I was terrified and I thought that this would act as an inhibitor on my appet.i.te. But, strangely, just the opposite was happening. I ate and ate as if this alone could a.s.suage my fear.
It was Morodor I was terrified of, I knew that. But was it because I feared him or liked him?
Afterward, it was all I could do to drag myself up the staircase. I stumbled down the hallway and into bed without even removing my clothes.
I slept a deep dreamless sleep but when I opened my eyes it was still dark out. I turned over, about to return to sleep, when I heard a sound. I sat bolt upright, the short hairs at the back of my neck stiff and quivering.
Silence.
And out of the silence a weird, thin cry. I got off the bed about to open the door to the hallway when it came again and I turned. It was coming from outside in the blackness of the night.
I threw open the shutters wide and leaned out just as I had on my first night here. This time there was no mist. Stars shone intermittently through the gauzy cloud cover with a fierce cold light, blinking on and off as if they were silently appealing for help.
At first I saw nothing, hearing only the high soughing of the wind through the pines. Then, off to my left, so high up that I mistook it for another cloud, something moved.
I turned my head in that direction and saw a shape a good deal darker than a cloud. It blossomed with sickening speed, blacker even than the night. Wraith or dream, which was it? The noise of the flapping wings, leathery, horned and-what?-scabbed, conjured up in my mind the image of a giant bat.
Precariously, I leaned farther out, saw that it was heading for the open apertures of the cloud room. I hurled myself across the room and out the door, heading up the stairs in giant bounds.
Consequently, I was somewhat out of breath by the time I launched myself through the open doorway to the aerie and there found only Morodor.
He turned quickly from his apparent contemplation of the sky. "You should be asleep," he said. But something in his tone told me that I had been expected.
"Something woke me."
"Not a nightmare, I trust."
"A sound from the night. It was nothing to do with me."
"It is usually quite still here. What kind of sound?"
"It sounded like a scream... a terrible cry."
Morodor only stared at me, unblinking, until I was forced to go on.
"I went to the window and looked out. I... saw a shape I could not clearly identify; I heard the awful sound of bat wings."
"Oh," Morodor said, "that"s quite impossible. We have none here, I"ve seen to that. Bats are boring, really. As with octopi, I"m afraid their ferocious reputation has been unjustly thrust upon them."
"Just what the h.e.l.l did I see then?"
Morodor"s hand lifted, fell, the arch of a great avian wing. "Whatever it was, it brought you up here."
"Then there was something there!" I said in triumph. "You admit it."
"I admit," said Morodor carefully, "that I wanted to see you. The fact is you are here."
"You and I," I said. "But what of Marissa? I have been looking for her all evening. I must see her."
"Do you think it wise to see her now, to... continue what has begun, knowing what you do about me?"
"But she is nothing like you. You two are the shadow and the light."
Morodor"s gaze was unwavering. "Two sides of the coin, my friend. The same coin."
I was fed up with his oblique answers. "Perhaps," I said sharply, "it"s just that you don"t want me to see her. After all, I"m an outsider. I don"t belong at Fuego del Aire. But if that"s the case, let me warn you, I won"t be balked!"
"That"s the spirit!" His hand clenched into a fist. "Forget all about that which you saw from your bedroom window. It has nothing to do with you." His tone was mocking.
"A bird," I said uncertainly. "That"s all it was."
"My friend," he said calmly, "there is no bird as large as the one you saw tonight."
And he reached out for the first time. I felt his chill touch as his long fingers gripped my shoulder with a power that made me wither inside. "Come," he commanded. "Over here at the windowledge."
I stood there, dazed with shock as he let go of me and leaped out into the night.
I screamed, reaching out to save him, thinking that, after all, his apparent melancholy signaled a wish to die. Then I saw his great ebon cape ballooning out like a sail, drawn upward by the crosscurrents and, for the first time, I saw what had been hidden beneath its voluminous folds.
I had thought he wore the thing as an affectation, because it was part of the legend. But now I understood. What care had he for legends? He wore the cape for practical reasons.
For now from under it spread a pair of the most extraordinary wings I had ever seen. They were glossy and pitch black, as far away from bat"s wings as you could get. For one thing, they were feathered or at least covered in long silky strips that had the appearance of feathers. For another, they were as supple as a hummingbird"s and quite as beautiful. And made even more so by the thick, muscular tendons by which they were attached to his back. It was like seeing the most beautifully developed torso: hard muscle tone combined with sleek line. And yet. And yet there was more, in the most literal sense, because more musculature was required in order for those ma.s.sive wings to support the weight of the rest of the body.
Those wings! Sharply angled and hard, delicate as brushstrokes, they beat at the air like heroic engines. They were a magnificent creation, nothing less than a crowning achievement, an evolutionary pinnacle of the Creator.
But out of the wonder came terror and I thought: Marissa! My G.o.d! My G.o.d! He means to turn her into this.
El Amor Brujo.
Without a word, I turned and bolted from the room. Taking the steps three at a time, I returned to the second floor and there found Marissa asleep in her own bed.
My heart beating like a triphammer, I brought a light close to her face. But no. An exhalation hissed from my mouth. There was no change. But still I feared Morodor and what he could do to her.
"Marissa!" I whispered urgently. "Marissa! Wake up!" I shook her but she would not waken. Hurling the light aside, I bent and scooped her up in my arms. Turning, I kicked the door wide and hurried down the stairs. Where I thought to go at that moment remains a mystery to me still. All I know was that I had to get Marissa away from that place.
The way to the disused scullery I knew and this was the route I took. Outside, the wind ruffled my hair but Marissa remained asleep.
I carried her through the field of tiger lilies and the woodbine, down the center aisle of the vast rose garden, to the verge of the labyrinth. Without thinking, I took her inside.
It was dark there. Darker than the night with the high ebon walls, textured like stucco, looming up on every side. I stumbled down the narrow pathways, turning now left or right at random until I knew that I was truly lost. But at least Morodor could not find us and I had with me this place"s only key.
Panting, my muscles aching, I knelt on the gra.s.s and set Marissa down beside me. I looked around. All I could hear was the far-off whistle of the wind as if diminished by time. Even the booming surf was beyond hearing now.
I sat back and wiped my brow, staring down at that golden face, so innocent in repose, so shockingly beautiful. I could not allow- Marissa"s eyes opened and I helped her to sit up.
"What has happened?"
"I was awakened by a strange sound," I told her. "I saw your brother outside the castle. I thought at first it was a bird but when I went to find out, I saw him."
She looked at me but said nothing.
I gripped her shoulders. I had begun sweating again. "Marissa," I said hoa.r.s.ely. "He was flying."
Her eyes brightened and she leaned toward me, kissed me hard on the lips. "Then it"s happened! The time is here."
"Time," I echoed her stupidly. "Time for what?"
"For the change," she said as if talking to a slow-witted child.
"Yes," I said. "I suspected as much. That"s why I"ve brought you into the labyrinth. We"re safe here."
Her brows furrowed. "Safe? Safe from what?"
"From Morodor," I said desperately. "He can"t touch you here. Now he cannot change you. You"ll stay like this forever. You"ll never have to look like him."
For the first time, I saw fright in her eyes. "I don"t understand." She shivered. "Didn"t he tell you?"
"Tell me what?" I hung on to her. "I ran out of there as soon as I saw him-"
"Oh no!" she cried. "It"s all destroyed now. All destroyed!" She put her face in her hands, weeping bitterly.
"Marissa," I said softly, holding her close. "Please don"t cry. I can"t bear it. I"ve saved you. Why are you crying?"
She shook me off and stared wide-eyed at me. Even tear-streaked she was exquisitely beautiful. It did not matter that she was filled with pain. No emotion could alter those features. Not even, it seemed, time itself. Only Morodor, her haunted brother.
"He was supposed to tell you. To prepare you," she said between sobs. "Now it has all gone wrong."
"Marissa," I said, stroking her, "don"t you know I love you? I"ve said it and I meant it. Nothing can change that. As soon as we get out of here, we"ll-"
"Tell me, how deep is your love for me?" She was abruptly icily calm.
"How deep can any emotion be? I don"t think it can be measured."
"Do not be so certain of that," she whispered, "until you"ve heard me out." She put her hands up before her body, steepling them as if they were a church"s spire. "It is not Morodor who will work the change. It is you."
"Me?"
"And it has already begun."
My head was whirling and I put the flat of my hand against the ground as if to balance myself. "What are you saying?"
"The change comes only when we are in love and that love is returned. When we find a mate. The emotion and its reflection releases some chemical catalyst hidden deep inside our DNA helices which has remained dormant until triggered."
Her fingers twined and untwined anxiously. "This is not a... state that can be borne alone; it is far too lonely. So this is how it is handled. An imperative of nature."
"No!" I cried. "No no no! What you"re telling me is impossible. It"s madness!"
"It is life, and life only."
"Your life! Not mine!"
I stood up, stumbled, but I could not escape the gaze of her lambent eyes. I stared at her in mounting horror. "Liar!" I cried. "Where is Morodor"s mate if this is true?"
"Away," she said calmly. "Feeding."
"My G.o.d!" I whirled away. "My G.o.d!" And slammed into the p.r.i.c.kly wall of a hedge.
"Can love hold so much terror for you?" she asked. "You have a responsibility. To yourself as well as to me. Isn"t that what love is?"
But I could no longer think clearly. I only knew that I must get away from them both.
The change has already begun, she had said. I did not think that I wanted to see the fruits of that terrible metamorphosis. Not after having known her and loved her like this, all air and sunlight.
Two sides of the coin. Wasn"t that what I had said to Morodor? How he must have laughed at that. Yes. Two sides. But of the same coin.
"Don"t you see?" I heard her voice but could no longer see her. "You have nothing to fear. It is your destiny- our destiny, together."
Howling, I clawed my way from her, staggering, tripping as I ran through the labyrinth. My only coherent thought was to somehow get to the sea and then to hurl myself into its rocking embrace.
To swim. To swim. And if I were lucky I would at last be thrown up onto the soft sand of some beach far, far away.
But the night had come alive with shadows drenched in my own terror. And, like a mirror, they threw up to me the ugly writhing apparitions from the very bottom of my soul, thrusting them rudely into the light for me to view.
And above me the sound of...
Wings.
Even through the horrendous tattoo of the storm I can make out that sound. It"s the same sound that reached down into my heavy slumber that night in Fuego del Aire and wrenched me awake. I did not know it then but I know it now.
But I know many things now that I did not then. I have had time to think. To think and to write. Sometimes they are one and the same. Like tonight.
Coming to terms. I have never been able to do that. I have never wanted to do that. My writing kept me fluid, moving in and out as the spirit took me. New York today, Capri the next. The world was my oyster.
But what of me?
The sound is louder now: that high keening whistle like the wind through the pines. It buzzes through my brain like a downed bottle of vintage champagne. I feel lightheaded but more than that. Light-bodied. Because I know.
I know.
There is nothing but excitement inside me now. All the fear and the horror I felt in the labyrinth leached away from me. I have had six months to contemplate my destiny. Morodor was right: For each one, it is different. The doorway metamorphoses to suit the nature of the individual.
For me it is love. I denied that when Marissa confronted me with the process of her transmogrification. Such beauty! How could I lose that? I thought. It took me all of this time to understand that it was not her I feared losing but myself. Marissa will always be Marissa.
But what of me? Change is what we fear above all else and I am no different.
Was no different. I have already forgotten the golden creature of Fuego del Aire: she haunts my dreams still but I remember only her inner self. It is somehow like death, this acceptance of life. Perhaps this is where the legends began.
All around me the city sleeps on, safe and secure, wrapped in the arms of the myths of its own creation. Shhh! Don"t bother to disturb it. No one would listen anyway.