The Library at Mount Char Part 38

Now Steve and Erwin were both giving her looks. Anyway, David can't hear me. She let her hand drop. When she spoke next she made an effort to sound normal. "Yeah, that's a good, strong connection. I must have timed it just right."

Naga sniffed David, then yowled.

"You fed that lion lately?" Erwin asked.

"She'll be fine." Steve patted Naga on her back. She shoulder-dived against his hip. "She's just a big ol' sweetie. Ain't ya, girl?"

Carolyn smiled and crushed out the Marlboro under her bare foot. "Got another?"

Steve fished out the pack. The two of them lit up. Steve held out the pack to Erwin.

Erwin waved it off. "That s.h.i.+t'll kill ya." He put in a dip instead.

"You're bleeding," Steve said. There was real concern in his voice.

She looked down. Blood was dribbling out of the hole in her thigh-it didn't squirt the way it would have if an artery was nicked, but it was bad enough. "Oh, right. That. Steve, could I get you to run and get something for me?"

"Sure. What do you need?"

"I need to patch my leg up. Erwin's too. Remember that pile of stuff I left for you in the living room of that white house?"

"Yeah, sure."

"There's a big canvas bag tied with twine. Get that, some bandages, and as much water as you can carry. Pressure bandages, if there's any left."

"Will do." Steve took off.

"Erwin, can I have one of your shoelaces?"

"Er...yeah. If you want." He took off his Reebok and extracted the lace, then handed it to her. "What do you need it for?"

She tied one end of the lace to David's hairy big toe, and the other to a mailbox. "We've got one more thing to take care of, and I don't want him bobbing off."

- CAROLYN WASN'T AS skilled as Jennifer, but their wounds weren't all that bad. She packed the hole in her foot and leg with a gray powder, then poured water on it. As she worked on Erwin, the powder knitted itself into flesh, pink and new.

They found Margaret just outside the gate, still playing with the president's head.

"You killed David," Margaret said. She didn't look up. "How could you kill David?"

"Not exactly." Carolyn felt ferocious, triumphant...but she was wary as well. It was hard to tell what went on in Margaret's head. "That would have been too good for him. I found something worse."

"Worse than the forgotten lands?"

Carolyn's smile was streaked with blood. "Much."

Margaret looked up, interested for the first time. "Really?" She searched Carolyn's face. "It is true. You did. You are a horror, then. I did not know." She smiled. "We are sisters." Then, to the head, "David said she might be reading outside her catalog, but I didn't beeee-leeeeeeeve him. She seems so pink and mousy." She punctuated "pink" and "mousy" by poking the president in his cheeks. The head tried to moan, but it had no air.

Margaret moaned for it, weaving her head back and forth in the night. Then something occurred to her. "Father will be upset." She made the head poke out its bottom lip.

"Father is gone too. I killed him."

"He'll be back. He always comes back."

"Not this time."

Margaret wavered. She spoke softly. "You have ended Father? Ended him forever?"

Carolyn thought she saw the faintest, tiniest flicker of expression in Margaret's face. Hope, perhaps? She couldn't tell. "Yes. He's gone."

"Forever?"

"Forever."

"Oh." Again that little flicker of expression, hard to read. "I believe you." She looked back down at the head, then back up, as something new occurred to her. "Then you are horror and death. Yes?" She looked at Carolyn seriously, waiting for an answer.

Carolyn blinked. "I guess you could put it that way."

"Then I suppose that makes you my mistress." She set the president's head on the ground, stood up, and curtsied. "What would you have of me, madam?"

Carolyn didn't know what she had expected, but this wasn't it. "Only one thing." She looked at Erwin, nodded. Erwin raised his pistol.

"Oh," Margaret said, bored again. "You are sending me home?"

"Yes."

"Hmm." She paused. "May I ask one thing? Madam? A favor, please?"

Carolyn was in a generous mood. She touched Erwin on the shoulder, spoke in English. "Not yet." Then, in Pelapi, to Margaret. "Sure. Why not?"

"Do you remember the way David died? The first time?"

"Yeah. But Margaret, I wouldn't-"

"I would like to go home that way. Through the bull. The way David went."

Carolyn squinted at her, unsure if she had heard right. "Can you say that again?"

"I would like to be roasted in the bull. Father said it would be my final lesson. I believe that I am ready."

"Margaret...why would you possibly want such a thing?"

"You don't know?" She sounded disappointed.

"No. I really don't."

"David never understood either. I wanted to hear him, you know, but...he couldn't get through. Not anymore. Not for a long time. But you and I are sisters, it seems. So perhaps..." Margaret frowned at her, searching for words. "I'm very far now. Far from all of you, far from myself. I am in the outer darkness, you see." She blinked, imploring. "I have wandered for so very long. You understand this much?"

Carolyn gave a small nod. "I do."

"I often think of the bull, though. Do you think of the bull?"

"Sometimes."

"You remember how it glowed? How the fire made it orange, under the moon, and David sang?"

Carolyn's mouth was dry. "I remember."

"If someone were to light a fire like that for me...I think I might feel it. Even here in the outer darkness, I might feel it. And...if it were bright enough, and burned very long...perhaps I could follow it back." Margaret, pale and atrocious, aged about thirty, gave a wistful smile. "Back to myself, you see. I might even have a song called out of me. I think there might be one left to call." She looked to Carolyn with the ghost of hope dancing in her eyes. "Just one. That's all I ask. Do you think? Perhaps?"

"Yes," Carolyn said quietly. "Perhaps."

"You'll do it then?"

They looked at each other. Maggots squirmed in Margaret's hair. When we were children, she had the best toys, Carolyn thought. Pretty little dolls. She let me borrow them sometimes. "Yes. If that's what you want." Then, in English: "Erwin, put the gun away. New plan. Margaret has a last request."

"I ain't shooting her?"

"No. That's not insane enough, apparently."

The muscles at Erwin's temples jumped. "What, then?"

"It's easier to show you. There should be a wheelbarrow in that garage over there. Can you and Steve grab it for me? And some stove lengths, from the wood pile in back? We'll meet you at the top of the hill."

Erwin eyed her. "Ah-ite." He unc.o.c.ked his pistol and put the safety on. After a moment's hesitation, he held it out to Carolyn, b.u.t.t first. "Wanna borrow this?"

Margaret boinged up and down on the b.a.l.l.s of her feet like a small child at a candy counter.

"Thanks, but I don't think I'll need it."

- THE DEAD ONES polished the bull every few days. Even under the faint light of the distant streetlamp it had a certain glow.

Fifteen minutes later, sweating, Erwin dragged the wheelbarrow up the last of the railroad-tie stairs cut into the bluff. His cart was full of knotty pine, dry and sticky with sap. He set it down next to the bull and wiped sweat from his forehead with the back of his hand. Then, rapping his knuckles against the bronze, "What's this thing?"

"That," Carolyn said, "is the worst barbecue grill in the world."

Margaret hadn't been able to wait. She was lugging logs from the wood pile by hand, her small body bent under the load. She carried them to the bull two at a time and arranged them just-so. Seeing Erwin's mound of pine, she smiled.

"We having a cookout?" Erwin sounded suspicious and...something else.

Hearing his voice, Carolyn thought of the diamond pattern of rattlesnake scales, almost but not quite hidden under autumn leaves. She considered sending him away. He's not David, but he's not nothing, either. "Not exactly. It's...something we do. Sort of a ritual."

Erwin's right hand drifted to his left shoulder, rubbed it. There was, she knew, a number 4 branded there. Everyone in his unit had gotten them in Afghanistan. Erwin would understand about ritual.

Margaret dropped her armload of broken limbs. She flashed Erwin a greedy smile and plucked a split log from his wheelbarrow.

Erwin considered this. "Yeah. OK. Want me to lug summa that wood?"

"Sure. That'd be great."

The four of them settled into a rhythm, Steve and Erwin filling the cart, Erwin pus.h.i.+ng and dumping it. Carolyn was supposed to be helping Margaret, but Margaret had some theoretically optimal vision of a wood pile in her mind, and she kept slapping Carolyn's hand away.

After twenty minutes or so, Margaret stepped back and looked at the pile. "This is enough."

"Margaret, are you sure you-"

"Yes. Any higher and it will be over too soon." Margaret took hold of the hatch, but she was a slight woman. The tendons in her neck stood out as she strained to open it, but the most she could manage was a couple of inches. Carolyn walked over to help. Together they raised it past the tipping point. The thick bronze clanged against the bull's back. "Are you sure this is what you want?"

"Oh yes." Her voice was eager.

Carolyn spoke to Erwin in English. "Can you give her a hand up?"

"What?"

"Part of the ritual."

"Uh-huh." Erwin squinted at Carolyn, suspicious, then at Margaret. Margaret nodded, bouncing on the b.a.l.l.s of her feet. Erwin knelt and made a sling out of his hands. Margaret lifted one bare, dirty foot, then hesitated. "Here," she said, and held out her Zippo to Carolyn. "For you."

Carolyn didn't want to touch the thing. "It's OK. I've got my own."

"Take it."

"Really, I-"

"Take it. You'll need it sooner or later." Margaret smiled. Her teeth were black. "You're like me now."

Carolyn felt a little squirt of horror at that but squelched it. Just get this over with. She took the lighter with two fingers, touching it as little as possible.

Margaret scrambled into the bull.

"I don't understand," Steve said.

"I don't either. Not really. But this is what she wants."

Margaret's eyes shone wide and white against the black grease inside-excited, but not wanting to hope for too much.

"She wasn't always like this," Carolyn said. "When we were little she...she had a really big dollhouse. We'd play, sometimes." She sighed. "Can one of you give me a hand with the hatch?"

"What are you doing?" Erwin asked. But he knew. He was American, not stupid.

"What does it look like? Give me a hand."

"Yeah, um, no. I can't let you do that," Erwin said.

Carolyn sighed, exasperated. Maybe Steve could help? No. Just push. You can do this.

"You wanna put her down, that's fine. I'll shoot her myself. But you can't burn her. 'Tain't right to do that to a person." Erwin glared at her. "Smart lady like you oughtta know that."

"I'm with Erwin on this one," Steve said.