‘It had the same setting as the first. Purple sun, brooding forest. But I needed a castle so I invented this immense bramble, sort of a briar patch thousands of feet high growing from the side of a mountain, with the tips of the highest branches carved into turrets.’ He flipped up a lily pad with the end of his cane; long green tendrils trailed from the underside, thickening into white tubules. ‘I never had a chance to work out the plot.’
A tin-colored heron landed with a slosh in the lily pads about thirty feet away, took a stately step forward and stopped, one foot poised above the surface.
‘You should finish it,’ said Jocundra; she smiled. ‘You’re going to have to do something for a living.’
‘Do you really think I can?’ he asked. ‘Survive?’
‘Yes.’ She flicked a chip of rotten wood onto the lily pads and watched a water strider scuttle away from the ripples. ‘You were right to leave Shadows. Here there won’t be so much pressure, and it’ll be easier to work things out. And they can be worked out.’ She hesitated.
‘But what?’
‘Given the ledger, everything you’re seeing, everything you can do, I’m convinced a solution is possible. In fact, I’m surprised one of these geniuses at Tulane hasn’t stumbled on it. If you have the data at hand, it’s hardly more than a matter of common sense and engineering. But equipment and materials will be expensive. And the only way I can see of getting the money is to find a bargaining position and force the project to fund us.’
‘A bargaining position.’ He stirred the water with his cane. ‘What say we sell Edman a new diet plan? Harrison’s Magnetotactic Slimming Program. Reorients your fat molecules to be south-seeking and sends them down to Latin America where they’re really needed.’
‘It’s Ezawa you’d have to sell.’
‘Even easier. One jolt of Papa Salvatino’s Love Rub and he’d be putty in our hands.’
Rainclouds passed up from the south. Big drops splat-ted on the lily pads, and the sun ducked in and out of cover. Donnell complained of leg cramps, and Jocundra supported his arm as they walked to the cabin. She stopped at the pump to wash off the grime of the boathouse, and as she bent to the gush of water, he rested his hand on her waist. She turned, thinking he had lost his balance. He put his other hand on her waist, holding her, not pulling her to him. His expression was stoic, prepared for rejection. The light pressure of his hands kindled a warmth in her abdomen, and it seemed to her she was building toward him the way the edges of a cloud build, boiling across the space between them. When he kissed her, she closed her eyes and opened her mouth to him as if it were the most natural thing in the world. Then she drew back, dizzy and a little afraid. A pine branch behind his head flared and was tipped with gold, the sun breaking through again.
Tentatively, he fingered the top button of her dress. ‘It’s all right,’ she said, trying to gloss over his awkwardness. Still tentative, he began undoing the buttons. Static charges crackled wherever he touched the cloth, delicate stings. She wondered how the material could have accumulated such a charge, and then, recalling other occasions when he had touched her, other instances of static, she wondered if he might be their cause. It didn’t bother her. All his strangeness was common to her now, a final accommodation had been reached. As if a pool of electricity were draining around her, the dress slid from her shoulders, popping and clinging to her skin as it fell away.
Twilight gathered in the back room. Jocundra lay with her face turned to the ceiling, her arm flung across Donnell’s hip. The fur tickled, and as she shifted position, he absently caressed her leg. Through narrowed eyes she watched the gaps between the boards empurple, imagining the cabin adrift in an unfeatured element of purple, a limbo where time had decayed matter to this one color. The intensity of her response to him perplexed her. She had not known how much she had wanted him. The desire had been buried in some anthracitic fold of herself, and she had seen but a single facet of it, unaware that it would take only the miner’s pick of opportunity to expose a significant lode. Sex for her had always involved a token abandonment, a minimal immersion in the act, and she was beginning to realize that she had been programmed to expect no more. Her mother’s attitude toward sex had been neatly summarized the day before Jocundra’s wedding; she had called Jocundra aside, thinking her still a virgin, and presented her with a gift-wrapped plastic sheet. ‘Sometimes,’ she had whispered, peering around to be sure no one would overhear, baring a horrible secret, ‘sometimes there’s an awful mess.’
A moonless dark embedded the cabin, the wind blew warm and damp through the cracks, and as Donnell’s hand smoothed down the curve of her belly, the easy rise of her passion made her feel fragile and temporary, a creature of heat and blackness stirred from shapelessness by the wind and left to fade. Her arms went around his back, her consciousness frayed. Some childish part of her, a part schooled to caution by the dictates of a timorous mother, was unwilling to be swept away, fearful of committing to an uncertain future. But she banished it. Exulting in the loss of control, she cried out when he entered her.
Mr Brisbeau returned shortly before noon the next day, earlier than planned and in a surly mood. He unloaded provisions from a burlap sack, tossing canned goods into a wooden storage chest, making an unnecessary racket, and then, with bad grace, thrust two parcels into their hands. Shirts and jeans for Donnell, blouses and jeans. for Jocundra. Their appreciation did not lighten his surliness. He stood by the wood stove, squinting angrily at them, and finally said, ‘That ol’ man Bivalaqua he’s nothin’ but talk-talk, tellin’ me ‘bout the holy show over in Salt Harvest.”
Jocundra opened her mouth to say something, but Mr Brisbeau cut her off. ‘Why you takin’ my hospitality and don’t offer to cure me lak that Grimeaux boy?’
‘I didn’t cure him,’ said Donnell, nettled by the accusatory tone of his voice. ‘Nobody could cure him.’
A frown carved the lines deeper on the old man’s face.
‘Look.’ Donnell sat up from the cot, where he had been going over the ledger. ‘I’m not even sure what I did. Last night was the first time I’ve ever done anything like that.’
‘It can’t hurt to try,’ said Jocundra, coming over to him. ‘Can it? We might learn something that’ll help.’
Mr Brisbeau’s magnetic field was distinguished by a misty patch about the size of a walnut behind his right temple, floating amid the fiery arcs like a cloud permanently in place. When Donnell mentioned it, Jocundra dug among the junk and located a pencil and suggested she take notes while he described the process. Each time one of the arcs materialized near the misty patch, it would bend away to avoid contact. On impulse, Donnell began inducing arcs to enter the patch, but they resisted his guidance and tore away from his grip. Rather than the gentle tugging he had expected, they exerted a powerful pull, and the harder he strained at them, the more inelastic they became. After perhaps a half hour of experiment, he tried to direct two of the arcs to enter the patch from opposite sides, and to his amazement they entered easily. The patch glowed a pale whitish-gold, and the arcs held steady and bright, flowing inward toward each other.