She froze; it was already unfastened. Around her head the bluebottles buzzed crazily.
Lifting herself to the platform, she saw, in an instant, the reason for the quiet: amid a small mound of feathers at the back of the coop, their yellow legs thrust at odd angles in the air, lay the plump and headless bodies of three hens.
Deborah maintains that Bwada did it. As she points out, the cat was known to be adept at turning handles, latches, etc., amp; just because she's run off, there's no certainty she's dead. 'Remember,' Deborah said, 'she's used to eating what she catches in the woods.'
That's where her argument breaks down – because the hens had not been eaten. They would certainly have made Bwada a succulent meal, yet their bodies had scarcely been touched. Only the heads had been taken.
Sarr claims he's heard of weasels doing this amp; came up with a dozen stories to prove it. While only a few days ago he was ready to believe that Satan had entered the cat, now he refuses to believe that his beloved old Bwada could have done such a thing. 'She may have fought with the other cats,' he said, 'but that was out of jealousy. She'd never stoop to this.'
I'm willing to suspect anything right now. Having just read some
Frederick 'White Wolf Marryat this afternoon, I'm not even so sure I'd rule out wolves, were- and otherwise, as a possibility. My Field Guide to North American Mammals lists both red amp; grey foxes amp; even coyotes as surviving here in New Jersey. No wolves left, the guidebook says. But of course it may be wrong.
Why would any animal – Bwada, wolf, or weasel – make off with heads like that? Simply out of sheer meanness? It just doesn't seem natural.
As if she were out to convince me just how nasty she really is, Mother Nature had one more shock in store for me. When I came back here to this building tonight, after talking long into the evening with Sarr amp; Deborah, I reached out in the darkness, closed my hand over the doorknob – amp; crushed three fat green caterpillars. They left a foul-smelling whitish liquid on my hand.
'Guess what I have in my hand,' Rosie, grinning, held something concealed behind his back. Across the room the air conditioner fought a noisy war against the summer night.
'Is it for me?'
His grin widened. 'Now I ask you, have I ever come here empty-handed?'
'Is it something to wear?'
He shook his head. 'Uh-uh, no more clothes, young lady! You're better off choosing your own.'
'Is it something to read?'
'In a way. But don't be misled, it's not a book.' He paused. 'Give up? Here. Something to play with.'
He drew forth an object wrapped in brown paper. Tearing that off, Carol saw that it contained a small cardboard box and recognized the green and gold design on the front. Dynnod, the letters said, in swirls of acanthus leaves and roses.
'Oh, of course. They're the same cards I took out for Jeremy. Gee, thanks, Rosie. They're beautiful!'
Actually, she was rather let down; she'd been hoping he'd brought her jewelry. And she seemed to recall that there'd been something a little unpleasant about these particular cards.
'You never explained how these work,' she said, slipping the cards from the box and once again looking in vain for some instructions. 'They're for telling fortunes, right?'
Rosie nodded. 'Only you tell them through a kind of game,* he said, 'and the winner gets his or her wish. Here, sit down. I'll show you how to play.'
The rules were confusing. There were only twenty-two cards, but in order to win the game it was necessary to memorize them all, since the object was to guess which cards were held by one's opponent. Carol found her gaze returning again and again to the smiling man and woman on the card marked The Lovers, and though she tried her best to concentrate, her thoughts kept straying to Jeremy.
'You're not paying attention, Carol,' Rosie said for the third time. 'You have to study all the cards. Now this tree's the da'fae because green is daeh, and we call the fire tein'eth because teine means red… '
'I'm trying,' she said, already tiring of the game. There didn't really seem to be much point to it: it was difficult to score because each card held a different value which also had to be memorized, and so far as she could understand there was no clear way to tell when the game ended and who had won.
'The cards,' he kept saying. 'You have to keep looking at the cards.'
At the end of an hour Rosie simply laid down his hand, announced, 'It appears you've beaten me, young lady,' and proceeded to read Carol's fortune in the cards that she held. As fortunes went, it seemed, in part, too bland – prophecies of friendship, hard work, a second visit to the country – and, in pan, too silly: 'There's a test in your future,' he said, studying the card marked The Mound.
'A test of what?'
He tapped the card and looked up, grinning. 'A test of will. Can you move mountains?'
No, Carol decided, she just couldn't see the point of it all. It wasn't the sort of game she'd care to play again.
The room smelled of perspiration and roses. Lying on the bed with her hand over her eyes, oblivious to the night sounds outside her window, Mrs Poroth breathed deeply and let her mind drift, skimming lightly over sleep as if upon the surface of a pool. Around her on the coarsely woven sheets lay nearly a dozen of the Pictures, their lumpish figures glowing in the lamplight like paintings on the rough walls of a cave. The others lay scattered where they'd fallen, on the floor beside the bed.
Gradually her breathing slowed and her face softened, the harsh angular lines at each side of her mouth smoothing slightly as she left familiar thoughts behind and let herself fall into darkness, deeper now, where other presences, indistinct but real, hovered expectantly around her as if summoned. The rose scent was here too, but at the center of it she heard the click of teeth; she felt the brush of earth against her cheek, and something moist, and fur; there was a slow, distant heartbeat, vast and heavy as a continent, and the stir of giant leaves, and the sound of something wormlike, probing for her in the darkness as if seeking to enter her skull…
A tiny doubt touched her, and still with eyes shut she awakened, struck suddenly by a fear she'd thought long buried, the fear that she was alien in this world, even in this stony little room she had known for the long years of her widowhood. What was she doing here, after all? What was her real purpose, and why was she so sure that God had chosen her to be the instrument of His will?
The thought of God brought a hardness back to her face, and a resolve. Fear was a weapon of the devil. There was something, she knew, that would have to be destroyed, and soon. It was only a matter of finding where it lay hidden – that would not be hard – and of fending off a possible attack. All she needed was the strength.
Again the doubt assailed her, the futility of it all. This is wrong, she thought, if s foolish. I'm not a young woman; I shouldn't have to carry such a burden by myself.
But even as she gave the ±ought words, she rejected it. She knew there was no one who could help her, no one else as capable as she.
Calmer now, she felt a new claim on her attention, drawn like a compass needle by something just beyond the bed. Opening her eyes, she sat up and scanned the room. On the floor where her gaze came to rest, she saw it staring from the Picture – the crude jagged lines of the tree, a scribble of waxy green crayon with a hint of eyes amid the lower boughs. She stared back at it a moment, then suddenly looked down at her right hand. The fingertips lay lightly upon another of the Pictures, one she recognized dimly from her dream. It was a dark, humped shape, swelling in the centre of the paper like a mound of earth.
July Eighteenth
Morning. Despite the heat, he switches off the air conditioner by his bed and raises the window overlooking the river. A warm breeze bathes his face and brings the scent of roses. The air is clear at this hour; he can see figures moving in the glass and brick apartments on the opposite shore, and, farther west, the wavering green line of low hills.