Green Eyes

by Lucius Shepard

  ‘Where’s Otille?’ asked Donnell.

  ‘Seen her downstairs when we’s headin’ up,’ said the Baron; he kicked Simpkins’ leg out of the way and motioned for them to pass on through; then he let the door bang down. ‘What the hell is gon’ on ‘round here? Clea say…’

  ‘Stay away from the veve,’ said Donnell, taking Jocundra by the shoulders. ‘Understand? Find the tapes.’ And then, before she could respond, he said to the Baron, ‘Keep her here,’ and ran toward the stairs. Clea ran after him.

  Despite the warning, Jocundra started to follow, but the Baron blocked her way. ‘Do what he say, woman,’ he said. ‘Way I hear it, ain’t nothin’ we can do down there ‘cept die.’

  Dusk had settled over Maravillosa, and a silvery three-quarter moon had risen high above the shattered trees. Scraps of insulation and roofing blown from the cabins glittered among the debris of fronds and branches and vines. The only sound was of Donnell and Clea crunching through the denuded thickets. Because of Valcours’ weakness, Otille would be leading him along a circuitous and relatively uncluttered path to the veve, so Donnell had made a beeline for it. Clea was breathing hard, squeaking whenever a twig scratched her.

  ‘You should go back,’ he said. ‘You know what he did to Downey.’

  ‘I promise you,’ said Clea, hiccupping. ‘If you don’t get him, then I’m gonna.’

  Donnell glanced back and saw that she was crying.

  A dark man-shaped thing floated in the marble pool, and the shadowy forms of Valcours’ other anthropomorphic toys were visible among the stripped branches of the shrubbery, leaning, arms outflung, like soldiers fallen in barbed wire while advancing across a no man’s land. Towering above them, some twelve or fifteen feet high, was a metal devil’s head, lean-skulled and long-eared. Its faceted, moonstruck eyes appeared to be tracking them, and its jaw had fallen open, giving it a dumfounded look. The rivets stitching the plates together resembled tribal tattoos.

  As he climbed up the last conical hill, a drop of sweat slid along his ribs and his mouth went dry. There was a terrifying aura of suppressed energy about the clearing. The floodlights were off, but the copper paths of the veve rippled with moonlight: a crazy river flowing in every direction at once. He forced himself down the hill and climbed up on it, feeling as though he had just strapped himself into an electric chair. Clea climbed on behind him. He was through warning her; she was her own agent, and he had no time to waste.

  He became lost in walking his pattern, in building his fiery tower, so lost that he did not notice Valcours had joined him on the veve until the fields began to evolve beyond his control, rising at an incredible rate into the sky. Valcours was walking alone on the opposite end of the veve, and from the movements of the bacteria, the height and complexity of the structure above them, from his understanding of the necessities of their patterns, Donnell judged they would reach their terminal junctions simultaneously. The knowledge that they were bound together wrapped him in an exultant rage. No one was going to usurp his place, his authority! He would write his victory poem in the bastard’s blood, cage a serpent in his skull. He had a glimpse of Clea trudging toward the man, her mouth opening and closing, and though the whine of the fields drowned out her voice, he knew she must be singing.

  Then the white burst of transition, the perfunctory holiness of a spark leaping the gap, and he was once again standing in the purple night and dusty streets of Rumelya.

  Somewhere a woman screamed, a guttering, bubbling screech, and as he cast about for the direction of the scream, he realized the town was not Rumelya. The streets were of the same pale sand; the Mothemelle loomed above the hunched rooftops; the buildings were constructed and carved the same, but many were of three and four stories. Looking to the east, he saw a black column. The splinter of Moselantja. This, then, was the high town of the river. Badagris. Where he was Aspect. Normally the streets would be bustling, filled with laughter-loving fools. Fishermen and farmers from upriver; rich men and their women stopping their journey for an evening’s festival; the cultus playing guitars and singing and writhing as they were possessed by the Invisible Ones. But not tonight. Not until the Election had been won. Then even he might relax his customary reserve, let the dull throng mill around and touch him, squealing at the tingle of his black spark.

  He wondered who had been incautious enough to accept candidacy this year. It was no matter. His fires were strong, he was ready and confident.

  Too confident.

  If his suit had not reacted, urging him to spring into a back somersault, he might have died. As it was, a beam of fire seared his forehead. He came up running from the somersault, never having seen his assailant, half-blind with pain and cursing himself for his carelessness. He cut between buildings, remembering the layout of the town as he ran, its streets designed in accordance with the Aspect’s seal. His strength confounded him. Even such a slight wound should have weakened him briefly, overloaded his suit, but he felt more fit than ever, more powerful. At last he slowed to a walk and went padding along, the sand hissing away from his feet. He was at one in stealth and caution with the crouched wooden demons on the roof slants, their fanned wings lifted against the starlight, and it seemed they were peering around the corners for him, scrying dangers. One day, when he finally lost an Election, his image would join theirs in some high place of the town. But he would not lose this Election.

  Turning onto the Street of Beds, he saw a body lying in front of the East Wind Brothel, an evil place offering artificially bred exotics and children. The body was that of a girl. Probably some kitchen drudge who had wanted a glimpse of combat. It happened every year. Beneath the coarse dress, her bones poked in contrary directions.

  He rolled her over with his foot, and her arm followed her shoulder with a herky-jerky, many-jointed movement. Broken capillaries webbed her face and neck, and blood seeped from the orbits of her eyes. She had not died quickly, and he marked that against the candidate. He ripped down the bodice of her dress and saw the seal of the Aspect tattooed upon her right breast. She was of the cultus. Though she had been a fool, he could not withhold the grace of Ogoun. He touched her lips with his forefinger, loosing a black spark to jitter and crawl inside her mouth, and he sang the Psalm of Dissolution.

  ‘I am Ogoun, I am the haze on the south wind,

  The eddy in the river, the cadence at the heart of light,

  The shadow in the mirror and the silence barely broken.

  Though you may kill me, I will crawl inside of death

  And dwell in the dark next-to-nothingness,

  Listening to the tongues of dust tell legends

  Until my day of vengeance breaks.’

  Since she was a mere kitchen drudge, he chanted only the one verse.

  Lagoon-shaped shadows from the forest crowns spilled onto the street. He shifted forwards, streaming from darkness to darkness, materializing beside walls carved into the faces of forest animals and spirits. What had the old man said? Sorry past and grim future pressing their snouts against the ebony grain of the present. The Aspect poured through the streets, a shadow himself, until finally, near Pointcario’s Inn, his favorite spot in the town because of the carved figure of a slender woman emerging from the door, her face half-turned back to someone within, there he found the candidate: a big man with a face half spider, half toad set into his suit. Without hesitation the Aspect attacked, and soon they were locked in combat.

  Their beams crossed and deflected, their misfires started blazes on the roofs, and sections of nearby walls were lit by vivid flashes into rows of fanged smiles. The candidate was incredibly strong but clumsy: his patterns of attack and parry were simple, depending on their force to overwhelm the more skillful play of the Aspect’s beams. Gradually, their fires intertwined, weaving above and around them into an iridescent rune, a cage of furious energy whose bars flowed back and forth. After having fully tested the candidate’s strengths and weaknesses, the Aspect disengaged and shifted toward anothe
r district of the town to consider his strategy and rest, though truly he felt no need for rest. Never before had he been so battle ready, his suit so attuned to his reactions, his rage so pure and burning.

  He sat down on the porch of Manyanal’s Apothecary and stroked the head of the ebony hound rising from the floorboards. The beauty of the night was a vestment to his strength and his rage, fitting to him as sleekly as did his suit. It seemed to move when he moved, the stars dancing to the firings of his nerves. Talons of the purple aurora clawed up half the sky, holding the world in their clutch and shedding violet gleams on the finials and roofpeaks, coursing like violet blood along the wing vanes of a roof demon. The stillness was deep and magical, broken now and then by the hunting cry of an iron-throated lizard prowling the Mothemelle.

  A door creaked behind him.

  He somersaulted forward, shifting as he did, and landed in the shadows across the street, playing his fires over the front of the doorway. A scream, something slumped on the porch, flames crackling around a dark shape. He shifted back. Beneath the web of broken capillaries was the face of Manyanal, his eyes distended, smoke curling from his stringy brown hair. Had everyone gone mad? One fool was to be expected, but two… Manyanal was a respected citizen, accorded the reputation of wisdom, a dealer of narcotic herbs who had settled in Badagris years before his own Election. What could have driven him to be so foolhardy? The Aspect had a notion something was wrong, but he pushed it aside. It was time to end the combat before more fools could be exposed. He would harrow the candidate, engage and disengage, diminish his fires and lead him slowly by the nerve-ends down to death. Still vaguely puzzled by the constancy of his strength, he started off along the street, then stopped, thinking to bestow the grace upon Manyanal. But he remembered that the apothecary was not of the cultus, and so left him to smoulder on his porch.

  Otille came pelting into the house just as Jocundra and the Baron came out of her office, each carrying cans of videotape; she flattened against the wall, staring at them, horrified. Her black silk robe hung open and there was dirt smeared across her stomach and thighs. The wind drove something against the side of the house, and she shrieked, her shriek a grace note to the howling outside. She ran past them, head down and clawing at the air as if fighting off a swarm of bees.

  The Baron shouted something that was lost in the wind.

  Jocundra signaled that she hadn’t heard, and he shook his head to say never mind, gazing after Otille.

  Wind battered the house, a gale, perhaps even hurricane force. The walls shuddered, windows exploded, and the wind gushed inside, ripping down blinds, overturning lamps, flipping a coffee table, all with the malevolent energy of a spirit who had waited centuries for the opportunity. A maelstrom of papers swirled out of Otille’s office like white birds fluttering down the hall.

  ‘I’m going out!’ shouted Jocundra.

  The Baron shook his head and tried to grab her. But she eluded him and ran out the door and down the steps.

  The night thrashed with tormented shadows, the air was filled with debris. Branches and shingles sailed across the ridiculously calm and unclouded moon. Shielding her head, she made for the cover of the underbrush, stumbling, being blown off course. She crouched behind a leafless bush that offered no protection and pricked her with its thorns, but there was no greater protection elsewhere. The fury of the wind blew through her, choking off her thoughts, even her fears, absorbing her into its chaos. The Baron threw himself down beside her. Blood trickled along his jaw, and he was gasping. Then, behind them, a tortured groan split the roar of the wind. She looked back. Slowly, a hinged flap of the roof lifted like a great prehistoric bird hovering over its nest, beat its black wing once and exploded, disintegrating into fragments that showered the bushes around them. In the sharp moonlight, she saw boxes, bundles, and furniture go spiraling up from the attic, and she had the giddy idea that they were being transported to new apartments in the spirit world. The Baron pulled her head down, covering her as a sofa crashed nearby and split in two.

  It took forever to reach the veve.

  A forever of scuttling, crouching, of vines flying out of the night and coiling around them. Once a rotten oak toppled across their path, and as she crawled through its upturned roots, the wind knocked her sideways into its hollow bottom. The moon looked in on her, shining up the filaments of the root hairs. She was groped by claustrophobia, an old man with oaken fingers who wanted to swallow her whole. By the time the Baron hauled her out, she was sobbing with terror, beating at the invisible things crawling beneath her clothes. They went on all fours, cutting their hands on pieces of glass, ducking at shadows. But at last they wriggled up the hill overlooking the veve.

  Valcours and Donnell stood about a dozen feet apart, and from their fingers flowed streams of the same numinous glow that had destroyed the cypress; the streams twisted and intertwined, joining into a complex design around them, one which constantly changed as they moved their hands in slow, evocative gestures, like Kabuki dancers interpreting a ritual battle. Suddenly Valcours broke off the engagement and limped away along one of the copper paths. The weave of energy dissolved; the pale light bursting from Donnell’s hands merged into a single beam and torched a bush below the hill. Maybe, she thought, maybe she could sneak through the wind, get beneath the veve and pull Valcours down. She wriggled forward but the Baron dragged her back.

  ‘Look, goddamn it!’ he shouted in her ear, pointing to a part of the veve far from Valcours and Donnell.

  Two bodies lay athwart the struts. One, her dress torn, was Clea, and the other - Jocundra recognized him by the radio clutched in his hand - was Captain Tomorrow. Even at this distance, the deformity of their limbs was apparent. She turned back to see Donnell racing after Valcours. With incredible grace - she could hardly believe he was capable of such - he turned a forward flip, came out of a shoulder roll, and landed on the junction behind Valcours. The bush he had set afire whirled up in a tornado of sparks into the darkness and was gone.

  Weakened beyond the possibility of further battle, cornered, the candidate appealed for mercy. He dissolved his mask; his puffy features were strained and anxious. The Aspect was surprised by his age. Usually they sent the youngest, the angriest, but no doubt this man’s exceptional strength had qualified him.

  ‘Brother,’ said the candidate. ‘My soul is not ripe. Grant me two years of meditation, and I will present myself at Ghazes.’

  ‘Your soul will ripen in my fires.’ said the Aspect.

  ‘Should it not, then it would never have borne with ripeness.’

  ‘How will it be, brother? I would prepare.’

  ‘Slowly,’ said the Aspect. ‘Two of my children have died this night.’

  He savored the moment of victory. The clarity accessible at these times merited contemplation. He noticed that the glitter of the stars had grown agitated, eager for the death, and in the distance the river chuckled approvingly against the pilings of the wharf. The shadows of the roof demons stretched long across the sand, centering upon the spot where the candidate stood. Everything was stretching toward the moment, adding its strength to his.

  ‘Ogoun will judge me,’ said the candidate.

  ‘I am his judgment here in Badagris,’ said the Aspect, irked by the man’s gross impiety, his needless disruption of the silence. ‘And like his mercies, his judgments hold no comfort for the weak.’

  He drew his left hand back behind his ear, extended his right, and set an iridescent halo glowing about the candidate. The man began to quiver, and with a series of cracks like a roll of castanets, his fingers fused into crooked knots. A foam of blood fringed his nostrils; the web of capillaries - his new mask of death - faded into view. Another crack, much louder, and the pyramid of a fracture rose at the midpoint of his shoulder. Oh, how he wanted to scream, to retreat into meditation, but tie endured. The Aspect silently applauded his endurance and tested it more severely, causing his eyes to pop millimetre by millimetre until the irises we
re bull’s eyes in the midst of veined white globes rimmed with blood. Loud as tree trunks snapping, his thighbones shattered and he fell, his suit changed shape with every subsequent crack. His chest breeched, and something the size of a grapefruit was pushed forward; it dimpled and bulged against the coating of black energy; before long, before the candidate’s skull caved inward, it had become still.

  After victory, diminution-.

  The old cadre wisdom was right. He derived no real pleasure from the aftermath of battle. It simply meant he must now live until the next one, and despite his poetry, his meditation, that was never easy. Soon the townspeople would pour out the doors, throw open the shutters and debase the purity of night with their outcries and orange lanterns. Full of praise, they would gather around and ogle the corpse who, having met his death with courage, deserved better. Perhaps he would go to Pointcario’s Inn, touch the waist of the ebony girl lost forever in the doorway, pretend some other woman was she. But first there was something to do. The business of the aberrant High Aspect of Mounanchou. He reached up for the circuits of his ourdha, concentrated his thoughts into a point of sapphire light, and spun round and round until he arrived at Maravillosa.

  The inside of his head was warm, unpleasantly so, as he jumped down, but his muscles were supple, his strength undiminished. He started toward the house, but was brought up short by the sight of the two corpses lying apart from the candidate. From Valcours. Disoriented, he looked around at the moonlit devastation, the gaping roof of the house, and a part of him which had been dormant raised an inner voice to remind him of certain verities. He understood now the meaning of the warmth, the nature of his newfound strength, and as another voice - a more familiar one of late - whispered to him, he also understood how that strength must be put to use.

  Chapter 19

  September 19, 1987

  Donnell was standing beside the veve when Jocundra and the Baron came down from the hill. Hearing their footsteps, he glanced up. His skin was pale and his eyes were terminal, the pupils gone inside radiant green flares. She ran toward him, but he thrust out his hand and boomed her with such force that she held up a dozen feet away.