Finally Mary looked up through the branches, lace-patterned black on black, and saw stars shining out of the dark web.
The last day dwindled to the last minutes.
She felt Rachel’s hand tighten on hers, heard her say, “There… that ancient light. I lived in a golden age, Mary, when we began to learn the real dimensions of the universe. I hope it doesn’t shrink again in the human mind until those stars are only holes in a dome. What a small, cramped world it was….” The words sighed into shallow panting, then: “It’s time. Bring the first-aid box. The morphine.”
Mary couldn’t move. She stared into Rachel’s pain-ravaged face, and she had no intention of denying her the relief she sought, that in sound mind she asked for now. The paralysis was both physical and mental, and it was total. Only when Rachel repeated in an anguished whisper, “It’s time,” did the paralysis release her. Mary forced herself to rise, made her way to the table, and returned with the first-aid box.
Rachel had managed to brace herself on one elbow, and the fire shone full on her face. In her eyes, past the pain, was a transcendent light that Mary didn’t understand and knew she wouldn’t until she stood at the same point looking over the rim of time to timelessness.
Mary knelt and opened the box, found the morphine. A golden age, and this was an artifact of it. Mercy in amber glass. There was more of it at Amarna, she knew. She wondered if it would still be viable when the time for mercy came for her. She offered Rachel the vial and syringe.
Rachel reached for them, but her trembling muscles betrayed her. The vial and syringe clattered together, then slipped out of her grasp. With a groan, she fell back against the bearskin. When she didn’t speak, but lay staring hopelessly up at the stars, the transcendent light quenched, Mary said, “I’ll do it, Rachel.”
“No… oh, Mary, I can’t… ask that….”
“You didn’t ask.”
Rachel caught her hand, looked fixedly into Mary’s eyes for what seemed a long time. Then her frail hand slipped away from Mary’s. “It has to be given intravenously. It’ll take… all of it. The full vial.”
No doubt this had also been thoroughly researched. Mary picked up the vial and syringe, felt her equilibrium shifting dangerously, and realized the calm that surrounded her now was a fragile thing.
“Fill the syringe first….”
Mary peeled the metal cap off the vial to expose the rubber seal, then broke off the plastic cap on the syringe, slipped it out of its sheath, pulled off the smaller sheath that protected the needle. She stabbed through the seal with the steel point, drew the plunger back against the pull of vacuum, holding the syringe so that the firelight was behind it, and she could see the liquid fill the tube. It was as benignly clear as water. She emptied the vial into the syringe.
Rachel began fumbling at her sleeve. “That cord in the box… use that as a tourniquet.” Mary propped the syringe against the side of the first-aid box, then unbuttoned Rachel’s sleeve, rolled it above her elbow.
The braided cord—she looked in the box and at first couldn’t see it. She paused to get herself under control. And found the cord.
Rachel nodded. “Tie it around my arm… yes, that’s right….”
Mary followed Rachel’s instructions without allowing herself to think past them, only aware of the monumental effort behind those quiet commands. “Tighten the cord….” Rachel squeezed her hand into a fist, an effort that quickened her panting breaths. “Can you see the vein?” It was there, a small, blue wheal. “All right… the syringe…”
Mary picked up the syringe, held it tightly when she wanted to throw it, to do anything to rid herself of it.
But Rachel was waiting.
Mary angled the needle nearly parallel with the blue wheal. A moment’s resistance, then the needle slid under the skin, into the vein.
“Now…” Rachel loosened the tourniquet with her free hand. And Mary pressed the plunger slowly, steadily, inexorably. She emptied the water-clear liquid into Rachel’s vein, and never once trembled or faltered until the syringe was empty, and she tossed it away from her, a silent cry shrieking in her mind, as tangible as the pain that bore her down, gasping for air, into Rachel’s arms.
Rachel whispered, “Oh, my Mary, my friend, don’t ever regret this… no greater love…”
Mary lay shivering with her head on Rachel’s shoulder, holding on to her and the vanishing moments, while the stars faded in the light of the rising moon.
And the sea sang softly, endlessly, I am here….
Mary had all the long night to weep.
She didn’t have to constrain herself now for Rachel’s sake. There was no one to hear her sobbing, no one to know her anguish.
For most of the night she huddled by the fire, maintaining that pitiful island of light and warmth because darkness was intolerable. Yorick came to her with his ears back, his liquid brown eyes crescented with white, and she welcomed him in her arms, watched the moon move across the sky through gossamer clouds.
Yorick was at her side when she stood on the bank and watched the moon sink golden into the mass of clouds at the horizon. He was at her side when the last stars disappeared and the sky began to shed a soft, vague light.
And he remained at her side when she went to the beach and began gathering driftwood. The tide was high at dawn, and she had to stack the wood near the bank. As the tide ebbed she stacked it farther down the sand, and at midmorning she brought Epona to the beach and, with her help and the rope, pulled small logs to the place she had chosen well below the high-tide line and arranged them in a rectangle five by eight feet. On this foundation she laid the smaller pieces of wood she had gathered, building them to a height of a yard. She stopped then to rest, to get a drink and wash her tear-swollen face in the creek. Then she searched the woods for dead pine and spruce branches, cut armloads of dead fern fronds. When this tinder was added to the stacked wood, she returned to the campsite. The sun was at zenith, the tide at full ebb.
She knelt by Rachel’s body and touched her hand.
This husk that had once been Rachel Morrow—how small it was, not a hint of beauty in it. It didn’t make sense.
Mary zipped the sleeping bag around the body, then dragged it to the beach. It took a long time, but she didn’t count the passage of time in any way now except in the change of the tide and the incremental return of the sea across the sand.
When at length she had placed the body on the mound of wood, she picked up a pine branch crusted with pitch from an old scar, used a match to light it, and when it was burning well, walked slowly around the pyre, igniting the dry tinder. The fitful wind combed through the crackling flames.
She looked down at her hands and was surprised that they weren’t as translucent as the opaline smoke that billowed up from the pyre; she was surprised that her flesh didn’t waver like the air above the flames. Her hands remained solid, opaque, and she pressed them to her body.
Rachel would never see this child that would be her heir.
Mary looked out at the sea, at the tourmaline green light behind the breakers, at the creamy froth cast up with every wave. She’s yours now.
Finally she reached down to stroke Yorick’s head.
“Come on, Yorick. Let’s go home.”
Chapter 25
I acknowledge the Furies.
I believe in them, I have heard the disastrous beating of their wings.