‘Nothing from the Pterodactyle, I shouldn’t think,’ says Professor Osborn, standing somewhere behind him, ‘though the cranium is oddly reminiscent of the Dimorphodon, isn’t it?’ and Silas Desvernine bows his head, stares down at the soggy darkness where his feet must be and waits for the leather and satin rustle of her wings, gentle loversound through the storm. The rain catches his tears and washes them away with everything else.
The funeral over and the servants busy downstairs when Silas opened the doors of his gallery; viewed the damage she’d done for the first time, knew it was mostly broken glass and little that couldn’t be put right again, but the sight hurt his chest, hurt his eyes. Heart already so broken and eyes already so raw but new pain anyway. No bottom to this pain, and he bent over and picked up his dodo, retrieved it from a bed of diamond shards and Silas brushed the glass from its dusty beak and rump feathers. Set it back on the high shelf between passenger pigeons and three Carolina parakeets. Another step closer to her cage, the drapes still pulled open, and his shoes crunched. Her, crouched in the shadows, wings wrapped tight about her like a cocoon, living shield against him, and he said, ‘What did you do to her, Tisiphone?’ And surprised at how calm his voice could be, how empty of everything locked inside him and clawing to get out.
The wings shivered, cringed and folded back; ‘That’s not my name,’ she said.
‘What did you do to her, Megaera?’
‘Shut up,’ words spit at the wall where her face was still hidden, at him, ‘You know that I’m not one of the three, you’ve known that all along.’
‘She couldn’t have hurt you, even if she’d wanted to,’ he said, hearing her words but as close as he would ever come to being able to ignore them: her weak, and his grief too wide to cross even for her voice. ‘Did you think she could hurt you?’ he said.
‘No,’ and shaking her head now, forehead bang and smack against brick and he could see the sticky, black smear she left on the wall.
‘Then you did it to get back at me. Is that it? You thought to hurt me by hurting her.’
‘No,’ she said and that was the only time he ever saw her cry, if it was crying, the dim phosphorescence leaking from the corners of her eyes. ‘No, no...’
‘But you know she’s dead, don’t you?’ and ‘Yes,’ she said, small yes too quick and it made him want to wring her white throat, lock his strong hands around her neck and twist until he was rewarded with the pop and cartilage grind of ruined vertebrae. Squeeze until her tongue hung useless from her lipless mouth.
‘She never hurt anyone, Alecto,’ he hissed and she turned around, snake-sudden movement and he took a step away from the bars despite himself.
‘I asked her to help me,’ and she was screaming now, perfect, crystal teeth bared. ‘I asked her to free me,’ and her hurt and fury swept over him, blast furnace heat rushing away from her, and faint smell of nutmeg and decay left in the air around his head.
‘I asked her to unlock the fucking cage, Silas!’ and the wings slipped from off her back and lay bloody and very still on the unclean metal and hay-strewn floor of the cage.
In the simplest sense, these things, at least, are true: that during the last week of June 1916, Silas Desvernine hired workmen from Haverstraw to excavate a large stone from a spot near the summit of Storm King, and that during this excavation several men died or fell seriously ill, each under circumstances that only seemed unusual if considered in connection with one another. When the foreman resigned (monkeyed little Scotsman with a face like ripe cranberries), Silas hired a second crew and in July the stone was carried down and away from the mountain, ingenious block-and-tackle of his own design, then horse and wagon, and finally, barge, the short distance upriver to Pollepel Island. Moneys were paid to a Mr Harriman of the Palisades Interstate Park Commission, well enough known for his discretion in such matters, and no questions were asked.
And also, that archaeologists and anthropologists, linguists and cryptographers were allowed brief viewings of the artefact over the next year and only the sketchiest, conflicting conclusions regarding the glyphs on the stone were drawn: that they might have been made by Vikings, or Phoenicians, or Minoans, or Atlanteans; that they might be something like Sanskrit, or perhaps the tracks of prehistoric sea worms, or have been etched by Silas Desvernine himself. The suggestion by a geologist of no particular note, that the stone itself, oily black shale with cream flecks of calcite, was not even native to the region, was summarily ignored by everyone but Silas. Who ignored nothing.
One passing footnote mention of ‘the Butterhill Stone’ in a monograph on Mahican pottery and by 1918 it was forgotten by the busy, forgetful world of men and words beyond the safeguarding walls of Silas’ Castle.
‘Wake up,’ she says. ‘You must wake up,’ and he does, gummy blink, unfocused, and the room’s dark except for the light of brass lamps with stained glass shades like willows and dragon-flies and drooping, purple wisteria.
‘You’re dying, Silas,’ and he squints towards the great cage, cage that could hold lions or leopards and she looks so terribly small in there. Deceptive contrast of iron and white, white skin, and she says, ‘Before the sun rises again. ’
Big sigh rattle from his bony chest and ‘No,’ looking about the desk for his spectacles. ‘No, not yet,’ but she says ‘You’re an old man, Silas, and old men die, eventually. All of them.’
‘Not yet,’ and there they are, his bifocals perched on a thick book about African beetles, ‘there’s a new war, new ships that have to be built,’ and he slips them on, frame wire bent and straightened and bent again so they won’t sit quite right on his face any longer. Walking cane within reach, but he doesn’t stand, waits for the murky room to become solid again.
‘Let me go now,’ she says, as if she hasn’t said it a thousand thousand times before, as if it were a new idea, never occurred to her before and he laughs. Froggy little strangled sound more like a burp. ‘You’re trying to trick me,’ he says, grins his false-toothed grin at her and one crooked finger pointed so there can be no doubt. ‘You’re not a sibyl,’ and it takes him five minutes to remember where he’s put his pocket watch.
‘I can hear your tired old heart and it’s winding down, like your watch,’ and there it is, in his vest pocket; 4:19, but the hour hand and minute hand and splinter second hand still as ice. He forgets to wind it a lot these days, and how much time has he lost, dozing at his desk? Stiff neck crane and he can see stars through the high windows.
‘You can’t leave me here, Silas.’
‘Haven’t I told you that I won’t?’ still watching the stars, dim glimpse of Canes Venatici or part of the Little Bear, and the anger in his voice surprising him. ‘Haven’t I said that? That I’ll let you go before I die?’
‘You’re a liar, Silas Desvernine. You’ll leave me here with all these other things that you’ve stolen,’ and he notices that her eyes have settled on the tall glass case near her cage, four tall panes and the supporting metal rods inside, the shrivelled, leathery things wired there. The dead feathers that have come loose and lie scattered like October leaves at the bottom of the case.
‘You would have destroyed them if I hadn’t put them there,’ he mumbles, ‘Don’t tell me that’s not the truth,’ turning away, anything now to occupy his attention, and it was true, that part. That she’d tried to eat them after they’d fallen off, Jesus Christ, tried to eat them, before he took them away from her, still warm and oozing blood from their ragged stumps.