Sacrament

CHAPTER XV

i

Frannie had not gone with Rosa in pursuit of Steep. She'd stayed in Rukenau's chamber, watching in astonishment as the walls shed their covering. It was not the safest place to be by any means, not with the earth and rope and furniture overhead in steady collapse. But she had no intention of taking shelter; not having risked so much to be here. She would watch the process to the end, however heavy the rain became.

Her presence did not go unnoticed. A minute or so after Rosa's departure, Rukenau turned his head in Frannie's direction, and focusing what was left of his sight upon her, asked her if Rosa had found Jacob yet. Not yet, she told him. She could see the object of his enquiries making her way through the unfurling walls in pursuit of Jacob; she could see Jacob too, moving in the brightness. The figure that truly caught her attention, however, was Will, who was furthest from her, but by some trick of place or sight was in sharper focus than either Rosa or Jacob; his form perfectly delineated as he walked the brightening air.

I'm losing him, Frannie thought. He's going away from me and I'll never see him again.

The man on the ground in front of her said: 'Won't you come a little closer? What's your name?'

'Frannie.'

'Frannie. Well then, Frannie, could you raise me a little? I want to see my Nilotic.'

How could she refuse him? He was beyond doing her any harm. She knelt down beside him, and put her arm under his body. He was heavy, and wet with blood, but she felt strong and she'd never been squeamish, so it wasn't a difficult task to lift him up as he'd requested, until he had a view through the veils of the House.

'Do you see them?' she asked him.

He managed a blood-red smile.

'I see them,' he said. 'And that third? Is it Ted or Will?'

'That's Will,' she said.

'Somebody should warn him. He doesn't know what he's risking, going so deep.'

In the cool furnace of the world, Will heard Steep call his name. Once upon a time, he would have turned eagerly at the sound of that voice, hungry for the face that owned it. But there were finer sights to see, all around him; the creatures whose designs had been abstractions until now finally parading their forms before him. A flock of parrot-fish broke against his face, a wave of flamingos ruddied the sky; he waded ankledeep through a lush field of otters and rattlesnakes.

'Will,' Steep said again.

Still he didn't turn. If the creature strikes me down from behind, he thought, so be it; I'll die with my head full of life. A boulder split before him, and spilled a bounty of chicks and apes; a tree grew around him, as though he were its rising sap, and spreading overhead, blossomed with striped cats and carrion crows.

And as he saw them, he felt Steep's hand on his shoulder; felt Steep's breath at his neck. One last time, the man said his name. He waited for the coup de grace, while the tree grew still taller, and shedding its fine fruit, blossomed a second time.

The fatal blow didn't come. Instead, Steep's hand slid from his shoulder, and Will heard the fox say: Oh, I think maybe you should take a look at this.

He wouldn't have attended to any other voice but that. Ungluing his eyes from the spectacle a moment, he glanced back towards Steep. The man was no longer looking at Will. He had himself turned round, and was staring at the figure who had pursued him through the House to this spot. It was Rosa; but only just. To Will's eyes she seemed to have become a wonderful patchwork. The woman she'd once been was still visible, of course: her exquisite features, the ripeness of her body; but the brightness that had seeped from her in Donnelly's house was in greater evidence than ever, flowing copiously from her wound; and as it came it inspired the form inside her form to show itself more plainly.

Will heard Steep say: stay away from me, but there was no weight in his words, nor belief that his order would be obeyed. She kept coming towards him, slowly, lovingly; her arms lifted from her sides a little way, palms out, as though to show him the innocence of her intent. And perhaps it was indeed innocence. Or perhaps this was her last, and slyest, deceit; to play the pliant bride, folded in veils of light, delivering herself to his mercy. If so, it worked. Instead of defending himself against her, he let the brightness wash around him; and he was engulfed.

Will thought he saw a shudder pass through Steep's form, as though Jacob was suddenly aware that he was caught, and was trying to shake himself free. But it was too late. The man he'd been was lost already, his exhausted form flayed away by light, uncovering the mirror image of the face that was even now supplanting the last of Rosa. Will saw her human features make a smile as they were dissolved, then the Nilotic was there in all its burnished perfection; moving through the circling confluence of light to marry its form with the form in Steep. This was the final conundrum, solved. Jacob and Rosa weren't separate creatures; they were each a part of the Nilotic; divided and grown forgetful of who they were. Living in the world with stolen names, learning the cruel assumptions of their gender from what they saw about them; unable to live apart, though it was a torment to be so close to the other, yet never close enough.

Oh, now look what you've done ... Will heard the fox say in his head.

'What's that?'

... you've set me free.

'Don't go yet.'

Oh Lord, Will, I want to be gone.

'Just a little while. Stay with me. Please.'

He heard the fox sigh. Well, the beast said, maybe just a little while ...

Rukenau shuddered in Frannie's embrace. 'Are they whole?' he said. 'I can't see them clearly.'

Frannie was dumb with disbelief. Hearing Rukenau speak of dividing the Nilotic was one thing; seeing that process reversed another entirely.

'Did you hear me?' Rukenau said. 'Are they whole?'

... yes.. .' she murmured.

Rukenau sank back against her arm. 'Oh God in Heaven, the crimes I committed against that creature,' he said. 'Will you forgive me?'

'Me?' Frannie said. 'You don't need forgiveness from me.'

'I'll take it wherever I can find it,' Rukenau replied. 'Please.'

He was clearly in extremis, his voice so frail Frannie had difficulty catching his words; his clownish face slackening. It was, she knew, the last service he would require of her. And if it gave him comfort, why not? She leaned a little closer to him, so that she could be certain he heard her.

'I forgive you,' she said.

He made a tiny nod, and for a moment his eyes focused upon her. Then the sight went out of them, and his life stopped.

The braids of light in which the Nilotic had been wed to itself were dispersing now, and as they did so the creature turned and looked at Will. Simeon had not done too badly with the portrait he'd painted, Will thought. He'd caught the grace of the creature well enough. What he'd failed to capture was the alien cadences of its proportions; its subtle otherness, which made Will a little fearful it would do him harm.

But when it spoke, his fears fled.

'We have come such a distance together,' it said, its voice mellifluous. 'What will you do now?' 'I want to go a little further,' Will replied, glancing back over his shoulder. 'I'm sure you do,' the Nilotic said. 'But believe me when I tell you it wouldn't be wise. Every step we take we go deeper into the living heart of the world. It will take you from yourself, and at last, you will be lost.' 'I don't care.' 'But those who love you will care. They'll mourn you, more than you know. I would not wish to be responsible for another moment's suffering.' 'I just want to see a little more,' Will said. 'How much is a little?' 'I'll let you be the judge of that,' Will said. 'I'll walk with you for a while, and we'll turn back when you tell me it's time.' 'I won't be coming back,' the Nilotic said. 'I intend to unmake the House, and must unmake it from its heart.' 'Then where will you go?' 'Away. From men and women.' 'Is there anywhere like that left?' 'You'd be surprised,' the Nilotic said, and so saying, moved past Will and proceeded on into the mystery. It had not explicitly forbidden Will to follow it, which was all the invitation he needed. He went in cautious pursuit of it, like a spawning fish climbing waters that would have dashed him to death without the Nilotic ahead of him to breast the flow. Even so, he quickly understood the truth in its warnings. The deeper they ventured the more it seemed he was treading not amongst the echoes of the world, but the world itself, his soul a thread of bliss passing into its mysteries. He lay with a pack of panting dogs on a hill overlooking plains where antelope grazed. He marched with ants, and laboured in the rigours of the nest, filing eggs. He danced the mating dance of the bower-bird, and slept on a warm rock with his lizard kin. He was a cloud. He was the shadow of a cloud. He was the moon that cast the shadow of a cloud. He was a blind fish; he was a shoal; he was a whale; he was the sea. He was the lord of all he surveyed. He was a worm in the dung of a kite. He did not grieve, knowing his life was a day long, or an hour. He did not wonder who made him. He did not wish to be other. He did not pray. He did not hope. He only was; and was; and was; and that was the joy of it. Somewhere along the way, perhaps amongst the clouds, perhaps amongst the fish, he lost sight of his guide. The creature that had been, in its human incarnations, both his maker and his tormentor, slipped away and was gone out of his life forever. He was vaguely aware of its departure, and knew its going to be a signal that he should stop and turn round. It had trusted him with his destiny; it was his responsibility not to abuse the gift. Not for his sake, but for those who would mourn him if he was lost to them.

He shaped all these thoughts quite clearly. But he was too besotted to act upon them. How could he turn his back on these glories, with so much more to see?

On he went then, where only souls who had learned the homeward paths by heart dared to go.

ii

I'm a witness, Frannie thought. That's what I'm meant to do right now: watch these events as they unravel, and keep them clear in my head, so that I can be the one who tells everything, when all these wonderful sights have passed away.

And pass they would. That was becoming more evident by the moment. The first sign she had that the House was beginning to unknit was a spatter of cold rain on her head. She looked up. The ceiling of Rukenau's chamber was now dissolving, the living forms that had spilled from it disappearing. They didn't melt, they were just lost to her sight as a more familiar scene reestablished itself. Indeed she was tempted to believe that they remained around her, but simply became unavailable to her senses. She was not altogether unhappy at this. Though the sight of grey clouds shedding grey rain was less inspiring than the glories passing from her view, they had the virtue of familiarity. She was not obliged to gorge on them, afraid she'd miss some choice glory.

The walls were also receding from her, just as the ceiling had, layer upon layer of flickering lucidity subsumed. That roiling wall, alive with silver life, was tamed into a simple sea; that other, green and glistening, the crown of Kenavara. Here were the birds now: the kittiwakes, the cormorants, the hoodie-crow; while underfoot her eyes caught a glimpse of the lives that lay below her in the earth - the seeds, the worms - before that vision was also dimmed, and she was staring at the excremental mud that the rain was making from the sheddings of the House.

Remember how this is, she told herself, while she knelt in the mud. This presence of all things, seen and unseen; around and about; remember. There will be days in your life when you'll need to have this feeling again, to know that all that's gone from the world hasn't really gone at all; it's just not in sight.

There were more people than she'd expected sharing the cliff-top with her; all, she assumed, released from the maze of the Domus Mundi. There was an old man standing up in the downpour some twenty yards from her shouting hallelujahs at the sky; there was a woman a few years her senior who was already wandering back towards the body of the island, as if in fear that she would be claimed again if she didn't escape the cliff. There was a young couple, shamelessly hugging and kissing with a passion the icy rain could not chasten.

And there was Will. He hadn't gone wherever the creature who'd made the House had gone. He was here still; standing gazing out towards the sea, glassy-eyed. She got to her feet to go to him, glancing down at Rukenau as she did so. She was astonished at what she saw. His flesh, now that it was no longer rocked in the cradle of the House, had succumbed to the claim of his true age. His skin had split in a dozen places, and was being driven off his withered muscle by the pelting rain. His blood had already been sluiced from the corpse, so that it looked like something a child might have made from papier-mache and paint, and now, having grown bored with the game, abandoned in the mud. Even as she watched, its chest caved in, its contents gone to mush and jelly. She took her eyes off it, knowing when she looked again it would have been received into the sodden earth. There were worse ways to disappear, she thought, and went to Will.

He was not staring at the sea, as she'd initially thought. Though his eyes were wide open, and when she said his name he made a guttural sound that she took to be a response, his thoughts were not with her, but about some business that was claiming most of his attention.

'I think we should go,' she said to him.

This time he didn't even murmur a response; but when she took his arm, as now she did, he went with her, neither seeing nor blind, back over through the mud and rain towards the machair.

By the time they reached the car, the rainstorm had passed over the island and was headed for America. Night was on its way; there were lights in the cluster of houses at Barrapol, and stars coming between the ragged clouds. She got Will into the passenger seat without any problem (it was almost as though he were in a trance; capable of responding to simple instructions, but in every other way absent); then she backed the car up until she reached the road, and drove through the rapidly descending twilight to Scarinish. There'd be a ferry tomorrow; they'd be back on the mainland by evening, and - if she drove through the night - home by the following morning. That was as far as she was presently willing to project her thoughts: as far as the kitchen and the teapot and the comfort of her bed. Only when she was safely back in her own house would she think about what she'd seen and felt and suffered since the man at her side had come back into her life.