The Golden (34 page)

“Let’s
take a walk, shall we?”

She glanced up
at him, weary looking around the eyes. “Where?”

“Up the
Mahakam River, eventually.” He extended a hand. “To the
village down in the valley for starters. I can’t see any reason
to go back, can you?”

She lowered her
head again. “It’s too dangerous.”

“Then
what’s the point in waiting here any longer? As I recall, the
evening coach passes through the village shortly before midnight. We
can stop at an inn and wash up. We’ll sleep on the coach. Have
you fed recently?”

She nodded.

“Good,”
he said. “I’d prefer not to risk anything in the village.
Now come along.”

He helped her
up, and after Alexandra had retrieved her shawl and draped it so as
to hide the damage done to her blouse, they started off down the
slope, following the stream that cut across the lower portion of the
hill. When they reached a notch between hills, they left the stream
and headed off along a dusty coach road that wound through a birch
forest. Twilight was settling, and the white trunks gleamed pale as
ghosts in the accumulating dark. Now and then they passed a cottage
with whitewashed walls and a neatly thatched roof and a lantern
glowing orange in the window. Beheim felt disconnected from the
scene. Like a monster prowling the streets of a sleeping city. Now
that he knew who he was, it was strange to walk among men. It seemed
he had been a long time absent from them. Yet he also felt that his
disconnection was unimportant, irrelevant, and that other, more
radical recognitions would come to overwhelm it.

“Do you
have any money?” Alexandra asked as they approached the
outskirts of the village; a church steeple was standing up above the
trees, its bell tower almost touching the evening star, like a
benediction upon the peace and sweetness of the place.

“Enough
for the moment,” he said. “Money won’t be a
problem. We can always get money.”

“I know,”
she said. “I just wondered if we’d have to get some now.”

She stopped
walking and stood gazing off into the village. Snatches of music came
on the wind, and then, behind them, they heard the creaks and
clopping of a horse-drawn cart.

“What is
it?” he asked.

“Mystery,”
she said.

He looked toward
the cozy houses nestled in among the trees, the pretty lights and
proven shadows, the quick, uncertain lives, and he had a flaring up
of a wild, plunderous feeling. Yet the feeling did not stay, did not
nourish, and when it had fled, the sight of the town seemed for a
moment as fabulous and impossible to interpret as had that last
fleeting glimpse of Agenor’s being, dissolving against an empty
sky.

The cart was
lurching nearer, rattling along. Beheim saw the crooked black
silhouette of the driver raised above the plodding bulk of a dark
horse.

“I don’t
know what any of it’s going to be like anymore,”
Alexandra said. “I can’t imagine why it should be
different, but I . . . reflected light streaked her
left eye like a meteor crossing a tiny sky. “I know it will
be.”

The driver of
the cart grunted a command to his horse and pulled up beside them. He
was an old man, older than Agenor and far more frail, with a rag tied
around his head, muffling his ears, and fingerless gloves, and a
frayed woolen coat. “Can I offer you a ride into town?”
he asked. “It’s a bumpy patch ahead. Be hard walking for
the lady.”

Beheim, hearing
the flabby rhythm of the driver’s heart, felt a twinge of
disgust, a desire to leap aboard the cart and end his sour little
life. But he only said, “Thank you, no.” Then, with a
forced smile, not wanting to become a story told at an inn about the
unfriendly stranger and his tall, silent woman, he added, “We’re
going a lot farther than that, so we might as well get used to
walking.”

The driver
sucked on a tooth, spat. “So are we all,” he said with
bad grace. “Doesn’t mean you can’t be a gentleman
and give the lady here a bit of a rest.” He gave the reins a
twitch, starting the horse off again into its plodding gait.

Alexandra
laughed. “Serves you right for trying to be one of the country
folk.”

“I hope
you’re better at it than I,” he said. “Because in a
few minutes we’re going to be sitting down to supper with
them.”

“Oh, I’ll
be in my element.” She danced off a ways along the road. “I
just shows ’em a few fancy steps, I whispers in their ears, and
next you know, they’re begging to be my footstool.”

He laughed, too,
following her. “I’ll wager they’re aiming a bit
higher than your feet for their reward.”

She pretended to
aim a slap at him. “You’ve a dirty mouth for such a fine
gentleman!”

He caught her
arm, pulled her close, and for a few seconds they went waltzing along
the road, teasing one another, their voices happy; but once they
disengaged, their mood dimmed.

“It’s
different already,” she said as they stood with their arms
about one another. “It’s as if I’ve . . .”
She seemed to be searching for the right words. “As if I’ve
shed a skin. That’s it, that’s what it’s like. It’s
all so fresh. The smells, the colors. Everything. It’s as if
I’ve shed an old skin, and the new skin is more sensitive, but
not as strong. Don’t you feel it? You must.”

He told her Yes,
he felt much the same. But that was a lie to comfort her. All he
truly felt was the absence of an oppressive weight, the freedom of
being his own master again after two years of hallucinatory
servitude. Changed as he was, new as he was, the world he saw before
him was the known world, the familiar, a world he neither feared nor
despised, but one toward which he now directed an almost childlike
enthusiasm and curiosity.

The wind picked
up, spinning the birch leaves, conjuring a liquid rustling that
swelled into a river of breath, singing in a long-voweled rush,
pouring along the curved throat of the old coach road; through the
fluttering leaves, the lantern-lit windows of the village were
fragmented into a fiery orange glitter, like the facets of a jeweled
sun showing among the tatters of night; the white trunks of saplings
deeper in the forest swayed like drugged dancers; and from somewhere
close by, all but overwhelmed by the coursing of the wind, sounded
the tinkling of a bell, a crystalline voice that spoke to Beheim in
syllables of ice, telling him of something mystical and lost that he
could know and be empowered by if he would only go forward now. Then
the whole, wild tearing substance of that moment came into him with
the abruptness of a revelation, and he wanted to throw back his head
and howl, adding the windy noise of his soul to the great movement of
time and fate that was carrying him off into the heat and decay of
the solitudes.

Alexandra
murmured something. He heard only the words, “I wish . . .”
but knew from the tightness of her waist, the hammering of her pulse,
that she was still afraid.

He cupped her
face in his hands, kissed her brow, stroked the cool, massy flow of
her hair. The tension left her, and she relaxed against him. Over her
shoulder he watched a squirrel hop out onto the road, its gray coat
almost blending with the grayed surface of the dust. It stood on its
hind legs, sniffing the air, then scampered closer, stood erect
again. It showed no sign of fear, apparently undisturbed by their
unnatural scent, and Beheim wondered if Alexandra’s image had
been apt, if indeed they had shed some dry scaly garment, some
burdensome physicality that had prevented them from themselves
blending in with the drab colors of the ordinary.

“Love,”
he said, using the word lightly, as a name rather than a pledge.

She pulled back
from him, startled.

“Time to
go,” he said. “They might wonder in the village why we’re
not afraid of walking about in the dark.”

He kissed her on
the mouth, let the kiss develop slowly, flirting with her tongue, and
when they broke apart, she caught his head and held it still, held
his eyes, not searching, not trying to impress her will, but—it
seemed—opening to him, allowing him to penetrate her with his
own will, to give her his confidence. Something began to show in her
face that he had never seen before, a kind of clean expectancy that
had nothing to do with want or need.

“Well,”
she said at last, taking his hand. “I’m ready.”

Night was
closing down over the valley, wild stars showing bright as pain over
Castle Banat, and as they walked with their heads bowed their hearts
were racing, their minds heavy with thoughts of the future, of how
they would pass the evening in the village of their weak and
multitudinous enemy, and then travel out along the road of the
willful blood, toward the end of an old romantic darkness and the
secret splendor of the dead, toward the light of the East and the
hill of mahogany, toward the crimes and sacred central moments of a
new Mystery and the beginning of a strange green time.

Other
eBooks from ElectricStory.com