“Why do you make that sound, monsieur?”
“Because I am afraid.” The winds extinguished, and yet the raft continued to move toward the island, as if pulled to it by some force. “The Isle of Moira,” Sebastian continued, “draped in darkness. Her sand aches for the touch of our hot naked feet. She would drink our vitality with those mouths that are her barrows and her pits. Ah, and there—do you see her? Our desolate receptionist.”
Charlotte peered at the place of stone steps toward which their craft sailed, and saw the grim figure that stood like some obsidian statue. The raft lodged itself perfectly against the pitted platform of the lowest step. Kicking off his shoes, the child limped toward the waiting figure and offered it his hand. Swiftly, the creature lowered itself until its cowled head was in alignment with the child’s. The infant moved his mouth, as if whispering secrets. A dark face parted its lips and fed upon the lame boy’s living breath. As the child began to shudder, the woman took him in her arms.
Sebastian removed his slippers and indicated to Charlotte that she should discard her shoes. He tried not to gape at the sight of her bestial feet, which were far more feral than her ungainly hands. Offering assistance, he helped her from the raft, onto the weathered stone steps. They approached the woman and her captive. Charlotte watched the dusky hand that loosened the lad’s shirt and manipulated the flesh nearest the child’s heart.
Sebastian’s musical voice began to pipe. “Mistress Atropos, may I present Miss Charlotte Hund, of Boston? She has come to dance naked beneath your moon.”
The black woman chuckled as she rose, not relinquishing her hold on the child. “You will want to climb the highest hill, where the wind is exquisitely musical among the numbered sarcophagi. You know the place, Melmoth; you capered there once yourself.”
“In one of my Greek moments, yes. I was much younger then. And far less innocent. But we shall have to ascend slowly. These thick old limbs are no longer in fine fettle. Do release the child, Mistress, that he may playfully lead the way.”
The woman spread her arms and the child hobbled forward, to Charlotte, whose hand he held. Sebastian watched as they began to climb the upward path, and then he touched his brow to the Mistress and followed his friend. The moon was as orange as many of the decorative leaves, and mauve shadows hovered behind the many trees and shrubs. Sebastian did not like the silence of the place; he could hear too loudly his labored breathing. Now and then, in places of deep shadow, he sensed that he was watched by shapes in the night. He followed the path, past tombs and angels and obelisks, watching the two before him. He saw the child suddenly stop and place a tiny hand to its heart. Stopping, Sebastian produced a gilded case, from which he snatched a cigarette.
“The child has been too active, too excited,” Charlotte concluded as she folded her arms around the boy. “His heart is racing and he burns with fever.”
“Yes, he suffers from that dread contagion called Life. But we are almost there, and he may rest upon one of the paws of the great beast. Shall I carry you, boy? Would you like a cigarette?”
Ignoring the man, the silent child took one of Charlotte’s hands and continued to lead the way. They reached the crest, and Charlotte gazed in admiration at the moon-drenched colossus. She and the child watched as Sebastian approached the gigantic stone Sphynx, before which he raised his hands and snapped his fingers. His high voice hummed an ancient tune, and he smiled as Charlotte joined him in the danse. Happily, the lame child began to move with them, his crooked feet moving in imitation of the woman’s hoofs. They moved beneath the moon for quite a while, until finally the child tripped and fell, clutching again at his chest. Charlotte dropped beside him and smoothed his brow with her rude hand. Sebastian watched as her expression altered, as she lowered her face to the earth and began to snuffle.
“Whatever are you doing?”
She looked at him with shining eyes. “There is something here, beneath this ground; something rare yet familiar, something seductive. It is a memory that I once knew, long ago; it has taste and texture, and it calls to me.”
“Really, you are too fantastic. I think you’ve been touched by the corroded light of that torrid moon. I hate the moon when it resembles a scab on diseased flesh. Ugh! Those awful crimson shadows around the tombstones, it’s too macabre.”
Charlotte ignored his histrionic chatter and continued to smooth the ground with anxious fingers, the limping child beside her. She crawled until coming to a toppled obelisk, beside the base of which she found an opening in the earth. Peering into that cavity, she saw the steps that led beneath the surface. “Do you sense it,” she asked the child, “how this hollow summons? Are you game, boy? Shall we investigate?” Standing, she took the lad’s hand and led him down into the pit.
Sebastian Melmoth raised a white hand and sang some lines from Jonson:
“Farewell, thou child of my right hand, and joy;
My sin was too much hope of thee, dear boy…”
He watched them vanish into dank shadow. Then he turned to the gigantic Sphynx. Would she answer the riddle of what his friend would find? Was there anything that would appease doom? He looked to the moon, which had paled to a shade of ocher. Sebastian raised his hands to the sphere of dead refracted light, and then he began to remove his clothing.
The steps of loam felt strangely familiar to Charlotte’s naked feet, like something she had known while dreaming. She paused one moment to press her brow against the earthen wall, breathing its aroma, which stirred a cloudy image in her brain of something she had known, now forgotten. Touching lips to the dark wall, she trembled at the taste. Something in the sensation filled her with happiness, and turning to the child she began to dance upon the steps. Weirdly, she could easily see the child’s bright flesh in the dark place, the small hands held out to her. Eschewing caution, she took those hands and led the boy into a clownish dance upon the sleek and narrow steps. She seemed not to notice the heaviness of his breathing, and thought that he was clowning when he began to jerk with spasm. When she let go of his hands, she was too slow to catch his falling form. He tumbled down the stairs, to a level of rocky surface. Crying, she rushed to him and took up his still limp form in her embrace. She held him as is flesh grew cool and dry. She pressed him tighter to her breasts and whispered to his uncomprehending ear. How keenly she could smell his death, the fragrance of the stuff that clothed his bones. At last, she set his still form onto the surface to which he had fallen. Pressing fingers to his mouth, she pushed it shut. “Rest in peace, sweet innocent,” she murmured.
Before her was a passageway, through which a charnel breeze wafted to her. She could smell the bits of old bone that, over time, had sifted through the ground, some poking through the earth, others littering the place. Their stench was like something she had known, intimately, in Boston; but the memory was vague, like a favorite delicacy from childhood that had been forgotten in dull adulthood, until happened on by chance. Charlotte followed the chthonic blast, through the passageway, until she came to a spacious grotto, which seemed to her like the forgotten catacomb of some deserted cathedral. Broken statuary stood among the boxes of discarded death. She peered at a raised platform, a kind of bema, and saw two figures huddled over an altar, whispering as they watched her approach. She did not look away from the green eyes set deep within the rubbery faces, eyes that resembled her own. The eldest creature moved to meet her at the steps leading to the platform, and offered her his bestial hand. He smoothed her face with that hand, and combed her hair with thick strong nails. His mouth found her own. His kiss was revelation. She knew from that kiss exactly who she was.