He looked, then shrugged. "I don't know. Let's see, eh?"
At once he scrambled down. Meg hesitated, then followed. The ground was soft and spongy and in only a few paces her canvas shoes were soaked. Ben had gone ahead of her, his feet sinking, squelching as he ran. Then she saw him crouch down and examine something.
She came up behind him and looked over his shoulder. It was a rabbit. A dead rabbit.
"What killed it?" she asked.
He prized the carcass up from out of the wet, clinging turf and turned it over, examining it.
"I don't know. There's no sign of external injury. But it's not been here long." He looked up at her. "Here, Meg, give me your pullover."
She slipped her pullover off and handed it to him, then watched as he spread it out and laid the dead animal on it.
"What are you doing?"
Ben drew his hunting knife from its sheath, then cut the rabbit from chin to rump. For a moment he watched the blood well from the cut, staining the mottled gray fur, then laid the knife down and eased the flesh apart.
Meg watched, fascinated and horrified, as he probed inside the animal, the blood dark on his fingers. Then he lifted something small and wet; a pale, tiny sac attached by tubes and ten-
dons to the rest. It glistened in his fingers as he bent to study it. Then he looked up at her.
"It's as I thought. Look. The liver's covered in dark blotches." She shook her head, not understanding; watching him bundle the rabbit in her pullover, then lift it and sling it over his shoulder.
"It was diseased," he said, staring across at the Seal. Then he turned to look at her again. "It's part of the change in things, Meg. Don't you see that now? There's a sickness here in the Domain. A killing thing."
HAL SHEPHERD stood at the turn of the road, his hands resting lightly on the low stone wall, looking down at the row of cottages and the bay beyond. To his right the hill rose up above where he stood, then fell again to meet the next turn of the river. It was dotted with old stone-built houses and cottages. At its summit was a small church.
It was almost three months since he had been home, but now, standing there, it seemed that he had never been away. This much at least remains unchanged, he thought. Each hill, each tree, each house was familiar to him from youth. I see it as my grandfather saw it, and his grandfather before him. In three hundred years only the trees had changed, growing older, dying, replaced by others of their own ancient seed. Like us, he thought. We, too, are trees.
He walked on. The road dipped steeply here, then curved back wickedly upon itself. Where he had been standing had been a turning point for cars once upon a time—when there were still cars in the world—but this had never been a place for modern things. Even back then, when the world was connected differently, it had been seven miles by road to the nearest town of any size, and that easier to get to by the river. Time had stood still here even then. During the Ma'dness, when the old world had heaved itself apart, this place had been a point of stillness at the center of things. Now it was timeless.
There were walls, no more than a pace or two either side of him. Whitewashed walls, in heavy shadow now, their low-silled windows dark; only one cottage in the row lit up. He smiled, seeing it ahead of him; imagining Beth there in the low-beamed living room, the fire lit and the curtains drawn; seeing her, as he had so often seen her, go to the back door and call the children in from the meadow.
Home. It meant so many things, but only one to him. He would have withered inside long ago had there not been this to return to.
He stood outside the low, broad door, listening, then put his hand out flat against the wood and gently pushed. There was no need for locks here. No need for fear. The door swung back slowly, silently, and he went in.
Beth stood there in the doorway, framed by the soft light of the living room behind her and to her left. She smiled. "I knew you were coming. I dreamed of you last night."
He laughed and went to her, then held her tightly against-him, kissing her tenderly. "Your dreams . . ." He gazed into her eyes, loving the beauty, the measureless depth of them. "They never fail you do they?"
She smiled and kissed his nose. "No. Never."
He shivered and reached up to stroke her cheek, then trace the contours of her lips with a fingertip. His whole body was alive with desire for her. "Where's Ben? And Meg?"
Her body was pressed hard against his own, her hands at his neck. Her eyes now were dark with longing, her voice softer, more alluring. "They're outside. Down by the creek. But they'll not be back. Not just yet." She kissed him again, a harder, longer kiss this time.
"Yes . . ." He let his left hand rest gently on her waist a moment, then rucked up her skirt. Beneath it she wore nothing. He shuddered and sought her mouth again, the kiss more urgent now. His fingers traced the warm smoothness of her thighs and belly, then found the hot wetness at the core of her. She moaned softly and closed her eyes, her whole body trembling at his touch, then she reached down and freed him, holding his swollen penis momentarily, her fingers softly tracing its length, once, then again, almost making him come, before drawing him up into her.
He groaned, then grasped her by the buttocks and lifted her,
backing her against the wall, thrusting up into her once, twice, a third time, before he came explosively, feeling her shudder violently against him.
For a while, then, they were silent, watching each other. Then Beth smiled again. "Welcome home, my love."
THE PINE SURFACE of the kitchen table was freshly scrubbed, the knives newly sharpened. Ben looked about him, then left the bundled rabbit on the wide stone step outside and busied himself. He spread an oilcloth on the table, then laid the big cutting board on top of it. He laid the knives out beside the board and then, because it was growing dark, brought the lamp from beside the old ceramic butler sink, trimming the wick before he lit it.
Meg stood in the garden doorway, her small figure silhouetted against the twilight redness of the bay. She watched him roll back his sleeves, then fill a bowl with water and set it beside the knives.
"Why are you doing that?" she asked. "You know it's diseased. Why not burn it? Surely that's best?"
"No." Ben barely glanced at her. He turned and went down the four steps that led into the long, dark, low-eeilinged dining room, returning a moment later with a book from the shelves. An old thing, leather bound and cumbersome. "I've a hunch," he said, putting the heavy volume down on the other side of the board to the knives and the water.
Meg went across and stood beside him. It was a book of animal anatomy. One of their great-great-great-grandfather Amos's books. Ben flicked through the pages until he came to the diagram he was looking for. "There," he said, the heavy, glossy pages staying in place as he turned away to bring the rabbit.
She looked. Saw at once how like a machine it was. A thing of pumps and levers, valves and switches, controlled by chemicals and electric pulses. It was all there on the page, dissected for her. The whole of the mystery—there at a glance.
Ben came back. He placed the dead rabbit carefully on the block, then turned and looked at her. "You needn't stay, Meg. Not if you don't want to."
But she stayed, fascinated by what he was doing, knowing that this had meaning for him. Something had caught his attention. Something she had missed but he had seen. Now she waited as he probed and cut and then compared what had been exposed against the diagram spread across the double page.
At last, satisfied, he went to the sink and washed his hands, then came back and threw a muslin cloth over the board and its bloodied contents.
"Well?"
He was about to answer her when there was the sound of footsteps in the dining room. Their mother's. Then a second set.