Her words seemed to find an echo in Rukenau, because as she spoke, tears came. 'What did I do to you?' he said. 'Oh Lord.' He closed his eyes, and the tears ran.
'I don't know what you did,' Rosa said. 'I only want an end to it.'
'Then go to him,' Rukenau said. 'Go to Jacob and heal yourself.'
'What are you saying?'
Rukenau opened his eyes again. 'That you're two halves of the same soul,' he said. She shook her head, not comprehending. 'You trusted me, you see; said I was better company than you'd had in two hundred years.' He looked away from her, and stared at the bright air above his head. 'And once I had your trust I put you to sleep, and I spoke my liturgies, and undid the sweet syzygy of your being. Oh I was so proud of myself, playing God that way. Male and female madeth He.'
Rosa let out a low moan. 'Jacob's a part of me?' she said.
'And you of him,' Rukenau murmured. 'Go to him, and heal both of your spirits before he does more harm than even he can calculate.'
There was a man squatting in the passageway ahead of Will, his hands clamped over his eyes so as to shut out the vision rising around him. It was Ted, of course.
'What the hell are you doing down there?' Will and the fox said to him.
He didn't dare unstop his eyes; at least until Will demanded he do so. 'There's nothing to be afraid of, Ted,' he said.
'Are you joking?' the man replied, uncovering his eyes long enough to confirm that he was talking to Will. 'The place is coming down on our heads, for God's sake.'
'Then you'd better find Diane pretty damn quick,' Will said. 'And you're not going to do it sitting on your arse. Get up and get moving, for God's sake.' Shamed into action, Ted got to his feet, but kept his eyes half closed. Even so, he couldn't help flinch at the sights that were surging from the walls.
'What is all this?' he sobbed.
'No talking!' Will said, knowing Steep was closing on them, stride for stride. 'Just get moving.'
Even if they'd had the time to debate the visions brimming about them, Will doubted there was any explanation for them that fell within their frame of knowledge. The Nilotic had built a house of numinosities; that was all Will knew. The means by which it had done so was beyond his grasp; nor finally, was it important to know. It was the work of a sublime being, that was all that mattered; a holy mason whose labour had created a temple such as no priest had ever consecrated. If Will's eyes ever distinguished the patterns moving around him, he knew what he would see: the glory of creation. The tiger and the dung-beetle, the gnat's wing and the waterfall. It was perhaps, not the House that smeared their particularities, but his brain, which would have perished from the sheer excess of all that these swelling clouds of life contained, had he seen them precisely.
'This ... is such ... a glorious ... madness...' he gasped as he moved on with Ted, towards the source. And from that insanity a figure now emerged; a woman with a branch in one hand, heavy with figs, and in the other, clutched tightly, a fat salmon thrashing and glistening as though it had moments before been snatched from a river.
'Diane?' Ted said.
It was she. And seeing her ragged, tear-stained husband the woman dropped her bounty and went to him, opening her arms. 'Ted?' she said, as though she didn't quite believe what she was seeing. 'Is it you?'
She might in other circumstances have been quite a plain woman. But the light loved her. It clung to her weight as her sodden clothes clung; it ran over her full breasts, it played around her groin and lips and eyes. No wonder she'd been seduced by the place, Will thought. It had made her radiant, glorifying her substance without cavil or complaint. She was impermanent, of course; no less than the fish or the figs. But in the space between birth and dissolution, this life called Diane, she was made marvellous.
Ted was a little afraid to put his arms around her. He held back, puzzling out what he was seeing.
'Are you my wife?' he said.
'Yes, I'm your wife,' she said, plainly amused.
'Will you come with me, out of here?' he asked her. She glanced back the way she'd come. 'Are you leaving?' she said. 'We all are,' Ted replied. She nodded. 'I suppose ... yes ... I'll come with you,' she said, 'if you want me to.' 'Oh-' he caught hold of her hand. 'Oh God, Diane.' Now he embraced her. 'Thank you. Thank you-
We'd better move, the fox murmured in Will's head, Steep's not far behind. 'I have to go,' he said to Ted, slapping him on the back as he moved on past the couple.
'Don't go any further,' Diane said to him. 'You'll get lost,'
'I don't mind,' Will told her.
'But it'll be too much,' she replied. 'I swear, it'll be too much.'
'Thanks for the warning,' he said to her, and giving Ted a grin as he passed, walked on towards the heart of the House.
CHAPTER XV
i
Frannie had not gone with Rosa in pursuit of Steep. She'd stayed in Rukenau's chamber, watching in astonishment as the walls shed their covering. It was not the safest place to be by any means, not with the earth and rope and furniture overhead in steady collapse. But she had no intention of taking shelter; not having risked so much to be here. She would watch the process to the end, however heavy the rain became.
Her presence did not go unnoticed. A minute or so after Rosa's departure, Rukenau turned his head in Frannie's direction, and focusing what was left of his sight upon her, asked her if Rosa had found Jacob yet. Not yet, she told him. She could see the object of his enquiries making her way through the unfurling walls in pursuit of Jacob; she could see Jacob too, moving in the brightness. The figure that truly caught her attention, however, was Will, who was furthest from her, but by some trick of place or sight was in sharper focus than either Rosa or Jacob; his form perfectly delineated as he walked the brightening air.
I'm losing him, Frannie thought. He's going away from me and I'll never see him again.
The man on the ground in front of her said: 'Won't you come a little closer? What's your name?'
'Frannie.'
'Frannie. Well then, Frannie, could you raise me a little? I want to see my Nilotic.'
How could she refuse him? He was beyond doing her any harm. She knelt down beside him, and put her arm under his body. He was heavy, and wet with blood, but she felt strong and she'd never been squeamish, so it wasn't a difficult task to lift him up as he'd requested, until he had a view through the veils of the House.
'Do you see them?' she asked him.
He managed a blood-red smile.
'I see them,' he said. 'And that third? Is it Ted or Will?'
'That's Will,' she said.
'Somebody should warn him. He doesn't know what he's risking, going so deep.'
In the cool furnace of the world, Will heard Steep call his name. Once upon a time, he would have turned eagerly at the sound of that voice, hungry for the face that owned it. But there were finer sights to see, all around him; the creatures whose designs had been abstractions until now finally parading their forms before him. A flock of parrot-fish broke against his face, a wave of flamingos ruddied the sky; he waded ankledeep through a lush field of otters and rattlesnakes.
'Will,' Steep said again.
Still he didn't turn. If the creature strikes me down from behind, he thought, so be it; I'll die with my head full of life. A boulder split before him, and spilled a bounty of chicks and apes; a tree grew around him, as though he were its rising sap, and spreading overhead, blossomed with striped cats and carrion crows.
And as he saw them, he felt Steep's hand on his shoulder; felt Steep's breath at his neck. One last time, the man said his name. He waited for the coup de grace, while the tree grew still taller, and shedding its fine fruit, blossomed a second time.