Every window and door remained shut despite the heat. Heavy curtains covered the windows. Burns heard no talking from the houses; he heard no animals. He felt as if he and Pais were the only people left in Rodenje. Other than their own voices, the only sounds were their shoes pressing the harvested plants, crushing and popping berries and seedpods.
-- where are the other tourists? Where's Elsie?
He asked, "Why is the town so quiet?"
"This is a holy day."
For half an hour, Pais led him through the corridor of flowers. Eventually they stopped before an ancient grey wall that divided a street. It had a narrow archway; the corridor of grasses and flowers stopped at its threshold. To Burns, the wall looked like part of a younger Rodenje. Beyond it, bronze bowls were set beside the door of each house in the otherwise undecorated part of the street.
Burns noticed a crumbled engraving above the archway. Pais looked impatient when he stopped to read it. She raised her eyes to the inscription. "You look at decorations? You are a tourist, after all! Can you understand it?"
"It's in Latin. Did the Romans left this?"
He wasn't about to admit that his understanding of the tongue depended more on his familiarity with university texts than on a mastery of the language, but most of the inscription survived, and he drew some meaning from the words: mulier in omnes partes.
"The phrasing is odd. It says 'the woman is to all parts,' or maybe, 'the woman is in all directions.' Don't ask me what it means, I've never come by it."
Since they stopped walking, Burns became mindful of their holding hands. He took his hand from Pais. She hardly noticed.
He asked, "Can you tell why the archway is here?"
"It belongs to a chapel."
-- belonged to; Burns decided not to correct her.
It occurred to him that he didn't know which side they were on -- inside or outside the walls of the bygone chapel? It brought to mind his visit to the chapel in the woods, its wonderfully monstrous statues.
Pais looked nervous now, anticipatory. Her eyes remained on the inscription, as if trying to discover a new meaning in the ancient message.
He asked, "You said this is a holy day. Are you celebrating a saint?"
"We have no saints."
He asked, "What do you believe?"
"The Lady. She is all things at once."
"You really believe this?"
The belief in a goddess-progenitor was one of the phases of the proto-gargoyle he needed to prove. He'd thought genuine matriarchal religions long dead -- until now, he lived under the assumption that even die-hard Wiccans used their system of beliefs as a moral or intellectual guide, engaging romanticised notions that alternative beliefs were somehow purer than mere modern knowledge. If Pais' faith went beyond the role she played for the festival, Burns might reap valuable information from her. He wondered if Professor Kingston realised the ancient religion might have survived against the odds.
Pais said, "Who I pray to doesn't care if I sit or kneel, or if I face a wall or face some table, or if I look up, or if I have priests. People who worship, they do it for themselves. Who I pray to stands outside all this." She waved at the town. "Stone and clay does not matter."
"It mattered to whoever built a chapel here."
"These things are mirrors for us. Seeing is important for us. Seeing is, is truth?"
"Seeing is believing."
"I think I am right," she corrected him, and gave another of her shrugs. "What do you believe?"
"I suppose I believe in what you just said – I believe in what I see."
"You have no faith?"
"Belief without proof won’t get me far."
"You came to Rodenje on faith. You came without knowing what you would find."
Burn frowned. How much had he discussed with her last night?
"I'm looking for information. Proof. I don't know what this is," he said, waving a hand at the flowers and grasses, "but it isn't what I left the hotel for."
"You think you can find what you want in books and from old statues? You came to copy information?" She looked disappointed.
"Collecting information is just the beginning. I need to understand it, and explain what makes it important."
"And that is all you will do? Make another book?"
"It might be important. It might teach people the importance of Rodenje's past."
"And you will decide what is important for us?"
He made an effort to look at Pais as she was, separate from his impressions -- and saw she was what she had claimed outside the hotel -- nina, virgo: just a girl, a young woman of little experience and considering Rodenje, of limited education. He wasn’t sure what he could expect from her, other than mischief.
"Are you just playing around? You can't help me, can you? That's not why you brought me here."
"You are looking for sources."
-- I wish I could remember telling her, he thought.
"Why do you keep them, if you don't need them?"
"For scholars like you."
"And the festival?"
"For the orphans. It helps them to understand."
"The orphans? You mean the people. Like me?"
Pais grasped his hand again. "You are not an orphan." Her grip was tight now, anxious. Burns had a mind to stop her, but then he let her pull him through the archway. She didn't look back. The ghost of the ancient chapel enveloped them; Burns' skin cooled as if under a shadow. The daylight seemed less bright after leaving the carpet of dead plants. The houses were smaller beyond the ancient wall. They crouched.
Pais picked up pace.
*
She took him through streets narrow as alleys. Burns finally heard movements from behind the doors -- cutlery on plates, even a few voices; enough to tell him the stillness of the plant-carpeted streets had left him uneasy, and for him to take comfort from other life, even if it remained unseen. When birds tapped the rooftops and he looked for them, the high sun washed the vision from his eyes. He supposed he heard Rodenje' overlarge crows, even if their grumbling sounded like sniggers.
Dark liquid filled deep bronze bowls left beside the doorways. Red wine, Burns thought. Around many were dark stains on the stone, as if something had lapped from them. As they continued, Burns could smell the contents of the bowls -- red wine for sure, and wild herbs and spices more potent than anything he'd drank in Rodenje. After several more streets, it became unpleasant, gamy, and reminded Burns of the sickly concoctions his own system struggled with. It made his stomach feel queasy and soft as overripe fruit.
"I'm getting tired of this," he said. He doubted Pais would lead him back to the hotel, and they had taken so many turns the town seemed a genuine maze.
Pais kept walking. Burns wondered why he allowed this young woman to lead him. He swore at himself for letting her lure him this far. She wasn’t even old enough for college. He tugged her hand, and she looked back.
Burns looked at a stranger. The woman looking back -- and this was a woman, not a girl -- gave him an impatient tug to counter his own, as if leading a brazen child.
Then it was Pais again; her large absorbing eyes (they seemed darker now), her slender face, the outthrusting lips. A peek from his engulfed memories showed Pais leading him and Elsie from the festival last night. Flickering lamps and candles had made Pais seem young and then old, washing years to and from her in subtle tides of illumination. She had looked back often to make sure Burns still had Elsie's hand; Elsie might have been a string connecting them.
Burns said, "I want to know what you're up to."
She gave a tired -- or maybe it was just a bored -- sigh, and said, "Wait."
She took him around another corner. He was about to make a final protest and turn back, when he finally saw movement other than their own: three people (men, he judged by their cloaked bulk) displayed around a wooden pole set in the road at the far end of the street. One wore sheepskins so recently stripped that blood smeared the muscular protrud
ing arms. He hunched like an animal. When he raised his head, which wore the sagging face of the pelt like a hood, Burns saw an animal's maw over his own -- not a herbivore's, either; it looked predatory. The second man shifted under several pelts, including a large dog's lopsided staring face. The third form lay inside pale and damp tubular pelts stitched together. The wearer was so contorted that it was impossible to tell which end of the costume hid his head -- the entire form was a convulsing organic tube, as if it choked on the person inside.
The men repeatedly flinched as if stung; they rattled heavy chains that kept them to the pole. It was one of the strangest displays Burns had ever seen.
"What's that about?"
"They are tributes."
Pais led Burns toward the costumed men. They made him want to turn back for a very different reason than tiredness and his hangover -- something about their disguises and movements troubled him. The odour from the bowls was strongest on this street, at its wildest and most unpleasant. Burns felt his legs turn wooden.
Pais startled him when she pushed through a door on their right. He noticed as she pulled him into the house that it was the only one since the archway without a bowl outside. When an animal grunt from the street attracted Burns' attention, Pais quickly turned to touch his chin and prevent him from looking outside. She leant by him and shut the door.
Tribute (Pt. 1)
Pais closed the door. The room became dim. She walked by Burns. The room had a wooden table so close to the ground Burns might have thought it a child's toy, with two squat stools at either end. It wasn't a toy; nothing in the sparsely furnished room struck Burns as frivolous. Instead of drapes, a wooden shutter covered the window. Slivers of daylight trickled between the slats. In one corner, an unlit oil lamp hanging from a metal hook breathed paraffin, ephemeral as a ghost. Another metal hook hung from the ceiling in the corner opposite, and held a birdcage with a mesh like a spider's web. Several small shapes flitted inside the cage. Other than their wings, which made continuous whispers, the birds made no sound. Their plumage blended with the wall, making it difficult for Burns to distinguish their form. Their restless flight upset what Burns assumed were dry wood shavings or strips of paper covering the base of the cage, until a dead yellow leaf flapped through the mesh. It twirled to the floor a few inches from a bowl. The bowl had its contents made darker by the shaded room, but Burns made out the burnt mound in the centre of the liquid, most of its short quills scorched of feathers.
He asked, "Is that a tribute, too?"
"We have a saying -- the Lady is at the door. We try to make her welcome."
Pais looked nervous again. She went to an outcrop on the wall no wider than a belt, where she kept various small items -- cheap gems, small knives, thin necklace chains, crude etchings made of small rocks, coloured stubs of candles -- and picked a small cardboard box from the assortment. She took it to the lantern, and removed a match to light the curled wick. It bloomed a flame that cast a yellowish and fleshy light that made her lips and eyes seem even larger, fuller. Her features softened, as if Burns saw her under a pool of water.
Again, Burns felt he was missing something -- as was this room. It had no books. The walls were unpainted, undecorated, rough brick. The room had one door other than the exit. Lower and narrower, the second door arched, and reminded Burns of the eye of a needle.
Pais opened the narrow door and went through. The space inside was just a suggestion; the lantern illuminated just a portion of its surroundings. Pais became vague in the deeper murk, another suggestion. Familiar bitter incense came through the door, mixed with something wilder that reminded Burns of the reek from the men chained to the pole outside, yet somehow this was more pleasing.
Burns thought of Pais dancing through the streets. He thought of the dead bird in the deep bronze bowl soaking in wine. A flurried commotion pointed him to the birdcage, where one of the birds bit another on the back of the neck, and wrestled its victim to the base of the cage, where they tangled inside a swirl of dead leaves.
Burns started something sliding along outside the front door; he thought of the fleshy tube or one of the other disguised men around the pole.
From the other room, Pais called, "Come here, Burns."
Burns was sure yesterday evening's overindulgences were affecting his perception (it certainly affected his imagination; he wasn't given to paranoid thoughts such as transformed man-creatures seeking him out), but even Pais' tone, if not her accent, made him think Elsie waited in the other room. It was possible, he supposed; he had no idea of where Elsie had gone.
He moved away from the searching, scratching, sniffing sounds on the street, through the narrow door. He could barely see the walls, but sensed it was smaller than the room he'd left.
The odours were fuel to his senses; they warmed his lungs and stomach like spices, and prickled his skin like static. It had him salivate, it made his blood pulse harder.
Whatever covered the floor made brittle sounds under his shoes, like the berries underfoot during his walk through the floral corridor. He took a relaxed form in one corner for Pais, before she moved from the wall on the opposite side of the room, toward Burns. That other form remained against the corner. He waited for it to move. It didn't. Instead, Pais' hand moved against his.
At first, he thought the dimness affected her vision as much as it did his, and she was feeling her way through the room, but her hand touched and then pressed on his chest. His heart shuddered, as if it were another entity responding to Pais's touch. His thoughts tangled, and scattered. When Pais stepped away, she left an ache in Burns for her to reach through the dark and touch him again. His veins trembled. He became aware of something like a slab near where he stood, low to the ground. A bed? It reminded him of the altar in the chapel in the woods.
He tried to follow Pais but even this close and given the cramped confines, his eyes read no more than basic forms. The clues he absorbed were uncertain -- as Pais went to the slack bulk in the corner, her hair, which Burns thought buoyant while they strode through Rodenje, struck him as spidery. He thought that she must have put on at least part of a costume, and wondered what the next phase of the festival might entail, before he remembered why he'd let Pais lead him here: the texts.
When she came back, he hoped for her to touch his chest again. Instead, she stepped so close her breaths misted his neck. This close, he could read the fullness of her lips, and see her eyes, large and unblinking, gaping as if made thirsty by the dark. The scratching at the front door stopped. Stillness surrounded them. Burns could almost believe the town was as empty as it had appeared during the walk here; only he and Pais remained.
Pais put one hand against his hip, and the other against his stomach. Her fingers through his shirt felt cool and pleasant, and moved down his stomach to dip inside the waist of his jeans as if to test the temperature of water, before sinking further between the fabric and Burns' skin. Her fingers and his cock found each other; their skin slid between whatever ointment she used to coat her hands while in the corner.
The scent of her now was maddening; it roiled in Burns' chest, it made him woozy. He groaned. She tightened her hold, pulled him nearer while her other hand grasped his belt buckle. Her movements were eager yet controlled. Burns reached for the hair above her neck and grabbed her hip. Her lips slid, exposing teeth. Then she gave a nervous giggle, patting his face with more misty breaths. He felt for where he could fit his hand down the waist of her skirt, but the tailoring was unfamiliar, and he groped at the fabric without getting at her skin. She giggled again, playful and teasing, but also nervous; her uncertainty excited Burns even more.
She drew him back by his cock until she sat on the low slab. She had no success with opening Burns' jeans after unbuckling the belt (the zipper refused to cooperate against the added bulge of Burns' erection and her kneading hand), and tilted her arm awkwardly to keep hold inside the fabric.
Burns pushed her until she lay back. He almost fell over when his shins
hit the slab -- it had no give, it wasn't a bed. Rock, he thought. He ignored the skinned shins, and knelt above Pais. She finally tugged his zip open.
She kept her hand on his cock, both pulsing together, and used her other hand to take Burns by a wrist to the warmth between her legs. Her body shook and she arched; her maddening scent bloomed around him. He tugged his jeans down, and she raised her pelvis for him.
Something dragged itself across the floor of the outer room. He wondered if Pais had closed the front door without locking it. He turned, and saw a form that was almost a man except for the animal bulk of the shoulders and skull reach a fleshy arm into the bedroom. Someone wearing another animal pelt, Burns thought. Dark marbling over the stranger's arm gleamed like warm gravy; like blood. The arm swung back to the outer room as if scorched, drawing shut the door.
Pais reached her legs around his waist and pulled him closer. "Teraz," she whispered. "Dnes."
Burns didn't need to understand the words. Instead of trying to decipher her tailoring, he caught the hem of her skirt and pushed it above her open thighs, over her hips, and she pulled him the final few inches it took to enter her.
*
He heard the creatures in the outer room slump on the door and wall, hungry, curious, and aroused. He heard them with each other, thoughtless, breathless, and grasping; the sounds made Pais wrap tighter around him. His stomach pressed over hers, their hands clawed as if struggling for life. Their aches spread through them, enveloped them in waves, explored them, invaded them.
Tribute (Pt. 2)
Afterwards, Burns lay listening to whatever bodies had entered the outer room drag themselves back to the street. The smell of his sweat and sex mixed with those from Pais and the room. The slab he lay on was rock, but it was smooth, and warm. With the door to the outer room closed, there was no light, yet Burns suspected something else moved in here. It breathed almost at the same rate as Pais, long and satisfied. Yet the longer he stared into the dark and waited, the less sure he became of the uninvited and unseen voyeur.
Dead Birds: The Dark Orphans Collection Page 8
