Well In Time Part 19

Even more abstractly, wasn't it stone that had saved both groups? In the Egyptian case, the ma.s.sive stone cutting off the enemy's advance and in her own, the monolithic stone of the cliff over which she and Hill had disappeared as if they had never been. And in each case, a river was the source of life toward which they journeyed.

More importantly, she was separated as grievously from Javier as Isis was from Osiris. Would she have to lose him and find him dead in order to fulfill the pattern? The thought was too terrible. And yet, the myth of Isis showed the G.o.ddess in both her terrible and benevolent forms, just as in tonight's dream. Calypso had come too far in life to expect happy endings.

A blast of lightning and thunder shook the windowpanes, filling the room with a shock of blue-white light. Alarmed, her thoughts skittered and bolted onward.

Did people really reincarnate again and again? It all seemed too huge and too fantastic. And yet, she felt in her bones that all people were really Light made matter, suffering amnesia about their true origins. Were she, Javier, and Hill, and the rest of humanity, all part of an ancient lineage of which beings like the Christ and the Buddha were the s.h.i.+ning exemplars, the realized ones because they had overcome the forgetting?

Could she dare to believe that she was conjured from the same divine fire? Was that hubris or simple knowing? And did it exalt or exhaust her to think that she had been around since the beginning of time and would be here after its end? Wasn't that knowledge almost as heavy to bear as the locket?

She had to smile despite herself. Her weary body certainly felt tonight as if it had seen the pa.s.sage of the ages.

She gripped the window bars and leaned her forehead against the cold metal. The storm was moving off down the canyon like a great battle transiting, with cannons roaring and bombs dropping. The hard white light of lightning was replaced by the glow of the fire, the cras.h.i.+ng cannonade with the slow drip of rain on the sill outside.

Calypso pulled the chair close to the fire, threw on another log and bent her head to her hands, her elbows on her knees. It must be nearly dawn, although it would be a dark one, hidden behind clouds. Somewhere in her own life, light must be dawning, too, despite all appearances. Her body was leaden with weariness, but somewhere deep down she had connected to a bottomless aquifer of energy. Come what may, she knew herself to be unshakable.

A sharp knock on the door startled her from a doze, her face still supported in her hands. She jerked awake, her eyes darting to the window. It was still black behind the bars and the fire had scarcely burned down on the hearth. Who would be summoning her at this early hour? Before she could call out the question, a key turned in the lock, the heavy wooden door swung inward, and a black-robed figure glided through it.

Calypso reeled back in shock, momentarily caught in the illusion of her dream repeating itself. There was no black cowl, however, and when the figure stepped out of shadows into firelight, she saw that her visitor was Icepick.

Of all the men's stories, his was far from the most gruesome. Yet he was one of the men for whom Calypso had felt the least compa.s.sion. It came, she realized, from his apparent lack of compunction. He had told his life's tale as if he were reading from a book written by someone else about a fict.i.tious character.

There was an isolated quality to the man. His face was pitted and desolate as the lunar surface, with a haunted yet somehow vacant expression, as if he had lived too long in an orbit far from human warmth. He was not young but the years had been kind to him. He moved with an uncanny grace that more resembled stealth. Yet he was a gray man-hair, flesh, aura. Instead of giving off energy like other living creatures, he seemed to suck energy in, leaving a void around him where air and vibrancy should be. He was, in a word, creepy.

Calypso rose from her chair and stood behind it, keeping it between them.

"Icepick," she said. "To what do I owe this visit? It's very early."

Icepick did not answer. He flowed soundlessly around the room, keeping Calypso edging around the chair, as she turned to face him. Her eyes never left his face as she thought of his story: how he had first killed at only twelve, while working in his father's little corner market.

A thug had come in, he'd recounted, to collect extortion money. Icepick, knowing that the amount was needed for rent, had crept up behind the man as he wrangled with his father and slipped an ice pick under the back of his skull. It was the first in a very long string of a.s.sa.s.sinations, all carried out with the original ice pick that he kept hidden in a leather case on his wrist.

Calypso looked for the telltale bulge of the case but Icepick was in constant motion, the skirt of his black ca.s.sock swinging about him like a dancer's.

"What is it that you want?" she asked again, trying to keep a rising panic from her voice.

Having circled the room once, Icepick came to a halt in front of the window and stood sideways to it, glancing out into the featureless blackness, but keeping an eye on Calypso. They stood that way for several moments, he in a posture of readiness, she with her hands on the back of the chair, imagining how she might use it as s.h.i.+eld and weapon.

"You're causing a big problem for us," he said at last. His voice was soft, almost seductive.

Calypso did not respond. The intimation that Icepick had come to remedy the situation was all too clear. She did not imagine that he was the kind of man who would be swayed by argument.

"We never have women here." His voice was accusing.

"It was never my intention to trouble you with my presence." Her response sounded more nettled than she intended. If this was the situation for which the dream was attempting to prepare her, then how in the world could she manage to bless this repugnant personification of death?

"It's a problem," he repeated.

It suddenly occurred to Calypso that he might never have killed a woman, only men. On impulse she asked, "When you killed the thug who was shaking down your father-what did your mother say?"

He swiveled to face her with snaky suppleness.

"What did you say?"

She could see he was fl.u.s.tered and followed up her small advantage.

"It must have been hard for her. You were her son. She loved you. Yet you'd done this thing that was irrevocable. I'm trying to imagine how she must have felt."

Icepick's face had become even more bloodless. Calypso knew that they were at the crux of his visit. Either he would attack now because of her impudence, or the situation would s.h.i.+ft in her favor.

They faced one another across the small room like two animals gauging their attack. Icepick's eyes narrowed and he circled his nose through the air, the instinctual gesture of a hunting animal picking up a scent. Calypso's heartbeat quickened and her muscles tensed in readiness. Her fingers dug into the top rail of the chair back like steel screws being set into the wood.

She watched him with all her instinctual being, waiting for the slight tension that would be the gathering of his muscles for attack. And when she saw it, she threw down her final ace.

"I think she must have blessed you."

There was a misstep in the ch.o.r.eography of his kill. He went rigid and glared at her.

"What did you say?"

"Your mother. I think no matter what she may have said to you, that in her heart she blessed you. For rescuing your father. For saving the rent. For sending a message to the gang that was squeezing your family. I'm a woman. I know these things."

Calypso could see that Icepick was completely flummoxed, as if she had somehow manifested his mother's ghost in the room.

"You were just a poor kid doing what had to be done. It was dog eat dog. Probably no one ever told you so but you were a hero. You saved your family that day. And you've paid a heavy price for it. I know in my heart that your mother was proud of you."

If she had fired a handgun into her opponent, she could not have reduced him further. Icepick s.h.i.+fted his feet, settling out of attack stance, and sagged against the wall as if he had taken a bullet. He lifted eyes heavy with tears that had needed shedding for over sixty years. His voice, although still soft, had lost its seductive menace.

"You think so?"

"I'm absolutely certain of it."

Calypso resisted the urge to go to him. To touch him. He was too much the wounded animal. So she followed up her advantage with another blow to his defenses.

"I need you, too, Icepick. I need you to be heroic for me. I'm in a bad spot and I don't know the rules here. I don't know how to defend myself. Would you defend me?"

She surprised herself with the depth of her plea. It came from a place not of fear but of newly roused compa.s.sion for Icepick. In those few instants, she had seen him vulnerable, undefended, as he must have been before and just after his first kill.

In every human, she realized, there is a Before and After persona, one innocent and principled, the other bruised and defensive. Somehow, through the grace of the locket and its dream, she had touched the pulse of the former.

Icepick straightened, and with a flick almost too quick to register, pushed the icepick up his sleeve like a magician. Calypso had not even seen it in his hand. A wave of weakness swept over her and instead of gripping the chair like a weapon, she leaned into it for support. They stood staring at one another, each trying to imagine how to go forward from this unexpected juncture.

Suddenly they both flinched in alarm. With a tremendous crash, the door flew violently inward. Lone-R was revealed in the weak light from the hallway, his leg still descending from the mighty kick he had delivered. He rushed into the room, crouched in a fighter's stance, his scarred and leathery knuckles up, his torso weaving.

"You son of a b.i.t.c.h!" he screamed, and he lunged for Icepick, who retreated behind the table.

"Get out! Get out!" he yelled, and Calypso didn't know if he was telling her to run or if he was trying to eject Icepick.

Lone-R caught the edge of the table in one hand, flipped it on edge, and used it as a battering ram to press Icepick against the wall.

Icepick did not fight back. His shoulders and head hit the wall with a sickening thump, and he raised his arms in a gesture of surrender.

"Lone-R!" Calypso shrieked. "No! Stop!"

"This son of a b.i.t.c.h came here to kill you!"

Lone-R slammed the tabletop over and over into Icepick's body, using the full force of his ma.s.sive body. Calypso was reminded of a bullfight she had attended years before, in which the bull trapped the matador against the bullring wall with one horn and then crushed him repeatedly with its vast chest.

Calypso burst into tears. "Lone-R, please! Please stop!" she sobbed. Icepick's eyes were unfocused and she could see he was nearly unconscious. "Please! You've got to listen to me! Stop for G.o.d's sake!"

Something in her tone finally broke through Lone-R's killing rage. He kept the pressure on Icepick, but ceased ramming him. He turned to Calypso with a look of consternation.

"He's gonna kill you, don't you understand?" he asked, shaking his huge head, as if her reaction were too naive to comprehend.

Calypso dashed her tears with the back of her hand.

"We were just negotiating a truce," she panted. "Ask him." She waved her hand at Icepick and then collapsed into the chair, lifting the hem of her long skirt to wipe her eyes.

Lone-R turned again to Icepick and, shoving the tabletop against him with less vigor, snarled, "Well? What about it?"

Icepick tried to answer but couldn't speak. Lone-R backed the pressure off a trifle and Icepick wheezed, "Broken ribs. Can't breathe."

"This a trick?" Lone-R eyed him warily.

Icepick shook his head, his face gone completely white.

"Throw down the icepick then."

He released the pressure of the table, allowing Icepick a small s.p.a.ce in which to lift his hand. Icepick fumbled at his wrist, produced the weapon, and let it drop to the floor. Glancing at Calypso, Lone-R jerked his head at it.

"Go pick it up."

Calypso did as commanded and only then did Lone-R drag the table away from Icepick, who slumped against the wall, groaning.

"Let's get him on the bed," Calypso said, moving to support Icepick. Lone-R joined her and they lifted him carefully. "Do you have a doctor here?" Her tone was urgent but Lone-R was slow to respond in kind.

"Yeah. Bones."

"Go get him."

"I don't wanna leave you alone with him."

"Just go, Lone-R. The poor man can scarcely breathe. I hope a rib hasn't punctured his lung."

Lone-R picked up the icepick and handed it to Calypso.

"If he makes a move, you stick him with this, you hear?" Then he spun toward the door and took off running.

It was several minutes before Lone-R came racing back with Bones. In the meantime, she made Icepick as comfortable as possible, stoked the fire against the chill of the coming dawn, and then pulled the chair beside the bed and bent over the patient solicitously.

"How are you feeling?"

Icepick nodded, looking grim. "Alive," he wheezed.

Calypso smiled at him. "Where there's life, there's hope," she said rea.s.suringly.

She gazed into the fire, debating with herself, and finally asked, "Why did you do it? You had a chance. Lone-R, I mean. I saw how open he was. I saw the icepick in your hand. Why did you put it away?"

She looked at Icepick with something close to affection.

"And of course, don't answer. Talking will only make things worse. I just want you to know that I know. You sacrificed yourself willingly-again."

She wanted to touch him, to soothe him, but refrained. Instead, she began to hum a tune from her childhood, hoping that Icepick might be touched by Dvorak's sad and lilting song.

"Songs my mother taught me/in the days long vanished/Seldom from her eyelids were the teardrops banished..." she sang in a soft, almost whispered soprano, accompanied by the reedy wail of wind beyond the sill.

When tears began to slide down Icepick's face, she bent close to him.

"Do you want me to stop?" she whispered.

He rocked his head on the pillow, no.

Calypso kept singing and humming until she heard footsteps pounding down the hall.

"They're here," she whispered, and wiped away his tears with the hem of her skirt.

Calypso stood before the a.s.sembled Ghosts. Even Icepick, his ribs bound, was propped in a chair among the others, his place guarding the door next to Lone-R taken by El Lobo.

"This room," Father Keat began abruptly, "was the court of the Inquisition. The Jesuits believed in the power of the Inquisition and that was one of the beefs the king had with them. But the ones who built this place weren't about to quit. They would kidnap notorious people from town or local Indians and torture them. Most often, they ended by putting them to death. It's all in the journals they kept. So we all feel right at home here, right brothers?"

The men nodded their agreement. Father Keat shot a crafty look at Calypso.

"How's that make you feel?"

"Queasy."

"Too much blood and guts for you?"

"Yes."

"Well, it's time, then, to tell the rest of the story. Haven't you been wondering why we're wearing these monk clothes?"