I pointed at the open windows, rain slanting behind them like bars of black metal. “And the other day, at Jamie Casson’s place. I saw this man. But not a man—he had horns, he was moving in the woods—”
“The god,” Axel said softly, nodding. “That’s who you saw.”
“But what god?”
“The first one. The oldest one, except for Her,” he added, glancing at the open window as though he expected to see someone peering in at us. “The dying god, the hunter who becomes the hunted. The bull from the sea. The sacrificial lamb. Giles Goat-Boy. Drain this cup, drink his blood. Eat and be eaten.”
I would have thought he was making fun of me, or just going off on another crazy riff—except that I had seen something, in the woods and on the mountain.
And what else could possibly explain it? Unless I was insane, or drunk, or someone had slipped acid into my orange juice that morning—none of which seemed totally out of the question. I looked at Axel warily.
“That’s what it was? A—some kind of god?”
Axel nodded.
“But how?” I asked. “Why?”
“Why not? ‘All men have need of the gods.’” He raised a finger, tapped his brow. “Homer. And when the half-gods go, the gods arrive. Actually, it’s been happening for a long time—haven’t you noticed, Lit?”
His gaze was piercing, almost angry. I stared uneasily at the window.
“No.”
“Don’t lie to me.” His hands tightened around my arms, not painfully, but so that I could not edge away. “I know you have. Because I’ve seen you.”
He tilted his head, unsmiling, put a finger beneath my chin and tipped my head back until I was staring at him.
And there, for just an instant, I saw him: the leaf-eyed figure moving through the trees, horns tangling with the branches above him and the smell of oak mast. But before I could react the vision was gone. Instead there was something else flickering there, a face pale as my own but frowning, with great bruised eyes and hair shorn so close it was like gazing at a skull, threads of light rippling up and down his arms from the Seeburg and cigarette smoke in my nostrils.
“What?” demanded Axel. He shook me gently, pulling me so close that his unshaven chin grazed my forehead and the panels of his kimono opened about my face. “What do you see? Tell me…”
I blinked, dizzy; then Jamie Casson’s image was gone as well. I could feel my heart racing, but before Axel Kern could notice I edged away from him—carefully, pretending interest in the ivy twining down the walls.
“It’s—it’s gone,” I murmured. I reached to touch the underside of one heart-shaped leaf. “But it was the same as what I saw before. The horned man. The thing in the woods…”
Suddenly I was rent by such horrible yearning that tears sprang to my eyes. I gasped—and everything tumbled together inside me, the feeling I had when I’d met Jamie Casson, the memory of a song played on a flute and the haunted rush of wind in the leaves, the shadow of the doomed stag upon a hilltop and a boy silhouetted on a jukebox: all of it somehow was the same thing, and if I could only find the pattern between it all, trace the lines that ran like veins within all those shadows—then I would be free of them. Then I could escape.
But not yet. Axel towered beside me. His hand covered mine, moved it from the ivy until my palm lay upon his breast. Beneath his green kimono he was naked; my fingers tangled in the thick hair on his chest and the fabric of my dress bunched up around my thighs. He leaned forward, raising his arms until they rested against the wall, the heavy drape of his kimono forming a canopy so that I was surrounded by him. Dim light filtered through the green silk; flaws in the cloth shone like stars. He put one hand on the back of my neck and thrust my head forward against his breast, pushed me until my mouth found his nipple. My lips closed around it and he moaned as I kissed him, ran my tongue over his nipple until it stiffened, became a small swollen seed in my mouth. My cheek rubbed against the hair of his chest, damp now and hot as though sun-warmed. There was a smell of musk and balsam, the acrid tang of salt upon my tongue. When I drew my hand across his breast I could feel the steady thump of his heart, like another hand beating beneath mine. I started to move, reaching to embrace him and pulling up my dress; when he murmured, “No,” and drew away from me.
“What?” I asked hoarsely, half-blinded by the sudden surge of light as he pulled his kimono back around him. “What is it?”
Axel looked at me muzzily, as though uncertain where I’d come from. The rapt intensity that had candled his eyes a moment before was gone. Rain silvered his gray-streaked hair, and his cheeks looked raw and red from the cold. Suddenly he just seemed stoned, a little tired, the lines around his eyes more pronounced when he smiled.
“Later.” He plucked a sprig of ivy from the wall and tucked it into my hair. Behind him dancing figures stretched across the movie screen, the screen itself rippling as the wind nudged it. “It’s cold in here…”
He turned and began to walk a bit unsteadily, holding on to one of the pews for balance. I stared after him, my bewilderment giving way to anger.
“Tell me!” I demanded. I ran after him, grabbed his wrist and tugged it imploringly. “Axel, please—tell me, you said it was real, tell me what it is!”
He stopped and drew a hand across his eyes. Above us the hanging lanterns swung slightly back and forth. “God, I’m tired. But—yes, it was real. It is real. But it’s probably impossible to explain, even—even to you.”
He leaned forward to stroke my cheek, his hand cold and smelling of some sweet resin. “Because the hardest thing to understand is that nothing ever really changes, Lit. Nothing really dies. Not even very old things; not even gods. They flicker in and out of view, that’s all”— he gestured at the screen above us, then at the simple chapel altar. —“they go underground and they seem to die but they only sleep, they gather strength until finally they’re reborn. Because gods have seasons, too, time moves differently for them, it might take a hundred years or a thousand, but then their seasons come round again and they always return, they always return…”
He began to chant, so softly I had to strain to hear him.
He fell silent. There was no sound save the rain tapping against the windows and the midnight hum of the film projector, and faintest of all an echoing reverberation of music through the stone walls. Beside me Axel Kern stood deathly still, as though listening for a reply. For a long time I said nothing. Then,
“If that was a god,” I said, “if it was some kind of—thing—what is it doing here? In Kamensic? Why isn’t it in Greece or someplace like that?”
“Because this is where he will be born, this time. This is where his children live. It is his sanctuary. Not the only one, but a place where his worship is strong.”
I looked incredulous. “Kamensic Village?”
“Why not? This is where the stories come from, Lit. Come on—haven’t you ever noticed anything strange about this place?”