Personal Darkness

by Tanith Lee

"Oh, my love," she said, "my only, only love."

  CHAPTER 45

  WHY HOPE TO BE HAPPY? Before, it had been like a tide of water (life), not especially fast, passing over her. Not happy. Not un-happy. Indifferent.

  There was music and there were books.

  The rest was an interruption.

  Live second-hand.

  And then the Scarabae. Anna, Stephan. Adamus. Ruth. Miranda. Malach. Althene.

  The cats sat looking at her, perturbed, for Rachaela was their priestess and had no function save to serve them.

  Jacob, black on white, Juliet, a dainty monkey, white on black.

  They were the salve, not the solution.

  At sunset, the helicopter would arrive. Presumably.

  He had come back from somewhere, Malach. Althene, with medical skills beyond belief, binding cracked ribs, stitching long cuts. And Kei had been called, for there was an animal, a black dog. He had tended to it, seemingly, and Oskar and Enki had shown no jealousy, only licking it, calming it. Something of all this Althene had told her.

  She did not ask what had gone on.

  Somewhere, somehow, Malach had spent his grief and rage.

  But what was stupid Rachaela to do?

  My daughter, walled up in the attic again, like mad Mrs. Rochester in Jane Eyre. And my lover, leaving me.

  Sunset. They would be gone. Dogs, Malach, Al-thene.

  Good. Let her go. Pervert. Half-thing. No. No. She was perfect. She was like something made in heaven, even if marriages were not made there. She, he. Damn her. And good-bye.

  Rachaela knocked on the door of Eric's room.

  Almost to her surprise, he called to her to come in, called her by name, perhaps to demonstrate he had not been expecting anyone but she.

  It had been a clear day, but very windy. Through Eric's windows, which were of dense orange and green and magenta glass—a forest, knights riding, maidens strewing flowers—the light of late afternoon made colors on an overall paleness.

  Eric sat by a little chessboard with tiny figures shaped in silver or bronze as animals. There were herons for bishops and squirrels and mice and pigeons for pawns. The kings and queens were not lions but cats with delicate crowns between their leaves of ears.

  "Eric, I said before, several times, I had to leave you. And now I must." Rachaela watched Eric move a silver armadillo knight onto a geranium-pink square.

  "No, that's wrong."

  "I'm afraid it isn't."

  "I'm sorry, Rachaela. I meant the move I had made."

  Rachaela laughed. She had come to laugh, among them, strangely, with ease and genuine pleasure. Even now, the board of little beasts intrigued her. And stopped her concentrating.

  "I have to say," Rachaela said, "this house has been my fortress. But now. Now it's a prison. With a prisoner."

  "Ruth," he said.

  "Yes." She thought, / had this conversation with Ste-phan, the last time. But it isn't the same. And Stephan is dead. "You see, I understand now," Rachaela said. "There's nothing to be done about her. I accept… what you'll do. There's no doctor on earth who could help her. Only Malach seemed—but then—" She recalled Ruth dragged shrieking up the stairs. Ruth, screaming for Malach. "And I can't do anything. I never could. I always disliked her and now there's just an emptiness in me with her name. The same as there is for Adamus."

  "Yes," said Eric. His thin hand lay over the little armadillo, like the hand of a god of miniatures.

  "And so—I leave her to you. That's all I can think of or decide. Maybe I'm grossly in error. Probably. God knows."

  "And Althene is leaving with Malach tonight," Eric said.

  "I'd like to say I was tricked there. But perhaps I only tricked myself."

  Eric said, "It's difficult to have faith in a lover. They possess so much of you. You're at their mercy. How can you ever anticipate kindness?"

  "Well, I haven't had much."

  "None of us," he said, "has."

  Rachaela felt an urge to go over to him. Instead she went to the other side of the board, and looked more closely at the tiny animals.

  She remembered. Had he carved masks once? He had been so silent. A gift of feathers to dead Sylvian. How he had ordered champagne.

  Eric said, "When do you wish to leave?"

  "As soon as I can. But, I'll need to make some plans."

  "Not necessary. We will provide all you require. By that I don't mean you will be tied to us. Go as far as you want. But the provisions of our house are also yours. You are ours."

  "I have to concede that. So, I'll agree. I suspect you will anyway. You've put money and possessions my way in the past, I think. Before I even knew."

  "Perhaps." Eric slid the armadillo forward. "And now I've trapped myself."

  Rachaela picked up the silver cat-queen, who waited to one side. Poor thing, taken so early and bizarrely from the game.

  "I feel," Rachaela said, "I want to be in London. I don't want to go farther than that. London's what I know."

  "There is a large apartment," Eric said, "a third-story flat, overlooking the river. It could be made ready in three or four days."

  "Thank you," Rachaela said.

  "And if you should want us," Eric said, "we are here."

  Rachaela looked at him and their eyes met. Dust still lay upon the vivid brightness of Eric's black eyes. No change. No older and no younger.

  "I'm afraid of you, still," Rachaela said.

  "Yes. That will go."

  "Will it?"

  "Time," he said.

  "Oh, time. It doesn't heal. It spoils. Can it do anything good?"

  "There's no choice," he said, "but to continue, and see."

  "Adamus found another option. He hanged himself."

  "But you," he said, "have not."

  Out in the garden, Rachaela guided the two cats. They investigated every bush and stem, and Jacob arrogantly sprayed, marking a territory he did not realize was soon to be altered. Apparently the new flat had access to a garden below. She was planning for the cats as for herself. What they would eat and the freedoms they would need. This was helpful. She was not quite alone, for now she did not want to be. She partly feared it.

  Among the windy, bare and acorn-colored oaks, she met Miranda walking with Tray.

  Miranda was the young woman in her filmy dress, and Tray an elderly lady dressed in black. They moved hand in hand, so that Miranda could support Tray. In Tray's other arm was held close a brand-new bright golden lion, a wonderful velvet beast, with mane and tufted tail, and sherry eyes that sparkled. An old woman with a toy lion.

  "There is Rachaela," said Miranda.

  Tray smiled at Rachaela. She was innocent.

  She had gone quite insane, so much must be obvious, but, like Ruth, she was not to be handed over to any authority, not even to her own mother, to whom the body of the fat brown dead man had been returned, smoothly by night.

  "Tray has a new name we're trying," said Miranda. "Tell Rachaela."

  "Terentia," said Tray. She smiled again and seemed pleased. She raised the lion and kissed it like biting a golden fruit.

  "It's an old Roman name," said Miranda. "Ah, look." And she bent down to stroke Juliet. Still linked by hand, Tray or Terentia too, bent down. She tucked the lion under her chin and stroked Jacob who hurried up to be included.

  The wind blew savagely against the garden, and the trees creaked like the masts of a ship.

  Time… The world, a ship upon the seas of centuries, passed on.

  Althene did not come to say good-bye again. Rachaela had anyway locked her door. She sat between the cats and the sunset began, cold red under a dome of alcoholic violet.

  The helicopter dropped from the sky.

  Out of the opened window of her unlit room, Rachaela saw the camp of bikers raise their heads to see. Two of the men got up, shouting and excited. Lou was there, in creased black rubber, and Camillo, just visible, the white dreadlocks, not turning to look.

  The helicopter lighted
in the glade, and from the house walked out the figures of the ones who were going away. As the dark filled the common and the lights of the house were unlit, they were like shadows she could only guess to be Malach, Kei, Althene. A white shine on Malach's hair. He moved stiffly, old now, as she had seen him last. And the two ghosts of the dogs, unsure perhaps at departure. Kei carried a bundle in his arms—the mysterious black dog, maybe. And Michael and Cheta followed with the few bags.

  Althene's shadow moved strongly ahead. From the bikers' camp someone whistled. And another dog barked, and was hushed.

  In a moment they would be gone.

  The trees swallowed them, and then, presumably, the helicopter, which rose again like a chariot of fire.

  I feel nothing, Rachaela thought. Nothing.

  She thought of her mother's body lying in its box, all wrong, a stuffed doll of flesh.

  Juliet started earnestly to wash Jacob.

  How strange. I feel nothing. And my eyes are wet.

  CHAPTER 46

  IN THE SCENTED PALACE, WITH ITS pagodas of plants and rose-petal lighting, Stella was remade. Recreated, as something which Nobbi would never have recognized. An alien. Which was as it had to be.

  There was so much money it was beyond belief, and Stella did not believe in it. She had let the solicitor, and then the bank manager, and then the financial consultant, deal with it. They seemed to enjoy this, their faces glowing with greed. And she sat quietly and gazed at them, from the valley of the Shadow.

  And when it was all over, she came here, to this place which promised a kind of beauty that Stella knew to be also unreal.

  With her she brought a small overnight bag. There were only a limited number of items in it, one of them the lion Nobbi had left for her, her true inheritance.

  First there was a sauna, and then a Jacuzzi. Then the sunbed, the massage, the facial. Then they came upon her hair, her face, her hands. They were like flocks of pretty birds settling on a worm to make it into an angel with their beaks. But they were tactful too. Trying her to see if she wanted chatter, and when they found she did not, silent and soothing as nurses at a deathbed.

  It was a deathbed. The old Stella had been killed, and now the new Stella was fashioned on her bones.

  She saw it coming, bit by bit. She was not amazed.

  In the end, they pulled a sort of diaphanous analogous dustsheet off her, and there she was.

  Not beautiful, for Stella could not be made into a beauty even by such clever birds. But no longer a worm of the earth. Winged, now.

  Her jaw-cut hair they had slashed shorter, and raised upon her head a sort of low comb, like thick fur. All hint of premature gray was gone, and the hair had the sheen of a crow. Her face was a cameo, pale as cream, lit with a tint of blusher, and with two huge black eyes in fans of charcoal and faint silver. Her lips were more full, colored like sweets the world would want to nibble. Her body was soft, taut, scented, closed against all assault and given to light. Her hands were exact as gloves. Even the nails, which for the duration of her grief—how curious—she had not bitten, were formed to ovals and painted a somber terra-cotta two shades darker than her mouth.

  Stella went to the cubicle and put on the white silk underclothes, and then the dress and coat she had bought.

  They were of the same fine woollen material, and a purple almost black, the tone of sharks, serpents, night-things.

  She clad herself. She drew on the boots of black-purple leather.

  In the long mirror she saw this other woman, the second Stella, no longer Star.

  Dressed now head to toe. Dressed to kill.

  The chauffeur-driven car was light gray, the color of the day itself. It glided through the streets and thoroughfares. There were crowds upon the pavements even in the thin rain. Girls with canary hair and boys like Renaissance minstrels, beggars with broken smiles.

  They passed Buckingham Palace. Such an ugly building, she thought, as if it had just been built.

  The parks were liquid green beneath their empty trees.

  The driver of the car did not speak, of course.

  Then the byways came again, the squadrons of shops, furniture and clothes, food and drink, chemists for the sick and florists for birth, marriage, love and death.

  Stella saw it all as if from high above. The panoply of this city. Its grandeur and its sleaze.

  The rain stopped.

  They coasted along a road below a wood, the common? And all at once, she saw the house, that peculiar house Nobbi had told her of.

  It too was real.

  "Go back to the end of the road," Stella said. "Wait there, please."

  She thought, Will it matter?

  She got out and walked up to the house. Not thinking, He did this. Not thinking now at all.

  When she reached the door, the slabs of the house above her with their blind, inky windows, she found a man there in the mud, standing by an unusual machine, a sort of motorbike with a carriage fixed on its back.

  "Here I am," said the man.

  He looked about fifty, but very slim and hard, and when he smiled his teeth were good and probably not false.

  Into white hair, woven in dreadlocks like a black man's, were studded beads like brilliant ants.

  "Are you one of the family?" Stella asked. The word Family had evolved, and stuck firmly in her head. That, and one other word. The fox word, Vixen.

  "Am I?"

  "I'm here to see someone."

  "Are you?" said the man. He wore the leathers of a biker. He touched the bike at the front where a horse head was attached. It reminded her in an odd way of the lion.

  "The young girl," said Stella.

  "Which one?"

  There was nothing else to say.

  "The one with a knife."

  "Ah!" he exclaimed. And then he capered.

  Puck, from A Midsummer Night's Dream. Or a devil from Faust.

  "You've come," he said, "for Ruth. Nasty Ruth, but they've locked her up, my lady."

  "I've come a long way," said Stella.

  "Why?"

  "Why," she said, "do you think?"

  Camillo looked at Stella.

  "The rocking horse burned," he said. "They always do. The things you love. They die and burn and fall apart. He knows that. Why did he try again? Broke his back. Black dog, but no black-haired girl." Camillo laughed. "We ran over the snow."

  He's mad. Will that help?

  "You'll bring her to me," said Stella. "Ruth."

  "Nasty," Camillo said. "Take her away. She'll cause trouble, up in the attic."

  "Take her away—" said Stella. She had not thought of that.

  "Yes, you must. That's my condition." Camillo moved over to the door, and pushed it. It had been open, and behind it was another door, open too.

  Beyond was a hall from a country mansion, the kind the public paid to see.

  Stella had not paid and barely saw. She saw a staircase.

  "Up there," said Camillo. "I'll show you. But you must take her away."

  "All right." Stella closed her eyes and then widened them. "I'd like that. To take her away."

  "Good. Then here's the key."

  He held out to her something which had the name of key, and the being of key.

  "The key to the attic?"

  "One of them. I stole it."

  "Yes."

  "Take her away," he said. He went into the hall., and then turned back and flourished to her a courtly bow.

  Stella entered the pillared space.

  "This time," Camillo said. He made a gesture of cutting and chopping.

  Then he scampered up the stairs.

  Someone will come.

  No one did.

  Stella had a sense of things which hid, as if from her. Of things in chrysalis. Moths, spiders, beetles. Things in catacombs, waiting for some night or morning which might never come.

  They had climbed the stairs and she had not noticed. There were everywhere colored windows, like a church.


  A corridor. Another corridor. Closed doors. More stained glass.

  I'm lost.

  But she was not.

  Through a door another staircase, narrow and un-carpeted.

  "Up there," said the old man. She could see he was old, now, nearer seventy than fifty. "Just put the key in the lock."

  "I can't remember the way we came."

  "Tough," said Camillo, like a youth.

  He turned and went away, and Stella looked up the narrow stairs.

  I could do it here.

  But why not take her, take her away? Would she come? Yes, she too was waiting, waiting as the beetles did. No one to assist her. And her name was Ruth.

  Whither thou goest, I will go.

  Stella smiled.

  She went up the stairs.

  Among the oaks and pines, Red was brushing her hair.

  Lou sat with Cardiff, sulky in her black rubber like a creased balloon. Cardiff kept tweaking Lou's nipples. She did not like this, evidently.

  Rose and Pig were dozing and Tina had been cooking beans and sausages over the fire, despite the wondrous meals that infallibly issued from the house.

  Whisper was rubbing his bike, sensuously.

  Connor crouched, throwing a stick for Viv. Viv retrieved urgently, trying to distract him, for he was tense.

  Camillo arrived abruptly.

  God, but he looked old. Up from out of the mound, and his death clothes on him.

  "It's time!" he cried. He laughed as if with glee but it might have been a squawk of pain. "Come on! Get up, you cunts."

  "Here!" howled Whisper.

  "Stow it," said Connor. "Viv—bag!" Viv galloped to the Shovelhead and leapt into the saddlebag, the twig still in her jaws. "Camillo," said Connor.

  "No. We go. We go. Red girl, Scarlet O'Hara. You come around and get on my horse."

  "J'entends, monsieur."

  And Red ran, away to the front of the house where the trike was.

  Pig and Rose and Tina were already kicking out the fire, Pig trying to eat the boiling-hot food from the saucepan as they did so.

  "Three minutes," said Connor.

  "No. No minutes. Now."

  "Okay, Camillo. Up, you bastards!" Connor roared.

  But Camillo was gone, after Red, toward the trike on the front path in the mud.