Though there would be days on the road before they separated, in a way, he was saying goodbye to her. Their actual parting would be more mundane; she would slip off into the canyons of New York skyscrapers and forget him. And for his part, he would cease to debase himself by following after her, doglike, growing smaller in her eyes until he altogether vanished.
The clouds were dispersing in a network of lace to expose the constellations. And now he had a small insight on the poetry of Ira’s vision, freed of conceptions of space and time, mass and the radiant energy of distant lights. Low-hanging stars winked in and out with her passage across the levee road. There was no hard line of demarcation between the heavens and the high earthen barrier. In his fractured perception, she was walking across the sky.
Goodbye, Kathy Mallory.
He said her name again, aloud this time, and now another connection was taking place, almost against his will. He climbed into Mallory’s point of view, an uncomfortable and cramped place to be, for she was only six years old, going on seven. The child in the closet had heard no sound from her mother, only the one voice speaking to the silent mob. The words may not have been clear, but the voice would have been recognized. Thoughts of the child were linking to Malcolm, whom those of long acquaintance called Mal.
Mal Laurie – Mallory.
The child had taken the name of her mother’s killer. She had been plotting, even then, to come back for him one day when she had her size, when her hands were large enough to hold a lethal weapon. Each day of her life, she had been called by that hated name – so she would not, could not, forget the worst pain a small child could suffer and yet remain alive.
Charles stood there for a time, collecting his emotions. And then, forgetting his resolution of goodbye, he struck out across the starry night, following after Mallory. He was planning to hold her very close, to inflict comfort on her, and consolation for all her pain and loss.
He realized she might not care for that. Actually, he knew she would hate that. She would probably try to wave him off, as though he might be an annoying two-hundred-pound housefly.
Well, too bad, Mallory.
He needed to hold her; that need was very strong. And now he was forming another intention to annoy her even more: Until the end of his life or hers, whenever she turned around, there he would be.
Carol O'Connell
Born in 1947, Carol O'Connell studied at the California Institute or Arts/Chouinard and the Arizona State University. For many years she survived on occasional sales of her paintings as well as freelance proof-reading and copy-editing.
At the age of 46, Carol O'Connell sent the manuscript of Mallory's Oracle to Hutchinson, because she felt that a British publisher would be sympathetic to a first time novelist and because Hutchinson also publish Ruth Rendell. Having miraculously found the book on the 'slush pile', Hutchinson immediately came back with an offer for world rights, not just for, Mallory's Oracle but for the second book featuring the same captivating heroine.
At the Frankfurt Book Fair, Hutchinson sold the rights to Dutch, French and German publishers for six figure sums. Mallory's Oracle was then taken back to the States where it was sold, at auction, to Putnam for over $800,000.
Carol O'Connell is now writing full time.
