Lucia's Masks (25 page)

Who is slowing down the rain, the boy wonders. Is it Snake? Or are his parents watching over him? This idea has never occurred to him before.

Once he and Harry reach the cave mouth and retreat inside with the others, the Sky-being of Chandelier’s imagining begins to roar. Then Sky lets loose a curtain of blood.

“Farther back,” calls the Outpacer, in a sharp tone the boy has never heard him use before. “Keep close to the wall.”

The boy clutches Harry’s hand tighter, and together they inch their way toward the Outpacer’s voice, their backs grazing the damp cave wall. How dark it is, and how cold.

Even as he forms this thought, the cave mouth reveals itself as a crimson gash. An ear-shattering roaring invades the world. The boy’s flesh contracts. There follows the sound of an explosion so massive that the stone behind their backs shifts and groans. “Courage,” he hears Harry say. Or was it Snake who spoke? This is a new kind of pain, the boy thinks.

They are all being tortured by the roaring and the booming. Chandelier begins to wonder if this is indeed the end of all things; if soon he will see his parents, made whole again and happy. He seeks comfort in this idea.

“Keep moving,” the Outpacer cries out. “Carefully. Cautiously. Stay close to the wall. This is the fireball the doctor predicted. We will survive this.”

The fireball. It will demolish everything in its path, the plague doctor said, including human flesh and bone. The boy’s heart lurches in his chest as he pictures the fire consuming Lola’s body. There will be nothing left of her now, not even ash.

Not even that. Where then would she be?

Foolish boy. You know the answer to that.
This is Snake again.

Yes, of course he knows the answer. Lola’s story goes into the deep well of what we are.

At that instant the entire interior of the cave is briefly lit with a lurid glow. For a split-second only, just as long as the hellish light lasts, Chandelier sees a face he does not recognize. Plunged again into darkness, he reconstructs the image in his mind’s eye as the group progresses onward into the heart of the rock. The unknown man, with the stern, lean face of a warrior angel, wears a monk’s gown. In his arms he bears the slight, slumped figure of a young girl.

Chandelier is so amazed that he stops, and Harry’s shoulder bumps his.

“Boy, what’s wrong?”

He cannot say: I have seen the naked face of the Outpacer and he looks like a warrior angel; so he simply whispers, “Nothing, sorry.” He and Harry inch forward once again.

A putrid smell makes the boy’s nostrils prickle. Harry coughs.

“There is sweeter air ahead,” the Outpacer calls out. “Keep moving.”

How odd it is to hear the hooded man’s voice and be able to picture his face.

“Speak your names, please.” The Outpacer sounds anxious, and the echo intensifies his concern. “Let me know you are all here.”

“Candace.”

“Lucia.”

“Harry.”

“Chandelier.”

But no one hears the boy speak his name. For at that moment, the toe of his fabric boot dislodges a stone that clatters and flies out from under his foot. He rights himself, squeezes Harry’s hand, and listens to the intense hush in which they are all now immersed. Some ten full heartbeats later, they hear a splash.

“Oh, my God!” The boy thinks it was Lucia who spoke, yet the voice was so fear-filled, he cannot be certain.

“Stay calm, all of you,” the Outpacer says. “Press your backs against the wall.

“Lucia, could you strike a match? Can you manage this?”

“Yes.”

Ah, thinks the boy. It is all right. This is the Lucia he knows who is speaking.

They wait. Then they hear the rasp of the struck match.

In the brief light Lucia makes, the boy sees first the gleaming wetness of the cave walls. We are inside the mouth of one of the old gods, he thinks, the first ones. He looks down and gasps, as they all do. They are standing on a ledge barely two feet wide. Far below them is a ravine whose ebony water, churning and alive, speaks of its deadly depth.

Now they are in the dark again. They all instinctively press back against walls that are wetter, slippier, and so much more inhospitable than when they first entered the cave.

A woman sobs. Is it Candace or Lucia? Or is it Bird Girl?

He hears Lucia speak in words he does not understand: “
Per me si va ne la città dolente . . . Lasciate ogni speranza, voi chi entrate
.”

He registers the raw fear in the words nonetheless, and some other emotion he cannot identify — something heavy that slows her speech and makes her sound unlike herself.

“Courage!” This from Harry.

“Take courage! Let us keep on.” This is the Outpacer.

“
Speranza. S
ì.” Harry again.

“
Speranza
,” Lucia repeats.

“Another match, Lucia.” As the match strikes, the boy concentrates this time on looking directly ahead, toward the back of the cave. At first he cannot believe his eyes. What appears to be a ring of dazzling white stones marks out the boundary of a solid platform of rock, wide and deep enough for them all to sit and rest; even to lie down and to sleep.

“It is quite solid and safe.” Already the Outpacer is standing on the platform, encouraging them to join him. His hood is once again in place, the boy notes. He sees how carefully the man has laid Bird Girl down in the centre of the stone floor. The Outpacer stands above her still form, rummaging in the deep pockets of his habit.

Lucia’s match goes out.

“I have a small flashlight,” the Outpacer tells them. “I am sure it has several hours of power left.” A small tube of light illuminates Bird Girl’s prone figure. With the utmost care and caution, they all make their way along the remainder of the narrow ledge to the platform which seems to grow out of the roots of the cave, like a tongue in a mouth.

“Ugh!” Candace yelps. The Outpacer swings his torch to where she stands, her hand covering her mouth. Candace points to a hollow in the cave wall, from which a skull grins down at them. He then sweeps the slim beam around the perimeter of the platform, where his light discovers an assortment of gleaming bones: rib cages, clavicles, tibias, and many more skulls.

“We have been preceded,” he says. “We will be protected by this circle,” he tells them. Harry murmurs his agreement. What choice do they have but to believe this, the boy wonders.

“We will wait here,” the Outpacer tells them, like a father speaking in stern reassurance to his children, “some eight to ten hours. Then I will make the first foray out to ensure it is safe for us to leave.

“For now we must conserve our strength. We have survived the firestorm. We have brought Bird Girl through this ordeal.

“We must persist; head north speedily as the doctor advised.”

To Chandelier’s great surprise, the Outpacer begins to sing. The boy is so weary he cannot take in all the words. Later he remembers “valour” and “constant be” or perhaps it was a “constant bee.” The song’s quietly thumping beat makes him think of a healthy heart in a great strong chest on which he might lay his head. Perhaps that is why, despite the day’s harrowing event and tormenting worry, he falls asleep. When he wakes, his head is nestled against Harry’s hip.

“The Outpacer went out about ten minutes ago,” Harry whispers. “Soon we will have news of when we can leave this damp and wretched place.”

“Bird Girl?” the boy asks. He cannot keep the apprehension out of his voice.

“She is still breathing, although a bit raggedly,” Lucia answers. “There is hope,” she adds. “
Speranza
.”

“
Speranza
,” the boy repeats. The sound of this word has a power to brighten and quicken his spirit when he speaks it quietly to himself.

“What’s that?” Lucia asks. “Hush.”

At that moment they hear the unmistakable slide of shoe soles on loose stone; and the rub of cloth against the slick stone wall. Someone has entered the cave.

“The Outpacer?” whispers Harry to Chandelier and Lucia, for they are the only three awake. Lucia shakes her head, even though they can barely see each other in the dark.

“He would have called out to us,” she responds in a hush. She flicks on the flashlight, and sends the beam sweeping over the wall. A man with a shock of orange hair is making his way rapidly along the narrow ledge. He is dressed completely in black. Over his right shoulder is slung the strap of a quiver.

“I think it is the archer,” she whispers to Harry and Chandelier, who flinches at the odd croaking quality of her voice. Immediately the boy is on his feet, positioning himself in front the unconscious Bird Girl. But his legs go weak when he hears a voice like an animal’s snarl, “Grimoire’s here to finish off the little whore.” Chandelier thinks he has never heard a human being say anything more terrible. How can they stop him? How? What would Snake do? What weapons do they have to hand?

The answer comes from Harry. Calmly and quietly he tells Chandelier, “Fetch me a skull. Just go behind me and get me a whole one from the row of bones. Lucia will train the light so that you can see. Be quick and careful as you can, boy.” Chandelier homes in on an intact skull, which he scoops up with a scrupulous care and places in Harry’s outstretched hands. “Good lad. Now stand behind me, boy. And pray if you wish.”

“Put the beam on the bastard, Lucia,” Harry instructs her. “Try to shine it right in his eyes.”

Lucia does as she is bid. At once, a round creamy-white missile whirls through the beam of light. Grimoire moves his head just in time. The skull plunges off the ledge. They all wait with rigid nerves in a silence which pounds upon the boy’s ears like a closed fist. Lucia’s hand is shaking so much that the beam of light slips and they can see Grimoire no more.

The tension thickens the dark and the air around them. Where is the evil man now? Chandelier wonders. He considers throwing himself on top of Bird Girl. Would the arrow also penetrate her body or would it stop in his? His teeth are gritted and the silence still assaults his ears so painfully he does not at first hear Harry’s urgent whisper. “Another one, boy. Fetch me another nice round skull.

“More light, Lucia, and keep it steady.”

She sweeps the beam along the ledge and just as it catches Grimoire, they hear the cave echo with the sound of the first skull hitting the water below. In the cone of light they see that Grimoire has his back pressed tight against the wall. His mouth is open and his eyes wide. He knows now, thinks the boy. He knows how narrow is the ledge and how deep the watery cavern below. There is fear in the evil man now, a fear that will eat at his courage and his sense of balance.

“He has only one eye,” Lucia says softly to Harry.

“Which one is missing, Lucia?” Harry sounds angry at her.

“The right, I think. I am not certain,” she confesses.

“Hold the beam steady.”

Lucia complies. In the beam, which she directs as Harry instructs, they see the orange-haired man still standing frozen against the cave wall, arms akimbo.

“Bastards!” he screams at them.

Harry hurls the second skull. This one strikes the man on his right temple and his head and shoulders jerk forward. As he tries desperately to regain his balance, he missteps so that his right foot is off the ledge. For a moment Grimoire appears to hang in mid-air. Then he plummets. So shrill is his scream, as he goes down and down, that Chandelier puts his fingers in his ears. The scream wakes Candace, but Bird Girl sleeps on.

“What happened?” Candace exclaims. “What? Tell me!”

“Harry stopped a killer,” Lucia says, “the man who shot Bird Girl. Harry hurled a skull at his head and the archer fell into the chasm.”

“Harry?” Candace keeps repeating in puzzlement. “Harry?”

“Harry.” Chandelier confirms proudly. “Yes, Harry.”

All four sit silently, their bodies trembling from the emotional aftershock. Chandelier senses some current of fear still moving among them, though the evil man must surely be dead. He keeps seeing the archer’s look of utter surprise, round-mouthed, at the last instant before he began to fall. This picture causes a corkscrew of pain in his gut, and the feeling that he has swallowed a vast emptiness. Is this sensation pity, he wonders. And if so, why does he pity such a wicked being? He knows he will turn this question over and over in the years to come.

Some hours later they hear the Outpacer returning, humming to himself the tune with its thump-a-thump beat.

“How is the child?”

“She lives. She hangs on,” Lucia tells him.

“But we had an interloper. The archer came into the cave, looking to kill her. Harry toppled him from the ledge by hurling one of the skulls.”

“What!” The boy pictures the swift transformation on the warrior-angel’s face, the shadow of alarm succeeded by relief. “And I was not here to protect you. But none of you are hurt?” he asks. His words sound high-strung, as if he walks a wire.

“Shaken and wary, but well enough,” Lucia tells him.

“We are all in your debt, Harry,” the Outpacer says.

“And here is an ironic consolation for us. When we go out again, we need not fear another ambush. That is one clear advantage of the destruction the fireball and red rain caused. There is such utter devastation out there, no one could find anywhere to hide for a covert attack.”

“
Utter
devastation?” Lucia asks.

“Yes. You must prepare yourselves.

“But we will be safe, I think, if we wear the masks the doctor gave us, and if we make haste. If we hurry, we can reach terrain untouched by the fireball by nightfall perhaps.

“We must be resolute,” he urges them. “Try not to be downhearted by what you see.”

They stand and stretch. Chandelier helps to raise Bird Girl’s head while Lucia slips the girl’s gas mask gently over her face. Then she puts on her own.

The boy watches Candace put on hers. Then he and Harry help each other to fix the filmy masks carefully over their mouths and nostrils.

They set off with the Outpacer in the lead, bearing Bird Girl in his arms. Inch by inch, they make their way along the perilous ledge, trying to accustom themselves to breathing normally with the masks in place.