Tomorrow night had come. The whisper of his name had come. She had come. He’d been free of his iron staple since just before dawn of the night before, but all day long he’d had to lie back against it with his arm under him. They didn’t look at him very closely any more when they brought the food. His muscles were still fairly weak and uncertain from the strictures of his long confinement, but all day long he’d been massaging his legs endlessly, and ever since darkness had fallen and it was safe to do so, he’d been practicing motion, walking and flexing them, alone there in the cell.
He trod gingerly across the dungeon floor and put his face up close to the vent. He could feel the warmth of her breath coming to him from the other side. Now there was only this left between them.
“I worked all last night, after you left. I’ve been free since dawn. I cried a little in the beginning, and I swore I wouldn’t tell you; now that’s the first thing I’m doing — telling you.”
“What do you suppose I’m doing right now?”
“Let me feel your tears. Let me touch them with my hand.” He traced his fingertips softly across her cheek, and something warm and wet dropped to one of them and clung there. He brought his hand back and put it to his own lips.
She was whispering, and he didn’t want to miss anything she said.
“I found something they use. I don’t know what it is. Powdered roots. Narcotic, I guess. I put a pinch in the water jug she drinks from. I was afraid to use too much, she might have noticed it by the taste. It makes it a little safer. She’ll sleep a little deeper.”
“Let me hold your hand for a little while.”
He covered it with both his own, and then she added her other one to it, making a knot of longing and of hope. He placed his lips to it, and then presently she did hers too.
They both sighed deeply in unison.
“That feel so good. I’m not so lonely now.”
“I’m not so frightened now.”
He sundered the knot, extended his hands through the opening. “Bring your face closer. Bring it nearer mine.”
Their lips met, and he kissed her with an avid ferocity. With the kiss came the knowledge, the certainty, withheld until now: I love her. This is my love, my only love. There never was another, never will be any more. I know it now. Too late, but I know it now.
He held her face pressed to his like that for a moment. “I love you, Chris. Excuse me if I — sort of slop over, but I just now found it out.”
“I found it out so long ago,” she said with wistful simplicity, “that I can’t remember when it was now, any more.”
He pressed his mouth to hers again. And then again. And still again. “How strange it feels to kiss with real love for the first time. Am I doing it right? Is this the way? I don’t even know, because I’ve never done it before. Am I frightening you, Chris?”
“No, you’re taking all the fright away. All of it away. You’re making the bad dream stop, and the daytime come back again.”
They lingered like that, on dangerous, knife-edged moments. She hadn’t asked if her father were in there with him. He wondered if she knew. She must, or she would have tried to speak to him as well.
“Chris,” he faltered finally. “You know — how it is I’m by myself in here?”
“I know about that. I keep pretending that he’s still in there with you, only he’s asleep and so he doesn’t hear us.”
“But when you had the knife yourself, didn’t you want to—”
“No, I only wanted it for you. I wanted you to live. To have used it on her, that would have meant death for you, as well as myself. You be my knife. You be my right arm. I’ll grieve later. Ill hate later. Right now there’s only you to think of.”
They made their final plans. “I’m at the halfway stage now,” he said. “My arms are free. There’s just the barrier. That means one more night. Because we must both go the same night that I pry that out. It can’t be hidden in the daytime, like the iron ring was behind my back.”
“Do you think you can loosen it?”
“I’m sure I can. I’ve been tying it up and down all day, while I was lying there. Now that I can get up flush with it, and now that I have the knife. I can stretch my arm through the opening and across the outside, and whittle away the thongs that lash the two iron hoops together. That’s all that holds it; I’ve seen them when they open it.”
“Well, maybe I can do it for you from this side even better.”
“No,” he said, “that’ll be my job. There’s too much of tonight used up already; daylight would be here just about the time we got through. And we’ll need the darkness for our getaway; that’s the only headstart we’ll have. I’ll begin right at dusk tomorrow, and you slip out as soon as you see the moon come up.”
“The moon’s going to be full tomorrow night. Will that be good or bad?”
“Bad only in the beginning, until we can get clear of this built-up place. Good as soon as we’re out in the open jungle.”
“I’d better go back now. I’ll be here when the moon comes up.”
“You’re not afraid, are you? It means going back again, for one more night and one more day.”
“I’m not afraid, if you say so. Only, be careful. We’re so close to it now, just a night away. For both of us, be careful.”
“For both of us,” he promised.
They parted with their lips.
“Just one more tomorrow night.”
One more tomorrow night. Hope has so many tomorrow nights. Hope never runs out of tomorrow nights. That’s what hope is, all hope is.
Chapter Twenty-six
His timing was beautiful. Almost uncanny. Just a quarter of an hour before the rise of the moon, he felt the final sudden spring of looseness that told him the last of the thongs had parted under his untiring knife. The shifting back of the barrier could have been done in about two minutes time, if he cared to risk having it creak or complain; he did it in twelve, in an absolute velvety silence. One shoulder to it, both his arms pressed tight to it; the latter holding it back against him, rather than urging it forward. He eased it a fraction of an inch at a time on its way, then stopped, keeping all unevenness, both of the wood and of his body, out of it, so that the wood had no chance to find a voice.
He stopped when the opening was little more than a foot in width. That was enough. He held it tight now, one arm on each side of it, and squeezed through side.
The realization that he was on the outside, that he was free, hit him all at once, as if by delayed action. He’d been too taken up with the mechanics of the act itself until now. It nearly made him dizzy for a minute, in a literal sense. He swayed, and had to plant both palms against the wall, to keep from teetering against the wood and perhaps undoing all his stealth after all.
His heart sang as it had never sung before. I’m out! I’m in the open! In the open, I tell you!
He hadn’t noticed yet that she wasn’t here. That is to say, he had, of course, but hadn’t had time to worry about it yet.
He dropped to all fours like an animal, put the knife bladewise between his teeth, and started to pad in sinuous menace along the inner passage, toward its mouth, where the guard lay sleeping.
One palm, the opposite knee, the other palm, the opposite knee to that. Death down close to the ground.
There wasn’t going to be any quarter given, there wasn’t going to be any boy-scout morality or fair-fight ethics. He was among primitives, and he was going to kill according to their code.