by Farris, John
"Yes," she said, with obvious reluctance. "It's there."
The uproar from the Walkouts was like a sudden squall that disturbed her airy balance; she nearly fell, head-down, but righted herself with a frantic leg-scissors and dashing of wings; she sought elevation, detachment from their delirium.
"Wait!" she warned them, but they were in full cry, rushing off the croquet pitch and into the woods, the centaur in front, then in their spectral midst, then lagging badly.
Josie came to vacant earth and folded her wings, covering in a gesture of dark chagrin her nakedness before the stranger, Terry's father.
"Josie, this is my dad."
"Yes, I thought so," she murmured, downcast, finding in Whit's presence a reminder that Terry had a life in some distant elsewhere that they, as lovers, had failed to acknowledge. "And how do you do, sir?" She looked up and away from him to the shadowy wind broke centaur. They heard the sobs and shouts of the Walkouts surging uphill, climbing over and around each other in their frenzy to reach the promised chateau.
"Jim!" she called. "Can you not stop them?"
"Why should I?"
"I'm afraid! Do you recall Jacob's words—"
"It doesn't matter what Jacob said! He was no saner than any of us. No less subjugated."
"Are you going too, then?"
"Yes! Yes, Lord give me strength, I'll be the first to return!"
Brandishing his whip, the centaur took up the shrill cry of the disenfranchised, vaulting after those who had left him behind. Whit observed him with a shudder of anxiety until he had no more substance than smoke, a shadow blending into the mountainous dark.
When he glanced at Josie he saw tears shining like silver coins on her fair cheeks and Terry standing intimately close, under the protection of a sable-bordered wing.
She said bitterly, "And what welcome do they think awaits them in the demonarchy? Not a welcoming, nor relief from their affliction. Only more torment, I'm thinking. Oh, God save them, I'm so sorry. "
"What did Jacob tell you?" Whit asked her. "Josie!"
"He said—it might someday reappear, poised upon the earth but not locked into it, and truly this is what I did see, dead low shining like a ghost bound in chains of horrid lightning. Fearful! And he said—though we might go back, and mingle with its haunting, still none of us—could become what once we were. It is no house at all but an engine that awaits them, familiar to the trusting eye but diabolical, an engine that will convey them straight to a hell deeper and more forbidding than anything the mind conjectures."
Arn's voice echoed through the nearly deserted town; and they heard the mournful howling of Bocephus the hound.
"Colonel Bowers! Can you get me out of here?"
"Where is he, Josie?"
She put her head wearily against Terry's; her breast heaved, her tears flowed. He wiped them awkwardly, and kissed a wettened cheek.
"Ah, well. What difference now? You might as well turn the damned rogue loose. Come on, then. I will lead you to him."
Terry released her and Josie sprang into the air. They followed her at a jog to the hut where Arn was crouched just outside the door. Josie remained on high, aloofly, her back to the deed as Whit loosened the rugged slipknot and freed Arn.
"You okay, sergeant-major?"
"Hell, yes, everythin's ducky. What was all that hooraw?"
Terry had disappeared into the trees behind the hut. He returned with Bocephus laboring at the end of a rope. "The chateau is back," Josie said above their heads.
Arn looked up and met her eyes. "Wouldn't be funnin' with me?"
Josie made a wordless sound of contempt.
"Then—that could be where Faren is. In trouble." A spate of coughing caused him pain, and brought blood to his lips. "Don't know what—I can do, except raise plenty hell long as I'm able. Colonel, I—I could use a good man."
"I'll come, Arn."
"Me too," Terry said.
Josie flew at him, angrily and protectively, backing him away from the men.
"Terry, no! It's dangerous there."
"Why?"
"Have you not heard a word I've said? When it goes, in the flash of a second, all who are inside or around the chateau will be lost, perhaps forever."
"I only want to see it. Don't you?"
"I told you, no, I would not go."
"Listen, Josie," Arn said, needing to clear his throat often to get words out, "you and me—have had our little differences. But—I want my wife back, hear? If she's in the chateau I'll find her, only you got to—show me the way. Just get me up there, and I'll take my chances."
She seemed coldly pleased by his insistence; but her enamored, worried eyes were full of Terry.
"So be it," she said. "Follow me, then—all of you."
And suddenly
here was yesterday; the sharp thin air
of mountain April had thickened languorously
where the dark wood ended, it was odorous
of a heavier, rose-reeking June night.
Across the emerald esplanade, bedecked
with striped pavilions and garlands
of electric lights, teeming caravans
formed to outbursts of jocularity
and rollicking music. There were
fractious camels, lofty giraffes,
silver-garbed parade horses, dawn-pink
flamingos, doves in wicker cages on long
poles. And all those revelers unadvised
of a wild and deplorable magick that
crackled invisibly a cunning distance
from human apprehension: spear carriers,
musketeers, mummers, beasties vivants.
Death, the old ragpicker, was not in
sight among them. But the Walkouts,
assuming the reality of what they sought,
frantic or numbed by amazement, searched
the mobs for husbands, wives, friends.
"Sweet merciful Jesus," Arn said in a hushed, hoarse voice.
Whit and Terry couldn't say anything. But Whit's chin was trembling like a very young child's.
Nearby, the shattered aviary, a relic in real time, stood dark and silent.
Josie, at treetop height, faced resolutely away from the chateau, but she couldn't stop her ears, and thus was unable to keep from weeping.
Arn slowly fixed his attention on the center of the chateau, a light outshining the ground firewheels, coruscations trivial and immense; it was as if a small sun lived there.
Something struck his forehead, a single warm droplet, not rain. He looked up.
"What is it, Josie? That light? Where's it comin' from?"
"A room they call—the lantern. Dunno why. Mr. Langford, they say, built a divilish machine inside, made all of silver wire. It is—the working of his machine that gives off the fell light."
"Lantern?" Arn rubbed his raw neck, recalling the dream, or vision, in which Faren had appeared to him. "That's where she is! Bet my life on it. Colonel, you comin' with me?"
He had to repeat himself. Then Whit turned to him with a stricken look, a small shrug of apology.
"No. I—have to find my father."
"General Blackie? He ain't here. He's been dead for—you still a little off from that crack on the head?"
"I can't explain now."
Arn said angrily, "Well, I ain't got time for you to explain. Terry, take care of Bocephus for me, I'll be back soon as I can."
"It looks—different over there," Terry said. "Like a mirage. Dad? Doesn't it?"
"See how it shimmers," Josie called. "Isn't only the lantern. That is a force, not a thing, under a bad spell and all unstuck in time. Aye, none but a fool would go inside."
"No," Whit said, his light-impacted eyes like glass wells in his skull, his voice so strange Terry almost didn't recognize who was speaking. "It hasn't changed. Everything's the same."
"Enough bullshit. My wife's comin' out of there, and right now."
Arn took off at a run, prompt
ing an outcry from Bocephus. Terry had to use both hands to keep the loyal dog from flying after Arn. He found a tree small enough to snub the rope around. Bocephus crouched down with a whimper of dismay.
Whit turned to his son in the outreaching light. His brow had caught, his mind seemed eerily aflame.
"Stay here with Josie," he said.
"Dad!"
"Maybe she's right. But—my mother and father are in there."
"Granpa—"
"No, no." Whit shook his head impatiently. "Somebody different. You never knew him. Maybe I didn't know him very well, either. I have to find out for myself who he was, what he was like."
Josie said urgently, "If you have a mind to go there, do it now, for pity's sake. And do not linger!"
Whit walked rapidly away from the woods. Terry hesitated a. couple of seconds, then started after him. But Josie plunged down in front of Terry, her wings spread forbiddingly.
"You said he'd be a fool to—"
"Terry, did you not see your da's face? He is driven to go. There is some mystery in this we do not understand. But it is coming to an end now, for better or warse."
"All of you are acting crazy!"
"Yes, I do feel a touch of madness meself." She looked back at the chateau, face suddenly incandescent with horror; hair-raising. Terry trembled and Bocephus moaned. "I am tempted to retarn. It's an agony. I wish to see me dear sister's face again." Her wings fell. Terry had his chance but made no move to go around her. "I am too afraid."
"Of losing your wings?"
"To lose them might not be so tragic. Yet I cannot know if arms will be restored to me, once I cross the threshold of Langford's magic. Is there any save himself who truly understands it? Or is it forever out of control?" She grieved there in the outland of her destiny, fixed by the glare of the perilous, about-to-blaze ether surrounding the chateau. "No, I would rather feel safe, for just a little longer. Safe, and with you, Terry—although I know that when you leave Wildwood, I may not go."
As Whit crossed the park of equatorial green, dapper in dew and smoke-blue curlicues, mind and memory oscillated wildly between light and dark, beginning and ending, the bitter and the sweet. Each long stride diminished those he had left behind, his blond son and the faery butterfly; he felt years younger, fresher, eager—all that mattered was home, the many graceful windows and the realness of stones. He paid little attention to the stunning light of the lantern, the glints of disorder in all that brilliance. He passed tableaux of festival, brisk orchestras, tumblers and fire-swallowers and dog-clowns, swanboats on a glossed plane of lake; he arrived out of breath at the flight of alabaster steps beneath the central facade. There he paused, shrugged off more years like a heavy pack load and went inside.
Jongeleurs strolled through the corps du logis, mock-mandarins and high borns posed famously for the flash pan. He wasn't included, but felt tolerant; this was fun. The huge helical staircase, made entirely of marble, was a familiar playground. Elated, he thought of games of hide-and-seek: the staircase was designed so that those who ascended could hear but not see others coming down from the upper floors.
"Do you know where my father is?"
The servant he addressed looked at his soiled clothes and then his unshaven face, seemed puzzled and a little afraid of him. He drew away with a hasty head-shake of apology, as if Whit had spoken in an obscure language.
Oh, well . . . But he felt a vague sense of distrust of the carefree moment, and, looking at the runners of carpet crossing the corps du logis, which showed the deep imprints of horse's hooves, his wishbone hurt him, he imagined his father missing or dead: sealed forever in the perfection of one of his ingenious mazes, swallowed up by a thick stone wall of this house.
No, that couldn't be right. He was immortal, by right of his magick. He was waiting now, in the boy's rooms, perhaps having brought some simple new illusion with which to amuse them both. Whit/Alex made his way to the crowded stairs, hurrying, as usual: he ran everywhere in the vast chateau, never a spare ounce of flesh on his body. His father, of course, could will himself from one distant room to another, instantaneously.
He found a long upper hallway deserted, glaring, the ceaseless grinding of the lantern-light hard as carborundum to the senses; he seemed to use only a fraction of the interminable hallway with each dogged, running step as he followed the big horseshoe prints in the carpet. Intaglios in stone between narrow mullioned windows, the faces of philosophers and tyrants, looked down with cored eyes as if from crypts. His too-strong shadow was a menace, an unwelcome harbinger. Something bad was happening in his rooms. . . .
But when he stopped outside the open door, blood pounding in his ears so that he couldn't hear well, and peaked cautiously inside, he saw no one. He advanced into the playroom, aware of odors, horsehair and piss. His bear costume for the Revels lay in a cinammon heap on the floor; his shelves of toys and magic props were undisturbed.
"Father?"
The bedroom and bath were empty. He came slowly out of his bedroom, yawning, looked at the open windows, the maculate, gossamer accretion of light there, sharp green and spewing fireworks beyond. Idly he picked up his bear-mask and sought a mirror, annoyed that the mask had shrunk and didn't fit him.
The eyes, even the unkempt face, were his father's, but when he whirled no one was standing behind him. It was yet another illusion, he realized, thankful but a little shaken. His father teasing him. But where had he gone? He dropped the bear-mask, yawning again. The intelligent, proprietary light willed him to fall into a doze on the corner couch, accept the permanence of homecoming.
He shook off this powerful suggestion, throwing down the bear-mask. He was irritable and uneasy; he didn't want to sleep, he wanted to talk to his father. He looked round the room and saw, past the windows, not green-sward but rusty barren mountains in a yellow sky, heat waves rising from a crackled desert floor. The desolate vision thoroughly frightened him. He backed out of his playroom into the lonely hall, seeking comfort, wanting his father but thinking, unexpectedly, of his bedridden mother. . . .
Arn Rutledge released his grip on the servant girl, dressed in multi-eyed peacock blues, who had reluctantly guided him to the lantern. Another time, he would have admired to pluck her. She ran away, less afraid of him than of what might be inside, behind the sculpted bronze doors that stood sixteen feet high. Arn found no conventional means of access—the doors were without handles and apparent locks. Their hinged tonnage responded, perhaps, to occult suggestion. Or brute force. Of that he was capable. He put a shoulder to one door and strained like a big mule in harness.
The door moved, a few inches, and he was assaulted by the blade of a cosmic dagger; a heatless inferno raved him blind. He stumbled against this fury into the lantern, calling Faren.
"Helllpppp meeeee!"
All he could see was the bird, wings beating frantically against the stones of the floor. And then, shielding his eyes as best he could, he looked up and made out the form of a serpent suspended above the writhing, feathery blackness. He was transfixed by the poisoned ruby of a jealous eye. There was a dry spittle of venom like, cyclone dust around its toothy, ancient head.
With the serpent's attention transferred to Arn, Faren slipped momentarily into human shape, although she had talons instead of feet.
Arn took one step toward her and then his power to move was nullified; he barely had the strength to breathe. The serpent's head angled again toward its principal victim, and Faren's tormented wail became the corbel's croak of mourning. Arn's eyes streamed tears from the ferocity of the light, at the center of which was a blue void. Weakened, hands hanging at his sides, he dropped to his knees.
Josie, too fidgety to do anything but fly, carried a stick in one foot to ward off the ruffian owl and other nightwingers that came near where she hovered, so attractive a morsel, just outside a dark wall of hemlock. Through the fizzle and smoke of low pyrotechnics she was quicker than Terry to grasp the changes taking place within the sphere of the ch
ateau: the blooming dahlia in the heart of the lantern-light, a lovely, complex, fatalistic blue with the vitality to wrench and wrap solid stone. And the airy frost now descending overall, like the ice-notes of a seductive music, stilling merriment, glazing time to perpetual zero. Her heart stuck in her throat, she faltered clumsily as Bocephus bayed and Terry called anxiously from below.
"Josie! What's happening?"
"I dunno—it may be that—"
"Do you see dad? Is he coming?"
"I cannot—see him anywhere," she said. There was a haze like snowfall across the slowed, appalled landscape. The figures of revelers were dimming to her eyes, with little upstart flickers of their magnetically charged bones like the blissful dead in a shallow cemetery. Or the harrowing undead.
Sickened, distraught, she tried to keep her eyes closed to the inevitable dissolution of the restless chateau. As she had feared and predicted, all were lost. She felt, not righteous, but lost herself.
"Josie, can't you do something? It's going away!"
Josie shuddered, and looked back despairingly at the wild wood, emptied now of Walkouts. She glanced at Terry's pale upturned face and impulsively went spiraling down, dangled lamely in air face to face with him, covetous, afire, sensitive to his distress.
"Ah, Terry."
He was shaking, he couldn't speak. She said it for them.
"It was so unexpected, and so sweet. And if that is all there is, surely I may be content. I will try to send him back to you, my dearest Terry—if only I have time."
She kissed him, and he covered her breasts, a tender laying-on of hands. Only then did she feel brave enough to part with him. She vaulted straight up with a mighty surge of hard wingbeats, spiraling once, twice; then she turned to frigid music and flew, in a rainbow arc, toward the ganglia of the lantern, the blazing blue imperium; hearing Terry, and smiling to herself, aloft and in her element, and in a state of everlasting peace.
"You'll come back too! Josie, you come back!"
The doors to Sibby Langford's apartment were open.