Galilee (92 page)

She looked down at her feet. I followed her gaze, and saw that a subtle change had overtaken the boards. The cracks were being erased, and the details of each board, the grain and the knotholes, were shifting. Rachel could obviously feel the effect of this shift against the tips of her toes: the flow of the motion was toward her, out of the heart of the room.

Now I put the sound I was hearing together with the shifting of the boards: the wood was becoming sand; sand blown by a gentle but insistent breeze.

Rachel glanced back toward me. To judge by her expression she wasn't so much alarmed by what was happening as entertained.

“Look,” she said. Then, to Galilee, “It's okay, honey.” She reached out toward him, and he came to join her, sliding an anxious glance in my direction as he did so. The wind was getting stronger; the boards had now disappeared completely. There was only sand beneath our feet now, its grains glittering as they rolled on their way.

I watched him reach out to take hold of her hand, wondering what place this was, creeping up upon us. The walls across the room had melted away into a gray-blue haze; and I cast my eyes heavenward to see that the dome had also faded from view. There were stars up there, where there'd been a solid vault of timber and plaster. The dark between them was deepening, and their pinpricks growing brighter, even as I watched. For a few giddying heartbeats it seemed I was falling toward them. I returned my gaze to Rachel and Galilee before the illusion caught hold of me; and as I did so the lovers' fingers intertwined.

I felt a subtle shock pass through me, and Tansy jumped out of my arms, landing on the sand in front of me. I went down on my haunches to see that no harm had come to her—strange, I suppose, but there was some comfort in concerning myself with the animal's welfare when the ground was being remade underfoot, and the stars burning too bright above. But Tansy wanted none of my help now. She was off before I could touch her, with that comical rolling gait of hers. I watched her go perhaps three yards from me before lifting my eyes. What I saw when I did so put the thought of her out of my head completely.

There was no apocalyptic scene before me; no vaults of fire, no panicking animals. There was instead a landscape that I knew. I'd never walked there, except in my imagination, but perhaps I knew it all the better for that fact.

Off to my right was a forest, thick and dark. And to my left, the lisping waters of the Caspian Sea.

Two souls as old as heaven came down to the shore that ancient noon . . .

This was the place where the holy family had walked; where Zelim the fisherman had left his bickering comrades and gone to engage in a conversation that would not only change his life, but the life that he lived after death. The place of beginnings.

There was no harm here, I thought to myself. There was just the wind and the sand and the sea. I looked back toward the door; or rather the spot where the door had stood. It had gone. There was no way out of here, back into the house. Nor was there any sign of Cesaria's presence along the shore. I thought I could see some hint of habitation in the distant dunes—a new Atva, perhaps, or the old—and there was the skeletal remains of a boat, the bones of its hull black in the starlight, a distance away, but of the woman we'd come here to see, not a sign.

“Where the hell are we?” Galilee wondered aloud.

“This is where you were baptized,” I told him.

“Really?” He looked out toward the placid water. “Where I tried to swim away?”

“That's right.”

“How far did you get?” Rachel asked him.

I didn't hear his response. My attention was once again upon the porcupine, who having waddled away some distance had now turned round, and with her nose to the sand, was snuffling her way toward the carcass of the boat. Halfway there, she raised her head, made a small noise in her throat, and quickened her pace. She wasn't sniffing her way any longer: she knew her destination. Somebody was waiting for us in the shadows of the vessel.

“Galilee . . . ?” I murmured.

He looked my way, and I pointed along the shore. There—sitting in the boat—was the storm-maker, the virago herself, a scarf of dark silk draped over her head.

“You see her?” I murmured.

“I see,” he said. Then, more quietly. “You go first.”

I didn't argue. My anxiety had faded, calmed by the tranquillity of the scene. There would be no great unleashings here, I sensed; no forces raging around. Of course that probably meant that my hopes of being raised out of half-breed state were dashed. But nor would I come to any harm.

Following Tansy's tracks in the sand, I approached the boat. The starlight was no longer brightening, but its benediction showed me Cesaria clearly enough, sitting there on a pile of timbers, looking my way. With the ribs of the wreck rising to either side of her she looked as though she were sitting at the heart of a dark flower.

L'Enfants . . .
she said to us . . .
you took your time.

Tansy was at her feet. She bent down and the creature clambered up into her embrace, where it perched in grunting bliss.

“We looked for you downstairs . . .” I began to explain.

I won't be going back there,
she said.
I've shed too many tears down there. And now I'm done.

She hadn't taken her eyes off me since we'd started toward her. It was almost as though she didn't want to look past me toward her son; didn't dare, perhaps, for fear of shedding the very tears she said she was done with. I could see how close they were; how full of feeling she was.

“Is there something you need from me?” I asked her.

No, Maddox,
she said, with sweet gravity.
There's nothing now. You've done more than enough, child.

Child.
There'd been a time when she'd enraged me with that word. Now it was wonderful. I was a child, still. My life, she seemed to say, was still to be lived.

You should go,
she said.

“Where?”

Through the forest,
she said.
The way Zelim went.

I didn't move. Though I'd heard the instruction, I couldn't bring myself to leave. After all my trepidation, all my fears of what being in her presence might bring, I wanted to stay a moment longer, two moments, three, to enjoy the balm of her eyes and the honey of her voice. It was only with the greatest difficulty that I made my limbs obey me, and turn me toward the trees.

Travel safely, child . . .
I heard her say.

Lord, but it was hard, walking away, even though in a sense I was being set free. I'd paid for my freedom in words; every thought I've set on these pages has been a ransom against this release. But still, there was a sadness in me, to be going.

I didn't look back until I'd taken perhaps twenty paces. When I did, however, I stopped for a few minutes, just to watch what ensued. This was the moment Galilee and Rachel, hand in hand, were approaching the boat.

Brat,
Cesaria said to him.
You took your time.

“I got lost, Mama,” Galilee said. “I got lost in the world. But I'm home now.”

There's nothing left to come home to,
Cesaria said.
It's all gone.

“Then let me build it again,” Galilee replied.

You don't have the wits, child.

“Not on my own,” Galilee said. “But with my Rachel—”

Your Rachel,
Cesaria said, her voice softening. She rose from her throne of timbers, and beckoned to Rachel.
Come here,
she said.

Rachel let go of Galilee's hand, and walked toward the boat. Cesaria stepped out between the ribs of the hull and looked her up and down. I was too far from them to see the expression on her face, but I could well imagine how scouring that scrutiny felt. I'd experienced it myself; or some measure of it. Cesaria was looking into Rachel's soul. Making a final judgment as to the appropriateness of this woman. At last, she said:

Are you sure you want this?

“This?” Rachel said.

This house. This history. This brat of mine.

Rachel looked back over her shoulder. In the long moment that she gazed at Galilee I thought I heard the stars moving overhead, steady and content.

“Yes,” she said. “He's what I want.”

Then he's yours,
Cesaria said.

She opened her arms.

“Does this mean I'm forgiven?” Galilee asked.

Cesaria laughed.
If not now, then when? Come into my arms, before you break my heart again.

“Oh, Mama—”

He went to her then, with such abandon, and pressed his face against her shoulder while she wrapped him in her arms.

“Forgiven?” he said.

Forgiven,
she replied.

I
did not expect to come to the last few pages of this story following in the footsteps of Zelim the fisherman, but that's what happened. Leaving the reunion to take its happy course behind me I headed for the trees, and stepped beneath their canopy. It was dark, and I very soon gave up any attempt to plot a course for myself; I simply plunged on through the undergrowth, letting accident decide my destiny. I wasn't particularly reassured by what I remembered of Zelim's journey. He'd emerged from this forest only to be raped by bandits. I hoped to be luckier; hoped, indeed, that though I'd left the shore and Cesaria far behind me, she was watching over my progress, and would guide me in my sightlessness.

There was little sign of a guiding hand, however. Just as I was certain the darkness around me was as profound as it could, get, it became darker. I was soon reduced to stumbling forward with my arms stretched in front of me, to prevent myself from walking into a tree. That didn't keep my face and hands and chest from being scratched by thorns, or my feet from becoming entangled in the ropes of root across my path. Several times I fell headlong, the breath knocked out of me. So much for Cesaria's final blessing, I thought sourly
. Travel safely,
indeed. If this was her world I was stumbling through, as I presumed it to be, might she not have put a moon up there above me, to light the path?

No, I suppose that would have been too easy. She was never one to be needlessly kind, even to herself. Perhaps especially to herself. Just because her child had been returned to her, she wasn't going to change her ways.

It was too late for me to turn back, of course. The shore had long since disappeared from sight behind me. I had no choice but to wander on—as Zelim had done before me—hoping that the torment would eventually come to an end.

And so, after a long, long time, it did. I caught a glimpse of amber light between the trees, and fixing my eyes on the glow, I stumbled on toward it. Dawn was coming up, ahead of me; I could see layers of tinted cloud, their flat bellies stroked by the emerging sun. And to welcome the light, birds in bright chorus, filling the branches overhead. My legs were weak by now, and my body shaking with fatigue, but the sight and sound gave me a fresh burst of energy, and within five minutes of first seeing the light I was emerging from the trees.

My night journey had been far more elaborate than I'd realized. Somehow while I'd been blind Cesaria's enchantments had led me out of the house and across the grounds to the perimeter of L'Enfant. That was where I now stood: at the borderland between sacred ground and secular; between Barbarossian territory and the rest of the world. Behind me was a solid mass of trees, the thicket that swelled and blossomed between them so dense that I could see no more than three or four yards, while ahead of me lay a landscape of simple virtues. Rolling hills, rising away from the swampy ground that bounded L'Enfant; scattered trees, uncultivated fields. I could see no sign of habitation.

The birds who'd been greeting the dawn now took flight from the canopy, and I watched them rising up, wheeling around overhead before taking their various ways. I felt suddenly immensely vulnerable, seeing them rise into that bright, wide sky. It was so long since I'd been roofless; I was sorely tempted to turn round and go back to the house. I had unfinished business there, I reasoned: I couldn't just walk out into the world and leave the life I'd been living behind me. A journey like this needed thought and preparation. I had to say goodbye to Marietta, Zabrina and Luman; I had to append a few closing paragraphs to the book on my desk; I had to tidy up my study, and lock away my private papers. There was this to do, there was that to do.

All excuses, of course. I was just trying to find ways to postpone the fearful moment when I actually faced the world again. That was why Cesaria had tricked me into this sudden exile, I knew; to deny me my procrastinations, and oblige me to venture out, under this expanse of sky. In short, to make me live.

I was standing there, facing the empty vista before me, chewing all this over, when I heard a motion in the thicket behind me. I turned around, and to my astonishment saw Luman digging his way out through the shrubbery, cursing ripely as he did so. When he finally emerged from the tangle he looked like some half-crazed spirit of the green, twiglets and thorns in his beard and hair. He spat out a mouthful of leaf, and gave me a fierce look.

“You'd better be grateful!” he groused.

“For what?' I said.

He raised his hands. He was carrying two leather knapsacks, both much battered and beaten. They were packed to the point of bursting. “I brought you some stuff for your travels,” he said.

“Well that's good of you,” I said.

He tossed the smaller of the knapsacks over to me. It was heavy. It also stank.

“Is this another of your antiques?” I said, looking at the Confederate insignia on the flap.

“Yep,” he said. “I got them the same place I got the saber. I put your pistol in there, along with some money, a shirt and a flask of brandy.”