Anna von Wessen (47 page)

The Endai stood by with the utmost reverence, while the Weldon wolves turned towards Anna, and bestowed upon her the sign of their fortress. First they held their palms to the place where she lay. Then they raised their hands to Heaven, and tilted their faces to let God’s light shine down upon them.

XLV:

Goodbye

T
he Narken and the Endai formed a long procession, then, which followed as Vaya carried Anna away from the blood-strewn grounds. Dio walked by her side, and Griel went just behind her, bearing Xeros. Then came Dahro with Leventh. Nearly every other member of the solemn party bore someone dead in their arms. There came Nessa bearing Orin, and Doric’s father bearing his son, and so, so many others. Even Greyson and Clyde had had a member of the fallen entrusted to their strong Lumarian hands. They trudged along beside all the rest, looking hardly at all as if they did not belong. And, really – who was to say they did not?

The way back was much longer than the way forward. The departed were not buried, then, till several nights later in the Weldon graveyard. The Endai’s site of interment was far away – and besides, they considered it nothing less than an honour, to lay their loved ones beside such very brave Narken. They thought that the dead would have preferred, too, to be placed by the ones with whom they had fought, and with whom they had died.

The Endai went, that night, to sleep within the Weld. By dawn the graveyard was empty, and the sun stole with lonely light across the freshly dug graves. There was but one who remained: and this was Dio Constantín. Just as soon as the orange shine of daybreak came to kiss his cheek, he stumbled wearily to his Mila’s grave, and laid him down beside it. There he closed his eyes, and breathed out his last breath.

Vaya, on the other hand, had vanished. It was said that none had seen her, after the last bit of earth was turned over Anna’s grave.

She fled directly to the forest, and rambled aimlessly for a number of days, walking in as straight a line as she was able (though the persistent tears in her eyes made her swerve this way and that), and turning away each time she came to a place where the forest ended, and the wide world began. One week after she had entered the endless tree-realm, she had no idea at all where she was, but did not much care. She could have shifted anywhere; but she did not much desire it. She merely walked, and stumbled, and slept wherever she fell.

Her hunger sharpened quickly to a point. She stopped only once at the forest-line, beside a lonely road in the dead of night, and watched fascinated for a long moment, as a trio of young people walked along its shoulder. She closed her eyes, and heard the beating of their hearts, pumping hot fresh blood through veins beneath the skin. They were all nicely plump, too.

Yet she paused in her survey, when she realised that her appetite was almost irreversibly whetted, and her tongue was running thickly over her lips. She was something horrified, yes – but this made her no less hungry.

So it was the first time that she thought – of Anna? No; certainly not. Anna had been in her mind all these days, had been inside it and never left. She had almost feared that, without the constant pressing of Anna’s thoughts to sustain her, her presence might begin to drift away, slowly, slowly, till she could not call it back. There was no hum of Anna’s voice, now, inside her brain. But still it spoke there sometimes, in a much quieter tone, a tone of memory rather than substance. And all the years that Anna had not dwelt within her – so many years, really, when compared to the short months they had lived as
one! – they all seemed as nothing now, as no more than empty seconds ticked round the face of a lonely clock, which had stopped forever when Anna came.

She understood, now, that Anna could not be lost to her. But when there was no Anna
here,
no hand to hold, no lips to press, and no breathing breast for her pillow, was this eternal memory not more terrible than it was sweet? Certainly the never-ending ache in her chest told her so.

This present thought, then, was by no means the first she had had of Anna herself. Yet it was the first time she remembered the wolf – and Anna’s constant need to feed it. She turned away from the humans on the road, almost grudgingly; and fled quickly into the deeps of the forest, before she could change her mind.

In this space of cold, damp darkness, she huddled beneath the eyes of a vast army of trees, and consumed the whole of a great large buck. It was not so satisfying as the fleshy youths would have been; but still the pain of hunger was temporarily removed.

Yet she bolted upright almost immediately, hissing and dripping blood. All was up now. She cared for nothing! So why ever should she care for sparing the wretched lives of three such useless wights?

There was no acceptable or sensible answer to this question. Nothing accepted by her, that was, or which made sense to her own disordered mind.

Still this night marked her last in the forest. With her aching stomach soothed, and her strength somewhat restored, she betook her blood-smeared self down to a fresh little lake, which was fed and made clean by a narrow stream. She bathed there, and screamed and cried for some time. Yet there was not a soul who heard her. No earthly one, that was.

She quit the forest, then, and shifted into the Weld. She did not knock at the entrance, and she did not make her presence known. She merely went to the chamber she had shared with Anna (which had been kept vacant, we might add, even upon the crowded night wherein the Endai called the fortress their home), and collected all things there that she could not bear to part with. She retrieved Anna’s Turin, and a dark, soft cloak that still smelt of her. Then there was only the camera which they had brought with them from Rome. Vaya stood still for a moment, staring down at it; and the next she was gone.

The place she went now, was one where she had surely never expected she would go. She shifted hither and thither till she came to a large town. Humans walked everywhere; and the scent of them incited her nearly to madness. Yet she kept on with the purpose for which she had come. After a little she came to the great paved lot of what they call a “super-mart,” with glowing white letters over its banner which read, “photos developed here.” Vaya went inside, frightened many a sales associate as she demanded directions to the photo developer (though of course she did not use that designated appellation, but merely waved the little camera to make them understand her), and affected that latter employee no less when she arrived to request his services.

A thin, pimple-faced boy stood behind the dirty grey counter, wearing a short blue smock. He looked up at Vaya with a start; but directly he saw her face, he began to smile in a most idiotic fashion. “Why, hullo,” said he. “How can I help you?”

Vaya threw the camera on the counter. “Take the portraits from inside,” she said, “and give them to me.”

“You – you want it developed?” the boy asked in bewilderment.

“Yes, you fool! Hurry up.”

“It will be th-thirty minutes at least, miss.”

Vaya howled with frustration, and overturned several racks of expensive cameras beside the counter. The boy watched her fearfully.

“No one can do it quicker, miss, than me,” he murmured, with a countenance so pallid it appeared he might faint.

“Do it, then,” cried Vaya, “and quit blathering about it!”

With a frightened whimper, he snatched up the camera, and hurried into the safety of a square of tall partitions, where he proceeded to develop the photographs. Vaya merely fell to the floor, there in the very centre of the aisle, and sat heedless of the curious people who passed her on every side. When finally the boy returned to tell her all was ready, she rose up, and looked almost ruefully at the mess she had made. She tossed a great sum of money to the boy, which must have almost three times paid for what destruction she had wrought, and then shifted away without another word, leaving the poor boy standing, terribly bemused and afraid behind the dirty grey counter.

~

The chaos which had reigned at Drelho for two nights, and seeped slowly from the isolated heart of the New Forest, met finally with the attention of the humans in the more populous areas, by dint of the frightened farmers and hermits who lived in the corners of that rural land. Naturally, their curiosity was piqued. By the time they sent their representatives to see to the situation, however – and by the time they located the exact spot where the trouble had brewed – the mess had been cleaned up; the bodies were gone; and the fires were doused. They demanded to speak to the authority of the castle, and were met by none other than a grave and bewildered Clyde Whist, whose eyes were shot through with exhaustion, and whose hair was sticking all up, no less severely than Greyson’s was wont to do. He stuttered as he answered their questions, trembled from head to foot, and nearly screamed in their faces as he bade them farewell. His very ridiculousness served better than anything else possibly could to quell their suspicions. They tipped their hats to him, and left him standing at the threshold of the castle, with his eyes opened wide and a frown upon his face.

After this brief meeting with the authorities of the human world, Greyson and Clyde fell more in earnest to tidying the castle. They even became somewhat adept in the art of stonemasonry, as they worked to repair the many walls which had been felled. They ripped Ephram’s throne from the royal chamber, and shut up the doors so that they might not be opened again. Then they tore down the King’s table in the dining hall, and used the wood to start a large fire in the rear of the castle, where still there were many bodies piled, which had escaped the flames of the wolves on the first round. These they burnt; for they felt no scruples as to burying them. They took the most pleasure in throwing the corpses of Ephram, Koro and Abrast into the blaze, stood back a little after they had done so, and wore very happy smiles, as the orange light of the pyre flickered over their faces.

They were so busy during this time, they hardly asked themselves where Vaya had gone. She would return, they knew, when she wanted – and besides they would never find her, even were they to look. It was in the following way, then, that they learnt of her arrival.

She came directly to Drelho from the human town. She stopped first in her chamber to deposit her treasures; and though she was weary, she needed do one thing more before she slept. She went silently, and with a blank countenance, up into the castle’s attics – and broke Vyra Iyenov’s red rose. The enormous, ancient pane of glass fell in many hundreds of pieces to the ground below, and lay glittering poisonously in the glow of the moon. Vaya gave a crooked smile, and turned away.

~

Next day she was roused by a round of emphatic knocking on her chamber door. Yet the callers did not wait for her to answer, but merely shifted inside the room, hardly a moment after they had announced themselves.

“Well,” she said. “How did you know I was here?”

“The rose,” said Clyde with a timid smile.

“Yes!” exclaimed Greyson. “The rose. I never really liked it, you know. Roses in general, well, those I like – but that! No, no. I never liked that.”

Vaya rose from her bed, and crossed the room to stand before them. She stared so intently at Greyson, it was clear they both thought she meant to strike him.

“If you want to do it,” he said resignedly, “you might as well get it over with.”

But she only laughed aloud, and clapped him on the shoulder. “Oh, Greyson!” she said. “You’re such a fool. I don’t want to
hit
you, you great lout – I want to thank you.”

He looked with astonishment into her face. “What was that?”

“I want to thank you, Greyson Menuch! I realise now that I never have. Were it not for you, I would lie in my coffin still. You are a hero, my friend! And you brought me to Anna.”

She leant forward, and kissed his cheek. He fell back in a daze.

He and Clyde left her then; but Greyson returned alone a while later, hefting some great object in his wiry little arms. She admitted him to the room, and stood back curiously as he made his way inside.

“I know nothing can cheer you,” he said despondently. “Neither can it do for me. But I have brought you a present.”

He pulled a fair cloth from the top of his load, and then set it down carefully by the door. It was a portrait of Anna, painted many years ago at Ephram’s order.

“She was not thirty years old then,” said Greyson. “In many ways she was different. In all those ways she changed, after she met you. But see – if you look in her eyes, they are the same.”

Vaya’s eyes were fastened for a long moment to the portrait. It is strange, when you think of it – how Anna’s love, even without her knowing it, was begun by the sight of Vaya’s own portrait; and now, even after the love had come and been taken away, Vaya stood watching Anna, whose beautiful face was trapped forever within the canvas.

But finally she shook herself, and went to the drawer of the dressing table, from which she removed a little blue envelope. “I suppose,” she said to Greyson, “that I’ve something for you, too. Here.”

She selected a photograph of Anna from the envelope. It was one she had taken herself in their hotel in Rome, the morning after they woke. Anna stood by the bright windows, smiling much as if she had never known the pain or fear of death.

Greyson looked down at the picture; uttered a shrill little squeal of grief which would not allow for his lingering; and dashed away like a miserable thundercloud.

Vaya stood staring after him for a moment. But slowly her gaze returned to the portrait he had brought; and she set about a very important task.