"Forever? That may be difficult."
"Only for a few days, until I can get a few of the Kavi together to make a protection for you. Until we can teach you to protect yourself. I don't even want to take you home, to leave you there alone, except that anything else would make them more determined, more dangerous. As it is, they may not know we suspect them."
"The thing Ellat taught me won't work?"
"You're not schooled enough in its use. You haven't the discipline. I hate to leave you, even for tonight."
"They can't be in that much of a hurry," she said nervously, disturbed by his intensity. "I don't inherit for another four years, for heaven's sake. Harvey isn't going to do anything precipitous."
"I suppose you're right. Once one begins to feel this menace, this gathering force, it is like hearing a thunderstorm in one's head. Space and time are lost in it. One is at the center of fury." He reached to take her hand in his, utterly unprepared for the reaction his words would bring. "Marianne, I could stay with you tonight."
Her hand whipped away from him, without volition. Her mouth bent into an oval of rejection, horror. "I'm not like that," she said, the words coming from deep within, words she did not usually say aloud but were now aloud, between them, harsh and ugly. "Not like that." She shuddered once, again, muttered words under her breath, like a litany, got control of herself, tried to make light of it, did not succeed. His face was white, blank.
"I've offended you," he said at last. "I meant nothing dishonorable. Please. It was only to offer protection. You're probably right. There is not that much hurry. They aren't mind readers, after all. They cannot know how thoroughly I am alerted to the danger they pose. We will comfort ourselves with that thought. If your brother calls, you will be light, and cheerful, and contrary. Please remember to be contrary, Marianne."
She agreed to do so, not hearing him, too caught up in the internal maelstrom he had unleashed, wanting only to be out of the car and behind a door, her own door, shut against the world. "Not like that," the hissing demon voices inside kept saying. "Harvey was wrong. I'm not like that."
He left her at the door, seeing on her face that he should not offer to come in. She went in to disconnect phone, to sit for an hour in her window while the sun went down and the stars began to peek over the roofs and chimneys. The buds of the oak outside her window had begun to unfurl into tiny, curled hands of innocent pink, and her mind squirmed in guilt and confusion at the fact that now, even now, she lusted after him, wanted him, and all the years of not wanting did not seem to have immunized her at all.
At last she set to work building mental towers of adamant and walls of iron. She put herself to sleep with the litany Ellat had taught her. She awakened to her clock radio, news of combat and death, so ordinary and distant as to be undisturbing.
She was almost ready for class when the doorbell rang, and she saw the delivery man's hat through the peephole, knew that it must be some little gift from Makr Avehl, felt again that combined guilt, lust and self-loathing. She opened the door to receive the package, accept the the proffered pencil.
"You have to sign for it. Where the X is on the line."
"Yes," said Marianne, "I will." Only to see the glitter of eyes as the uniformed person's head came up, dark, hawkfaced, mouth curved in a cry of victory. She had only time to think that she had given consent and to say, "Madame
Delubovoska," before all went dark around her.
IT WAS DARK by the time Makr Avehl arrived in Washington after miles of driving through country he did not see, traffic he did not consider, in a state of mind best described, he told himself, as unnerved and astonished. While his mouth had been busy saying words which meant, in whatever language he was thinking, "Gods in heaven, what ails the wench!" his center of being was saying in another tone, perhaps another language entirely, "Oh, my dear, my very dear." This colloquy was over in the moment which it occupied, leaving his political self shaken before the sweet longing of that inner voice: "Oh, my very dear." And that was when he knew, absolutely and without any remaining doubt. Not earlier, when he had seen her at dinner, a sparkling baton of willow flesh, bending but not breaking before her brother's assault; not on horseback, face eager as a child's, with tendrils of hair wet on her forehead from the sun; not as he had seen her in the car, first laughing then crying to know that all her world was arrayed against her but that she was not insane.
So. So what was he to do now? She had rejected him and he had left her, left her there alone, and he could not go back to force himself upon her, for in such forcing might end all that he now in one instant hoped and longed for, without warning or premonition. Well, no matter the reason, if any. If she had rejected him, she had not rejected Ellat, and what Ellat could not find out was not worth the finding. So he drove like a maniac to reach his hotel and a phone so that Ellat might be enlisted in his sudden cause. He was convinced of danger, smelled it, felt it breathing hotly on his neck, a scent of blood and damnation. She must accept help from Ellat.
Oncoming headlights speared toward his eyes, and he came to himself as a horn shrieked beside him, dopplering by and away into darkness with a howl of fury. This sobered him. He would call Ellat as soon as he arrived in Washington. Until then, he would try to behave more sensibly and think of other things.
In which he was only partially successful. Ellat was eager enough to help Marianne. "Of course I'll stay with her. We got along quite nicely. If you really feel...." But her desire to help did not allay Makr Avehl's concern.
"I really feel," he said grimly, "that there's something more than merely wicked going on here."
"I can't figure what they're playing at," fussed Ellat.
"Madame using her cocktail party magic tricks here, in this house, against one of your people."
"I think Madame sees Marianne as one of her people, or one of Harvey's people, which amounts to the same thing. Can you be here by lunch time tomorrow?"
Lunch time, she said, yes. Yes, the guests had all departed.
Yes, the horse which had been bitten seemed to be healing and a dog they had captured was being tested for rabies. Yes, he could turn in the little car to the rental agency, they would use the big one. Yes, the servants were packing so that they might leave. "I'm tired of all this, Makr Avehl. I want to go home."
"Just as soon as we do something about Marianne, Ellat. I promise."
Something in his voice said more than he had intended, for there was a waiting silence at the other end of the line, a silence which invited him to say more than he was ready to say. When he did not fill it, she said, "Take her with us. That's the sensible thing to do."
"It's called kidnaping, Ellat. The Americans don't find it socially acceptable. They have laws against it."
Ellat only snorted. "Tomorrow. At lunch time."
On which note he found himself sitting on the side of his bed, holding the phone in one hand as it buzzed a long, agitated complaint. Should he call Marianne? What could he say? No.
Better leave it. Drop in with Ellat tomorrow, about five in the afternoon, when Marianne got home from work. Gritting his teeth, he turned from the phone to his briefcase to spend two dull hours going over the material he would use in his meeting the following morning.
And when that meeting was over, he felt it had all been an exercise in futility, a kind of diplomatic danse macabre in which he and Madame had shaken skeletons at one another like children at a Halloween party. And yet the woman had seemed strangely satisfied, as though she had won whatever game she was playing.
"The undersecretary of state assures me that we may depend upon the status quo," he said to Ellat over the lunch table.
"Which means precisely what?" asked Ellat, not interrupting her concentration on a plethora of oysters.
"Which means exactly nothing," he admitted. "The U.S. has spoken for us in the U.N. and that's it. They don't take the matter seriously, and I'm beginning to think they're right.
This has all been a charade
. Madame is up to something else, and this has all been misdirection, probably for my benefit."
"Marianne said that."
"She said what?"
"Marianne said that if the Lubovoskans really intended to take us over, they'd invade."
"Well, of course they have tried that," he said.
"She would have no way of knowing that, Makr Avehl. I repeat what I said earlier. If you want to keep the child safe and away from that horrible brother of hers, take her with us."
He did not reply. The food did not tempt him, and he was waiting impatiently for Ellat's affair with the oysters to run its course. He dared not agree with her, for she would take it as a promise, but emotionally he had begun to believe only the course she had suggested would satisfy him-to take Marianne with him when he left.
"Eat your oysters, Ellat," he said. "It may be your last opportunity to do so. Aghrehond will be here with the car in twenty minutes."
They approached Marianne's tall house just at sunset. The door into the front hall stood open and on the tiny turfed area between the steps and the iron fence, Mrs. Winesap leaned on a lawn edger, intent upon the clean line separating daffodils from grass. She looked up in frank curiosity, staring at Makr
Avehl and Ellat from her broad, open face, mouth a little open, rather gnomelike with her cutoff jeans and baggy shirt. "I don't think Marianne's here," she told them. "The door's open, though, so she must have run out just for a minute."
Makr Avehl acknowledged this information with a pleasant nod, stood back to let Ellat precede him into the hallway and halfway up the stairs. Then he saw Marianne's jacket, obviously trodden upon where it lay half on the upper step, then the clipboard of papers with her signature scrawled and running off one edge. The door to her apartment was open. On the window seat the purple crocuses wilted in the close heat, and a fly buzzed in frustration against the closed window.
He stepped back into the hall to pick up the clipboard, knowing as he did so what had happened. It could all be read in the signs; the track of the beast could be seen. The world began to turn red inside his eyes, and he realized he was holding his breath. Released air burst from his lungs, and he sat down abruptly. "She's gone. Oh, damn me for a fool, Ellat. Damn me for an arrogant, irresponsible fool. We're too late. She's gone."
Ellat was already going down the stairs, out into the tiny front yard. "You must be Mrs. Winesap? I thought so. Marianne has told me all about you. She's so grateful for your help with the lawn. I wonder, did you happen to notice anyone coming or going this morning? I had sent a package, and I wondered..."
Sympathetic, warm expression saying what a nice woman she was to have sent a package. "I saw him leaving. Went out of here like a cat with his tail on fire. Must have left his delivery truck around the comer, because he went off down the block in the time it took me to say 'Good morning.' I hate it when people are so bad-tempered they don't even respond to a simple time of day. I said, 'Good morning,' loud and cheerful, and I didn't even get a grunt from him."
"That would have been about what time?"
"Oh, let me see. What did I come outside for? I'd had breakfast, and Larkin was doing the dishes, and I'd written a letter to my sister-that was it-and I'd come out to put it in the mailbox for the postman. So it wasn't time for 'Donahue' yet, or I'd have been watching him. About 8:30, I'd say, give a little take a little." She laughed heartily. "I always say don't be too sure, and nobody can call you a liar."
He was holding onto the banister when Ellat came back up the stairs. "I heard," he said. "Then Marianne wasn't taken."
He turned back into the room. On the window seat the Delvaux print of the young women setting lights in the street was broken in two, splintered ends of frame protruding like broken bones.
He went through to the bedroom. Nothing. Orderly. She had made the bed. The bathroom was a little messy, towel dropped rather than folded. "She was here when the doorbell rang," he said to Ellat, turning to make a helpless gesture to Aghrehond who had just come up the stairs. "Doorbell rang, she went to the door. The person there said something about signing for a package, and Marianne said 'of course' or 'sure' or something of the kind-without thinking. She didn't even have time to be afraid." Oh, God, he thought, why did she pull away from me with that revulsion? I should have been here. I should have been the one to answer that door, confront that monster.
"If it is that Lubovosk woman, she flips her finger at you," said Aghrehond. "She sneers like a boy in the street, nyaa, nyaa, nyaa. She makes an insult, a provocation. Why?"
"Perhaps," said Ellat, "because she has had the wits to see that Makr Avehl cares for the girl. Bait. Bait in a trap."
With horror, Makr Avehl thought of the white bird and the black, demon fish; thought of the naked girl carrying her little light into the darkness while trying to pretend that she was dreaming. He came to himself staring at his own face in the mirror, haggard and terrified.
"Why is the picture broken?"
"I gave it to her," he replied woodenly. 'To replace a very unpleasant one her brother had given her. If Harvey saw itif Madame saw it, they would know in an instant that someone was intervening in Marianne's affairs."
"But she wasn't taken," said Ellat. "Whoever it was didn't take her."
"Sent," Makr Avehl growled. "Not taken, sent." So, wherever she was now, among the false worlds, somewhere in the endless borderlands where no maps existed and the shortest distance between any two points was never a straight line, she was at least together, body and soul. He had seen bodies sundered from their souls. He had experienced souls sundered in that way, too. Better not, far better not. If he had had to choose between two horrors, it would have been this, at least. That she was in one place. One. Somewhere.
"I must go into Madame's limbo after her, into whatever borderland place she has been sent."
"Makr Avehl! Think of the danger!" Ellat laid a hand upon his arm. "Think!"
"I am thinking," he muttered. "You, too. Think of her.
Somewhere alone. Lost. Frightened. Perhaps without memory.
Certainly without friends. In a dream world, a lost world, a world in which dark is light and evil is good, perhaps. You think, Ellat. What else can we do?"
"From here?"
"Yes. From here. Water those flowers, will you? She wouldn't have left them like that. Open the window. She would have done that." Oh, God Zurvan, he prayed, let me undo the harm
I have done. I was the one not to tell her what pit of evil I sensed in that box of hers. I was the one who begged her to come to Wanderly, not valuing her own instincts which bade her stay far from her so-called kin. I was the one who considered the threat not urgent, not imminent. God.
Where would one like Madame send one like Marianne?
What kind of world would she construct, of her own soul, of her own being? Where would one like Marianne be sent? Into what place? Into which of the myriad borderlands? How constrained, how held? He lay down upon Marianne's bed, quietly, quietly, letting what he knew of Tahiti possess him until it became more real than himself. Where? Where? Where?
Ellat came to the door of the room, apparently unsurprised to see him lying there. "Can you tell me what you are going to do?"
He reached out a hand to her, clasping her own, begging her trust and indulgence. She released him, sighing.
How could he describe to her the almost instinctive tasting of ambience, the intuitive sorting through of words and ideas and pictures? Marianne had been sent, and that sending had had to be, by its very nature, within the structure of Marianne's relationship to Madame, within the ambience of their milieu.
He had only to feel his way into that vicinage, into what was already there; he had only to seek that faintly diplomatic tinge, the flavor of embassies and foreign places, the sourness of artifice, the stink of deception, the thin, beery scent of solitude and cold rooms, the presence of children-no! The presence of the childlike. The shadow of malevolence hovering. Within that, something being built,
constructed, changed, for
Marianne's own persona would demand that. Courage. There would be courage. Stubbornness. A kind of relentless perseverance in survival.
Withal, there would power, Madame's power, Madame's control, hidden, perhaps, or disguised, but there nonetheless.
Madame's colors, ebony and blood. Marianne's colors, mauve and plum and misty blue found rarely if at all. Would there be anything there of Harvey? Unlikely. Though he might think of himself as an important part of this challenge, in reality he was no more to Madame than was Marianne herself, a part of the bait.He lay there, breathing his way into the precincts of illusion, finding the border of dream as he would have found the spoor of a deer in the forest of Alphenlicht, slowly, with infinite caution, summoning it, moving breath by breath so as not to shatter the silence or betray his presence, disguising his own form, changing to blend into the place he would find himself, that otherwhere, that hinterland where he would find her, find her, find her....
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