The darkness was a bull. It was the Bull, the great and eternal sacrifice, as she was the Woman, staggering to its feet and shaking its great black head, its horns the shadow of that blazing lunar crescent. The Woman in the Moon stared down at it, her mouth breaking into a smile.
And I knew Her. Her mouth the freezing maw of the abyss, her teeth like clashing knives, her tongue the flame that burned in the night country. Othiym the Devourer, Othiym the Mouth of the World—
Othiym Lunarsa! a million voices shouted. There was a smell of burning, of hyacinth and anemone and roses, of sandalwood and oranges. There was a smell of the sea. The chanting voices grew to a shout. The crescent in Othiym’s hands burned brighter still, when with a sudden choking roar the bull staggered backward, tossing its head so that its horns were silhouetted against the blazing light—
And suddenly the vision of goddess and bull was gone. Suddenly all I saw was Dylan, and before him his mother, her eyes like scorched holes, her face a ravaged mask, and the lunula gripped in her hands like a scythe. On the floor behind her the dark woman lay, stirring weakly. Beside her Annie crouched,
“Oliver! Are you hurt—oh!”
“Now!” cried Angelica.
Before I knew it I was upon her. A searing pain as I wrenched the lunula from her raised hands; then a scream, whether my own or Angelica’s I never knew. Then there was only light, light and sound, a vast echoing tumult. In my hands I clutched a flaming crescent.
“No, Sweeney!—please, you don’t understand, you can’t possibly—”
For one last instant I heard Angelica’s voice, faint as the sound of rain dying into the wind. With both hands I raised the lunula before me. I had a flickering vision of eyes and mouths, of white throats raised in supplication and weeping women. With all my strength I broke the lunula upon my knee.
High above me Othiym threw Her head back and howled; then with a groan She stooped. Her monstrous hand closed around something on the ground—Angelica’s doll-like figure. Othiym bore her upward. Her mouth opened, a yawning entrance to the abyss, and the moon upon Her brow glimmered fitfully as the tiny struggling figure was swallowed by that engulfing darkness. With a last howl of rage and hunger She was gone—and with Her, Angelica.
Every sense was riven from me. From very far away I heard a faint high ping!, a sound like the tiny crack that foretells the destruction of a prized vase. One moment I was numb; the next I was blinking as I looked around.
“Sweeney? Sweeney, it’s me—”
I moaned. A few feet away Annie was still crouched over the dark woman. Beside me knelt Dylan. He was covered with blood, but the blood was cracked and drying, the slash along his collarbone already scabbing over.
“Dylan?” I grabbed him and began to sob. “Oh, Dylan—”
“It’s okay, Sweeney,” he murmured. “It’s okay, it’s okay…” He helped me to my feet.
“Is it—what happened?”
“Hush. Not now, Sweeney.” He put his arm around me and we started toward the back of the Shrine. “Maybe not ever…”
The endless lines of goddesses were gone. Instead the same wooden pews stood there, rank upon rank, the same holy water fonts and Sunday Missalettes. There were dead leaves everywhere too, and mud—
Mud!
“Is it raining?” I asked thickly.
Dylan nodded, unexpectedly grinned. “Wait’ll you see—”
We walked slowly till we came onto the Shrine’s broad steps. Rain sluiced from the sky, rain so cold that within a minute I was shivering.
“It’s broken!” somebody yelled. I turned, and saw Annie stomping in a puddle. “The heat wave’s broken—”
A thunderclap boomed and I jumped, then laughed.
Across the campus of the Divine, lights were flickering on, one by one. Lights in turrets and paneled studies, streetlights and crimelights and lights in cars—
In one car, at least: Yellow Cab Number 393, idling at the base of the Shrine.
“Is that for us?” I croaked.
“Not this time.” A diminutive figure slipped from behind Dylan, holding out some wadded clothing. “Here—put these on for now.” He drew Dylan away from me.
“Professor Warnick.” I raised my hand to my brow. “Angelica—where is she? What happened?”
“Hush,” he said, and he sounded exactly like Dylan. “Later. Sweeney, I want you and the others to come with Robert and me.”
“But Oliver!” I cried. “Where’s Oliver?”
That was when I saw someone standing by the cab. A tall black man with barrel chest, an umbrella in his hand. He was holding the door open for a woman in a purple robe, a woman with long black hair that fell, wet and glistening, to her shoulders.
“Oliver!” I shouted. “Oliver—”
Handsome Brown raised the umbrella so the woman could step into the back of the cab.
“Oliver!”
The dark woman stopped, shaded her eyes, and looked up the steps to the Shrine.
“Sweeney,” she said; although how could I hear her from that distance? She smiled, that beautiful crooked smile, and her voice rang out across the distance, across years and decades and maybe even centuries—
“I told you I’d be back.”
Then there was the muted thump of a car door slamming shut. With a low rumble the cab pulled out of the parking circle and onto North Capitol Street. In a moment it was gone.
“Here, Professor Warnick. I can take over now.”
Balthazar Warnick smiled slightly as Dylan pushed him aside. “You okay, Sweeney?” Dylan asked tenderly, drawing me close to him. “You okay?”
I stared at him openmouthed. He was wearing a clean, though damp, white oxford cloth shirt and chinos, and a pair of black leather wing tip shoes with no socks. One shirt cuff still bore the faded image, in blurred ballpoint ink, of a clock’s face, the hands set to four. Always time for tea.
“Where—where did you get those clothes?” I stammered.
“From Professor Warnick.” Dylan gestured to where the cab had been parked. “He said that woman told him to give them to me.”
“That—that woman.” I wiped my eyes and nodded. My throat was tight as I whispered, “They—they fit pretty good.”
Dylan gave me a sad smile. “I know. It’s weird, isn’t it? Warnick said she was an old friend of—of my mother’s.” He plucked at his shirt. “He said she’d been holding on to these for a while, to give them to me. And she said to give you something, too—”
Behind him, Balthazar Warnick and Robert Dvorkin and Annie Harmon stood watching us.
“What’s that?” I whispered.
“This,” Dylan said. He bent to kiss my cheek, his warm breath smelling of honey and coriander. “And this—”
He handed me a flower: a small flower with violet-blue petals and brilliant yellow stamen, its scent faint as the fragrance of rain and sweeter than anything I had ever know.