by Farris, John
So there was his prize. To claim her, all he had to do was expose himself to the razor edge of the goatman's ax—because, the longer he studied the comely creature dangling over his 'sang patch like an especially well-drawn illustration from a children's book of faery, the more certain he felt that this was all too good to be true. She hadn't come here alone. She and her kind knew his Wildwood hangouts pretty thoroughly; he didn't doubt that he had been spotted earlier in the day with Whit Bowers. And he'd had a hunch all along that they were under surveillance, what had he said about having wings and roosting in tall trees? He'd been thinking then of the butterfly girl, who could fly impressively high, he knew that already . . . so they had rigged a trap of their own, difficult for her, as bait, but convincing. They had anticipated that he would be overeager and stupid at the sight of her, forgetting everything else in his hurry to cut her down and carry her off. Over one shoulder, because she wouldn't be able to walk very far in these woods without tearing her wings, no matter how carefully folded, to tatters.
Thus encumbered, he would be easy prey for the goatman.
He looked for likely hiding places, but that was a futile exercise: there were just too many. The goatman could be stretched out lean as a mantis in a shadovy tree overhead, blending fully with the darkness except for half-shut eyes. Or crouched deep in a thicket. Too bad he hadn't brought Bocephus along, Arn thought regretfully, to sniff the nigger out. But he still wasn't of a mind to just turn around and leave her, tantalizingly within reach again.
He coveted the butterfly girl. He was smitten with her uniqueness, her freakish beauty. Sex had something to do with it, but he most wanted what he'd never demanded of another woman—to own her. The hell with what anyone else might say, including Faren.
The way to work it, he reasoned, was to act almost as dumb as they expected, until he flushed the goatman from cover and killed him. He now had a good idea of how to accomplish that.
With his rifle ready and his knife in his left hand and resting against his chest where it couldn't be got at easily, he walked into the clearing, not moving his head much, hat brim pulled down so no one could see where he was looking at any given moment. Setting his feet down with care, most concerned about stepping into a trap like the one with which he'd grabbed the butterfly girl: they might have relocated his remaining snares, or fixed up a deadlier surprise of their own. His back was unprotected, which bothered him; but he just had to trust the sharpness of his ears. He needed a really firm grip on himself right now, but he was distracted by a tickle of the ludicrous, inspired by the winged girl hanging there, too much like a picture show for him to maintain his concentration as he damned well knew he ought to. Arn went to the movies with Faren only because he liked the cartoons, most of them anyway: he always called ahead to be sure they weren't going to show him some shit like singing mice or Casper the Friendly Ghost, but he'd stay over every time to see the Road Runner twice, and laugh all the way home recalling the tribulations of Wile E. Coyote, when one of his elaborate schemes to trap that hot-footed bird (bee-beeeeeep!) blew up in his crooked tufted face. Hell of a thing to be thinking about right now, that dumb fucking coyote . . .
He fully expected the girl to start screaming as soon as she became aware of him, to distract him and cover any slight noises the goatman might make as he readied himself to attack. But she was quiet, even after a frightened convulsive jerking of her body that set her to twirling almost full circle. It had to hurt: her right ankle, where the thong-tough vine gripped it, was skinned bloody raw. But she only sobbed weakly and gasped for breath.
Now Arn had her well covered with his rifle and could smile, though he didn't stop moving, circling sideways but changing direction unpredictably, the Winchester rifle barrel in the crook of his left arm, muzzle never more than eighteen inches from the perfectly round, taut bulge of her navel. Even if the goatman was so handy with his ax he could split Arn's skull from twenty feet with a whirling throw, the girl was sure to die as well, her belly blown out.
A stand-off, for now.
Her upside-down eyes were fixed on him.
"Will you cut the vine, sir?" she pleaded. Her accent was unmistakably mick, but he might have guessed, because of her overall rosy coloring and the tan freckles on the raised, slightly sharp bridge of her nose.
When he didn't speak or alter his smile she jerked again, frantically, hurting herself needlessly; her inflated nearly fleshless ribs looked fragile as paper lanterns.
"Would you be shooting me then? Have I no time to pray to the Virgin's Son?"
"Girl, I don't mean you no harm at all."
Her tears flowed, wetting her short sandy-red lashes and then her peaked hairline. Her free leg flexed at the knee. She had long toes for such a small girl. With prehensile strength they grasped the vine where it had crossed her right instep as she attempted to take some of the weight off her other, cramped leg.
"Then for pity's sake release me—let me go! It's suffering I am."
Arn stopped moving, perhaps slightly lulled by his fascination with her. He said, "I can see it ain't been much fun for you. What's your name, girl?"
"My name is—Josie Raftery."
"Where'd you come from?"
"Ireland. Dun Laoghaire."
"I mean today."
"I'm after thinking you already know."
"Yeah. Do you know who I am?"
"Indeed I do. God and Sweet Mary, will you kindly cut me down?"
"Where'd you get them pretty wings, Josie?"
"I tried them on—sir; the next thing I knew, they—were mine for keeps."
He nodded. "Do you know what I want, Josie?"
"Whatever it is—get on with it! But don't—leave me like this."
"I want you to call the goatman out. I want him where I can see him."
"Taharqa? But he's not here—I've not seen him all this day long."
"Josie Raftery, I'll bet you're sharp a-plenty, but you got to realize I ain't no dunce myself. You and that nigger're never far from each other; he looks after you, don't he?"
"I look after—meself," she said in a huskier voice and with a frown of indignation. Then she fell into despair again. "Oh, God. Sweet Jaysus! I cannot endure—much more of this."
"You won't call him out?"
"I swear to you, sir—I do not know where Taharqa is!"
Arn said in a low voice, "Then I reckon I got to do somethin' I'd as leave not do, just to make sure you're tellin' me the truth."
He reversed his rifle and placed the stock end against one of her hips, turned her in a circle. As her bare buttocks appeared he quickly slashed one cheek with the knife. Not cutting her deeply—he only wanted blood to flow, visible from a distance and inviting the goatman's rage, a sudden, fatally wrong move on his part. Josie gasped, but she hadn't seen the knife in his hand flicking toward her; and the blade was so sharp she scarcely felt the shallow diagonal cut, six inches long, where the cheek was fullest, didn't know what he'd done until blood began rolling down the middle of her back, and she smelled it.
"You said you wouldn't hurt me! You are a fearful villain! And why not cut me throat, too, have done with all your mayhem! Saints of glory preserve me!"
Arn ignored her; he was looking around the clearing, ready with his rifle and knife for the attack he was sure must now come. But nothing rustled in the bushes except some peeping birds and chipmunks; there was no sudden shaking of tree branches as the goatman plunged to the ground.
Nearly five minutes passed. Flies came to the blood, which slowly dried, darkening the streak; but the goatman did not appear. Either he owned better control than Arn had given him credit for, which made him all the more dangerous, or the girl simply hadn't been lying.
Arn felt grimmer, and shabby in his purpose.
Her eyes were closed now, her breathing had slowed, there was a tinge of blue to her lips that worried him even as he wondered if a scar would be traceable where he had struck.
"Josie!"
Her wetted lashes fluttered, her lips parted, he saw her tongue and a little foam between not-quite-regular teeth, but she didn't utter a sound.
He let go of his rifle then, encircled her slippery waist with one arm, and hacked the vine in two. He lowered her carefully, setting her feet on the ground, but her ankles turned and she sagged against him, breathing in shallow gusts. The multicolored scales of her wings felt and looked like fine needlepoint; they were covered with a thin film of iridescent dust that stained the fingertips. He knew he had to be careful, the wings would rend easily, and might not heal as fast as flesh, if they healed at all. Eventually butterflies just wore out their wings, didn't they? As the blood drained rapidly from her head she fainted with a tremulous sigh.
Arn put Josie Raftery down on her side in a bed of birds' foot violets and phlox and, while staying alert for surprises, pondered what to do with her.
She came around after a few minutes and a nudge of his foot against the side of her throat, stirring with painful little noises, blinking her eyes until she was able to focus on him.
"It's dying of a demon thirst I am," she complained.
Arn knew there was a spring and a pool only a few minutes away. He sheathed his knife and kneeled, putting an arm around Josie's waist again, then tilted her forward over his left shoulder. He lifted her easily.
"Be still now, and don't give me no trouble," he cautioned; but Josie lay unresisting in his grasp on his wide shoulder. He adjusted her position until he had the balance just right, his left hand spread in the blood-tacky hollow of her back. Her wings were tamely folded, at a diagonal and resting against his hat brim. His peripheral vision was partially blocked, although a little of the sun's light filtered through the wings as if through loosely woven window shades. The noose of vine remained around her sorely chafed ankle. He carried her out of the clearing to the west, rifle down along his right side, the worn stock in his armpit, finger on the trigger. Even so he was vulnerable as long as he carried the girl. But he lacked that well-honed sense of imminent danger, the instinct that he was observed. The farther he walked, the more secure he felt, convinced that he and Josie were alone.
"What were you doin' in my 'sang patch?" he asked her.
"There's so little of it to be found anymore, and we need the tonic. There has been a lot of sickness. It was a harsh winter, sir. Several of us died."
"Sorry to hear it," Arn muttered, moving as carefully as he knew how, but still rubbing her wings occasionally against low sharply pronged branches. She tensed in his grasp each time: the danger of torn wings alarmed her. He understood; what would she be without them? A doomed cripple.
"Oh, be right careful, won't you?"
"We're just about there, Josie."
Almost no sun leaked into the small glade where the spring bubbled from a cleft between stairstep levels of rock into a fern-bordered pool about twelve feet wide. He put her down at the pool's edge and told her to keep still, although she looked with longing at the clear flowing water.
"Hold it a minute."
Arn glanced up at the tenting of leaves on interlaced branches not far above their heads, glowing like a greenhouse roof. Nowhere she could go, he decided, if she took a notion to spread her wings.
He pulled his knife and cut the noose from her ankle. There were black specks of gnats like dirt in the still-suppurating wound.
"After you have your drink you better soak that ankle," he advised her. "Do you need any help?"
"No." Josie rolled quickly onto her stomach, tossed her long streaky hair back over her shoulders, wiggled a little through the fern until she could lower her mouth to the surface of the pool and drink. Then she bathed her heated face, holding her head half under the water for a very long time. When she lifted and shook her head vigorously her teeth sparkled, her sea-green eyes were magnified by water drops and almost blissful in their expression.
Arn wanted water himself, but he preferred keeping his eyes on her at all times. Josie lifted herself to a sitting position, wincing at the rub of fern on the cut cheek. She put her feet together and lowered them into the pool until the water was above her knees. She had spread her wings for balance; they wavered delicately, yielding glints of gold where the sun struck unsteadily through them. She sighed. Am pulled his handkerchief from his back pocket and mopped his face; it was stuffy in this glade.
"And what will you do with me now?" Josie asked him.
"Take you home with me, girl."
"No!"
"What do you want to do, spend the rest of your life with a bunch of damned Walkouts?"
"Damned? Yes—through no fault of ours! Why should you hate us so? And want to kill us? We've done no harm; and our lives are difficult enough as it is."
"Look: the hawkman—well, that was a long time ago, I don't think I—if I had it to do over—"
He had no inkling she could move so quickly, almost with the speed of a hummingbird. One moment she was soaking her legs in the pool, the next she had flitted eight feet in the air, wings flung wide and clinging to the sultry, unmoving air; and of course (he realized too late), lacking arms and hands, she would have become expert in the use of her legs and, particularly, her long-boned feet and deft toes. He barely had a glimpse of the green smudgy water-rock she had fished from the bottom of the pool before she did a kind of sideways flip, one leg coming up in a ferociously well-aimed cross-kick, the rock chunking him with great force on the right side of his head between the eye and the ear. It knocked him down but not out, vision going as if a line to a lamp had been cut. He lost his grip on his rifle. As he was trying to pick it up she was on him again; in a dark flutter of rage she brought the rock down resoundingly on his forehead. White light burst behind his eyes, he bit his tongue as he thrashed on the ground. But he couldn't get up, and when he tried to grab her his clumsy hand slipped from a wet shinbone.
The sight of his good eye cleared long enough for him to glimpse the fierceness of her puckered brow, her jade glower, but he didn't see the rock coming as she rolled adroitly to one side again.
Arn barely heard the smack of the rock against thinly fleshed bone as he rolled toward the pool. And he was too far gone in weighted darkness to feel much distress as he sank into the pool, incapable of reacting even when water gushed down his throat.
Whit, dozing where Arn had left him on the ridge a brisk half hour's walk away from the spring in the glade, heard Bocephus growl at his side, and he opened his eyes as the hound got stiffly to its feet. Bo's eyes were hotly rimmed and glaring at something Whit couldn't see.
He put a steadying hand on Bo's flank and started to rise himself.
Something round, hard, and polished flashed out of the woods from a dozen yards away and struck the dog on the cleft bone between the eyes. Bocephus went down in a backward heap and lay motionless at Whit's feet.
Whit looked in disbelief at the orange-striped croquet ball that had rebounded into the root-crotch of a tree, then saw movement in dusky shade that claimed his full attention.
A tall and well-muscled creature walked toward him on two legs. He saw the curly head of a goat—thickly wrinkled devil horns, and unfriendly amber eyes. It could not be what he first wanted to believe, a realistically styled mask: the prim little chin and narrow mouth moved in a sideways, chewing motion; there was sinister life in the, eyes. The rest of the creature was a man, with bitter-chocolate skin. It wore a deerskin loincloth and carried, in one hand, a short ax with a curved blade that glared in a sunspot.
In its other hand Whit saw Arn Rutledge's campaign-style hat, a part of the front brim darkly stained, as if dipped in ink.
Or:
Whit wasted no more time in speculation. The goatman had lengthened its stride as it approached, and Whit was defenseless against the ax it carried so purposefully.
Leaving his pack behind, Whit went running through the trees up the ridge, leaping windfalls, twisting through crinkly brush, putting as much distance between himself and the goatman as he could.
He would get away, as he always had. The goatman could not catch him.
He was too quick, and he had too many hiding places, and as soon as the chase became tiring, the initial flush of exhilaration subsided, he would crawl into one of his woodsy sanctuaries—like the yellow birch tree with the hollow beneath its standing roots. The birch had first taken root on a decaying stump, the roots lengthening and creeping down into the earth as the stump beneath the tree slowly rotted away. Now the birch was full-grown but raised on its many broad roots three feet above the ground, forming a cozy boy-size cave no one knew about but him.
All he had to do, when Taharqa came near, searching for him, was be very still with his hands over his mouth, holding back nervous glee.
But he was just a little lost right now, he couldn't be sure where the birch was standing in these woods. Maybe it was higher up, where the park began. It had been a long time since their last outing. He knew he must continue to run, or the pretense of danger would fade. The game wouldn't be fun anymore. Run and run and run—but he was tireless today.
He had a small boy's stamina and a good lead on the Ethiopian.
And no matter how close Taharqa came, he always won the chase.
Chapter Nineteen
Wildwood, January 1909
The architect James B. Travers, mounted on his fine chestnut gelding, Cyclops, paused on his return from a solitary morning ride, mustache iced to the root of his nose, and looked at the chateau revealed half formed to him within a chrysalis of frozen fog.
In his most depressed moods—and he was riding with one of them this morning, a creature of the spirit wearing a black executioner's mask—he was still capable of being aroused, astonished by the beauty of what he had created, beginning (could it be seven years ago?) with some penciled lines on a roll of draftsman's paper. The mountainous setting, the ice and fog and pale wintering sun, provided a touch of the fabulous, of unearthly romance, to what was solid, rational, well proportioned. Knowing that his vision had belonged from its inception to a man he had come to despise and at times wished to horse-whip scarcely clouded Travers's passion for the chateau. Some of the magnificent palaces of Europe had been commissioned and inhabited by royal fools and pasty-faced misfits, long vanished from the world and of interest only to scholars, while those masterpieces in which they had so fleetingly dwelled serenely survived the centuries, testifying to the genius of men like Jules Hardouin-Mansart and Philibert Delorme.