Everville

  The horror seemed to go on an age—the thrashing, rocking, and tearing—but his tenacity was repaid. With one final twisting motion he separated his body from its means of flight, pressed his mutilated form through the crack and fell, his honey blood flowing copiously, on the other side.

  Maeve knew now what he’d meant by just be ready. He needed her help to stem the flow from his wounds before he bled to death. She went to the body of Buddenbaum’s attacker and tore at his robes. They were thick and copious, precisely to her purpose. Returning to Coker, who was lying face-down where he’d fallen, she pressed the fabric gently, but firmly, against his wounds, which ran from his shoulder blades to waist, telling him softly as she did so that this was the bravest thing she’d ever seen. She would make him well, she said, and watch over him for as long as he wished her to do so.

  He sobbed against the snow—the crack closed above him—and in the midst of his tears he answered her.

  “Always,” he said.

  * * *

  Buddenbaum had been wounded before, though only once as badly as this. The stabbing would not kill him—his patrons had rendered his constitution inhumanly strong in return for his services—but it would take a little time to heal, and this mountain was no place to do it. He lingered in the vicinity of the two rocks long enough to see the door close, then he stumbled away from the slope, leaving the O’Connell child and her miserable consort to bleed and weep together at the top. Discovering how innocent little Maeve had come to cause such mayhem he would leave for another day. Not all the witnesses to the night’s events were dead; he’d seen a handful fleeing the field when he’d arrived. In due course, he’d trace them and quiz them till he better understood how his fate and that of Maeve O’Connell were connected.

  One thing he knew for certain: connected they were. The instinct that had made him prick his ears that April day, hearing the name of a goddess called in a place of dust and dirt and unwashed flesh, had been good. The miraculous and the mundane lived side by side in this newfound land, and, in the person of Maeve O’Connell, were indivisible.

  EIGHT

  I

  Coker and Maeve lay in the shelter of the two rocks for several hours, resting bones, flesh, and spirits traumatized by all that the previous night had brought. Sometimes she would make little compresses of fabric soaked in melted snow, and systematically clean his wounds, while he lay with his head upon her lap, moaning softly. Sometimes they would simply doze together, sobbing sometimes in their sleep.

  There was no snow that morning. The wind was strong, and brought convoys of puffy white clouds up from the southwest, shredding them against the peaks. Between them, sun, too frail to warm them much but reassuring nevertheless.

  The supplies of carrion lying on the slope had not gone unnoticed. An hour or two after sunrise the first birds began to circle and descend, looking for morsels on the battlefield. Their numbers steadily increased, and Maeve, fearful that she or Coker would have an eye pecked out while they slept, insisted they move a few yards into the cleft between the rocks, where the birds would be less likely to come.

  Then, sometime towards noon, she woke with her heart hammering to the sound of growls. She got up and peered over the rock. A pack of wolves had nosed the dead on the wind, and were now either tearing at the bodies, or fighting over the tenderest scraps.

  Their presence was not the only grim news. The clouds were getting heavier, threatening further snow. “We have to go,” she told Coker.

  He looked up at her through a haze of pain. “Go where?” he said.

  “Back down the mountain,” she told him, “before we freeze or starve. We don’t have that much daylight left.”

  “What’s the noise?”

  “Wolves.”

  “Many of them?”

  “Maybe fifteen. They won’t come after us while they’ve got so much food just lying there.” She went down on her haunches beside him. “I know you’re hurting and I wish I could make it better. But if we can get back to the wagon I know there’s clean bandages and—”

  “Yes—” he muttered, “and what then?”

  “I told you: We go on down the mountain.”

  “And what happens after that?” he said, his voice pitifully weak. “Even if we could find the rest of your people, they’d kill us soon as look at us. They think you’re a child of the Devil, and I’m—I don’t know what I am any more.”

  “We don’t need them,” she said. “We’ll find our own place to live. Somewhere we can build.”

  “Build?”

  “Not right now, but when you’re well. Maybe we’ll have to live in a hole for a while, steal food, do whatever we have to do, but we’re not going to die.”

  “You’re very certain.”

  “Yes,” she said quietly. “We’re going to build a shining city. You and me.”

  He looked at her almost pityingly. “What are you talking about?” he said.

  “I’ll tell you as we go,” she said to him, pulling on his arm to raise him up.

  She was right about the wolves: They had more than enough food to keep them occupied. Only one of the pack, a scarred, runty animal missing an ear, came sniffing after them. Maeve had armed herself with a short sword plucked from one of the corpses, and rushed at the animal with a blood-curdling shout. It fled, its tail between its legs, and did not venture near them again.

  The first flakes of snow began to fall just as they reached the forest, but once beneath the canopy of branches it was no concern to them. Getting lost, however, was. Though the gradient of the ground plainly pointed the way down, the forest covered most of the lower slope, and without Coker’s preternatural sense of direction, Maeve would have most assuredly lost her way between the trees, and never have emerged again.

  They spoke very little as they went, but Coker—who despite his wounds showed amazing fortitude—did broach one subject: that of Buddenbaum. Was he a Blessedm’n, Coker asked?

  “I don’t know what a Blessedm’n is.”

  “One who works with the spirit—”

  “Like a priest?”

  “And does miracles.”

  “Priests don’t do miracles.”

  “What do they do then?”

  “They say prayers. They break bread. They tell people what to do and what not to do.”

  “But no miracles?”

  “No miracles.”

  Coker thought about that for a time. “Then I mean something different,” he said.

  “Are Blessedm’n good or bad?”

  “Neither. They’re explorers, is what they are.”

  That sounded like Buddenbaum, she said.

  “Well whatever he is,” Coker went on, “he has more power in him than most. That wound should have killed him on the spot.”

  She pictured Buddenbaum as he spoke, pulling the blade out of his own back.

  “It was extraordinary,” Coker replied. Though she had not said a word she knew without question he was speaking of the same sight.

  “How did you do that?” she said.

  He looked at her guiltily. “I’m sorry,” he said, “that was impolite. It’s just that it was so clear.”

  “You saw what I saw?” He nodded. “What else have you seen?”

  “Not much,” he said.

  “What?” she insisted.

  “When you talked about building,” he said. “I saw a city.”

  She named it for him. “That’s Everville. My Papa was going to build it—” She paused a moment, then said: “What did it look like?”

  “It was shining,” he replied simply.

  “Good,” she said.

  It was dark by the time they reached the wagon, but the snow that had blanketed the heights was falling only fitfully below. While Coker made a bed for himself, Maeve rooted around for what crumbs and scraps of food remained, and they ate together. Then they slept again, while the wind buffeted the wagon; fitful sleep, filled with dreams, the strangest of which Maeve woke from wi
th such a start Coker stirred beside her.

  “What is it?” he asked her.

  She sat up. “I was back in Liverpool,” she said. “And there were wolves in the streets, walking upright in fancy clothes.”

  “You heard them howling in your sleep,” Coker said. The wind was still carrying the howls down the mountainside. “That’s all.” He raised his hand to her face and stroked it gently.

  “I wasn’t afraid,” she said. “I was happy.” She rose and lit the lamp. “I was walking in the streets,” she went on, turning the blankets aside as she spoke, “and the wolves were bowing to me when I went by.” She had uncovered the teak chest, and now threw open the lid.

  “What are you looking for?”

  She didn’t answer, but delved through the papers in the chest until she found a piece of folded paper. She closed the chest and unfolded the paper on top of it. Though the light from the lamp was paltry, the object wrapped in the paper gleamed as it was uncovered.

  “What is it?” Coker wanted to know.

  “Papa never told me properly,” she said. “But it was—” she faltered, and lifted the paper up towards the light so she could study it better. There were eight words upon it, in perfect copper-plate.

  Bury this at the crossroads, where Everville begins.

  “Now we know,” she said.

  * * *

  II

  The snow continued to fall the following day, but lightly. They made two small bundles of supplies, wrapped up as warmly as they could, and began the last portion of their journey. The tracks left by the rest of the wagons were still visible, and they followed them for half a mile or so, their route steadily taking them further from the mountain.

  “We’ve followed them far enough,” Maeve announced after a time.

  “We’ve got no choice,” Coker replied.

  “Yes we do,” she said, leading him to the side of the trail, where a tree-lined slope fell away steeply into a misty gorge. “They couldn’t go that way ’cause of the wagons, but we can.”

  “I can hear rushing down there,” Coker said.

  “A river!” Maeve said with a grin. “It’s a river!”

  Without further debate they started down. It wasn’t easy. Though the snow turned to a light dusting and then disappeared entirely as they descended, the rocks were slick with vivid green moss, which also grew in abundance on the trees, whether dead or alive. Twice they came to places where the slope became too steep to be negotiated, and they were obliged to retrace their steps to find an easier way, but for all their exhaustion they didn’t stop to rest. They had the sound—and now the glittering sight—of the river to tempt them on; and everywhere, signs of life: ferns and berry bushes and birdsong.

  At last, as they reached level ground, and began to beat a trail to the river, a breeze came up out of nowhere, and the mist that had kept them from seeing any great distance was rolled away.

  They said nothing to one another, but stood a few yards from the white waters and looked in astonishment at the scene beyond. The dark evergreens now gave way to trees in all their autumnal glory, orange and red and brown, their branches busy with birds, the thicket beneath quickened by creatures pelting away at the scent of these interlopers. There would be food aplenty here: fruit and honey and fish and fowl.

  And beyond the trees, where the river took its glittering way, there was green land.

  A place to begin.

  On the mountain that would come to be known as Harmon’s Heights, the elements were beginning the slow process of erasing the dead and their artifacts. They stripped from the bodies what little flesh the wolves and carrion birds had left. They pounded the bones till they splintered, then pounded the splinters to dust. They shredded the tents and the fine robes; they rusted the blades and the buckles. They removed from the sight of any who might chance upon the battlefield in decades to come, all but the minutest signs of what had happened there.

  But there was one sign the elements could not remove; a sign that would have certainly disappeared had there not been a last living soul upon the mountainside to preserve it.

  His names were numerous, for he was the son of a great family, but to all who had loved him—and there had been many—he was called by the name of a legendary ancestor: Noah.

  He had come to the mountain with such hopes in his heart he had several times wished aloud for the words to express them better. Now he half-believed he’d called disaster down, wishing for words. After all, hadn’t it been words spoken by a child that had undone the ceremony and brought the truce to such a bloody end?

  He had fled the signs of that battle half-insane, fled into the forest where he had sat and sobbed for the wife he’d seen perish in front of him, her heart too tender to survive the trauma of having her spirit-child unknitted. He, on the other hand, was beyond such frailties, coming as he did from a line of incorruptibles. His mind was part of a greater scheme, and though nothing would have pleased him more than to cease thinking, cease living, he could not violate his family’s laws against self-slaughter. Nor would his body perish for want of sustenance. He could fatten himself on moonlight if he so chose.

  So at last, when he’d wept himself out, he returned to the sight of the tragedy. The beasts had already done their disfiguring work, for which he was grateful. He could not distinguish one corpse from another; they were all simply meat for this devouring world.

  He climbed the slope and slipped between the rocks, up to the place where the door that had led on to the shores of Quiddity had burned. It was gone, of course; sealed up. Nor could he expect it to be opened again any time soon—if at all—given that most all of the people who had known about the ceremony were on this side of the divide, and dead.

  Blessedm’n Filigree, who had opened the crack in the first place, was a notable exception (was he a conspirator in this, perhaps?), but given that his opening of the door was a crime punishable by servitude and confinement, he was likely to have fled to the Ephemeris since the tragedy and found a place to lie low until the investigations were over. But as Noah stood on the spot where the threshold between Cosm and Metacosm had been laid, he saw something flickering close to the ground. He went down on his haunches and peered at it more closely. The door, it seemed, had not entirely closed. A narrow gap, perhaps four or five inches long, remained in place. He touched it, and it wavered, as though it might at any moment flicker out. Then, moving very cautiously, he went down on his belly and put his eye close to the gap.

  He could see the beach, and the sea, but there were no ships. Apparently their captains had sensed disaster and sailed away to some harbor where they could count their profits and swear their crews to silence.

  All was lost.

  He got to his feet, and stared up at the snow-laden sky. What now? Should he leave the mountain, and make his way in the world of Sapas Humana? What purpose was there in that? It was a place of fictions and delusions. Better to stay here, where at least he could smell the air of Quiddity, and watch the light shifting on the shore. He would find some way to protect the flame, so that it wasn’t extinguished. And then he would wait, and pray that somebody ventured along the beach one day, and saw the crack, and came to it. He’d tell them the whole sorry story; persuade them to find a Blessedm’n who’d come and open the way afresh. Then he’d return to his world. That was the theory, at least. There was but a tiny chance that it could ever be more than that, he knew. The shore had been chosen for its remoteness; he could not expect many beachcombers there. But patience was easy if it was all you had; and it was. He would wait, and while he waited, name the stars in this new heaven after the dead, so he would have someone to confide in as time went by.

  As things went, there was more to see below than above, for after a little while people began visiting the valley that lay in the shadow of the peak. Noah knew their lives were trivial things, but he studied them nevertheless, his gaze so sharp he could pick out the color of a woman’s eyes from his lookout on the mountain.
There were many women in the valley in those early days, all of them robust and well-made, a few even beautiful. And seeing that this stretch of earth was as good a place as any other to settle, their admirers built houses, and courted, and married and raised families.

  And in time there grew and prospered in the valley a proud little city called Everville.

  PART TWO

  CONGREGATION

  ONE

  Forgive me, Everville.”

  The words were written in fading sepia ink on paper the color of unwashed bed sheets, but Erwin had read texts far less legible in the sixteen years he’d been dealing with the will and testaments of Everville’s citizens. Evelyn Morris’s final instructions for instance (‘Put the dogs to sleep, and bury them with me’), written in iodine on a table lamp beside her deathbed; or Dwight Hanson’s codicil, scrawled in the margin of a book on duck decoys.

  Erwin had read somewhere that Oregon had a larger percentage of heretical thinkers per capita than any other state. More activists, more flat-earthists, more survivalists; all happy to have three thousand miles between them and the seat of government. Out of sight, in a state that was still comparatively empty, they went their own sweet way; and what better place to leave a statement about their individuality than their last words to the world?

  But even by the high standard of eccentricity he’d encountered in his time as an attorney, the testament he was now studying was a benchmark. It was not so much a will as a confession; a confession which had gone unread in the thirty or so years since it had been written in March of 1965. Its author was one Lyle McPherson, whose goods and chattels had apparently been so negligible upon his passing that nobody had cared to look for any indication as to how he had wanted them divided. Either that, or his only son, Frank, whose sudden demise had brought the confession into Erwin’s hands, had discovered it, read it, and decided that it was best kept hidden. Why he had not destroyed it completely only the dead man knew for certain, but perhaps somewhere in his soul McPherson the Younger had been perversely proud of the claims his father made in this document, and had toyed with the possibility of one day making it public.