Metro Winds

by Isobelle Carmody

  She stopped, remembering her aunt’s warning, and in the silence heard muffled laughter or screams or crying, which her footsteps must have concealed before. She felt cold and wondered if that was fear. She listened again and thought there was not one voice but a babble of them coming from behind her. She turned to face the voices and the metro wind blew so hard she rocked on her feet.

  Another train? She glanced back, but turned again because now she could hear a tremendous clattering as if a herd of cows or goats were being driven along the tunnel. But the cacophony resolved into the hoof beats of a single beast, with a loud accompaniment of echoes. Something appeared in the torch beam which could not be contained or encompassed by it. The only certainties were a massive whiteness and a black eye rolling in terror. The girl staggered back against the wall and something huge passed her so closely that she felt the roughness of its pelt on her cheek and the damp heat of its fear.

  A horse, she told herself, hearing it gallop away towards the platform. Or maybe a bull, but bigger than any bull or horse she had ever seen. Impossibly big. How had it come down here?

  The voices were louder and now she could make out shouting and laugher and grunts and cries and shrieks and even what seemed to be discordant snatches of song. Instinctively she switched off the torch and let them come, pressing herself to the wall. In the light of dull lanterns that barely lit their faces, let alone the way ahead, she saw men and women, ragged and degenerate and shambling, some so hirsute and hunched over that they looked like beasts. As they clamoured along the passage in a narrowing stream, she thought she saw the gypsy woman she had imagined earlier pass by, her mouth open in a soundless scream. Last of all came the saxophone man carrying a great loop of rope over one shoulder and only then did it occur to her that the motley crowd were a hunting party, and the white beast that had thundered by her their quarry.

  When they had passed and the noise had faded, the girl flicked on her torch and shone it after them. Her heart leapt into her throat, for there, looming in its thin stream, was the wild tormented eye of the white beast. Somehow it had evaded the rabble and doubled back. It was trembling and she sensed it was about to plunge away from her into the darkness, perhaps onto the rails below.

  ‘Don’t,’ she said.

  The beast shifted uneasily but stayed as she moved closer with the torch. Its thin beam illuminated an ear pricked forward and, fleetingly, something shining and sharp. She reached out with her free hand and laid it on the coarse white coat. Powerful muscles rippled under her palm as the beast gathered itself to leap away or perhaps trample her to death. Then all at once, it became still and the violence of its terror faded.

  ‘Come,’ the girl said, and it went with her. Now that she walked by its head, she could see it was definitely a horse, but its head was deformed. For the first time she wondered if it actually belonged to the metro denizens. It was no less a freak than they, for all its strange beauty. Perhaps she had been mistaken and they were not hunting it but trying to catch their pet. Hadn’t there been a tender yearning in the eyes of the saxophone man? Even so, why should the poor beast be kept in the blackness of the metro tunnels?

  Her thoughts galloped ahead and she began to run lightly to keep up with them. The beast kept pace so beautifully that it was as if they merged into one animal. The sensation was unlike anything she had ever experienced. Waves of pleasure shuddered through her, and as they ran, her hand on its hot neck, she understood that this was the thing she had sought through all the dreams and all the tunnels, this running, the hot hide under the whorls of her fingertips.

  When at last they reached the platform again, she forced herself to stop so that she could look for the arches with her torch. The beast nuzzled her neck tenderly, seeming to draw her smell in, and she shivered with pleasure at the intimate touch of its nostrils on her bare skin. Then she heard the distant clamour of the hunt, if hunt it was. Instinctively she turned to the beast and bade it run, but though it shivered, it would not go. Its eyes pleaded with her. She made herself push it away roughly. It was like trying to push a mountain. She could smell the salt of its sweat.

  ‘I can’t protect you from them!’ she cried to it. ‘Run, can’t you?’

  But it stayed. It rested its head on her shoulder and leaned against her. The weight of the massive head forced her legs to buckle slowly, and when she had settled on the ground, the beast knelt and laid its lovely deformed head on her knees.

  ‘Oh you poor thing, you must go,’ she murmured helplessly, shining the torch down onto it, but the violet sadness of its eyes asked only where it should go, and there was no answer to that.

  Then it was too late. There was a great hullaballoo of triumph and the ragged men and women with dirt-streaked faces and crazed eyes were capering around them in the darkness, crowing with glee as they caught hold of the great white beast by its mane and tail and ears. A dozen filthy pairs of hands bore it away and brushed the girl aside without seeming to notice her when she tried to hold onto it. Or so it seemed, until one of the men, a great hulking hunchback with an ash-brown beard, looked over his shoulder at her and said with rough gentleness: ‘You found it.’

  ‘Will you take it out of here?’ she said.

  ‘Up there?’ the man asked, jerking his chin up contemptuously. ‘There is no place for its like up there, girl.’

  She stood boneless and will-less, as they surged away and were swallowed by the dark, knowing she had stayed the beast for the crowd. Without her, they never would have caught it. Exhaustion deep as a mineshaft opened within her. A surge of the metro wind wrested the torch from her fingers. It rolled away and came to rest against the wall beside a tunnel, its beam reduced to a flickering golden egg. As the girl retrieved it, the wind blew again, gently, a mere sigh, cool and damp with the smell of the sea. She did not know what to do, but it seemed to her that she could not go back up to the city and her aunt. There was no place for creatures such as her there, either. She began to walk in the direction in which the ragged people had taken the beast, uncaring that she did not know where they were going.

  The torch light gave a sepia spasm and she was again in darkness. She lifted her hand, groped for the wall, and continued on. She did not know how long she had walked except that her feet hurt. She knew she must be on one of the ledge paths again, and thought she would sit down and rest, but the salt-strong smell of the sea drew her on. The ground under her feet began to slope down and she wondered again if, deeper than the metro, there was a sea, awaiting her. If she could find her way to it, she would surely find the beast and the ragged metro people. Perhaps they had a camp of some kind and she could stay with them and help tend the beast. If it lives, whispered her heart, and oh, she knew what fear was then. There was no mistaking it.

  She was still walking an hour later, or perhaps years later. In the darkness, time had become elastic and then liquid. Memories floated around her of the wind and the sea and of her solitary childhood, the way her parents had touched her so rarely. She had never wondered at this, but now it came to her that they had been afraid to touch her.

  Ahead she saw a blue light and then the tunnel spilled her into what must be an immense cavern filled with ghostly phosphorescence, but if it was a cavern, then it was big enough that she could not see the walls or roof of it. She walked across pallid sand, cold and soft as powder under her feet, which the blue light turned aquamarine. Beyond it a sea stretched away and away to an invisible horizon. She walked to the edge of it and heard how the waves hissed as they unrolled at her feet. Some distance away, the narrow beach jutted out in a long pale finger, and at the very tip, through a dark jostle of people, she saw the red flare of fire. Beyond them or in their midst stood the white beast, swaying slightly to and fro, its milky coat stained red and pink by the firelight.

  Stumbling with relief, she made her way along the beach and out onto the peninsula. When she was close enough to hear the fire crackling, she stopped, for the saxophone man held a knife and so d
id several others. They wielded them as they danced and the dance was full of stabbing and slashing.

  ‘No,’ she choked. ‘No!’

  ‘There is nothing else for it,’ said a voice and she turned to find the old beggar woman by her side. Her hair shone white in the ghostly light as she went on gently in her cracked voice, ‘The beasts come but they cannot stay here in the darkness and they cannot live up there. To let them go running and running in the darkness until they are blinded, until they starve or founder and fall prey to the rats would be too cruel.’

  ‘What is it?’ whispered the girl, numb with dread. ‘Where did it come from?’

  ‘From dreams, like all of the others,’ said the woman. ‘They are the shape of our yearning.’

  ‘Why do they come? What do they want?’ The girl felt thin and insubstantial, as if she were a dream.

  ‘To be taken in,’ said the woman. ‘To be known. To be free of those who dreamed them. We let each of them run for as long as we can bear their desperation, and then we hunt and end them. Out of love and mercy. Join us. We saw at once that you were one of us.’

  ‘Is there no way to save this one?’ asked the girl.

  The old woman looked at her then, squinting as if to see her better, and her eyes widened. ‘For most of us, there is no way. But for one who is pure and empty, an unused vessel, there may be a way. If you have the courage for it.’

  The girl did not understand what the woman was saying. The wild, deadly dance was coming to a crescendo, and through the faltering movements of the capering figures she saw the beast, white and trembling, foam about its lips and nostrils.

  ‘Tell me,’ she said, her heart yearning and yearning towards the beast, till she thought she would die of longing. She was astonished to find she was weeping, for she had never wept before.

  The old beggar woman took her cold fingers and squeezed them to draw her eyes from the beast. ‘You must go to it and claim it. But there is no going back once you begin.’ The girl nodded, and the woman reached into a battered bag and drew out a garland of dried red roses, regarding it with wonder. ‘I have carried this for long, long years, ever since I came here as a girl. I had not the courage to wear it, but I could not bear to throw it away.’ She set it upon the girl’s head. ‘Do not baulk or flinch or cry out when you face the beast,’ she said. ‘Only courage will avail you.’

  The scent of the ancient roses was very strong. The girl thought of the flowers sent by her father, his frowning concentration and big bony wrists as he laid the sheaf of roses in their box.

  She thought of her mother, packing the white dress in layers of fine tissue, singing softly in a darkened room. She pitied them and marvelled at their love for her, despite their frailty, their short, short lives.

  The dance ended.

  ‘Go,’ the old woman cried. ‘Before it is too late.’

  The girl moved towards the tattered men and women, who stood panting and sweating and gasping from their exertions. But they drew back and fell silent when she came among them, white as a votive candle in their midst.

  ‘You are mine,’ she told the beast.

  Hearing the words, it ceased to sway and its gaze fixed upon her. Its eyes glowed like hot coals in the firelight, fierce and terrible and beautiful. They looked through skin and bone and into her essence. Moving closer, she saw herself reflected infinitely in its eyes; the short life that had been and all that might be and her death as well. She did not turn away from it, because she would never see its like again. Whatever it cost to see it, and to save it, she would pay.

  She realised it was waiting and that words alone were not enough. She stopped and opened her arms, and at last it came to her. It lowered its head, it pierced her through, white dress, white flesh, red heart. The pain was immense, monstrous, impossible. But she did not scream. She clenched her teeth and closed her arms about the beast’s head, embracing it, holding herself up by it as her life and strength flowed away. The world dimmed to grey and she dropped to her knees. The air was full of the smell of blood. Then flames leapt and churned in the air as the beast began to pour itself into her. It burned to take the beast in, for she was only flesh. Then she felt the hot red gush of blood within and without, for she could not contain him. Her back split and blood fountained out, but that scarlet gush was not wet and it was not blood. She was on the ground on her hands and knees, gasping and rocking with the pain.

  The old beggar woman knelt before her in the sand, seamed and withered face shining. There was wonder and terror in her eyes. She reached out to touch the girl’s cheek with papery reverent hands.

  The saxophone man and the hunchback stood either side of her. They lifted her to her feet, grunting with the effort. Miraculously the blood had ceased to pour from her chest and the skin was smooth and unbroken, though the torn bodice of the dress was drenched and crimson. But there was a dragging heaviness at her back as they released her and bowed. She staggered under an unfamiliar weight as a great softness moved and unfolded behind her. She craned her neck to look over her shoulder and saw what knowledge of the beast had done to her. Wings emerged from the shreds of cloth. Not white but red as the dawn sun, red as fire, red as a beating heart.

  ‘I am changed,’ she said.

  ‘How could you not be?’ asked the beggar woman. ‘There have been others, it is said, who claimed one of the horned beasts, but never did I see it. Never did I speak to anyone who saw such a one. Rare and rare they are. You are.’

  ‘Where did the others go?’ asked the girl who was no longer a girl.

  ‘Up,’ said the gypsy. ‘Out into the world to fly fearless in the sunlight. Alone and complete.’

  The girl who was no longer a girl smiled at the beggar woman and at the other poor, dim, ragged people gazing at her, and they lifted their hands before their eyes and reeled back. Knowing she would blind them if she stayed, she spread her wings and the metro wind rose to carry her up and up and out into the dark world where she would haunt the dreams of the fearful, stir secret wings in the hearts of poets, sing lullabies to the dying and reveal herself to those who dared to see her.

  THE DOVE GAME

  It was hot in Paris.

  The minute Daniel stepped from the air-conditioned cool of Charles de Gaulle airport, the sun dropped a hammer on his forehead. The unexpectedness of it stopped him dead, and a woman in a white dress that looked like a silk petticoat wove around him, her thin arms and long neck a glowing pink. He had never imagined people getting sunburned in Paris. The heat seemed wrong here, misplaced, as if he had somehow brought the aridity of the outback with him.

  He was to catch a Roissybus to Avenue de l’Opéra in the city, and then take a taxi to his hotel. A queue extended from the closed doors of the bus, through which the driver was visible reading his paper. He took his place behind the elderly couple at the end. It was evident that they were arguing. Daniel thought of the comfortable bickering of his own parents, which had always seemed to him like two old warped boards rubbing together whenever the wind blew from a certain direction.

  The woman stabbed a finger towards a mound of baggage and Daniel wondered what could possibly fill so many cases and bags. The rest of the people in the queue also seemed heavily laden. He carried only a half-empty canvas bag. Perhaps it was because he did not need his luggage to anchor him when he was only staying for a few days.

  He found himself remembering the look on the face of the travel agent when he said he needed to be in Paris for one day. Her eyes had flickered with faint confusion over his dusty jeans and faded flannel shirt, but she had said nothing, so he pressed on and asked if she could book him a room in a specific quarter.

  The girl – she had been little more than that, for all her thin black suit and the slick vermilion smile painted onto her lips – had taken out a map. Daniel could have pointed to the street because he had looked it up to make sure it existed, but she had been absorbed in the mechanics of her own efficiency.

  ‘It must be an im
portant occasion,’ she said, pecking at her computer. Her eyes flicked up, inviting him to explain, as if it were part of her job to offer curiosity so that travellers could talk about their plans and be admired for their adventurous spirits; or maybe so that they could be reassured they were doing the right thing.

  ‘It’s the right thing to do,’ he had said, and been startled to find he had spoken aloud.

  ‘I’m sure it is.’ The girl had smiled, offering the possibility of a week in Hong Kong or in Singapore as a stopover. Daniel had shaken his head, saying again that he only needed to go to Paris for one day and would like to return to Australia the next day.

  She had regarded him with fleeting severity, as if she thought he was making some sort of joke.

  ‘I’m afraid that is not possible,’ she had said finally. She looked at her computer screen and began to type rapidly. Her face grew smooth and her expression bland, as if the computer had consumed her personality. Then the quick, slick smile again. ‘The soonest I can get you home is five days from the date you fly. There are already heavy bookings because it will be the European summer, and there is a World Cup game. If you could go on another date . . .’

  ‘No,’ he had said softly.

  In the end, he had agreed to the extra days, but the decision had made him uneasy because it had been forced on him. The travel agent had explained that countries wanted more tourists, and there were various kinds of inducements and controls. But Daniel had felt that under the little pat of truth were the bones of something harder.

  In the Roissybus, he took the back seat because it looked as if his long legs would fit better there. He found himself pressed between a teacher from a Friends school in Baltimore and a German geneticist. He was amazed at how easily and quickly they told their business to one another and to him.

  ‘What about you?’ the American teacher on his left asked with friendly insistence.