A Bed of Earth

by Tanith Lee

  She put out her hand.

  “Noli me tangere,” he said. “A sensible precaution.”

  “Are we sensible, then?”

  They put their hands together. It was awful for them to touch. Each to the other, like a nothingness—an absolute of the forbidden and impossible. Yet they kept their hands together.

  “Shall I die?” she said. “Should I be with you then?”

  “I don’t know, my love. I think not. There have been some I killed, whom I’ve never met after. I believed I sent them to Hell. But the island is void of any but ourselves, my mother and I, and what we invent for ourselves.”

  “We must make do then, with this.”

  She put her arms about him. He held her in turn. It was as if they held the storm, if a storm were without motion or energy. It was as if they held nothing at all, yet the nothing was paramount.

  While on the table lay the golden Box, and the withered Heart that had once worked miracles.

  And in the deserts of time, midnight beginning to sound from all the bells of Venus.

  “I love you,” she said again.

  “And I love you. Oh, Beatrixa. I loved you before I was born, and that is why, I think, I was.”

  “Then it must be that I, too, was born—for this.”

  Each had read, yet neither remembered, what tomorrow would be. The Crab month had arrived at its last day which, in the near past, had been sloughed and thus for one year missed, by the edict of a pope. The thirtieth day, which had become the single Dies Manium. And, in popular talk, it had partly remained so, even now it was returned to the calendar. A day that had died, yet lived. The Ghost Day.

  He could feel the texture of her hair. How extraordinary it was, under his hands, and brushing over them, too. Silken—yet also strong and harsh and so heavy, this hair, galvanically crackling with its vitality.

  And her body. Her slim, firm structure, fitted tight and warm on its chiseled bones, which, too, he could make out, through the sheath of her flesh; the serpent of her spine. Her gown was silk. His fingers pressed, amazed, into the embroidery and the lacing of her bodice at its back—trying to guess the pattern of these things which, visually, he did not remember.

  “Silvio …”

  She clung to him, rubbing her face against his shoulder.

  Beatrixa, too, seemed to experience his body now, as now he did hers.

  But to him, she felt as only the illusory women had ever done—real. For even the gentle touches of Meralda—maternal—had never evoked this sense—not yet of desire—but of completion.

  Then, drawing slightly apart, they looked at each other.

  They did not ask, either of them yet, what had occurred.

  Each noticed, confusedly, that the other had become more real also in their looks, and more perfect, for there had been degrees of perfection, and now the greatest of these was attained.

  As he leaned towards her again, her face was like a lamp, and then he forgot everything about her, except that she was his.

  They kissed long and hungrily, their mouths fusing, their bodies one pressed and devouring thing.

  It should not have been possible, had not previously been. But now it was, and so everything had become heightened, an exquisite tumult of erotic appetite, live as fire, consuming as deep water.

  When again they let go of each other, or almost let go (their hands, their clothes even, and their hair, still mingled and entwined) they were not, even in perfection, the same. Though outwardly they remained as they had always been, they were altered entirely, become other creatures. But they knew each other still. It seemed now that they always would.

  It was Beatrixa, a pragmatist, who said, mutedly. “How has this happened?”

  Silvio only laughed, and reached for her again.

  And she did not resist, for a short while.

  But then, “No, we must see, my love, what all this is around us—”

  “Why? Who cares what it is? You are everything.”

  “And you. But nevertheless.”

  She pulled away from him, her body aching at the loss, the very edges of her hair aching, and her blood. But even so she did it, and turned her head, and saw.

  From the sea, the land rose high. Below lay coves and headlands, rocks and islands standing out of the water. But it was an unfamiliar landscape, and saturated in the supernatural ending of a night, the lambent break of a dreamlike day.

  In the distance, the pleated sea was sluiced in glowing cinnabar light, and the fold of every wave was silvered. Here, the sun was soon to rise. Nearer to the land, the sea was melted to the deepest green, first like a dragon’s back, then like malachite; and from it lifted giant arches of rock casting long, violet shadows, and yet also glittering as if speckled by dark gold. The sky was brazen red, and new copper where it met the ocean. Then beyond it, the immanence of the sunrise, the sky, like the water, also grew ethereal, a mysterious translucent hyacinth that turned darker as it rose. And in its highest ceiling it was smalt blue, and a quarter moon lay on it like a boat of white, transparent horn, scattered around it trails of flashing crystal that were stars.

  The ground underfoot had a dark, twilight turf, turquoise-green, every blade of grass silvered like the waves, from the stars or the moon or the coming of the sun. Trees were massed here and there, ink-black without full light, yet their depths lit with spangles like jade, or tan-red like the lowest part of the sky.

  Silvio and Beatrixa could make out mountains across the water, gleaming and looking near, in the clarity of approaching dawn. Their high peaks burned moltenly like amber streaked with madder. Also, a city, or cities, were now visible, spread across the further shores and on some of the islands in the sea. Their buildings sparkled with golden points just as the rocks did. Their architecture, however, was not easily distinguished, save for several glimmering domes of powder-green verdigris, and others of volcanic brass.

  He and she stood there, gazing about, for perhaps half an hour. They had not spoken again, nor had the sun risen any higher, though the conflagration on the water did not fade. Nor did the moon begin to descend.

  Beatrixa turned. She saw their own shadows dyed in metallic umber on the turquoise ground, among the silvered grass and glassy flowers.

  There was the scent of the sea, clean as in winter, although it was summer, here. And the fragrance of the enormous sky which contained everything, the aromas of the stars.

  She said, quietly, in the stillness where the sea alone sounded like a distant breathing, “This is a mighty and a terrible place.”

  “No,” he said. “How, terrible?”

  “I don’t mean there is any harm here. I mean, it inspires terror—by its beauty and its vastness. Its difference

  “Don’t fear it, Beatrixa. It’s only another country of the lands beyond life. One I’ve never seen. And yet—it was as if I knew it. Look, doesn’t everything seem known to you?”

  “Yes. And I have never seen any land like this, or heard of one. Except—now and then in some painting by a great master-artisan, perhaps there. How do they know to paint it,” she murmured, “if they are yet alive?”

  Birds flew over them, alabaster white. One separated from the others, and came down on to the headland where they stood.

  Beatrixa knelt at once among the flowers.

  Silvio did not.

  He said, “Are you real? What are you, then?”

  “The reflection,” answered the being on the headland, “of another source, which is quite real.”

  “No,” Silvio protested, “you are—”

  “Hush, my love,” Beatrixa whispered. “It is an angel.”

  “Nor that,” said the being. “You are in another place. Unlearn, and you may see.”

  It was tall, the reflection, or the angel, tall as two men one upon the other’s shoulders. It had wings of white flame, which spread behind it and caught the ruby incandescence of the unrising sun. It seemed clothed in something that was pale and not wholly visible,
and nor was any of it wholly there, for the sky showed through it, and a cloud of little stars. Yet it was solid as the earth they stood on. It had no face, yet it had eyes. These eyes were like the larger stars. They gave great light, so from the lovers on the grass, jet-black shadows now extended, three or four of them, while the flowers, even in this shadow, shone.

  “Are we to be punished?” Beatrixa asked.

  The being said, “For you, it will always be dawn. There can be for you, here, no night, and no true day. But dawn, you may have.”

  Silvio said, “Dawn is for ever, here.”

  But the creature rose straight up into the deep of the deep, raisin-blue sky, rose like a pillar of fire, leaving behind it a susurrus, as if a breeze had passed across the land; and the air sang for a moment, and it was like the music of the stars.

  After a time, they were walking down from the headland, the high place.

  Inland, huge woods and forests spread, sable, lighted as if by torches within, and far away were other mountains, tipped as if with palest gold-leaf. The sky was sea-green there, in what must be the west, and also starred over.

  They kept to the margin of the coast, the ocean on their right hand.

  They were lost. This did not disturb them. Both of them knew they had reached the Ghost Day of Paradise. They were on the outskirts of Heaven, and had been given an endless dawn.

  But Beatrixa thought, although the thought seemed negligible, The moon is infinitessimally moving. I think it is. Really, she could not be sure.

  And Silvio had taken her hand, and now and then they stopped again, to touch each other, their faces, their hair, the very sleeves and shoes, the garments that covered their bodies. For here, they could.

  Then they stopped for another reason.

  The slope ran over and away into a long valley, where the sea came in like liquid vitreous to a shallow spoon. And there was a palazzo there, or palazzi—a town of them. The buildings gave into and from each other, and all were open, with roofs which had no centre and pillared arcades and courts laid with floors mirroring the sky above, doorless, and huge arched windows without glazing.

  People—if people they were—moved about there. There were horses too, in ornate trappings, as if for a festival or carnival, and the clothes of the people had also, even in the distance, that glamorous look.

  Closer, there was something else.

  “It is a graveyard,” she said. “How can there be a yard of death in this world?”

  “There can be anything,” Silvio replied, “here.” He knew more than she did of such areas.

  But they stayed at the graveyard’s edge for some time.

  Like everything they had seen, this, too, was of great beauty. Beside it, Venus City’s Isle of the Dead was a paltry slum.

  For here, every grave had its upright and pristine marker, made of a mysterious opalescent substance that glowed inwardly like a coal. And these markers had been carved, or had evolved, each with a figure of the Zodiac, but everyone done uniquely.

  The Ram stood guard in one spot, like silvery ice, with a rose-scarlet smouldering inside his horns. There was the Virgo, luminous and stellar as her star overhead. And there the Lion, flickering in his own golden radiance. Each of these monuments, and there were a great many, stretching away and away, was a masterpiece. One other thing there was, too.

  “Do you see, Beatrixa—each grave’s thrown open—like a bed.”

  Beatrixa looked. She held her breath, astonished that she still breathed at all. She thought concisely, The astrological signs are the markers not of their birth, but their deathdays. Their return into this world—

  At that moment, a grave which was marked by the Archer trembled, tilted, and the lid of earth flew up and slapped down again beside it.

  “Look, oh look,” said Beatrixa.

  “I see. It’s a child.”

  The child lay in the grave. But soon it sat up, and next it stepped slowly out of the earth. It wore nothing, was naked, nearly formless, yet its face was full of anxiety. It was crying.

  “Oh, the child,” she said. “Shall I go to it? What shall I say?”

  But Silvio held her back, and in that instant, the child’s face altered. It shook its hair, which became burnished, and for a second it was male, and then he was clothed. And the child broke out in a shout of laughter. Opening wide his arms, he flew up into the sky as if to greet his friend.

  “In God’s name, it’s myself—” Silvio said. “It is me—”

  “No, my love. No, not you.”

  “But so I was. Look how he soars about. All fear gone. Everything before him. Ah, no then. Not myself. What did I have? He was a human thing once. And I never was.”

  “My love,” she said, “my love.”

  They watched the child, as joyful, skillful, and wild, it darted over the twilight sky towards the town of palazzi below.

  “Are we to go there?” Silvio said to Beatrixa.

  “I think it’s allowed us.”

  But they had put their arms about each other again. Not to kiss or caress, not for the reassurance of sensation and lust, but only to be sure of each other, and of themselves.

  In their minds, the voice of the angel sounded still. Dawn you may have. But were the glittering wave-crests one notch brighter, the moon a little less high?

  In dreams, things are sometimes suddenly changed. And here, too, it seemed, this might happen. When finally they had crossed the graveyard, they needed to go through a grove of silent trees, where a fountain fell down into a basin. And looking up, the beginning of the waterfall was nowhere but in the starry sky.

  Silvio cupped some of the water in his hand. “If we drink it, we must remain here.”

  “Do you think so?” she said. She shook her head. “Don’t drink. I don’t think it will give us that. Perhaps it’s forbidden.”

  “Oh, Beatrixa, you’ll tell me next I mustn’t eat the Apple of the Tree.”

  “Yes, I would tell you that too.”

  Silvio drank the water, a few drops lingering in his palm. “It tastes of water.”

  Beatrixa said, “If you have taken it, then I must.”

  Then he would have stopped her, not uneasy, only cautious for her, as she had been for him. But she caught a little and put the moisture in her mouth.

  “No, it tastes of light.”

  “On my mother’s island,” he said, “the fountains taste of wine or flowers—whatever one wishes. But this one knows its own mind.”

  Then they ceased to speak and looked at each other.

  “We, too,” he said, “are invited to their festival. Whatever that is.”

  For their garments had altered. Without their feeling or knowing or, for a minute, seeing it.

  Her gown was of a blood-red velvet figured over in blue with a design of hearts that were also fruit. And he was now clad in cloth-of-gold, the doublet slashed to reveal yellow silk. Both were crowned with flowers, the flowers of the world, roses, myrtle.

  “The colors of our houses,” she said.

  Beyond the grove, in the direction of the palazzi, music began to sound. Earth’s music, too, Venus music, violas, mandolas, the tabor, the reed—

  “And the design on my gown,” she said, “is for a bride.”

  “Yes,” he said, “I think you are right.”

  She was troubled. He, carefree.

  She said, “Is this truly to be? Is it a dream, then?”

  The music was nearer, and Silvio came and caught her to him again, making her his, as she was, reminding her without words that marriage, to them, was a formality and a ritual only. They were already joined, not yet by bodily union, but by the iron couplings of the spirit.

  Outside the grove, when they emerged from it, waited their bridal procession on the grassy road.

  They stared, the lovers, at a hundred people or more, none of whom they knew, and who were yet familiar to them, as if from the memories of others …

  The wedding-guests had dressed in splendo
r. Their faces were smiling and expectant—and Beatrixa saw that the expression of Silvio’s face was quite like theirs.

  What had he really known but such a world as this, a world of happiness and delights—what had she known and seen about her but the other world, the world of earth, of sorrow and disappointments.

  Small surprise he stood there, this superlative man, childish in his pleasure and acceptance. Nor that Beatrixa was so still.

  Musicians in crimson and yellow struck their pear-shaped lutes; to the tapping of drums, acrobats turned cartwheels and walked on golden stilts. The red and turquoise dawn lit every figure, every drapery, the silverwork and rainbow tassels of the horses, the mantles that seemed stitched with diamonds, the cascading hair, the masks of animals and birds with sequined eyes, the faces all unknown and yet known.

  Some had led two horses forward, for the bride and groom. (There were no servants here, of course.) The hands which assisted Beatrixa to mount were courteous, helpful. Physically able to be experienced. Silvio was already mounted, used to horses as to everything from the illusory war-camps of his earliest living fantasies.

  They rode slowly down towards the town of palazzi.

  On the sea, at the very line of meeting between sky and water, there was now a single crack of sheer white-gold.

  Over a bridge the couple went, one high-arched and lined by statues that held high torches of grass-green flame. Below, a river of obsidian flowed to the jade of the sea and to the outer sea, which was carnelian.

  Walking alongside her horse, which was a white one, trapped in white patterned by golden towers, Beatrixa recognized the guardsman from the Castello Barbaron, he who had died two years ago.

  “Good morning, Beatrixa,” he said, smiling up at her. His face was fine, and full now, too, of happy thought and good-will.

  “Greetings, sir. I am glad—to see you here.”

  “Best girl. I am content, for now.”

  Sharply she said, “For now? But this is for eternity.”

  But when she looked down, she found he had gone off a short way, and instead Jacmo walked by her. Jacmo, who had been killed by the della Scorpia sword, that night above the Blessed Maria Canal.