by K. W. Jeter
A horse ran toward him, its mane and tail on fire. The hooves struck sparks from the cobbles, the ground shaking beneath him with each hammer blow. But that was the bombs, he knew. An iron rain, as the night’s birds cried out in fear and triumph. He shielded his face, and the birds’ song beat against the inside of his skull. The horse was upon him then and he fell beneath it, seeing the red flames bannering from its neck, a flap of torn skin revealing the steaming wet muscle of its shoulder, pink-flecked foam coursing its jaw. In the mirror of the burning horse’s crazed round eye Pavli could see his face reflected…
He had come into the city from the southeast, climbing over an abandoned row of tank barriers, nothing more than broken slabs of concrete stacked haphazardly at the edge of a shallow trench. The old men and children of the Volkssturm guards had run away, leaving behind the antiquated rifles they had been given. A shop window had been broken out, the stock inside looted; all he could find was a jaw of preserves that had smashed upon the doorsill. He had picked out the glass shards and eaten, scooping up the dark berry pulp with his fingertips. The sweetness had made him dizzy for a moment, then had given him enough strength to continue on into the Berlin he no longer recognized.
Blood leaked through the teeth of the fallen horse, and then the creature was still. Pavli pushed himself out from beneath its weight, his elbows scraping on the stones. Too dazed to stand upright, he crawled away, up onto the sidewalk, sitting at last against a wall of charred brick.
The sounds of the birds came to him then. He looked up and saw them overhead, their wings dark shapes against the churning red clouds. Not just the birds of the forest, or the small wrens and sparrows of the city; he saw a mad profusion, great swans and long-necked egrets, storks of Africa, fierce-eyed hawks, eagles whose beating wings cooled his heat-scarred face. The zoo, he realized. That’s where they’ve come from. The cages had been torn open, and they had burst into the sky in their own bright, chattering explosion. For a dizzying moment, he watched the swirl of the birds’ brilliant plumage, the jewels of their eyes, the inside of his skull singing with their unexpected beauty.
A raven swooped by, close enough that he felt the brush of its wing against his brow. Its rasping metallic voice shouted his name. He wondered if it had followed him all this way, if it had been the one that had flown above the cross he made from fallen branches in the woods, if it had listened to his brother whispering those secrets to him…
The black wings settled along the raven’s back as it perched on top of the horse’s head. It darkened its beak in the blood still welling over the broken flesh, then turned the hard gems of its gaze toward him again.
He’s here! The raven’s voice jabbed a rusting nail into Pavli’s eardrum. The prince has come, the prince is here!
His hands pushed him away from the wall. “What do you mean -” The words made no sense to him. “Who is it -”
The little one! An idiot chant. The little one! The raven’s eyes sparked with fervor. The prince, her son – he’s come!
“I don’t understand…” He raised his palm toward the creature, hoping that it would hop onto his wrist, so that he could bring it to his ear, where it could explain these mysteries to him. “Please…”
The raven spread its ragged wings and flapped into the air. Pavli turned and saw a hunched-over figure moving out of the shadows. The bursts of artillery shells illuminated a man with a drawn knife, a butcher’s tool, bigger than the dagger inside Pavli’s shirt.
He drew back against the wall as the man sprinted toward the horse. The knife rose, then sank into the animal’s haunch, blood gouting over the man’s forearm. The red weight of flesh that the blade carved away was large enough that the man had to sling it over his shoulder to carry.
“What’s wrong with you? Eh?” The man, stooped beneath the oozing burden, stared at Pavli. “Are you crazy?” The man’s eyes glittered brighter than the raven’s had.
“No… I don’t know…” The birds, all of them, the storks and eagles and the shrill-voiced raven, had wheeled about in the sky and vanished, specks against the storm clouds and then gone from sight. The man with the butcher knife hadn’t seemed to be aware of their presence. “I’ve come from -” He couldn’t remember its name, or if it had ever had one.
“You must be crazy! To be outside in weather like this!” The man looked up at the fire-reddened sky, cocking his head to listen to the war thunder, then broke into harsh, barking laughter. He came and grabbed Pavli’s arm, pulling him upright. “Come on – you’ll be killed if you don’t!”
The man led him to an open doorway, steps leading down into a cellar’s darkness. “There you are! That’ll do for you!”
“But what about you?” Pavli turned and saw the man scuttling away. “Where are you going?”
“I can’t go in there!” His eyes widened, his hands clutching tighter upon the bleeding horseflesh. “There’s too many of them down there – they’ll take it from me! Let them get their own!” He broke into a stumbling run, close to the crumbling buildings, his head down to avoid any stray bullets.
Pavli lost sight of the man in the banks of smoke rolling across the wreckage-cluttered streets. Another wave of the bombardment swept across the area, the impact of the explosions striking him in the chest. The front of one building gave way like a mountain avalanche, bricks and stone burying an abandoned truck and the body of its driver lying a few yards away.
Scalding air filled Pavli’s nose and mouth. He covered his face and grabbed the iron rail, hot against his palm, leading down into the shelter. The air was only a few degrees cooler with each step downward, but breathable.
He halted at the bottom of the steps to get his bearings. In the close-ceilinged darkness, he could see a few scattered candles and lanterns. Faces turned toward him, some showing fear, others beyond caring. Women held their hollow-eyed children close to themselves, one mother rocking a fitfully squalling infant against her breast.
Head lowered, Pavli squeezed between the rows of wooden benches lining the shelter’s walls. Away from the steps, the air grew staler, smelling of sweat and the zinc buckets in the corners, overflowing with urine. He went onward, looking for something but not knowing what. Dust fell on his neck, the mass of earth and brick above shuddering with each unseen blow.
He found them then, at the farthest reach of the shelter, where the curved walls were damp with seeping water. On a box set in the middle of the packed-dirt floor, a single candle guttered in a tin holder. A bearded man leaned forward, trying to read a book by the flickering light. Pavli’s eyes adjusted to the dimness; beyond the man were figures from a dream. Huddled against each other on the benches, or lying close upon the floor, were knights in doublet and hose, court ladies in elegantly embroidered gowns and hair bound up in gems and pearls. As if the shelter’s tunnel had been dug so deep into the earth, that it had uncovered the ancient centuries buried here, and the ghosts had stepped forward to take up bodies once more.
He held still, not even breathing, marvelling at their strangeness and beauty. Wherever they had come from, they had become mired in this place and time; Pavli could see now how tattered the women’s gowns were, the fabric defiled with dirt and scorch marks; the men’s torn leggings revealed the pale flesh beneath. One knight had an arm in a sling improvised from a handkerchief, another had his head bound with a ragged bandage. A young girl, with only the top half of her gown intact, lay with her head against a man’s chest, her red-rimmed eyes now closed in exhaustion, his arm clasped around her shoulders for protection.
He’s here! Pavli remembered the raven’s cry. The prince has come, the prince is here! He peered through the darkness, across the faces, sleeping or gazing numbly before themselves. He still didn’t understand what the raven had meant.
The man reading the book – dressed, like some of the others among the knights and ladies, in modern garb – looked up at Pavli. “Do you want to sit here with us?” The man’s voice was soft, burdened with fatigue. �
�There’s not much room, but you’re welcome. You look tired.”
“Yes…” He nodded. “I’ve come a long way.” He could see the pages of the book spread upon the bearded man’s lap. An old woodcut illustration showed a medieval court, the men and women dressed in the same finery as their counterparts here in the shelter. They had all turned to look in dread and wonder at a hooded figure that had appeared in the banquet room’s arched doorway. “A very long way…”
The man set aside the book and studied Pavli. “Why?” He touched Pavli’s hand. “Why did you come?”
“I was told…” He swayed where he stood and smiled in rueful acknowledgment of his own madness. Who could understand that he had heard his dead brother upon a cross, whispering the secrets of eternal life to him? That the birds of the night had cried out mysteries? “I thought… that she might be here…”
“How remarkable.” The bearded man smiled, a partner in madness, though his eyes remained filled with grief. “That you should find your way to this place.” He set aside the book of old tales and stood up. “I know the one you mean.” He took Pavli by the hand. “Be quiet.”
The fragile light of the candle was left behind as the man led Pavli farther into the darkness, past the knights and ladies. The crying of children, the murmur of prayers, even the volleys of artillery shells overhead, grew remote.
“There…” Pavli’s guide whispered at his ear. “You see her, don’t you?”
The shelter tunnel angled to one side, the curved wall hiding them from the view of the others. Enough illumination slid along the damp bricks to allow Pavli to see the figure of a woman lying on the wooden bench.
“Is she the one you seek?”
Pavli knelt down by the bench. The woman’s shallow breathing barely lifted the white fabric of her gown. Her white-gold hair spilled across her bared shoulder and alongside her arm, the back of her pale hand resting on the dirt floor.
The man’s voice came even softer. “Of course she is.”
He felt his heart swell and crack inside his chest, the narrow vault of the shelter seeming to fall away to a perfect night sky. The birds shouted inside the chamber of his skull. The raven, poor foolish creature, had known, but had not known what she was. He took the woman’s fallen hand and placed it on her breast. An angel…
He was close enough to have kissed her, if he had dared. The face of Marte Helle, the angel of his uncle’s shop window, the face in the silver frame, the newspaper photo that had flared into smoke and ash in the asylum’s darkroom. All of those, and now here before him. Now he knew why he had come, what vision had guided his steps.
His hand reached down and brushed a strand of golden hair away from her brow. She made no sign of awakening, her eyelids not even fluttering. “What is the matter with her?” He looked over his shoulder at the man who had led him to this place.
“Isn’t it obvious?” The bearded man regarded her with his sad eyes. “She’s dying. She didn’t even try to get out of the studio when the shells hit – you don’t know what I’m talking about, do you? Never mind, it doesn’t matter. Two of the grips carried her here.” He shook his head. “I suppose it’s better this way. I would have been tormented by the thought of her burning.”
Pavli felt as if he had stepped through the pages of the book the man had been reading by candlelight and into one of the woodcut pictures. The old tales were the real world now, and the other merely empty dreaming. “What is the spell that has been laid upon her?”
“Ah…” The bearded man understood. “Of course. The spell… an evil magician has stolen her son from her. The young prince was killed, and his bones ground up and scattered to the winds. And now she’ll die of her grieving.”
No – Pavli shook his head. The prince is here. Somewhere in the city; that was what the raven had told him. He knew if he could wake her, tell her, she would live.
“Leave us.” He looked up at the man standing behind him. “I can help her. But you must not watch.”
“What do you mean -” The bearded man suddenly reached down, his hand laid against the side of Pavli’s face. “Your eyes,” he said wonderingly. “You must be one of them… one of her people.”
He brushed the man’s hand away. “There isn’t time to waste. You must go away.” He pointed to the angle of the tunnel, concealing the other part of the shelter. “And keep anyone else from coming back here.”
The bearded man hesitated for only a moment. “Very well. She spoke to me – a long time ago – about legends, secrets known to the ones from whom her father had taken her. What harm can it do now?” He stepped back, away from the bench with the dying woman upon it. “As you wish; I’ll stand guard for you.”
Pavli waited until the man had disappeared around the curve of the wall, then turned back to the angel lying on the bench. It struck him as something inevitable, as preordained as one page following the next in the book of old tales, that he would have come upon her in this place. She needed him, as much as he had needed her, the mere image of her face in the frayed newspaper photo and in his dreams, that had kept him alive in Ritter’s asylum.
Carefully, tenderly, he undid the ornate belt knotted at her waist. A cleverly sewn fold of cloth concealed a long row of hooks and eyes at the side of the gown. When he had separated those and unbuttoned the tight cuffs beaded with seed pearls at her wrists, it was an easy matter to remove the garment from her. He had to raise her up with a hand between her shoulder blades, so he could draw her white arms from the gown’s sleeves; as he laid her back down, leaning over her, the bloodless lips parted, whispering a man’s name.
“David…”
His heart constricted for a moment, in a pang of jealousy. He wondered who the man was, who could be so fortunate as to have her dream of being in his embrace as she lay dying.
There wasn’t time to consider such things. Not now.
She lay before him, the antique gown rumpled beneath her, its hem draped over the edge of the bench and across his knees. She had tried to speak once more, but no sound came. The effort seemed to exhaust what little strength she had left; Pavli could see her sinking deeper into unconsciousness, beyond dreaming. And closer to death.
From inside his shirt, he took the SS dagger. His thumb rubbed across the words inscribed on the blade. Meine Ehre hei?t Treue. He remembered everything that Matthi had taught him, the secrets whispered by a silken thing with his brother’s face, hanging from a wooden cross in the forest. His inheritance at last, the secrets of the Lazarenes.
With the dagger’s sharp point, he drew a shallow cut along her left wrist, then the other. In the dim light, the blood seeped out black as ink. Another wound, along her ribs; this one flowed more, the blood trickling down and soaked up by the gown beneath her. The stigmata were complete.
The wounds, the brief pain that he had been unable to avoid causing, roused her for a moment. Her eyes opened partway, her gaze out of focus as she tried to see him. She lifted her hand and grasped his arm, leaving a red mark upon his sleeve. Then she let go, her hand falling as if already lifeless.
Pavli knew there was little time left.
He reached behind Marte’s neck, to the first small points of her spine; as if they were buttons as well, that he could undo as easily as those of the gown. His fingertips dug deeper into the flesh above the bone. Something parted, her skin but not her skin; he felt the weightless substance, lighter than smoke, gathering in the crooks of his fingers. He shifted his hands, laying his palms flat against the backs of her shoulders, then drawing them slowly apart.
As his brother had taught him, had promised him – he saw it then, the skin of her death, the silken translucent matter separating from her body. She moaned, at first as though the process pained her, then a sigh, the ending of pain. He brought his hands down the smooth roundness of her arms, a silken ghost rising piece by piece from her naked form. The floating image snared for a moment at her wrists, the blood from the wounds mingling as red threads in both flesh and t
he slowly drifting essence. The connection thinned and then broke, the ghost hands opening like pale flowers.
Beneath her breasts, at the side of her torso, Pavli stroked his hand across the larger wound, the blood smearing against his palm. She arched her back, eyes still closed, in a dream or memory of a lover’s touch. He brought his hands lower, the dead skin parting from her throat to the soft, darker-gold hair between her legs. That flesh swelled beneath his fingertips; it was the first time he had ever touched a woman in that place, and a dizzying flush rose up across his own throat. He forced his breath deliberate, his brother’s words repeating inside his head. The moment passed, and he was able to draw his hands over her hips and across the front of her thighs.
The face was the last. A ghost floated above Marte, bound to her as though locked in an unending kiss. Pavli reached up and stroked his fingertips across her cheeks and brow, his thumbs moving along the angle of her jaw. The silken mask gave way. The ghost with her dreaming face rose higher now, faint luminous smoke caught against the low stonework of the tunnel.
He sank down upon the floor, feeling his own tiredness well up inside him. The administering of the sacrament to her, the angel that shared his blood and heritage, had taken what had been left of his strength. He could barely keep himself sitting upright as he watched the silken image slowly dissipate and vanish in the darkness overhead.
The sound of the woman’s breathing brought his gaze back down to her. Her breast rose higher now; he could see the force of her heartbeat, the pulse strong at the sides of her neck.
“I told you,” mumbled Pavli, his heavy eyelids lowering. “I told you… I could save her…”
His head snapped erect, startled, as he felt his arm seized. His eyes opened wider, and he found himself gazing into the angel’s awakened face. She raised herself from the bench, her fingers still tight above his elbow, and looked searching into his eyes.