Darkness, I

by Tanith Lee

  A picture came into Faran’s mind, a shelf of coast, mountains behind like black-and-white whales. Had they shown him a picture? Perhaps Mr Thorpe had done so. He could not recall.

  ‘Do you think we’ll be there soon?’ Berenice asked, in a little voice.

  ‘Yes. Don’t be scared.’

  ‘No.’

  Faran wondered how he would cope with Berenice once his perception had centred on the woman, Lilith. He would have to be kind.

  ‘My cat’s excited,’ Berenice said, placatingly.

  ‘Good.’

  The cat did look more alive, assuming personality as Berenice poured attention into it. This happened with people too. Faran hoped Cain would value Berenice. But he must, he did already, or why else had she been chosen?

  Something tugged at Faran’s soporific thought. They were all only children. Even the Welsh girl and the Greek. All—what was it?—First Born.

  Why had he remembered that? The First Born in Egypt, and the angel passing over. What had the angel done?

  ‘I keep thinking of Mama,’ said Berenice. ‘My mother. I never did before. I wonder if she’s happy.’

  ‘Perhaps you’ll be able to see her one day,’ he said. His ideas of biblical things had scattered.

  ‘Yes, that would be great. Yes, I’d like to. When I’m grown up.’

  ‘Do you want to be grown up?’

  ‘Yes. I’ll be more comfortable then.’

  ‘Or will it be the same?’

  ‘No, it couldn’t be,’ she said, making a decision, for all of them.

  The plane rocked and purred. The pilot had not spoken. He was like a robot.

  A roller of sleep came up on Faran again and he pushed it off, not wanting it.

  ‘Isn’t the sea dark?’ he said.

  ‘Yes,’ said Berenice, and then something must have caught her eye, for she moved eagerly, and again she said, ‘Look, Faran!’

  And Faran looked.

  But in that second the sky went white.

  Seen from below, the plane was, and then was not. It changed. It became a soft image, furry almost, and very bright, a puffball of rosy flame. And out of that, dark objects poked and popped, and sheered, soundless away, in the seconds before the explosion came.

  The noise, unlike the vision, was hard and coarse, yet also somehow far away. Irrelevant. An afterthought.

  Pieces of the plane, of seats and metal sinews, and fuselage, and dead burned bodies, fell quietly down, or sometimes with a little grating and rattling, and went in under the plates of ice, sizzling in the inky sea.

  A smoke trail marred the sky, then faded.

  Nothing at all remained.

  Chapter Forty-Three

  Cain moved through the torchlit darkness of his mountain, his pyramid, and came to the courtyard with the four statues in it. Of Anubis and Bast, Hercules and Astarte: Soul, joy, strength, lust. And the tank of lotuses in alabaster lamplight.

  There he paused.

  He wore black, and the hood of his black silk hair, so living and viable it was like some animal that enclosed his face, some symbiote, just as his eyes were, set in that face, symbiotic eyes. Yet, now, his eyes were smouldered over, and calm.

  He looked once towards the apartment he had allocated the boy. Then he moved on, and opened the outer door to the woman’s rooms.

  In his hand he carried the gadget of black plastic, with the single red button. That was all.

  He passed the guardian statue.

  At the inner door, he knocked.

  She spoke, the woman. ‘Is it you?’

  ‘Cain,’ he said.

  He uttered his own name with inexpressible appetite, the way men speak the names of those they want and will have. He did not speak her name that way, though he had given her her name and now she used it.

  It was she who opened the door.

  He went inside, into the ornate, golden, painted room.

  ‘I wondered when you’d come. Why were you so long?’

  ‘You should never question me,’ he said. ‘I only answer when I wish to, and in that case I’d tell you any way.’

  ‘All right,’ she said. She was not discommoded. Now she was Ankhet, as he had meant her to be, neither quite Ruth nor, definitely, Anna. A new person. His?

  ‘Ankhet,’ he said, ‘you’re alone with me now.’

  ‘Yes.’

  ‘I don’t mean that you and I are together here. I mean that there will be no others.’

  ‘Others?’

  ‘I’ve destroyed them. It’s only you who matter to me. And you’ve renounced your lover.’

  ‘Malach,’ she said. ‘Yes. The man whipped him with the thongs. Then I came away.’

  ‘And I,’ he said, ‘came away to you. There’s the boy, naturally. He means something to me, was something to me, once. He’d come to recollect that. Great loyalty, and in his adult life, more. But if you want, Ankhet, I’ll have them kill him. Painlessly and quickly. Then, only you and I.’

  ‘And Lilith?’ she said. Her face was the mask face that Ruth’s had been, porcelain perfection of nothingness. Blank. Divine. Empty. Yet now, the very emptiness was a sort of fullness and satiety.

  ‘Lilith. Lilith and I are parted.’

  ‘And you’d kill the little boy, Harpokrates.’

  ‘Andrew,’ he said carelessly.

  ‘No,’ she said. ‘I don’t mind. It’s all right. Keep him.’

  ‘And now,’ Cain said.

  ‘Now you want to make love to me,’ she said. It seemed to her she remembered many times of love-making. Malach’s, other men. Or were they all Malach, Malach in altered bodies, other lives? She herself must have died and come back often. She could visualize it now, like a winding passage with doors. She said, ‘Do what you want.’

  ‘That isn’t inviting,’ he said. ‘Invite me.’

  Then I do. I’ll sleep with you. I’ll have your babies.’

  ‘Oh,’ he said. He smiled. ‘Ankhet. Try to recall.’

  ‘What? You and I, before?’

  ‘No. That would be new, perhaps. You and I.’

  He came forward, and put his hands softly on her arms. She gazed up at him, unafraid. She said, ‘Will you hurt me?’

  ‘Never. I’d never harm you.’

  She frowned. ‘But it should hurt, love, shouldn’t it?’

  He lowered his head and gazed into her eyes with his, so blue and quiet and shining. He looked near laughter again, like the boy he had been on the boat above, as they sailed the quick-silver cold river, that was the replica of the Nile.

  Yet it was he, this one, who she had seen tear out the throat of a man, sodomizing him, murdering him, at once, and the scene running with blood—

  She put her arms up round his neck.

  He made a small sound, approval, pleasure.

  Then he leaned into her body and drew her against him, and kissed her in the way she now recollected, his tongue swelling into her mouth, a kind of willing asphyxia.

  Behind her shut lids, the other stirred, as if he were already in her body. Malach.

  Ankhet flexed her will. It was far greater than she had suspected. She cast Malach out.

  Cain was leading her over to the bed, pushing away its draperies, making her lie with her head at its foot.

  He undressed her slowly and simply, but not himself. She did not remonstrate. She concentrated on his touch, which was electric, rousing her, for she knew her body should be ready.

  He had said he would not hurt her, but obviously, he must. Anna was a virgin, tight. Now the vast weapon, which so far she had seen used only as a means to a death, would be thrust into her also, thrust in to her very core. He would hurt her, but not, it was true, harm.

  She saw him through a fine veil of tears.

  She did not know why she wept, or if she did.

  He licked her tears away, his tongue rough like a cat’s.

  Then he suckled at her breasts.

  Her blood began to flow to the rhythm of his hea
rt, for she felt his heart beat hard against her stomach. And after that he put his face into her loins, feeding on her sweetly, so she was melted like burning honey.

  But she kept her eyes wide on him. She did not mean, even for a second, to forget that he was Cain.

  Finally he pierced her, and she knew the pain once more, but it was different, less, and greater. As then, she forced herself along the measure of the blade. She took hold of his waist. She stared at him, seeing him and only him. Now they were joined, perhaps the only moment in the world when two things can be said to be one.

  ‘Will you drink my blood?’

  ‘Yes, Ankhet Persephone.’

  ‘Then am I yours?’

  ‘From the beginning, you were. But we’ll seal it.’

  ‘Are your gods real?’ she said.

  ‘I have no gods.’

  He moved in her like thunder. Then she closed her eyes at last. It was not the same. She did not need to see.

  When he pierced also into her neck, she did not protest. She felt her blood run hot along her throat as his seed ran through her inner spaces. A spasm shook her distantly, the orgasm of who she had been, once, or who she would come to be. It was not ecstatic, not even enjoyable. It was not yet hers.

  Cain lay on Ankhet. His body was heavy, warm and hard, but flexible, like the form of some large beast.

  She spread under him, immobile, and felt him draw out of her. And away.

  He looked grave, almost stoical, as if he had foregone sex rather than having taken it.

  ‘Get up,’ he said, ‘look into the mirror.’

  She did as he said. She would always have to do as he said. She must not disobey. This was nearly a relief.

  In the ordinary, unsuitable glass, Ankhet beheld the reflection of herself, the young white naked girl, and of Cain standing behind her, clothed, sombre. He slipped his left arm about her body, and his hand cupped and gently crushed her left breast over the heart. With the right hand he smoothed her neck, where he had bitten her and drunk her blood.

  ‘Why?’ she said. It was not her question—they were vampires, that was why. Ruth had known. Yet, she asked it. To test him?

  The law of God,’ he said, surprising her, for she had no memory to fit this.

  ‘You told me you didn’t believe in any gods.’

  He smiled. He said, ‘Habit. Perhaps there was a god long ago.’ Then he put down his face, like a father with a child, beside hers.

  She watched them, both faces, his, and hers. Her wig was gone. She was like his white shadow. A living shadow. He was relaxed, playful, now. Her own face was tense and alert.

  He said, ‘Now are you mine? Tell me so.’

  ‘I’m yours.’

  ‘For ever,’ he said.

  ‘Yes.’

  ‘Then I can let him go,’ Cain said.

  She did not say, Malach. She said, ‘But if I wanted you to kill him?’

  ‘I’ve killed enough for the moment,’ he said. He said, ‘I shall have to carry them with me, for three days.’

  She said, ‘The children.’

  ‘Yes. It was that,’ he pointed. She saw the black plastic thing with the button lying on a table. Next to it was a sort of mediaeval pouch that had been at his belt. He said, They are there. Go and look.’

  So she went to the purse, and undid the clasp, and inside there were six conventional blurry snapshots. Of six children. They had been captured unawares in various spots: a dusty street, a pillared way, outside an ancient building, a railway station, the entrance to Harrods, one on a bicycle in a green field. The boy outside Harrods was black, and his hand was held by a smartly dressed black woman with large white earrings.

  ‘My sacrifice,’ he said, ‘to you. To the goddess Ankhet.’

  She returned the photographs into the purse. She too, once, had killed children. But not remotely. She had done it face to face, with sharp implements.

  ‘Thank you,’ she said. Ruth’s voice. Prim and cool.

  Then it was as if he laughed, but without sound, like a cat meowing silently.

  ‘I can’t bring them back,’ he said, as if she had inquired. He sounded—satisfied. ‘They’re dead.’

  ‘Can Malach die?’ she said.

  ‘Oh, yes. Each of us can do that. But I shall let Malach live. I’ll let him live with the memory of you, and how you told him to go away from you.’

  She said, ‘I’m afraid of boredom.’

  ‘I know.’

  ‘This place,’ she said.

  ‘I’ll show you the ice world,’ he said. ‘I’ll be with you. And when you tire of the things that are here, we can go elsewhere. I haven’t troubled with it, but it’s there. It may have some interest again for me. The world. Boredom, Ankhet. We’ll amuse each other.’

  She thought of them out on the earth, and Malach somewhere else, left behind, growing small with distance. Vanishing. A pain clenched behind her breast, where her heart was, and then the pain grew delicious, under his hand, the hand of her lover, who wanted her for ever, and would take her into the world. If anything, he had been too gentle with her.

  ‘Make love to me again,’ she said, ‘I want to see—’

  ‘She gives me orders,’ he said, but he only smiled. He said, Then make me want you again.’

  Sure in memory, she turned, her white spine to the mirror, and put her narrow hands, empty of rings, on to his amber flesh.

  Lilith watched the child, Harpokrates, playing with the two white tigers. She had watched him for an hour.

  Before and beyond them, the enormous Hall stretched away, the crimson pillars and the iron roof of Nuit’s lamps. At Lilith’s back, in the blue window, nothing moved. It was as if the window were finally dead. A dead blue eye.

  He had told her, when he brought the boy.

  As the boy took hold, fearlessly, of the two great cats, Cain had said to her, in a language of a dead sea, that now there would be no more children.

  And on the horizon of Lilith’s mind, there in the mist, a black icon winked away. Was gone. Cain too left her.

  Then she sat still, and the little boy played and the cats played with him.

  Now, when she rose, only the paler tiger turned its head on its gold collar, like a clockwork thing.

  She said the word to it which meant it might stay, and then it looked off from her, and raised one vast paw, claws all sheathed, to cuff lightly the boy so he rolled down giggling against its side.

  This child must be the one who had known cats before. He did not fear them. And the tigers played beautifully, majestic and careful, as with a young cub.

  The darker did not even glance after her, as she left them.

  In the thoughts of black Faran, Lilith had been fixed.

  But his thoughts were ended. His brain was ashes.

  It was as if she had been put out.

  She did not know him, who he was, had been, would be, only the intuitive premonition of their life, jointly.

  But now he did not think of her, she had ceased.

  Lilith, too, moved through the mountain, and came into a place beyond the corridors and courts and rooms.

  There was a door which, like the bomb on the plane, responded to the touch of a finger on a button.

  Beyond this door was a fearful cold.

  The woman in her black dress, the golden diadem of a serpent on her head, went out into this, and the door shut behind her.

  Ice had formed, like walls and barriers, screens and windows. And behind, within, the ice, were shapes.

  It was a burial chamber, a necropolis.

  Unnecessary to pass over a river or a lake to reach it, perhaps unneedful the rites of old embalmings that seemed to have been carried out.

  The mummy-cases stood upright in their shields of ice, black and emerald and gold. And between stood the slender statues of Anubis and Thot-Zehuti, the conductors of souls, images of the Balance, of the serpent of Hell, Aataru, the drinker of blood, of monsters which tore, and winged guides, and painted
on the walls behind membranes of white crystal, the golden fields of endless day, the land of Ra beyond the River.

  A great barge rose, green-dyed, like all the cases, for resurrection, the hue of the Osiris. Ice shards tapered from it.

  On hedges of crystal hovered the personification of life and sexual energy, the human-headed bird, the Ba, overseeing what must be done.

  Lilith, while she moved forward, drifting between the objects of death, murmured the names of those who lay there. A limitless list, no one must be left out: You that pass me by, speak my name that I be remembered—

  In alcoves were dolls for servants to serve the dead, vases of date and pomegranate wine, or what passed for them, turned to maroon sand.

  It was an Egyptian vision, slightly flawed... Here a Greek amphora, there a bowl with a view of Bacchus, a woman’s glove in the style of 1700—items left deliberately, offerings, and frozen garlands of flowers turned black inside the claws of the ice.

  There were butterflies too, in stasis, coloured like blood and gilt and sapphire. Butterflies that perhaps had lived, resting now with folded wings thin as breath on outstretched hands of stone, the snout of Anubis the Jackal, the curls of an Assyrian lion.

  Lilith passed across the lines of sarcophagi, the boats of death, under the shade of cold gods.

  This area was like some other element of her mind, some dream made real, for a few moments.

  Then she had gone beyond it.

  A tunnel of darkness littered by bits of pottery, fake or actual gems, whispers of things that had smashed. And after that the open grotto of ice, hollowed through some glacier beneath Cain’s mountain.

  Grey-blue, the walls ran up, shimmering with stone-still wetness. Strands like hair, or swords, stalactites of ice pointing down, framing the outer whiteness of the day-locked snow.

  Lilith kicked off—a light gesture, girlish—her sandals.

  Barefoot, bare and empty-handed, her face and head uncovered, and only the dress of black linen on her body, and the gold snake on her hair. So she walked, alone, from the grotto.

  Her silhouette became, on the light, all darkness.

  Black as Faran, she walked out across the slope of whitest snow.

  She walked into the ice-scape, not fast, nor slowly, not looking back. Growing smaller with distance. Vanishing.