I am I. The darkness that cradled her was gentle, kindly. She thought: I am a spirit still unborn in the womb of night. But what was night… and what was spirit? She thought: I am content—I do not want to be born again. Again? That meant that she had been born before… a word came to her—Jean. She thought: I am Jean… but who was Jean?

  She heard two voices speaking. One a woman’s, soft and sweet with throbbing undertones like plucked harp strings. She had heard that voice before… before, when she had been Jean. The man’s voice was low, filled with tranquillity, human… that was it, the voice held within it a humanness the sweet voice of the woman lacked. She thought: I, Jean, am human.…

  The man said: “Soon she must awaken. The tide of sleep is high on the shore of life. It must not cover it.”

  The woman answered: “I command that tide. And it has begun to ebb. Soon she will awaken.”

  He asked: “Will she remember?”

  The woman said: “She will remember. But she will not suffer. It will be as though what she remembers had happened to another self of hers. She will pity that self, but it will be to her as though it died when died her husband. As indeed it did. That self bears the sorrow, the pain, the agony. It leaves no legacy of them to her—save memory.”

  And now it seemed to her that for a time there was a silence… although she knew that time could not exist within the blackness that cradled her… and what was—time?

  The man’s voice broke that silence, musingly: “With memory there can be no happiness for her, long as she lives.”

  The woman laughed, a tingling-sweet mocking chime: “Happiness? I thought you wiser than to cling to that illusion, priest. I give her serenity, which is far better than happiness. Nor did she ask for happiness. She asked for vengeance. And vengeance she shall have.”

  The man said: “But she does not know who—”

  The woman interrupted: “She does know. And I know. And so shall you when you have told her what was wrung from the Tibetan before he died. And if you still do not believe, you will believe when he who is guilty comes here, as come he will—to kill the child.”

  The man whispered: “To kill the child!”

  The woman’s voice became cold, losing none of its sweetness but edged with menace: “You must not let him have it, priest. Not then. Later, when the word is given you.…”

  Again the voice grew mocking… “I contemplate a journey… I would see other lands, who so long have dwelt among these hills… and I would not have my plans spoiled by precipitancy.…” Once more Jean Meredith heard the tingling laughter. “Have no fear, priest. They will help you—my sisters.”

  He said, steadily: “I have no fear.”

  The woman’s voice became gentle, all mockery fled< She said:

  “I know that, you who have had wisdom and courage to open forbidden doors. But I am bound by a threefold cord—a promise, a vow, and a desire. When a certain time comes, I must surrender much—must lie helpless, bound by that cord. It is then that I shall need you, priest, for this man who will come.…”

  The voices faded. Slowly the blackness within which she lay began to lighten. Slowly, slowly, a luminous greyness replaced it. She thought, desperately: I am going to be born! I don’t want to be born! Implacably, the light increased. Now within the greyness was a nimbus of watery emerald. The nimbus became brighter, brighter.…

  She was lying upon a low bed, in a nest of silken cushions. Close to her was an immense and ancient bronze vessel, like a baptismal font. The hands of thousands of years had caressed it, leaving behind them an ever deepening patina like a soft green twilight. A ray of the sun shone upon it, and where the ray rested, the patina gleamed like a tiny green sun. Upon the sides of the great bowl were strange geometric patterns, archaic, the spirals and meanders of the Lei-wen—the thunder patterns. It stood upon three legs, tripodal… why, it was the ancient ceremonial vessel, the Tang font which Martin had brought home from Yunnan years ago… and she was back home… she had dreamed that she had been in China and that Martin… that Martin.…

  She sat up abruptly and looked through wide, opened doors into a garden. Broad steps dropped shallowly to an oval pool around whose sides were lithe willows trailing green tendrils in the blue water, wisterias with drooping ropes of blossoms, white and pale azure, and azaleas like flower flames. Rosy lilies lay upon the pool’s breast. And at its far end was a small pagoda, fairy-like, built all of tiles of iridescent peacock blue and on each side a stately cypress, as though they were its ministers… why, this was their garden, the garden of the blue pagoda which Martin had copied from that place in Yunnan where lived his friend, the wise old priest.…

  But there was something wrong. These mountains were not like those of the ranch. They were conical, their smooth bare slopes of rose-red stone circled with trees… they were like huge stone hats with green brims.…

  She turned again and looked about the room. It was a wide room and a deep one, but how deep she could not see, because the sun streaming in from a high window struck the ancient vessel and made a curtain, veiling it beyond. She cou
ld see that there were beams across its ceiling, mellow with age, carved with strange symbols. She caught glimpses of ivory and of gleaming lacquer. There was a low altar of what seemed green jade, curiously carved and upon which were ceremonial objects of unfamiliar shape, a huge ewer of bronze whose lid was the head of a fox.…

  A man came toward her, walking out of the shadows beyond the ancient Tang vessel. He was clothed from neck to feet in a silken robe of silvery-blue upon which were embroidered, delicately as though by spiders, Taoist symbols and under them, ghostly in silver threads, a fox’s head. He was bald, his face heavy, expressionless, skin smooth and faded yellow as some antique parchment. So far as age went he might have been sixty—or three hundred. But it was his eyes that held Jean Meredith. They were large and black and, liquid, and prodigiously alive. They were young eyes, belying the agelessness of the heavy face; and it was as though the face was but a mask from which the eyes had drawn all life into themselves. They poured into her strength and calmness and reassurance, and from her mind vanished all vagueness, all doubts, all fears. Her mind for the first time since the ambush was clear, crystal clear, her thoughts her own.

  She remembered—remembered everything. But it was as though all had happened to another self. She felt pity for that self, but it had left no heritage of sorrow. She was tranquil. The black, youthful eyes poured tranquillity into her.

  She said: “I know you. You are Yu Ch’ien, the wise priest my husband loved. This is the Temple of the Foxes.”

  CHAPTER II

  “I am Yu Ch’ien, my daughter.” His voice was the man’s voice which she had heard when cradled in the darkness.

  She tried to rise, then swayed back upon the bed, weakness overcoming her.

  He said: “A night and a day, and still another night and half this day you have slept, and now you must eat.” He spoke the English words slowly, as one whose tongue had long been stranger to them.

  He clapped his hands and a woman slipped by the great vase through the bars of the sunlight. She was ageless as he, with broad shrewd face and tilted sloeblack eyes that were kindly yet very wise. A smock covered her from full breasts to knees, and she was sturdy and strong and brown as though she had been carved from seasoned wood. In her hands was a tray upon which was a bowl of steaming broth and oaten cakes.

  The woman sat beside Jean Meredith, lifting her head, resting it against her deep bosom and feeding her like a child, and now Jean saw that herself was naked except for a thin robe of soft blue silk and that upon it was the moon-silver symbol of the fox.

  The priest nodded, his eyes smiled upon her. “Fienwi will attend you. Soon you will be stronger. Soon I shall return. Then we shall talk.”

  He passed out of the wide doors. The woman fed her the last of the broth, the last of the little cakes. She left her, and returned with bowls of bronze in which was water hot and cold; undressed her; ministered to her, bathed her and rubbed her; dressed her in fresh silken robes of blue; strapped sandals to her feet, and smiling, left her. Thrice Jean essayed to speak to her, but the woman only shook her head, answering in a lisping dialect, no sound of which she recognized.

  The sun had moved from the great Tang font. She lay back, lazily. Her mind was limpidly clear; upon it was reflected all through which she had passed, yet it was tranquil, untroubled, like a woodland pool that reflects the storm clouds but whose placid surface lies undisturbed. The things that had happened were only images reflected upon her mind. But under that placid surface was something implacable, adamant-hard, something that would have been bitter did it not know that it was to be satisfied.

  She thought over what Martin had told her of Yu Ch’ien. A Chinese whose forefathers had been enlightened rulers ten centuries before the Man of Galilee had been raised upon the cross, who had studied Occidental thought both in England and France, and had found little in it to satisfy his thirst for wisdom; who had gone back to the land of his fathers, embraced at last the philosophy of Lao-Tse, and had withdrawn from the world to an ancient fane in Yunnan known as the Temple of the Foxes, a temple reverenced and feared and around which strange legends clustered; there to spend his life in meditation and study.

  What was it Martin had called him? Ah, yes, a master of secret and forgotten knowledge, a master of illusion. She knew that of all men, Martin had held Yu Ch’ien in profoundest respect, deepest affection… she wondered if the woman she had seen upon the steps had been one of his illusions… if the peace she felt came from him… if he had made sorrow and pain of soul illusions for her… and was she thinking the thoughts he had placed in her mind—or her own… she wondered dreamily, not much caring.…

  He came through the doors to her, and again it was as though his eyes were springs of tranquillity from which her soul drank deep. She tried to rise, to greet him; her mind was strong but through all her body was languor. He touched her forehead, and the languor fled. He said:

  “All is well with you, my daughter. But now we must talk. We will go into the garden.”

  He clapped his hands. The brown woman, Fien-wi, came at the summons, and with her two blue-smocked men bearing a chair. The woman lifted her, placed her in the chair. The men carried her out of the wide doors, down the shallow steps to the blue pool. She looked behind her as she went.

  The temple was built into the brow of the mountain. It was of brown stone and brown wood. Slender pillars hard bitten by the teeth of the ages held up a curved roof of the peacock blue tiles. From the wide doors through which she had come a double row of sculptured foxes ran, like Thebes’ road of the Sphynxes, half way down to the pool. Over the crest of the mountain crept the ancient steps up which she had stumbled. Where the steps joined the temple, stood a tree covered all with white blossoms. It wavered in the wind like the flame of a candle.

  Strangely was the temple like the head of a fox, its muzzle between the paws of the rows of sculptured foxes, the crest of the mountain its forehead and the white blossoming tree, like the lock of white upon the forehead of the fox of the steps… and the white lock upon the forehead of the woman.…

  They were at the pool. There was a seat cut at the end, facing the blue pagoda. The woman Fien-wi piled the stone with cushions and, as she waited, Jean Meredith saw that there were arms to this seat and that at the end of each was the head of a fox, and that over its back was a tracery of dancing foxes; and she saw, too, that on each side of the seat tiny paths had been cut in stone leading to the water, as though for some small-footed creatures to trot upon and drink.

  She was lifted to the stone chair, and sank into the cushions. Except for the seat and the little runways, it was as though she sat beside the pool Martin had built at their California ranch. There, as here, the willows dipped green tendrils into the water; there, as here, drooped ropes of wisteria, pale amethyst and white. And here as there was peace.

  Yu Ch’ien spoke: “A stone is thrown into a pool. The ripples spread and break against the shore. At last they cease and the pool is as before. Yet when the stone strikes, as it sinks and while the ripples live, microscopic lives within the pool are changed. But not for long. The stone touches bottom, the pool again becomes calm. It is over, and life for the tiny things is as before.”

  She said quietly, out of the immense clarity of her mind: “You mean, Yu Ch’ien, that my husband’s murder was such a stone.”

  He went on, as though she had not spoken: “But there is life within life, and over life, and under life—as we know life. And that which happens to the tiny things within the pool may be felt by those beneath and above them. Life is a bubble in which are lesser bubbles which we cannot see, and the bubble we call life is only part of a greater bubble which also we may not see. But sometimes we perceive those bubbles, sometimes glimpse the beauty of the greater, sense the kinship of the lesser… and sometimes a lesser life touches ours and then we speak of demons… and when the greater ones touch us we name it inspiration from Heaven, an angel speaking through our lips—”

  She inte
rrupted, thought crystal clear: “I understand you, Martin’s murder was the stone. It would pass with its ripples—but it has disturbed some pool within which it was a lesser pool. Very well, what then?”

  He said: “There are places in this world where the veil between it and the other worlds is thin. They can enter. Why it is so, I do not know—but I know it is so. The ancients recognized such places. They named those who dwelt unseen there the genii locorum—literally, the spirits of the places. This mountain, this temple, is such a place. It is why I came to it.”

  She said: “You mean the fox I saw upon the steps. You mean the woman I thought I saw take the place of that fox, and who drove the Tibetan mad. The fox I asked to help me and to give me revenge, and whom I called sister. The woman I thought I saw who whispered to me that I should have revenge and who called me sister. Very well, what then?”

  He answered: “It is true. The murder of your husband was the stone. Better to have let the ripples die. But there was this place… there was a moment… and now the ripples cannot die until—”

  Again she interrupted the true thought—or what she believed the true thought—flashing up through her mind like sun-glints from jewels at a clear pool’s bottom. “I had denied my God. Whether he exists or does not, I had stripped myself of my armor against those other lives. I did it where and when such other lives, if they exist, could strike. I accept that. And again, what then?”

  He said: “You have a strong soul, my daughter.”

  She answered, with a touch of irony: “While I was within the blackness, before I awakened, I seemed to hear two persons talking, Yu Ch’ien. One had your voice, and the other the voice of the fox woman who called me sister. She promised me serenity. Well, I have that. And having it, I am as unhuman as was her voice. Tell me, Yu Ch’ien, whom my husband called master of illusions, was that woman upon the steps one of your illusions, and was her voice another? Does my serenity come from her or from you? I am no child, and, I know how easily you could accomplish this, by drugs or by your will while I lay helpless.”