It took her an hour, wandering down the hushed avenues to reach the back wall of the cemetery against which she found a row of animals’ graves cats interred beside birds, dogs beside cats; at peace with each other as common clay. It was an odd sight. Though she knew of other animal cemeteries she’d never heard of pets being laid in the same consecrated ground as their owners. But then should she be surprised at anything here? The place was a law unto itself, built far from any who would care or condemn.
Turning from the back wall, she could see no sign of the front gate, nor could she remember which of the avenues led back there. It didn’t matter. She felt secure in the emptiness of the place, and there was a good deal she wanted to see: sepulchres whose architecture, towering over its fellows, invited admiration. Choosing a route that would take in half a dozen of the most promising, she began an idling return journey. The sun was warmer by the minute now, as it climbed towards noon. Though her pace was slow she broke out into a sweat, and her throat became steadily drier. It would be no short drive to find somewhere to quench her thirst. But parched throat or no, she didn’t hurry. She knew she’d never come here again. She intended to leave with her memories well stocked.
Along the way were several tombs which had been virtually overtaken by saplings planted in front of them. Evergreens mostly, reminders of the life eternal, the trees flourished in the seclusion of the walls, fed well on rich soil. In some cases their spreading roots had cracked the very memorials they’d been planted to offer shade and protection. These scenes of verdancy and ruin she found particularly poignant. She was lingering at one when the perfect silence was broken.
Hidden in the foliage somebody, or something, was panting. She automatically stepped back, out of the tree’s shadow and into the hot sun. Shock made her heart beat furiously, its thump deafening her to the sound that had excited it. She had to wait a few moments, and listen hard, to be sure she’d not imagined the sound. There was no error. Something was in hiding beneath the branches of the tree, which were so weighed by their burden of leaves they almost touched the ground. The sound, now that she listened more carefully, was not human; nor was it healthy. Its roughness and raggedness suggested a dying animal.
She stood in the heat of the sun for a minute or more, just staring into the mass of foliage and shadow, trying to catch some sight of the creature. Occasionally there was a movement: a body vainly trying to right itself, a desperate pawing at the ground as the creature tried to rise. Its helplessness touched her. If she failed to do what she could for it the animal would certainly perish, knowing this was the thought that moved her to action that someone had heard its agony and passed it by.
She stepped back into the shadow. For a space the panting stopped completely. Perhaps the creature was fearful of her, and reading her approach as aggression was preparing some final act of defence. Readying herself to retreat before claws and teeth, she parted the outer twigs and peered through the mesh of branches. Her first impression was not one of sight or sound but of smelclass="underline" a bitter-sweet scent that was not unpleasant, its source the pale flanked creature she now made out in the murk, gazing at her wide-eyed. It was a young animal, she guessed, but of no species she could name.
A wild cat of some kind, perhaps, but that the skin resembled deer hide rather than fur. It watched her warily, its neck barely able to support the weight of its delicately marked head. Even as she returned its gaze it seemed to give up on life. Its eyes closed and its head sank to the ground.
The resilience of the branches defied any further approach. Rather than attempting to bend them aside she began to break them in order to get to the failing creature. They were living wood, and fought back. Halfway through the thicket a particularly truculent branch snapped back in her face with such stinging force it brought a shout of pain from her. She put her hand to her cheek. The skin to the right of her mouth was broken. Dabbing the blood away she attacked the branch with fresh vigour, at last coming within reach of the animal. It was almost beyond responding to her touch, its eyes momentarily fluttering open as she stroked its flank, then closing again. There was no sign that she could see of a wound, but the body beneath her hand was feverish and full of tremors.
As she struggled to pick the animal up it began to urinate, wetting her hands and blouse, but she drew it to her nevertheless, a dead weight in her arms. Beyond the spasms that ran through its nervous system there was no power left in its muscles. Its limbs hung limply, its head the same. Only the smell she’d first encountered had any strength, intensifying as the creature’s final moments approached.
Something like a sob reached her ears. She froze.
Again, the sound. Off to her left, some way, and barely suppressed. She stepped back, out of the shadow of the evergreen, bringing the dying animal with her. As the sunlight fell on the creature it responded with a violence utterly belied by its apparent frailty, its limbs jerking madly. She stepped back into the shade, instinct rather than analysis telling her the brightness was responsible. Only then did she look again in the direction from which the sob had come.
The door of one of the mausoleums further down the avenue a massive structure of cracked marble stood ajar, and in the column of darkness beyond she could vaguely make out a human figure. Vaguely, because it was dressed in black, and seemed to be veiled.
She could make no sense of this scenario. The dying animal, tormented by light; the sobbing woman surely a woman in the doorway, dressed for mourning. What was the association?
“Who are you?” she called out.
The mourner seemed to shrink back into the shadows as she was addressed, then regretted the move and approached the open door again, but so very tentatively the connection between animal and woman became clear.
She’s afraid of the sun too, Lori thought. They belonged together, animal and mourner, the woman sobbing for the creature Lori had in her arms.
She looked at the pavement that lay between where she stood and the mausoleum. Could she get to the door of the tomb without having to step back into the sun, and so hasten the creature’s demise? Perhaps, with care. Planning her route before she moved, she started to cross towards the mausoleum, using the shadows like stepping stones. She didn’t look up at the door—her attention was wholly focused on keeping the animal from the light but she could feel the mourner’s presence, willing her on. Once the woman gave voice; not with a word but with a soft sound, a cradle-side sound, addressed not to Lori but to the dying animal.
With the mausoleum door three or four yards from her, Lori dared to look up. The woman in the door could be patient no longer. She reached out from her refuge, her arms bared as the garment she wore rode back, her flesh exposed to the sunlight. The skin was white as ice, as paper but only for an instant. As the fingers stretched to relieve Lori of her burden they darkened and swelled as though instantly bruised. The mourner made a cry of pain, and almost fell back into the tomb as she withdrew her arms, but not before the skin broke and trails of dust yellowish, like pollen burst from her fingers and fell through the sunlight on to the patio.