The dog stood up and whined. Puppies.
When she had more time, Día would wonder if the dog made any distinction between puppies and people. “No, they aren’t – these aren’t U’ru’s people, Mother Dog. They belong to the Lady of the House.”
The dog circled her legs, insistent. Lost puppies.
“Yes, but – but the person who hurt them may still be here, and I’m afraid he’ll hurt me too.”
The dog stopped circling, and stood still beside her. Bigness. Dominance.
Día seriously doubted that. She glanced down. “Can you promise I’ll be safe?”
The dog looked up, with the first sense of disapproval Día had felt from her.
Yes, of course: that was an impious question to ask of God or any of his appointed representatives. “I’m sorry,” Día said. “I understand that it’s important to help them. I’m only...” She looked again at the pool, and thought about what would be required to cut whatever ropes were holding them down. “... will you stay with me, please, and keep watching over me?”
Día was answered with a hand-lick. That would have to do.
So she removed her belt and her knife, and set them aside. She unfastened her cassock, and laid it down likewise. Then she pulled her white shift over her head, and when that was done, she was nothing but herself and the golden sun-wheel pendant around her neck.
The carved handle of the knife was smooth in her hand. The water was cool around her feet. Día sat down at the edge of the pool, calculating the point at the bottom where the lines holding those seven souls in limbo would have their common origin. Then she took a deep breath, closed her eyes, and slid in.
She could not have descended more than a few feet before her toes touched the bottom, but that was enough to dissolve the twilight behind her eyelids into total darkness. Día reached out, groping for the ropes that had to be tying them down –
Her fingers closed around chain.
Her heart sank. She ducked down to the bottom, feeling along the pitiless iron links to discover what was anchoring them. They disappeared into a crevice – a rock, she realized, almost a boulder, pinning them all to the sandstone floor. It was long and flat and brutally heavy – surely custom-selected for the task – and as she planted her feet and heaved, her first thought was hope: she could not feel the rock lift, but the chains were moving.
Something kicked her.
Día’s eyes snapped open. Startled by the sudden blow to the back of her head, she let go of the rock and surged up for the surface.
A hand grabbed her hair. Another closed over her arm. Her scream was nothing but a column of bubbles. Her first back-flung elbow hit something wet and heavy; she kicked and thrashed and threw her head forward, senseless with panic.
BE STILL.
Día could barely hear the water-distorted sound of the dog’s barking above the blood pounding in her ears. She froze for an instant – long enough to feel half a dozen slimy hands let go – and kicked for the surface again. This time, nothing prevented her as she scrambled out of the water and collapsed, naked and gasping, into the grass.
It crinkled like dry straw under the weight of soft, approaching paws.
Again.
“I can’t,” Día cried.“I tried, but I can’t.”
Again.
“I CAN’T!” she shrieked, and curled over on her side. “It’s too heavy – it’s too hard.” And she tried to show the problem in her mind: a horse or a mule or a few strong men might be able to lift that rock, but Día had nothing but herself. It couldn’t be done.
One.
Día rolled over. The dog did not wag, or smile. It did not come forward to lick her or shove its nose under her hand. It only stood there, its golden eyes bright in the dark, and waited.
“What good will that do?” Día answered, and pushed herself up to sit. “And what makes you think I can accomplish even that much? I’ve already said –”
One.
Día shut her mouth, and looked back at the pool. Its occupants had gone still again, but faint, contrary ripples still disturbed the surface.
Well. A chain had two ends, after all... and she only needed to free one. “I’ll try,” she said. “But you have to keep them still.” And if that was an impious demand, then so be it. The duties of a grave bride compelled her to do everything in her power to help the dead find their rest, and their interests would not be served by adding another body to the count.
The dog followed her back to the edge of the pool. Día sat at the edge again, and gingerly extended one leg towards that submerged forest of hands and arms. One made a clumsy grab for her foot, its movement announced by an unnatural eddy in the water.
It was answered by a growl. The dog stayed there at the edge of the water, staring, her hackles raised, her curly tail held stiff and straight. The water went still.
But even after the last ripples had smoothed out, Día couldn’t bring herself to move. She sat there at the edge of the water, shivering in the breeze, negotiating with horror.
This was the correct thing to do. It was a crucial, necessary act. And hadn’t she been hungry for some great purpose? Hadn’t she spent days wishing and begging and crying to know where she was going, and to what end? And now she was here – anchored, centered, set firmly to a task that exactly matched her life’s devotion – and all she could think of was how dark the night was... and how dreadful that water was... and how she was probably the only still-living person for miles and miles around – one fragile human heartbeat alone in a wild, lightless world.
She’d better hope she was alone, anyway.
The dog glanced over at her, and Día felt a wordless pang of admonition.
No, of course not. She wasn’t alone. She never had been. And if anyone knew loneliness, it was those lipless, milky-eyed martyrs there. How many nights had they floated here in their stagnant purgatory, without even one timid stranger to sit beside them? What were the names of their frantic fathers back home, and how long had they been sleepless with fear? Really, after so many days spent stewing in restless, helpless terror, who wouldn’t cling and grab at any rescuer within reach?
“Forgive me,” she said, just in case any of them knew Marín. “I didn’t understand. Please try to be gentle and patient with me.”
This time, she would not fail. Día stood straight and tall, envisioning the hand of the Almighty tightening around her – His palm at her back, His fingers closing over her shoulders, His thumb folding across her chest in an unbreakable shield. Hold me fast, Master. Then she took a breath, closed her eyes, and eased herself in.
She landed in a slow-motion crouch at the bottom. As soon as her feet touched down, she tucked her chin, mindful to keep her head below all those feet, and groped blindly for the chains again. She felt her way up one of them, praying in the dark all the while. Be still, be still, please be still... There would surely be a shackle, a cuff, a screwed-in bolt she could turn, and then –
Her hand brushed soft, soapy flesh. It flinched at her touch. Día swallowed, keeping her eyes and mouth sealed shut... and swore when she found the misshapen ring half-buried in the skin. Whatever Sibylline villain had done this would have needed two good pairs of pliers and considerable strength to close it. Día had neither.
She did have a knife, though – if she could find where she’d dropped it.
So she surfaced for a breath and dove back down into the blind abyss, gingerly feeling along the top and sides of that huge rock until she discovered the blade. As soon as her fingers closed around the handle, she was up again, feeling for each of those seven shackled feet in turn, hunting for one that might slip free more easily than the others. Some shuddered at her touch; others flexed or curled. Just when she was about to rise in despair, her hand closed around one thin, delicate ankle whose owner must have struggled considerably: the flesh under the chain was as stripped and mangled as a fox’s leg in a bear trap.
Día’s lungs burned, but she refused to surface al
one. With her knife in one hand and the stranger’s foot in the other, she pushed the chain as far down as it would go – and then brought the blade down to carve off the obstructing flesh of the ankle. Her spine crawled as she sawed through ligaments and scraped over bone. Her chest ached, ever more tempted to draw in a ruinous lungful of corpse-water. Her mind reeled, starving for light and air, threatening at every moment to realize the full horror of what she was doing and buckle like a pressure-crushed submersible.
And yet Día might as well have been shaving a sleeping child’s fingernails. Her patient’s nerves had long since decayed, or perhaps ascended, past the simple stimulus-response relay system of the living, to the intention-sensitivity of the unburied dead. Hers was a simple, loving act, received in perfect tranquility.
And it was over not a second too soon. As soon as she felt the mutilated foot slip free, Día let go and shot to the surface, gasping for air.
The first whiff of her success turned her stomach. The body bobbed up to the surface behind her, its ascendance marked by a horrific stench, and Día could not afford to pause for even a moment: quickly, before her nerves or her gag reflex failed her, she reached back to grab one cold, water-blistered hand, and swam for the edge. She could feel the skin slip like a rotting, ill-fitting glove, but she tightened her grip and pulled and crawled and the instant she felt the body meet earthly friction, she let go and stumbled forward, staggering into the trees on wobbly legs, running until the air was clean and the world was nothing but darkness and tree-bark and dry, living grass.
But the sickly-sweet taste of that water lingered on her lips, and its nauseating smell drenched her hair, and every touch of her death-soaked dreadlocks on her bare back was a horrible morbid caress. Día could not bear it one second more: she dropped to the ground and flung herself out until absolutely no part of her touched any other, and breathed through her mouth only, beating back the urge to vomit with every successive gulp of air.
Happy licks. A good puppy, a smelly puppy, licking it clean –
But the dog was nowhere within earshot, and Día could not bear to contemplate her meaning. No, she thought, desperate not to know. No licks, no thoughts, nothing – please, please nothing.
There was a moment of confusion, and then – thank God! – silence.
It took Día much longer to quiet her own mind. But she worked at it as her skin dried, her breathing slowed, and her eyes closed. At some point during the night, she finally managed to be nothing at all.
IN THE DREAM, Hap’piki Dos Puertas turned, the dead sheep hanging heavy across his shoulders, and smiled at her. “Good morning, Lovey!”
And before she could decide how to answer him, he turned and went walking on.
MORNING FOUND DÍA late that day, when the sun had long since breached the horizon. It took Día awhile longer to find herself.
Her knife was on the ground. That did for a start. Her companion was a brown spot in front of the white sandstone wall – waiting, wagging. Her courage, which she would need in order to venture back over to that cistern of over-steeped human tea, took a bit longer to find. But when she had dressed herself in her most essential virtues, Día did not find the walk nearly so daunting. She had survived the night, after all. Certainly she could make it through morning.
Her conviction faltered as she caught a fresh glimpse of the pool. Six chained souls still hung suspended in the water. The seventh was gone.
Had the body gone under again? Día stopped, nauseous at the prospect of retrieving it a second time. “Mother Dog, where...”
The dog stretched out in a playful bow about ten feet away. Going.
Día could not make out the dark shape before her front paws. In another few steps, however, the pattern was clear: wet human footprints, unmissable where they intersected the trail, tracked away to the north and east.
The thought was profoundly unsettling. “Where, though? Going where?”
U’ru’s daughter straightened and wagged. Going. Pleasantness. Hopefulness. New puppy.
Perhaps that was as much of an answer as Día was meant to have. She glanced back at her companion. “Should we go too?”
This time, she was answered with leg-circling enthusiasm. It was easy to share in it – to feel that they had accomplished something profound and important, even if she didn’t fully understand it. Easier still to feel relieved at the prospect of leaving.
But as Día retrieved her clothes and dressed, it was impossible not to try and assuage her own guilt at leaving the other six. She told herself that perhaps she was not meant to be their savior – that perhaps that quest belonged to someone else. Her father had told her once that the Afriti had saved the Afriti... so maybe the Ikwei would have to save the Ikwei.
Día certainly hoped that they were better equipped to discover what had prompted such a strange, meticulously vicious act.
As she sheathed her knife and tied her belt, Día’s wandering gaze was caught again by the inscriptions on the wall. There were beautifully scripted names, drawings, dates, numbers, and maps faint with age – a thousand years and a hundred languages, all orbiting a single idea. I lived. I was here.
Now, as yesterday, she wished to heaven that she’d brought her pencil and formulary.
But today, the morning light was far superior, and brought her attention to a fresh inscription on the wall beside the pool. In neat, careful letters, it said:
SIMON WHITE-EYE HAS MADE THIS FOR WONA LOA
HIS BELOVED AND WELL-DESERVING WIFE
WHO LIVED FOR 23 YEARS
Día stared at it for a long time.
Esto in Marín was every bit as ambiguous as the Ardish this. It was the neuter form of the word, used to refer to a neuter or unspecified object.
‘Inscription’ was feminine, though. So was ‘writing’. So was –
Going. New puppy.
Día looked down. She hadn’t noticed herself clutching the soft black cotton of her cassock, or seen the dog waiting by her feet.
“Yes,” she said, pulling her thoughts up from a sinister crevice between the pool and the inscription. “I’m ready to go now.”
Día did not look back as she followed the dog away from the white cliffs, walking west ahead of the rising sun. But she did glance over at the wet, north-going footprints before they were lost to sight. For the second time in a week, Día had turned a restless soul loose into the world, and could only offer prayers for whoever was about to receive its attention.
SOMEWHERE ALONG THE way, Sil had made a mistake. There were no fresh tracks on the road now, and the only droppings he’d found were weeks old.
But there was no backtracking now. Some kind of nervous shock was keeping him going, but it surely couldn’t last. Sooner or later, he would collapse – and if he was clever, he’d be sure to do it on this highway here, where there was some infinitesimal chance that someone would pass by before he expired.
So Sil, cleverness personified, etched his name ever more deeply into his palm-sized portable tombstone, and went walking on.
CHAPTER FIFTEEN
I-WHOLE
“SO THERE WAS me,” the bounty hunter said, “standing over him with nothin’ in the holster but a rolled-up sock. And there was him, all crying and begging and pissin’ his pants –”
“He did not,” Shea said, and curled herself more comfortably under his arm.
“Hand to God,” he said. “Black-Eye Otis, the meanest man in Laramie Territory, nothin’ but hands and knees and puddled silk drawers. Pitifullest thing you ever seen.”
Shea shifted on the blanket and tried to ignore the tantalizing lap of the water on the nearby shore. She wished he would consent to another bath. “So what did you do?”
He laughed. “Coo, what do you think? I got him up and dumped the washbowl over his shirt, so he could make like he got wet down in the fight. Talking all about how I was going to let us do it civil, no need to upset Missus with the gun and the cuffs, and all the time hoping God my jacket-f
lap didn’t slip and let him peek the truth. I tell you what, Miss Lady: I marched that sumbitch a quarter mile down Fontaine Street with nothing in my hand but my own crusty wooler, praying Sacré-Feu every step of the way.”
Well, true or not, it made a good story. Shea stared into the darkness, relishing the picture almost as much as the feel of her head on his bare shoulder. “What a ridiculous job.”
His chest heaved with the force of his snort. “Yeah? Mais, what do you do?”
Shea lifted her hand and tipped it from side to side. “Sex. Espionage. Laundry.” She sighed. “I’ve been thinking about getting into a different line of work.” That was understating it. Even if everything went splendidly – if she found Yashu-Diiwa in time, if she managed to get the knife in him, if U’ru was still alive, if she came for him and healed Shea and forgave her – there was still nothing to placate Mother Opéra, nothing to prevent Faro or any of her other loyal lessers from killing her on sight. No matter what happened now, there was no going back.
He shifted, and she could feel him staring down at her. “I ain’t gonna find you on a paper, am I?”
“No,” Shea said. In all likelihood, he would never find her at all. Nobody would. She would die somewhere out here, alone and unnoticed, and if she were exceptionally lucky, the current would push her body all the way out to sea, so the Artisan could re-forge her soul, craft her into some new and more promising individual. Her only consolation was her own faltering conviction: that she was right about Yashu-Diiwa, that U’ru would come and rescue her... and that dying anonymously was not the same as living that way.
And this fellow, with his lonely, dangerous trade – what did he have?
Shea looked up. “Tell me there’s someone waiting for you. Tell me you have...” She would not let herself say a real woman. “... a life worth living.”
He didn’t move, or make any quick answer. Had she presumed too much? Shea swallowed her anxiety, and squelched the urge to copy him.
Medicine for the Dead Page 25
