Galilee. Part 69

L'Enfants... she said to us... you took your time.

Tansy was at her feet. She bent down and the creature clambered up into her embrace, where it perched in grunting bliss.

"We looked for you downstairs..." I began to explain.

I won't be going back there, she said. I've shed too many tears down there. And now I'm done.

She hadn't taken her eyes off me since we'd started toward her. It was almost as though she didn't want to look past me toward her son; didn't dare, perhaps, for fear of shedding the very tears she said she was done with. I could see how dose they were; how full of feeling she was.

"Is there something you need from me?" I asked her.

No, Maddox, she said, with sweet gravity. There's nothing now. You've done more than enough, child.

Child. There'd been a time when she'd enraged me with that word. Now it was wonderful. I was a child, still. My life, she seemed to say, was still to be lived.

You should go, she said.

"Where?"

Through the forest, she said. The way Zelim went.

I didn't move. Though I'd heard the instruction, I couldn't bring myself to leave. After all my trepidation, all my fears of what being in her presence might bring, I wanted to stay a moment longer, two moments, three, to enjoy the balm of her eyes and the honey of her voice. It was only with the greatest difficulty that I made my limbs obey me, and turn me toward the trees.

Travel safely, child ... I heard her say.

Lord, but it was hard, walking away, even though in a sense I was being set free. I'd paid for my freedom in words; every thought I've set on these pages has been a ransom against this release.

But still, there was a sadness in me, to be going.

I didn't look back until I'd taken perhaps twenty paces. When I did, however, I stopped for a few minutes, just to watch what ensued. This was the moment. Galilee and Rachel, hand in hand, were approaching the boat.Brat, Cesaria said to him. You took your time.

"I got lost. Mama," Galilee said. "I got lost in the world. But I'm home now."

There's nothing left to come home to, Cesaria said. It's all gone.

"Then let me build it again," Galilee replied.

You don't have the wits, child.

"Not on my own," Galilee said. "But with my Rachel-"

Your Rachel, Cesaria said, her voice softening. She rose from her throne of timbers, and beckoned to Rachel. Come here, she said.

Rachel let go of Galilee's hand, and walked toward the boat. Cesaria stepped out between the ribs of the hull and looked her up and down. I was too far from them to see the expression on her face, but I could well imagine how scouring that scrutiny felt. I'd experienced it myself; or some measure of it. Cesaria was looking into Rachel's soul. Making a final judgment as to the appropriateness of this woman. At last, she said: Are you sure you want this?

"This?" Rachel said.

This house. This history. This brat of mine.

Rachel looked back over her shoulder. In the long moment that she gazed at Galilee I thought I heard the stars moving overhead, steady and content.

"Yes," she said. "He's what I want."

Then he's yours, Cesaria said.

She opened her arms.

"Does this mean I'm forgiven?" Galilee asked.

Cesaria laughed. If not now, then when? Come into my arms, before you break my heart again.

"Oh, Mama-"

He went to her then, with such abandon, and pressed his face against her shoulder while she wrapped him in her arms.

"Forgiven?" he said.Forgiven, she replied.

VII.

I did not expect to come to the last few pages of this story following in the footsteps of Zelim the fisherman, but that's what happened. Leaving the reunion to take its happy course behind me I headed for the trees, and stepped beneath their canopy. It was dark, and I very soon gave up any attempt to plot a course for myself; I simply plunged on through the undergrowth, letting accident decide my destiny. I wasn't particularly rea.s.sured by what I remembered of Zelim's journey. He'd emerged from this forest only to be raped by bandits. I hoped to be luckier; hoped, indeed, that though I'd left the sh.o.r.e and Cesaria far behind me, she was watching over my progress, and would guide me in my sightlessness.

There was little sign of a guiding hand, however. Just as I was certain the darkness around me was as profound as it could get, it became darker. I was soon reduced to stumbling forward with my arms stretched in front of me, to prevent myself from walking into a tree. That didn't keep my face and hands and chest from being scratched by thorns, or my feet from becoming entangled in the ropes of root across my path. Several times I fell headlong, the breath knocked out of me. So much for Cesaria's final blessing, I thought sourly. Travel safely, indeed. If this was her world I was stumbling through, as I presumed it to be, might she not have put a moon up there above me, to light the path?

No, I suppose that would have been too easy. She was never one to be needlessly kind, even to herself. Perhaps especially to herself. Just because her child had been returned to her, she wasn't going to change her ways.

It was too late for me to turn back, of course. The sh.o.r.e had long since disappeared from sight behind me. I had no choice but to wander on-as Zelim had done before me-hoping that the torment would eventually come to an end.

And so, after a long, long time, it did. I caught a glimpse of amber light between the trees, and fixing my eyes on the glow, I stumbled on toward it. Dawn was coming up, ahead of me; I could see layers of tinted cloud, their flat bellies stroked by the emerging sun. And to welcome the light, birds in bright chorus, filling the branches overhead. My legs were weak by now, and my body shaking with fatigue, but the sight and sound gave me a fresh burst of energy, and within five minutes of first seeing the light I was emerging from the trees.

My night journey had been far more elaborate than I'd realized. Somehow while I'd been blind Cesaria's enchantments had led me out of the house and across the grounds to the perimeter of L'Enfant. That was where I now stood: at the borderland between sacred ground and secular; between Barbarossian territory and the rest of the world. Behind me was a solid ma.s.s of trees, the thicket that swelled and blossomed between them so dense that I could see no more than three or four yards, while ahead of me lay a landscape of simple virtues. Rolling hills, rising away from the swampy ground that bounded L'Enfant; scattered trees, uncultivated fields. I could see no sign of habitation.The birds who'd been greeting the dawn now took flight from the canopy, and I watched them rising up, wheeling around overhead before talcing their various ways. I felt suddenly immensely vulnerable, seeing them rise into that bright, wide sky. It was so long since I'd been roofless; I was sorely tempted to turn round and go back to the house.

I had unfinished business there, I reasoned: I couldn't just walk out into the world and leave the life I'd been living behind me. A journey like this needed thought and preparation. I had to say goodbye to Marietta, Zabrina and Luman; I had to append a few dosing paragraphs to the book on my desk; I had to tidy up my study, and lock away my private papers. There was this to do, there was that to do.

All excuses, of course. I was just trying to find ways to postpone the fearful moment when I actually faced the world again. That was why Cesaria had tricked me into this sudden exile, I knew; to deny me my procrastinations, and oblige me to venture out, under this expanse of sky.

In short, to make me live.

I was standing there, facing the empty vista before me, chewing all this over, when I heard a motion in the thicket behind me. I turned around, and to my astonishment saw Luman digging his way out through the shrubbery, cursing ripely as he did so. When he finally emerged from the tangle he looked like some half-crazed spirit of the green, twiglets and thorns in his beard and hair. He spat out a mouthful of leaf, and gave me a fierce look.

"You'd better be grateful!" he groused.

"For what?" I said.

He raised his hands. He was carrying two leather knapsacks, both much battered and beaten.

They were packed to the point of bursting. "I brought you some stuff for your travels," he said.

"Well that's good of you," I said.

He tossed the smaller of the knapsacks over to me. It was heavy. It also stank.

"Is this another of your antiques?" I said, looking at the Confederate insignia on the flap.

"Yep," he said. "I got them the same place I got the saber. I put your pistol in there, along with some money, a shirt and a flask of brandy."

"And that one?" I said, eyeing the bigger knapsack.

"Some more clothes. A pair of boots, and you know what."

I smiled. "You brought me my book?"

"Of course. I know how much you love that d.a.m.n thing. I wrapped it in the ol' Stars and Bars.""Thank you," I said, taking the second knapsack from him. It was quite a weight. My shoulders were going to regret my verbosity in the days to come. But it felt good to have the thing with me; like a child that I could not bear to be separated from.

"You went into the house for the book," I said. "I know how you hate it in there..."

He threw me a sideways glance. "Used to. But it's changin' isn't it? Animals s.h.i.ttin' on the floor.

Women everywhere." His face broke into a puckish grin. "I'm thinkin' maybe I'll move back in.

Them ladies is mighty fine."

"They're lesbians," I pointed out.

"I don't care if they're from Wisconsin," he said. "I like 'em."

"How did you know where to find me?"

"I heard you walking by the Smoke House, talking to yourself."

"What was I saying?"

"Couldn't make no sense of it. I came out and you jus' walked right on, like you was sleepwalkin'.

I kinda figured she'd put you up to this. Old Lady Love."

"You mean Cesaria."

He nodded. "That's what Paps used to call her. 'Old Lady Love, all ice and honeysuckle.' Didn't you ever hear him call her that?"

"No, I never did."

"Huh. Well, anyhow I figured she'd decided to be rid of you. So I thought I'd just give you something to be going with."

"Thank you. I appreciate it." Luman looked a little uncomfortable that I was thanking him.

"Well..." he said, plucking another fragment of leaf from the corner of his mouth. "You've been kind to me, brother."

I wondered, watching him separate leaf and beard, if I'd missed some simple pattern in my investigation of our family; if he wasn't Pan, by another name, and my brother Dionysus, and- I caught myself in this, and growled.

"What is it?"

"I'm still writing that d.a.m.n book in my head," I said."You'll forget about it, once you get out there," Luman said, his gaze drifting past me to the landscape over my shoulder. There was a certain wistfulness on his face. I thought about our conversation about how he couldn't possibly face the prospect of returning to the world: that it would make too crazy. But I could also see how the idea of risking the journey was deeply tempting to him. I decided to play Mephistopheles.

"You want to join me?" I said.

He didn't look at me. Just kept his eyes on the sunlit hills. "Yeah..." he growled. "I want to join you. But I ain't gonna. Least, not today. I got s.h.i.t to do, brother. I got to arm all them ladies."

"Arm them?"

"Yeah... if they're staying-"

"They're not staying."

"Marietta says they are."

"Really."

"That's what she says."

Oh my Lord, I thought: the invasion took place after all. L'Enfant has fallen. But not to the Gearys: at least, not yet. To a tribe of lesbians.

"But you know what you promised-" Luman went on.

"You mean about your kids?"

"You remembered."

"Of course I remembered."

He beamed, his eyes shining. "You'll go look for them."

"I'll go look for them."

He came to me suddenly, and clamped his arms around me. "I knew you wouldn't let me down,"

he said, planting a noisy kiss on my cheek. "I love you, Maddox. And I want you to take that love along with you, to keep you safe out there." His hug tightened. "You hear me?"

I hugged him back, though it was a messy embrace, with both knapsacks in my arms.

"You know where you're going to start looking?" he asked me when the hugging was done."No idea," I said. "I'm just going to follow my instincts."

"You bring my kids back with you?"

"If that's what you want."

"It's what I want..." he said.

He fixed me with his gaze for a long moment, and I swear there was more affection in his expression than I'd seen directed at me in many a long year. He didn't linger, but broke the gaze, and turned away, disappearing into the thicket. In four or five strides he'd been eclipsed by the green, and the wall between myself and L'Enfant stood resolute.