For what seemed an eternity the General held the body forward as it gouted blood, staring about him at the shocked faces in the chamber. Then he let the body fall, blood splashing as it hit the floor, and stepped back, the trousers of his white ceremonial uniform spattered with blood.
He made no move to wipe it away, but stood there, defiant, his dagger raised, as if to strike again.
PART 3 I SPRING 220I
The Domain
With all its eyes the creature-world beholds
the open. But our eyes, as though reversed,
encircle it on every side, like traps
set round its unobstructed path to freedom.
What is outside, we know from the brute's face
alone; for while a child's quite small we take it
and turn it round and force it to look backwards
at conformation, not that openness
so deep within the brute's face. Free from death.
We alone see that; the free animal
has its decease perpetually behind it
and God in front, and when it moves, it moves
within eternity, like running springs.
WeVe never, no, not for a single day,
pure space before us, such as that which flowers
endlessly open into: always world,
and never nowhere without no: that pure,
unsuperintended element one breathes,
endlessly knows, and never craves. A child
sometimes gets quietly lost there, to be always
jogged back again. Or someone dies and is it.
—rainer maria RILKE, Duino Elegies: Eighth Elegy.
CHAPTER TEN
The Dead Rabbit
MEG SHEPHERD, Hal Shepherd's daughter, was standing in the tall grass of the Domain, watching her brother. It was early evening and, on the far side of the water, dense shadow lay beneath the thick cluster of trees. At this end the creek narrowed to a shallow, densely weeded spike of water. To her left, in the triangle of wild, uncultivated land between the meadow and the vast, overtower-ing whiteness of the Wall, the ground grew soft and marshy, veined with streams and pocked with tiny pools.
Ben was crouched at the water's edge, intensely still, staring at something in the tall, thick rushes to his right. For a moment there was only the stillness and the boy watching, the soft soughing of the wind in the trees across the water, and the faint, lulling call of pigeons in the wood. Then, with an abrupt crash and spray and a strong beating of wings, the bird broke from cover. Ben's head went up, following the bird's steep ascent, his twelve-year-old eyes wide with watching. "Look at it, Meg! Isn't it a beauty?"
"Yes," she answered softly, but all the while she was watching him, seeing how his eyes cast a line to the climbing bird. Saw how he grasped every last detail of it and held that knowledge tight in his memory. His body was tensed, following the bird's flight, and his eyes burned. She shivered. It was astonishing to watch, that intensity of his. The world seemed to take form in his eyes: to grow bright and rich and real. As if, before he saw it,
it was but a pale shadow of itself; a mere blueprint, uncreated until he saw and reimagined it. So it was for her. She could see nothing unless he had seen it first.
The bird was gone. He turned and looked at her.
"Did you see it?"
"Yes," she said, meaning something else. "It was beautiful."
He turned his head, looking away from her, toward the village. When he looked back his green eyes were dark, thoughtful.
"Things are different this year, Meg. Don't you feel it? Small things. Like the bird."
She shrugged, then pushed her way through the grass, out into the open. Standing there beside him at the water's edge, she looked down at his reflection, next to her own in the still, clear water.
"Why do you think that is? Why should it change?" He looked around him, his brow furrowing. "I mean, this place has always been the same. Always. Unchanged. Unchanging but for the seasons. But now . . ." He looked at her. "What is it, Meg? What's happening?"
She looked up from his reflection and met his eyes.
"Does it worry you?"
He thought for a moment. "Yes," he said finally. "And I don't know why. And I want to know why."
She smiled at him and reached out to touch his arm. It was so typical of him, wanting to understand what he thought and why he thought it. Never happy unless he was worrying at the problem of himself.
"It's nothing," she said reassuringly. "They're only small things, Ben. They don't mean anything. Really they don't."
But she saw he wasn't convinced. "No," he said. "Everything has meaning. It's all signs, don't you see? It all signifies. And the small things . . . that's where it's to be seen first. Like the bird. It was beautiful, yes, but it was also . . ." He looked away and she said the word for him, anticipating him without quite knowing how, as she so often did.
"Frightening."
"Yes."
She followed his gaze a moment, seeing how his eyes climbed the Wall to its summit far overhead, then looked back at him again. He was more than a head taller than she, dark haired and straight boned. She felt a small warmth of pride kindle in her. So elegant he was. So handsome. Did he know how much she loved him? He knew so much, but did he know that? Maybe. But if he did he gave no sign.
"It was only a bird, Ben. Why should it frighten you?"
He almost smiled. "It wasn't the bird, Meg. At least, not the outer thing, the cage of bone and flesh, sinew and feather. It was what was within the bird—the force that gave it such power, such vitality." He looked down at his left hand, then turned it over, studying its back. "That's where its beauty lies. Not in the outward show but in the shaping force. That"—he seemed to shiver—"well, it's mystery. Pure mystery. And that frightens me, Meg. The thought of all that dark, unharnessed power simply existing in the world. I look at it and I want to know where it comes from. I want to know why it's there at all. Why it isn't mere mechanics and complexity of detail. Why all that fiery excess?"
"The force that through the green fuse drives the flower."
And now he did smile, pleased by her recognition; by her quoting back at him the poem he had read to her only two days past. How rare that was, him smiling. And only for her. Never for mother or father. Nor for those others who came so rarely to this place.
"I guess there's that too," he said. "That same force brings us on, from bud to flower to ... well, to something browned and withered. And thus to clay." He shrugged. "It's all connected, isn't it? It uses us and then discards us. As if we're here only to flesh out its game—to give it form. Doesn't that frighten you, Meg?"
She shook her head. "Why should it? There's plenty of time, Ben. A whole world of time before we have to think of that."
He studied her intently for a moment, then bowed his head slightly. "Perhaps."
He began to walk, treading a careful path through the marshy ground, following a rising vein of rock that jutted from the sodden turf, until he came beneath the shadow of the Wall.
There, facing them not thirty paces away, was the Seal. Part of the Wall, it was the same dull pearl in color, a great circle five times Ben's height, its base less than an arm's length above the surface of the ground, its outer edge a thick ridge of steel-tough plastic.
For a moment he stood there, staring at it, oblivious of all else.
Meg, watching him, understood. It was a gateway. A closed door. And beyond it was the darkness of the Clay. Primal, unadulterated Clay. Beyond it the contiguous earth was sun-deprived and ban-en. Here Heaven, there Hell. And only a Wall, a Seal, between the two.
She climbed up beside him on the ridge of rock. "What's that?" She pointed outward to their left. There was something there. Something small and pale and gray against the green. Something that hadn't been there before.