A Green and Ancient Light (3 page)

I stood in the doorway of my room, bewildered. Even after three months, I knew so little about my grandmother. Apparently, this man was no stranger to her, and their conversations frequently took place by the light of the moon. Grandmother, who never went into the street by day without her headscarf and her collars buttoned, thought nothing of being outdoors in her nightclothes with this gentleman. My parents had mentioned no other relatives in the village.

The main-room windows looking out on the garden were shuttered at night. I considered opening the door just a crack—but I didn't want to disappoint Grandmother again. I hovered on my threshold for a long time, then sat on my bed. For reassurance, I glanced at our family photo, but it was too dark to see us. Still, I knew we were all there, inside the frame, and my parents were smiling, my sister newly born.

The night was warm; summer had fully arrived, and it came
with an airiness much more pleasant than the muggy nights in the city, where the heat took on garbage smells and lay heavy and still among the buildings. Grandmother's front and back gardens were overrun with blossoms and aromatic trees. She was trying to teach me the names of them, but most flowers were as new and strange to me as the village. I suspected, moreover, that the names by which Grandmother knew them were not always their names as listed in books. I left my room's shutters open at night, because I didn't like pitch blackness. My window peered out over one of the fuchsia boxes. I could look at it without guilt now. One afternoon, out of the blue, as if reading my thoughts, Grandmother had said, “I was mostly angry at H —— that day.” (She meant Mrs. D ——; that was her first name.) “Using you like that—bah! She knew what she was doing.”

I sometimes crouched among the fuchsia, in the shaded gallery of the side yard, where the white and magenta blooms draped down from the box like a primeval jungle. Turning my head now, I could see the moon touching the treetops—only a few nights past full, and still mostly round.

After what seemed a long while, the back door opened again, and I returned to my open doorway.

“Get dressed,” Grandmother said, marching past me. “It will be light soon. We may as well start today early.”

“What's happening?” I asked. “Who was—”

“Get the big shears and the brush knife,” she ordered. She paused in the door of her bedroom. “There's a place you should see, anyway. I've been meaning to show you, and time is getting on. Today's the day. Yes, you should come: I may need your help.”

“My help?”

“Get dressed.”

“But—” I was speaking now to her closed door. I could hear her bustling about on the other side. “But where are we going?”

Her words were hard to catch as she opened drawers and lifted squeaky lids. “You like your stories of the long-ago, don't you? Curious and strange things—monstrous creatures?”

I held my breath and hurried closer to her room, my heart racing again. She'd closed the back door; our visitor was either gone or waiting outside.

“Yes,” I said.

“Well, we're going to the grove of monsters.”

*  *  *  *

With the moon down, the night was very dark as we left by the kitchen door, let ourselves out by the back gate, and climbed through the steep field of arbors and the open meadow. From every side came the scent of living, growing things, so different from the city's smells of dust, rust, and engine exhaust. Grandmother carried an old-fashioned lantern that she'd lifted down from a shelf and lit with a match. It smelled of heat and the oil it burned, and it threw a circle of golden light around us.

There was no sign of the man who'd come to our door. “That was Mr. Girandole,” Grandmother explained when I asked her again. “He's a very old friend. He's gone ahead of us.”

I was overawed by this sudden turn of events—we were really going up into the forest, the place I'd wondered about for so long. It crossed my mind that I might be dreaming, but everything was too detailed and continuous to be a dream. I could feel the tag of my shirt scratching against the back of my neck; occasional birds
called. I didn't want Grandmother to change her mind, so I kept all questions to myself. Somehow, talking would seem intrusive in the night. Besides, I was burdened with a bucket, a metal pan inside it, and the garden tools Grandmother had asked for. She'd tied them in a canvas bundle and put other things from the kitchen into a large carpet bag while I dressed. The bag hung from her shoulder; in her free hand, she gripped her briar walking-stick. I marveled that we were doing this, all before Grandmother had had so much as a cup of tea.

The grasses glistened with dew that soaked my pant cuffs in no time and dampened my ankles, though my old leather shoes kept my feet dry. Mist flowed along the ground under the grape trellises. Insects sang all around us. The sky was a deep blue, ­sparkling with stars. I'd never seen so many stars in the city. By the time we reached the forest, I'd already seen two shooting stars flash and vanish.

I suppose it would have made sense to feel some kind of dread. But Grandmother was not afraid.

We didn't follow a path. The lantern's glow fell in warm swaths on the moss and leaves, sending shadows lurching among the trunks. We switched back and forth in the steeper places, sometimes coming to outcroppings of bare stone where Grandmother would perch for a while to rest. In one narrow ravine, tree roots formed a natural staircase. The mist floated thick in places, its frosty whiteness broken by glistening black trees.

Beneath the hem of her dress, Grandmother wore thick woolen stockings, and her feet were snugged in sturdy leather high-topped shoes that I suspected had once been my grandfather's, though he had been dead for many years. Like most villagers, she was
accustomed to walking. Had Grandmother lived in the city, I doubt she'd have considered taxis worth the fare.

As we progressed up the mountain, the stillness deepened. The voices of insects and night birds faded away, and even the wind ceased to stir leaves or creak the high boughs. I wondered if this solemnity always filled the last hour before sunrise, or whether it was because of the place. Were monsters watching us now, lurking beyond the lantern's shine?

Grandmother poked her stick at a moss-bearded boulder on our left, then at a dead tree on the right with two limbs like the dangling arms of a person. She was figuring out the way to go.

The brush rustled, and something ghostly and pale moved slowly between the trees, just beyond the point at which we could see any details. I kept still, watching it, and didn't dare to speak. I thought it was a four-footed animal, probably a deer, though it might have been anything.

When it had passed, Grandmother led us onward again. Even in the wildest stretches, the footing was never too difficult. We crossed carpets of leaves, stepped over logs crusted with fungus like fairy dishes and cups; we traversed aprons of moss so plush that I felt guilty to set my feet there, as if I were blundering over someone's bed. Though Grandmother never issued a specific warning, I carefully avoided treading on any mushrooms or stepping into the rings or half-rings they formed.

We came up onto a level shelf where the trees grew ancient and immense, soaring like cathedral pillars. As we rounded a shoulder of rock, I looked ahead and nearly shrieked. Dropping everything, I covered my mouth, feeling that the breath had been sucked out of me.

Grandmother raised the lantern toward a terrifying sight.

A human figure—a man—dangled limp, hanging among the branches. All around and above him was a web of countless strands, a silky whiteness draping the limbs, billowing gently with the wood's breath. I thought of the spiders in Grandmother's garden, of the webs they spun in the darkness, and of the tiny winged things caught there when the sun rose. But the spider that had spun this web must be the size of a horse.

My scalp felt pierced with cold needles. I turned in a circle, searching the gloom above and behind us.

“What's wrong with you?” Grandmother shot me a scathing look, apparently unafraid to use her voice here.

“Where's the spider?” I blurted.

She narrowed her eyes. Then her expression softened, though she didn't smile. “You silly boy. That's not a spider web. It's a parachute.”

At once, my face flushed with heat. I knew I should have understood what the cords and the pleated silky cloth were. But it was a dark place, and I'd been looking for monsters.

Grandmother moved forward again, prodding her way through some bushes to circle the man and eventually to stand directly beneath him. His boots swung with the smallest rocking motion about two body lengths over her head. She poked with her stick in the leaves around her shoes.

“He's lost some blood,” she said. Then she raised her voice and called up at the man, “Hey! Can you hear me?”

There was no answer, no movement. I could see that the right leg of his canvas trousers was soaked with blood. I crept closer. At first, I'd thought his head was bald and blackened, perhaps as
an effect of the giant spider's venom; now I saw that he wore a close-fitting leather pilot's hat.

He hung completely limp in his harness, supported by two broad straps above his shoulders. When a draft of air bellied the chute and stirred the bundles of cord, he twirled ever so slightly.

Trudging a few steps away, Grandmother stooped and picked up something . . . a heavy twig. She clamped her stick in her lantern-­hand, took aim, and flung the twig up at the man. It missed him by a wide margin. So did her second try, with another twig . . . her third bounced off his hip.

Grandmother breathed something that might have been a curse word, set the stick and lantern down, and ordered me to help her.

It wasn't as easy as it looked. A chunk of bark I threw almost hit the man's arm.

Then, with a loud
whop
, a rock of Grandmother's struck him squarely in the stomach.

Immediately, the leather-capped head flew up, and the man shouted and flailed his arms and legs, looking like a marionette . . . an angry, blood-soaked marionette. His eyes were hidden behind big goggles. The language he was shouting in was not ours.

It was then that I finally made the connection. The plane that had fallen from the sky to crash into the sea . . . Clear and bright in my memory, I saw again the emblems on the wings and fuselage. This man above us had parachuted out of it. He was an enemy fighter pilot.

I cried out as I saw him pull a handgun from a holster beneath his arm.

Spinning right and left with the frenzy of his struggles, the man yelled a stream of harsh-sounding words, trying to aim the
gun at Grandmother. His arm swayed and bobbed, the gun bouncing up and down.

Grandmother said nothing. She stood as straight as her curving back would allow and watched the man. I have no doubt she came within a hair's breadth of being shot, but she didn't shout back or try to run. She only stood and breathed and studied the pilot trying to get her in his gun sight.

But I hollered enough for both of us. I ran toward her, screaming at the man not to shoot. The goggled eyes turned toward me, and the gun wavered uncertainly, swinging in my direction, then back at Grandmother.

The man looked up into the nest of straps and lines that held him. He clawed at the buckles on his chest, but his panicked shouts had now taken on the tones of complaint. He gesticulated with the gun, now waving it in the air, now pounding it against his side. At one point, he seemed to be weeping.

“That's enough!” Grandmother had picked up her walking-stick, and something in her voice got the man's attention. She pointed the stick at him and shook it. “Enough,” she repeated. “Drop that gun right now and be still if you want any help from us.”

“Shut up!” yelled the man. He spoke at least a little of our language. “Shut up! No drop gun, no drop gun!”

“Shoot it, then!” Grandmother called back. “Shoot it, and everyone in the village will hear you. Soldiers will come. Do you want their help or ours?”

It was hard to argue with her logic. After a few more epithets, he stuck the gun back into his holster.

“Not there,” said Grandmother, pointing with her stick. “The ground.”

This seemed too much for him, too tall an order, but then he lost consciousness again. He'd missed the holster, only shoving the barrel beneath his arm—and when his limbs went slack, the gun tumbled onto the carpet of leaves.

I stared and thought about how close to death we'd come. After a pause, Grandmother bent close, regarded the pistol as if it were dog manure on her front walk, and picked it up by its middle. Holding it at arm's length, she moved off behind the pilot's back and hid it among a pile of rocks.

“He's alive, then,” said a voice at my back, and I jumped.

It was Mr. Girandole, peering around the bole of a tree and wringing his hands, like someone in a play.

“Too alive for his own good,” said Grandmother.

Gray light was brightening the thickets. Beyond the wood, the sun was about to rise. The leaves and trunks were no longer entirely black, though the mist still floated in curtains. The air was damp and cool in a fresh, pleasant way. Birds chattered again, near and far.

I had my first good look at Mr. Girandole. He came forward with what seemed reluctance, as if he would have preferred to watch from the shadows but had no choice. His thinness made him seem taller than he was; as he drew near, I saw that he was scarcely taller than Grandmother. His face was mostly large eyes and a prominent, sharp nose, his mouth and inconsequential chin half-hidden by a short, groomed mustache and beard. I could not imagine his age: perhaps thirty, perhaps fifty.

His skin was dark, only a shade lighter than his brown whiskers. He wore a knee-length coat, the belt cinched tight, and had the hat pulled low, so that the rumpled brim covered his ears. There was an oddity to his walk, which I guessed must be a limp.