There had been several women in Meric’s life since he arrived in the valley; most had been attracted by his growing fame and his association with the mystery of the dragon, and most had left for the same reasons, feeling daunted and unappreciated. But Lise was different in two respects. First, because she loved Meric truly and well; and second, because she was married – albeit unhappily – to a man named Pardiel, the foreman of the calciner crew. She did not love him as she did Meric, yet she respected him and felt obliged to consider carefully before ending the relationship. Meric had never known such an introspective soul. She was twelve years younger than he, tall and lovely, with sun-streaked hair and brown eyes that went dark and seemed to turn inward whenever she was pensive. She was in the habit of analyzing everything that affected her, drawing back from her emotions and inspecting them as if they were a clutch of strange insects she had discovered crawling on her skirt. Though her penchant for self-examination kept her from him, Meric viewed it as a kind of baffling virtue. He had the classic malady and could find no fault with her. For almost a year they were as happy as could be expected; they talked long hours and walked together on those occasions when Pardiel worked double shifts and was forced to bed down by his furnaces, they spent the nights making love in the cavernous spaces beneath the dragon’s wing.

 It was still reckoned an evil place. Something far worse than skizzers or flakes was rumored to live there, and the ravages of this creature were blamed for every disappearance, even that of the most malcontented laborer. But Meric did not give credence to the rumors. He half believed Griaule had chosen him to be his executioner and that the dragon would never let him be harmed; and besides, it was the only place where they could be assured of privacy.

 A crude stair led under the wing, handholds and steps hacked from the scales – doubtless the work of scalehunters. It was a treacherous passage, six hundred feet above the valley floor; but Lise and Meric were secured by ropes, and over the months, driven by the urgency of passion, they adapted to it. Their favorite spot lay fifty feet in (Lise would go no farther; she was afraid even if he was not), near a waterfall that trickled over the leathery folds, causing them to glisten with a mineral brilliance. It was eerily beautiful, a haunted gallery. Peels of dead skin hung down from the shadows like torn veils of ectoplasm; ferns sprouted from the vanes, which were thicker than cathedral columns; swallows curved through the black air. Sometimes, lying with her hidden by a tuck of the wing, Meric would think the beating of their hearts was what really animated the place, that the instant they left, the water ceased flowing and the swallows vanished. He had an unshakable faith in the transforming power of their affections, and one morning as they dressed, preparing to return to Hangtown, he asked her to leave with him.

 ‘To another part of the valley?’ She laughed sadly. ‘What good would that do? Pardiel would follow us.’

 ‘No,’ he said. ‘To another country. Anywhere far from here.’

 ‘We can’t,’ she said, kicking at the wing. ‘Not until Griaule dies. Have you forgotten?’

 ‘We haven’t tried.’

 ‘Others have.’

 ‘But we’d be strong enough. I know it!’

 ‘You’re a romantic,’ she said gloomily, and stared out over the slope of Griaule’s back at the valley. Sunrise had washed the hills to crimson, and even the tips of the wings were glowing a dull red.

 ‘Of course I’m a romantic!’ He stood, angry. ‘What the hell’s wrong with that?’

 She sighed with exasperation. ‘You wouldn’t leave your work,’ she said. ‘And if we did leave, what work would you do? Would – ’

 ‘Why must everything be a problem in advance!’ he shouted. ‘I’ll tattoo elephants! I’ll paint murals on the chests of giants, I’ll illuminate whales! Who else is better qualified?’

 She smiled, and his anger evaporated.

 ‘I didn’t mean it that way,’ she said. ‘I just wondered if you could be satisfied with anything else.’

 She reached out her hand to be pulled up, and he drew her into an embrace. As he held her, inhaling the scent of vanilla water from her hair, he saw a diminutive figure silhouetted against the backdrop of the valley. It did not seem real – a black homunculus – and even when it began to come forward, growing larger and larger, it looked less a man than a magical keyhole opening in a crimson-set hillside. But Meric knew from the man’s rolling walk and the hulking set of his shoulders that it was Pardiel; he was carrying a long-handled hook, one of those used by artisans to maneuver along the scales.

 Meric tensed, and Lise looked back to see what had alarmed him. ‘Oh, my God!’ she said, moving out of the embrace.

 Pardiel stopped a dozen feet away. He said nothing. His face was in shadow, and the hook swung lazily from his hand. Lise took a step toward him, then stepped back and stood in front of Meric as if to shield him. Seeing this, Pardiel let out an inarticulate yell and charged, slashing with the hook. Meric pushed Lise aside and ducked. He caught a brimstone whiff of the calciners as Pardiel rushed past and went sprawling, tripped by some irregularity in the scale. Deathly afraid, knowing he was no match for the foreman, Meric seized Lise’s hand and ran deeper under the wing. He hoped Pardiel would be too frightened to follow, leery of the creature that was rumored to live there; but he was not. He came after them at a measured pace, tapping the hook against his leg.

 Higher on Griaule’s back, the wing was dimpled downward by hundreds of bulges, and this created a maze of small chambers and tunnels so low that they had to crouch to pass along them. The sound of their breathing and the scrape of their feet were amplified by the enclosed spaces, and Meric could no longer hear Pardiel. He had never been this deep before. He had thought it would be pitch-dark; but the lichen and algae adhering to the wing were luminescent and patterned every surface, even the scales beneath them, with whorls of blue and green fire that shed a sickly radiance. It was as if they were giants crawling through a universe whose starry matter had not yet congealed into galaxies and nebulas. In the wan light, Lise’s face – turned back to him now and again – was teary and frantic; and then, as she straightened, passing into still another chamber, she drew in breath with a shriek.

At first Meric thought Pardiel had somehow managed to get ahead of them; but on entering he saw that the cause of her fright was a man propped in a sitting position against the far wall. He looked mummified. Wisps of brittle hair poked up from his scalp, the shapes of his bones were visible through his skin, and his eyes were empty holes. Between his legs was a scatter of dust where his genitals had been. Meric pushed Lise toward the next tunnel, but she resisted and pointed at the man.

‘His eyes,’ she said, horror-struck.

Though the eyes were mostly a negative black, Meric now realized they were shot through by opalescent flickers. He felt compelled to kneel beside the man – it was a sudden, motiveless urge that gripped him, bent him to its will, and released him a second later. As he rested his hand on the scale, he brushed a massive ring that was lying beneath the shrunken fingers. Its stone was black, shot through by flickers identical to those within the eyes, and incised with the letter S. He found his gaze was deflected away from both the stone and the eyes, as if they contained charges repellent to the senses. He touched the man’s withered arm; the flesh was rock-hard, petrified. But alive. From that brief touch he gained an impression of the man’s life, of gazing for centuries at the same patch of unearthly fire, of a mind gone beyond mere madness into a perverse rapture, a meditation upon some foul principle. He snatched back his hand in revulsion.

There was a noise behind them, and Meric jumped up, pushing Lise into the next tunnel. ‘Go right,’ he whispered. ‘We’ll circle back toward the stair.’ But Pardiel was too close to confuse with such tactics, and their flight became a wild chase, scrambling, falling, catching glimpses of Pardiel’s smoke-stained face, until finally – as Meric came to a large chamber – he felt the hook bite into his thigh. He went down, clutching at the wound, pulling the hook loose. The next moment Pardiel was atop him; Lise appeared over his shoulder, but he knocked her away and locked his fingers in Meric’s hair and smashed his head against the scale. Lise screamed, and white lights fired through Meric’s skull. Again his head was smashed down. And again. Dimly, he saw Lise struggling with Pardiel, saw her shoved away, saw the hook raised high and the foreman’s mouth distorted by a grimace. Then the grimace vanished. His jaw dropped open, and he reached behind him as if to scratch his shoulder blade. A line of dark blood eeled from his mouth and he collapsed, smothering Meric beneath his chest. Meric heard voices. He tried to dislodge the body, and the effects drained the last of his strength. He whirled down through a blackness that seemed as negative and inexhaustible as the petrified man’s eyes.

Someone had propped his head on their lap and was bathing his brow with a damp cloth. He assumed it was Lise, but when he asked what had happened, it was Jarcke who answered, saying, ‘Had to kill him.’ His head throbbed, his leg throbbed even worse, and his eyes would not focus. The peels of dead skin hanging overhead appeared to be writhing. He realized they were out near the edge of the wing.

‘Where’s Lise?’

‘Don’t worry,’ said Jarcke. ‘You’ll see her again.’ She made it sound like an indictment.

‘Where is she?’

‘Sent her back to Hangtown. Won’t do you two bein’ seen hand in hand the same day Pardiel’s missin’.’

‘She wouldn’t have left . . .’ He blinked, trying to see her face; the lines around her mouth were etched deep and reminded him of the patterns of lichen on the dragon’s scale. ‘What did you do?’

‘Convinced her it was best,’ said Jarcke. ‘Don’t you know she’s just foolin’ with you?’

‘I’ve got to talk to her.’ He was full of remorse, and it was unthinkable that Lise should be bearing her grief alone; but when he struggled to rise, pain lanced through his leg.

‘You wouldn’t get ten feet,’ she said. ‘Soon as your head’s clear, I’ll help you with the stairs.’

He closed his eyes, resolving to find Lise the instant he got back to Hangtown – together they would decide what to do. The scale beneath him was cool, and that coolness was transmitted to his skin, his flesh, as if he were merging with it, becoming one of its ridges.

‘What was the wizard’s name?’ he asked after a while, recalling the petrified man, the ring and its incised letter. ‘The one who tried to kill Griaule . . .’

‘Don’t know as I ever heard it,’ said Jarcke. ‘But I reckon it’s him back there.’

‘You saw him?’

‘I was chasin’ a scalehunter once what stole some rope, and I found him instead. Pretty miserable sort, whoever he is.’

Her fingers trailed over his shoulder – a gentle, treasuring touch. He did not understand what it signaled, being too concerned with Lise, with the terrifying potentials of all that had happened; but years later, after things had passed beyond remedy, he cursed himself for not having understood.

At length Jarcke helped him to his feet, and they climbed up to Hangtown, to bitter realizations and regrets, leaving Pardiel to the birds or the weather or worse.

It seems it is considered irreligious for a woman in love to hesitate or examine the situation, to do anything other than blindly follow the impulse of her emotions. I felt the brunt of such an attitude – people judged it my fault for not having acted quickly and decisively one way or another. Perhaps I was overcautious. I do not claim to be free of blame, only innocent of sacrilege. I believe I might have eventually left Pardiel – there was not enough in the relationship to sustain happiness for either of us. But I had good reason for cautious examination. My husband was not an evil man, and there were matters of loyalty between us.

I could not face Meric after Pardiel’s death, and I moved to another part of the valley. He tried to see me on many occasions, but I always refused. Though I was greatly tempted, my guilt was greater. Four years later, after Jarcke died – crushed by a runaway wagon – one of her associates wrote and told me Jarcke had been in love with Meric, that it had been she who had informed Pardiel of the affair, and that she may well have staged the murder. The letter acted somewhat to expiate my guilt, and I weighed the possibility of seeing Meric again. But too much time had passed, and we had both assumed other lives. I decided against it. Six years later, when Griaule’s influence had weakened sufficiently to allow emigration, I moved to Port Chantay. I did not hear from Meric for almost twenty years after that, and then one day I received a letter, which I will reproduce in part:

‘. . . My old friend from Regensburg, Louis Dardano, has been living here for the past few years, engaged in writing my biography. The narrative has a breezy feel, like a tale being told in a tavern, which – if you recall my telling you how this all began – is quite appropriate. But on reading it, I am amazed my life has had such a simple shape. One task, one passion. God, Lise! Seventy years old, and I still dream of you. And I still think of what happened that morning under the wing. Strange, that it has taken me all this time to realize it was not Jarcke, not you or I who was culpable, but Griaule. How obvious it seems now. I was leaving, and he needed me to complete the expression on his side, his dream of flying, of escape, to grant him the death of his desire. I am certain you will think I have leaped to this assumption, but I remind you that it has been a leap of forty years’ duration. I know Griaule, know his monstrous subtlety. I can see it at work in every action that has taken place in the valley since my arrival. I was a fool not to understand that his powers were at the heart of our sad conclusion.

 Acne-scarred, lean, arrogant, Major Hauk was a very young major with a limp. When Meric had entered, the major had been practicing his signature – it was a thing of elegant loops and flourishes, obviously intended to have a place in posterity.

As he strode back and forth during their conversation, he paused frequently to admire himself in the window glass, settling the hang of his red jacket or running his fingers along the crease of his white trousers. It was the new style of uniform, the first Meric had seen at close range, and he noted with amusement the dragons embossed on the epaulets. He wondered if Griaule was capable of such an irony, if his influence was sufficiently discreet to have planted the idea for this comic-opera apparel in the brain of some general’s wife.

‘. . . not a question of manpower,’ the major was saying, ‘but of . . .’ He broke off, and after a moment cleared his throat.

Meric, who had been studying the blotches on the backs of his hands, glanced up; the cane that had been resting against his knee slipped and clattered to the floor.

‘A question of materiel,’ said the major firmly. ‘The price of antimony, for example . . .’

‘Hardly use it anymore,’ said Meric. ‘I’m almost done with the mineral reds.’

A look of impatience crossed the major’s face. ‘Very well,’ he said; he stooped to his desk and shuffled through some papers. ‘Ah! Here’s a bill for a shipment of cuttlefish from which you derive . . .’ He shuffled more papers.

‘Syrian brown,’ said Meric gruffly. ‘I’m done with that, too. Golds and violets are all I need anymore. A little blue and rose.’ He wished the man would stop badgering him; he wanted to be at the eye before sunset.

As the major continued his accounting, Meric’s gaze wandered out the window. The shantytown surrounding Griaule had swelled into a city and now sprawled across the hills. Most of the buildings were permanent, wood and stone, and the cant of the roofs, the smoke from the factories around the perimeter, put him in mind of Regensburg. All the natural beauty of the land had been drained into the painting. Blackish gray rain clouds were muscling up from the east, but the afternoon sun shone clear and shed a heavy gold radiance on Griaule’s side. It looked as if the sunlight were an extension of the gleaming resins, as if the thickness of the paint were becoming infinite. He let the major’s voice recede to a buzz and followed the scatter and dazzle of the images; and then, with a start, he realized the major was sounding him out about stopping the work.

The idea panicked him at first. He tried to interrupt, to raise objections; but the major talked through him, and as Meric thought it over, he grew less and less opposed. The painting would never be finished, and he was tired. Perhaps it was time to have done with it, to accept a university post somewhere and enjoy life for a while.

‘We’ve been thinking about a temporary stoppage,’ said Major Hauk. ‘Then if the winter campaign goes well . . .’ He smiled. ‘If we’re not visited by plague and pestilence, we’ll assume things are in hand. Of course we’d like your opinion.’

Meric felt a surge of anger toward this smug little monster. ‘In my opinion, you people are idiots,’ he said. ‘You wear Griaule’s image on your shoulders, weave him on your flags, and yet you don’t have the least comprehension of what that means. You think it’s just a useful symbol . . .’

‘Excuse me,’ said the major stiffly.

‘The hell I will!’ Meric groped for his cane and heaved up to his feet. ‘You see yourselves as conquerors. Shapers of destiny. But all your rapes and slaughters are Griaule’s expressions. His will. You’re every bit as much his parasites as the skizzers.’

The major sat, picked up a pen, and began to write.

‘It astounds me,’ Meric went on, ‘that you can live next to a miracle, a source of mystery, and treat him as if he were an oddly shaped rock.’

The major kept writing.

‘What are you doing?’ asked Meric.

‘My recommendation,’ said the major without looking up.

‘Which is?’

‘That we initiate stoppage at once.’

They exchanged hostile stares, and Meric turned to leave; but as he took hold of the doorknob, the major spoke again.

‘We owe you so much,’ he said; he wore an expression of mingled pity and respect that further irritated Meric.

‘How many men have you killed, Major?’ he asked, opening the door.

‘I’m not sure. I was in the artillery. We were never able to be sure.’

‘Well, I’m sure of my tally,’ said Meric. ‘It’s taken me forty years to amass it. Fifteen hundred and ninety-three men and women. Poisoned, scalded, broken by falls, savaged by animals. Murdered. Why don’t we – you and I – just call it even.’

Though it was a sultry afternoon, he felt cold as he walked toward the tower – an internal cold that left him light-headed and weak. He tried to think what he would do. The idea of a university post seemed less appealing away from the major’s office; he would soon grow weary of worshipful students and in-depth dissections of his work by jealous academics. A man hailed him as he turned into the market. Meric waved but did not stop, and heard another man say, ‘That’s Cattanay?’ (That ragged old ruin?)

The colors of the market were too bright, the smells of charcoal cookery too cloying, the crowds too thick, and he made for the side streets, hobbling past one-room stucco houses and tiny stores where they sold cooking oil by the ounce and cut cigars in half if you could not afford a whole one. Garbage, tornadoes of dust and flies, drunks with bloody mouths. Somebody had tied wires around a pariah dog – a bitch with slack teats; the wires had sliced into her flesh, and she lay panting in an alley mouth, gaunt ribs flecked with pink lather, gazing into nowhere. She, thought Meric, and not Griaule, should be the symbol of their flag.

As he rode the hoist up the side of the tower, he fell into his old habit of jotting down notes for the next day. What’s that cord of wood doing on level five? Slow leak of chrome yellow from pipes on level twelve. Only when he saw a man dismantling some scaffolding did he recall Major Hauk’s recommendation and understand that the order must already have been given. The loss of his work struck home to him then, and he leaned against the railing, his chest constricted and his eyes brimming. He straightened, ashamed of himself. The sun hung in a haze of iron-colored light low above the western hills, looking red and bloated and vile as a vulture’s ruff. That polluted sky was his creation as much as was the painting, and it would be good to leave it behind. Once away from the valley, from all the influences of the place, he would be able to consider the future.

A young girl was sitting on the twentieth level just beneath the eye. Years before, the ritual of viewing the eye had grown to cultish proportions; there had been group chanting and praying and discussions of the experience. But these were more practical times, and no doubt the young men and women who had congregated here were now manning administrative desks somewhere in the burgeoning empire. They were the ones about whom Dardano should write; they, and all the eccentric characters who had played roles in this slow pageant. The gypsy woman who had danced every night by the eye, hoping to charm Griaule into killing her faithless lover – she had gone away satisfied. The man who had tried to extract one of the fangs – nobody knew what had become of him. The scalehunters, the artisans. A history of Hangtown would be a volume in itself.

The walk had left Meric weak and breathless; he sat down clumsily beside the girl, who smiled. He could not remember her name, but she came often to the eye. Small and dark, with an inner reserve that reminded him of Lise. He laughed inwardly – most women reminded him of Lise in some way.

‘Are you all right?’ she asked, her brow wrinkled with concern.

‘Oh, yes,’ he said; he felt a need for conversation to take his mind off things, but he could think of nothing more to say. She was so young! All freshness and gleam and nerves.

‘This will be my last time,’ she said. ‘At least for a while. I’ll miss it.’ And then, before he could ask why, she added, ‘I’m getting married tomorrow, and we’re moving away.’

He offered congratulations and asked her who was the lucky fellow.

‘Just a boy.’ She tossed her hair, as if to dismiss the boy’s importance; she gazed up at the shuttered membrane. ‘What’s it like for you when the eye opens?’ she asked.

‘Like everyone else,’ he said. ‘I remember . . . memories of my life. Other lives, too.’ He did not tell her about Griaule’s memory of flight; he had never told anyone except Lise about that.

‘All those bits of souls trapped in there,’ she said, gesturing at the eye. ‘What do they mean to him? Why does he show them to us?’

‘I imagine he has his purposes, but I can’t explain them.’

‘Once I remembered being with you,’ said the girl, peeking at him shyly through a dark curl. ‘We were under the wing.’

He glanced at her sharply. ‘Tell me.’

‘We were . . . together,’ she said, blushing. ‘Intimate, you know. I was very afraid of the place, of the sounds and shadows. But I loved you so much, it didn’t matter. We made love all night, and I was surprised because I thought that kind of passion was just in stories, something people had invented to make up for how ordinary it really was. And in the morning even that dreadful place had become beautiful, with the wing tips glowing red and the waterfall echoing . . .’ She lowered her eyes. ‘Ever since I had that memory, I’ve been a little in love with you.’

‘Lise,’ he said, feeling helpless before her.

‘Was that her name?’

He nodded and put a hand to his brow, trying to pinch back the emotions that flooded him.

‘I’m sorry.’ Her lips grazed his cheek, and just that slight touch seemed to weaken him further. ‘I wanted to tell you how she felt in case she hadn’t told you herself. She was very troubled by something, and I wasn’t sure she had.’

She shifted away from him, made uncomfortable by the intensity of his reaction, and they sat without speaking. Meric became lost in watching how the sun glazed the scales to reddish gold, how the light was channeled along the ridges in molten streams that paled as the day wound down. He was startled when the girl jumped to her feet and backed toward the hoist.

‘He’s dead,’ she said wonderingly.

Meric looked at her, uncomprehending.

‘See?’ She pointed at the sun, which showed a crimson silver above the hill. ‘He’s dead,’ she repeated, and the expression on her face flowed between fear and exultation.

The idea of Griaule’s death was too large for Meric’s mind to encompass, and he turned to the eye to find a counterproof – no glints of color flickered beneath the membrane. He heard the hoist creak as the girl headed down, but he continued to wait. Perhaps only the dragon’s vision had failed. No. It was likely not a coincidence that work had been officially terminated today. Stunned, he sat staring at the lifeless membrane until the sun sank below the hills; then he stood and went over to the hoist. Before he could throw the switch, the cables thrummed – somebody heading up. Of course. The girl would have spread the news, and all the Major Hauks and their underlings would be hurrying to test Griaule’s reflexes. He did not want to be there when they arrived, to watch them pose with their trophy like successful fishermen.

It was hard work climbing up to the fronto-parietal plate. The ladder swayed, the wind buffeted him, and by the time he clambered onto the plate he was giddy, his chest full of twinges. He hobbled forward and leaned against the rust-caked side of a boiling vat. Shadowy in the twilight, the great furnaces and vats towered around him, and it seemed this system of fiery devices reeking of cooked flesh and minerals was the actual machinery of Griaule’s thought materialized above his skull. Energyless, abandoned. They had been replaced by more efficient equipment down below, and it had been – what was it? – almost five years since they were last used. Cobwebs veiled a pyramid of firewood; the stairs leading to the rims of the vats were crumbling. The plate itself was scarred and coated with sludge.

‘Cattanay!’

Someone shouted from below, and the top of the ladder trembled. God, they were coming after him! Bubbling over with congratulations and plans for testimonial dinners, memorial plaques, specially struck medals. They would have him draped in bunting and bronzed and covered with pigeon shit before they were done. All these years he had been among them, both their slave and their master, yet he had never felt at home. Leaning heavily on his cane, he made his way past the frontal spike – blackened by years of oily smoke – and down between the wings to Hangtown. It was a ghost town, now.

Weeds overgrowing the collapsed shanties; the lake a stinking pit, drained after some children had drowned in the summer of ’91. Where Jarcke’s home had stood was a huge pile of animal bones, taking a pale shine from the half-light. Wind keened through the tattered shrubs.

‘Meric!’ ‘Cattanay.’

The voices were closer.

Well, there was one place where they would not follow.

The leaves of the thickets were speckled with mold and brittle, flaking away as he brushed them. He hesitated at the top of the scalehunters’ stair. He had no rope. Though he had done the climb unaided many times, it had been quite a few years. The gusts of wind, the shouts, the sweep of the valley and the lights scattered across it like diamonds on gray velvet – it all seemed a single inconstant medium. He heard the brush crunch behind him, more voices. To hell with it! Gritting his teeth against a twinge of pain in his shoulder, hooking his cane over his belt, he inched onto the stair and locked his fingers in the handholds. The wind whipped his clothes and threatened to pry him loose and send him pinwheeling off. Once he slipped; once he froze, unable to move backward or forward. But at last he reached the bottom and edged upslope until he found a spot flat enough to stand.

The mystery of the place suddenly bore in upon him, and he was afraid. He half turned to the stair, thinking he would go back to Hangtown and accept the hurly-burly. But a moment later he realized how foolish a thought that was. Waves of weakness poured through him, his heart hammered, and white dazzles flared in his vision. His chest felt heavy as iron. Rattled, he went a few steps forward, the cane pocking the silence. It was too dark to see more than outlines, but up ahead was the fold of wing where he and Lise had sheltered. He walked toward it, intent on revisiting it; then he remembered the girl beneath the eye and understood that he had already said that goodbye. And it was goodbye – that he understood vividly. He kept walking. Blackness looked to be welling from the wing joint, from the entrances to the maze of luminous tunnels where they had stumbled onto the petrified man. Had it really been the old wizard, doomed by magical justice to molder and live on and on? It made sense. At least it accorded with what happened to wizards who slew their dragons.

‘Griaule?’ he whispered to the darkness, and cocked his head, half-expecting an answer. The sound of his voice pointed up the immensity of the great gallery under the wing, the emptiness, and he recalled how vital a habitat it had once been. Flakes shifting over the surface, skizzers, peculiar insects fuming in the thickets, the glum populace of Hangtown, waterfalls. He had never been able to picture Griaule fully alive – that kind of vitality was beyond the powers of the imagination. Yet he wondered if by some miracle the dragon were alive now, flying up through his golden night to the sun’s core. Or had that merely been a dream, a bit of tissue glittering deep in the cold tons of his brain? He laughed. Ask the stars for their first names, and you’d be more likely to receive a reply.

He decided not to walk any farther – it was really no decision. Pain was spreading through his shoulder, so intense he imagined it must be glowing inside. Carefully, carefully, he lowered himself and lay propped on an elbow, hanging on to the cane. Good, magical wood. Cut from a hawthorn atop Griaule’s haunch. A man had once offered him a small fortune for it. Who would claim it now? Probably old Henry Sichi would snatch it for his museum, stick it in a glass case next to his boots. What a joke! He decided to lie flat on his stomach, resting his chin on an arm – the stony coolness beneath acted to muffle the pain. Amusing, how the range of one’s decision dwindled. You decided to paint a dragon, to send hundreds of men searching for malachite and cochineal beetles, to love a woman, to heighten an undertone here and there, and finally to position your body a certain way. He seemed to have reached the end of the process. What next? He tried to regulate his breathing, to ease the pressure on his chest. Then, as something rustled out near the wing joint, he turned on his side. He thought he detected movement, a gleaming blackness flowing toward him . . . or else it was only the haphazard firing of his nerves playing tricks with his vision. More surprised than afraid, wanting to see, he peered into the darkness and felt his heart beating erratically against the dragon’s scale.

Not long after the Christlight of the world’s first morning faded, when birds still flew to heaven and back, and even the wickedest things shone like saints, so pure was their portion of evil, there was a village by the name of Hangtown that clung to the back of the dragon Griaule, a vast mile-long beast who had been struck immobile yet not lifeless by a wizard’s spell, and who ruled over the Carbonales Valley, controlling in every detail the lives of the inhabitants, making known his will by the ineffable radiations emanating from the cold tonnage of his brain. From shoulder to tail, the greater part of Griaule was covered with earth and trees and grass, from some perspectives appearing to be an element of the landscape, another hill among those that ringed the valley; except for sections cleared by the scalehunters, only a portion of his right side to the haunch, and his massive neck and head remained visible, and the head had sunk to the ground, its massive jaws halfway open, itself nearly as high as the crests of the surrounding hills. Situated almost eight hundred feet above the valley floor and directly behind the fronto-parietal plate, which overhung the place like a mossy cliff, the village consisted of several dozen shacks with shingled roofs and walls of weathered planking, and bordered a lake fed by a stream that ran down onto Griaule’s back from an adjoining hill; it was hemmed in against the shore by thickets of chokecherry, stands of stunted oak and hawthornes, and but for the haunted feeling that pervaded the air, a vibrant stillness similar to the atmosphere of an old ruin, to someone standing beside the lake it would seem he was looking out upon an ordinary country settlement, one a touch less neatly ordered than most, littered as it was with the bones and entrails of skizzers and flakes and other parasites that infested the dragon, but nonetheless ordinary in the lassitide that governed it, and the shabby dress and hostile attitudes of its citizenry.

Many of the inhabitants of the village were scalehunters, men and women who scavenged under Griaule’s earth-encrusted wings and elsewhere on his body, searching for scales that were cracked and broken, chipping off fragments and selling these in Port Chantay, where they were valued for their medicinal properties. They were well paid for their efforts, but were treated as pariahs by the people of the valley, who rarely ventured onto the dragon, and their lives were short and fraught with unhappy incident, a circumstance they attributed to the effects of Griaule’s displeasure at their presence. Indeed, his displeasure was a constant preoccupation, and they spent much of their earnings on charms that they believed would ward off its evil influence. Some wore bits of scale around their necks, hoping that this homage would communicate to Griaule the high regard in which they held him, and perhaps the most extreme incidence of this way of thinking was embodied by the nurture given by the widower Riall to his daughter Catherine. On the day of her birth, also the day of his wife’s death, he dug down beneath the floor of his shack until he reached Griaule’s back, laying bare a patch of golden scale some six feet long and five feet wide, and from that day forth for the next eighteen years he forced her to sleep upon the scale, hoping that the dragon’s essence would seep into her and so she would be protected against his wrath. Catherine complained at first about this isolation, but she came to enjoy the dreams that visited her, dreams of flying, of otherworldly climes (according to legend, dragons were native to another universe to which they traveled by flying into the sun); lying there sometimes, looking up through the plank-shored tunnel her father had dug, she would feel that she was not resting on a solid surface but was receding from the earth, falling into a golden distance.

Riall may or may not have achieved his desired end; but it was evident to the people of Hangtown that propinquity to the scale had left its mark on Catherine, for while Riall was short and swarthy (as his wife had also been), physically unprepossessing in every respect, his daughter had grown into a beautiful young woman, long-limbed and slim, with fine golden hair and lovely skin and a face of unsurpassed delicacy, seeming a lapidary creation with its voluptuous mouth and sharp cheekbones and large, eloquent eyes, whose irises were so dark that they could be distinguished from the pupils only under the strongest of lights. Not alone in her beauty did she appear cut from different cloth from her parents; neither did she share their gloomy spirit and cautious approach to life. From earliest childhood she went without fear to every quarter of the dragon’s surface, even into the darkness under the wing joints where few scale-hunters dared go; she believed she had been immunized against ordinary dangers by her father’s tactics, and she felt there was a bond between herself and the dragon, that her dreams and good looks were emblems of both a magical relationship and consequential destiny, and this feeling of invulnerability – along with the confidence instilled by her beauty – gave rise to a certain egocentricity and shallowness of character. She was often disdainful, careless in the handling of lovers’ hearts, and though she did not stoop to duplicity – she had no need of that – she took pleasure in stealing the men whom other women loved. And yet she considered herself a good woman. Not a saint, mind you. But she honored her father and kept the house clean and did her share of work, and though she had her faults, she had taken steps – half-steps, rather – to correct them. Like most people, she had no clear moral determinant, depending upon taboos and specific circumstances to modify her behavior, and the ‘good,’ the principled, was to her a kind of intellectual afterlife to which she planned some day to aspire, but only after she had exhausted the potentials of pleasure and thus gained the experience necessary for the achievement of such an aspiration. She was prone to bouts of moodiness, as were all within the sphere of Griaule’s influence, but generally displayed a sunny disposition and optimistic cast of thought. This is not to say, however, that she was a Pollyanna, an innocent. Through her life in Hangtown she was familiar with treachery, grief, and murder, and at eighteen she had already been with a wide variety of lovers. Her easy sexuality was typical of Hangtown’s populace, yet because of her beauty and the jealousy it had engendered, she had acquired the reputation of being exceptionally wanton. She was amused, even somewhat pleased, by her reputation, but the rumors surrounding her grew more scurrilous, more deviant from the truth, and eventually there came a day when they were brought home to her with a savagery that she could never have presupposed.

Beyond Griaule’s frontal spike, which rose from a point between his eyes, a great whorled horn curving back toward Hangtown, the slope of the skull flattened out into the top of his snout, and it was here that Catherine came one foggy morning, dressed in loose trousers and a tunic, equipped with scaling hooks and ropes and chisels, intending to chip off a sizeable piece of cracked scale she had noticed near the dragon’s lip, a spot directly above one of the fangs. She worked at the piece for several hours, suspended by linkages of rope over Griaule’s lower jaw. His half-open mouth was filled with a garden of evil-looking plants, the calloused surface of his forked tongue showing here and there between the leaves like nodes of red coral; his fangs were inscribed with intricate patterns of lichen, wreathed by streamers of fog and circled by raptors who now and then would plummet into the bushes to skewer some unfortunate lizard or vole. Epiphytes bloomed from splits in the ivory, depending long strings of interwoven red and purple blossoms. It was a compelling sight, and from time to time Catherine would stop working and lower herself in her harness until she was no more than fifty feet above the tops of the bushes and look off into the caliginous depths of Griaule’s throat, wondering at the nature of the shadowy creatures that flitted there.

The sun burned off the fog, and Catherine, sweaty, weary of chipping, hauled herself up to the top of the snout and stretched out on the scales, resting on an elbow, nibbling at a honey pear and gazing out over the valley with its spiny green hills and hammocks of thistle palms and the faraway white buildings of Teocinte, where that very night she planned to dance and make love. The air became so warm that she stripped off her tunic and lay back, bare to the waist, eyes closed, daydreaming in the clean springtime heat. She had been drifting between sleep and waking for the better part of an hour, when a scraping noise brought her alert. She reached for her tunic and started to sit up; but before she could turn to see who or what had made the sound, something fell heavily across her ribs, taking her wind, leaving her gasping and disoriented. A hand groped her breast, and she smelled winy breath.

‘Go easy, now,’ said a man’s voice, thickened with urgency. ‘I don’t want nothing half of Hangtown ain’t had already.’

Catherine twisted her head, and caught a glimpse of Key Willen’s lean, sallow face looming above her, his sardonic mouth hitched at one corner in a half-smile.

‘I told you we’d have our time,’ he said, fumbling with the tie of her trousers.

She began to fight desperately, clawing at his eyes, catching a handful of his long black hair and yanking. She threw herself onto her stomach, clutching at the edge of a scale, trying to worm out from beneath him; but he butted her in the temple, sending white lights shooting through her skull. Once her head had cleared, she found that he had flipped her onto her back, had pulled her trousers down past her hips and penetrated her with his fingers; he was working them in and out, his breath coming hoarse and rapid. She felt raw inside, and she let out a sharp, throat-tearing scream. She thrashed about, tearing at his shirt, his hair, screaming again and again, and when he clamped his free hand to her mouth, she bit it.

‘You bitch! You . . . goddamn . . .’ He slammed the back of her head against the scale, climbed atop her, straddling her chest and pinning her shoulders with his knees. He slapped her, wrapped his hand in her hair, and leaned close, spittle flying to her face as he spoke. ‘You listen up, pig! I don’t much care if you’re awake . . . One way or the other, I’m gonna have my fun.’ He rammed her head into the scale again. ‘You hear me? Hear me?’ He straightened, slapped her harder. ‘Hell, I’m having fun right now.’

‘Please!’ she said, dazed.

‘Please?’ He laughed. ‘That mean you want some more?’ Another slap. ‘You like it?’

Yet another slap.

‘How ’bout that?’

Frantic, she wrenched an arm free, in reflex reaching up behind her head, searching for a weapon, anything, and as he prepared to slap her again, grinning, she caught hold of a stick – or so she thought – and swung it at him in a vicious arc. The point of the scaling hook, for such it was, sank into Key’s flesh just back of his left eye, and as he fell, toppling sideways with only the briefest of outcries, the eye filled with blood, becoming a featureless crimson sphere like a rubber ball embedded in the socket. Catherine shrieked, pushed his legs off her waist and scrambled away, encumbered by her trousers, which had slipped down about her knees. Key’s body convulsed, his heels drumming the scale. She sat staring at him for a long seamless time, unable to catch her breath, to think. But swarms of black flies, their translucent wings shattering the sunlight into prisms, began landing on the puddle of blood that spread wide as a table from beneath Key’s face, and she became queasy. She crawled to the edge of the snout and looked away across the checkerboard of fields below toward Port Chantay, toward an alp of bubbling cumulus building from the horizon. Her chest hollowed with cold, and she started to shake. The tremors passing through her echoed the tremor she had felt in Key’s body when the hook had hit into his skull. All the sickness inside her, her shock and disgust at the violation, at confronting the substance of death, welled up in her throat and her stomach emptied. When she had finished she cinched her trousers tight, her fingers clumsy with the knot. She thought she should do something. Coil the ropes, maybe. Store the harness in her pack. But these actions, while easy to contemplate, seemed impossibly complex to carry out. She shivered and hugged herself, feeling the altitude, the distances. Her cheeks were feverish and puffy; flickers of sensation – she pictured them to be iridescent worms – tingled nerves in her chest and legs. She had the idea that everything was slowing, that time had flurried and was settling the way river mud settles after the passage of some turbulence. She stared off toward the dragon’s horn. Someone was standing there. Coming toward her, now. At first she watched the figure approach with a defiant disinterest, wanting to guard her privacy, feeling that if she had to speak she would lose control of her emotions. But as the figure resolved into one of her neighbors back in Hangtown – Brianne, a tall young woman with brittle good looks, dark brown hair and an olive complexion – she relaxed from this attitude. She and Brianne were not friends; in fact, they had once been rivals for the same man. However, that had been a year and more in the past, and Catherine was relieved to see her. More than relieved. The presence of another woman allowed her to surrender to weakness, believing that in Brianne she would find a fund of natural sympathy because of their common sex.

‘My God, what happened?’ Brianne kneeled and brushed Catherine’s hair back from her eyes. The tenderness of the gesture burst the dam of Catherine’s emotions, and punctuating the story with sobs, she told of the rape.

‘I didn’t mean to kill him,’ she said. ‘I . . . I’d forgotten about the hook.’

‘Key was looking to get killed,’ Brianne said. ‘But it’s a damn shame you had to be the one to help him along.’ She sighed, her forehead creased by a worry line. ‘I suppose I should fetch someone to take care of the body. I know that’s not . . .’

‘No, I understand . . . it has to be done.’ Catherine felt stronger, more capable. She made as if to stand, but Brianne restrained her.

‘Maybe you should wait here. You know how people will be. They’ll see your face,’ – she touched Catherine’s swollen cheeks – ‘and they’ll be prying, whispering. It might be better to let the mayor come out and make his investigation. That way he can take the edge off the gossip before it gets started.’

Catherine didn’t want to be alone with the body any longer, but she saw the wisdom in waiting and agreed.

‘Will you be all right?’ Brianne asked.

‘I’ll be fine . . . but hurry.’

‘I will.’ Brianne stood; the wind feathered her hair, lifted it to veil the lower half of her face. ‘You’re sure you’ll be all right?’ There was an odd undertone in her voice, as if it were really another question she was asking, or – and this, Catherine thought, was more likely – as if she were thinking ahead to dealing with the mayor.

Catherine nodded, then caught at Brianne as she started to walk away. ‘Don’t tell my father. Let me tell him. If he hears it from you, he might go after the Willens.’

‘I won’t say a thing, I promise.’

With a smile, a sympathetic pat on the arm, Brianne headed back toward Hangtown, vanishing into the thickets that sprang up beyond the frontal spike. For awhile after she had gone, Catherine felt wrapped in her consolation; but the seething of the wind, the chill that infused the air as clouds moved in to cover the sun, these things caused the solitude of the place and the grimness of the circumstance to close down around her, and she began to wish she had returned to Hangtown. She squeezed her eyes shut, trying to steady herself, but even then she kept seeing Key’s face, his bloody eye, and remembering his hands on her. Finally, thinking that Brianne had had more than enough time to accomplish her task, she walked up past the frontal spike and stood looking out along the narrow trail that wound through the thickets on Griaule’s back. Several minutes elapsed, and then she spotted three figures – two men and a woman – coming at a brisk pace. She shaded her eyes against a ray of sun that had broken through the overcast, and peered at them. Neither man had the gray hair and portly shape of Hangtown’s mayor. They were lanky, pale, with black hair falling to their shoulders, and were carrying unsheathed knives. Catherine couldn’t make out their faces, but she realized that Brianne must not have set aside their old rivalry, that in the spirit of vengeance she had informed Key’s brothers of his death.

Fear cut through the fog of shock, and she tried to think what to do. There was only the one trail and no hope that she could hide in the thickets. She retreated toward the edge of the snout, stepping around the patch of drying blood. Her only chance for escape would be to lower herself on the ropes and take refuge in Griaule’s mouth; however, the thought of entering so ominous a place, a place shunned by all but the mad, gave her pause. She tried to think of alternatives, but there were none. Brianne would no doubt have lied to the Willens, cast her as the guilty party, and the brothers would never listen to her. She hurried to the edge, buckled on the harness and slipped over the side, working with frenzied speed, lowering in ten and fifteen foot drops. Her view of the mouth lurched and veered – a panorama of bristling leaves and head-high ferns, enormous fangs hooking up from the jaw and pitch-dark emptiness at the entrance to the throat. She was fifty feet from the surface when she felt the rope jerking, quivering; glancing up, she saw that one of the Willens was sawing at it with his knife. Her heart felt hot and throbbing in her chest, her palms were slick. She dropped half the distance to the jaw, stopping with a jolt that sent pain shooting through her spine and left her swinging back and forth, muddle-headed. She began another drop, a shorter one, but the rope parted high above and she fell the last twenty feet, landing with such stunning force that she lost consciousness.

She came to in a bed of ferns, staring up through the fronds at the dull brick-colored roof of Griaule’s mouth, a surface festooned with spiky dark green epiphytes, like the vault of a cathedral that had been invaded by the jungle. She lay still for a moment, gathering herself, testing the aches that mapped her body to determine if anything was broken. A lump sprouted from the back of her head, but the brunt of the impact had been absorbed by her rear end, and though she felt pain there, she didn’t think the damage was severe. Moving cautiously, wincing, she came to her knees and was about to stand when she heard shouts from above.

‘See her?’

‘Naw . . . you?’

‘She musta gone deeper in!’

Catherine peeked between the fronds and saw two dark figures centering networks of ropes, suspended a hundred feet or so overhead like spiders with simple webs. They dropped lower, and panicked, she crawled on her belly away from the mouth, hauling herself along by gripping twists of dead vine that formed a matte underlying the foliage. After she had gone about fifty yards she looked back. The Willens were hanging barely a dozen feet above the tops of the bushes, and as she watched they lowered out of sight. Her instincts told her to move deeper into the mouth, but the air was considerably darker where she now kneeled than where she had landed – a grayish green gloom – and the idea of penetrating the greater darkness of Griaule’s throat stalled her heart. She listened for the Willens and heard slitherings, skitterings, and rustles. Eerie whistles that, although soft, were complex and articulated. She imagined that these were not the cries of tiny creatures but the gutterings of breath in a huge throat, and she had a terrifying sense of the size of the place, of her own relative insignificance. She couldn’t bring herself to continue in deeper, and she made her way toward the side of the mouth, where thick growths of ferns flourished in the shadow. When she reached a spot at which the mouth sloped upward, she buried herself among the ferns and kept very still.

Next to her head was an irregular patch of pale red flesh, where a clump of soil had been pulled away by an uprooted plant. Curious, she extended a forefinger and found it cool and dry. It was like touching stone or wood, and that disappointed her; she had, she realized, been hoping the touch would affect her in some extreme way. She pressed her palm to the flesh, trying to detect the tic of a pulse, but the flesh was inert, and the rustlings and the occasional beating of wings overhead were the only signs of life. She began to grow drowsy, to nod, and she fought to keep awake. But after a few minutes she let herself relax. The more she examined the situation, the more convinced she became that the Willens would not track her this far; the extent of their nerve would be to wait at the verge of the mouth, to lay siege to her, knowing that eventually she would have to seek food and water. Thinking about water made her thirsty, but she denied the craving. She needed rest far more. And removing one of the scaling hooks from her belt, holding it in her right hand in case some animal less cautious than the Willens happened by, she pillowed her head against the pale red patch of Griaule’s flesh and was soon fast asleep.

 Many of Catherine’s dreams over the years had seemed sendings rather than distillations of experience, but never had she had one so clearly of that character as the dream she had that afternoon in Griaule’s mouth. It was a simple dream, formless, merely a voice whose words less came to her ear than enveloped her, steeping her in their meanings, and of them she retained only a message of reassurance, of security, one so profound that it instilled in her a confidence that lasted even after she waked into a world gone black, the sole illumination being the gleams of reflected firelight that flowed along the curve of one of the fangs. It was an uncanny sight, that huge tooth glazed with fierce red shine, and under other circumstances she would have been frightened by it; but in this instance she did not react to the barbarity of the image and saw it instead as evidence that her suppositions concerning the Willens had been correct. They had built a fire near the lip and were watching for her, expecting her to bolt into their arms. But she had no intention of fulfilling their expectations. Although her confidence flickered on and off, although to go deeper into the dragon seemed irrational, she knew that any other course offered the certainty of a knife stroke across the neck. And, too, despite the apparent rationality of her decision, she had an unshakable feeling that Griaule was watching over her, that his will was being effected. She had a flash vision of Key Willen’s face, his gaping mouth and blood-red eye, and recalled her terror at his assault. However, these memories no longer harrowed her. They steadied her, resolving certain questions that – while she had never asked them – had always been there to ask. She hadn’t been to blame in any way for the rape, she had not tempted Key. But she saw that she had left herself open to tragedy by her aimlessness, by her reliance on a vague sense of destiny to give life meaning. Now it appeared that her destiny was at hand, and she understood that its violent coloration might have been different had she been different, had she engaged the world with energy and not with a passive attitude. She hoped that knowing all this would prove important, but she doubted that it would, believing that she had gone too far on the wrong path for any degree of knowledge to matter.

It took all her self-control to begin her journey inward, feeling her way along the side of the throat, pushing through ferns and cobwebs, her hands encountering unfamiliar textures that made her skin crawl, alert to the burbling of insects and other night creatures. On one occasion she was close to turning back, but she heard shouts behind her, and fearful that the Willens were on her trail, she kept going. As she started down an incline, she saw a faint gleam riding the curve of the throat wall. The glow brightened, casting the foliage into silhouette, and eager to reach the source, she picked up her pace, tripping over roots, vines snagging her ankles. At length the incline flattened out, and she emerged into a large chamber, roughly circular in shape, its upper regions lost in darkness; upon the floor lay pools of black liquid; mist trailed across the surface of the pools, and whenever the mist lowered to touch the liquid, a fringe of yellowish red flame would flare up, cutting the shadows on the pebbled skin of the floor and bringing to light a number of warty knee-high protuberances that sprouted among the pools – these were deep red in color, perforated around the sides, leaking pale threads of mist. At the rear of the chamber was an opening that Catherine assumed led farther into the dragon. The air was warm, dank, and a sweat broke out all over her body. She balked at entering the chamber; in spite of the illumination, it was a less human place than the mouth. But once again she forced herself onward, stepping carefully between the fires and, after discovering that the mist made her giddy, giving the protuberances a wide berth. Piercing whistles came from above. The notion that this might signal the presence of bats caused her to hurry, and she had covered half the distance across when a man’s voice called to her, electrifying her with fear.

‘Catherine!’ he said. ‘Not so fast!’

She spun about, her scaling hook at the ready. Hobbling toward her was an elderly white-haired man dressed in the ruin of a silk frock coat embroidered with gold thread, a tattered ruffled shirt, and holed satin leggings. In his left hand he carried a gold-knobbed cane, and at least a dozen glittering rings encircled his bony fingers. He stopped an arm’s length away, leaning on his cane, and although Catherine did not lower her hook, her fear diminished. Despite the eccentricity of his appearance, considering the wide spectrum of men and creatures who inhabited Griaule, he seemed comparatively ordinary, a reason for caution but not alarm.

‘Ordinary?’ The old man cackled. ‘Oh yes, indeed! Ordinary as angels, as unexceptional as the idea of God!’ Before she had a chance to wonder at his knowledge of her thoughts, he let out another cackle. ‘How could I not know them? We are every one of us creatures of his thought, expressions of his whim. And here what is only marginally evident on the surface becomes vivid reality, inescapable truth. For here,’ – he poked the chamber floor with his cane – ‘here we live in the medium of his will.’ He hobbled a step closer, fixing her with a rheumy stare. ‘I have dreamed this moment a thousand times. I know what you will say, what you will think, what you will do. He has instructed me in all your particulars so that I may become your guide, your confidant.’

‘What are you talking about?’ Catherine hefted her hook, her anxiety increasing.

‘Not “what,”’ said the old man. ‘Who.’ A grin split the pale wrinkled leather of his face. ‘His Scaliness, of course.’

‘Griaule?’

‘None other.’ The old man held out his hand. ‘Come along now, girl. They’re waiting for us.’

Catherine drew back.

The old man pursed his lips. ‘Well, I suppose you could return the way you came. The Willens will be happy to see you.’

Flustered, Catherine said, ‘I don’t understand. How can you know . . .’

‘Know your name, your peril? Weren’t you listening? You are of Griaule, daughter. And more so than most, for you have slept at the center of his dreams. Your entire life has been prelude to this time, and your destiny will not be known until you come to the place from which his dreams arise . . . the dragon’s heart.’ He took her hand. ‘My name is Amos Mauldry. Captain Amos Mauldry, at your service. I have waited years for you . . . years! I am to prepare you for the consummate moment of your life. I urge you to follow me, to join the company of the Feelys and begin your preparation. But,’ – he shrugged – ‘the choice is yours. I will not coerce you more than I have done . . . except to say this. Go with me now, and when you return you will discover that you have nothing to fear of the Willen brothers.’

He let loose of her hand and stood gazing at her with calm regard. She would have liked to disregard his words, but they were in such accord with all she had ever felt about her association with the dragon, she found that she could not. ‘Who,’ she asked, ‘are the Feelys?’

He made a disparaging noise. ‘Harmless creatures. They pass their time copulating and arguing among themselves over the most trivial of matters. Were they not of service to Griaule, keeping him free of certain pests, they would have no use whatsoever. Still, there are worse folk in the world, and they do have moments in which they shine.’ He shifted impatiently, tapped his cane on the chamber floor. ‘You’ll meet them soon enough. Are you with me or not?’

Grudgingly, her hook at the ready, Catherine followed Mauldry toward the opening at the rear of the chamber and into a narrow, twisting channel illuminated by a pulsing golden light that issued from within Griaule’s flesh. This radiance, Mauldry said, derived from the dragon’s blood, which, while it did not flow, was subject to fluctuations in brilliance due to changes in its chemistry. Or so he believed. He had regained his lighthearted manner, and as they walked he told Catherine he had captained a cargo ship that plied between Port Chantay and the Pearl Islands.

‘We carried livestock, breadfruit, whale oil,’ he said. ‘I can’t think of much we didn’t carry. It was a good life, but hard as hard gets, and after I retired . . . well, I’d never married, and with time on my hands, I figured I owed myself some high times. I decided I’d see the sights, and the sight I most wanted to see was Griaule. I’d heard he was the First Wonder of the World . . . and he was! I was amazed, flabbergasted. I couldn’t get enough of seeing him. He was more than a wonder. A miracle, an absolute majesty of a creature. People warned me to keep clear of the mouth, and they were right. But I couldn’t stay away. One evening – I was walking along the edge of the mouth – two scalehunters set upon me, beat and robbed me. Left me for dead. And I would have died if it hadn’t been for the Feelys.’ He clucked his tongue. ‘I suppose I might as well give you some of their background. It can’t help but prepare you for them . . . and I admit they need preparing for. They’re not in the least agreeable to the eye.’ He cocked an eye toward Catherine, and after a dozen steps more he said, ‘Aren’t you going to ask me to proceed?’

‘You didn’t seem to need encouragement,’ she said.

He chuckled, nodding his approval. ‘Quite right, quite right.’ He walked on in silence, his shoulders hunched and head inclined, like an old turtle who’d learned to get about on two legs.

‘Well?’ said Catherine, growing annoyed.

‘I knew you’d ask,’ he said, and winked at her. ‘I didn’t know who they were myself at first. If I had known I’d have been terrified. There are about five or six hundred in the colony. Their numbers are kept down by childbirth mortality and various other forms of attrition. They’re most of them the descendants of a retarded man named Feely who wandered into the mouth almost a thousand years ago. Apparently he was walking near the mouth when flights of birds and swarms of insects began issuing from it. Not just a few, mind you. Entire populations. Wellsir, Feely was badly frightened. He was sure that some terrible beast had chased all these lesser creatures out, and he tried to hide from it. But he was so confused that instead of running away from the mouth, he ran into it and hid in the bushes. He waited for almost a day . . . no beast. The only sign of danger was a muffled thud from deep within the dragon. Finally his curiosity overcame his fear, and he went into the throat.’ Mauldry hawked and spat. ‘He felt secure there. More secure than on the outside, at any rate. Doubtless Griaule’s doing, that feeling. He needed the Feelys to be happy so they’d settle down and be his exterminators. Anyway, the first thing Feely did was to bring in a madwoman he’d known in Teocinte, and over the years they recruited other madmen who happened along. I was the first sane person they’d brought into the fold. They’re extremely chauvinistic regarding the sane. But of course they were directed by Griaule to take me in. He knew you’d need someone to talk to.’ He prodded the wall with his cane. ‘And now this is my home. More than a home. It’s my truth, my love. To live here is to be transfigured.’

‘That’s a bit hard to swallow,’ said Catherine.

‘Is it, now? You of all those who dwell on the surface should understand the scope of Griaule’s virtues. There’s no greater security than that he offers, no greater comprehension than that he bestows.’

‘You make him sound like a god.’

Mauldry stopped walking, looking at her askance. The golden light waxed bright, filling in his wrinkles with shadows, making him appear to be centuries old. ‘Well, what do you think he is?’ he asked with an air of mild indignation. ‘What else could he be?’

Another ten minutes brought them to a chamber even more fabulous than the last. In shape it was oval, like an egg with a flattened bottom stood on end, an egg some 150 feet high and a bit more than half that in diameter. It was lit by the same pulsing golden glow that had illuminated the channel, but here the fluctuations were more gradual and more extreme, ranging from a murky dimness to a glare approaching that of full daylight. The upper two thirds of the chamber wall were obscured by stacked ranks of small cubicles, leaning together at rickety angles, a geometry lacking the precision of the cells of a honey-comb, yet reminiscent of such, as if the bees that constructed it had been drunk. The entrances of the cubicles were draped with curtains, and lashed to their sides were ropes, rope ladders, and baskets that functioned as elevators, several of which were in use, lowering and lifting men and women dressed in a style similar to Mauldry: Catherine was reminded of a painting she had seen depicting the roof warrens of Port Chantay; but those habitations, while redolent of poverty and despair, had not as did these evoked an impression of squalid degeneracy, of order lapsed into the perverse. The lower portion of the chamber (and it was in this area that the channel emerged) was covered with a motley carpet composed of bolts of silk and satin and other rich fabrics, and seventy or eighty people were strolling and reclining on the gentle slopes. Only the center had been left clear, and there a gaping hole led away into yet another section of the dragon; a system of pipes ran into the hole, and Mauldry later explained that these carried the wastes of the colony into a pit of acids that had once fueled Griaule’s fires. The dome of the chamber was choked with mist, the same pale stuff that had been vented from the protuberances in the previous chamber; birds with black wings and red markings on their heads made wheeling flights in and out of it, and frail scarves of mist drifted throughout. There was a sickly sweet odor to the place, and Catherine heard a murmurous rustling that issued from every quarter.

‘Well,’ said Mauldry, making a sweeping gesture with his cane that included the entire chamber. ‘What do you think of our little colony?’

Some of the Feelys had noticed them and were edging forward in small groups, stopping, whispering agitatedly among themselves, then edging forward again, all with the hesitant curiosity of savages; and although no signal had been given, the curtains over the cubicle entrances were being thrown back, heads were poking forth, and tiny figures were shinnying down the ropes, crowding into baskets, scuttling downward on the rope ladders, hundreds of people beginning to hurry toward her at a pace that brought to mind the panicked swarming of an anthill. And on first glance they seemed alike as ants. Thin and pale and stooped, with sloping, nearly hairless skulls, and weepy eyes and thick-lipped slack mouths, like ugly children in their rotted silks and satins. Closer and closer they came, those in front pushed by the swelling ranks at their rear, and Catherine, unnerved by their stares, ignoring Mauldry’s attempts to soothe her, retreated into the channel. Mauldry turned to the Feelys, brandishing his cane as if it were a victor’s sword, and cried, ‘She is here! He has brought her to us at last! She is here!’

His words caused several of those at the front of the press to throw back their heads and loose a whinnying laughter that went higher and higher in pitch as the golden light brightened. Others in the crowd lifted their hands, palms outward, holding them tight to their chests, and made little hops of excitement, and others yet twitched their heads from side to side, cutting their eyes this way and that, their expressions flowing between belligerence and confusion, apparently unsure of what was happening. This exhibition, clearly displaying the Feelys’ retardation, the tenuousness of their self-control, dismayed Catherine still more. But Mauldry seemed delighted and continued to exhort them, shouting, ‘She is here,’ over and over. His outcry came to rule the Feelys, to orchestrate their movements. They began to sway, to repeat his words, slurring them so that their response was in effect a single word, ‘Shees’eer, Shees’eer,’ that reverberated through the chamber, acquiring a rolling echo, a hissing sonority, like the rapid breathing of a giant.

The sound washed over Catherine, enfeebling her with its intensity, and she shrank back against the wall of the channel, expecting the Feelys to break ranks and surround her; but they were so absorbed in their chanting, they appeared to have forgotten her. They milled about, bumping into one another, some striking out in anger at those who had impeded their way, others embracing and giggling, engaging in sexual play, but all of them keeping up the chorus of shouts.

Mauldry turned to her, his eyes giving back gleams of the golden light, his face looking in its vacuous glee akin to those of the Feelys, and holding out his hands to her, his tone manifesting the bland sincerity of a priest, he said, ‘Welcome home.’

 Catherine was housed in two rooms halfway up the chamber wall, an apartment that adjoined Mauldry’s quarters and was furnished with a rich carpeting of silks and furs and embroidered pillows; on the walls, also draped in these materials, hung a mirror with a gem-studded frame and two oil paintings – this bounty, said Mauldry, all part of Griaule’s hoard, the bulk of which lay in a cave west of the valley, its location known only to the Feelys. One of the rooms contained a large basin for bathing, but since water was at a premium – being collected from points at which it seeped in through the scales – she was permitted one bath a week and no more. Still, the apartment and the general living conditions were on a par with those in Hangtown, and had it not been for the Feelys, Catherine might have felt at home. But except in the case of the woman Leitha, who served her meals and cleaned, she could not overcome her revulsion at their inbred appearance and demented manner. They seemed to be responding to stimuli that she could not perceive, stopping now and then to cock an ear to an inaudible call or to stare at some invisible disturbance in the air. They scurried up and down the ropes to no apparent purpose, laughing and chattering, and they engaged in mass copulations at the bottom of the chamber. They spoke a mongrel dialect that she could barely understand, and they would hang on ropes outside her apartment, arguing, offering criticism of one another’s dress and behavior, picking at the most insignificant of flaws and judging them according to an intricate code whose niceties Catherine was unable to master. They would follow her wherever she went, never sharing the same basket, but descending or ascending alongside her, staring, shrinking away if she turned her gaze upon them. With their foppish rags, their jewels, their childish pettiness and jealousies, they both irritated and frightened her; there was a tremendous tension in the way they looked at her, and she had the idea that at any moment they might lose their awe of her and attack.

She kept to her rooms those first weeks, brooding, trying to invent some means of escape, her solitude broken only by Leitha’s ministrations and Mauldry’s visits. He came twice daily and would sit among the pillows, declaiming upon Griaule’s majesty, his truth. She did not enjoy the visits. The righteous quaver in his voice aroused her loathing, reminding her of the mendicant priests who passed now and then through Hangtown, leaving bastards and empty purses in their wake. She found his conversation for the most part boring, and when it did not bore, she found it disturbing in its constant references to her time of trial at the dragon’s heart. She had no doubt that Griaule was at work in her life. The longer she remained in the colony, the more vivid her dreams became and the more certain she grew that his purpose was somehow aligned with her presence there. But the pathetic condition of the Feelys shed a wan light on her old fantasies of a destiny entwined with the dragon’s, and she began to see herself in that wan light, to experience a revulsion at her fecklessness equal to that she felt toward those around her.

‘You are our salvation,’ Mauldry told her one day as she sat sewing herself a new pair of trousers – she refused to dress in the gilt and satin rags preferred by the Feelys. ‘Only you can know the mystery of the dragon’s heart, only you can inform us of his deepest wish for us. We’ve known this for years.’

Seated amid the barbaric disorder of silks and furs, Catherine looked out through a gap in the curtains, watching the waning of the golden light. ‘You hold me prisoner,’ she said. ‘Why should I help you?’

‘Would you leave us, then?’ Mauldry asked. ‘What of the Willens?’

‘I doubt they’re still waiting for me. Even if they are, it’s only a matter of which death I prefer, a lingering one here or a swift one at their hands.’

Mauldry fingered the gold knob of his cane. ‘You’re right,’ he said. ‘The Willens are no longer a menace.’

She glanced up at him.

‘They died the moment you went down out of Griaule’s mouth,’ he said. ‘He sent his creatures to deal with them, knowing you were his at long last.’

Catherine remembered the shouts she’d heard while walking down the incline of the throat. ‘What creatures?’

‘That’s of no importance,’ said Mauldry. ‘What is important is that you apprehend the subtlety of his power, his absolute mastery and control over your thoughts, your being.’

‘Why?’ she asked. ‘Why is that important?’ He seemed to be struggling to explain himself, and she laughed. ‘Lost touch with your god, Mauldry? Won’t he supply the appropriate cant?’

Mauldry composed himself. ‘It is for you, not I, to understand why you are here. You must explore Griaule, study the miraculous workings of his flesh, involve yourself in the intricate order of his being.’

In frustration, Catherine punched at a pillow. ‘If you don’t let me go, I’ll die! This place will kill me. I won’t be around long enough to do any exploring.’

‘Oh, but you will.’ Mauldry favored her with an unctuous smile. ‘That, too, is known to us.’

Ropes creaked, and a moment later the curtains parted, and Leitha, a young woman in a gown of watered blue taffeta, whose bodice pushed up the pale nubs of her breasts, entered bearing Catherine’s dinner tray. She set down the tray. ‘Be mo’, ma’am?’ she said. ‘Or mus’ I later c’meah.’ She gazed fixedly at Catherine, her close-set brown eyes blinking, fingers plucking at the folds of her gown.

‘Whatever you want,’ Catherine said.

Leitha continued to stare at her, and only when Mauldry spoke sharply to her, did she turn and leave.

Catherine looked down disconsolately at the tray and noticed that in addition to the usual fare of greens and fruit (gathered from the dragon’s mouth) there were several slices of underdone meat, whose reddish hue appeared identical to the color of Griaule’s flesh. ‘What’s this?’ she asked, poking at one of the slices.

‘The hunters were successful today,’ said Mauldry. ‘Every so often hunting parties are sent into the digestive tract. It’s quite dangerous, but there are beasts there that can injure Griaule. It serves him that we hunt them, and their flesh nourishes us.’ He leaned forward, studying her face. ‘Another party is going out tomorrow. Perhaps you’d care to join them. I can arrange it if you wish. You’ll be well protected.’

Catherine’s initial impulse was to reject the invitation, but then she thought that this might offer an opportunity for escape; in fact, she realized that to play upon Mauldry’s tendencies, to evince interest in a study of the dragon, would be a wise move. The more she learned about Griaule’s geography, the greater chance there would be that she would find a way out.

‘You said it was dangerous . . . How dangerous?’

‘For you? Not in the least. Griaule would not harm you. But for the hunting party, well . . . lives will be lost.’

‘And they’re going out tomorrow?’

‘Perhaps the next day as well. We’re not sure how extensive an infestation is involved.’

‘What kind of beast are you talking about?’

‘Serpents of a sort.’

Catherine’s enthusiasm was dimmed, but she saw no other means of taking action. ‘Very well. I’ll go with them tomorrow.’

‘Wonderful, wonderful!’ It took Mauldry three tries to heave himself up from the cushion, and when at last he managed to stand, he leaned on his cane, breathing heavily. ‘I’ll come for you early in the morning.’

‘You’re going, too? You don’t seem up to the exertion.’

Mauldry chuckled. ‘It’s true, I’m an old man. But where you’re concerned, daughter, my energies are inexhaustible.’ He performed a gallant bow and hobbled from the room.

Not long after he had left, Leitha returned. She drew a second curtain across the entrance, cutting the light, even at its most brilliant, to a dim effusion. Then she stood by the entrance, eyes fixed on Catherine. ‘Wan’ mo’ fum Leitha?’ she asked.

The question was not a formality. Leitha had made it plain by touches and other signs that Catherine had but to ask and she would come to her as a lover. Her deformities masked by the shadowy air, she had the look of a pretty young girl dressed for a dance, and for a moment, in the grip of loneliness and despair, watching Leitha alternately brightening and merging with gloom, listening to the unceasing murmur of the Feelys from without, aware in full of the tribal strangeness of the colony and her utter lack of connection, Catherine felt a bizarre arousal. But the moment passed, and she was disgusted with herself, with her weakness, and angry at Leitha and this degenerate place that was eroding her humanity. ‘Get out,’ she said coldly, and when Leitha hesitated, she shouted the command, sending the girl stumbling backwards from the room. Then she turned onto her stomach, her face pressed into a pillow, expecting to cry, feeling the pressure of a sob building in her chest; but the sob never manifested, and she lay there, knowing her emptiness, feeling that she was no longer worthy of even her own tears.

Behind one of the cubicles in the lower half of the chamber was hidden the entrance to a wide circular passage ringed by ribs of cartilage, and it was along this passage the next morning that Catherine and Mauldry, accompanied by thirty male Feelys, set out upon the hunt. They were armed with swords and bore torches to light the way, for here Griaule’s veins were too deeply embedded to provide illumination; they walked in a silence broken only by coughs and the soft scraping of their footsteps. The silence, such a contrast from the Feelys’ usual chatter, unsettled Catherine, and the flaring and guttering of the torches, the apparition of a backlit pale face turned toward her, the tingling acidic scent that grew stronger and stronger, all this assisted her impression that they were lost souls treading some byway in Hell.

Their angle of descent increased, and shortly thereafter they reached a spot from which Catherine had a view of a black distance shot through with intricate networks of fine golden skeins, like spiderwebs of gold in a night sky. Mauldry told her to wait, and the torches of the hunting party moved off, making it clear that they had come to a large chamber; but she did not understand just how large until a fire suddenly bloomed, bursting into towering flames: an enormous bonfire composed of sapling trunks and entire bushes. The size of the fire was impressive in itself, but the immense cavity of the stomach that it partially revealed was more impressive yet. It could not have been less than two hundred yards long, and was walled with folds of thin whitish skin figured by lacings and branchings of veins, attached to curving ribs covered with even thinner skin that showed their every articulation. A quarter of the way across the cavity, the floor declined into a sink brimming with a dark liquid, and it was along a section of the wall close to the sink that the bonfire had been lit, its smoke billowing up toward a bruised patch of skin some fifty feet in circumference with a tattered rip at the center. As Catherine watched the entire patch began to undulate. The hunting party gathered beneath it, ranged around the bonfire, their swords raised. Then, with ponderous slowness a length of thick white tubing was extruded from the rip, a gigantic worm that lifted its blind head above the hunting party, opened a mouth fringed with palps to expose a dark red maw and emitted a piercing squeal that touched off echoes and made Catherine put her hands to her ears. More and more of the worm’s body emerged from the stomach wall, and she marveled at the courage of the hunting party, who maintained their ground. The worm’s squealing became unbearably loud as smoke enveloped it; it lashed about, twisting and probing at the air with its head, and then, with an even louder cry, it fell across the bonfire, writhing, sending up showers of sparks. It rolled out of the fire, crushing several of the party; the others set to with their swords, hacking in a frenzy at the head, painting streaks of dark blood over the corpse-pale skin. Catherine realized that she had pressed her fists to her cheeks and was screaming, so involved was she in the battle. The worm’s blood spattered the floor of the cavity, its skin was charred and blistered from the flames, and its head was horribly slashed, the flesh hanging in ragged strips. But it continued to squeal, humping up great sections of its body, forming an arch over groups of attackers and dropping down upon them. A third of the hunting party lay motionless, their limbs sprawled in graceless attitudes, the remnants of the bonfire – heaps of burning branches – scattered among them; the rest stabbed and sliced at the increasingly torpid worm, dancing away from its lunges. At last the worm lifted half its body off the floor, its head held high, silent for a moment, swaying with the languor of a mesmerized serpent. It let out a cry like the whistle of a monstrous tea kettle, a cry that seemed to fill the cavity with its fierce vibrations, and fell, twisting once and growing still, its maw half-open, palps twitching in the register of some final internal function.

The hunting party collapsed around it, winded, drained, some leaning on their swords. Shocked by the suddenness of the silence, Catherine went a few steps out into the cavity, Mauldry at her shoulder. She hesitated, then moved forward again, thinking that some of the party might need tending. But those who had fallen were dead, their limbs broken, blood showing on their mouths. She walked alongside the worm. The thickness of its body was three times her height, the skin glistening and warped by countless tiny puckers and tinged with a faint bluish cast that made it all the more ghastly.

‘What are you thinking?’ Mauldry asked.

Catherine shook her head. No thoughts would come to her. It was as if the process of thought itself had been cancelled by the enormity of what she had witnessed. She had always supposed that she had a fair idea of Griaule’s scope, his complexity, but now she understood that whatever she had once believed had been inadequate, and she struggled to acclimate to this new perspective. There was a commotion behind her. Members of the hunting party were hacking slabs of meat from the worm. Mauldry draped an arm about her, and by that contact she became aware that she was trembling.

‘Come along,’ he said. ‘I’ll take you home.’

‘To my room, you mean?’ Her bitterness resurfaced, and she threw off his arm.

‘Perhaps you’ll never think of it as home,’ he said. ‘Yet nowhere is there a place more suited to you.’ He signaled to one of the hunting party, who came toward them, stopping to light a dead torch from a pile of burning branches.

With a dismal laugh, Catherine said, ‘I’m beginning to find it irksome how you claim to know so much about me.’

‘It’s not you I claim to know,’ he said, ‘though it has been given me to understand something of your purpose. But,’ – he rapped the tip of his cane against the floor of the cavity – ‘he by whom you are most known, him I know well.’

 Catherine made three escape attempts during the next two months, and thereafter gave up on the enterprise; with hundreds of eyes watching her, there was no point in wasting energy. For almost six months following the final attempt she became dispirited and refused to leave her rooms. Her health suffered, her thoughts paled, and she lay abed for hours, reliving her life in Hangtown, which she came to view as a model of joy and contentment. Her inactivity caused loneliness to bear in upon her. Mauldry tried his best to entertain her, but his mystical obsession with Griaule made him incapable of offering the consolation of a true friend. And so, without friends or lovers, without even an enemy, she sank into a welter of self-pity and began to toy with the idea of suicide. The prospect of never seeing the sun again, of attending no more carnivals at Teocinte . . . it seemed too much to endure. But either she was not brave enough or not sufficiently foolish to take her own life, and deciding that no matter how vile or delimiting the circumstance, it promised more than eternal darkness, she gave herself to the one occupation the Feelys would permit her: the exploration and study of Griaule.

Like one of those enormous Tibetan sculptures of the Buddha constructed within a tower only a trifle larger than the sculpture itself, Griaule’s unbeating heart was a dimpled golden shape as vast as a cathedral and was enclosed within a chamber whose walls left a gap six feet wide around the organ. The chamber could be reached by passing through a vein that had ruptured long ago and was now a wrinkled brown tube just big enough for Catherine to crawl along it; to make this transit and then emerge into that narrow space beside the heart was an intensely claustrophobic experience, and it took her a long, long while to get used to the process. Even after she had grown accustomed to this, it was still difficult for her to adjust to the peculiar climate at the heart. The air was thick with a heated stinging scent that reminded her of the brimstone stink left by a lightning strike, and there was an atmosphere of imminence, a stillness and tension redolent of some chthonic disturbance that might strike at any moment. The blood at the heart did not merely fluctuate (and here the fluctuations were erratic, varying both in range of brilliance and rapidity of change); it circulated – the movement due to variations in heat and pressure – through a series of convulsed inner chambers, and this eddying in conjunction with the flickering brilliance threw patterns of light and shadow on the heart wall, patterns as complex and fanciful as arabesques that drew her eye in. Staring at them, Catherine began to be able to predict what configurations would next appear and to apprehend a logic to their progression; it was nothing that she could put into words, but watching the play of light and shadow produced in her emotional responses that seemed keyed to the shifting patterns and allowed her to make crude guesses as to the heart’s workings. She learned that if she stared too long at the patterns, dreams would take her, dreams notable for their vividness, and one particularly notable in that it recurred again and again.

The dream began with a sunrise, the solar disc edging up from the southern horizon, its rays spearing toward a coast strewn with great black rocks that protruded from the shallows, and perched upon them were sleeping dragons; as the sun warmed them, light flaring on their scales, they grumbled and lifted their heads and with the snapping sound of huge sails filling with wind, they unfolded their leathery wings and went soaring up into an indigo sky flecked with stars arranged into strange constellations, wheeling and roaring their exultation . . . all but one dragon, who flew only a brief arc before becoming disjointed in mid-flight and dropping like a stone into the water, vanishing beneath the waves. It was an awesome thing to see, this tumbling flight, the wings billowing, tearing, the fanged mouth open, claws grasping for purchase in the air. But despite its beauty, the dream seemed to have little relevance to Griaule’s situation. He was in no danger of falling, that much was certain. Nevertheless, the frequency of the dream’s recurrence persuaded Catherine that something must be amiss, that perhaps Griaule feared an attack of the sort that had stricken the flying dragon. With this in mind she began to inspect the heart, using her hooks to clamber up the steep slopes of the chamber walls, sometimes hanging upside down like a blond spider above the glowing, flickering organ. But she could find nothing out of order, no imperfections – at least as far as she could determine – and the sole result of the inspection was that the dream stopped occurring and was replaced by a simpler dream in which she watched the chest of a sleeping dragon contract and expand. She could make no sense of it, and although the dream continued to recur, she paid less and less attention to it.

Mauldry, who had been expecting miraculous insights from her, was depressed when none were forthcoming. ‘Perhaps I’ve been wrong all these years,’ he said. ‘Or senile. Perhaps I’m growing senile.’

A few months earlier, Catherine, locked into bitterness and resentment, might have seconded his opinion out of spite; but her studies at the heart had soothed her, infused her both with calm resignation and some compassion for her jailers – they could not, after all, be blamed for their pitiful condition – and she said to Mauldry, ‘I’ve only begun to learn. It’s likely to take a long time before I understand what he wants. And that’s in keeping with his nature, isn’t it? That nothing happens quickly?’

‘I suppose you’re right,’ he said glumly.

‘Of course I am,’ she said. ‘Sooner or later there’ll be a revelation. But a creature like Griaule doesn’t yield his secrets to a casual glance. Just give me time.’

And oddly enough, though she had spoken these words to cheer Mauldry, they seemed to ring true.

She had started her explorations with minimal enthusiasm, but Griaule’s scope was so extensive, his populations of parasites and symbiotes so exotic and intriguing, her passion for knowledge was fired and over the next six years she grew zealous in her studies, using them to compensate for the emptiness of her life. With Mauldry ever at her side, accompanied by small groups of the Feelys, she mapped the interior of the dragon, stopping short of penetrating the skull, warned off from that region by a premonition of danger. She sent several of the more intelligent Feelys into Teocinte, where they acquired beakers and flasks and books and writing materials that enabled her to build a primitive laboratory for chemical analysis. She discovered that the egg-shaped chamber occupied by the colony would – had the dragon been fully alive – be pumped full of acids and gasses by the contraction of the heart muscle, flooding the channel, mingling in the adjoining chamber with yet another liquid, forming a volatile mixture that Griaule’s breath would – if he so desired – kindle into flame; if he did not so desire, the expansion of the heart would empty the chamber. From these liquids she derived a potent narcotic that she named brianine after her nemesis, and from a lichen growing on the outer surface of the lungs, she derived a powerful stimulant. She catalogued the dragon’s myriad flora and fauna, covering the walls of her rooms with lists and charts and notations on their behaviors. Many of the animals were either familiar to her or variants of familiar forms. Spiders, bats, swallows, and the like. But as was the case on the dragon’s surface, a few of them testified to his otherworldly origins, and perhaps the most curious of them was Catherine’s metahex (her designation for it), a creature with six identical bodies that thrived in the stomach acids. Each body was approximately the size and color of a worn penny, fractionally more dense than a jellyfish, ringed with cilia, and all were in a constant state of agitation. She had at first assumed the metahex to be six creatures, a species that traveled in sixes, but had begun to suspect otherwise when – upon killing one for the purposes of dissection – the other five bodies had also died. She had initiated a series of experiments that involved menacing and killing hundreds of the things, and had ascertained that the bodies were connected by some sort of field – one whose presence she deduced by process of observation – that permitted the essence of the creature to switch back and forth between the bodies, utilizing the ones it did not occupy as a unique form of camouflage. But even the metahex seemed ordinary when compared to the ghostvine, a plant that she discovered grew in one place alone, a small cavity near the base of the skull.

None of the colony would approach that region, warned away by the same sense of danger that had afflicted Catherine, and it was presumed that should one venture too close to the brain, Griaule would mobilize some of his more deadly inhabitants to deal with the interloper. But Catherine felt secure in approaching the cavity, and leaving Mauldry and her escort of Feelys behind, she climbed the steep channel that led up to it, lighting her way with a torch, and entered through an aperture not much wider than her hips. Once inside, seeing that the place was lit by veins of golden blood that branched across the ceiling, flickering like the blown flame of a candle, she extinguished the torch; she noticed with surprise that except for the ceiling, the entire cavity – a boxy space some twenty feet long, about eight feet in height – was fettered with vines whose leaves were dark green, glossy, with complex veination and tips that ended in minuscule hollow tubes. She was winded from the climb, more winded – she thought – than she should have been, and she sat down against the wall to catch her breath; then, feeling drowsy, she closed her eyes for a moment’s rest. She came alert to the sound of Mauldry’s voice shouting her name. Still drowsy, annoyed by his impatience, she called out, ‘I just want to rest a few minutes!’

‘A few minutes?’ he cried. ‘You’ve been there three days! What’s going on? Are you all right?’

‘That’s ridiculous!’ She started to come to her feet, then sat back, stunned by the sight of a naked woman with long blond hair curled up in a corner not ten feet away, nestled so close to the cavity wall that the tips of leaves half-covered her body and obscured her face.

‘Catherine!’ Mauldry shouted. ‘Answer me!’

‘I . . . I’m all right! Just a minute!’

The woman stirred and made a complaining noise.

‘Catherine!’

‘I said I’m all right!’

The woman stretched out her legs; on her right hip was a fine pink scar, hook-shaped, identical to the scar on Catherine’s hip, evidence of a childhood fall. And on the back of the right knee, a patch of raw, puckered skin, the product of an acid burn she’d suffered the year before. She was astonished by the sight of these markings, but when the woman sat up and Catherine understood that she was staring at her twin – identical not only in feature, but also in expression, wearing a resigned look that she had glimpsed many times in her mirror – her astonishment turned to fright. She could have sworn she felt the muscles of the woman’s face shifting as the expression changed into one of pleased recognition, and in spite of her fear, she had a vague sense of the woman’s emotions, of her burgeoning hope and elation.

‘Sister,’ said the woman; she glanced down at her body, and Catherine had a momentary flash of doubled vision, watching the woman’s head decline and seeing as well naked breasts and belly from the perspective of the woman’s eyes. Her vision returned to normal, and she looked at the woman’s face . . . her face. Though she had studied herself in the mirror each morning for years, she had never had such a clear perception of the changes that life inside the dragon had wrought upon her. Fine lines bracketed her lips, and the beginnings of crow’s-feet radiated from the corners of her eyes. Her cheeks had hollowed, and this made her cheekbones appear sharper; the set of her mouth seemed harder, more determined. The high gloss and perfection of her youthful beauty had been marred far more than she had thought, and this dismayed her. However, the most remarkable change – the one that most struck her – was not embodied by any one detail but in the overall character of the face, in that it exhibited character, for – she realized – prior to entering the dragon it had displayed very little, and what little it had displayed had been evidence of indulgence. It troubled her to have this knowledge of the fool she had been thrust upon her with such poignancy.

As if the woman had been listening to her thoughts, she held out her hand and said, ‘Don’t punish yourself, sister. We are all victims of our past.’

‘What are you?’ Catherine asked, pulling back. She felt the woman was a danger to her, though she was not sure why.

‘I am you.’ Again the woman reached out to touch her, and again Catherine shifted away. The woman’s face was smiling, but Catherine felt the wash of her frustration and noticed that the woman had leaned forward only a few degrees, remaining in contact with the leaves of the vines as if there were some attachment between them that she could not break.

‘I doubt that.’ Catherine was fascinated, but she was beginning to be swayed by the intuition that the woman’s touch would harm her.

‘But I am!’ the woman insisted. ‘And something more, besides.’

‘What more?’

‘The plant extracts essences,’ said the woman. ‘Infinitely small constructs of the flesh from which it creates a likeness free of the imperfections of your body. And since the seeds of your future are embodied by these essences, though they are unknown to you, I know them . . . for now.’

‘For now?’

The woman’s tone had become desperate. ‘There’s a connection between us . . . surely you feel it?’

‘Yes.’

‘To live, to complete that connection, I must touch you. And once I do, this knowledge of the future will be lost to me. I will be as you . . . though separate. But don’t worry. I won’t interfere with you, I’ll live my own life.’ She leaned forward again, and Catherine saw that some of the leaves were affixed to her back, the hollow tubes at their tips adhering to the skin. Once again she had an awareness of danger, a growing apprehension that the woman’s touch would drain her of some vital substance.

‘If you know my future,’ she said, ‘then tell me . . . will I ever escape Griaule?’

Mauldry chose this moment to call out to her, and she soothed him by saying that she was taking some cuttings, that she would be down soon. She repeated her question, and the woman said, ‘Yes, yes, you will leave the dragon,’ and tried to grasp her hand. ‘Don’t be afraid. I won’t harm you.’

The woman’s flesh was sagging, and Catherine felt the eddying of her fear.

‘Please!’ she said, holding out both hands. ‘Only your touch will sustain me. Without it, I’ll die!’

But Catherine refused to trust her.

‘You must believe me!’ cried the woman. ‘I am your sister! My blood is yours, my memories!’ The flesh upon her arms had sagged into billows like the flesh of an old woman, and her face was becoming jowly, grossly distorted. ‘Oh, please! Remember the time with Stel below the wing . . . you were a maiden. The wind was blowing thistles down from Griaule’s back like a rain of silver. And remember the gala in Teocinte? Your sixteenth birthday. You wore a mask of orange blossoms and gold wire, and three men asked for your hand. For God’s sake, Catherine! Listen to me! The major . . . don’t you remember him? The young major? You were in love with him, but you didn’t follow your heart. You were afraid of love, you didn’t trust what you felt because you never trusted yourself in those days.’

The connection between them was fading, and Catherine steeled herself against the woman’s entreaties, which had begun to move her more than a little bit. The woman slumped down, her features blurring, a horrid sight, like the melting of a wax figure, and then, an even more horrid sight, she smiled, her lips appearing to dissolve away from teeth that were themselves dissolving.

‘I understand,’ said the woman in a frail voice, and gave a husky, glutinous laugh. ‘Now I see.’

‘What is it?’ Catherine asked. But the woman collapsed, rolling onto her side, and the process of deterioration grew more rapid; within the span of a few minutes she had dissipated into a gelatinous grayish white puddle that retained the rough outline of her form. Catherine was both appalled and relieved; however, she couldn’t help feeling some remorse, uncertain whether she had acted in self-defense or through cowardice had damned a creature who was by nature no more reprehensible than herself. While the woman had been alive – if that was the proper word – Catherine had been mostly afraid, but now she marveled at the apparition, at the complexity of a plant that could produce even the semblance of a human. And the woman had been, she thought, something more vital than mere likeness. How else could she have known her memories? Or could memory, she wondered, have a physiological basis? She forced herself to take samples of the woman’s remains, of the vines, with an eye toward exploring the mystery. But she doubted that the heart of such an intricate mystery would be accessible to her primitive instruments. This was to prove a self-fulfilling prophecy, because she really did not want to know the secrets of the ghostvine, leery as to what might be brought to light concerning her own nature, and with the passage of time, although she thought of it often and sometimes discussed the phenomena with Mauldry, she eventually let the matter drop.

 Though the temperature never changed, though neither rain nor snow fell, though the fluctuations of the golden light remained consistent in their rhythms, the seasons were registered inside the dragon by migrations of birds, the weaving of cocoons, the birth of millions of insects at once; and it was by these signs that Catherine – nine years after entering Griaule’s mouth – knew it to be autumn when she fell in love. The three years prior to this had been characterized by a slackening of her zeal, a gradual wearing down of her enthusiasm for scientific knowledge, and this tendency became marked after the death of Captain Mauldry from natural causes; without him to serve as a buffer between her and the Feelys, she was overwhelmed by their inanity, their woeful aspect. In truth, there was not much left to learn. Her maps were complete, her specimens and notes filled several rooms, and while she continued her visits to the dragon’s heart, she no longer sought to interpret the dreams, using them instead to pass the boring hours. Again she grew restless and began to consider escape. Her life was being wasted, she believed, and she wanted to return to the world, to engage more vital opportunities than those available to her in Griaule’s many-chambered prison. It was not that she was ungrateful for the experience. Had she managed to escape shortly after her arrival, she would have returned to a life of meaningless frivolity; but now, armed with knowledge, aware of her strengths and weaknesses, possessed of ambition and a heightened sense of morality, she thought she would be able to accomplish something of importance. But before she could determine whether or not escape was possible, there was a new arrival at the colony, a man whom a group of Feelys – while gathering berries near the mouth – had found lying unconscious and had borne to safety.

The man’s name was John Colmacos, and he was in his early thirties, a botanist from the university at Port Chantay who had been abandoned by his guides when he insisted on entering the mouth and had subsequently been mauled by apes that had taken up residence in the mouth. He was lean, rawboned, with powerful, thick-fingered hands and fine brown hair that would never stay combed. His long-jawed, horsey face struck a bargain between homely and distinctive, and was stamped with a perpetually inquiring expression as if he were a bit perplexed by everything he saw, and his blue eyes were large and intricate, the irises flecked with green and hazel, appearing surprisingly delicate in contrast to the rest of him.

Catherine, happy to have rational company, especially that of a professional in her vocation, took charge of nursing him back to health – he had suffered fractures of the arm and ankle, and was badly cut about the face; and in the course of this she began to have fantasies about him as a lover. She had never met a man with his gentleness of manner, his lack of pretense, and she found it most surprising that he wasn’t concerned with trying to impress her. Her conception of men had been limited to the soldiers of Teocinte, the thugs of Hangtown, and everything about John fascinated her. For awhile she tried to deny her feelings, telling herself that she would have fallen in love with almost anyone under the circumstances, afraid that by loving she would only increase her dissatisfaction with her prison; and, too, there was the realization that this was doubtless another of Griaule’s manipulations, his attempt to make her content with her lot, to replace Mauldry with a lover. But she couldn’t deny that under any circumstance she would have been attracted to John Colmacos for many reasons, not the least of which was his respect for her work with Griaule, for how she had handled adversity. Nor could she deny that the attraction was mutual. That was clear. Although there were awkward moments, there was no mooniness between them; they were both watching what was happening.

‘This is amazing,’ he said one day, while going through one of her notebooks, lying on a pile of furs in her apartment. ‘It’s hard to believe you haven’t had training.’

A flush spread over her cheeks. ‘Anyone in my shoes, with all that time, nothing else to do, they would have done no less.’

He set down the notebook and measured her with a stare that caused her to lower her eyes. ‘You’re wrong,’ he said. ‘Most people would have fallen apart. I can’t think of anybody else who could have managed all this. You’re remarkable.’

She felt oddly incompetent in the light of this judgment, as if she had accorded him ultimate authority and were receiving the sort of praise that a wise adult might bestow upon an inept child who had done well for once. She wanted to explain to him that everything she had done had been a kind of therapy, a hobby to stave off despair; but she didn’t know how to put this into words without sounding awkward and falsely modest, and so she merely said, ‘Oh,’ and busied herself with preparing a dose of brianine to take away the pain in his ankle.

‘You’re embarrassed,’ he said. ‘I’m sorry . . . I didn’t mean to make you uncomfortable.’

‘I’m not . . . I mean, I . . .’ She laughed. ‘I’m still not accustomed to talking.’

He said nothing, smiling.

‘What is it?’ she said, defensive, feeling that he was making fun of her.

‘What do you mean?’

‘Why are you smiling?’

‘I could frown,’ he said, ‘if that would make you comfortable.’

Irritated, she bent to her task, mixing paste in a brass goblet studded with uncut emeralds, then molding it into a pellet.

‘That was a joke,’ he said.

‘I know.’

‘What’s the matter?’

She shook her head. ‘Nothing.’

‘Look,’ he said, ‘I don’t want to make you uncomfortable . . . I really don’t. What am I doing wrong?’

She sighed, exasperated with herself. ‘It’s not you,’ she said. ‘I just can’t get used to you being here, that’s all.’

From without came the babble of some Feelys lowering on ropes toward the chamber floor.

‘I can understand that,’ he said. ‘I . . .’ He broke off, looked down and fingered the edge of the notebook.

‘What were you going to say?’

He threw back his head, laughed. ‘Do you see how we’re acting? Explaining ourselves constantly . . . as if we could hurt each other by saying the wrong word.’

She glanced over at him, met his eyes, then looked away.

‘What I meant was, we’re not that fragile,’ he said, and then, as if by way of clarification, he hastened to add: ‘We’re not that . . . vulnerable to one another.’

He held her stare for a moment, and this time it was he who looked away and Catherine who smiled.

If she hadn’t known she was in love, she would have suspected as much from the change in her attitude toward the dragon. She seemed to be seeing everything anew. Her wonder at Griaule’s size and strangeness had been restored, and she delighted in displaying his marvelous features to John – the orioles and swallows that never once had flown under the sun, the glowing heart, the cavity where the ghostvine grew (though she would not linger there), and a tiny chamber close to the heart lit not by Griaule’s blood but by thousands of luminous white spiders that shifted and crept across the blackness of the ceiling, like a night sky whose constellations had come to life. It was in this chamber that they engaged in their first intimacy, a kiss from which Catherine – after initially letting herself be swept away – pulled back, disoriented by the powerful sensations flooding her body, sensations both familiar and unnatural in that she hadn’t experienced them for so long, and startled by the suddenness with which her fantasies had become real. Flustered, she ran from the chamber, leaving John, who was still hobbled by his injuries, to limp back to the colony alone.

She hid from him most of that day sitting with her knees drawn up on a patch of peach-colored silk near the hole at the center of the colony’s floor, immersed in the bustle and gabble of the Feelys as they promenaded in their decaying finery. Though for the most part they were absorbed in their own pursuits, some sensed her mood and gathered around her, touching her, making the whimpering noises that among them passed for expressions of tenderness. Their pasty doglike faces ringed her, uniformly sad, and as if sadness were contagious, she started to cry. At first her tears seemed the product of her inability to cope with love, and then it seemed she was crying over the poor thing of her life, the haplessness of her days inside the body of the dragon; but she came to feel that her sadness was one with Griaule’s, that this feeling of gloom and entrapment reflected his essential mood, and that thought stopped her tears. She’d never considered the dragon an object deserving of sympathy, and she did not now consider him such; but perceiving him imprisoned in a web of ancient magic, and the Chinese puzzle of lesser magics and imprisonments that derived from that original event, she felt foolish for having cried. Everything, she realized, even the happiest of occurrences, might be a cause for tears if you failed to see it in terms of the world that you inhabited; however, if you managed to achieve a balanced perspective, you saw that although sadness could result from every human action, that you had to seize the opportunities for effective action which came your way and not question them, no matter how unrealistic or futile they might appear. Just as Griaule had done by finding a way to utilize his power while immobilized. She laughed to think of herself emulating Griaule even in this abstract fashion, and several of the Feelys standing beside her echoed her laughter. One of the males, an old man with tufts of gray hair poking up from his pallid skull, shuffled near, picking at a loose button on his stiff, begrimed coat of silver-embroidered satin.

‘Cat’rine mus’ be easy sweetly, now?’ he said. ‘No mo’ bad t’ing?’

‘No,’ she said. ‘No more bad thing.’

On the other side of the hole a pile of naked Feelys were writhing together in the clumsiness of foreplay, men trying to penetrate men, getting angry, slapping one another, then lapsing into giggles when they found a woman and figured out the proper procedure. Once this would have disgusted her, but no more. Judged by the attitudes of a place not their own, perhaps the Feelys were disgusting; but this was their place, and Catherine’s place as well, and accepting that at last, she stood and walked toward the nearest basket. The old man hustled after her, fingering his lapels in a parody of self-importance, and, as if he were the functionary of her mood, he announced to everyone they encountered, ‘No mo’ bad t’ing, no mo’ bad t’ing.’

Riding up in the basket was like passing in front of a hundred tiny stages upon which scenes from the same play were being performed – pale figures slumped on silks, playing with gold and bejeweled baubles – and gazing around her, ignoring the stink, the dilapidation, she felt she was looking out upon an exotic kingdom. Always before she had been impressed by its size and grotesqueness; but now she was struck by its richness, and she wondered whether the Feelys’ style of dress was inadvertent or if Griaule’s subtlety extended to the point of clothing this human refuse in the rags of dead courtiers and kings. She felt exhilarated, joyful; but as the basket lurched near the level on which her rooms were located, she became nervous. It had been so long since she had been with a man, and she was worried that she might not be suited to him . . . then she recalled that she’d been prone to these worries even in the days when she had been with a new man every week.

She lashed the basket to a peg, stepped out onto the walkway outside her rooms, took a deep breath and pushed through the curtains, pulled them shut behind her. John was asleep, the furs pulled up to his chest. In the fading half-light, his face – dirtied by a few days’ growth of beard – looked sweetly mysterious and rapt, like the face of saint at meditation, and she thought it might be best to let him sleep; but that, she realized, was a signal of her nervousness, not of compassion. The only thing to do was to get it over with, to pass through nervousness as quickly as possible and learn what there was to learn. She stripped off her trousers, her shirt, and stood for a second above him, feeling giddy, frail, as if she’d stripped off much more than a few ounces of fabric. Then she eased in beneath the furs, pressing the length of her body to his. He stirred but didn’t wake, and this delighted her; she liked the idea of having him in her clutches, of coming to him in the middle of a dream, and she shivered with the apprehension of gleeful, childish power. He tossed, turned onto his side to face her, still asleep, and she pressed closer, marveling at how ready she was, how open to him. He muttered something, and as she nestled against him, he grew hard, his erection pinned between their bellies. Cautiously, she lifted her right knee atop his hip, guided him between her legs and moved her hips back and forth, rubbing against him, slowly, slowly, teasing herself with little bursts of pleasure. His eyelids twitched, blinked open, and he stared at her, his eyes looking black and wet, his skin stained a murky gold in the dimness. ‘Catherine,’ he said, and she gave a soft laugh, because her name seemed a power the way he had spoken it. His fingers hooked into the plump meat of her hips as he pushed and prodded at her, trying to find the right angle. Her head fell back, her eyes closed, concentrating on the feeling that centered her dizziness and heat, and then he was inside her, going deep with a single thrust, beginning to make love to her, and she said, ‘Wait, wait,’ holding him immobile, afraid for an instant, feeling too much, a black wave of sensation building, threatening to wash her away.

‘What’s wrong?’ he whispered. ‘Do you want . . .’

‘Just wait . . . just for a bit.’ She rested her forehead against his, trembling, amazed by the difference that he made in her body; one moment she felt buoyant, as if their connection had freed her from the restraints of gravity, and the next moment – whenever he shifted or eased fractionally deeper – she would feel as if all his weight were pouring inside her and she was sinking into the cool silks.

‘Are you all right?’

‘Mmm.’ She opened her eyes, saw his face inches away and was surprised that he didn’t appear unfamiliar.

‘What is it?’ he asked.

‘I was just thinking.’

‘About what?’

‘I was wondering who you were, and when I looked at you, it was as if I already knew.’ She traced the line of his upper lip with her forefinger. ‘Who are you?’

‘I thought you knew already.’

‘Maybe . . . but I don’t know anything specific. Just that you were a professor.’

‘You want to know specifics?’

‘Yes.’

‘I was an unruly child,’ he said. ‘I refused to eat onion soup, I never washed behind my ears.’

His grasp tightened on her hips, and he thrust inside her, a few slow, delicious movements, kissing her mouth, her eyes.

‘When I was a boy,’ he said, quickening his rhythm, breathing hard between the words, ‘I’d go swimming every morning. Off the rocks at Ayler’s Point . . . it was beautiful. Cerulean water, palms. Chickens and pigs foraging. On the beach.’

‘Oh, God!’ she said, locking her leg behind his thigh, her eyelids fluttering down.

‘My first girlfriend was named Penny . . . she was twelve. Redheaded. I was a year younger. I loved her because she had freckles. I used to believe . . . freckles were . . . a sign of something. I wasn’t sure what. But I love you more than her.’

‘I love you!’ She found his rhythm, adapted to it, trying to take him all inside her. She wanted to see where they joined, and she imagined there was no longer any distinction between them, that their bodies had merged and were sealed together.

‘I cheated in mathematics class, I could never do trigonometry. God . . . Catherine.’

His voice receded, stopped, and the air seemed to grow solid around her, holding her in a rosy suspension. Light was gathering about them, frictive light from a strange heatless burning, and she heard herself crying out, calling his name, saying sweet things, childish things, telling him how wonderful he was, words like the words in a dream, important for their music, their sonority, rather than for any sense they made. She felt again the building of a dark wave in her belly. This time she flowed with it and let it carry her far.

 ‘Love’s stupid,’ John said to her one day months later as they were sitting in the chamber of the heart, watching the complex eddying of golden light and whorls of shadow on the surface of the organ. ‘I feel like a damn sophomore. I keep finding myself thinking that I should do something noble. Feed the hungry, cure a disease.’ He made a noise of disgust. ‘It’s as if I just woke up to the fact that the world has problems, and because I’m so happily in love, I want everyone else to be happy. But stuck . . .’

‘Sometimes I feel like that myself,’ she said, startled by this outburst. ‘Maybe it’s stupid, but it’s not wrong. And neither is being happy.’

‘Stuck in here,’ he went on, ‘there’s no chance of doing anything for ourselves, let alone saving the world. As for being happy, that’s not going to last . . . not in here, anyway.’

‘It’s lasted six months,’ she said. ‘And if it won’t last here, why should it last anywhere?’

He drew up his knees, rubbed the spot on his ankle where it had been fractured. ‘What’s the matter with you? When I got here, all you could talk about was how much you wanted to escape. You said you’d do anything to get out. It sounds now that you don’t care one way or the other.’

She watched him rubbing the ankle, knowing what was coming. ‘I’d like very much to escape. Now that you’re here, it’s more acceptable to me. I can’t deny that. That doesn’t mean I wouldn’t leave if I had the chance. But at least I can think about staying here without despairing.’

‘Well, I can’t! I . . .’ He lowered his head, suddenly drained of animation, still rubbing his ankle. ‘I’m sorry, Catherine. My leg’s hurting again, and I’m in a foul mood.’ He cut his eyes toward her. ‘Have you got that stuff with you?’

‘Yes.’

She made no move to get it for him.

‘I realize I’m taking too much,’ he said. ‘It helps pass the time.’

She bristled at that and wanted to ask if she was the reason for his boredom; but she repressed her anger, knowing that she was partly to blame for his dependency on the brianine, that during his convalescence she had responded to his demands for the drug as a lover and not as a nurse.

An impatient look crossed his face. ‘Can I have it?’

Reluctantly she opened her pack, removed a flask of water and some pellets of brianine wrapped in cloth, and handed them over. He fumbled at the cloth, hurrying to unscrew the cap of the flask, and then – as he was about to swallow two of the pellets – he noticed her watching him. His face tightened with anger, and he appeared ready to snap at her. But his expression softened, and he downed the pellets, held out two more. ‘Take some with me,’ he said. ‘I know I have to stop. And I will. But let’s just relax today, let’s pretend we don’t have any troubles . . . all right?’

That was a ploy he had adopted recently, making her his accomplice in addiction and thus avoiding guilt; she knew she should refuse to join him, but at the moment she didn’t have the strength for an argument. She took the pellets, washed them down with a swallow of water and lay back against the chamber wall. He settled beside her, leaning on one elbow, smiling, his eyes muddled-looking from the drug.

‘You do have to stop, you know,’ she said.

His smile flickered, then steadied, as if his batteries were running low. ‘I suppose.’

‘If we’re going to escape,’ she said, ‘you’ll need a clear head.’

He perked up at this. ‘That’s a change.’

‘I haven’t been thinking about escape for a long time. It didn’t seem possible . . . it didn’t even seem very important, anymore. I guess I’d given up on the idea. I mean just before you arrived, I’d been thinking about it again, but it wasn’t serious . . . only frustration.’

‘And now?’

‘It’s become important again.’

‘Because of me, because I keep nagging about it?’

‘Because of both of us. I’m not sure escape’s possible, but I was wrong to stop trying.’

He rolled onto his back, shielding his eyes with his forearm as if the heart’s glow were too bright.

‘John?’ The name sounded thick and sluggish, and she could feel the drug taking her, making her drifty and slow.

‘This place,’ he said. ‘This goddamn place.’

‘I thought,’ – she was beginning to have difficulty in ordering her words – ‘I thought you were excited by it. You used to talk . . .’

‘Oh, I am excited!’ He laughed dully. ‘It’s a storehouse of marvels. Fantastic! Overwhelming! It’s too overwhelming. The feeling here . . .’ He turned to her. ‘Don’t you feel it?’

‘I’m not sure what you mean.’

‘How could you stand living here for all these years? Are you that much stronger than me, or are you just insensitive?’

‘I’m . . .’

‘God!’

He turned away, stared at the heart wall, his face tattooed with a convoluted flow of light and shadow, then flaring gold.

‘You’re so at ease here. Look at that.’ He pointed to the heart. ‘It’s not a heart, it’s a bloody act of magic. Every time I come here I get the feeling it’s going to display a pattern that’ll make me disappear. Or crush me. Or something. And you just sit there looking at it with a thoughtful expression as if you’re planning to put in curtains or repaint the damned thing.’

‘We don’t have to come here anymore.’

‘I can’t stay away,’ he said, and held up a pellet of brianine. ‘It’s like this stuff.’

They didn’t speak for several minutes . . . perhaps a bit less, perhaps a little more. Time had become meaningless, and Catherine felt that she was floating away, her flesh suffused with a rosy warmth like the warmth of lovemaking. Flashes of dream imagery passed through her mind: a clown’s monstrous face; an unfamiliar room with tilted walls and three-legged blue chairs; a painting whose paint was melting, dripping. The flashes lapsed into thoughts of John. He was becoming weaker every day, she realized. Losing his resilience, growing nervous and moody. She had tried to convince herself that sooner or later he would become adjusted to life inside Griaule, but she was beginning to accept the fact that he was not going to be able to survive here. She didn’t understand why, whether it was due – as he had said – to the dragon’s oppressiveness or to some inherent weakness. Or a combination of both. But she could no longer deny it, and the only option left was for them to effect an escape. It was easy to consider escape with the drug in her veins, feeling aloof and calm, possessed of a dreamlike overview; but she knew that once it wore off she would be at a loss as to how to proceed.

To avoid thinking, she let the heart’s patterns dominate her attention. They seemed abnormally complex, and as she watched she began to have the impression of something new at work, some interior mechanism that she had never noticed before, and to become aware that the sense of imminence that pervaded the chamber was stronger than ever before; but she was so muzzy-headed that she could not concentrate upon these things. Her eyelids drooped, and she fell into her recurring dream of the sleeping dragon, focusing on the smooth scaleless skin of its chest, a patch of whiteness that came to surround her, to draw her into a world of whiteness with the serene constancy of its rhythmic rise and fall, as unvarying and predictable as the ticking of a perfect clock.

Over the next six months Catherine devised numerous plans for escape, but discarded them all as unworkable until at last she thought of one that – although far from foolproof – seemed in its simplicity to offer the least risk of failure. Though without brianine the plan would have failed, the process of settling upon this particular plan would have gone faster had drugs not been available; unable to resist the combined pull of the drug and John’s need for companionship in his addiction, she herself had become an addict, and much of her time was spent lying at the heart with John, stupified, too enervated even to make love. Her feelings toward John had changed; it could not have been otherwise, for he was not the man he had been. He had lost weight and muscle tone, grown vague and brooding, and she was concerned for the health of his body and soul. In some ways she felt closer than ever to him, her maternal instincts having been engaged by his dissolution; yet she couldn’t help resenting the fact that he had failed her, that instead of offering relief, he had turned out to be a burden and a weakening influence; and as a result whenever some distance arose between them, she exerted herself to close it only if it was practical to do so. This was not often the case, because John had deteriorated to the point that closeness of any sort was a chore. However, Catherine clung to the hope that if they could escape, they would be able to make a new beginning.

The drug owned her. She carried a supply of pellets wherever she went, gradually increasing her dosages, and not only did it affect her health, her energy, it had a profound effect upon her mind. Her powers of concentration were diminished, her sleep became fitful, and she began to experience hallucinations. She heard voices, strange noises, and on one occasion she was certain that she had spotted old Amos Mauldry among a group of Feelys milling about at the bottom of the colony chamber. Her mental erosion caused her to mistrust the information of her senses and to dismiss as delusion the intimations of some climactic event that came to her in dreams and from the patterns of light and shadow on the heart; and recognizing that certain of her symptoms – hearkening to inaudible signals and the like – were similar to the behavior of the Feelys, she feared that she was becoming one of them. Yet this fear was not so pronounced as once it might have been. She sought now to be tolerant of them, to overlook their role in her imprisonment, perceiving them as unwitting agents of Griaule, and she could not be satisfied in hating either them or the dragon; Griaule and the subtle manifestations of his will were something too vast and incomprehensible to be a target for hatred, and she transferred all her wrath to Brianne, the woman who had betrayed her. The Feelys seemed to notice this evolution in her attitude, and they became more familiar, attaching themselves to her wherever she went, asking questions, touching her, and while this made it difficult to achieve privacy, in the end it was their increased affection that inspired her plan.

 The drug moderated Catherine’s grief . . . or perhaps it was more than the drug. John’s decline had begun so soon after they had met, it seemed she had become accustomed to sadness in relation to him, and thus his death had not overwhelmed her, but rather had manifested as an ache in her chest and a heaviness in her limbs, like small stones she was forced to carry about. To rid herself of that ache, that heaviness, she increased her use of the drug, eating the pellets as if they were candy, gradually withdrawing from life. She had no use for life any longer. She knew she was going to die within the dragon, knew it with the same clarity and certainty that accompanied all Griaule’s sendings – death was to be her punishment for seeking to avoid his will, for denying his right to define and delimit her.

After the escape attempt, the Feelys had treated her with suspicion and hostility; recently they had been absorbed by some internal matter, agitated in the extreme, and they had taken to ignoring her. Without their minimal companionship, without John, the patterns flowing across the surface of the heart were the only thing that took Catherine out of herself, and she spent hours at a time watching them, lying there half-conscious, registering their changes through slitted eyes. As her addiction worsened, as she lost weight and muscle tone, she became even more expert in interpreting the patterns, and staring up at the vast curve of the heart, like the curve of a golden bell, she came to realize that Mauldry had been right, that the dragon was a god, a universe unto itself with its own laws and physical constants. A god that she hated. She would try to beam her hatred at the heart, hoping to cause a rupture, a seizure of some sort; but she knew that Griaule was impervious to this, impervious to all human weapons, and that her hatred would have as little effect upon him as an arrow loosed into an empty sky.

One day almost a year after John’s death she waked abruptly from a dreamless sleep beside the heart, sitting bolt upright, feeling that a cold spike had been driven down the hollow of her spine. She rubbed sleep from her eyes, trying to shake off the lethargy of the drug, sensing danger at hand. Then she glanced up at the heart and was struck motionless. The patterns of shadow and golden radiance were changing more rapidly than ever before, and their complexity, too, was far greater than she had ever seen; yet they were as clear to her as her own script: pulsings of darkness and golden eddies flowing, unscrolling across the dimpled surface of the organ. It was a simple message, and for a few seconds she refused to accept the knowledge it conveyed, not wanting to believe that this was the culmination of her destiny, that her youth had been wasted in so trivial a matter; but recalling all the clues, the dreams of the sleeping dragon, the repetitious vision of the rise and fall of its chest, Mauldry’s story of the first Feely, the exodus of animals and insects and birds, the muffled thud from deep within the dragon after which everything had remained calm for a thousand years . . . she knew it must be true.

As it had done a thousand years before, and as it would do again a thousand years in the future, the heart was going to beat.

She was infuriated, and she wanted to reject the fact that all her trials and griefs had been sacrifices made for the sole purpose of saving the Feelys. Her task, she realized, would be to clear them out of the chamber where they lived before it was flooded with the liquids that fueled the dragon’s fires; and after the chamber had been emptied, she was to lead them back so they could go on with the work of keeping Griaule pest-free. The cause of their recent agitation, she thought, must have been due to their apprehension of the event, the result of one of Griaule’s sendings; but because of their temerity they would tend to dismiss his warning, being more frightened of the outside world than of any peril within the dragon. They would need guidance to survive, and as once he had chosen Mauldry to assist her, now Griaule had chosen her to guide the Feelys.

She staggered up, as befuddled as a bird trapped between glass walls, making little rushes this way and that; then anger overcame confusion, and she beat with her fists on the heart wall, bawling her hatred of the dragon, her anguish at the ruin he had made of her life. Finally, breathless, she collapsed, her own heart pounding erratically, trying to think what to do. She wouldn’t tell them, she decided; she would just let them die when the chamber flooded, and this way have her revenge. But an instant later she reversed her decision, knowing that the Feelys’ deaths would merely be an inconvenience to Griaule, that he would simply gather a new group of idiots to serve him. And besides, she thought, she had already killed too many Feelys. There was no choice, she realized; over the span of almost eleven years she had been maneuvered by the dragon’s will to this place and moment where, by virtue of her shaped history and conscience, she had only one course of action.

Full of muddle-headed good intentions, she made her way back to the colony, her guards trailing behind, and when she had reached the chamber, she stood with her back to the channel that led toward the throat, uncertain of how to proceed. Several hundred Feelys were milling about the bottom of the chamber, and others were clinging to ropes, hanging together in front of one or another of the cubicles, looking in that immense space like clusters of glittering, many-colored fruit; the constant motion and complexity of the colony added to Catherine’s hesitancy and bewilderment, and when she tried to call out to the Feelys, to gain their attention, she managed only a feeble, scratchy noise. But she gathered her strength and called out again and again, until at last they were all assembled before her, silent and staring, hemming her in against the entrance to the channel, next to some chests that contained the torches and swords and other items used by the hunters. The Feelys gaped at her, plucking at their gaudy rags; their silence seemed to have a slow vibration. Catherine started to speak, but faltered; she took a deep breath, let it out explosively and made a second try.

‘We have to leave,’ she said, hearing the shakiness of her voice. ‘We have to go outside. Not for long. Just for a little while . . . a few hours. The chamber, it’s going . . .’ She broke off, realizing that they weren’t following her. ‘The thing Griaule has meant me to learn,’ she went on in a louder voice, ‘at last I know it. I know why I was brought to you. I know the purpose for which I have studied all these years. Griaule’s heart is going to beat, and when it does the chamber will fill with liquid. If you remain here, you’ll all drown.’

The front ranks shifted, and some of the Feelys exchanged glances, but otherwise they displayed no reaction.

Catherine shook her fists in frustration. ‘You’ll die if you don’t listen to me! You have to leave! When the heart contracts, the chamber will be flooded . . . don’t you understand?’ She pointed up to the mist-hung ceiling of the chamber. ‘Look! The birds . . . the birds have gone! They know what’s coming! And so do you! Don’t you feel the danger? I know you do!’

They edged back, some of them turning away, entering into whispered exchanges with their fellows.

Catherine grabbed the nearest of them, a young female dressed in ruby silks. ‘Listen to me!’ she shouted.

‘Liar, Cat’rine, liar,’ said one of the males, jerking the female away from her. ‘We not goin’ be mo’ fools.’

‘I’m not lying! I’m not!’ She went from one to another, putting her hands on their shoulders, meeting their eyes in an attempt to impress them with her sincerity. ‘The heart is going to beat! Once . . . just once. You won’t have to stay outside long. Not long at all.’

They were all walking away, all beginning to involve themselves in their own affairs, and Catherine, desperate, hurried after them, pulling them back, saying, ‘Listen to me! Please!’ Explaining what was to happen, and receiving cold stares in return. One of the males shoved her aside, baring his teeth in a hiss, his eyes blank and bright, and she retreated to the entrance of the channel, feeling rattled and disoriented, in need of another pellet. She couldn’t collect her thoughts, and she looked around in every direction as if hoping to find some sight that would steady her; but nothing she saw was of any help. Then her gaze settled on the chests where the swords and torches were stored. She felt as if her head were being held in a vise and forced toward the chests, and the knowledge of what she must do was a coldness inside her head – the unmistakable touch of Griaule’s thought. It was the only way. She saw that clearly. But the idea of doing something so extreme frightened her, and she hesitated, looking behind her to make sure that none of the Feelys were keeping track of her movements. She inched toward the chests, keeping her eyes lowered, trying to make it appear that she was moving aimlessly. In one of the chests were a number of tinderboxes resting beside some torches; she stooped, grabbed a torch and one of the tinderboxes, and went walking briskly up the slope. She paused by the lowest rank of cubicles, noticed that some of the Feelys had turned to watch her; when she lit the torch, alarm surfaced in their faces and they surged up the slope toward her. She held the torch up to the curtains that covered the entrance to the cubicle, and the Feelys fell back, muttering, some letting out piercing wails.

‘Please!’ Catherine cried, her knees rubbery from the tension, a chill knot in her breast. ‘I don’t want to do this! But you have to leave!’

A few of the Feelys edged toward the channel, and encouraged by this, Catherine shouted, ‘Yes! That’s it! If you’ll just go outside, just for a little while, I won’t have to do it!’

Several Feelys entered the channel, and the crowd around Catherine began to erode, whimpering, breaking into tears, trickles of five and six at a time breaking away and moving out of sight within the channel, until there were no more than thirty of them left within the chamber, forming a ragged semi-circle around her. She would have liked to believe that they would do as she had suggested without further coercion on her part, but she knew that they were all packed into the channel or the chamber beyond, waiting for her to put down the torch. She gestured at the Feelys surrounding her, and they, too, began easing toward the channel; when only a handful of them remained visible, she touched the torch to the curtains.

She was amazed by how quickly the fire spread, rushing like waves up the silk drapes, following the rickety outlines of the cubicles, appearing to dress them in a fancywork of reddish yellow flame, making crispy, chuckling noises. The fire seemed to have a will of its own, to be playfully seeking out all the intricate shapes of the colony and illuminating them, the separate flames chasing one another with merry abandon, sending little trains of fire along poles and stanchions, geysering up from corners, flinging out fiery fingers to touch tips across a gap.

She was so caught up in this display, her drugged mind finding in it an aesthetic, that she forgot all about the Feelys, and when a cold sharp pain penetrated her left side, she associated this not with them but thought it a side-effect of the drug, a sudden attack brought on by her abuse of it. Then, horribly weak, sinking to her knees, she saw one of them standing next to her, a male with a pale thatch of thinning hair wisping across his scalp, holding a sword tipped with red, and she knew that he had stabbed her. She had the giddy urge to speak to him, not out of anger, just to ask a question that she wasn’t able to speak, for instead of being afraid of the weakness invading her limbs, she had a terrific curiosity about what would happen next, and she had the irrational thought that her executioner might have the answer, that in his role as the instrument of Griaule’s will he might have some knowledge of absolutes. He spat something at her, an accusation or an insult made inaudible by the crackling of the flames, and fled down the slope and out of the chamber, leaving her alone. She rolled onto her back, gazing at the fire, and the pain seemed to roll inside her as if it were a separate thing. Some of the cubicles were collapsing, spraying sparks, twists of black smoke boiling up, smoldering pieces of blackened wood tumbling down to the chamber floor, the entire structure appearing to ripple through the heat haze, looking unreal, an absurd construction of flaming skeletal framework and billowing, burning silks, and growing dizzy, feeling that she was falling upward into that huge fiery space, Catherine passed out.

She must have been unconscious for only a matter of seconds, because nothing had changed when she opened her eyes, except that a section of the fabric covering the chamber floor had caught fire. The flames were roaring, the snaps of cracking timber as sharp as explosions, and her nostrils were choked with an acrid stink. With a tremendous effort that brought her once again to the edge of unconsciousness, she came to her feet, clutching the wound in her side, and stumbled toward the channel; at the entrance she fell and crawled into it, choking on the smoke that poured along the passageway. Her eyes teared from the smoke, and she wriggled on her stomach, pulling herself along with her hands. She nearly passed out a half dozen times before reaching the adjoining chamber, and then she staggered, crawled, stopping frequently to catch her breath, to let the pain of her wound subside, somehow negotiating a circuitous path among the pools of burning liquid and the pale red warty bumps that sprouted everywhere. Then into the throat. She wanted to surrender to the darkness there, to let go, but she kept going, not motivated by fear, but by some reflex of survival, simply obeying the impulse to continue for as long as it was possible. Her eyes blurred, and darkness frittered at the edges of her vision. But even so, she was able to make out the light of day, the menagerie of shapes erected by the interlocking branches of the thickets, and she thought that now she could stop, that this had been what she wanted – to see the light again, not to die bathed in the uncanny radiance of Griaule’s blood.

She lay down, lowering herself cautiously among a bed of ferns, her back against the side of the throat, the same position – she remembered – in which she had fallen asleep that first night inside the dragon so many years before. She started to slip, to dwindle inside herself, but was alerted by a whispery rustling that grew louder and louder, and a moment later swarms of insects began to pour from the dragon’s throat, passing overhead with a whirring rush and in such density that they cut off most of the light issuing from the mouth. Far above, like the shadows of spiders, apes were swinging on the vines that depended from the roof of the mouth, heading for the outer world, and Catherine could hear smaller animals scuttling through the brush. The sight of these flights made her feel accomplished, secure in what she had done, and she settled back, resting her head against Griaule’s flesh, as peaceful as she could ever recall, almost eager to be done with life, with drugs and solitude and violence. She had a moment’s worry about the Feelys, wondering where they were; but then she realized that they would probably do no differently than had their remote ancestor, that they would hide in the thickets until all was calm.

She let her eyes close. The pain of the wound had diminished to a distant throb that scarcely troubled her, and the throbbing made a rhythm that seemed to be bearing her up. Somebody was talking to her, saying her name, and she resisted the urge to open her eyes, not wanting to be called back. She must be hearing things, she thought. But the voice persisted, and at last she did open her eyes. She gave a weak laugh on seeing Amos Mauldry kneeling before her, wavering and vague as a ghost, and realized that she was seeing things, too.

‘Catherine,’ he said. ‘Can you hear me?’

‘No,’ she said, and laughed again, a laugh that sent her into a bout of gasping; she felt her weakness in a new and poignant way, and it frightened her.

‘Catherine?’

She blinked, trying to make him disappear; but he appeared to solidify as if she were becoming more part of his world than that of life. ‘What is it, Mauldry?’ she said, and coughed. ‘Have you come to guide me to heaven . . . is that it?’

His lips moved, and she had the idea that he was trying to reassure her of something; but she couldn’t hear his words, no matter how hard she strained her ears. He was beginning to fade, becoming opaque, proving himself to be no more than a phantom; yet as she blacked out, experiencing a final moment of panic, Catherine could have sworn that she felt him take her hand.

She awoke in a golden glow that dimmed and brightened, and found herself staring into a face; after a moment, a long moment, because the face was much different than she had imagined it during these past few years, she recognized that it was hers. She lay still, trying to accommodate to this state of affairs, wondering why she wasn’t dead, puzzling over the face and uncertain why she wasn’t afraid; she felt strong and alert and at peace. She sat up and discovered that she was naked, that she was sitting in a small chamber lit by veins of golden blood branching across the ceiling, its walls obscured by vines with glossy dark green leaves. The body – her body – was lying on its back, and one side of the shirt it wore was soaked with blood. Folded beside the body was a fresh shirt, trousers, and resting atop these was a pair of sandals.

She checked her side – there was no sign of a wound. Her emotions were a mix of relief and self-loathing. She understood that somehow she had been conveyed to this cavity, to the ghostvine, and her essences had been transferred to a likeness, and yet she had trouble accepting the fact, because she felt no different than she had before . . . except for the feelings of peace and strength, and the fact that she had no craving for the drug. She tried to deny what had happened, to deny that she was now a thing, the bizarre contrivance of a plant, and it seemed that her thoughts, familiar in their ordinary process, were proofs that she must be wrong in her assumption. However, the body was an even more powerful evidence to the contrary. She would have liked to take refuge in panic, but her overall feeling of well-being prevented this. She began to grow cold, her skin pebbling, and reluctantly she dressed in the clothing folded beside the body. Something hard in the breast pocket of the shirt. She opened the pocket, took out a small leather sack; she loosed the tie of the sack and from it poured a fortune of cut gems into her hand: diamonds, emeralds, and sunstones. She put the sack back into the pocket, not knowing what to make of the stones, and sat looking at the body. It was much changed from its youth, leaner, less voluptuous, and in the repose of death, the face had lost its gloss and perfection, and was merely the face of an attractive woman . . . a disheartened woman. She thought she should feel something, that she should be oppressed by the sight, but she had no reaction to it; it might have been a skin she had shed, something of no more consequence than that.

She had no idea where to go, but realizing that she couldn’t stay there forever, she stood and with a last glance at the body, she made her way down the narrow channel leading away from the cavity. When she emerged into the passage, she hesitated, unsure of which direction to choose, unsure, too, of which direction was open to her. At length, deciding not to tempt Griaule’s judgment, she headed back toward the colony, thinking that she would take part in helping them rebuild; but before she had gone ten feet she heard Mauldry’s voice calling her name.

He was standing by the entrance to the cavity, dressed as he had been that first night – in a satin frock coat, carrying his gold-knobbed cane – and as she approached him, a smile broke across his wrinkled face, and he nodded as if in approval of her resurrection. ‘Surprised to see me?’ he asked.

‘I . . . I don’t know,’ she said, a little afraid of him. ‘Was that you . . . in the mouth?’

He favored her with a polite bow. ‘None other. After things settled down, I had some of the Feelys bear you to the cavity. Or rather I was the one who effected Griaule’s will in the matter. Did you look in the pocket of your shirt?’

‘Yes.’

‘Then you found the gems. Good, good.’

She was at a loss for words at first. ‘I thought I saw you once before,’ she said finally. ‘A few years back.’

‘I’m sure you did. After my rebirth,’ – he gestured toward the cavity – ‘I was no longer of any use to you. You were forging your own path and my presence would have hampered your process. So I hid among the Feelys, waiting for the time when you would need me.’ He squinted at her. ‘You look troubled.’

‘I don’t understand any of this,’ she said. ‘How can I feel like my old self, when I’m obviously so different?’

‘Are you?’ he asked. ‘Isn’t sameness or difference mostly a matter of feeling?’ He took her arm, steered her along the passage away from the colony. ‘You’ll adjust to it, Catherine. I have, and I had the same reaction as you when I first awoke.’ He spread his arms, inviting her to examine him. ‘Do I look different to you? Aren’t I the same old fool as ever?’

‘So it seems,’ she said drily. She walked a few paces in silence, then something occurred to her. ‘The Feelys . . . do they . . .’

‘Rebirth is only for the chosen, the select. The Feelys receive another sort of reward, one not given me to understand.’

‘You call this a reward? To be subject to more of Griaule’s whims? And what’s next for me? Am I to discover when his bowels are due to move?’

He stopped walking, frowning at her.

‘Next? Why, whatever pleases you, Catherine. I’ve been assuming that you’d want to leave, but you’re free to do as you wish. Those gems I gave you will buy you any kind of life you desire.’

‘I can leave?’

‘Most assuredly. You’ve accomplished your purpose here, and you’re your own agent now. Do you want to leave?’

Catherine looked at him, unable to speak, and nodded.

‘Well, then.’ He took her arm again. ‘Let’s be off.’

As they walked down to the chamber behind the throat and then into the throat itself, Catherine felt as one is supposed to feel at the moment of death, all the memories of her life within the dragon passing before her eyes with their attendant emotions – her flight, her labors and studies, John, the long hours spent beside the heart – and she thought that this was most appropriate, because she was not re-entering life but rather passing through into a kind of afterlife, a place beyond death that would be as unfamiliar and new a place as Griaule himself had once seemed. And she was astounded to realize that she was frightened of these new possibilities, that the thing she had wanted for so long could pose a menace and that it was the dragon who now offered the prospect of security. On several occasions she considered turning back, but each time she did, she rebuked herself for her timidity and continued on. However, on reaching the mouth and wending her way through the thickets, her fear grew more pronounced. The sunlight, that same light that not so many months before had been alluring, now hurt her eyes and made her want to draw back into the dim golden murk of Griaule’s blood; and as they neared the lip, as she stepped into the shadow of a fang, she began to tremble with cold and stopped, hugging herself to keep warm.

Mauldry took up a position facing her, jogged her arm. ‘What is it?’ he asked. ‘You seem frightened.’

‘I am,’ she said; she glanced up at him. ‘Maybe . . .’

‘Don’t be silly,’ he said. ‘You’ll be fine once you’re away from here. And,’ – he cocked his eye toward the declining sun – ‘you should be pushing along. You don’t want to be hanging about the mouth when it’s dark. I doubt anything would harm you, but since you’re no longer part of Griaule’s plan . . . well, better safe than sorry.’ He gave her a push. ‘Get along with you, now.’

‘You’re not coming with me?’

‘Me?’ Mauldry chuckled. ‘What would I do out there? I’m an old man, set in my ways. No, I’m far better off staying with the Feelys. I’ve become half a Feely myself after all these years. But you’re young, you’ve got a whole world of life ahead of you.’ He nudged her forward. ‘Do what I say, girl. There’s no use in your hanging about any longer.’

She went a couple of steps toward the lip, paused, feeling sentimental about leaving the old man; though they had never been close, he had been like a father to her . . . and thinking this, remembering her real father, whom she had scarcely thought of these last years, with whom she’d had the same lack of closeness, that made her aware of all the things she had to look forward to, all the lost things she might now regain. She moved into the thickets with a firmer step, and behind her, old Mauldry called to her for a last time.

‘That’s my girl!’ he sang out. ‘You just keep going, and you’ll start to feel at rights soon enough! There’s nothing to be afraid of . . . nothing you can avoid, in any case! Goodbye, goodbye!’

She glanced back, waved, saw him shaking his cane in a gesture of farewell, and laughed at his eccentric appearance: a funny little man in satin rags hopping up and down in that great shadow between the fangs. Out from beneath that shadow herself, the rich light warmed her, seeming to penetrate and dissolve all the coldness that had been lodged in her bones and thoughts.

‘Goodbye!’ cried Mauldry. ‘Goodbye! Don’t be sad! You’re not leaving anything important behind, and you’re taking the best parts with you. Just walk fast and think about what you’re going to tell everyone. They’ll be amazed by all you’ve done! Flabbergasted! Tell them about Griaule! Tell them what he’s like, tell them all you’ve seen and all you’ve learned. Tell them what a grand adventure you’ve had!’

 Returning to Hangtown was in some ways a more unsettling experience than had been Catherine’s flight into the dragon. She had expected the place to have changed, and while there had been minor changes, she had assumed that it would be as different from its old self as was she. But standing at the edge of the village, looking out at the gray weathered shacks ringing the fouled shallows of the lake, thin smokes issuing from tin chimneys, the cliff of the fronto-parietal plate casting its gloomy shadow, the chokecherry thickets, the hawthorns, the dark brown dirt of the streets, three elderly men sitting on cane chairs in front of one of the shacks, smoking their pipes and staring back at her with unabashed curiosity . . . superficially it was no different than it had been ten years before, and this seemed to imply that her years of imprisonment, her death and rebirth had been of small importance. She did not demand that they be important to anyone else, yet it galled her that the world had passed through those years of ordeal without significant scars, and it also imbued her with the irrational fear that if she were to enter the village, she might suffer some magical slippage back through time and re-inhabit her old life. At last, with a hesitant step, she walked over to the men and wished them a good morning.

‘Mornin’,’ said a paunchy fellow with a mottled bald scalp and a fringe of gray beard, whom she recognized as Tim Weedlon. ‘What can I do for you, ma’am? Got some nice bits of scale inside.’

‘That place over there,’ – she pointed to an abandoned shack down the street, its roof holed and missing the door – ‘where can I find the owner?’

The other man, Mardo Koren, thin as a mantis, his face seamed and blotched, said, ‘Can’t nobody say for sure. Ol’ Riall died . . . must be goin’ on nine, ten years back.’

‘He’s dead?’ She felt weak inside, dazed.

‘Yep,’ said Tim Weedlon, studying her face, his brow furrowed, his expression bewildered. ‘His daughter run away, killed a village man name of Willen and vanished into nowhere . . . or so ever’body figured. Then when Willen’s brothers turned up missin’, people thought ol’ Riall musta done ’em. He didn’t deny it. Acted like he didn’t care whether he lived or died.’

‘What happened?’

‘They had a trial, found Riall guilty.’ He leaned forward, squinting at her. ‘Catherine . . . is that you?’

She nodded, struggling for control. ‘What did they do with him?’

‘How can it be you?’ he said. ‘Where you been?’

‘What happened to my father?’

‘God, Catherine. You know what happens to them that’s found guilty of murder. If it’s any comfort, the truth come out finally.’

‘They took him in under the wing . . . they left him under the wing?’ Her fists clenched, nails pricking hard into her palm. ‘Is that what they did?’

He lowered his eyes, picked at a fray on his trouserleg.

Her eyes filled, and she turned away, facing the mossy overhang of the fronto-parietal plate. ‘You said the truth came out.’

‘That’s right. A girl confessed to having seen the whole thing. Said the Willens chased you into Griaule’s mouth. She woulda come forward sooner, but ol’ man Willen had her feared for her life. Said he’d kill her if she told. You probably remember her. Friend of yours, if I recall. Brianne.’

She whirled around, repeated the name with venom.

‘Wasn’t she your friend?’ Weedlon asked.

‘What happened to her?’

‘Why . . . nothing,’ said Weedlon. ‘She’s married, got hitched to Zev Mallison. Got herself a batch of children. I ’spect she’s home now if you wanna see her. You know the Mallison place, don’tcha?’

‘Yes.’

‘You want to know more about it, you oughta drop by there and talk to Brianne.’

‘I guess . . . I will, I’ll do that.’

‘Now tell us where you been, Catherine. Ten years! Musta been something important to keep you from home for so long.’

Coldness was spreading through her, turning her to ice. ‘I was thinking, Tim . . . I was thinking I might like to do some scaling while I’m here. Just for old time’s sake, you know.’ She could hear the shakiness in her voice and tried to smooth it out; she forced a smile. ‘I wonder if I could borrow some hooks.’

‘Hooks?’ He scratched his head, still regarding her with confusion. ‘Sure, I suppose you can. But aren’t you going to tell us where you’ve been? We thought you were dead.’

‘I will, I promise. Before I leave . . . I’ll come back and tell you all about it. All right?’

‘Well, all right.’ He heaved up from his chair. ‘But it’s a cruel thing you’re doing, Catherine.’

‘No crueler than what’s been done to me,’ she said distractedly. ‘Not half so cruel.’

‘Pardon,’ said Tim. ‘How’s that?’

‘What?’

He gave her a searching look and said, ‘I was telling you it was a cruel thing, keeping an old man in suspense about where you’ve been. Why you’re going to make the choicest bit of gossip we’ve had in years. And you came back with . . .’

‘Oh! I’m sorry,’ she said, ‘I was thinking about something else.’

The Mallison place was among the larger shanties in Hangtown, half-a-dozen rooms, most of which had been added on over the years since Catherine had left; but its size was no evidence of wealth or status, only of a more expansive poverty. Next to the steps leading to a badly hung door was a litter of bones and mango skins and other garbage. Fruit flies hovered above a watermelon rind; a gray dog with its ribs showing slunk off around the corner, and there was a stink of fried onions and boiled greens. From inside came the squalling of a child. The shanty looked false to Catherine, an unassuming facade behind which lay a monstrous reality – the woman who had betrayed her, killed her father – and yet its drabness was sufficient to disarm her anger somewhat. But as she mounted the steps there was a thud as of something heavy falling, and a woman shouted. The voice was harsh, deeper than Catherine remembered, but she knew it must belong to Brianne, and that restored her vengeful mood. She knocked on the door with one of Tim Weedlon’s scaling hooks, and a second later it was flung open and she was confronted by an olive-skinned woman in torn gray skirts – almost the same color as the weathered boards, as if she were the quintessential product of the environment – and gray streaks in her dark brown hair. She looked Catherine up and down, her face hard with displeasure, and said, ‘What do you want?’

It was Brianne, but Brianne warped, melted, disfigured as a waxwork might be disfigured by heat. Her waist gone, features thickened, cheeks sagging into jowls. Shock washed away Catherine’s anger, and shock, too, materialized in Brianne’s face. ‘No,’ she said, giving the word an abstracted value, as if denying an inconsequential accusation; then she shouted it: ‘No!’ She slammed the door, and Catherine pounded on it, crying, ‘Damn you! Brianne!’

The child screamed, but Brianne made no reply.

Enraged, Catherine swung the hook at the door; the point sank deep into the wood, and when she tried to pull it out, one of the boards came partially loose; she pried at it, managed to rip it away, the nails coming free with a shriek of tortured metal. Through the gap she saw Brianne cowering against the rear wall of a dilapidated room, her arms around a little boy in shorts. Using the hook as a lever, she pulled loose another board, reached in and undid the latch. Brianne pushed the child behind her and grabbed a broom as Catherine stepped inside.

‘Get out of here!’ she said, holding the broom like a spear.

The gray poverty of the shanty made Catherine feel huge in her anger, too bright for the place, like a sun shining in a cave, and although her attention was fixed on Brianne, the peripheral details of the room imprinted themselves on her: the wood stove upon which a covered pot was steaming; an overturned wooden chair with a hole in the seat; cobwebs spanning the corners, rat turds along the wall; a rickety table set with cracked dishes and dust thick as fur beneath it. These things didn’t arouse her pity or mute her anger; instead, they seemed extensions of Brianne, new targets for hatred. She moved closer, and Brianne jabbed the broom at her. ‘Go away,’ she said weakly. ‘Please . . . leave us alone!’

Catherine swung the hook, snagging the twine that bound the broom straws and knocking it from Brianne’s hands. Brianne retreated to the corner where the wood stove stood, hauling the child along. She held up her hand to ward off another blow and said, ‘Don’t hurt us.’

‘Why not? Because you’ve got children, because you’ve had an unhappy life?’ Catherine spat at Brianne. ‘You killed my father!’

‘I was afraid! Key’s father . . .’

‘I don’t care,’ said Catherine coldly. ‘I don’t care why you did it. I don’t care how good your reasons were for betraying me in the first place.’

‘That’s right! You never cared about anything!’ Brianne clawed at her breast. ‘You killed my heart! You didn’t care about Glynn, you just wanted him because he wasn’t yours!’

It took Catherine a few seconds to dredge that name up from memory, to connect it with Brianne’s old lover and recall that it was her callousness and self-absorption that had set the events of the past years in motion. But although this roused her guilt, it did not abolish her anger. She couldn’t equate Brianne’s crimes with her excesses. Still, she was confused about what to do, uncomfortable now with the very concept of justice, and she wondered if she should leave, just throw down the hook and leave vengeance to whatever ordering principle governed the fates in Hangtown. Then Brianne shifted her feet, made a noise in her throat, and Catherine felt rage boiling up inside her.

‘Don’t throw that up to me,’ she said with flat menace. ‘Nothing I’ve done to you merited what you did to me. You don’t even know what you did!’

She raised the hook, and Brianne shrank back into the corner. The child twisted its head to look at Catherine, fixing her with brimming eyes, and she held back.

‘Send the child away,’ she told Brianne. Brianne leaned down to the child. ‘Go to your father,’ she said.

‘No, wait,’ said Catherine, fearing that the child might bring Zev Mallison.

‘Must you kill us both?’ said Brianne, her voice hoarse with emotion. Hearing this, the child once more began to cry.

‘Stop it,’ Catherine said to him, and when he continued to cry, she shouted it.

Brianne muffled the child’s wails in her skirts. ‘Go ahead!’ she said, her face twisted with fear. ‘Just do it!’ She broke down into sobs, ducked her head and waited for the blow. Catherine stepped close to Brianne, yanked her head back by the hair, exposing her throat, and set the point of the hook against the big vein there. Brianne’s eyes rolled down, trying to see the hook; her breath came in gaspy shrieks, and the child, caught between the two women, squirmed and wailed. Catherine’s hand was trembling, and that slight motion pricked Brianne’s skin, drawing a bead of blood. She stiffened, her eyelids fluttered down, her mouth fell open – an expression, at least so it seemed to Catherine, of ecstatic expectation. Catherine studied the face, feeling as if her emotions were being purified, drawn into a fine wire; she had an almost aesthetic appreciation of the stillness gathering around her, the hard poise of Brianne’s musculature, the sensitive pulse in the throat that transmitted its frail rhythm along the hook, and she restrained herself from pressing the point deeper, wanting to prolong Brianne’s suffering.

But then the hook grew heavy in Catherine’s hands, and she understood that the moment had passed, that her need for vengeance had lost the immediacy and thrust of passion. She imagined herself skewering Brianne, and then imagined dragging her out to confront a village tribunal, forcing her to confess her lies, having her sentenced to be tied up and left for whatever creatures foraged beneath Griaule’s wing. But while it provided her a measure of satisfaction to picture Brianne dead or dying, she saw now that anticipation was the peak of vengeance, that carrying out the necessary actions would only harm her. It frustrated her that all these years and the deaths would have no resolution, and she thought that she must have changed more than she had assumed to put aside vengeance so easily; this caused her to wonder again about the nature of the change, to question whether she was truly herself or merely an arcane likeness. But then she realized that the change had been her resolution, and that vengeance was an artifact of her old life, nothing more, and that her new life, whatever its secret character, must find other concerns to fuel it apart from old griefs and unworthy passions. This struck her with the force of a revelation, and she let out a long sighing breath that seemed to carry away with it all the sad vibrations of the past, all the residues of hates and loves, and she could finally believe that she was no longer the dragon’s prisoner. She felt new in her whole being, subject to new compulsions, as alive as tears, as strong as wheat, far too strong and alive for this pallid environment, and she could hardly recall now why she had come.

She looked at Brianne and her son, feeling only the ghost of hatred, seeing them not as objects of pity or wrath, but as unfamiliar, irrelevant, lives trapped in the prison of their own self-regard, and without a word she turned and walked to the steps, slamming the hook deep into the boards of the wall, a gesture of fierce resignation, the closing of a door opening onto anger and the opening of one that led to uncharted climes, and went down out of the village, leaving old Tim Weedlon’s thirst for gossip unquenched, passing along Griaule’s back, pushing through thickets and fording streams, and not noticing for quite some time that she had crossed onto another hill and left the dragon far behind. Three weeks later she came to Cabrecavela, a small town at the opposite end of the Carbonales Valley, and there, using the gems provided her by Mauldry, she bought a house and settled in and began to write about Griaule, creating not a personal memoir but a reference work containing an afterword dealing with certain metaphysical speculations, for she did not wish her adventures published, considering them banal by comparison to her primary subjects, the dragon’s physiology and ecology. After the publication of her book, which she entitled The Heart’s Millennium, she experienced a brief celebrity; but she shunned most of the opportunities for travel and lecture and lionization that came her way, and satisfied her desire to impart the knowledge she had gained by teaching in the local school and speaking privately with those scientists from Port Chantay who came to interview her. Some of these visitors had been colleagues of John Colmacos, yet she never mentioned their relationship, believing that her memories of the man needed no modification; but perhaps this was a less than honest self-appraisal, perhaps she had not come to terms with that portion of her past, for in the spring five years after she had returned to the world she married one of these scientists, a man named Brian Ocoi, who in his calm demeanor and modest easiness of speech appeared cast from the same mold as Colmacos. From that point on little is known of her other than the fact that she bore two sons and confined her writing to a journal that has gone unpublished. However, it is said of her – as is said of all those who perform similar acts of faith in the shadows of other dragons yet unearthed from beneath their hills of ordinary-seeming earth and grass, believing that their bond serves through gentle constancy to enhance and not further delimit the boundaries of this prison world – from that day forward she lived happily ever after. Except for the dying at the end. And the heartbreak in between.

 How The Father of Stones came into the possession of the gemcutter William Lemos continues to be a subject for debate among the citizens of Port Chantay. That Lemos purchased the stone from the importer Henry Sichi is not in question, nor is it in doubt that Sichi had traded several bolts of raw silk for the stone to a tailor in Teocinte, and although the tailor has not admitted it, witnesses have clearly established that he took the stone by force from his niece, who had seen it glinting amid a clump of ferns growing beneath the lip of the dragon Griaule. But how the stone came to be in that spot at that exact moment, therein lies the cause of the debate. Some hold that the stone is a natural artifact of Griaule, a slow production of his flesh, perhaps a kind of tumor, and that it served to embody his wishes, to move Lemos – who lived beyond the natural range of his domination – to do the dragon’s bidding in the affair of the priest Mardo Zemaille and the Temple of the Dragon. Others will say that, yes, Griaule is indeed a marvel, a creature the size of a mountain, immobilized millennia before in a magical duel, who controls the population of the Carbonales Valley through the subtle exercise of his will and is capable of manipulating the most delicate and discreet of effects, the most complex of events; but to think that his tumors or kidney stones have the aspect of fabulous gems . . . well, that is stretching things a bit. Lemos, they claim, is merely attempting to use the fact of Griaule’s mastery to justify his crime, and doubtless The Father of Stones is a relic of the dragon’s hoard, probably dropped beneath the lip by one of the pitiful half-wits who inhabit his innards. Of course that’s how it got there, their opponents will say; do you believe Griaule incapable of such a simple machination as that of directing one of his minions to leave a stone in a certain place at a certain time? And as for the origin of the stone, here we have a vast, mysterious, and nearly immortal intelligence, one whose body supports forests and villages and parasites large enough to destroy a city – given all that, is the possibility that he might have fabricated The Father of Stones in some dark tuck of his interior really so far removed?

These arguments aside, the facts are as follows. One misty night in February some years ago, a young boy burst into the headquarters of the constabulary in Port Chantay, bursting with the news that Mardo Zemaille, the priest of the Temple of the Dragon, had been murdered, and that his assassin, William Lemos, was awaiting the pleasure of the constabulary at the temple gates. When the constables arrived at the temple, which was located a few hundred yards from the landward end of Ayler Point, they found Lemos, a pale sandy-haired man of forty-three with a pleasant yet unremarkable face and gray eyes and a distracted professorial air, pacing back and forth in front of the temple; after placing him in restraints, the constables proceeded onto the grounds, which were uncharacteristically deserted. In a corner building of the compound they discovered Zemaille lying crumpled beside an altar of black marble, his skull fractured, the fatal blow having been struck with a fist-sized gem of an inferior milky water, one side left rough, affording an excellent grip for someone wishing to hurl it, and the other side cut into a pattern of sharply edged facets. They also discovered Mirielle, Lemos’ daughter, stretched naked on the altar, drugged into a state of torpor. Port Chantay, while a fairly large city, was not so large that the constabulary had been unaware of the conflict between Lemos and Zemaille. Lemos’ wife Patricia, drowned in the waters off Ayler Point three years before (she had, it was rumored, been visiting her lover, a wealthy gentleman with a home at the seaward end of the point), had willed her portion of the gem-cutting business to Mirielle, and Mirielle, who had been deeply involved with the dragon cult and with Zemaille himself, had donated the half-share to the temple. Zemaille was accustomed to using rare gems in certain of his rituals, and he soon began to drain the resources of the shop; the imminent failure of the gemcutter’s business, along with his daughter’s rejection, her wantonness and sluttish obeisance to the priest, had driven him to the depths of despair and thence, it seemed, to murder. And so, with a confession in hand, one backed by clear motive and a wealth of physical evidence, the constables felt confident that justice would be swift and sure. But they had not reckoned on the nature of Lemos’ defense. Nor, it appeared from his initial reaction, had Lemos’ attorney, Adam Korrogly.

‘You must be mad,’ he told Lemos after the gemcutter had related his version of the events. ‘Or else you’re damned clever.’

‘It’s the truth,’ Lemos said glumly. He was slumped in a chair in a windowless interrogation room lit by a glass bowl depended from the ceiling that held clumps of luminous moss; he gazed at his hands, which were spread upon a wooden table, as if unable to accept that they had betrayed him.

Korrogly, a tall, thin, intense man with receding black hair and features that looked to have been whittled into sharpness out of smooth white wood, walked to the door and, facing it, said, ‘I see where you’re trying to lead me.’

‘I’m not trying to lead you anywhere,’ Lemos said. ‘I don’t care what you think, it’s the truth.’

‘You should care very much what I think,’ said Korrogly, turning to him. ‘In the first place, I don’t have to accept your case; in the second, my performance will be greatly abetted if I believe you.’

Lemos lifted his head and engaged Korrogly’s eyes with a look of such abject hopelessness that for an instant the attorney imagined it had struck him with a physical force. ‘Proceed as you will,’ Lemos said. ‘The quality of your performance matters little to me.’

Korrogly walked to the table and leaned forward, resting his hands so that the splayed tips of his fingers were nearly touching Lemos’ fingers. Lemos did not move his hands away, did not appear to notice the closeness of Korrogly’s hands, and this indicated that he was truly overborne by all that had happened, and not putting on an act. Either that, Korrogly thought, or the man’s got the nervous system of a snail.

‘You’re asking me to attempt a defense that’s never been used before,’ he said. ‘Now that I think of it, I’m amazed no one’s ever tried it. Griaule’s influence – over the Carbonales Valley, anyway – is not in doubt. But to claim you were enacting his will, that some essence embodied in the gem inspired you to serve as his agent, to use that as a defense in a criminal case . . . I don’t know.’

Lemos appeared not to have heard: after a moment he said, ‘Mirielle . . . is she all right?’

Irritated, Korrogly said, ‘Yes, yes, she’s fine. Were you listening to what I just said?’

Lemos stared at him uncomprehendingly.

‘Your story,’ Korrogly said, ‘appears to demand a defense that has never been used. Never. Do you know what will attend that?’

‘No,’ said Lemos, and lowered his eyes.

‘Judges are not delighted by the prospect of setting precedent, and whoever presides over your trial is going to be particularly loath to establish this sort of precedent. Because if it is established, God knows how many villains will seek to use it to avoid punishment.’

Lemos was silent for a few seconds and then said, ‘I don’t understand. What do you wish me to say?’

Studying his face, Korrogly had a feeling of uneasiness: Lemos’ despair seemed too uniform, too all-encompassing. He had acted for a number of clients who had been in the grip of terrible despair, but even the most despondent of these had on occasion suddenly realized their plight and exhibited fright or desperation or some variant emotion. He had the idea that Lemos was an intelligent man, one capable of such a subtle deceit as this might be.

‘It’s not necessary that you say anything,’ he told Lemos. ‘I simply want you to understand the course you’ve set me. If I were to plead for mercy from the court, ask them to recognize the passions involved, to take into account the unscrupulous nature of the deceased, I’m confident that your sentence would be light. Zemaille was not well loved, and there are many who consider what you’ve done an act of conscience.’

‘Not I,’ said Lemos in such an agonized tone that Korrogly was persuaded for the moment to complete belief.

‘However,’ he went on, ‘should I pursue the defense that your story suggests, you may wind up facing a much harsher sentence, perhaps even the ultimate. That you choose to defend in this manner might imply to the judge that the crime was premeditated. Thus he would allow no mediating circumstance in his instructions to the jury. He would dismiss all possibility of it being a crime of passion.’

Lemos gave a dispirited laugh.

‘That amuses you?’ Korrogly asked.

‘I find it simplistic that passion and premeditation are deemed to be mutually exclusive.’

Korrogly moved away from the table, folded his arms, and regarded the luminous globe overhead. ‘Of course that’s not always the case. Not all crimes of passion are considered acts of the moment. There is leeway left for obsession, for irresistible compulsion. But what I’m telling you is that the judge in his desire to avoid setting precedent might block these avenues of mercy in his instructions to the jury.’

Once again Lemos appeared to have slipped into a reverie.

‘Have you decided?’ Korrogly insisted. ‘I can’t decide for you, I can only recommend.’

‘You seem to be recommending that I lie,’ said Lemos.

‘How do you arrive at that?’

‘You tell me the truth is a risk, that the secure course is best.’

‘I’m merely counseling you as to the potential pitfalls.’

‘There’s a fine line, is there not, between recommendation and counsel?’

‘Between guilt and innocence also,’ said Korrogly, thinking he might get a rise out of Lemos with this; but the gemcutter only stared at the table, brushed back his sandy forelock from his eyes.

‘Very well.’ Korrogly picked up his case from the floor. ‘I’ll assume you want me to go forward with the case as you’ve presented it.’

‘Mirielle,’ said Lemos. ‘Will you ask her to come and visit me?’

‘I will.’

‘Today . . . will you ask her today?’

‘I plan to see her this afternoon, and I’ll ask her. But according to the constables, she may not respond favorably to anything I ask on your behalf. She is apparently quite bereft.’

Lemos muttered something, and when Korrogly asked him to repeat it, he said, ‘Nothing.’

‘Is there anything else I can do for you?’

Lemos shook his head.

‘I’ll be back tomorrow,’ said Korrogly; he started to tell Lemos to be of good cheer, but partly in recognition of the profundity of Lemos’ despair, partly due to his continuing sense of uneasiness, he thought better of it.

The gemcutter’s shop was in the Almintra quarter of Port Chantay, a section of the city bordering the ocean, touched yet not overwhelmed by decay and poverty. Dozens of shops were situated on the bottom floors of old peeling frame houses with witchy-looking peaked roofs and gables, and between them, Korrogly could see the houses of the wealthy ranging Ayler Point: airy mansions with wide verandahs and gilt roofs nestled among stands of thistle palms. The sea beyond the point was a smooth jade-colored expanse broken by creamy surf, seeming to carry out the theme of elegance stated by the mansions; on the other hand, the breakers that heaped foam upon the beaches of the Almintra quarter were fouled with seaweed and driftwood and offal. It must, he thought, be dismaying to the residents of the quarter, which not so long ago had been considered exclusive, to have this view of success and beauty, and then to turn back to their own lives and watch the rats scurrying in piles of vegetable litter, the ghost crabs scuttling in the sandy streets, the beggars, the increasing dilapidation of their homes. He wondered if this could have played a part in the murder; he could discern no opportunity for profit in the crime, but there was so much still hidden, and he did not want to blind himself to the existence of such a motive. He did not believe Lemos, yet he could not fully discredit the gemcutter’s story. That was the story’s virtue: its elusiveness, the way it played upon the superstitious nature of the citizenry, how it employed the vast subtlety of Griaule to spread confusion through the mind of whomever sought to judge it. The jury was going to have one hell of a time. And, he thought, so was he. He could not deny the challenge presented him; a case of this sort came along but rarely, and its materials, so aptly suited to the game of the law, to the lawyerly sleights-of-hand that had turned the law into a game, afforded him the opportunity of making a quick reputation. His inability to discredit Lemos’ story might be a product of his hope that the gemcutter was telling the truth, that precedent was indeed involved, for he was beginning to realize that he needed something spectacular, something unique and unsettling, to reawaken his old hopes and enthusiasms, to restore his sense of self-worth. For the nine years since his graduation from law school, he had devoted himself to his practice, achieving a small success, all that could be expected of someone who was the son of poor farmers; he had watched less skilled lawyers achieve greater success, and he had come to understand what he should have understood from the beginning: that the Law was subordinate to the unwritten laws of social status and blood relation. He was at the age of thirty-three an idealist whose ideals were foundering, yet whose fascination with the game remained undimmed, and this had left him open to a dangerous cynicism – dangerous in that it had produced in him a volatile mixture of old virtues and new half-understood compulsions. Lately the bubblings up of that mixture had tended to make him erratic, prone to wild swings of mood and sudden abandonments of hope and principle. He was, he thought, in much the same condition as the Almintra quarter: a working class neighborhood funded by solid values that had once looked forward to an upwardly mobile future, but that now aspired to be a slum.

The gemcutter’s apartment was on the second floor of one of the frame houses, located directly above his shop, and it was there that Korrogly interviewed the daughter, Mirielle. She was a slim young woman in her early twenties with long black hair and hazel eyes and a heart-shaped face whose prettiness had been hardened by the stamp of dissipation; she wore a black dress with a lace collar, but her pose was hardly in keeping with the demureness of her garment or with her apparent grief. Her cheeks were puffy from weeping, her eyes reddened, and yet she lay asprawl on a sofa, smoking a crooked green cigar, her legs propped on the back and the arm, affording Korrogly a glimpse of the shadowy division between her thighs: it appeared that grief had offered her the chance to experience a new form of dissolution, and she had seized upon it wholeheartedly.

We’re proud of our little treasure, are we not, he thought, we like to give it lots of ventilation.

But Mirielle Lemos, for all her dissipation, was an extremely attractive woman, and despite his sarcasm, Korrogly – a lonely man – felt drawn to her.

The air in the apartment was thick with stale cooking odors, and the living room was a typical bachelor’s disarray of soiled dishes and tumbled piles of clothing and scattered books, all strewn across furniture that had seen better days: the sprung sofa, a couple of easy chairs shiny with dirt and grease, a thread-bare brown carpet with a faded blue pattern, a small scarred table that bore several framed sketches, one depicting a woman who greatly resembled Mirielle and was holding a baby in her arms – thin winter sunlight cast a glaze of reflection over the glass, imbuing the sketch with a mystical vagueness. On the wall were several paintings, and the largest of these was a representation of Griaule half-buried beneath centuries of grass and trees, only a portion of a wing and his entire massive head, as high as a hill itself, left visible; this painting, Korrogly noticed, was signed W. Lemos. He pushed aside some dirty clothing and perched on the edge of an easy chair facing Mirielle.

‘So you’re my father’s lawyer,’ she said after exhaling a stream of gray smoke. ‘You don’t look competent.’

‘Be assured that I am,’ said Korrogly, who had been prepared for her hostility. ‘If you were hoping for some white-haired old man with ink on his fingers and crumpled legal notes peeping from his waistcoat pockets, I’m . . .’

‘No,’ she said, ‘I was hoping for someone exactly like you. Somebody with a minimum of experience and skill.’

‘I take it, then, that you’re anticipating a hard judgment for your father. That you’re embittered by his act.’

‘Embittered?’ She laughed. ‘I despised him before he killed Mardo. Now I hate him.’

‘And yet he saved your life.’

‘Is that what he told you?’ Another laugh. ‘That’s scarcely the case.’

‘You were drugged,’ he said. ‘Lying naked on an altar. A knife was found on Zemaille’s body.’

‘I’ve spent other nights lying on that altar in exactly the same state,’ she said, ‘and never once have I experienced other than pleasure.’ Her sultry, smirking tone made clear the nature of that pleasure. ‘As for the knife, Mardo always went armed. He was in constant danger from fools like my father.’

‘What do you remember of the murder?’

‘I remember hearing my father’s voice. I thought I was dreaming. Then I heard a crack, a splintering sound. I looked up and saw Mardo fall with blood all over his face.’ She tensed, looked up to the ceiling, apparently made uncomfortable by the memory; but then, as though also inflamed by it, she ran a hand along her belly and thigh. Korrogly averted his eyes, feeling an accumulation of heat in his own belly.

‘Your father claims there were nine witnesses, nine hooded figures, all of whom fled the chamber. None of them have come forward. Do you know why this might be?’

‘Why should they come forward? To experience more persecution from people who have no idea of what Mardo was attempting?’

“And what was that?”

She exhaled another stream of smoke and said nothing.

‘You’ll be asked this question in court.’

‘I will not betray our secrets,’ she said. ‘I don’t care what happens to me.’

‘Neither does your father . . . or so he says. He’s very depressed, and he wants to see you.’

She made a noise of contempt. ‘I’ll see him on the gallows.’

‘You know,’ Korrogly said, ‘despite what your father has done, he really does believe he was acting to save you.’

‘You don’t know what he believes,’ she said, sitting up, fixing him with a dead stare, her voice full of venom. ‘You don’t understand him at all. He pretends to be a humble craftsman, an artisan, a good honest soul. But in his heart he considers himself a superior being. Life, he used to say, had thrown obstacle after obstacle into his path, keeping him from achieving his proper station. He feels he’s been penalized with bad luck for his intelligence. He’s a schemer, a plotter. And his bad luck stems from the fact that he’s not so intelligent as he thinks. He bungles everything.’

The first part of what she had said was in such accord with Korrogly’s impression of Lemos that he was taken aback; hearing his feelings issue from Mirielle’s mouth acted both to reinforce his impression and – because she was so obviously her father’s antagonist – to invalidate it.

‘That may be,’ he said, covering his confusion by shuffling through papers, ‘but I doubt it.’

‘Oh, you’ll find out,’ she said. ‘If there’s one thing you’ll end up knowing about my father, it’s his capacity for deceit.’ She settled back on the sofa, her skirt riding up onto her thigh. ‘He’s been wanting to kill Mardo ever since I got involved with him.’ A smile hitched up the corners of her mouth. ‘He was jealous.’

‘Jealous?’ said Korrogly.

‘Yes . . . as a lover is jealous. He delights in touching me.’

Korrogly did not reject the notion of incestuous desire out of hand, but after going through the mental file he had begun on Lemos, he refused to believe Mirielle’s accusation; she had been so committed to Zemaille and his way of life that he could not, he realized, believe anything she told him. She was ruined, abandoned to the point of dissolution; the stink pervading the apartment, he thought, was scarcely distinguishable from the reek of her own spoilage.

‘Why do you despise your father?’ he asked.

‘His pomposity,’ she said, ‘and his stodginess. His stale conception of what happiness should be, his inability to embrace life, his dull presence, his . . .’

‘All that sounds quite adolescent,’ he said. ‘Like the reaction of a stubborn child who’s been denied her favorite treat.’

She shrugged. ‘Perhaps. He rejected my suitors, he prevented me from becoming an actress . . . and I could have been a good one. Everybody said so. But how I am, how I was, doesn’t have any bearing on the truth of what I’ve said. And it’s not relevant to what my father did.’

‘Relevant . . . possibly not. But it speaks to the fact that you’re not in the least interested in helping him.’

‘I’ve made no secret of that.’

‘No, you haven’t. But the history of your emotions will be helpful in pointing up that you’re a vindictive bitch and that your idea of the truth is whatever will hurt your father. It has no relation to what really happened.’

He had been trying to make her angry, wanting to get an idea of her boiling point, knowledge that would come in handy during the trial; but her smile only broadened, she crossed her legs and traced a florid shape in the air with the tip of her cigar. She was very cool, he thought, very cool. But in court that would work against her; it would cast Lemos in a more benign light, show him to be the patient, caring parent in contrast to her vengeful ingrate. Of course that would be more significant to a defense based on compulsion, on wrong-headed passion; but Korrogly believed he could color his actual defense with this other and so win the jury’s sympathy.

‘Well,’ he said, coming to his feet. ‘I may have some more questions later, but I don’t see any use in continuing this now.’

‘You think you’ve got me, don’t you?’

‘Got you? I don’t know what you mean.’

‘You think you’ve got me figured out.’

‘As a matter of fact, I do.’

‘And how you would portray me in court?’

‘I’m sure you must have an idea.’

‘Oh, but I’d like to hear it.’

‘All right. If necessary I’ll paint a picture of a spoiled, indulgent creature who has no real feelings for anyone. Even her grief for her lover seems to be no more than a kind of adornment, an accessory to be worn with a black dress. And in her degeneracy, a condition prompted by drugs and the black arts, by the depraved rituals of the dragon cult, the only emotions she is capable of mustering are those she thinks will serve her ends. Greed, perhaps. And vengefulness.’

She let out a lazy chuckle.

‘That strikes you as inaccurate?’

‘Not at all, lawyer. What amuses me is that knowing this, you think you can use it to your advantage.’ She turned on her side, supporting her head with one hand, her skirt twisting beneath her, exposing even more pale firm flesh. ‘I’ll look forward to our next meeting. Perhaps by then your understanding of the situation will have grown more complex, and you’ll have more . . . more interesting questions to ask.’

‘May I ask one further question now?’

‘Yes, of course.’ She rolled onto her back, cutting her eyes toward him.

‘This display of yours, the dress up to your waist and all that, is it intended to arouse me?’

She nodded. ‘Mmm-hmm. Is it working?’

‘Why?’ he said. ‘What possible benefit do you think that’ll gain you? Do you think I’ll defend your father with less enthusiasm?’

‘I don’t know . . . will you?’

‘Not at all.’

‘Then it’ll be for nothing,’ she said. ‘But that’s all right, too.’

He couldn’t tear his eyes away from her legs.

‘Really, it’s all right,’ she said. ‘I need a lover now. And I like you. You’re funny, but I like you anyway.’

He stared at her, his anger alternating with desire. Knowing that he could have her alarmed him. He could go to her now, this moment, and it would affect nothing, it would have no resonance with the trial, it would merely be an indulgence. Yet he understood that it was this increasing openness to indulgence that signaled his impending moral shipwreck. To reject her would not be an act of prudishness, but one of salvation.

‘It’ll be good with us,’ she said. ‘I have a feeling for these things.’

His eye followed the line of her thigh to the white seashell curve of her hip; her fingers were long, slender, and he imagined how they might touch him.

‘I have to be going,’ he said.

‘Yes, I think you’d better.’ Her voice was charged with gleeful spite. ‘That was a near thing, wasn’t it? You might have actually enjoyed yourself.’

 During the next week Korrogly interviewed many witnessess, among them Henry Sichi, who reported that when Lemos purchased the gemstone, he had been so entranced by it, so absorbed, that Sichi had found it necessary to give him a nudge in order to alert him sufficiently to complete the deal. He spoke to various members of Lemos’ guild, all of whom were willing to testify to the mildness and honesty of his character; they described him as a man obsessed with his work, obsessed to the point of absentmindness, drawing a vastly different picture of the man than had Mirielle. Korrogly had known quite a few men who had presented an exemplary public face and a wholly contradictory one in private; yet there was no doubt that the guildsmen’s testimony would outweigh Mirielle’s . . . in fact, whatever Mirielle said in evidence would, no matter how hostile, benefit Lemos’ case because of its vile context. He sought out experts on Griaule’s history and talked to people who’d had personal experience of Griaule’s influence. The only witness whose testimony ran contrary to the defense was that of an old man, a drunkard who was in the habit of sleeping it off in the dunes south of Ayler Point and on several occasions had seen Lemos hurling stones at a sign post, hurling them over and over again as if practicing for the fatal toss; the old man’s alcoholism would diminish the impact of the testimony, but it was nevertheless of consequence.

When Korrogly related it to Lemos, the gemcutter said, ‘I often walk out past the point of an afternoon, and sometimes I throw stones to relax. It was my only talent as a child, and I suppose I seek refuge in it when the world becomes too much to bear.’

Like every other bit of evidence, this too, Korrogly saw, was open to interpretation; it was conceivable, for instance, that Griaule’s choice of Lemos as an agent had been in part made because of this aptitude for throwing stones, that he had been moved by the dragon to practice in preparation for the violent act. He looked across the table at his client. Jail, it appeared, was turning Lemos gray. His skin, the tenor of his emotions, everything about him was going gray, and Korrogly felt infected by that grayness, felt that the gray was the color of the case, of all its indistinct structures and indefinite truths, and that it was spreading through him and wearing him away. He asked again if he could do anything for Lemos, and again Lemos’ answer was that he wished to see Mirielle.

On a Sunday in late March, Korrogly interviewed an elderly and wealthy woman who had until shortly before the murder been an active member of the Temple of the Dragon. The woman was known only as Kirin, and her past was a shadow; she seemed not to have existed prior to her emergence within the strictures of the temple, and since leaving it, she had lived a secretive life, known to the public only through the letters that she occasionally wrote to the newspaper attacking the cult. He was met at the door by a thick-waisted drab, apparently the woman’s servant, who led him in a room that seemed to have been less decorated than to have sprung from a green and leafy enchantment. It was roofed by a faceted skylight, divided by carved wooden screens, all twined with vines and epiphytes; plants of every variety choked the avenues among the screens, their foliage so luxuriant that sprays of leaves hid the pots in which they were rooted. The sun illuminated a profusion of greens – pale pomona, nile, emerald, viridian, and chartreuse; intricate shadows dappled the hardwood floors. The fronds of sword ferns twitched in the breeze like the feelers of enormous insects.

After wandering through this jungly environment for nearly half an hour, growing more and more impatient, Korrogly was hailed by a fluting female voice, which asked him to call out so that she might find him among the leaves. Moments later, a tall white-haired woman in a floor-length gown of gray watered silk came up beside him; her face was the color of old ivory, deeply wrinkled and stamped with what struck Korrogly as a stern and suspicious character, and her hands moved ceaselessly, plucking at the nearby leaves as if they were the telling beads of some meditative religion. Despite her age, she radiated energy, and Korrogly thought that if he were to close his eyes, he would have the impression that he was in the presence of a vital young woman. She directed him to a bench in a corner of the room and sat next to him, gazing out into the lushness of her sanctum, continuing to pluck and pick at stem and leaf.

‘I distrust lawyers, Mister Korrogly,’ she said. ‘You should know that from the outset.

‘So do I, Ma’am,’ he said, hoping to elicit a laugh, some softening of her attitude, but she only pursed her lips.

‘Had you represented any other client, I would not have agreed to see you. But the man who has rid the world of Mardo Zemaille deserves any help I can give . . . though I’m not at all certain how I can help.’

‘I was hoping you might provide me with some background on Zemaille, particularly as regards his relationship with Mirielle Lemos.’

‘Ah,’ she said. ‘That.’

‘Mirielle herself has not been forthcoming, and the other members of the cult have gone to ground.’

‘They’re afraid.’

‘Of what?’

She gave an amused hiss. ‘Of everything, Mister Korrogly. Mardo has addicted them to fear. And of course now that he’s gone, now that he’s abandoned them to the fear he instilled in them, they’ve fled. The temple will never thrive again.’ She tore a strip of green off a frond. ‘That was Mardo’s one truth, that in the proper environment, fear can be a form of sustenance. It’s a truth that underlies many religions. Mirielle understands it as well.’

‘Tell me about her.’

The old woman fingered a spray of bamboo leaves. ‘She’s not a bad girl . . . or at least she didn’t used to be. It was Mardo who corrupted her. He corrupted everyone, he broke them and then poured his black juice into their cracks. When I first met her, that was five years ago, I took her for a typical convert. She was an agitated, moody girl when she came to the temple. All dance and no standstill, as the saying goes. I assumed Mardo would have her – he had all the pretty ones and that then he would let her fall from grace, become an ordinary devotee. But I underestimated Mirielle. She had something, some quality, that fascinated Mardo. I originally thought that he might have met his match sexually, for I knew from some of the other members that she was’ – she seemed to be searching for the right word – ‘rapacious. And perhaps that did have something to do with it. But of greater relevance, I believe, was that she was driven in much the same way as he. And thus she is equally untrustworthy.’

‘How do you mean “driven”?’

The old woman looked down at the floor. ‘It’s difficult to explain Mardo to anyone who never knew him, and it’s entirely unnecessary to explain him to anyone who did. When you examine what he said closely, it was all doctrinal persiflage, mumbo jumbo, a welter of half-baked ideas stirred together with high-flown empty language. But despite that, you always had the idea that he knew something, or that he was onto something, some course that would carry him to great achievement. I’m not speaking of charisma . . . not that Mardo was short in that department. What I’m trying to get to is something more substantial. There was about him an air that he was being moved by forces within him that not even he fully comprehended.’

‘And you’re saying Mirielle had this air as well.’

‘Yes, yes, she was driven by something. Again, I don’t know if she understood its nature. But she was driven much like Mardo. He recognized this in her, and that’s why he trusted her so.’

‘And yet it appears that he was going to kill her.’

She sighed. ‘The reason I left the temple . . . no, let me tell you first the reasons I joined it. I fancied myself a seeker, but even at the height of my self-deception, I realized that I was merely bored. Bored and old . . . too old to find better entertainment. The temple was for me a violent dark romance whose characters were constantly changing, and I was completely taken with it. And there was always the sense that Griaule was near. That chill scaly presence . . . that awful cold power.’ She gave a dramatic shudder. ‘At any rate, two years ago I began to have a sense that things were getting serious, that the great work Mardo had talked of for so long was finally getting under way. It frightened me. And being frightened awakened me to the deceits and evils of the temple.’

‘Do you know what it was . . . the great work?’

She hesitated. ‘No.’

He studied her, thinking that she was holding back something. ‘I have no one else to turn to in this,’ he said. ‘The cult members have gone to ground.’

‘They may have gone to ground, but some of them are watching even now. If I revealed secrets, they would kill me.’

‘I could subpoena you.’

‘You could,’ she said, ‘but I would say no more than I have. And there is also the fact that I would not make a very reliable witness. The prosecutor would ask questions about my past, and those I would not answer.’

‘I assume the great work had something to do with Griaule.’

She shrugged. ‘Everything did.’

‘Can’t you even give me a clue? Something?’

‘I’ll tell you this much. You have to understand the nature of the cult. They did not so much worship Griaule as they elevated their fear of him to the status of worship. Mardo saw himself in a peculiar relationship to Griaule; he felt he was the spiritual descendant of that first wizard who long ago did battle with the dragon . . . a sort of ritual adversary, both celebrant and enemy. That kind of duality appealed to Mardo; he considered it the height of subtlety.’

Korrogly continued to press her, but she would say no more and finally he gave it up. ‘Did Mirielle know about the work?’

‘I doubt it. Mardo’s trust of her extended to the material world, but this was something else, something magical. Something serious. And that troubled me. I didn’t want things to be serious, I began to be afraid. People vanished, conversations became whispered, the darkness inside the temple seemed to be spreading everywhere. Finally I couldn’t bear it. I started to notice things. Perhaps I’d always noticed them, but had preferred not to see them. At any rate, I realized then how dangerous a thing had been my boredom, how low I had let it drag me. I understood that for all his drive and intensity, Mardo Zemaille was an evil man . . . evil in the blackest of definitions. He sought to master wizardly arts that have died away for lack of adherents corrupt enough to dig in the nightsoil where the roots of such power are buried.’

‘What things did you notice?’

‘Rituals of torture . . . sacrifices.’

‘Human sacrifice?’

‘Perhaps . . . I can’t be sure. But I believe at the least that Mardo was capable of it.’

‘Then you think that he was going to sacrifice Mirielle.’

‘It’s hard to credit. He doted on her. But, yes, it’s possible that he would feel he had to sacrifice the thing he most cared about in order to complete the great work. She may not have known it, but I think he may have had that in mind.’

Korrogly watched leaf shadows trembling on the sunlit floor; he felt tired, out of his element. What, he thought, am I doing here, talking to an old lady about evil, trying to prove that a dragon has committed murder, what am I doing?

‘You mentioned trust between the two of them.’

‘Yes, Mardo made it plain to everyone that in the event anything happened to him, she was to lead the temple. There was something . . .’

‘What?’ Korrogly asked.

‘I was going to say I always suspected that there was a secret history between them, and that was another reason for Mardo’s trust. It was something I felt was true . . . but it was only a feeling. Nothing admissible, nothing you could use. Anyway, I suppose he drew up documents that would grant her some kind of legal succession. He was a stickler for that sort of detail.’ She tilted her head to the side as if trying to make out some indefinite quality in his face. ‘You look surprised. I’ve never known a lawyer whose expressions were so readable.’

Failure, he thought, even my face is failing me now.

‘I had no idea the bond between them had been ratified in any way,’ he said.

‘Perhaps it hasn’t. I can’t be sure. But if I’m correct and it has, you’ll have no end of trouble unearthing the documents. Mardo would have never gone to a lawyer. If they exist they’re probably hidden in the temple somewhere.’

‘I see.’

‘What are you thinking?’

He made a noise of baffled amusement. ‘I thought this would be such a simple case, but everywhere I turn I come upon some new complexity.’

‘It is a simple case,’ she said, her wrinkled face tightening with a grim expression. ‘Take my word, no matter how villainous a creature you believe William Lemos to be, his act has made him an innocent.’

One night shortly before the opening of the trial, Korrogly visited the constabulary headquarters to have another look at the murder weapon – The Father of Stones, as Lemos had named it. Standing alone by a table in the evidence room, looking down at the stone, which rested at the center of a nest of tissue paper within a tin box, he was as confounded by it as he had been by every other element of the case. At one moment it seemed to enclose profane fractions of encysted light, its surface clouded and occult, a milky bulge with the reek of a thousand-year-old egg trapped inside; the next, it would appear lovely, subtle, embodying the delicate essence of some numinous philosophy. And at its heart was a dark flaw that resembled a man with upflung arms. Like Griaule himself, it was a thing of infinite shadings, of a thousand possible interpretations, and Korrogly could easily believe that its point of origin was a cavity in the dragon’s body. He was, however, still unable to believe Lemos’ story; it, too, was flawed, and this flaw would be enough to lead the gemcutter to the gallows. There was just no good reason, at least none he, Korrogly, could discern, why Griaule would have wanted Lemos to kill Zemaille. Not even Lemos could come up with a good reason; he simply continued to insist that it was so, and mere insistence would not save him. Yet it was that same flaw, the lack of patness to the story, that kept forcing Korrogly to relent in his judgment, to be tempted to belief. What a case, he thought; when he was back in law school he’d dreamt of having a case like this, and now he had it, and all it was doing was making him weary, making him wonder if he had wasted his life, if every question, even the most fundamental, was as elusive as this one, and he just hadn’t noticed before.

He picked up The Father of Stones and juggled it; it was unusually heavy. Like dragon scale, like ancient thought.

Damn, he thought, damn this whole business, I should give it up and start a religion, there must be sufficient fools out there for some of them to consider me wise and wonderful.

‘Thinking about murdering someone?’ said a dry voice behind him. ‘Your client, perhaps?’

It was the prosecutor, Ian Mervale, a reedy, aristocratic-looking man in a stylishly cut black suit; his dark hair, combed back from a noble forehead, was salted with gray, and the vagueness of his eyes, which were watery blue, set in sleepy folds, belied a quick and aggressive mentality.

‘I’m more likely to go after you,’ said Korrogly wryly.

‘Me?’ Mervale affected shocked dismay. ‘I’m by far the least of your worries. If not your client, I’d consider an attack upon our venerable Judge Wymer. It appears he’s not at all sympathetic to your defense tactics.’

‘I can’t blame him for that,’ Korrogly muttered.

Mervale studied him a moment, then shook his head and chuckled. ‘It’s always the same every time I run up against you. I know you’re being honest, you’re not trying to underplay your hand; but even though I know it, as soon as the trial begins I become positively convinced that you’re being duplicitous, that you’ve got some devastating trick up your sleeve.’

‘You don’t trust yourself,’ Korrogly said. ‘How can you trust anyone else?’

‘I suppose you’re right. My greatest strength is my greatest weakness.’ He started to turn toward the door, hesitated and then said, ‘Care for a drink?’ Korrogly juggled The Father of Stones one last time; it seemed to have grown heavier yet. ‘I suppose a drink might help,’ he said.

The Blind Lady, a pub in Chancrey’s Lane, was as usual crowded with law clerks and young solicitors, whose body heat fogged the mirrors on the walls, whose errant darts lodged in white plaster or blackened beam, and whose uproarious babble made quiet conversation impossible. Korrogly and Mervale worked their way through the press, holding their glasses high to avoid spillage, and at last found an unoccupied table at the rear of the pub. As they seated themselves, a group of clerks standing nearby began to sing a bawdy song. Mervale winced, then lifted his glass in a toast to Korrogly.

The singers moved off toward the front of the pub; Mervale leaned back, regarding Korrogly with fond condescension, an attitude more of social habit than one relating to their adversary positions. Mervale was the son of a moneyed shipbuilder, and there was always an edge of class struggle to their conversations, an edge they blunted by pretending to have a fund of mutual respect.

‘So what do you think?’ Mervale asked. ‘Is Lemos lying . . . demented? What?’

‘Demented, no. Lying . . .’ Korrogly sipped his rum. ‘Every time I think I have the answer to that, I see another side to things. I wouldn’t want to hazard a guess at this stage. What do you think?’

‘Of course he’s lying! The man had every motive in the world to kill Zemaille. His daughter, his business. My God! He could have done nothing else but kill him. But I have to admit his story’s ingenious. Brilliant.’

‘Is it? I might have gotten him off with a couple of years if he’d pled some version of diminished capacity.’

‘Yes, but that’s what makes it so brilliant, the fact that everyone knows that’s so. They’ll say to themselves, God, the man must be innocent or else he wouldn’t stick to such a far-fetched tale.’

‘I’d hardly call it far-fetched.’

‘Oh, very well! Let’s call it inspired then, shall we?’

Growing annoyed, Korrogly thought, you pompous piece of shit, I’m going to beat you this time.

He smiled. ‘As you wish.’

‘Ah,’ said Mervale, ‘I sense that a trial lawyer has suddenly taken possession of your body.’

Korrogly drank. ‘I’m not in the mood tonight, Mervale. What are you after that you think I’m willing to give away?’

Displeasure registered on Mervale’s face.

‘What’s wrong?’ Korrogly asked. ‘Am I spoiling your fun?’

‘I don’t know what’s got into you,’ said Mervale. ‘Maybe you’ve been working too hard.’

‘These little ritual fishing expeditions are beginning to bore me, that’s all. They always come to the same thing. Nothing. They’re just your way of reminding me of my station. You drag me in here and butter me up with the old school smile and talk about parties to which I haven’t been invited. I expect you believe this gives you a psychological advantage, but I think the false sense of superiority it lends you actually weakens your delivery. And you need all the strength you can muster. You’re simply not that proficient a prosecutor.’

Mervale got stiffly to his feet, cast a scornful look down at Korrogly. ‘You’re a joke, you know that?’ he said. ‘A tiresome drudge without a life, with only the law for a bed partner.’ He tossed some coins onto the table. ‘Buy yourself a couple of drinks. Perhaps drunk you’ll be able to entertain yourself.’

Korrogly watched him move through the crowd, accepting the good wishes of the law clerks who closed around him. Now why, he thought, why did I bother doing that?

He waited until Mervale was out of sight before leaving, and then, instead of going directly home, he walked west along Biscaya Boulevard, heading nowhere in particular, moving aimlessly through the accumulating mist, his thoughts in a despondent muddle; the dank salt air seemed redolent of his own heaviness, of the damp dark moil inside his head. Only peripherally did he notice that he had entered the Almintra quarter, and it was not until he found himself standing in front of the gemcutter’s shop that he suspected he had tried to hide from himself the fact that he had intended to come this way. Or perhaps, he thought, I was moved to come here by some vast and ineluctable agency whose essence spoke to me from The Father of Stones. Though that thought had been formed in derision, it caused the hairs on the back of his neck to prickle, and he wondered, what if Lemos’ story is true, could I also be vulnerable to Griaule’s directives? The silence of the dead street unnerved him; the peaks of the rooftops looked like black simple mountains rising from plateaus of mist, and the few streetlamps left unbroken shone through the haze like evil phosphorescent flowers, and the shop windows were obsidian, reflective, hiding their secrets. It was still fairly early, but all the good artisans and shopkeepers were abed . . . all except the occupant of the apartment above Lemos’ shop. Her light still burned. He gazed up at it, thinking now that Mervale’s insulting and accurate depiction of his life might have motivated him to visit Mirielle, thereby to disprove it. He decided to leave, to return home, but remained standing in front of the shop, held in place, it seemed, by the glow of the lamp and the sodden crush of the surf from the darkness beyond. A dog began to bark nearby; from somewhere farther away came the call of voices singing, violins and horns, a melancholy tune that he felt was sounding the configuration of his own loneliness.

This is folly, he said to himself, she’ll probably kick you down the stairs, she was only playing with you the last time, and why the hell would you want it anyway . . . just to be away from your thoughts for awhile, no matter how temporary the cure?

That’s right, that’s exactly right.

‘Hell!’ he said to the dark, to the whole unlistening world. ‘Hell, why not?’

The woman who opened the door, though physically the same woman who had sprawled brazenly on the sofa during their first meeting, was in all other ways quite different. Distracted; twitchy; pale to the point of seeming bloodless, her black hair loose and in disarray; clad in a white robe of some heavy coarse cloth. The dissolute hardness had emptied from her face, and she seemed to have thrown off a handful of years, to be a troubled young girl. She stared for a second as if failing to recognize him and then said, ‘Oh . . . you.’

He was about to apologize for having come so late, to beat a retreat, put off by her manner; but before he could frame the words, she stepped back from the door and invited him in.

‘I’m glad you’re here,’ she said, following him into the living room, which had undergone a cleaning. ‘I haven’t been able to sleep.’

She dropped onto the sofa, fumbled about on the end table, picked up a cigar, then set it down; she looked up at him expectantly.

‘Well, have a seat.’

He did as instructed, taking his perch again on the easy chair. ‘I was hoping you wouldn’t mind answering a few more questions.’

‘Questions . . . you want . . . oh, all right. Questions.’ She gave a fey laugh and picked nervously at the fringe on the arm of the sofa. ‘Ask away.’

‘I’ve heard,’ he said, ‘that Mardo had in mind for you to take over the leadership of the temple in case of his death. Is that correct?’

She nodded, kept nodding, too forcefully for mere affirmation, as if trying to clear some painful entanglement from her head.

‘Yes, indeed,’ she said. ‘That’s what he had in mind.’

‘Were there papers drawn up to this effect?’

‘No . . . yes, maybe . . . I don’t know. He talked about doing it, but I never saw them.’ She rocked back and forth on the edge of the sofa, her hands plucking at ridges of its old embroidered pattern. ‘It doesn’t matter now.’

‘Why . . . why doesn’t it matter?’

‘There is no temple.’

‘What do you mean?’

‘There is no temple! Simple as that. No more adherents, no more ceremonies. Just empty buildings.’

‘What happened?’

‘I don’t want to talk about it.’

‘But . . .’

She jumped to her feet, paced toward the back of the room; then she spun about to face him, brushing hair back from her cheek. ‘I don’t want to talk about it! I don’t want to talk at all . . . not about . . . not about anything important.’ She put a hand to her brow as if testing for a fever. ‘I’m sorry, I’m sorry.’

‘What’s the matter?’ he asked.

‘Oh, nothing,’ she said. ‘My life’s a shambles, my lover’s dead, and my father goes on trial for his murder tomorrow morning. Everything’s fine.’

‘I don’t know why your father’s plight should disturb you. I thought you hated him.’

‘He’s still my father. I have feelings that hate won’t dissolve. Reflex feelings, you understand. But they have their pull.’ She came back to the sofa and sat down; once again she began picking at the embroidered pattern. ‘Look, I can’t help you. I don’t know anything that can help you with the trial. Not a thing. If I did I think I’d tell you . . . that’s how I feel now, anyway. But there’s nothing, nothing at all.’

He sensed that the crack in her callous veneer ran deeper than she cared to admit, and, too, he thought that her anxiety might be due to the fact that she did know something helpful and was holding it back; but he decided not to push the matter.

‘Very well,’ he said. ‘What would you like to talk about?’

She glanced around the room, as if searching for something that would support a conversation.

He noticed that her eye lingered on the framed sketch of the woman and baby. ‘Is that your mother?’ he asked, pointing to it.

That appeared to unsettle her. ‘Yes,’ she murmured, looking quickly away from the sketch.

‘She’s very much like you. Her name was Patricia, wasn’t it?’

Mirielle nodded.

‘It’s a terrible thing,’ he said, ‘for a woman so lovely to be taken before her time. How did she drown?’

‘Don’t you know how to talk without interrogating people?’ she asked angrily.

‘I’m sorry,’ he said, wondering at the vehemence of her reaction. ‘I just . . .’

‘My mother’s dead,’ she said. ‘Let that be enough for you.’

‘I was only making conversation. You choose the subject, all right?’

‘All right,’ she said after a moment. ‘Let’s talk about you.’

‘There’s not much to tell.’

‘There never is with people, but that’s all right. I won’t be bored, I promise.’

He began, reluctantly at first, to talk about his life, his childhood, the tiny farm in the hills above the city, with its banana grove, its corral and three cows – Rose, Alvina, and Esmeralda – and as he spoke, that old innocent life seemed to be resurrected, to be breathing just beyond the apartment walls. He told her how he used to sit on a hilltop and look down at the city and dream of owning one of the fine houses.

‘And now you do,’ she said.

‘No, I don’t. There’s a law against it. The fine houses belong to those with status, with history on their side. There are laws against people like me, laws that keep us in our place.’

‘Of course,’ she said. ‘I know that.’

He told her about his first interest in the law, how it had seemed in its logical construction and order to be a lever with which one could move any obstruction, but how he had discovered that there were so many levers and obstructions, when you moved one, another would drop down to crush you, and the trick was to keep in constant motion, to be moving things constantly and dancing out of the way.

‘Did you always want to be a lawyer?’

He laughed. ‘No, my first ambition was to be the man who slew the dragon Griaule, to claim the reward offered in Teocinte, to buy my mother silver bowls and my father a new guitar.’

Her expression, happy a moment before, had gone slack and distraught; he asked if she was all right.

‘Don’t even say his name,’ she said. ‘You don’t know, you don’t know . . .’

‘What don’t I know?’

‘Griaule . . . God! I used to feel him in the temple. Perhaps you think that’s just my imagination, but I swear it’s true. We all concentrated on him, we sang to him, we believed in him, we conjured him in our thoughts, and soon we could feel him. Cold and vast. Inhuman. This great scaly chill that owned a world.’

Korrogly was struck by the similarity of phrasing with which the old woman Kirin and now Mirielle had referred to their apprehension of Griaule, and thought to make mention of it, but Mirielle continued speaking, and he let the matter drop.

‘I can still feel his touch in my mind. Heavy and steeped in blackness. Each one of his thoughts a century in forming, a tonnage of hatred, of sheer enmity. He’d brush against me, and I’d be cold for hours. That’s why . . .’

‘What?’

‘Nothing.’ She was trembling violently, hugging herself.

He crossed to the sofa, sat beside her, and, after hesitating for a few seconds, draped an arm about her shoulder. Her hair had the smell of fresh oranges. ‘What is it?’ he asked.

‘I can feel him still, I’ll always feel him.’ She glanced up at Korrogly and then blurted out, ‘Come to bed with me. I know you don’t like me, but it’s warmth I want, not affection. Please, I won’t . . .’

‘I do like you,’ he said.

‘No, you can’t, you . . . no.’

‘I do,’ he said, believing it as he spoke. ‘Tonight I like you, tonight you’re someone it’s possible to care about.’

‘You don’t understand, you can’t see how he’s changed me.’

‘Griaule, you mean?’

‘Please,’ she said, her arms going around his waist. ‘No more questions . . . not now. Please, just keep me warm.’

 As Korrogly began his opening statement, half his mind was back in the gemcutter’s apartment with Mirielle, still embraced by her white arms, nourished by the rosy points of her breasts and her long supple legs, finding that beneath her veneer of depravity there existed a woman of virtue and sweetness, replaying in memory the joys of mastery and submission. None of this posed a distraction, but acted rather to inspire him, to urge him on to a more impassioned appeal than that he had originally contrived. Strolling alongside the jury box, stuffed with twelve pasty-faced models of good citizenship culled from an assortment of less worthy souls, he felt like a sea captain striding the deck of his ship, and the courtroom, it struck him, was essentially a cross between church and vessel, the ship of state sailing toward the coast of justice, with white walls for sails and boxy divisions of black wood holding a cargo of witnesses and jurors and the curious, and lording over all, the judge’s bench, an immense teak block carved into the semblance of dragon scales, where sat the oracular figurehead of this magical ship: the Honorable Ernest Wymer, white-haired and florid, an alcoholic old beast with a cruel mouth and tufted brows and a shiny red beak, hunched in the folds of his black-winged gown, ready to pounce upon any lawyerly mouse that should happen to stray into his field of vision. Korrogly was not afraid of Wymer; he, not the judge, was in command this day. He knew the jury’s mind, knew that they wanted to believe Griaule was the guilty party, that this suited the mystical yearning of their hearts, and with all his wiles, he set about consolidating that yearning into intent. There was urgency in his voice, yet it was neither too strident nor too subdued, perfect, a blend of power and fluency; he felt that this harmony of intent and skill stemmed from his night with Mirielle. He was not in love with her, or perhaps he was . . . but love was not the salient matter. What most inspired him was to have found something unspoiled in her, in himself, and whether that was love or merely a place left untouched by the world, it was sufficient to renew his old enthusiasms.

‘We are all aware,’ he said toward the conclusion of his statement, ‘that Griaule’s power exists. The question remains, is he capable of reaching out from the Carbonales to touch us here in Port Chantay. That is a question we should not need ask. Look there.’ He pointed to the judge’s bench and its carved scales. ‘And there.’ He pointed to crude representations of the dragon carved twining the lintel posts at the back of the hall. ‘His image is everywhere in Port Chantay, and this is emblematic of his propinquity, of the tendrils of his will that have infiltrated our lives. Perhaps he cannot move us with the facility that he does those who dwell in Teocinte, but we are not so far beyond the range of his thoughts that he does not know us. He knows us well. He sees us, he holds us in his mind, and if he requires something of us, do you really believe he is incapable of affecting our lives in a more pronounced fashion? Griaule is, if anything, capable. He is an immortal, unfathomable creature who is as pervasive in our lives as the idea of God. And as with God, we do not have the wisdom to establish the limits of his capacities.’ Korrogly paused, letting his gaze fall on each of their rapt faces in turn, seeing therein a measure of anxiety, understanding how to play upon it; the slants of winter sunlight made them all look wan and sickly, like terminal patients hopeful of a cure. ‘Griaule is here, ladies and gentlemen of the jury. He is watching this proceeding. Perhaps he is even involved in it. Search inside yourselves. Can you feel secure that his eye is not upon you? And this’ – he picked up The Father of Stones from the prosecution table – ‘can you be sure that this is not his eye? The prosecution will tell you that it is only a stone, but I tell you that it is much more.’ He held it up to their faces as he passed along the jury box and was pleased to see them shrink from it. ‘This is Griaule’s instrument, the embodiment of his will, the vehicle by which his will has been effected here in Port Chantay, miles and miles beyond the range of his usual sphere of influence. If you doubt this, if you doubt that he could have formed it and injected it with the complex values of his wish and need, then I urge you to touch it. It brims with his cold vigor. And just as you now perceive it, so it is perceiving you.’

The prosecution’s case was elementary. A constable testified to the authenticity of Lemos’ confession; several witnesses were called to testify to the fact that they had seen him working at cutting The Father of Stones; the old drunkard related his story of Lemos throwing stones on the beach; others claimed to have seen him breaking into the temple. Korrogly limited his cross-examination to establishing the point that none of the witnesses had known the gemcutter’s mind. No more was needed. The defense would rise or fall on its own merits.

Late in the day, Mirielle was called to the stand. Her testimony, while not as embittered as Korrogly had assumed it would be, was nonetheless of great benefit to Lemos; it was obvious that she was of two minds about her father, that she despised him, and that this attitude warred with the guilt that arose from testifying against him – that she should be in the least guilty implied that Lemos must have been a good parent, that her spite was doubtless a product of Zemaille’s corrupting influence. It was also evident that she was not being entirely forthcoming. She denied knowledge of Zemaille’s great work, and there was – Korrogly was certain – something else that she was keeping from the light. In his cross-examination he touched upon it, establishing the area of vagueness, one having to do with her reasons for entering the temple.

‘I’m not quite clear on this,’ he said to her. ‘Surely you didn’t enter into such a dark society on a whim?’

‘It was years ago,’ she said. ‘Perhaps it was a whim, perhaps I simply wanted to escape my father.’

‘Yes,’ he said, ‘your father, who simply wanted to spare you the violent excesses of the temple. Truly, that was overly severe of him.’

Mervale leaped to his feet. ‘If the defense wishes to frame his lectoral remarks in a question, I suggest he do it.’

‘I agree,’ said Judge Wymer, with a cautionary nod to Korrogly.

‘Your pardon.’ Korrogly inclined his head in a respectful bow. ‘The temple,’ he went on musingly, ‘what attracted you to it? Was it Zemaille?’

‘I don’t know . . . yes, I think so.’

‘A physical attraction?’

‘It was more complex than that.’

‘How so?’

Her face worked, she worried her lower lip. ‘I don’t know how to answer that.’

‘Why not? It’s a simple question.’

‘Nothing is simple!’ she said, her voice growing shrill. ‘You couldn’t possibly understand!’

Korrogly wondered if she might be restraining herself from speaking of her father’s alleged abuse – he was not afraid of the topic, yet he did not want to break her down into tears and that seemed a likelihood. He would not have minded rage; but he did not wish to make her in any way an object of sympathy. He could, he knew, always recall her.

Questioning her, even though her adversary, he felt that a strange connection had been forged between them, as if they were partners in a plot, and it was difficult to maintain a professional distance; she looked beautiful in her lacy black dress, and standing beside the witness box, inhaling her scent of heat and oranges, he began to believe that his feelings for her did run deep, that something powerful had been dredged up from beneath the years of disappointment and failure.

The close of Mirielle’s testimony was also the close of the prosecution’s case, and Judge Wymer called for a recess until the morning. Lemos, as he had throughout the proceeding, sat without displaying any emotion – a gray statement of despair – and nothing Korrogly could say had a cheering effect upon him. He had been given a haircut in jail, his sandy forelock trimmed away, his ears left totally exposed, and this, along with his loss of weight and increased pallor, made him look as if he had been the victim of a prolonged and dehumanizing abuse.

‘It’s going well,’ Korrogly told him as they sat at the defense table afterward. ‘Before today I wasn’t sure how the jury would react to our tactics, I was concerned that we didn’t have sufficient detail. But now I don’t know if we’ll need it. They want to believe you.’

Lemos grunted, traced an imperfection in the wood of the table with his forefinger.

‘Still, it would help a great deal if we could present a reason that would explain why Griaule wanted Zemaille dead,’ Korrogly went on.

‘Mirielle,’ Lemos said, ‘she didn’t seem to be as distant from me today as before. I wonder, could you ask her again to visit me?’

Korrogly felt a rippling of guilt. ‘Yes, I’ll ask her tonight.’

‘Tonight?’ Lemos looked askance at him.

‘Yes,’ said Korrogly, hurrying to cover the slip, ‘I’ll make a special trip to see her. I want you to see her, I’m in favor of anything that’ll wake you up. You’re on trial for your life, man!’

‘I know that.’

‘You don’t much act like you do. I’ll ask Mirielle to see you, but my advice is to forget about her for the time being, concentrate on the trial. Once you’re free, then you can repair the relationship.’

Lemos blinked, gazed out the window at the reddening western sky. ‘All right,’ he said listlessly.

Frustrated, Korrogly began packing up his papers.

‘I know,’ Lemos said.

‘What?’ Korrogly asked, preoccupied.

‘I know about you and Mirielle. I’ve always been able to tell who she was bedding. She looks at them differently.’

‘Don’t be ridiculous! I . . .’

‘I know!’ said Lemos, suddenly energized, turning a bright stare on him. ‘I’m not a fool!’

Korrogly, taken aback, began to wonder if Mirielle’s veiled accusations of parental lust might have had substance. ‘Even if I were . . .’

‘I don’t want you to see her like that!’ Lemos gripped the edge of the table. ‘I want you to stop!’

‘We’ll talk more after you’ve calmed down.’

‘I won’t have it! Ever since she’s been old enough, men like you have taken advantage of her. This time . . .’

Korrogly slammed his case shut. ‘Now listen to me! Do you want to die? Because if you do, alienating your lawyer’s a fine first step. I promise you, if you don’t stop this right now, I’ll start treating your case with the same lack of concern you’ve shown toward it. You don’t seem to care very much about living . . . or maybe that’s just an act. If it is an act, I caution you to be temperate with me.’

Lemos sank back into his chair, looking defeated, and Korrogly felt he had at last penetrated the man’s mask. The gemcutter did care about his fate; his pose of unconcern was a fake, his entire story a lie. Which made Korrogly an accomplice. He could back out of the case, he thought, claiming to have stumbled upon new information; but given Judge Wymer’s hostility toward the defense, it might be that charges would be brought against him in any event. And he could not be sure of the matter; there was nothing sure in this case. He had become so confused by the conflicting flows of evidence that he was unable to trust his own judgments. Lemos’ perverse desire for his daughter – if that, too, was not a fraud – might have enlivened him sufficiently to react to his peril.

After the guard had led Lemos back to his cell, Korrogly walked slowly through the twilight across town toward the Almintra quarter, ignoring the bustle of the evening traffic; his mind was in a turmoil, the greater part of his agitation caused not by the snarls of the case, but by the fact that he had threatened to turn against a client. It was the final tattering of his ideals, the ultimate violation of his contract with the law. How could he have done it, he thought. Was it Mirielle, her influence? No, he could not blame her – blame attached only to himself. The sole course open to him was to defend the gemcutter from this point forward to the best of his abilities, his guilt or innocence notwithstanding. And he would have to break it off with Mirielle; he could not in good faith continue to upset Lemos. It had been a long time since he had felt so at ease with a woman. But he would do it nevertheless, he told himself; he would not allow this case to become a drain down which the last of his conscience flowed.

When he reached the gemcutter’s apartment, however, his resolve went glimmering. Mirielle was even more ardent than she had been the previous night; it was not until much later that Korrogly thought of Lemos again, and then it was only in passing, produced by a flicker of remorse. Mirielle was lying on her side, one leg flung across his hip, still joined to him; her breasts were small and white, glowing in the misted light from the streetlamps with the milky purity of The Father of Stones; beneath the skin, faint blue veins forked upward to vanish in the hollow of her throat. He traced their path with his tongue, making her breath come fast; he cupped her buttocks with his hands, holding her against him while his hips moved with sinuous insistence. Her nails pricked his back, the rhythm of her own movements quickened, and then she let out the last best part of her feeling in a hoarse cry.

‘God!’ she said. ‘God, you feel so good!’ And without thinking of what he was saying, he told her that he loved her.

A shadow seemed to cross her face. ‘Don’t say that.’

‘What’s wrong?’

‘Just don’t say it.’

‘I’m afraid it’s true,’ he said. ‘I don’t have much choice.’

‘You don’t know me, you don’t know the things I’ve done.’

‘With Zemaille?’

‘I had sex with other people, with whomever Mardo wanted me to. I did things . . .’ She closed her eyes. ‘It wasn’t so much what I did, it’s that I stood by while Mardo . . .’ She broke off, buried her face in the join of his neck and shoulder. ‘God, I don’t want to tell you any of this.’

‘It doesn’t matter, anyway.’

‘It does,’ she said. ‘You can’t go through what I have and come out a whole person. You may think you love me, but . . .’

‘How do you feel about me?’

‘Don’t expect me to say I love you.’

‘I’m not expecting anything more than the truth.’

‘Oh!’ She laughed. ‘Is that all? If I knew the truth, things would be much easier.’

‘I don’t understand what you mean.’

‘Look.’ She took his face in both hands. ‘Don’t make me say anything. It’s good between us, it helps. Sometimes I want to say things to you, but I’m not ready. I hope I will be someday, but if you force me to say anything now . . . I’m perverse that way. I’ll just try to deny it to myself. That’s what I’ve been taught to do with things that make me happy.’

‘That says enough.’

‘Does it? I hope so.’

He kissed her mouth, touched her breasts, feeling the nipples stiffen between his spread fingers.

‘There’s something I’d like you to do for me, though. I want you to visit your father.’

She turned away from him. ‘I can’t.’

‘Because he . . . he abused you?’

‘What do you think?’

‘I think there’s some evidence you were abused by him.’

‘Abused,’ she said, enunciating the word precisely as if judging its flavor; then, after a moment, she added, ‘I can’t talk about it, I’ve never been able to talk about it. I just can’t bring myself to . . . to say what happened.’

‘Well?’ he said. ‘Will you see him?’

‘It wouldn’t do any good, it wouldn’t make him any happier. And that’s what you’re after, isn’t it.’

‘That’s one way of putting it.’

‘A visit would just upset him, believe me.’

‘I suppose I’ll have to,’ he said. ‘I can’t force you. I just wish I could get him more involved.’

‘You still think he’s innocent, don’t you?’

‘I’m not sure . . . perhaps. I don’t think you’re sure, either.’

She looked as if she were going to respond, but her mouth thinned and she remained silent for a long moment. Finally she said, ‘I’m sure.’

He started to say something, and she put a finger to his lips.

‘Don’t talk about it anymore, please.’

He lay on his back, watching frail shadows of the mist coiling across the white ceiling, thinking about Lemos; he could accept nothing, believe nothing. That the gemcutter had molested his daughter seemed both apparent and unlikely, as was the case with his guilt and innocence. He did not doubt that Mirielle believed her father had abused her; but while he loved her, he was not assured of her stability, and thus her beliefs were in question. And in question also were her motives in being with him. He found it difficult to accept that she was anything but sincere in her responses; her reluctance to voice a commitment seemed clear evidence of the inner turmoil he was causing her. Still, he could not wholly reject the notion that she was using him . . . though for what reason he had no idea. He was walking across quicksand, in shadows, with inarticulate voices calling to him from every direction.

‘You’re worrying about something,’ she said. ‘Don’t . . . it’ll be all right.’

‘Between us?’

‘Is that what you’re worrying about?’

‘Among other things.’

‘I can’t promise you that you’ll like what will happen,’ she said. ‘But I will try with you.’

He started to ask her why she was going to try, what she had found that would make her want something with him; but he reminded himself of her caution against pushing her.

‘You’re still worrying,’ she said.

‘I can’t stop.’

‘Yes, you can.’ Her hand slid down across his chest, his belly, kindling a slow warmth. ‘That much I can promise.’

Against Korrogly’s objections, the case for the prosecution was reopened the following morning and Mirielle recalled to the stand. Mervale offered into evidence a sheaf of legal documents, which proved to have been signed by Mardo Zemaille and witnessed by Mirielle, and constituted a last will and testament, deeding the temple and its grounds to Mirielle on the event of the priest’s death. Mervale had unearthed the papers from the city archives and produced ample evidence to substantiate that the signatures were authentic and that the papers were legal.

‘How much would you say the properties mentioned in the will are worth?’ Mervale asked Mirielle, who was wearing a high-collared dress of blue velvet.

‘I have no idea.’

‘Would it be inaccurate to say that they’re worth quite a large sum of money? A sizeable fortune?’

‘The witness has already answered the question,’ said Korrogly.

‘Indeed she has,’ said Judge Wymer, with a stern look at Mervale, who shrugged, stepped to the prosecution table, and offered into evidence the tax assessor’s report on the properties.

‘Did your father know of this will?’ Mervale asked after the exhibits had been marked.

Mirielle murmured, ‘Yes.’

Korrogly glanced at Lemos, who appeared not to be listening.

‘And how did he come to know about them?’

‘I told him.’

‘On what occasion?’

‘He came to the temple.’ She drew in breath sharply, let it out slowly, as if ordering herself. ‘He wanted me to leave the cult, he said that once Mardo tired of me he would drop me and then the family would be without a penny. The shop would be gone . . . everything.’ She drew in another breath. ‘He made me angry. I told him about the will, I said that Mardo had taken care of me far better than he had. And he said that he’d have me declared incompetent. He said he’d get a lawyer and take everything Mardo left me.’

‘Do you know if he ever did see a lawyer?’

‘Yes, he did.’

‘And was that lawyer’s name Artis Colari?’

‘Yes.’

Mervale picked up more papers from his table. ‘Mister Colari is currently trying another case and cannot attend this proceeding. However, I have here a deposition wherein he states that he was approached by the defendant two weeks before the murder with the intent of having his daughter declared mentally incompetent for reasons of instability caused by her abuse of drugs.’ He smiled at Korrogly. ‘Your witness.’

Korrogly requested a consultation with his client, and once they were sequestered he asked Lemos, ‘Did you know about the will?’

A nod. ‘But that wasn’t why I went to see Colari. I didn’t care about the money, I didn’t want anything that Zemaille had touched. I was afraid for Mirielle. I wanted her out of that place, and I thought the only way I could manage that was to have her declared incompetent.’

The uncharacteristic passion with which he had spoken startled Korrogly: it was the first sign of vitality that Lemos had displayed since his arrest.

‘Why didn’t you tell me this before?’

‘I didn’t think of it.’

‘It seems an odd thing to have forgotten.’

‘It wasn’t so much that I forgot . . . Look.’ Lemos sat up straight, absentmindedly putting his hand to his brow. ‘I realize I’ve given you a hard time, but I . . . it’s been . . . I can’t explain what it’s been like for me. I didn’t think you believed my story. I’m still not sure you do. And that’s just added to the despair I’ve been feeling. I’m sorry, I know I should have been more cooperative.’

Despite his prison haircut and coverall, his unhealthy complexion, Lemos seemed the picture of eager contrition, boyish in his renewed vigor, and Korrogly did not know whether to be pleased or disgusted. Incredible, he thought, more than incredible, the man was impossible to believe, except that somehow his very implausibility seemed believable. As for Mirielle, how could she have hidden this from him? What did that signal as to their relationship? Was her hatred for her father such a powerful taint that it could abrogate all other rules? Had he misjudged her in every way?

‘It doesn’t look good, does it?’ Lemos said.

Korrogly resisted the temptation to laugh. ‘We still have our witnesses, and I’m not going to let Mirielle’s testimony go unchallenged.’

‘What are you going to do?’

‘Try to overcome the effects of your despondency,’ said Korrogly. ‘Come on.’

Once back in the courtroom, Korrogly took a turn around the witness box, studying Mirielle, who appeared nervous, picking at the seams of her dress, and at last he said, ‘Why do you hate your father?’

She looked surprised.

‘It’s not a difficult question,’ Korrogly said. ‘It’s obvious to everyone here that you want him found guilty.’

‘Objection!’ Mervale shrilled.

Judge Wymer said, ‘Limit yourself to proper questions, Mister Korrogly.’

Korrogly nodded. ‘Why do you hate your father?’

‘Because . . .’ Mirielle stared at him, pleading with her eyes. ‘Because . . .’

‘Is it because you consider him a restrictive parent?’

‘Yes.’

‘Because he tried to separate you and your lover?’

‘Yes.’

‘Because you feel he is contemptible in the stodginess and staleness of his life?’

‘Yes.’

‘And can we assume you have other reasons yet for hating him?’

‘Yes!’ she cried. ‘Yes! What are you doing?’

‘I’m establishing that you hate your father, Miss Lemos. That you hate him with sufficient passion to attempt to turn this trial into a melodrama so as to guarantee his conviction. That you’ve hidden evidence from the court so that it could be produced at a particularly theatrical moment. Perhaps you’ve had help in this from the theatrical Mister Mervale . . .’

‘Objection!’

‘Mister Korrogly!’ said Judge Wymer.

‘. . . but whatever the case, you most certainly have been duplicitous in your testimony . . .’

‘Mister Korrogly!’

‘Duplicitous in your intent, in your every action before this court!’

‘Mister Korrogly! If you don’t stop this immediately . . .’

‘I apologize, Your Honor.’

‘You’re on thin ice, Mister Korrogly. I won’t permit another such outburst.’

‘I can assure you, Your Honor, it won’t happen again.’ He walked over to the jury box, leaned against it, hoping to ally himself thereby with the jurors, to make it seem that he was asking their questions. ‘Miss Lemos, you knew of the will prior to this morning . . . correct?’

‘Yes.’

‘Did you make mention of it to the prosecutor?’

‘Yes.’

‘When did you mention it to him?’

‘Yesterday afternoon.’

‘Why not before? Surely you must have recognized its importance.’

‘I . . . it slipped my mind, I guess.’

‘It slipped your mind,’ said Korrogly, injecting heavy sarcasm into his tone. ‘You guess.’ He turned to the jury, shook his head ruefully. ‘Is there anything else you have forgotten to mention?’

‘Objection!’

‘Overruled. The witness will answer.’

‘I . . . no.’

‘I hope not for your sake,’ Korrogly said. ‘Did your father ever tell you that the reason he wanted to declare you incompetent was to remove you from the temple, to prevent you from being destroyed by Zemaille?’

‘Oh, he said that, but . . .’

‘Just answer the question Yes or No.’

‘Yes.’

‘This will,’ said Korrogly, ‘you knew its contents . . . I mean you were versed in its contents, you knew its exact particulars.’

‘Yes, of course.’

‘Now the conversation during which you told your father about the will, it was, I take it, rather heated, was it not?’

‘Yes.’

‘And so in the midst of a heated conversation, a violent argument, if you will, you had the presence of mind to inform your father of the contents of a most complicated document. I assume you filled him in on every detail.’

‘Well, no, not everything.’

‘Oh!’ Korrogly arched an eyebrow. ‘What exactly did you tell him?’

‘I . . . I can’t recall. Not exactly.’

‘Now let me get this straight, Miss Lemos. You remember telling him about the will, but you can’t recall if you informed him of its contents. It is possible then that you merely blurted out something to the effect that Mardo had seen to your future?

‘No, I . . .’

‘Or did you say . . .’

‘He knew what it meant!’ she shouted, standing up in the box. ‘He knew!’ She stared with fierce loathing at Lemos. ‘He killed him for the money! But he’ll never . . .’

‘Sit down, Miss Lemos!’ said Judge Wymer. ‘Now!’ Once she had obeyed, he warned her in no uncertain terms to restrain her behavior.

‘So,’ Korrogly went on, ‘in the midst of an argument you blurted out some incoherent . . .’

‘Objection!’

‘Sustained.’

‘You blurted out something, you can’t recall exactly what, about the will. Is that a fair statement?’

‘You’re twisting my words!’

‘On the contrary, Miss Lemos, I’m simply repeating what you’ve said. It appears that the only persons who were absolutely clear as to the contents of the will were you and Mardo Zemaille.’

‘No, that’s . . .’

‘That wasn’t a question, Miss Lemos. Merely the preamble to one. Since you are likely to benefit greatly from your father’s conviction, since that will in effect prevented him from initiating a competency hearing, doesn’t that color your testimony the color of greed?’

‘I never wanted anything except Mardo.’

‘I believe everyone within earshot will second your characterization of Mardo Zemaille as a thing.’

‘No need to object, Mister Mervale,’ said Judge Wymer; then, to Korrogly: ‘I’ve given you a great deal of leeway. That leeway is now at end. Do you understand me?’

‘Yes, Your Honor.’ Korrogly crossed to the defense table, picked up some of his notes, and leafing through them, walked to the witness box and stood facing Mirielle; her face was tight with anger. ‘Did you believe in Mardo Zemaille, Miss Lemos?’

‘I don’t know what you mean.’

‘I mean did you believe in what he said, in his public statements, in his theological doctrines? In his work?’

‘Yes.’

‘What was his work? His great work?’

‘I don’t know . . . nobody except Mardo knew.’

‘Yet you believed in it?’

‘I believed that Mardo was inspired.’

‘Inspired . . . I see. Then you accepted his precepts as being the code by which you lived.’

‘Yes.’

‘Then it would be illuminating to examine some of those precepts, might it not?’

‘I don’t know.’

‘Oh, I think it would.’ Korrogly turned a page. ‘Ah, here we are.’ He read from his notes. ‘“Do what thou wilt, that is all the law.” Did you believe that?’

‘I . . . yes, I did.’

‘Hmmm. And this, did you believe this? “If blood is needed for the great work, blood will be provided.”’

‘I don’t . . . I never knew what he meant by that.’

‘Really? But you accepted it, did you not, as part of his inspired doctrine?’

‘I suppose.’

‘And this? “No crime, no sin, no breach of the rules of what is considered ordinary human conduct, shall be considered such so long as it serves the great work.”’

She nodded. ‘Yes.’

‘And I assume that included under the label of sin would be the sin of lying?’

Her stare was hard and bright.

‘Do you understand the question?’

‘Yes.’

‘Well?’

‘Yes, I suppose. But . . .’

‘And included under the label of crime would be the crime of perjury?’

‘Yes, but I no longer hold to those beliefs.’

‘Don’t you? You’ve been heard recently to characterize Mardo Zemaille as a paragon.’

Her mouth thinned. ‘Things have changed.’

Korrogly knew he was invading dangerous territory, that she might make specific reference to the changes he had brought to her life; but he thought he could make his point and clear out before damage was done.

‘I submit that things have not changed, Miss Lemos. I submit that the great work, whatever its nature, will go on under your aegis. I submit that all the miscreant rules attaching to that work still hold, and that you would tell any lie, commit any . . .’

‘You bastard!’ she cried. ‘I’ll . . .’

The courtroom was filled with babble, Mervale was objecting, Wymer pounding his gavel.

‘And commit any crime,’ Korrogly went on, ‘in order to assure its continuance. I submit that the great work is your sole concern, and the truth is the farthest thing from your mind.’

‘You can’t do this!’ she shrilled. ‘You can’t come to my . . .’

Judge Wymer’s bellow drowned her out.

‘No further questions,’ said Korrogly, watching with mixed emotions as the bailiffs led her, still shouting, from the courtroom.

Shortly after beginning the examination of the first witness for the defense, the historian and biologist Catherine Ocoi, a striking blond woman in her late thirties, Korrogly was summoned to the bench for a whispered conversation with Judge Wymer. The judge leaned over the bench, pointing at the various displays that Catherine had brought with her, indicating with particular emphasis the huge painting of the mountainous dragon set beside the defense table.

‘I warned you not to turn this into a circus,’ he said.

‘I scarcely think that displaying Griaule’s image . . .’

‘Your opening statement was a masterpiece of intimidation,’ said Wymer. ‘I didn’t censure you for it, but from now on I will not allow you to intimidate the jury. I want that painting removed.’

Korrogly started to object, but then saw virtue in having it done; that it was deemed important enough to be removed only gave added weight to his thesis.

‘As you wish,’ he said.

‘Be careful, Mister Korrogly,’ Wymer said. ‘Be very careful.’

As the painting was carried out, the jury’s eyes followed it, and once the painting was out of sight, they expressed a visible degree of relief. That relief, Korrogly thought, might be more valuable than the oppressive presence of the painting; he would be able to play them, to remind them of Griaule, to let them swing between relief and anxiety, and so exercise all the more control.

He led Catherine Ocoi through her testimony, the story of how she had been manipulated by Griaule to live inside the dragon for ten years, the sole purpose being for her to oversee a single event of Griaule’s internal economy; then he let her testify as to the marvels to be found within the dragon, the drugs she had distilled from his various secretions, the strange and in some instances miraculous parasites and plants that flourished there. She had no knowledge of The Father of Stones, but the wonders to which she was able to testify left little doubt in the jury’s mind that the stone could have been produced by Griaule. Her exhibits – every one of them taken from the interior of the dragon – included a glass case filled with spiders in whose webs could be seen all manner of fantastic imagery; cuttings of a most unusual plant that was capable of creating replicas of the animals who fell asleep in its coils; and most pertinently, nodes of an amber material, very like a mineral form, which she claimed was produced by the petrification of Griaule’s stomach acid.

‘I have no doubt,’ she said, ‘that Griaule could have produced this.’ She held up The Father of Stones. ‘And touching it now, I know it is of Griaule. I had ten years to become intimately familiar with the feeling that attaches to his every element, and this stone is his.’

There was little Mervale could do to weaken her testimony: Catherine Ocoi’s reputation was above reproach, her story and discoveries celebrated throughout the region. However, with the witnesses that followed, philosophers and priests, all of whom presented opinions concerning on Griaule’s capacity for manipulation, Mervale was not so gentle; he railed and ranted, accusing the witnesses of wild speculation and Korrogly of debasing the legal process.

‘This does seem to be degenerating into something of a metaphysical debate,’ said Wymer after calling the attorneys for consultation at the bench.

‘Metaphysical?’ said Korrogly. ‘Perhaps, but no more so than the debate that underlies any fundamental point of law. Our laws are founded upon a moral code which comes down to us through the tenets of religious faith. Is that not metaphysics? Metaphysics are rendered into law based upon a consensus moral view, the view nourished by religion and commonly held in our society as to what is right and appropriate as regards the limitations that should be placed upon men in their behavior. What I’m establishing first and foremost is that there is a consensus regarding the fact of Griaule’s influence. I could go out into the street and not find a single person who doesn’t believe to some degree or another in Griaule. That kind of unanimity can’t even be found as relates to a belief in God.’

‘This is ridiculous!’ said Mervale.

‘Secondly,’ Korrogly continued, ‘I’m establishing through expert testimony the consensus regarding the extent of Griaule’s influence, the range and limitations of his will. This is simple foundation. Essential to any decision regarding the validity not only of my client’s claim to innocence, but also to the validity of the precedent. If you disallow it, you disallow the plea. And since you have already allowed the plea, you’ll have to allow foundation to support it.’

Wymer appeared to be absorbing all this; he glanced inquiringly at Mervale, who sighed.

‘All right,’ he said, ‘I’m willing in the interests of brevity to stipulate that Griaule’s influence exists, that it is . . .’

‘I’m afraid the interests of brevity are not altogether congruent with those of my client,’ said Korrogly. ‘In order for precedent to be established, I wish to lay a proper foundation. I intend to make the jury aware of the history of Griaule and his various acts of influence. I think it’s absolutely essential they have a complete understanding of his subtlety in order to arrive at an equitable judgment.’

Wymer heaved a sigh. ‘Mister Mervale?’

Mervale’s mouth opened and closed; then he threw up his hands and stalked back to the prosecution table.

‘Carry on, Mister Korrogly,’ said Wymer. ‘But let’s try to keep the floorshow to a minimum, shall we? I doubt that anything you produce here is going to outweigh the evidence of the will, and there’s no point in wasting time.’

It came to be late in the day, but Korrogly did not ask for a recess; he wanted Lemos to tell his story, to give the jury a night to let it sink in, before exposing him to cross-examination. He conducted Lemos through some background testimony, allowing him to get a feel for the witness stand and the jury and then asked him to tell in his own words what had happened after he had bought The Father of Stones from Henry Sichi.

Lemos wet his lips, gazed down at the rail of the witness box, sighed, and then, meeting the jury’s eyes as he had been coached, said, ‘I remember I was in a great hurry to get home with the stone. I didn’t know why at the time, I just knew I wanted to examine it more closely. When I reached the shop, I went to my workbench and sat with it awhile. The part you see now was gripped by what appeared to be claws of corroded-looking orange material, whose color came away on my fingers; it was flaky, soft, rather like old wood or some other organic matter. As for the stone itself, I couldn’t tear my eyes away from it. Its clouded surface seemed so lovely, so mysterious. I became certain that an even greater beauty was trapped within it, beauty I knew I could unlock. Usually I will not cut a stone until I have lived with it for weeks, sometimes months. But I was in a kind of trance, invested with a strange confidence that I knew this stone, that I had known it always, that its internal structures were as familiar as the patterns of my thoughts. I cleaned off the orange material, then clamped the stone in a vise, put on my goggles and began to cut it.

‘With each blow of my chisel, light seemed to fracture within the stone, to spray forth in beams that penetrated my eyes, and these beams acted to strike sprays of images from my brain, as if it too were a gemstone in process of being cut. The first image was of Griaule, not as he is now, but vital, spitting fire toward a tiny man in a wizard’s robes, a lean, swarthy man with a blade of a nose. There followed another image that depicted both dragon and man immobilized as a result of that battle. Then other images came, too rapidly for me to catalogue. My mind was alive with light, and the ringing in my ears was the music of light, and I knew with every fiber of my being that I was cutting one of the great gems. I would call it The Father of Stones, I thought, because it would be the archetype of mineral beauty. But when at last I set down my chisel and considered what I’d done, I was more than a little disappointed. The stone was flashy, full of glint and sparkle, but had no depth and subtlety of color. Indeed, it appeared to have a hollow center. Except for its weight, it might have been an intricate piece of blown glass.

‘I was distressed that I’d wasted money on the thing. I couldn’t imagine what I’d been thinking – I should have realized it was worthless, I told myself. The shop was already in danger of going under, and I’d had no business in making the purchase under any circumstance. Finally I decided to present the stone to Zemaille. He’d been harrassing me to come up with something unusual for one of his rituals, and perhaps, I thought, he would allow the superficial brilliance of the stone to blind him to its worthlessness. And I also hoped I might get the chance to see Mirielle. I wrapped the stone in a velvet cloth and hurried toward the temple, but when I reached it I found the gates locked. I knocked again and again, but no one responded. I’ve never considered myself an intemperate man; however, being locked out after having walked all that way, it seemed a terrible affront. I paced up and down in front of the gates, stopping now and again to shout, my anger building into a towering frustration. Finally, unable to contain my rage, I set about climbing the temple walls, using the creepers that grew upon them for handholds. I pushed my way through the garden – if such noxious growths as flourish there can be called such – becoming even more angry, and when I heard chanting coming from a building that stood at a corner of the compound, I rushed toward it, so angry now that I intended to fling the stone at Zemaille’s feet, to cast a scornful look at Mirielle, and then storm out, leaving them to their perversions. But once inside the building, my anger was muted by the barbarity of the scene that met my eyes. The chamber into which I’d entered was pentagonal in shape, enclosed by screens of carved ebony. The floor was carpeted in black moss and declined into a pit where lay an altar of black stone worked with representations of Griaule. It was flanked by torches held in wrought-iron stands of grotesque design. Zemaille, robed in black and silver, was standing beside the altar – a swarthy hook-nosed man with his arms lifted in supplication, chanting in company with nine hooded figures who were ranged about the altar. Moments later, a door at the rear of the chamber opened, and Mirielle was led forth, naked except for a necklace of polished dragon scale. She was in an obvious state of intoxication, her head lolling, her eyes showing as crescents of white.

‘I was so appalled at seeing my daughter in this pitiful condition that I was stunned, unable to act. It was as if the sight had ratified all the hopelessness of my life, and I think for awhile I believed that this was proper, that I deserved such a fate. I watched as Mirielle was stretched out on the altar, her head tossing about, incapable – it appeared – of knowing what was happening to her. The chanting grew louder, and Zemaille, lifting his arms higher, cried, “Father! Soon you will be free!” Then he lapsed into a tongue with which I was unfamiliar.

‘It was at this point that I sensed Griaule’s presence. There was no great physical symptom or striking effect . . . except perhaps an intensification of the distance I felt from what I was seeing. I was absolutely unemotional, and that seems to me most peculiar, because I have never been unemotional where Mirielle is concerned. But I was nonetheless certain of his presence, and as I stood there overlooking the altar, I knew exactly what was going on and why it had to be stopped. This knowledge was nothing so simple as an awareness of my daughter’s peril, it was the knowledge of something old and violent and mystic. I can still feel the shape it made in my brain, though the particulars have fled me.

‘I stepped forward and called to Zemaille. He turned his head. It was strange . . . never before had he displayed any reaction to me other than disdain, but there was tremendous fear in his face then, as if he knew that Griaule and not me was his adversary. I swear before God it was not in my mind to kill him before that moment, but as I moved toward him I knew not only that I must kill him, but that I must act that very second. I’d forgotten the stone in my hand, but then, without thinking, without even making a conscious decision to act, I hurled it at him. It was an uncanny throw. I could not have been less than fifty feet away, and the stone struck with a terrible crack dead center of his forehead. He dropped without a cry.’

Lemos lowered his head for a second, his grip tightening on the rail of the witness box. ‘I had expected that the nine gathered around the altar would attack me, but instead they ran out into the night. Perhaps they, too, sensed Griaule’s hand in all this. I was horrified by what I’d done. As I’ve stated, the knowledge of what was intended by the act had fled, had flown from my brain, evaporated like a mist. I knew only that I had killed a man . . . a despicable man, but a man nonetheless. I went over to Zemaille, hoping that he might still be alive. The Father of Stones was lying beside him. Something about it had changed, I realized, and on picking it up I saw that the center was no longer hollow. At the heart of the stone was the flaw that you can see there now, a flaw in the shape of a man with uplifted arms.’ He leaned back and sighed. ‘The rest you know.’

Mervale’s cross-examination was thorough, incisive, yet if it had not been for the will, Korrogly thought after the day’s proceedings had been concluded, he would have had an excellent chance to win an acquittal; the weight of the material evidence would not have impressed the jury any more than his witnesses and Lemos’ account. But as things stood, the fact that Lemos could not put forward any reason why Griaule had wanted Zemaille dead, that seemed to Korrogly to tip the balance in favor of the prosecution. He stayed late at the courthouse, running over the details of the case in his mind, and finally, just after eleven o’clock, more frustrated than he had yet been, he packed up his papers and set out for the Almintra quarter, hoping that he could mend his fences with Mirielle; perhaps he could convince her of his good intentions, help her to understand that his responsibilities had demanded he treat her roughly.

By the time he reached the quarter, the streets were deserted and mist had sealed in the dilapidated houses from the beach, from the sky and the rest of the world, turning the streetlamps into fuzzy white blooms; the surf sounded sluggish, like slaps being delivered by an enormous hand, and the dampness of the air caused Korrogly to turn up his collar and hurry along, his footsteps scraping on the drifted sand. He caught a glimpse of his reflection in a shop window, a pale anxious man, clasping his coat shut with one hand, his brow furrowed, rushing through a glossy black medium . . . the medium of Griaule, he imagined it, the medium of guilt and innocence, of every human question. He walked faster, wanting to subsume his doubts in Mirielle’s warmth. Up ahead, he made out an indistinct figure standing wreathed in mist. Just standing, but there was something ominous about its stillness. Idiot, he said to himself, and kept going. But as the figure grew more solid, his nervousness increased; it was wearing a cloak or a robe of some kind. He peered through the mist. A hooded robe. He stopped by an alley mouth, remembering Lemos’ story and the nine hooded witnesses. Once again he told himself that he was being foolish, but he was unable to shake the feeling that the figure – no more than forty or fifty feet away – was waiting for him. He held his briefcase to his chest, took a few tentative steps forward. The figure remained motionless.

There was no point, Korrogly thought, in taking chances. He backed toward the alley mouth, keeping his eyes on the figure, then bolted down the alley; he stopped at the end of it, on the margin of the beach, and, hidden behind a pile of rotted boards, gazed back toward the street. A moment later, the figure appeared at the alley mouth and began walking down it.

Icy cold flowed down Korrogly’s spine, his testicles shriveled, his legs felt trembly and weak. Clutching his case, he ran through the darkness, slipping in the soft sand, stumbling, nearly falling across an overturned dory. He could see nothing, he might have been sprinting in the glossy darkness he had glimpsed within the shop window. Things came blooming suddenly out of the mist, visible in the faint glow from the windows of the houses – dead fish bones, a bucket, driftwood – and the erratic rhythm of the surf had the glutinous sound of huge laboring lungs.

He ran for several minutes, stopping for fractions of seconds to cast about for sign of pursuit, spinning about, jumping at every noise, peering into the misted blackness; at last he ran straight into what felt like a sticky thick spiderweb and fell tangled in its mesh. Panicked, he let out a strangled cry, tearing at the mesh, and it was only after he had freed himself that he discovered the web had been a fishing net hung on a wooden rack to dry. He began running again, making for the street, visible as a spectral white glow between houses. When he reached it, he found that he was less than a block from the gemcutter’s shop. He sprinted toward it, fetching up against the door, gasping, bracing against it with one hand, catching his breath. Then a terrible shock, and pain lanced through his hand, drawing forth a scream; he saw to his horror that it had been pierced by a long-bladed dagger, whose handle – entwined with the image of a coiled dragon – was still quivering. Blood trickled from the wound, flowing down his wrist and forearm. Making little shrieks, he managed to pull the blade free; the accompanying surge of pain almost caused him to lose consciousness, but he managed to keep his feet, staring at the neat incision in his palm, at the blood welling forth. Then he glanced wildly along the misted street – there was no one in sight. He pounded on the door with his good hand and called to Mirielle. No answer. He pounded again, kept it up. What could be taking her so long? At last steps sounded on the stairs, and Mirielle called, ‘Who is it? Who’s there?’

‘It’s me,’ he said, staring at his hand; the sight of the blood made him nauseated and dizzy. The wound throbbed, and he squeezed his wrist, trying to stifle the pain.

‘Go away!’

‘Help me!’ he said. ‘Please, help me!’

The door swung inward.

He turned to Mirielle, suddenly weak and fading, holding up the injured hand as if it were something she could explain to him. Her face was a mask of shock; her lips were moving, but he could hear no sound. Then, without knowing how he had gotten there, he was lying on the sand, looking at her foot. He had never seen a foot from that particular angle, and he gazed at it from the perspective of a dazed aesthetic. Then the foot was replaced by a bare knee. Milky white. The same clouded color as that of The Father of Stones. Against that white backdrop he seemed to see the various witnesses, the evidence, all the confounding materials of the case, arrayed before him like the scenes that reportedly came to the eyes of a dying man, as if it were the case and not the details of his own life that were of most significance to him. Just as he passed out he believed that he was about to understand something important.

 Because of his injury, Korrogly was granted a day off from the trial, and since the following two days would be given over to a religious festival, he had nearly seventy-two hours in which to come up with some tactic or evidence that would save Lemos’ life. He was not sure how to proceed, nor was he sure that he wanted to proceed. He had not been the only victim of the previous night; Kirin, the old woman he had interviewed prior to the trial, was missing, and a bloody dagger identical to the one that had pierced his hand had been found on her stoop. Apparently the members of the cult were seeking to assure Lemos’ conviction by silencing everyone who could possibly help him.

He spent the first day going over his notes and was distressed to see how many avenues of investigation he had neglected; he had been so caught up with Mirielle, with all the complexities of the case, complexities that had led nowhere, he had failed to do much of what he normally would consider basic pretrial work. For example, apart from digging up character witnesses, he had done nothing by way of researching Lemos’ background; he should, he realized, have checked into the gemcutter’s marriage, the drowning of his wife, Mirielle’s childhood, her friends . . . there were so many routine things that he should have done and had not, he could spend most of the next two days in merely listing them. He had intended to interview Kirin a second time, certain that the old woman had known more than she was saying; but his infatuation with Mirielle had caused him to forget that intent, and now the old woman was gone, her secrets with her.

After a day, a night and another day, he realized that he did not have sufficient time left to carry out further investigations, that he had been derelict in his duty to the court and to Lemos, and that – barring a miracle – his client was doomed. Oh, he could file an appeal. Then there would be time to investigate everything. But with precedent having been denied by a respected judge, he would have to present overwhelming proof of innocence in order to win an appeal, and given the nature of the case, such proof would likely not be forthcoming. Realizing this, he closed his notebooks, pushed aside his papers and sat brooding, gazing out the window of his study at Ayler Point and the twilit ocean. If he were to lean forward and crane his neck, he would be able to see the black pagoda roofs of the dragon cult standing up among palms and sea grape on the beach a few hundred yards beyond the point; but he had no desire to do so, to do anything that would remind him further of his failure. Lemos might well be guilty of the crime, but the fact remained that he had deserved a better defense than Korrogly had provided; even if he was a villain, he was not a great villain, certainly not as great a one as Mardo Zemaille had been.

It was a relatively clear night that fell over Port Chantay; the mists typical of the season failed to materialize, stars flickered between the pale masses of cloud that drove across the winded sky, and the lights of the houses picked out the toiling darkness along Ayler Point. White combers piled in toward the beach; then, as the tide receded, they were swept sideways to break on the end of the point. Korrogly watched them, feeling there was something instructive in the process, that he was learning something by watching; but if a lesson were being taught, he did not recognize it. He began to grow restless, and he thought with frustration and longing of Mirielle. At length he decided to go to The Blind Lady and have a drink . . . or maybe several drinks; but before he could set out for the tavern there came a knock at his door and a woman’s voice called to him. Thinking it was Mirielle, he hurried to the door and flung it open; but the woman who faced him was much older than the gemcutter’s daughter, her head cowled in a dark shawl, the lumpiness of her body evident beneath a loose jacket and skirt. He backed away a step, reminded by her shawl of the cowled figure who had attacked him.

‘I’ve something for you,’ the woman said in a voice with a thick northern accent; she held out an envelope. ‘From Kirin.’

He recognized her then for Kirin’s servant, the drab who had admitted him to the old woman’s house some weeks before. Heavy-breasted and thick-waisted, with features so stuporous that they looked masklike.

She pushed the envelope at him. ‘Kirin said I was to give this to you if anything happened to her.’

Korrogly opened the envelope; inside were two ornate keys and an unsigned note.

Mr Korrogly,

If you are reading this, you will know that I am dead. Perhaps you will not know by whose hand, though if you don’t, then you’re not the astute individual I reckon you to be.

The keys open the outer gate of the temple and the door to Mardo’s private apartment in the main building. If you wish to learn the nature of the great work, go with Janice to the temple as soon as you have received this. She will be helpful to you. You dare not wait longer, for it’s possible that others will know what I know. Do not involve the police; there are cult members among them. The cult has become afraid of the temple, afraid of what has happened there, and most of them have no wish to come near the place. However, the fanatics will be anxious to protect Mardo’s secrets.

Once in Mardo’s apartment, if you search carefully, I know you will find what you need to save your client.

Be thorough, but be swift.

Korrogly folded the note and looked at Janice, who, in turn, regarded him with bovine stolidity; he could not for the life of him think how she would be helpful.

‘Do you have a weapon?’ she asked.

Ruefully, he showed her his bandaged hand.

‘When we reach the temple,’ she said, ‘I’ll take the lead. But keep close behind me.’

He was about to ask how this would be an advantage, when she pulled a long knife from her jacket; the sight of it made him reconsider his options. This might be a trick, a trap set by the members of the cult.

‘Why are you helping me?’ he asked.

She looked perplexed. ‘Kirin asked it of me.’

‘You’d put yourself in danger simply because she asked?’

She continued staring at him for a long moment; at last she said, ‘I’ve no love for dragons.’ She tugged at her blouse, pulling the hem up from the waistband of her skirt, then turned away from him, exposing her naked back; the smooth pale skin below her shoulderblades had been branded by an iron in the shape of a coiled dragon; the flesh surrounding it was puckered and discolored.

‘Zemaille did this to you?’ asked Korrogly.

‘And more.’

Korrogly remained unconvinced; the more fanatical of the cult members might have adopted such mutilations as a fashion.

‘Are you coming?’ Janice asked, and when he hesitated, she said, ‘You’re afraid of me, aren’t you?’

‘I’m wary of you,’ he said.

‘I don’t care if you come or not, but make up your mind quickly. If we are to go the temple, we need to make use of the cover of darkness.’

She glanced about the room, then crossed to a table on which stood a decanter of brandy and glasses. She poured a glass and handed it to him.

‘Courage,’ she said.

Shamed by this, he drank the brandy down; he poured a second and sipped it, considering the situation. He questioned Janice concerning her mistress, and though her answers were circumspect, he derived from them the sense of an old brave woman who had done her best to thwart the evil ambitions of Zemaille. That, too, shamed him. What kind of lawyer was he, he thought, to refuse to risk himself for his client? Perhaps it was the effects of the brandy, perhaps a product of the self-loathing he felt concerning his failure to provide Lemos with an adequate defense, but for whatever reason he soon began to feel brave and resolute, to perceive that unless he did his utmost now in Lemos’ defense, he would never be able to practice his profession again.

‘All right,’ he said finally, taking his cloak from its peg. ‘I’m ready.’

He had expected Janice to be pleased, to approve of his decision, but she only grunted and said, ‘Let’s just hope you haven’t waited too long.’

The road that led to the temple was paved with enormous slabs of gray stone and continued along the coast for several miles, then turned inland toward the Carbonares Valley, where Griaule held sway; it was said that the location had been chosen because it stood in the dragon’s imaginary line of sight, so that his eye would be always fixed upon the cult. At the spot where the road passed the temple it widened considerably as if its builders had wanted to offer travelers the option of giving the place a wide berth. That option now greatly appealed to Korrogly. Standing before the gate, looking at the immense brass lock in the shape of a dragon, at the high black walls twined with vines that bore orchidaceous blooms the color of raw beef, the pagoda roofs that loomed like strange terraced mountains, he was inclined to discard any pretense he had of being a moral man and a committed officer of the court, and to hurry back to the security of his apartment. Not even the clarity of the night could diminish the temple’s forbidding aspect, and each concatenation of the surf, driven in onto the shore by a blustery wind, made him jump. If he had been alone, he would have had no compunction about fleeing. Only Janice’s dull regard, in which he saw a reflection of Lemos’ despondent stare, kept him there; he felt outfaced by her, and though he told himself that her courage was born of ignorance and thus not courage at all, he was unable to persuade himself that this was relevant to his own lack of fortitude.

With an unsteady hand, he unlocked the gate; it swung inward with surprising ease, as if either the place or its controlling agency were eager to receive him. Following Janice, who went with her knife at the ready, he moved along a path winding among shrubs hung with overripe berries and low spreading trees with blackish green leaves; the foliage was so dense that he was unable to see anything of the buildings other than the rooftops. The wind did not penetrate there, and the stillness was such that every rustle he made in brushing against the bushes seemed inordinately loud; he fancied he could hear his heartbeat. Moonlight lacquered the leaves and applied lattices of shadow to the flagstones. He felt he was choking, moving deeper into an inimical hothouse atmosphere that clotted his lungs; he realized this was merely a symptom of fear, but knowing that did nothing to alleviate the symptom. He fastened his eyes on Janice’s broad back and tried to clear his mind; but as they drew near the building where Zemaille’s apartment was situated, he had the notion that someone was watching . . . not just an ordinary someone. Someone cold, vast, and powerful. He recalled how Kirin and Mirielle had described their apprehension of Griaule, and the thought that the dragon’s eye might be turned his way panicked him. His fists clenched, his jaw tightened, he had difficulty in swallowing. The shadows appeared to be acquiring volume and substance, and he imagined that terrible creatures were materializing within their black demarcations, preparing to leap out and tear at him.

Once inside the door, which opened onto a corridor lit by eerie mosiac patterns of bioluminescent moss, like veins of a radiant blue-green mineral wending through the teakwood walls, his fear increased. He was certain now that he could feel Griaule; with every step his impression of the dragon grew more discrete. There was an aura of timelessness, or rather that time itself was not so large and elemental as the dragon, that it was something on which Griaule had gained a perspective, something he could control. And the walls, the veins of moss . . . he had the sense that those patterns reflected the patterns of the dragon’s thoughts. It was, he thought, as if he were inside Griaule, passing along some internal channel, and thinking this, he realized that it might be true, that the building, its function aligned with Griaule for so long, might well have become attuned with the dragon, might have in effect become the analogue of his body, subject to his full control. That idea produced in him an intense claustrophobia, and he had to bite back a cry. This was ridiculous, he told himself, absolutely ridiculous, he was letting his imagination run away with him. And yet he could not escape the feeling of enclosure, of being trapped beneath tons of cold flesh and bones the size of ships’ keels.

When at last Janice pointed out the door to Zemaille’s apartment, it was with tremendous relief that Korrogly inserted the key, eager to be out of the corridor, hoping that the apartment would provide a less oppressive environment; but although well-lit by globes of moss, the room that greeted his eye added more fuel to the fires of his imagination. Beyond an alcove was a bedchamber of a most grotesque design, the walls covered in a rich paper of crimson with a magenta stripe, and coiling around the entire room was a relief depicting a tail and a swollen reptile body, all worked in brass, every scale cunningly wrought, resolving into a huge dragon’s head with an open fanged mouth that protruded some nine feet out from the far wall, wherein lay a bed like a plush red tongue. The eyes of the dragon were lidded, with opalescent crescents showing beneath, and its claws extended from the foot of the bed; above the head, suspended from the ceiling, was a section of polished scale some four feet wide and five feet long, angled slightly downward so that whoever entered would see – as Korrogly did now – their dark reflection. He stood frozen, his eyes darting between the scale and the dragon, certain that through some mystic apparatus he was being perceived by Griaule, and he might have stood there for a good long time if Janice had not said, ‘Hurry! This is no place to linger!’

There was little furniture in the room – a bureau, a small chest, two chairs. Korrogly made a hasty search of the chest and bureau, finding only robes and linens. Then he turned to Janice and said, ‘What am I looking for?’

‘Papers, I think,’ she said. ‘Kirin told me once that Mardo kept records. But I’m not sure.’

Korrogly began feeling along the walls, searching for a hidden panel, while Janice stood watch at the door. Where, he thought, where would Zemaille have hidden his valuables? Then it struck him. Where else? He stared at the bed within the dragon’s mouth. The idea that Mirielle had once slept there repelled him, and he was no less repelled by the prospect of exploring the dark recess behind the bed; but it appeared he had no choice. He knelt on the bed, his trouserleg catching on one of the fangs, stalling his heart for an instant, and then he crawled back into the darkness, tossing aside pillows. The recess extended for about six feet and was walled with a smooth material that felt like stone; he ran his hands along it, hunting for a crack, a bulge, some sign of concealment. At last his fingers encountered a slight depression . . . no, five depressions, each about the size of his fingertips. He pressed against them, but achieved nothing; he tapped on the stone and it resounded hollowly.

‘Have you found it?’ Janice called.

‘There’s something here, but I can’t get it open.’

In a moment she came crawling up beside him, bringing with her a faint sweetish smell that seemed familiar. He showed her the depressions, and she began to push at them.

‘Maybe it’s a sequence,’ he said. ‘Maybe you have to push them one at a time in some order.’

‘I felt something,’ she said. ‘A tremor. Here . . . put your weight against the wall.’

He set his shoulder to the wall, heaved and felt the stone shift; the next second the stone gave way and he went sprawling forward. Terrified, he pushed up into a sitting position and found himself in a small round chamber whose pale walls, veined like marble, gave off a ruddy glow. At the rear of the chamber was a lacquered black box. He started to reach for it, but as he picked it up the veins in the stone began to writhe and to thicken, melting up from the surface of the chamber, becoming adders with puffy sacs beneath their throats, and behind the wall, as if trapped in a reddish gel, there appeared the image of Mardo Zemaille, a dark hook-nosed man robed in black and silver, his hands arranged into tortuous mudras from which spat infant lightnings.

Korrogly screamed and pounded on the wall; he looked behind him and saw that the serpents were twining around one another, some beginning to slither toward him. Zemaille was intoning words in some guttural tongue, staring with demonic intent, and the detonations of light emerging from the fingertips were forming into balls of pale fire that spat and crackled and arrowed away in all directions. Korrogly pried at the wall, his breath coming in shrieks, expecting the adders to strike at any second, to be scorched by the balls of fire. A searing pain in his ankle, and he saw that one of the adders had sunk its fangs deep. His screams grew frantic, he lashed out his foot, shaking the adder loose, but another struck at his calf, and another. The pain was almost unendurable. He could feel the venom coursing through his veins like black ice. Half-a-dozen of the serpents were clinging to his legs, and his blood was flowing in rivulets from the wounds. He began to shiver, his right leg spasmed in a convulsion. His heart was huge, swelling larger yet, bloating with poison; it felt like a fist clenched about a thorn inside his chest. One of the fireballs struck his arm and clung there, eating into his arm, charring cloth and flesh. Zemaille’s voice echoed, the voice of doom, as meaningless and potent as the voice of a gong. Then the wall swung outward, and he scrambled from the chamber, falling, coming to his knees, making a clumsy dive toward the bed, only to be caught up by Janice.

‘Easy,’ she said. ‘Easy, it’s only one of Mardo’s illusions.’

‘Illusion?’ Korrogly, his heart racing, turned back to the chamber; it was empty of all but the ruddy light. The pain, he realized, had receded. There were no wounds, no blood.

Janice picked up the box from where he had let it fall, held it to her ear and shook it. ‘Sounds like something solid. Not papers. Maybe this isn’t it.’

‘There’s nothing else there,’ said Korrogly, snatching the box from her, desperate to be away from there. ‘Come on!’

He crawled to the edge of the bed, started for the door, then glanced back to see if Janice was following. She was swinging her legs off the side of the bed, and he was about to tell her to hurry when movement above the bed drew his eye. In the polished scale that overhung the bed he saw his own reflection . . . that and more. Deeper within the scale another figure was materializing, that of a man lying on his back, wearing the robes of a wizard. At first Korrogly thought it must be Zemaille, for the man was very like him: hook-nosed and swarthy. But then he realized that the figure was shrunken and old, incredibly old, and the eyes, half-lidded, showed no sign of white or iris or pupil, but were black and wound through by thready structures of blue-green fire. The image faded after a second, but was so striking in aspect that Korrogly continued staring at the scale, feeling that more might be forthcoming, that it had been part of a sending. Janice pulled at him, making him aware once again of their danger, and together they went sprinting along the corridor toward the door.

The wind had grown stronger, the tops of the bushes were seething and the boughs of the trees lifting as if in sluggish acclaim. After the silence within the building, the roil of wind and surf was an assault, disorienting Korrogly, and he let Janice, who seemed untroubled by all that happened, lead him toward the gate. They had gone halfway through the toiling thickets, when she came to a sudden stop and stood with her head tilted to the side.

‘Someone’s coming,’ she said.

‘I don’t hear anything,’ he said. But she hauled at him, dragging him back the way they had come, and he trusted in her direction.

‘There’s a rear gate,’ she said. ‘It opens out onto the bluff. If we get separated, go west along the beach and hide in the dunes.’

Korrogly hustled after her, clutching the lacquered box to his chest, glancing back once to try and make out their pursuers; he could have sworn he saw dark hooded figures as he went around a bend. It took them less than a minute to reach the gate, another few seconds for Janice to unlatch it, and then they were slogging through the soft sand atop the bluff, heading away from Ayler Point; the moonstruck waves below were flowing sideways, obeying the drag of the outgoing tide. Korrogly was relieved to have left the temple behind, and he was more confused than afraid; he thought that Janice might have been mistaken about hearing someone, that he had not really seen the hooded figures. He ran easily, feeling amazingly sound. It was as if something about the temple had occluded his faculties, diminished his strength. He soon began to outpace Janice, and when he slowed to let her catch up, she gestured for him to keep going; her face was drawn tight with fear, and seeing this, he redoubled his efforts. Just as he came to the slope that led down from the bluff onto the beach, a path of white sand winding through tall grasses, he heard an agonized cry behind him, and turning, he had a glimpse of Janice, her shawl blown by the wind into a pennant, her dark hair loose, teetering on the edge of the bluff, clutching at her breast, at the handle of a dagger that sprouted bloody between her hands. Her eyes rolled up, she toppled over the edge and was gone.

It had happened so suddenly that Korrogly stopped running, scarcely able to believe what he had seen, but after a split-second, hearing a shout above the wind, he set out in a mad dash along the path. Three-quarters of the way down, he lost his footing and went tumbling head over heels the rest of the way. At the bottom of the slope, he groped for the box, found it, and bright with fear, made for the dunes which rose pale as salt above the narrow strip of mucky sand. By the time he had reached the top of the dunes, he was nearly out of breath, and he stood gasping, looking out over a rumpled moonlit terrain of grasses and hillocks, the folds between them holding bays of shadow. He set out running again, stumbling, dropping to his knees in a depression, tripping over exposed roots, and finally, his stamina exhausted, he dove into a cleft beneath a little rise and covered himself as best he could with sand and loose grass.

For awhile he heard nothing except the wind and the muffled crunch of the surf. Clouds began to pass across the moon, their edges catching silver fire, and he stared at them, praying that they would close and draw a curtain of darkness across the land. After about ten minutes he heard a shout, and it was followed a moment later by another shout. He could not make out any words, but the outcries had, he thought, the quality of angry desperation. He tucked his head down and made promises to God, swearing to uphold every sacred tenet, to do good works, if only he would be permitted to survive the night.

At long last the shouts ceased, but Korrogly remained where he was, afraid even to lift his head. He gazed at the clouds; the wind had lessened, and they were coasting past the moon like huge ragged blue galleons, like continents, like anything he wanted to make of their indefinite shapes. A dragon, for instance. An immense cloudy bulk with a vicious head and one globed, glaring silver eye, coiled throughout the heavens, the edges of its scales glinting like stars on its blue-dark hide, spying him out, watching over him, or else merely watching him, merely keeping track of its frightened pawn. He watched it take wing and fly in soaring arcs, diving and looping, making a pattern that drew him in, that trapped him like a devil within a pentagram and, eventually, hypnotized him into a dream-ridden sleep.

Dawn came gray and drizzly, with clouds that resembled heaps of dirty soap suds massing on the horizon. Korrogly’s head ached as if he had been drinking all night; he was sore, filthy . . . even his eyes felt soiled. He peered about and saw only the hillocks, the flattened grasses, the heaving slate-colored ocean, gulls scything down the sky and keening. He rested his head against the sand, gathering himself for the walk back to town, and then remembered the box. It was unlocked. Zemaille, he supposed, had thought that his illusion would dissuade any intruders. He opened it cautiously on the chance that there were more tricks inside. It contained a leather-bound diary. He leafed through the pages, stopping occasionally to read a section; after going over a third of it, he knew that he could win an acquittal, yet he felt no triumph, no satisfaction, nothing. Perhaps, he thought, it was because he still was not sure that he believed in Lemos. Perhaps it was because he knew he should have unearthed the motive sooner; Kirin had given him a clue to it, one he had neglected in his confusion. Perhaps the deaths of Kirin and Janice were muting his reaction. Perhaps . . . he laughed, a sour little noise that the wind blew away. There was no use in trying to understand anything now. He needed a bath, a sleep, food. Then maybe things would make sense. But he doubted it.

 The following morning, against Mervale’s objection, Korrogly recalled Mirielle to the stand. She had on a brown dress with a modest neckline – a schoolteacher’s dress – and her hair was done up primly like that of a young spinster. She had, it appeared, passed beyond mourning, and he wondered why she had not worn black; it might signal, he thought, some indecision on her part, some change of heart as related to her father. But whether or not that was so was unimportant. Looking at her, he had no emotional reaction; she seemed familiar yet distant, like someone he had known briefly years before. He knew that he could break down that distance and dredge up his feelings for her, but he was not moved to do so, for while he knew they were still strong, he was not sure whether they would manifest as love or hate. She had used him, had confused him with her sexuality, had undermined his concentration, and nearly succeeded in killing her father, who was very likely innocent. She had told him that she could have been a good actress, and she had been unsurpassable in her counterfeit of love, so perfect in the role that he believed she had won a piece of his heart for all time. But she was a perjurer and probably worse, and he was duty-bound to make her true colors known to the court, no matter what the cost.

‘Good morning, Miss Lemos,’ he said.

She gave him a quizzical look and returned the greeting.

‘Did you sleep well last night?’ he asked.

‘Oh, dear,’ said Mervale. ‘Is the counsel for the defense next going to inquire about the lady’s breakfast, or perhaps her dreams?’

Judge Wymer stared glumly at Korrogly.

‘I was simply trying to make the witness feel comfortable,’ Korrogly said. ‘I’m concerned for her welfare. She’s had a terrible weight on her conscience.’

‘Mister Korrogly,’ said the judge in tone of warning.

Korrogly waved his hand as if both to accede to the caution and dismiss its importance. He rested both hands on the witness box, leaning toward Mirielle, and said, ‘What is the great work?’

‘The witness has already answered that question,’ said Mervale, and at the same time, Mirielle said, ‘I don’t know what more I can tell you, I . . .’

‘The truth would be refreshing,’ said Korrogly. ‘You see, I know for a fact you haven’t been candid with this court.’

‘If the counselor has facts to present,’ said Mervale, ‘I suggest that he present them and stop badgering the witness.’

‘I will,’ said Korrogly, addressing the bench. ‘In due course. But it’s important to my presentation that I show exactly to what extent and to what end the facts have been covered up.’

Wymer heaved a forlorn sigh. ‘Proceed.’

‘I ask you again,’ said Korrogly to Mirielle, ‘what is the great work? And I warn you, be truthful, for you will not escape prosecution for any lie you may tell from this point on.’

Doubt surfaced in Mirielle’s face, but she only said, ‘I’ve told you all I know.’

Korrogly took a turn around the witness box and stopped facing the jury. ‘What was the purpose of the ceremony in progress on the night that Zemaille was killed?’

‘I don’t know.’

‘Was it part of the great work?’

‘No . . . I mean I don’t think so.’

‘For someone who was Zemaille’s intimate you appear to know very little about him.’

‘Mardo was a secretive man.’

‘Was he, now? Did he ever discuss his parents with you?’

‘Yes.’

‘So he was not secretive concerning his origins?’

‘No.’

‘Did he ever discuss his grandparents?’

‘I’m not sure. I believe he may have mentioned them once or twice.’

‘Other relatives . . . did he ever discuss them?’

‘I can’t remember.’

‘Did he ever make mention of a remote ancestor, a man who – like himself – was involved in the occult?’

Her face tightened. ‘No.’

‘You seem quite certain of that, yet a moment ago you claimed that you couldn’t recall if he had ever talked about other relatives.’

‘I would have remembered something like that.’

‘Indeed, I believe you would.’ Korrogly crossed to the defense table. ‘Does the name Archiochus strike a chord in your memory?’

Mirielle sat motionless, her eyes widened slightly.

‘Should I repeat the question?’

‘No, I heard it . . . I was trying to think.’

‘And have you finished thinking?’

‘Yes, I’ve heard the name.’

‘And who might this Archiochus be?’

‘A wizard, I believe.’

‘A wizard of some accomplishment, was he not? One who lived some time ago . . . thousands of years?’

‘I think so.’ Mirielle seemed to be mulling something over. ‘Yes, I remember now. Mardo considered him his spiritual father. He wasn’t an actual relation . . . at least I don’t think he was.’

‘And that is the extent of your knowledge concerning him?’

‘It’s all I can remember.’

‘Odd,’ said Korrogly, toying with the lid of his briefcase. ‘Let’s return to the ceremony on the night Zemaille was killed. Did this have anything to do with Archiochus?’

‘It may have.’

‘But you’re not sure?’

‘No.’

‘Your father has testified that Zemaille cried out to his father at one point, saying, “Soon you will be free!” Might he not have been referring at that moment to his spiritual father?’

‘Yes.’ Mirielle sat up straight, adopting an earnest expression as if she wanted to be helpful. ‘Now that you mention it, it’s possible he was trying to contact Archiochus. Mardo believed in the spirit world. He would often hold seances.’

‘Then you’re suggesting that the ceremony in question was something on the order of a seance?’

‘It could have been.’

‘To contact the soul of Archiochus?’

‘It’s possible.’

‘Are you certain, Miss Lemos, that you know nothing more about this Archiochus? For instance, did he have anything to do with Griaule?’

‘I . . . maybe.’

‘Maybe,’ said Korrogly bemusedly. ‘Maybe. I believe he had quite a bit to do with Griaule. As a matter of fact, was it not the wizard Archiochus, the man with whom Zemaille felt a spiritual – if not an actual – kinship, who thousands of years ago did battle with the dragon Griaule?’

Babble erupted from the onlookers, and Wymer gaveled them to silence.

Korrogly said to Mirielle, ‘Well?’

‘Yes,’ she said, ‘I believe it was he. I’d forgotten.’

‘Of course,’ said Korrogly. ‘Your flawed memory again.’ He engaged the jury’s eyes and smiled. ‘According to legend, just as Griaule lies dormant, so that same fate struck the wizard who stilled him . . . have you ever heard that?’

‘Yes.’

‘Had Mardo?’

‘I believe so.’

‘So then Mardo believed that this powerful wizard was yet alive? Moribund, but alive?’

‘Yes.’

‘Let’s talk about the work for a moment. Not the great work, just the ordinary run-of-the-mill work. Is it true that you took part in sexual rituals with Zemaille in that same room where he died?’

The vein in her temple pulsed.

‘Yes.’

‘And these rituals involved intercourse with Zemaille?’

‘Yes!’

‘And others?’

Mervale stood at the prosecution table. ‘Your Honor, I see no point in this line.’

‘Nor do I,’ said Wymer.

‘But there is a point,’ said Korrogly, ‘one I will shortly make plain.’

‘Very well,’ said Wymer impatiently. ‘But be succinct. The witness will answer.’

‘What was the question?’ Mirielle asked.

‘Did you participate in sex with others aside from Zemaille for ritual purposes?’ said Korrogly.

‘Yes.’

‘Why? What use did this wantonness serve?’

‘Objection.’

‘I’ll rephrase.’ Korrogly leaned against the defense table. ‘Did sex have a specific function in these rituals?’

‘I suppose . . . yes.’

‘And what was it?’

‘I’m not sure.’

Korrogly opened his briefcase, using the lid to hide the diary inside it from Mirielle’s eyes; he opened the little book. ‘Was it to prepare the flesh?’

Mirielle stiffened.

‘Shall I repeat the question?’

‘No, I . . .’

‘What does that mean, Miss Lemos . . . “to prepare the flesh”?’

She shook her head. ‘Mardo knew . . . I was never clear on it.’

‘Did you practice any sort of birth control prior to these rituals? Did you for instance drink some infusion of roots and herbs, or in other way attempt to prevent yourself from becoming pregnant?’

‘Yes.’

‘Yet on the night Zemaille died, you used no birth control.’

Mirielle came to her feet. ‘How do you . . .’ She bit her lip and sat back down.

‘I believe that night was considered by Zemaille to be the anniversary of the battle between Griaule and Archiochus, was it not?’

‘I don’t know.’

‘I will introduce evidence,’ said Korrogly addressing the bench, ‘to show that this was indeed Zemaille’s opinion.’ He turned again to Mirielle. ‘Was it your intent on that night to become pregnant?’

She sat mute.

‘Answer the question, Miss Lemos,’ said Judge Wymer.

‘Yes,’ she whispered.

‘Why of all the nights did you hope to become pregnant on that one? Was it because you were hoping for a specific sort of child?’

She stared hatefully at him.

Korrogly let the lid of the briefcase fall, let her see the diary. ‘The name of the child whom you were to bear, was it to be Archiochus?’

Her jaw dropped, her eyes were fixed on the leather book.

‘Was it not Zemaille’s intent, the long focus of his great work, to achieve by some foul magic the liberation and repair of Archiochus’ soul? And for that purpose did he not need flesh that was so soiled and degraded, it would offer a natural habitat for the black mind of that evil and moribund man? Your soiled flesh, Miss Lemos. Was it not your function to provide the vile womb that would allow the soul of this loathsome wizard to be reborn in innocent flesh? And would he not, once he had come to manhood and regained his full powers, with Zemaille’s aid, seek once again to destroy the dragon Griaule?’

Instead of answering, Mirielle let out a scream of such pure agony and despair that the courtroom was thrown into a stunned silence. She lowered her head, resting it on the rail of the witness box; at last she sat up straight, her face transformed into a mask of hatred.

‘Yes!’ she said. ‘Yes! And if hadn’t been for him’ – she flung out a hand, pointing to Lemos – ‘we would have killed the damned lizard! You would have thanked us . . . all of you! You would have praised Mardo as a liberator! You would have built statues, memorials. You . . .’

Judge Wymer cautioned her to silence, but she continued to rant; every muscle in her face was leaping, her eyes were distended, her hands gripping the rail.

‘Mardo!’ she cried, turning her face to the ceiling as if seeing through it into the kingdom of the dead. ‘Mardo, hear me!’

At length, unable to silence her, Wymer had her taken in restraints to an interrogation room, returned Lemos to his cell, and ordered a recess. After the courtroom had been cleared, Korrogly sat at the defense table, fingering the diary, staring gloomily into the middle distance; his thoughts seemed to arc out and upward like flares, bright for a moment, but then falling into darkness.

‘Well,’ said Mervale, coming to sit on the edge of the table, ‘I suppose I should offer my congratulations.’

‘It’s not over yet.’

‘Oh, yes it is! They’ll never convict now, and you know it.’

Korrogly nodded.

‘You don’t seem very happy about it.’

‘I’m just tired.’

‘It’ll sink in soon,’ Mervale said. ‘This is a tremendous victory for you. You’ve made your fortune.’

‘Hmm.’

Mervale got to his feet and extended a hand. ‘No hard feelings,’ he said. ‘I realize you were overwrought the other night. I’m willing to let bygones be bygones if you are.’

Korrogly took his hand and was surprised to see actual respect in Mervale’s face – his surprise stemmed from the fact that he felt no respect for himself; he could not stop thinking of Mirielle, wanting her, even though he realized that everything between them had been a sham. And, too, he was dissatisfied. The case struck him as a jigsaw puzzle whose pieces fit neatly together, but whose picture made no sense.

‘Want a drink?’ Mervale asked.

‘No,’ said Korrogly.

‘Come on, man. Maybe there was some truth in what you said the other night, but I’m won over. You won’t find me patronizing you anymore. Let me buy you a drink.’

‘No,’ said Korrogly; then he looked up at Mervale with a grin. ‘You can buy me several.’

 Korrogly’s dissatisfaction did not wane with time; he remained uncertain of Lemos’ innocence, and everything that happened as a result of the gemcutter’s acquittal caused his dissatisfaction to grow more extreme.

Mirielle was declared incompetent, and the temple and its grounds were ceded to Lemos, who promptly sold them for an enormous sum; the buildings were razed and a hotel was planned for the site. Lemos also sold The Father of Stones at a large profit back to Henry Sichi, for it was now considered a relic of Griaule and thus of inestimable worth, and Sichi wanted it for an exhibit in the museum he had built to house such items. Lemos had invested the majority of his new wealth in indigo mills and silver mines, and had purchased a mansion out on Ayler Point; there, with the court’s permission, he and a staff of nurses took charge of nursing Mirielle back to health. They were rarely seen in public, but word had it that she was doing splendidly, and that father and daughter had reconciled.

Whenever he had a spare hour, his practice having grown large and profitable following the trial, Korrogly would use the time to do the pretrial work that he neglected and continued to investigate all the circumstances surrounding Zemaille’s death. In this he made no headway until almost a year and a half later, when he interviewed an ex-member of the dragon cult on the beach below the bluff where the temple had once stood. The man, a slight balding fellow whose innocuous appearance belied his dissolute past, was nervous, and Korrogly had been forced to pay him well in order to elicit his candor. He was of little help for the most part, and it was only toward the end of the interview that he provided information that substantiated Korrogly’s doubts.

‘We all thought it strange that Mirielle took up with Mardo,’ he said, ‘considering what happened to her mother.’

‘What are you talking about?’ Korrogly asked.

‘Her mother,’ said the man. ‘Patricia. She came to the temple one night, the night she died as a matter of fact.’

‘What?’

‘You didn’t know?’

‘No, I’ve heard nothing about it.’

‘Well, I don’t suppose it’s public knowledge. She only came the once, and that same night she drowned.’

‘What happened?’

‘Who can say? Word was that Mardo had her into his bed. Probably drugged her. Maybe she fought him. Mardo wouldn’t have liked that.’

‘Are you saying he killed her?’

‘Somebody did.’

‘Why didn’t any of you come forward with this?’

‘We were afraid.’

‘Of what?’

‘Griaule.’

‘That’s ludicrous.’

‘Is it, now? You’re the man who got Lemos off, you must understand what Griaule’s capable of.’

‘But what you’re saying, it throws a different light on things. Perhaps Lemos and Mirielle plotted this whole affair to get revenge, perhaps . . .’

‘Even if they did,’ said the man, ‘it was still Griaule’s idea.’

Following this interview, Korrogly checked the tides on the night of Patricia Lemos’ death and discovered that they had been sweeping out from the temple bluff toward Ayler Point, that had her body entered the water in the early morning, she might well – as had been the case – have washed ashore on Ayler Point. That, however, was the extent of his enlightenment. Despite exploring every avenue, he could come up with no evidence to implicate Lemos or his daughter in a plot against Zemaille. The matter continued to prey on him, to cause him bad dreams and sleepless nights; having been used, he had an overwhelming compulsion to understand the nature of that usage, to put into perspective all that happened, so that he could know the character of his fate. He did not know whether he wanted more to believe that he had been manipulated by Griaule or by Lemos and his daughter. Some nights he thought he would prefer to cling to the notion of free will, to think that he had been the victim of human wiles, not those of some creature as inexplicable as God; other nights he hoped that he had won the case fairly and freed an innocent man. The only thing he was certain of was that he wanted clarity.

Finally, having no other course of action open, he went to the source, to Lemos’ mansion on Ayler Point, and asked to see the gemcutter. A maid advised him that the master was not in, but that if he would wait, she would find out if the mistress was at home. After a brief absence she returned and ushered him onto a sunny verandah that overlooked the sea and provided a breathtaking view of the Almintra quarter. The strong sunlight applied a crust of diamantine glitter to the surface of the water, spreading it wider whenever the wind riffled the tops of the wavelets, and the gabled houses on the shore looked charming, quaint, their squalor hidden by distance. Mirielle, clad in a beige silk robe, was reclining on a lounge; on a small table close to her hand lay a long pipe and a number of dark pellets that Korrogly suspected to be opium. There was a clouded look to her eyes, and though she was still lovely, the marks of dissipation had eroded the fine edge of her good looks; a black curl was plastered to her sweaty cheek, and there was an unhealthy shine to her skin.

‘It’s wonderful to see you,’ she said lazily, indicating that he should take a chair beside her.

‘Is it?’ he said, feeling the rise of old longings, old bitternesses. God, he thought, I still love her, despite everything; she could commit any excess, any vileness, and I would love her.

‘Of course.’ She let out a fey laugh. ‘I doubt you’ll believe me, but I was quite fond of you.’

‘Fond!’ He made the word into an epithet.

‘I told you I couldn’t love you.’

‘You told me you’d try.’

She shrugged; her hand twitched toward the pipe. ‘Things didn’t work out.’

‘Oh, I don’t know about that.’ He gestured at the luxurious surround. ‘Things have worked out quite well for you.’

‘And for you,’ she said. ‘I’ve heard you’ve become a great success. All the ladies want you for their . . .’ A giggle. ‘Their solicitor.’

A large wave broke on the shore beneath the verandah, spreading a lace of foam halfway up the beach; the sound appeared to make Mirielle sleepy; her lids fluttered down, and she gave a long sigh that caused her robe to slip partway off one pale, poppling breast.

‘I tried to be honest with you,’ she said. ‘And I was. As honest as I knew how to be.’

‘Then why didn’t you tell me about your mother and Zemaille?’

Her eyes blinked open. ‘What?’

‘You heard me.’ She sat up, pulling her robe closed, and regarded him with a mixture of confusion and displeasure.

‘Why have you come here?’

‘For answers. I need answers.’

‘Answers!’ She laughed again. ‘You’re more a fool than I thought.’

Stung by that, he said, ‘Maybe I’m a fool, but I’m no whore.’

‘A lawyer who thinks he’s not a whore! Will wonders never cease!’

 If a man can be measured by the size of his obsessions, George Taborin might have been said to be a very small man, smaller even than the quarter-men rumored to inhabit the forests of Tasmania. He was a numismatist by trade, by avocation a lover of rare and ancient coins, and he spent his days cataloguing, cleaning, and in contemplation of such coins, picturing as he did the societies whose lifeblood they had emblematized. Rubbing the face of Ptolemy, for instance, on a silver drachma found in Alexandria, struck at the approximate time of the invasion of Cyprus by Demetrios Poliokortes (probably in Salamis, the last city to fall to the Besieger), would conjure not merely the historical context of the Roman empire and Ptolemaic Egypt, but brought visions so vivid that he imagined he felt the weight of an armored breastplate on his chest or caught the scent of naphtha from an arrow dipped in Greek fire smoldering in its victim’s flesh. It was as if the ball of his thumb stirred the energies of the coin, releasing some essence of the moments through which it had passed, and it had been thus ever since his sixth birthday when his uncle gave him a Phoenician copper as a present.

From this you might suppose George, in his fortieth year, to have been a fastidious, obsessive little man given to wool-gathering, with spectacles and a potbelly and few close friends, his minimal life partitioned into orderly sections like the trays whereon he displayed the best of his collection. You would have been correct in this assessment save for one thing: George Taborin was not little. He stood a hand’s breadth over six feet, more if you measured from the peak of his coarse black hair, which tended to arrange itself into spiky growths when left unwashed, causing it to be said that if George ran into you while walking with his head down (as was his habit), you would be fortunate to survive the encounter without a puncture or two. Thanks to his parents, a farm couple who had viewed him less as a beloved addition to the family than as child labor, he was powerfully built; his sedentary occupation had eroded his strengths and softened his mid-section, but not so much that he was often challenged – he had earned a schoolyard reputation for toughness and durability in a fight and that reputation clung to him yet. He had a slightly undershot chin, a straight nose whose only notable quality was that it was too big for his face, and a mouth through which he was prone to breathe due to a persistent sinus condition (for all that, his was a face that missed being handsome by an ounce here, a centimeter there, and might have passed muster had there been more self-confidence underlying it). These features conspired with his bulk to lend him a doltish aspect, like a gangling idiot boy thickened into a man. When gazing into a mirror, something he did as infrequently as possible, he would have the notion that his soul had not thickened commensurately and was rattling around inside its house, a poor fit for the flesh it animated, stunted and too small by half.

Pursuant to his family’s wishes (the thought being that if George didn’t marry young he would never find a woman), at the age of fifteen he wed Rosemary LeMaster, a chubby, sullen, unprepossessing girl who, over the course of a quarter-century, had matured into a flirtatious, Raphael-esque matron. They had not been blessed with children and, because George deeply desired a family, as did Rosemary (so she claimed, though he suspected her of taking steps to ensure her infertility), they still shared the marriage bed once a week, regular as clockwork; but now that George’s business (Taborin Coins & Antiquities) had prospered, providing them the wherewithal to hire servants, Rosemary, freed from domestic duties, wasted no time in making up for the period of youthful experimentation she’d never had, aligning herself with a clutch of upper-middle-class wives in Port Chantay who called their group the Whitestone Rangers (named for the district in which many of them lived) and considered themselves prettier, more sophisticated and fashionable than they in fact were. She veered into a social orbit of parties and trivial causes (the placing of planter boxes along the harbor, for one) that served as opportunities to meet the men with whom she and her sisters would share dalliances and affairs. Although troubled by his wife’s infidelities (he had no proof positive, yet he was aware of the Rangers’ liberal attitude toward the matrimonial bond), George did not complain. He and Rosemary led essentially separate lives and this latest separation had not created any disruption in the routines of the marriage. Then, too, he had no grounds for complaint since he was regularly unfaithful to Rosemary.

In the spring of each year, George would travel to Teocinte and pass the next three weeks sporting in the brothels of Morning shade, a district that never received the morning sun, tucked so close beneath the dragon Griaule’s1 monstrous shadow, his ribcage bulged out over a portion of the area like a green-and-gold sky.2 Apart from its brothels, Morningshade was known for its junk shops and stalls where you could find antiquities and relics of Griaule (mostly fakes) among the dragon-shaped pipes and pendants, his image adorning a variety of merchandise including plates, pennants, toys (wooden swords were a big seller), tablecloths, teaspoons, mugs, and maps purporting to divulge the location of his hoard.3 George would spend his afternoons combing through these shops, searching for old coins. One evening in May, after such an expedition, he took himself to Ali’s Eternal Reward (the crudely-lettered word ‘Hellish’ had been added and marked for insertion between Ali’s and Eternal), a brothel on the sunnier edge of Morningshade, there to examine his day’s treasures over a pint of bitters.

The common room of the tavern, lit by kerosene lamps and almost empty at that early hour, was shaped like a capital I and smelled of fried onions, stale beer, and several decades of grease. Pitch-covered beams quartered the ceiling, beneath which lay benches and boards, and whitewashed walls gone a splotchy gray from kitchen smoke and innumerable grimy touches, and a counter behind which a corpulent barman wearing a fez (not Ali, who was a purely fictive personage) stood lordly and watchful, punctuating the quiet with the occasional thwack of a flyswatter. Three young women in loosely belted dressing gowns sat at the center of the room, talking softly. Carts rattled by outside, and a vendor shrilled the virtues of her coconut sweets. To George, sitting at a window in a rear corner of the I, the conversations of passersby came as bursts of unintelligible words peppered with curses.

While inspecting the contents of a glass jar containing coins and buttons and tin badges that he had purchased as a lot, he unearthed a dark leathern chip stiff with age and grime, shaped like a thumbnail, though three times the size and much thicker. He opened his cleaning kit and dabbed at the chip with a cotton ball dipped in solvent, after some exercise clearing a speck of bluish green at the center. His interest enlisted, he put on the spectacles he used for close work, bent to the chip and rubbed at it vigorously with the cotton ball, widening the speck. The blue-green color held a gem-like luster. He fitted a jeweler’s loupe to his spectacles and held the chip to his eye.

‘What you got there?’

A prostitute clad in a robe of peach silk, a thin brunette in her early twenties with curly hair, a dusky complexion, and a face that, though pretty, was too sharp-featured for his tastes, slid onto the bench beside him and held out a hand. ‘Can I see?’

Startled not only by her, but by the fact that the tavern had, without his notice, filled with a noisy crowd, he dropped the chip into her hand, an action he instantly regretted, worried that she might abscond with it.

‘I haven’t seen one of these since I was a bare-ass kid,’ the woman said, pushing her hair back from her eyes. ‘My granny wore one like this around her neck. She promised she’d leave it to me, but they buried the old hag with it.’

‘You know what it is, then?’

‘A dragon scale . . . not off a monster like Griaule. The babies have this blue color when they’re born, or so I hear.4 I suppose it could be Griaule’s from when he was little. There ain’t been any baby dragons around these parts for centuries. The scale my granny wore was passed down from her great-great-great.’

George reached for the scale, but the woman closed her hand.

‘I’ll give you a ride for it.’ She opened her robe, exposing her breasts, and shimmied her shoulders.

‘Let me have it,’ said George, snapping his fingers.

‘Don’t act so stern!’ She jiggled the scale in her palm, as if assessing its weight, and then passed it to him. ‘Tell you what. I’ll give you liberties for a week. When you go back to Port Chantay, you’ll have more than a guided tour of Griaule to remember, I promise.’

‘How can you tell I’m from Port Chantay?’

With a disdainful sniff, she said, ‘I have a gift.’

Her breasts were fuller than he had thought, quite shapely, with large cinnamon areolae. Ever a pragmatic sort when it came to business affairs, he reckoned the scale to be a curiosity piece, not worth that much to the run of his customers; but he pressed his seller’s advantage.

‘I’m here two more weeks,’ he said. ‘Put yourself at my disposal for that time and the scale is yours.’

‘At your disposal? You’ll have to speak plainer than that. I ain’t letting you tie me up, if that’s how you’re bent.’

‘I’m staying at the Weathers. I’d want you there with me.’

‘The Weathers,’ she said, and made an appreciative face. ‘What else would you want?’

George spelled out his needs in clinical detail; the woman nodded and said, ‘Done.’

She extended a hand and, as if imitating George, snapped her fingers. ‘Give it here.’

‘When the two weeks are up. One of us will have to trust the other to fulfill their end of the bargain. I’d prefer it be you.’

1 The mile-long dragon, paralyzed by a wizard’s spell, in whose lee Teocinte had grown.

2 Portions of this sky, scales shed by the dragon, would occaisionally fall on the rooftops below, crushing the houses beneath, causing the plots of land upon which they had stood to appreciate in value because they would be unlikely to experience another such disaster.

3 As the tale was told, over the centuries people came from the ends of the earth to lay offerings before him, and these offerings had been transported by a succession of creatures and men controlled by the dragon to a hiding place known only to him (its location having been subsequently erased from the minds of his minions). The treasure was said by some to be fabulous beyond belief, and by others to be a complete fabrication.

4 This was true only as so far as dragons native to the region went. Dragons bred in other climes displayed a variety of coloration, ranging from ivory-scaled snow dragons of the Antarctic to the reddish-gold hue of those dragons that once inhabited the wastes north of Lake Baikul, a shade that deepened to a rich bronze at maturity.

 With the death of the dragon Griaule, the city council of Teocinte were forced to confront a question they had failed to anticipate: When dealing with a creature whose heart beat once every thousand years, how does one determine whether he is actually dead? Since the sole perceptible sign of death was the closing of his eyes, it was suggested that he had merely lapsed into a coma induced by the countless gallons of poisoned paint slapped onto his side during the creation of Meric Cattanay’s mural.5 The parasites that lived on and inside him had not fled the body and there was no evidence of corruption (nor would there be for many years if the rate of decay were as glacially slow as the rest of his metabolic processes). Indeed, it had been ventured that since Griaule was a magical being, the possibility existed that his corpse would prove to be uncorrupting.

Decades before, when the council accepted Cattanay’s plan, they had acted in confidence and contracted with various entrepreneurs for the disposal of Griaule’s corpse, selling it piecemeal in advance of his death, thus adding millions to the town coffers; but the current council regretted their predecessors’ decision and refused to honor the contracts.6 Due to their uncertainty about his mortal condition, they still feared Griaule. If he were alive, they could only imagine his reaction to an attempted dissection. Then there was the matter of aesthetics. Thanks to the discovery of mineral springs south of town and, in no small part, to Griaule himself, Teocinte had become a tourist destination. Turning a portion of the town into an abattoir, with several hundred thousand tons of dragon meat and guts and bones lying about, would be an inappropriate advertisement for fun and relaxation. The council was hesitant to act, yet the citizenry of Teocinte, who for generations had lived under Griaule’s ineffable dominion, clamored for an official judgment. It was a touchy situation, one that demanded a delicate resolution, and therefore the council tried – as do all accomplished politicians – to make doing next to nothing seem like a compromise. They tore down the scaffolding Cattanay had erected in order to create his mural, scoured the moss from the teeth, cut away the vegetation from his body, leaving in place only the thickets surrounding the ruin of Hangtown on his back (now uninhabited except for a caretaker), which they designated a historical site. They constructed rope walkways leading to every quarter of the dragon and offered tours, inducing tourists to go where most of the townspeople feared to tread. This, they thought, would promote the idea that they believed Griaule to be dead, yet would provide no evidentiary proof and put off a final determination. If Griaule were still alive and a few tourists died as a result of this experiment in the social dynamic, well, so be it. They further built several luxury hotels, among them the Seven Weathers, on the slopes of Haver’s Roost, each offering excellent views of the dragon. And so, on the day after he found the scale, George stood at a window in his suite at the Weathers, sipping coffee and having a morning cigar, gazing at Griaule: an enormous green-and-gold lizard looming like a hill with an evil head over the smoking slum in his shadow, his tail winding off between lesser hills, light glinting from the tip of a fang and coursing along the ribbing of the sagittal crest rising from his neck, the mural on its side glazed with sun, making it indecipherable at that angle. The huge paint vats that had occupied the flat portion of his skull had been dismantled so as not to distract from the dramatic view.

The woman, Sylvia,7 stirred in the bedroom and George sat down at a writing desk and took up cleaning the scale once again, thinking he might as well make it nice for her. The dirt on the scale was peculiarly resistant and he had managed to clear only a small central patch, about a quarter of its surface, when Sylvia entered, toweling her hair, wearing only sandals and a pair of beige lounging trousers. She dropped heavily into the armchair beside the desk and sighed. He acknowledged her with a nod and bent to his task. She made an impatient noise, which he ignored; she flung her legs over the arm of the chair, the towel slipping down onto her thighs, and said blithely, ‘Well, you don’t fuck like a shopkeeper, I’ll say that much for you.’

Amused, he said, ‘I assume that’s intended as an endearment.’

‘A what-ment?’

‘Praise of a kind.’

She shrugged. ‘If that’s how you want to take it.’

‘So . . .’ He scraped at a fleck of stubborn grime with a fingernail. ‘How do shopkeepers fuck?’

‘With most of them, it’s like they’re embarrassed to be between my legs. They want to get it over quick and be gone. They turn their backs when they button their trousers. And they don’t want me saying nothing while they’re riding.’ She shook out her wet hair. ‘Not that they don’t want me making noises. They like that well enough.’

‘Then that raises the question: How do I fuck?’

‘Like a desperate man.’

‘Desperate?’ He kept on rubbing at the scale. ‘Surely not.’

‘Maybe desperate’s not the right word.’ She lazily scratched her hip. ‘It’s like you truly needed what I had to offer, and not just my tra-la-la. I could tell you wanted me to be myself and not some Sylvia.’

‘I expect I did.’ He was making good progress – the blue portion of the scale had come to resemble an aerial view of a river bordered by banks of mud and black earth. ‘From now on I’ll call you Ursula.’

‘That’s not my proper name, either.’

‘What is it, then?’

‘You don’t want to hear – it’s horrible.’ She stretched like a cat on its back in the sun; her face, turned to the window, blurred with brightness. ‘Truth be told, I don’t mind being Sylvia. Suits me, don’t you think?’

‘Mmm-hmm.’

She lapsed into silence, watching him work, attentive to the occasional squeak his cloth made on the scale, and then she said, ‘Do you fancy me? I mean, the way I’m talking with you now?’

He cocked an eye toward her.

‘I’m curious is all,’ she said.

‘I have to admit you’re growing on me.’

‘I was thinking I might try being myself more often. Always having to be someone else is an awful pressure.’ She scrambled to her knees in the chair, the towel falling away completely, and leaned over the desk, peering at the scale. ‘Oh, that blue’s lovely! How long you reckon ’til it’s done?’

‘I’ll give it a polish once it’s clean. A week or so.’

She bent closer, her breasts grazing the desktop, holding her hair back from her eyes, fixed on the streak of blue dividing the scale. How different she seemed from the brittle businesswoman he had met at Ali’s! She had tried to sustain that pose, but she let it drop more and more frequently, revealing the country girl beneath. He suspected he knew the basics of her story – a farm family with too many children; sold to a brothel keeper; earning her way by the time she was twelve – and thought knowing the specifics might uncover a deeper compatibility. But that, he reminded himself, was what she would want him to think in hopes of getting a bigger tip. Such was the beauty of whores: No matter how devious, how subtle their pretense, you always knew where you stood with them. He studied her face, prettied by concentration, and absently stroked the scale with his thumb.

A sound came to him, barely audible, part hiss, part ripping noise, as of some fundamental tissue, something huge and far away, cleaved by a cosmic sword (or else it was something near at hand, a rotten piece of cloth parting from the simple strain of being worn, giving way under a sudden stress). This sound was accompanied by a vision unlike any he had heretofore known: It was as if the objects that composed the room, the heavy mahogany furniture, the cream-colored wallpaper with its pattern of sailing vessels, the entire surround, were in fact a sea of color and form, and this sea was now rapidly withdrawing, rolling back, much as the ocean withdraws from shore prior to a tidal wave. As it receded, it revealed neither the floors and walls of adjoining rooms nor the white buildings of Teocinte, but a sun-drenched plain with tall lion-colored grasses and stands of palmetto, bordered on all sides by hills forested with pines. They were marooned in the midst of that landscape, smelling its vegetable scents, hearing the chirr and buzz of insects, touched by the soft intricacy of its breezes . . . and then it was gone, trees and plain and hills so quickly erased, they might have been a painted cloth whisked away, and the room was restored to view. George was left gaping at a portmanteau against the far wall. Sylvia, arms crossed so as to shield her breasts, squatted in the easy chair, her eyes shifting from one point to another.

‘What did you do?’ she asked in a shaky voice. She repeated the question accusingly, shrilly, as if growing certain of his complicity in the event.

‘I didn’t do anything.’ George looked down at the scale.

‘You rubbed it! I saw you!’ She wrested the scale from him and rubbed it furiously; when nothing came of her efforts she handed it back and said, ‘You try.’

It had not escaped George that there might be a correspondence between the apparition of the plain and the visions that arose when he rubbed his thumb across the face of a coin; but none of those visions had supplied the sensory detail of this last and no one else had ever seen them. He experienced some trepidation at the thought of trying it again and dropped the scale into his shirt pocket.

‘Finish dressing,’ he said. ‘Let’s go down to breakfast.’

A flash of anger ruled her face. He folded his penknife and packed up his cleaning kit and pocketed them as well.

‘Won’t you give it one more rub?’ she asked.

He ignored her.

Wrapping the towel around her upper body, she gave him a scornful look and flounced into the bedroom.

George sipped his coffee and discovered it was tepid. Through the thin fabric of his shirt, the scale felt unnaturally cold against his chest and he set it on the desk. It might be more valuable than he had presumed. He nudged it with the tip of a finger – the room remained stable.

Sylvia re-entered, still wearing the towel and still angry, though she tried to mask her anger behind a cajoling air. ‘Please! Give it one little rub.’ She kissed the nape of his neck. ‘For me?’

‘It frightened you the first time. Why are you so eager to repeat the experience?’

‘I wasn’t frightened! I was startled. You’re the one who was frightened! You should have seen your face.’

‘That begs the question: Why so eager?’

‘When Griaule makes himself known, you’d do well to pay heed or misfortune will follow.’

He leaned back, amused. ‘So you believe this nonsense about Griaule being a god.’

‘It ain’t nonsense. You’d know it for true if you lived here.’ Hands on hips, she proceeded to deliver what was obviously a quoted passage: ‘He was once mortal, long-lived yet born to die, but Griaule has increased not only in size, but in scope. Demiurge may be too great a word to describe an overgrown lizard, yet surely he is akin to such a being. His flesh has become one with the earth. He knows its every tremor and convulsion. His thoughts roam the plenum, his mind is a cloud that encompasses our world. His blood is the marrow of time. Centuries flow through him, leaving behind a residue that he incorporates into his being. Is it any wonder he controls our lives and knows our fates?’8

‘That sounds grand, but it proves nothing. What’s it from?’

‘A book someone left at Ali’s.’

‘You don’t recall its name?’

‘Not so I could say.’

‘And yet you memorized the passage.’

‘Sometimes there’s not much to do except sit around. I get bored and I read. Sometimes I write things.’

‘What kind of things?’

‘Little stories about the other girls, like. All sorts of things.’ She caressed his cheek. ‘Try again! Please!’

With a show of patience tried that was only partly a show, expecting that nothing (or next to nothing) would occur, he picked up the scale and ran his thumb along the lustrous blue streak, pressing down hard. This time the ripping sound was louder and the transition from hotel room to sun-drenched plain instantaneous. He fell thuddingly among the tall grasses, the chair beneath him having vanished, and lay grasping the scale, squinting up at the diamond glare of the sun and a sky empty of clouds, like a sheet of blue enamel. Sylvia made a frightened noise and clutched his shoulder as he scrambled to his knees. She said something that – his mind dominated by an evolving sense of dismay – he failed to register. The smells that had earlier seemed generic, a vague effluvia of grass and dirt, now were particularized and pungent, and the sun’s heat was no longer a gentle warmth, but an ox-roasting presence. A droplet of sweat trickled down his side from his armpit. Insects whirred past their heads and a hawk circled high above. This was no vision, he told himself. The scale had transported them somewhere, perhaps to another section of the valley. In the distance stood a ring of rolling, forested hills enclosing the lumpish shapes of lesser, nearby hills – his coach had traversed similar hills as it ascended from the coastal plain toward Teocinte, though those had been denuded of vegetation. Panic inspired him to rub at the scale, hoping to be transported back to the room; but his actions proved fruitless.

Sylvia sank to the ground and lowered her head, and this display of helplessness served to stiffen George’s spine, engaging his protective instincts. He scanned the valley for signs of life.

‘We should find shelter,’ he said dazedly. ‘And water.’

She made an indefinite noise and half-turned her head away.

‘Perhaps there’s water there.’ He pointed to the far-off hills. ‘And a village.’

‘I doubt we’ll find a village.’

‘Why not?’

‘Don’t you recognize where we are?’ She waved dejectedly at the closest hill, which lay behind them on the right. ‘There’s Haver’s Roost, where the Weathers stood. And the rise over yonder is where Griaule’s head rested. The sunken area to the left, with all the shrimp plants and cabbage palms – that’s where Morningshade used to lie. There’s Yulin Grove. It’s all there except the houses and the people.’

She continued her cataloging of notable landmarks and he was forced to admit that she was correct. He would have expected her to be upset by this development, fearful and verging on hysteria; but she was outwardly calm (calmer than he), albeit dejected. He asked why she was so unruffled.

‘We’re accustomed to such doings around here,’ she replied. ‘It’s Griaule’s work. The scale . . . he must have shed it when he was young and it wound up in that jar. For some reason he set you to find it. So you could clean it and rub on it, I imagine.’

In reflex he said, ‘That’s ridiculous.’

With a loose-armed gesture toward Haver’s Roost, she said, ‘Teocinte is gone. How else do you think it happened?’

Aside from grass swaying, palmetto fronds lifting in the wind, birds scattering about the sky, the land was empty. Odd, he thought, that birds would act so carefree with a hawk in the vicinity. Shielding his eyes against the glare, he tried to spot the hawk, but it had vanished against the sun field. His uneasiness increased.

‘We can’t stay here,’ he said.

Sylvia arranged her towel into a makeshift blouse and appeared to be awaiting instruction.

A bug zinged past George’s ear – he swatted at it half-heartedly. ‘Which way should we go?’

She tugged at a loose curl, a gesture that conveyed a listless air – it had become apparent that she had surrendered herself to Griaule or to some other implausible agency. George grabbed her by the wrist and pulled her to him.

‘If this is where Teocinte stood, you know where we can find water,’ he said

Sullenly she said, ‘There should be a creek over that way somewhere.’ She pointed toward the depression in which Morningshade had once sprawled. ‘It was filthy last I saw it, but now, with nobody around, the water ought to be all right.’

‘Let’s go,’ he said, and when she showed no sign of complying, he shoved her forward. She swung her fist, striking him in the forehead, an impact that caused her to cry out in pain and cradle her hand.

‘Are you angry?’ he asked. ‘Good.’

‘Don’t go pushing me!’ she said tearfully. ‘I won’t have it!’

‘If you’re going to act like your spine’s been sucked out, I’ll push you whenever I choose,’ he said. ‘You can mope about and wait to die on your own time.’

5 The process by which Griaule purportedly had been killed took more than 30 years to complete and was achieved by the utilization of arsenic- and lead-based paints in a mural painted on his side. The manufacture of these paints had destroyed the lush forests of the Carbonales (a steady supply of timber was necessary to heat the vats in which the paint was distilled) and placed such a stress on the economy that a number of wars had been fought with neighboring city-states in order to replenish Teocinte’s exchequer.

6 Cele Van Alstyne of Port Chantay, who had secured the rights to Griaule’s heart, estimated to weigh nine million pounds, was desperate to revive her failing pharmaceutical company and initiated legal action. She was joined in this by a group of speculators who had bought the approximately one hundred and sixty million pounds of bones (except for the skull, sold to the King of neighboring Temalagua) and planned to export them to foreign countries for use as sexual remedies, charms, souvenirs, etc.; and by a second consortium who had bought the skin, all two hundred and twenty million pounds of it (not counting the mural, destined to be housed in the Cattanay Museum). Lawyers for the council fought a delaying action, claiming that since the dragon’s death could not be proven absolutely, the lawsuits were invalid.

7 She had adopted this nom d’amour after George expressed dissatisfaction with the first name she gave, Ursula, and a selection process that winnowed the choices down to three: Otile, Amaryllis, and Sylvia. He had settled on the latter because it reminded him of a grocer’s wife he had admired in Port Chantay, a woman from the extreme south of the country, a region ‘Sylvia’ also claimed as home.

8 The excerpt is from the preface to Richard Rossacher’s Griaule Incarnate. Rossacher, a young medical doctor, while studying Griaule’s blood derived from it a potent narcotic that succeeded in addicting a goodly portion of the population of the Temalaguan littoral. After experiencing an epiphany of sorts, he became evangelic as regarded the dragon and spent his last years writing and proselytizing about Griaule’s divinity.

 By the time they had hiked a third of the distance to the creek, George’s practical side had re-established dominance and he had developed a scheme for survival in case their situation, whatever it might be,9 failed to reverse itself. But as he prepared for a solitary life with Sylvia (of whatever duration), planning a shelter that could be added to over the months and years, and devising ways in which they could usefully occupy their time, the hawk reappeared above, swelling to such a size as it dropped toward them that George could no longer believe it was a hawk or any familiar predator. He scooped up Sylvia by the waist, lifting her off the ground, and began to run, ignoring her shrieks, just as a dragon swooped low overhead, coming so near that they felt the wind of its passage. Its scales glinting bright green and gold, the dragon banked in a high turn and arrowed toward them again, and then, with a furious beating of its jointed wings, landed facing them in the tall grasses no more than fifty feet away. It dipped its snout and roared, a complicated noise like half-a-dozen lions roaring not quite in unison. George glimpsed a drop of orange brilliance hanging like a jewel in the darkness of its gullet and threw Sylvia to the ground, covering her with his body, expecting flames to wash over them. When no flames manifested, he lifted his head. The dragon maintained its distance, breath chuffing like an over-strained engine – it seemed to be waiting for them to act. Sylvia complained and George eased from atop her. When she saw the dragon she moaned and put her face down in the grass.

Taking care to avoid sudden movements, George climbed to his feet. He was so afraid, so weak in the knees, he thought he might have to sit down, but he maintained a shaky half-crouch. The dragon’s lowered head was almost on a level with his, but its back and crest rose much higher. He estimated it to be twenty-five feet long, perhaps a touch more, from the tip of the tail to its snout. The green-and-gold scales fit cunningly to its musculature, a tight overlay like the scales of a pangolin. It emitted a rumbling, its mouth opening to display fangs longer than his arms. A dry, gamey scent seemed to coil about him like a tendril, causing a fresh tightness in his throat. Yet for all its wicked design and innate enmity, there was something of the canine in the way it cocked its head and scrutinized them, like a puppy (one the size of a cottage) confounded by a curious pair of bugs.

‘Sylvia.’ He reached down, groping for her, his fingers brushing her towel.

In response he received a weak, ‘No.’

‘If it wanted to kill us, it would have done so by now,’ he said without the least confidence.

Not taking his eyes from the dragon, he groped again, caught her wrist and yanked her up. She buried her face in his shoulder, refusing to look at the dragon. Putting an arm about her waist, he steered her back in the direction from which they had come, experiencing a new increment of dread with each step. They had gone no more than thirty feet when, with a percussive rattling of its wings, the dragon scuttled ahead of them, cutting them off. It settled on its haunches and gave forth with a grumbling noise and tossed its head to the side. Sylvia squeaked and George was too frightened to think. Again the dragon tossed its head and loosed a full-throated roar that bent the nearby grasses. Sylvia and George clung together, their eyes closed. The dragon lifted its snout to the sky and screamed – the trebly pitch and intensity of the cry seemed to express frustration. It tossed its head a third and a fourth time, all to the same side, gestures that struck George as exaggerated and deliberate. Taking a cue from them, he went a couple of halting steps in the direction they indicated, dragging Sylvia along. The dragon displayed neither approval nor disapproval, so George continued on this path, heading toward the rise where Griaule’s massive head once had rested.

So began a faltering march, the two of them stumbling over broken ground, harried along by the dragon’s rumbles, herded from the former site of Teocinte, past the rise and out onto a vast plain of yellowish green thickets and sugarloaf hills, crisscrossed by animal tracks. On occasion the dragon bulled ahead of them to divert their course, flattening wide swaths of vegetation. The heat grew almost unbearable and George’s grip on reality frayed to the point that once, when they stopped to rest and the dragon urged them on with a roar, he sprang to his feet and shouted at the beast. After what must have been several hours of sweat and torment, they reached a spot where a stream widened into a clear pool some eighty or ninety feet across at the widest, flowing into other, smaller ponds and fringed by towering sabal palms, hedged by lesser trees and bushes, a cool green complexity amid the desert of thorny bushes and prickly weeds. There the dragon abandoned them, belching out a final cautionary (thus George characterized it) roar and soaring up into the sky until it once again appeared no bigger than a hawk and vanished into a cloud, leaving them exhausted and stunned, relieved yet despairing. They bathed in the largest pool and felt somewhat refreshed. As night fell, George picked shriveled oranges from a tree beside the pool and they made a meal of nuts and fruit. Shortly thereafter, too fatigued to talk, they fell asleep.

In the morning they had a discussion about returning to the spot to which they had been transported, but the sight of the dragon circling overhead ended that conversation and George began constructing a lean-to from bamboo and vines and palmetto fronds, while Sylvia set herself to catch fish, a task for which she claimed an aptitude. After watching her for half an hour, bent over and motionless in the pool, waiting for the fish to forget her presence and attempting to scoop them up when they swam between her legs, he held out little hope for a fish dinner; but to his amazement, when next he checked in on her he saw that she had caught two medium-sized perch.

That night, with enough of a breeze to keep off the mosquitoes, the two of them reclining on a bed of fronds and banana leaves inside the shelter, gazing at the lacquered reflection of a purple sky so thickly adorned with stars, it might have been a theatrical backdrop, a silk cloth embroidered with sequins . . . that night their predicament was reduced to a shadow in George’s mind by these comforts and a full belly; but it became apparent that Sylvia did not feel so at ease with things, for when he tried to draw her into an embrace, she resisted him vigorously and said, ‘We’re at death’s door and that’s all you can think about?’

‘We’re not at death’s door,’ said George. ‘The dragon was rather solicitous of our welfare. He could have conveyed us to a far more inhospitable spot.’

‘Be that as it may, we’re not exactly sitting pretty.’

‘Oh, I don’t know. One of us is.’ George gave a broad wink, attempting to jolly her with this compliment.

Sylvia returned a withering look.

‘We might as well make the best of things,’ said George.

She sniffed. ‘To my mind, making the best of it would include figuring a way out of this mess.’

‘We had a bargain,’ George said weakly.

‘Back in Teocinte we had a bargain. Here all bets are off.’

‘I don’t see it that way.’

‘Well, I do . . . and I’m in charge of the sweet shop. I don’t have my medicines with me and I won’t risk getting pregnant out here. When we return to Teocinte, I’ll do right by you. Until then you’ll have to take care of your own needs. And I’ll thank you to not do so in my presence.’

A pour of wind rustled the thatched roof of the shelter, carrying a spicy scent. Despite understanding that Sylvia’s reaction was to be expected, George’s feelings were hurt.

‘This is your fault,’ he said glumly.

She sat up, her face pale and simplified by the starlight. ‘What?’

He sketched out Peri Haukkola’s theory concerning the effects of stress on consensus reality.

‘You say I’m ridiculous to blame this on Griaule,’ she said. ‘Then you put forward this Haukkerman as if . . .’

‘Haukkola.’

‘. . . as if it were proof of something. As if because he wrote some stupid theory down, it must be true. And I’m the ridiculous one?’ She gave a sarcastic laugh. ‘You saw the dragon, I assume?’

‘Of course! That’s just more evidence in support of Haukkola. You’re obsessed with Griaule, so you incorporated one of his little friends into your fantasy.’

Dumfounded, Sylvia stared at him. ‘The dragon is Griaule! Didn’t you notice he’s got the same coloring, the same head shape? True, he’s not all nicked up and scarred, and he’s quite a bit smaller. But it’s him, all right.’

‘You can distinguish between lizards?’ He chuckled.

‘I’ve been looking at Griaule most of my life and I can distinguish him.’ She turned onto her side, showing him her back. ‘You and Haukkola! You’re both idiots! If it helps you to blame me, fine. I’m going to sleep.’

9 Though a rift in time or dimensionality would seem to be indicated, George subscribed to the theory espoused by Peri Haukkola, holder of the Carbajal Chair of Philosophy at the University of Helvetia. Haukkola believed that people under extreme stress could alter the physical universe even to the point of creating pocket realities, and George assumed that a reality formed by Sylvia’s self-avowed identity crisis comprised the relatively empty landscape they currently inhabited.

 Peony was too weak to manage a hike and George had to carry her much of the way. When he questioned her about the Snellings, she put her head down on his shoulder and slept, her heart beating against his chest, frail and rapid as a bird’s. With every step, her vulnerability impressed itself on him and his commitment to her deepened. He stopped now and then, hiding in the thickets, waiting until certain no one was trailing them before moving on, and before they reached camp in early afternoon he had reversed the basic situation in his mind and thought about Peony in terms such as might befit a protective parent.

Sylvia was fishing, crouched half-naked in the pool, wearing only her rolled-up trousers. She pretended not to hear his approach. He called out to her and she turned on him a look of exasperation that changed to one of displeasure when she caught sight of Peony.

‘Adding to your stable?’ she said nastily. ‘One woman’s not enough for a man of your dimensions?’

‘Use your eyes,’ he replied. ‘She’s hardly a woman.’

He explained what had occurred and she had him carry Peony inside the shelter, then shooed him away, saying she would tend to the girl.

Five good-sized fish lay on flat stones by the edge of the pool, their glistening sides pulsing with last breaths. One had silvery tiger-stripes on its olive green back – George couldn’t identify it. He sliced off their heads, gutted and filleted them, and wrapped their flesh in banana leaves. That done, he took a stroll into the thickets, located a banderilla tree growing beside a cluster of hibiscus bushes, and began removing the barbs from the tips of the twigs, placing them on banana leaves and carrying the leaves to the perimeter of the camp. He was loading his ninth leaf when Sylvia pushed through the bushes to his side and asked what he was doing.

‘I’m going to rig some booby traps along the trails,’ he said. ‘They won’t do serious damage, but we’ll hear when someone trips them.’

She said nothing, watching him work.

‘Is Peony sleeping?’ he asked.

She nodded and knelt beside him. ‘She’s going to require a lot of care. I’ll do what I can, but . . . I don’t know.’

‘What’s wrong?’

Sylvia shook her head.

‘Tell me,’ George insisted.

‘It’s what happens to beautiful young girls when there’s no one to care for them.’

Recalling the way Peony had looked, it was difficult to think of her as beautiful. ‘What do you mean?’

‘Men. As best I can tell, they’ve been at her since she was eight.’

Sylvia’s voice quavered with emotion and George suspected that her empathy for the girl might be due to a similarity of experience.

‘Men did most of the damage,’ she said. ‘But her mother used her as well.’

George had the impulse to suggest that being sexually abused by one’s mother would have a momentous effect. A centipede crawled onto his ankle – he flicked it off. ‘Did she say whether the Snellings were her parents?’

‘I asked, but she’s not clear about it. She’s hazy about most things. It’s good you brought her here.’ She uprooted a weed. ‘I’m sorry for earlier . . . what I said about you.’

‘It’s all right.’

‘I had no business saying it. You’ve treated me better than most.’ She paused. ‘She saw Griaule’s scale in your kit. I let her keep it, if that suits you.’

‘That’s up to you. It’s yours, after all.’

After a pause she said, ‘Could you sleep somewhere else for a while? Peony’s grateful for what you did, but it would do her a world of good not to sleep at close quarters with a man.’

George mulled this over. ‘I should build a larger shelter, anyway. We could be here for a while. There’s a nice spot by one of the smaller ponds. If I put it there, that should give her enough privacy.’

‘Thank you.’

‘Once I finish with the booby traps, I’ll get started.’

She made as if to stand, but held in a crouch with one hand flat to the ground, and then settled back onto her knees. ‘One more thing. Can I have your shirt? I want to cut it up and make her a halter.’

‘There’s no need to cut it up. It’ll be too big for her, but it’ll do the job.’

‘I thought I might make something for myself to wear, too. I know you like watching my titties, but they’re an encumbrance for me.’

He heard resentment in her tone, but her face remained neutral.

‘You were using it as a carry-all,’ she said. ‘I don’t figure you’ll miss it so much.’

He shrugged out of the shirt and handed it to her. ‘I’d give it a wash first.’

She stood, holding the shirt in both hands. Again he thought she might speak and when she did not he lowered his head and went to twisting banderilla barbs from the twigs.

‘Save me a fish,’ he said.

 Worn out by his labors, by emotional tumult, George fell asleep in the partially completed new shelter shortly after dark. He was overtired and slept fitfully, now and again waking to a twinge of strained muscles, conscious of scudding dark clouds that obscured all but thin seams of stars, and of wind rattling the palm thatch, raising a susurrus from the surrounding thickets. During such an interlude a shadow slipped inside the shelter and lay next to him, her fingers spidering across his belly and his groin. He intended to tell her that he was too tired, too sore, but while he was still half-asleep, his senses pleasantly muddled, she took him in her mouth, her tongue doing clever things, finishing him quickly, and then she slipped from the shelter and was gone, leaving him with the impression that the wind and the darkness had conspired to produce a lover whose sensuality was the warm, breathing analogue of the rustling thatch and the sighing thickets. Waking late the next morning, he half-believed it had been a dream or a visitation of some sort until he saw Sylvia beside the pool and she flashed a smile that persuaded him the intimacy had neither been imagined nor supernatural in origin.

Peony stood by her on the bank, but on spotting George she stepped behind Sylvia as if anxious. He would not have recognized her in a different context, though the marks of abuse were more prominent now that her skin was clean. Her hair was pulled back from her face, exposing high cheekbones and huge cornflower blue eyes and a mouth too wide for her delicate jaw and pointed chin. It was a face of such otherworldly beauty, George’s initial glimpse of it affected him like a slap and he felt a measure of alarm. Both Peony and Sylvia wore halters fashioned from his shirt and, while they did not much resemble one another, this made them seem like a mother and daughter – he doubted Sylvia was older than twenty-two or twenty-three, yet she possessed a maturity that lent her a maternal aspect when compared with Peony. George found appealing the notion that the three of them might constitute a family.

‘I’m George,’ he said to Peony. ‘Do you remember me?’

Peony had been peering at him over Sylvia’s shoulder, but now she looked away, showing him her left profile.

‘How are you feeling?’ he asked.

She kept her eyes averted. ‘I’m afraid.’

‘You needn’t be afraid. The people who hurt you . . .’

‘It’s not them she’s afraid of,’ Sylvia said. ‘It’s Griaule.’

‘He wants to show me something,’ Peony said. ‘But I won’t look.’

George rubbed at an ache in his shoulder. ‘I don’t understand.’

‘We’ll be fine.’ Sylvia fixed him with a stare, as if daring him to object. ‘Peony will be safe here, won’t she?’

‘Oh, yes. Absolutely.’ He continued to rub his shoulder and asked Peony how she knew Griaule’s mind.

‘It’s not so clear with the scale Sylvia gave me,’ Peony said. ‘Mine was better. But . . .’

George waited for her to go on. She fingered the ends of her hair and did not speak.

‘What’s not so clear?’ he asked.

‘It’s like he’s whispering to me, but there’s no voice.’

‘You hear him talking? He talks to you?’

‘He wants me to look at something awful,’ she said. ‘He wants us all to look.’

‘Do you ever hear him without touching the scale? After I took you from the Snellings, did you hear him then?’

She shot George a quizzical look. ‘Lots of people hear him when he’s angry.’

‘Do you think the Snellings heard him?’

‘I’ve got to get to my fishing. The later the hour, the harder they are to catch.’ Sylvia went to one knee and began rolling up a pants leg. ‘If you two could look after each other, maybe gather some fruit, that would be nice.’

George frowned. ‘I was going to collect some saplings I can use for poles. You know, for the shelter.’

‘Is there a reason you can’t take her with you?’ Sylvia came to her feet and said under her breath, ‘I need time to myself.’ She nodded at Peony and grimaced, as if to imply the girl was a trial, and then, in a normal voice: ‘See if you can bring back some grapes. I’m told there used to be grapevines out here.’

‘Grapes!’ Peony’s giggle seemed edged with dementia.

‘Yes,’ said Sylvia. ‘What about them?’

‘You might as well eat eyes. That’s what Edgar says.’

‘Edgar?’

‘The man living with her parents,’ said George.

‘They don’t taste like eyes,’ Peony said. ‘But they’re squishy like eyes.’

‘How does he know?’ Sylvia asked her. ‘Is Edgar an eye-eater? Does he relish a nice eye on occasion? Does he dip ’em in melted butter and let ’em slide down his gullet?’

Peony appeared to struggle with the question; her expression lost its sharpness and her gaze wandered.

‘I’ll wager he’s an eye-eater,’ Sylvia said. ‘Most men are.’

That conversation, George discovered, was Peony at her most coherent. Much of the time she was unresponsive, even when asked a direct question, and she would hum or sing in her pale voice, fiddling with a leaf or a pebble, whatever fell to hand. Nevertheless he managed to piece together a vision of her life with Edgar and the Snellings. She declined to talk about Sandra – her face tightened each time George broached the subject – but said that Mr Snelling had been in the habit of grabbing her whenever Sandra chose not to perform her wifely duty; he would turn Peony ‘bottoms up’ and beat her for her lack of enthusiasm. Edgar had weaseled his way into her affections, pretending to be a friend, and cajoled her into using her mouth to soothe him after a hard day of eating mangos. His fondness for sexual practices associated with sailors on long voyages had alienated Peony, yet she spoke of him fondly in contrast to her remarks about the Snellings. Having learned all this, George reserved the majority of his loathing for Edgar. Younger and stronger than the Snellings, he might have assisted Peony, but chose instead to gratify his lust, helping transform her into this broken thing.

Thenceforth George cared for Peony from the time he woke until late afternoon, at which point Sylvia took charge. He dragged her along whenever he searched for edibles (feeding three people occupied most of their day and though they went about it with diligence, they lost weight and strength at a startling rate). As a consequence, he and Sylvia were rarely alone together. It was hardly the family life he had envisioned, yet it was not dissimilar to the life he and Rosemary had shared, albeit with greater responsibilities and less frequent sex. Sylvia had not visited him in the new shelter since the night after he had returned with Peony. He believed on that occasion she must have been grateful for his intercession on Peony’s behalf, and he told himself that in order to obtain sexual favors on a regular basis he might have to save other young women from exigent circumstances. He was tempted to coerce her by saying that he needed this consolation, that the strain of days spent worrying and watching out for the dragon was taking its toll (it would not have been an outright lie – his waking hours were marked by depressive fugues). Then seventeen days after Peony had entered their lives, Sylvia visited him again, crawling into the shelter as he was falling asleep.

A three-quarter moon shone into the shelter, gilding their bed of banana leaves, and when Sylvia mounted him she became a silhouette limned in golden light, her hair tossing about like black flames, an impression supported by the thatch crackling in the wind. She was eager and enthusiastic as never before, and George, fancying this increase signaled more than mere animal intensity, responded with enthusiasm. Afterward, however, she broke the post-coital silence by saying, ‘I don’t want you taking this personal. I had an itch I couldn’t scratch, you understand.’

‘Why would I suppose otherwise?’

Moonlight erased the marks of strain on her face and she seemed a younger, less troubled version of herself. ‘Because I know how men get,’ she said.

George scoffed at this. ‘They’re such primitive creatures, aren’t they? Quick to arouse and to anger. Otherwise they’re like backward children.’

‘About some things they are. Do you think I’m such a ninny, I can’t tell your feelings are hurt? I’m sorry, but I don’t want you to come away with the wrong idea.’

‘Let me assure you, I know exactly where we stand.’

Another silence stretched between them, and then George said, ‘One thing is puzzling. You told me intercourse was out of the question because you didn’t have your “medicines.”’

‘Peony says we won’t be here long. If you get me in a family way, I’ll fix it when we return to Teocinte.’

‘You believe her? You’d take the word of a child who’d stare into the sun all day if we allowed it?’

‘I’ve had to accept greater improbabilities. I’ve accepted that you brought us to this place by rubbing a dragon’s scale. People like Peony are often compensated for their impairment with a gift. But who . . .’

‘Don’t tell me you put any stock in that old business!’

‘Who’d imagine a solid citizen like yourself would be so blessed?’

‘Is that an insult in your view? Calling me a solid citizen?’

‘I didn’t mean it as such, but if that’s how you choose to interpret it.’

‘I suppose “solid citizen” must seem an insult to . . .’ George bit back the last of his sentence.

‘A whore? Is that the word you want?’

‘We’re trapped in this situation. It’s pointless to fight.’

‘Pointless it may be, but I . . .’

‘Stop it!’ he said, wrapping his arms about her and drawing her close, so that they were pressed chest-to-chest. ‘We’ve greater troubles to deal with. And greater enemies.’

‘Let me go!’

She sought to wriggle free, but he held her tightly. She pulled away from him as far as his grip permitted, as if to gain a fresh perspective, and asked, ‘What do you want?’

‘Just that we try to get along.’

‘This . . .’ Although under restraint, she succeeded in conveying that she was speaking of their closeness. ‘This isn’t getting along?’

‘You know what I mean.’

‘We share the work, we each do our part in taking care of Peony. What else is there?’

‘You could be pleasant.’

‘Ah! You want me to pretend.’

‘No! I want you to be like you were at the hotel. You remember. When you asked if I liked you when you weren’t pretending to be someone else.’

Amused, she said, ‘You don’t believe I was pretending then?’

He tamped down his anger. ‘I don’t care what you were doing, only that you do more of it. In spite of your faith in Peony’s clairvoyance, it could be months or years before we find our way home. We could be stuck here the rest of our lives. We need to make a better effort at getting along or we’ll drive each other mad.’

‘We don’t have to get along. We’re not married.’

‘Is that right? We bicker constantly, we have sex infrequently, and we’re responsible for a child. That sounds like a marriage to me. Unlike a marriage, however, we can’t escape its context by having a night out. Whatever you were doing, pretending, not pretending, it might be helpful if you started doing it again. Neither of us is a trusting person, but we have to trust one another. We have no idea what’s going on and we may have to depend on each other more than we do now. We need to develop a bond. If we can’t, we have no chance of surviving.’

‘Are you finished?’

‘Yes, I suppose I am.’

‘Let me go.’

With a frustrated noise, he pushed her away and she rolled up to her knees. Curls and flecks of banana leaf were stuck to the sweat on her hip and thigh – they might have been the remnants of script, as if their lovemaking had written a green sentence on her flesh that their argument had mostly erased. He expected her to bolt without further word, but once she regained her footing she stood with her head down, hair hanging in her face, her fingers intertwined at her waist.

‘Are you all right?’ he asked.

She wiped her nose.

‘I didn’t mean to upset you,’ he said. ‘I’m merely suggesting we’d be better off if we were honest with one another. If we make a sincere effort at establishing a relationship, a friendship, then who knows what may develop. If a spark is given sufficient tinder . . .’

‘Don’t you ever stop?’ She clasped both hands to her head as though to prevent it from exploding. ‘You get an idea and you go on and fucking on about it! You don’t care what anyone else is going through so long as you hear the sound of your voice.’ She sniffled, wiped her nose again, and squared her shoulders. ‘I’m sorry. I truly am.’

With that, she hurried off into the darkness, leaving George to contemplate the error of his ways, to puzzle over her apology, and to listen to the wind intoning its ceaseless consonant-less sentence, like a mantra invoking an idiot god.

Judging by the way their conversation ended, George did not expect a happy result; but the upshot of the encounter was that Sylvia began coming to him every few nights, and they would make love and discuss practical considerations, most having to do with Peony. They were, he reflected, becoming if not a traditional family, then a functional one. He suspected that Sylvia’s heart was not in the relationship, but her pretence pleased him, nourishing a longstanding fantasy and sustaining him against the two oppressive, unvarying presences that ruled over the plain: the heat and the dragon. At times he was unable to distinguish between them – the dragon patrolling overhead seemed emblematic of the terrible heat, and the heat seemed the enfeebling by-product of the dragon’s mystery and menace. Without Sylvia’s affections and his paternal regard for Peony, he might have succumbed to depression. The days played out with unrelenting sameness: too-bright mornings and oven-like noons giving way to skies with low gray clouds sliding past, their bellies dark with rain that never fell, and a damp closeness turning the air to soup – it was as if they were living in the humid mouth of a vast creature too large to apprehend, one of which they had only unpleasant and unreliable intimations. Of course the dragon was the most salient threat, the one for which there was neither explanation nor remedy. Though he had denigrated Edgar and Snelling for their lack of interest in the question, George soon realized that any attempted analysis relating to the dragon’s purposes would be pure speculation. The most sensible explanation he came up with was that the dragon was using the plain as storehouse for its food supply, but this raised other questions, notably why would Griaule bother to choose its human treats by so indirect a procedure (assuming the others had been transported to the plain by touching or rubbing immature dragon scales). He inquired of Peony again, asking what she knew of Griaule’s designs, but she spoke in generalities, repeating her original statement that he wanted them to witness something, adding to this that they were ‘the lucky ones.’ When he pressed her, she grew tearful and mumbled something about ‘fire.’

George had not entirely accepted that the dragon of the moment was Griaule, or that, as this would imply, Griaule was still alive, and he found Peony’s failure to resolve the question unbearably frustrating. He tried every means of coercion at his disposal, but nothing caused her to elaborate on the subject and he decided that the only thing to do was to table the matter. To occupy his mind, he began teaching Peony about the natural world, lessons she did not appear capable of absorbing. As they wandered the plain in their never-ending search for food, he would point out the various trees and bushes and repeat their names, and he explained processes like the sunrise and rain, often over-explaining them, a tactic that may have annoyed Sylvia but to which Peony raised no objection.

One day while they were exploring the thickets to the west of the stream, they happened upon a kumquat tree that had escaped the attention of the birds, its boughs laden with dusky orange fruit. George sat beneath it and fashioned a makeshift basket out of banana leaves, while Peony nibbled at the fruit, gnawing away the flesh from around the big brown pits. After she had consumed over a dozen kumquats he told her that if she didn’t stop she might experience stomach trouble. She plucked another kumquat. He repeated his warning to no effect and finally snapped at her, forbidding her to eat more – she dropped the kumquat and refused to look at him. He patted her on the arm, feeling like a bully, and lectured her in detail on the consequences of eating too much fruit.

As the sun approached its zenith, George located a patch of shade large enough to shelter them and stretched out for a nap with Peony beside him. He emerged from an erotic dream to find that Peony had unbuttoned the remnants of his trousers and was fondling him. At first he thought it part of the dream, but then he pushed her away. She made a pleading sound and tried once more to fondle him – he shouted at her to quit and she covered her head with her hands, as if to shield herself from a blow.

‘You mustn’t do that,’ he said. ‘You don’t have to do that anymore. No one will hurt you if you don’t.’

She met his eyes without the least sign of comprehension; a tear cut a track though a spot of grime on her cheek.

‘It’s all right,’ he said. ‘I’m not angry at you. I’m angry at the people who taught you this was how you should please them.’

She gazed at him blankly, her face empty as a fresh-washed bowl embossed with an exotic pattern. She drew a wavy line in the dirt with a fingertip and looked at him again.

‘Do you understand?’ he said. ‘You never have to do this anymore. Not with anyone.’

A worry line creased her brow. ‘I want to make people happy.’

‘Where this is concerned, touching people, allowing them to touch you . . . the important thing is to please yourself.’

She made a clumsy pawing gesture and lowered her eyes; she saw the kumquat she had let fall and reached for it, then pulled back her hand.

‘From now on,’ he said, ‘if you have the urge to make anyone happy that way, if anyone asks you to make them happy, you come to me and ask what to do. Or ask Sylvia. Will you do that?’

She nodded and reached for the kumquat. He started again to reproach her, but decided that she had enough to think about.

It was not until after he handed her off to Sylvia that he began to speculate about his hesitation in pushing Peony away, thinking his reflexes may have been slowed not by sleep as much as by perversity; and it was not until that evening that he began to wonder about that first night after he had rescued Peony, when Sylvia had come to him . . . if it had been Sylvia. Her touch seemed in memory less practiced, less confident, akin to Peony’s in that regard. And surely Sylvia would have spoken to him – it was not like her to be so shy. The longer he thought about it, the greater his certitude that Peony had expressed gratitude the only way she knew. The idea repelled him yet he could not stop dwelling on it. As he went over the events of that night, a measure of prurience crept into his thoughts, repelling him further. He hewed to the notion that this was how the obsessive mind worked, seeking ever to betray itself, subverting every clean impulse by assigning it a base motive; yet as the days wore on he insisted upon punishing himself for his crimes. Even when occupied by the basics of survival, part of him was always focused upon Peony, upon what he had or hadn’t done.

The matter should have been easy to resolve, but when Sylvia next visited him, George had feared that anything she said about that night would support his self-imposed verdict. Better, he decided, to maintain a modicum of doubt concerning his moral turpitude than to have none. He was unable to perform with Sylvia, excusing his failure by claiming to have stomach trouble, and as they lay listening to the wind flowing across the plain, watching clouds skimming a half-moon that set their edges on silvery fire, he allowed this intimacy to change his mind and blurted out what had happened between him and Peony the day before, and asked Sylvia if she had come to him the night following the rescue, because he feared now that it had not been her.

She was silent for a beat and then turned to face him. ‘Is that what’s got you in a twist? Of course it was me!’ She gave him a playful punch. ‘I’m insulted you didn’t recognize me!’

Later he realized that if he had desired an honest response, he would have asked the question without preamble, not letting on that he suspected his visitor had been Peony, telling Sylvia that he’d had a dream and he wondered whether or nor it was real. He should never have afforded her the opportunity to weigh the situation, to determine that it would be best for her if she lied, thus giving his confidence a boost and assuring that he would remain capable of defending her. This scenario called for a complex understanding on her part, but he had long since discarded the idea that she was other than an intelligent, subtle woman. And so the conflict remained unresolved, continuing to erode his mental underpinnings, distracting him from more important considerations.

George could not separate himself from Peony during the day, but he minimized their physical contact and treated her with a rigid formality, permitting neither hugs nor holding hands. That the loss of a simple animal comfort appeared to have no effect on her should have offered him a degree of absolution, since it pointed out how damaged she was, how trivial an influence the actions of others had upon her inner turmoil; but instead it served to distress him further, seeming to add to his offense, and made him even more mindful of her well-being than he had been before. Every scraped knee and pricked finger was cause for worry; every complaining noise engaged his full concern. When he was unable to sleep (something that happened with increasing frequency), in order to safeguard her more thoroughly he would patrol the perimeter of the camp with a regularity that rivaled the dragon’s, taking pains to avoid his own booby traps. One evening as he made his rounds, he heard a succession of cries coming from the thickets out past his shelter. They subsided as he approached and he could hear nothing except the wind. An oblate moon emerged from cloud cover to the south, silvering the fluttering tops of the bushes and showing his path. Soon he heard the voices again. Men’s querulous voices. He crept toward the sound, peeking between leaves. Separated from the bank of one of the lesser pools by a thin fringe of vegetation, two men sat athwart an animal trail. Delicate rills of blood, black in the moonlight, trickled from wounds on their legs – they had fallen into one of his traps and were picking out banderilla barbs from their flesh. The smaller of the two, a sinewy man with a mane of dark hair half-hiding his face, wearing a pair of rotting trousers, cursed as he removed a barb, digging at his calf with the tip of a fishing knife. The other man was Edgar. He had received fewer injuries and was cautious with the barbs, yipping as he worked them free.

Anger flowed into George’s mind, like a rider swinging with practiced ease onto his mount – it was as if he’d been preparing for this moment for weeks and, now it had arrived, he was more than ready to perform whatever duties were required. He stepped onto the trail, but before he could speak the sinewy man sprang to his feet, and made an awkward, hobbling lunge toward George and slashed with the knife, drawing a line of hot pain across his abdomen. A second stroke sliced his forearm. Panicking, George flung himself forward and grappled with the man, locking onto the wrist of his knife-hand. They swayed together like drunken dancers and careened through the bushes and out onto the bank. His opponent was strong, but George, much the larger of the two, had leverage on his side – he turned the man and secured a hold from behind and rode him down onto his knees at the brink of the pool. The knife went skittering along the bank and, as the man sought to retrieve it, George moved atop him, using his weight to flatten him out, and forced his head underwater. He surfaced and twisted his neck about, offering a view of his grizzled cheek, grimacing mouth, and a mad, glaring eye that glittered through a webbing of wet hair. His fetid odor enveloped them both. He grunted and gulped in air; then his head went under again and his struggles grew spastic, frantic, churning the water. He reached back with his left hand, trying to claw George’s face, and George latched his fingers behind the man’s neck and pushed down harder, his eyes fixed on the opposite side of the pool. He spotted Sylvia in a half-crouch at the verge of the bushes, but took no salient notice of her. Spasms passed through the man’s flesh, lewd convulsions like those of a lover nearing completion. George kept pushing down on his neck, making sure. Finally he rolled off the body and lay panting beside it. The moonlight had brightened. His stomach throbbed. He sat up to inspect the wound: it appeared superficial. The cut on his forearm was more worrisome. If the man hadn’t been impeded by injuries, George thought, then he might be the one who lay motionless. His hands shook. A placid current set the dead man’s head to bobbing. George imagined fish nibbling at the eyes and thought to pull the body from the water, but wasn’t moved to act. The smell of the man was on his skin, nauseatingly thick. Sylvia kneeled beside him, saying words he couldn’t make sense of. The sight of her confused him on a fundamental level, disordered all his certainties. He wanted to look away, but her insistent stare held him. She spoke again, her tone fretful, and he said, ‘I’m all right.’

She slapped him. ‘The other one’s getting away!’

He cast about, but saw no one.

‘Here!’ She pressed the dead man’s knife into his hand, its blade frilled with red. Resting on his palm, it had an incomprehensible value.

‘It’s only Edgar,’ he said.

‘Edgar? The one who was holding Peony captive? And that . . .’ She gestured at the body. ‘That was Snelling?’

‘I don’t know who he was.’ George set the knife down on the grass. ‘But Edgar’s no threat. He’s harmless on his own.’

‘But he wasn’t on his own, was he? He must have talked his friend into having a little adventure. Told him there was a nice piece over this way and suggested they fetch her back. Do you call that harmless?’ She left a pause and, when he kept silent, she said, ‘If you won’t do something, I will.’

She snatched at the knife, but George closed his hand on the hilt and creakily came to his feet, feeling light-headed and feverish, moved not by an urge to seek out Edgar, but by the desire to stop her talking.

Edgar was not difficult to track. After they had walked the trail for several minutes, George heard a voice nattering on at a conversational volume. Thirty feet farther along they reached a creosote bush – many of its leaves were stripped away and it threw a complicated shadow across the ground – Edgar sat at the center of this shadow, like an innocent young demon with a moony face summoned by a magical design. He picked at a spine in his heel, noticed them and grinned sheepishly, as if he had been caught at something naughty.

‘I told you, didn’t I?’ he said, apparently addressing himself. ‘Leave ’em alone, I said.’

George hunkered down in front of him. ‘Where are the Snellings?’

Edgar was thinner than before, his cheeks hollowed, his belly flab reduced. He nodded, as if listening to an invisible someone responding to his chiding. George yelled at him to gain his attention and repeated his inquiry.

‘Peter’s dead,’ Edgar said. ‘And Sandra’s took ill. That’s why me and Tony come. To see if you had medicine.’

Sylvia made a disparaging noise.

‘If that was your purpose,’ George said, ‘why did Tony try to kill me?’

Edgar puzzled over this. ‘I reckon because you surprised him. He didn’t know you from Adam.’

‘You could have said something, couldn’t you? You could have told him who I was.’

He fingered his ratty hair. ‘I reckon you surprised me, too.’

‘Finish this,’ Sylvia said flatly.

‘I want to ask him some more questions,’ said George.

‘He’s making things up as he goes along. It’s obvious!’

George spoke to Edgar. ‘You wanted to see Peony, didn’t you?’

‘I’m always wanting to see Peony, but that weren’t why we come.’

‘Did you tell Tony about her?’

Edgar’s mouth worked, as if tasting some sourness. ‘I don’t recall.’

Sylvia threw up her hands. ‘Can’t we have done with this?’

George stood and pulled her aside, out of Edgar’s hearing. ‘Lying or not, he can’t harm us. He’s simple.’

‘You say he’s simple, I say it’s an act. But be that as it may, suppose another Tony happens along – do you think he won’t tell him about Peony? He wants her back, can’t you see that?’

‘We survived Tony, we’ll survive the next one.’

‘We barely survived! You may be willing to put yourself at risk for no good reason, but not me.’

George glanced at Edgar – he was picking at his heel.

‘This is the man you blamed for Peony’s condition,’ said Sylvia. ‘I’m not wrong about that, am I?’

‘I think we need to step back a moment,’ George said. ‘We don’t always have to react straightaway.’

‘You great fucking idiot!’ Sylvia looked as though she wanted to spit. ‘All this time out here, after everything we’ve been through, and you still don’t know who you are . . . or where you are. You just killed a man in self-defense. Held him under the water until his lungs burst because he threatened us. Now you’re reluctant to finish the job. I guess you’d rather pretend you’re a moral sort. That you’re too sensitive to be a killer. You need time to contemplate the idea, to fit it into your philosophy of life. Well, maybe that’ll make you feel better, but feeling better won’t change the fact that there’s no place for morality here. If truth be told, there’s no place for it in Morningshade, either. Nor anywhere, really.’

‘You’re being ridiculous. I keep telling you Edgar’s not a threat.’

‘Everyone’s a threat! There’s no law here except Griaule’s. If he wasn’t flying around all hours, frightening everybody, people would be braver, they’d explore their surroundings. And if that were the case, like as not Peony and I would be slaving away on our backs day and night, and you’d be dead. We’re fortunate the people camped close to us were cowards.’ She prodded his chest with a finger. ‘Sooner or later Edgar’s bound to tell his story to someone more adept at killing than you. Someone who’s not hampered by morality. Then we’ll find out how moral you are.’

Edgar started to mumble. The wind tailed off – George could hear the rush of the stream. The sound fatigued him and filled him with melancholy.

‘You want him dead?’ He offered her the knife. ‘I’ve shed enough blood this evening.’

Her face closed down, armored by a blank expression. George expected her to back away from his challenge, but after a pause, as he was about to say, ‘What are you waiting for?’ she seized the knife and went toward Edgar with a decisive step. At the last instant he turned his head, grinning at her, and she drove the knife into the side of his neck, giving a truncated cry as she struck. The force of the blow knocked Edgar onto his side, tearing the hilt from her grasp, and she fell back, as if shocked by the result. He made a mewling noise and pressed his fingers to the steel protruding from his neck; dark blood jumped between them, spattering his pale shoulder. He seemed to be straining at something, trying to preserve a critical balance, perhaps torn between the desire to yank out the blade and the thought that such an action would be the end of him. His legs kicked out, briefly causing it to appear that he was running in place. Then the straining aspect ebbed from his limbs and he lay staring at the base of the creosote bush. Off in the night, the dragon screamed.

 From then on, certain illusions went by the board, the illusion that they were a family foremost among them. George and Sylvia stopped having sex, a decision that was mutual albeit unspoken, and there was an overall diminution of pleasantries; yet these things seemed to indicate a larger change, one whose most profound symptom was an atmosphere of dejection, if not outright defeat. It was as if the spark that gave them life had been dampened. Occasionally that spark sputtered and sparked, providing a bright moment, as on the night when Sylvia told a story she’d written and memorized, one of several she related, all set in Ali’s Eternal Reward, concerning a girl of the brothel and her romance with a man who was the spitting image of the Sinistral from a deck of fortune-telling cards. Peony was entranced by the story and George offered extravagant praise that brought a smile to Sylvia’s face; but that flare of good feeling quickly faded and they were as before – three damaged people with no palpable bond to shield them against the oppressions of heaven and the disappointments of the world.

Peony became severely agitated in the week that followed Edgar’s death, and, though Sylvia swore Peony had been asleep, George assumed that it was due to her having witnessed Edgar’s execution . . . or perhaps sensed it in some fashion. She would rock on her haunches, fists clenched, making noises like a tiny teakettle, and nothing would console her. After four days she ceased being agitated and instead sat fiddling with the dragon scale, sometimes lapsing into a state that resembled catatonia, drooling and listless and completely unresponsive. Memories and dreams of the man he had killed and of Edgar, the man in whose death he had been complicit, plagued George’s nights. He wondered if Sylvia had trouble sleeping, curious as to how efficient her justifications were in protecting her against the depredations of conscience – he suspected they served her very well, indeed. His own sleep was fitful at best. He commonly woke well before sunrise, a circumstance that left him exhausted and slow-brained by day’s end, and he would nod off while sitting or even standing. At dusk, ten days after the killings, following a brief lapse of this sort, he stood at the margin of the camp, looking blearily across the plain, and observed a yellowish red glow on the horizon beneath a line of slate clouds. Sunset was his first thought, but then he realized that he was not facing west and what he had taken for clouds were actually the peaks of the eastern hills. The glow issued from an area between the hills and his vantage point. For a minute he watched it brighten and spread, thinking it odd. He heard piping cries and saw four or five people running through the thickets, their heads visible over the tops of the bushes. The dragon wheeled above and he assumed they were fleeing him. Fools, though. The edges of the glow wavered and he thought he detected a smoky odor. He stared dumbly a moment before recognizing the source of the glow. The plain was burning and a brisk wind was driving a wall of flame toward them.

Shouting the alarm, he raced to the shelter and found Sylvia and Peony outside, frightened and clinging together, asking questions with their eyes. He flung out an arm toward the east and said, ‘The thickets are on fire, the wind’s bringing it straight for us. We have to run!’

Light had almost faded from the sky when they began their westward flight, going at a steady pace, carrying nothing other than the rags on their back and a few meager possessions, like a family out of prehistory, united in fear. Soon they were racing in full night, yet before long the darkness was illuminated by the fire – they could see the spikes of separate flames and hear a dim roaring. George tried to keep close to the stream, but Griaule harried and herded them in a direction of his choosing. George had little doubt that he had set the plain afire in order to simplify that chore. Now and again the dragon would drop out of the sky, a creature of shadow with scales burnished by flame, and bellow at them, altering their course and adding his fierce noise to the din of the fire. On several occasions they made contact with other groups, but the people never materialized from the darkness sufficiently to identify or count their number. They shied away, as if their time on the plain had acclimated them to fear and suspicion. Hedgerows of fire closed around them. They stumbled and reeled through the thickets, their glistening faces dark with soot, darting this way and that to avoid sudden new channels of flame that threatened to hem them in. Peony fell and George picked her up; when Sylvia began to stagger and her pace faltered, he supported her with his free hand. There was so much smoke in the air, breathing was a chore, and this broke his concentration, causing him to feel fatigue. Griaule harrowed them onward, looming out of the night with his wings half-unfolded, seeming more terrible for being partially visible in the dark, here a reddened fang gleaming, here flame reflected in a golden eye, his roar outvoicing the roar of the flames, snapping, gusting flames that sucked oxygen from the air and heated it so that he felt his throat crack whenever he inhaled. He lost his bearings and suspected that Griaule was toying with them, that he would wear them out and let them to burn in a cul de sac; but he was too weary to come up with an escape plan, too wasted to care, and found himself hoping for a swift resolution, whatever form it might take.

The wind must have changed, because the temperature dropped and the light from the burning plain dimmed, occulted by a mixture of smoke and fog – still the dragon herded them along. They emerged from the thickets onto a grassy slope and, after no more than thirty yards, the slope grew steeper, rockier. Visibility was poor and George had to feel his way – it was as if they were ascending a crag whose lower reaches had the semblance of a crude stair, each step a couple of feet high. He couldn’t hear the fire anymore and, though perplexed by this development, he was too enervated to worry. Soon what sounded like muted voices came to his ear. As his eyes adjusted to the darkness he realized that the steps of the stair were very wide and scattered about on them were small groups of people. He steered clear of these and found an unoccupied space where they could sit. The dragon rumbled below, but it was a ruminative sound, or so George chose to interpret it. He was done with running, unable to go another foot.

‘Where are we?’ Sylvia asked, pressing close for warmth – it had gotten cold and she and Peony sheltered under his arms.

‘Don’t you know?’

‘I thought we were heading back toward Teocinte . . . where it used to stand. But there’s no place like this near the city.’

‘We’ll puzzle it out in the morning,’ he said. ‘Get some rest.’

George made a manful effort to keep watch, but the gentle breathing of the women seduced him and he fell into a dreamless sleep, waking to discover that the sky had grayed and a dense fog sealed them in against tiers of stone, a kind of amphitheater, perhaps a natural formation.10 The morning wind picked up, causing eddies and rifts in the fog, revealing sections of the plain – it disquieted him to see that the thickets showed yellowish green, not a trace of the previous night’s fire, and there was no smell of burning. Every part of his body ached and he would have liked to shake out the kinks and have a look around, as people on the tiers beneath were doing (from what he could tell, there were fewer than fifty altogether, though he could not be certain, what with the fog); but he wanted to let Peony and Sylvia sleep as long as they could and contented himself with passive observation.

The people clustered on the steps, as sooty and ragged as George, kept an eye on the other groups around them, displaying no inclination to socialize, perhaps focused on the hope that their ordeal might be over, thus having no interest in anything apart from their own preoccupations. That hope, however, did not long persist, for an immense shape began to materialize from the fog directly in front of the amphitheater and, while he had no reason to despair (on the contrary, the vista that opened before him should by its familiarity have relieved his every concern), the sight of Griaule, not his lesser incarnation but the great paralyzed, recumbent beast with his evil snout, his fangs festooned with vines and epiphytes, and scales embroidered with lichen and bird droppings, his greens and golds muted by an overcast, ghost-dressed in streamers of mist, the cavern of his mouth enclosing enough darkness to fill the naves of four or five cathedrals, the hill of his body looming above the tin roofs, the shanty districts and factory precincts of Morningshade from which now arose a clangor of bells . . . that sight had such a grim, iconic value, like a gigantic conceit enclosing the gates of some abyssal domain, George’s strength failed him and the other witnesses appeared similarly afflicted. Their murmurous voices grew silent and they stopped milling about and stood frozen in a dozen separate tableaus. Waking, Peony screamed and buried her face in George’s shoulder, and Sylvia drew in a breath sharply and pricked his arm with her fingernails. A chthonic rumbling was heard, so all-encompassing a sound it seemed to issue from the earth, the sky, from the core of all things, as if the basic stuff of matter had gained a voice and were offering complaint, and from Griaule’s mouth, in a trickle at first, and then a tide darkening the grass, came the creatures that dwelled within his enormous bulk, slithering, crawling, creeping, flying, hopping, running on four legs and two (for among the snakes and spiders and skizzers and flakes11 were a number of derelict men and women who, for whatever reason, had sought to shelter inside the dragon, in the hollows and caves and canyons formed by his organs and bones and cartilage). As they fled, dispersing across the plain, the witnesses made out a distant clamor composed of the affrighted cries of the citizens of Morningshade and various alarms being sounded. Griaule’s eyes blinked open, wheels of gold flecked with mineral hues, each divided by a horizontal slit pupil, lending a vile animus to his face. In the depths of his throat bloomed an orange radiance that whitened and shone more fiercely until it resembled a star lodged in his gullet. Seeing this, between ten or fifteen of the witnesses broke from the tiers of the amphitheater and raced toward the town below. Among them was Peony. She shrugged off George’s arm, eluded his lunging attempt to snatch her back, and scampered down the tiers.

Somewhat reluctantly, Sylvia made to stand, and George said, ‘It’ll be less of a risk if I go alone. Wait for us on the plain. We’ll find you.’

Relief and shame mixed in her face. ‘I don’t think she knows where she used to live,’ she said. ‘Look for her at Griaule’s temple. She thought it was pretty inside.’

‘Where else?’

She shook her head. ‘I don’t know.’ And then, as he started off, she called, ‘The brothel! Maybe there! Because of my stories!’

They had been seated near the top tier and George had descended about two-thirds of its height when Griaule, with a coughing grunt that signaled a mighty effort, turned his head and twisted his body in the direction of Haver’s Roost, his snout projecting out across the tin roofs – in the same motion, with a tremendous creaking and popping of calcified joints, noises that might have been created by tree trunks snapping, he pushed himself erect, moving with a ponderous, rickety deliberation bred by thousands of years of muscular disuse. It was an unreal sight, a mountainous transformation, the coming-to-life of a colossus. Griaule took a step forward and, with an earthshaking thump, planted a front foot among the shanties of Morningshade, crushing a considerable acreage and all that lived thereon, raising a dust cloud that boiled up around his foreleg, obscuring it. The soil and vegetation surrounding Hangtown, the village on the dragon’s back, slid off his side and wings in huge clumps, and the shacks that constituted the village followed, disintegrating in midair; from his position, George could not tell where the debris landed. Griaule roared, a blast of raw noise that deafened him.12 Pain drove him to his knees; he clasped both hands to his ears, squeezed his eyes shut, and when he looked again he saw a gush of flame (patterned with a shifting orange efflorescence that gave it an odd, lacy delicacy) spew from Griaule’s mouth and lance across the valley to engulf the hotels on the slopes of Haver’s Roost. Within seconds, every building on the Roost, even the government offices atop it, was burning. The dragon appeared to wobble for a instant, but maintained his stance and, lowering and turning his head slightly to the right, breathed out a swath of fire to encompass a section of the outlying district of Cerro Bonito, among whose rolling hills the estates of wealthy foreigners were situated. Dollops of flame dropping from the dragon’s lip and from the jet of its exhalation ignited conflagrations in other sections of the city. The smell of the burning held an acrid chemical undertone that stung George’s nostrils.

An animal fear possessed him, but the mental contract he had made to protect Peony enabled him to ignore both fear and pain. It may have been a blessing that he could not hear, for by the time he came to the foot of the hill, the greater portion of the city was on fire (only those areas adjoining and beneath the dragon were left untouched) and streams of panic-stricken people rushed past in the opposite direction, some bleeding and burned, their mouths open in what he assumed to be screams, a sound that would have encouraged his own nascent panic. The streams increased to a flood when he reached the outskirts of Morningshade. He had to fight his way through streets thronged by crowds surging toward the plain. Directly ahead, seen through the dust and across rooftops striped with rust, Griaule’s foreleg sprouted from the slum like a thewy green-and-gold tree thrust up from an orchard in hell; his dirty white belly sagged low above the finial atop a four-story temple devoted to his worship, more like a billow in a giant’s dirty bed sheet than a piece of sky. An alley opened between storefronts on George’s left. He wedged through the crowd and stepped into it in order to formulate a plan of action without being jostled; however, once away from the turbulence of the crowd, the situation seemed hopeless and he understood he had taken on a fool’s errand. He made ready to plunge back into the crowd, intending to join them in flight, but at the far end of the alley he spotted a sign bearing the crude painting of a cornucopia – the business that it advertised, a pawnshop, was close to Ali’s. He could spare a moment, he told himself, before surrendering to fear. Peony loved Sylvia’s fantasies about the brothel and, if she had survived, she might well have taken refuge in a place Sylvia described as home to a loving sisterhood. He raced along the alley, forged a path toward Ali’s through the sparser crowds on the side street, and burst through the door.

A scrawny, stoop-shouldered, white-haired man drinking two-handed at the bar was the sole occupant of the common room. Boards and benches had been overturned; bottles and broken crockery littered the floor. George’s hearing had returned to a degree – his ears rang, but he could detect the brighter range of sounds. He asked if the old man had seen Peony and the man did not turn from the bar to confront George and gave no other response. Drying blood from one ear made a track down his seamed cheek. Then the walls shimmied, the floorboards bounced, dust sifted down from the rafters and more bottles fell from a shelf behind the counter – Griaule shifting position once again. Two steps and their world was in chaos.

Upstairs, George hurried along a corridor, throwing open the doors, giving the rooms a cursory inspection, finding un-made beds and nightgowns draped over chairs, but no Peony. He was certain that he would be crushed or incinerated, and that certainty grew stronger with each second. In a room at the end of the hall whose window framed a view of the city, ruddy light flickered on creamy wallpaper with a pyramid pattern, and a pudgy, dark-haired woman in a pink flannel robe sat on the edge of the bed, watching Teocinte burn. Her eyes fell upon him and an expression of mirth spread like butter melting across her features. She patted the sheet beside her, inviting him to sit. He wanted to urge her to run, but something in her face, some central weakness, told him not to bother. A muscular balding man pushed past him into the room and, after a hostile glance at George, removed his trousers. The woman turned again to the window, plucking fretfully at the lapel of her robe. Abandoning them to whatever exercise they planned, George fled down the stairs and out into the street, almost overlooking the slight ginger-haired figure squatting on her haunches outside the door, rocking back and forth. Peony didn’t complain when he caught her up – she appeared stunned and uncaring.

Whereas the behavior of the couple in Ali’s had impressed George as being utterly final in its dissolution, the streets were an evolution of that finality, a Babel of dimly perceived sounds and voices, a bedlam of people who clawed and clutched and kicked. At one point somebody knocked him off-balance, sending him to a knee; he put out a hand to prevent a fall and braced against the bruised, misshapen face of a boy who had been trampled beneath the feet of the crowd. He yanked back his hand, repelled, yet this intimate contact with death firmed his resolve and he became single-minded in his pursuit of survival, using his size to full advantage, treating people like impediments, clubbing them with his fist, shoving them down and tossing them aside without a thought for their fate or the state of his soul, stained by one death and now, doubtless, by others. Aghast faces surfaced from the melee and he dispatched them one after the other. Dust and the smell of fear, of fury . . . all the toxins of dementia poisoned the air. Yet he felt immune to fear, unstoppable, invincible in his lack of emotion. Then, as he reached the outskirts of the city, where the dirt street gave out onto an upward slope, the crowd fanning out across it, a splintering crack ripped across the other noises, seeming to come both from inside him and from without. George looked back and saw that the dragon’s leg had buckled, a shockingly white shard of bone protruding from the scales above the knee, blood oozing from the break, and he recognized that Cattanay’s prediction had come to pass.13 Griaule’s gargantuan head swiveled to the left, a malefic golden eye canted downward, and though others must have thought the same, George had the idea that the dragon was staring directly at him, a white star shining deep within his throat. The leg buckled further, the dragon listed toward them, and George sprinted up the hill, running even more desperately than before, carrying Peony under an arm like a small rolled-up rug. The crowd’s wailing became a shriek as they fled from beneath Griaule’s fall.

Perhaps time slowed, subject to a new gravity now that Griaule was truly dying, or perhaps it was simply the chemistry of terror stretching seconds into wider fractions; but George ran for what felt like a long, long time. He heard an eerie hiss and a blast of heat at his back sent him veering out of control; he righted himself and kept going. Time slowed further and he could clearly make out his labored breathing above the ringing in his ears and the shouts of people around him; and then, the last thing he would ever hear: the dragon’s final roar, a percussive sound that shot lightning through his ears and resolved into a fizzing that banished every other sound, grew faint and fainter yet, then faded and faded, stranding him in the midst of a pure unmodulated silence. The earth convulsed, twitching like the skin on a cat’s back, and he was flung through the air, somehow managing to hang onto Peony and shield her from harm. He did not black out, but lay facedown for ten or fifteen minutes, longer perhaps, moving an arm, a leg, not testing his mobility, just incidental movements, content to rest and be thoughtless. When he sat up he found that Peony was unconscious, but breathing steadily. Only then did he turn and gaze through the pall of dust and smoke toward Teocinte.

The better sections of town, Cerro Bonito, Haver’s Roost, and Yulin’s Grove, were still afire, releasing black smoke into the sky from half a thousand conflagrations; but the shanties of Morningshade had gone up as if made of paper and all that was left of them were smoldering piles of wreckage; indeed, the blaze had moved through the slum at such a pace that a handful of more substantial buildings in the district, those with their own water supply (Griaule’s temple for instance), had survived relatively unscathed, the fire sweeping past them so rapidly that they had not been endangered for long – presumably their staffs and inhabitants had taken steps to protect them. Dwarfing the ruinous landscape, the immensity that was Griaule lay on his side, his back toward the hill where George and Peony were situated, his neck twisted so that his snout angled toward the sky like a scaly tower, a forked tongue lolling between his fangs. His ribcage had shattered and bones poked through the skin in five or six places. It was a sight of such scope and implausibility, George could not frame the whole picture in his mind and for years thereafter, until his actual memories were replaced by a popular rendering of the death of Griaule, he recalled it in fragments. The most memorable element of the scene for him was not Griaule, but the slope that led up from the outskirts of the city. Although the majority of the dead had been incinerated by the dragon’s uncanny fire, reduced to piles of unidentifiable ash, his flame must have weakened toward the end, because several thousand carbonized corpses decorated the hill, replicas of their living selves save for the fact they were blackened and so fragile that the pressure of a finger upon them would cause them to collapse and lose their shape. They were dust held together by habit and little else, yet they looked solid, an intricate weaving together of human forms that might have been mistaken for a work accomplished by some apocalyptic artist.

Peony stirred; her fist opened – the scale slipped from her palm. George picked it up and was startled to feel that cold, crawly vitality he had become aware of in the thickets on the day he and Peony met. An image slipped into his mind, that of a gold coin, a Byzantine solidus, very rare, from the reign of the emperor Aleksii. Then an unfamiliar silver coin, yet Egyptian in aspect, came into his mind, and it was followed by another and another yet, and he saw gems of superb luster and clarity, golden cups of great antiquity beset with uncut stones, bejeweled daggers and mirrors with gold frames, a small mountain of such objects, a treasure like no other. He knew he should be about the business of survival (they were not safe yet), but he was tired and the gold was so alluring and that other world of death and smoke and flame seemed far away. And then he was exiting the cavern where the gold was kept, going by torchlight along a meandering tunnel, walking slowly and silently as in a dream, and once out in the light of day he could no longer see the entrance to the tunnel. It had vanished, hidden by ferns and vines and perhaps by some ancient magic, but he didn’t concern himself with such trivia – he had the confidence, a serene sense of fate and his relation to it, that he would find his treasure again.

10 The amphitheater was not natural, but had been excavated from the side of a hill during Sylvia and George’s absence from Teocinte (a term of years, and not of months, as they perceived it), its purpose being to provide seating for audiences who had come to witness a Sound and Light performance. Such a performance never occurred, though the lamps had been set in place and a stage built for the orchestra, and some have conjectured that the impulse to construct the amphitheater came not from the city fathers, as had been thought, but from a more subtle agency whose penchant for such ironies had been noted throughout the long history of Teocinte, and it was also thought that the seating had not been intended for tourists, but for precisely the audience that occupied it on the morning after George, Sylvia and Peony had been forced to flee their encampment.

11 Parasitic creatures peculiar to Griaule. Skizzers were relatively benign, but flakes, commonly camouflaging themselves as part of a scale, exuded a poison from their skin that led to the deaths of countless unwary scalehunters.

12 The roar killed and injured several thousand people, most of them struck by flying glass from a myriad shattered windows. Nearly half the population suffered damage to their hearing to one degree or another.

13 Though he did not predict that Griaule would awaken, Cattanay told the city fathers that the poisons in the paint would seep into his system, weakening his internal structure, and, unable to support his weight, the dragon would eventually ‘cave in like an old barn.’

 Excerpt from The  Last Days of Griaule

by Sylvia Monteverdi

This much is known:

Following the death of the dragon Griaule, after his scales had been removed, his blood drained and stored in canisters, his flesh and organs variously preserved, his bones pulverized and sold as a remedy for cancer, incontinence, arthritis, indigestion, eczema, and much else . . . after all of this, Griaule’s skull (nearly six hundred feet in length) was maneuvered onto a many-wheeled platform and hauled across eleven hundred miles of jungle to the court of Temalagua. The history of this journey, which lasted two decades and featured dozens of pitched battles, a brief and nearly disastrous passage by sea, and cost many thousands of lives, would require several volumes to recount. Perhaps someday that history will be told, but for the purposes of our story suffice it to say that by the time the skull reached its destination, a tract of land outlying the palace grounds, King Carlos VIII, who had purchased it from the city fathers of Teocinte, was dead and buried, and his son Adilberto the First had ascended to the Onyx Throne.

Adilberto’s obsessions were not those of his father. He spent the bulk of his reign pursuing wars of aggression against neighboring states and the skull became a roosting place for birds, home to monkeys, snakes, and palm rats, and was overgrown by vines and fungus. His son, a second and lesser Adilberto, restored the skull to a relatively pristine condition, transformed the land around it into an exotic garden, bronzed the enormous fangs and limned its eye sockets and jaw with brass, jade and copper filigrees that accentuated its sinister aspects and inspired the creation of tin masks that years later came to be sold in the tourist markets. He adorned the interior with teak and ebony furnishings, with gold, silk and precious stones, and therein held bacchanals that established new standards for debauchery (murder, torture, and rape were commonplace at these revels) and contributed greatly toward bankrupting an economy already decimated by the excesses of Adilberto I and Carlos VIII.

Upon his death (under circumstances that even a lenient observer would term suspicious), a third Adilberto known as El Frio (the Cold One) seized power following a protracted and bloody struggle with his elder brother Gonsalvo. El Frio, a religious zealot and occultist, intended to destroy the skull, but received warnings from his fortunetellers that such an act of desecration would not have a felicitous result. Instead, he devoted his energies to the systematic slaughter of his enemies, whom he apparently saw under every rock, for during his reign he put to death over two hundred thousand of his countrymen. His heir, a fourth Adilberto, was so ashamed of his father’s legacy that he changed his name to Juan Miel, a name whose proletarian flavor embodied his proto-Marxist view of the world, and abolished the monarchy, thereby ushering in a period of tumult unparalleled in the tumultuous history of Temalagua. Forty-four days after initiating this radical reform, he was hacked limb from limb by a crowd of cane workers whom he had been addressing – they were inspired to take action by his chief rival in the nascent presidential campaign, a wealthy plantation owner who had suggested that were they to act otherwise, they might lose their jobs. Thenceforth the country was governed by a succession of generals and politicians who had all they could do to combat innumerable revolutions and the economic incursions of more powerful nations to the north. The palace burned to the ground during the early years of the twentieth century and by the 1940s the gardens built by Adilberto II had merged with the surrounding jungle and the skull was hidden by dense vegetation, though it maintained a significant place in the public consciousness and was considered to have been the root cause of Temalagua’s fall from grace . . . if, indeed, grace had ever prevailed in the region.

Travelers occasionally visited the skull – many would pose for photographs inside the jaws, standing next to one of the brass-covered fangs, sheathed now in verdigris, and then they would hurry away, oppressed by the atmosphere of foreboding generated by the huge bony snout with its barbarous decorations protruding from epiphytes and tree ferns and the shadow of the thick canopy. Those who camped overnight at the site reported disquieting dreams, and several adventurers and scientists who had undertaken longer stays went missing, their number inclusive of a herpetologist who was discovered years later living with coastal Indians and had no memory of his former life. In the 1960s the city (Ciudad Temalagua) mushroomed, growing out and away from the jungle that enclosed the skull in much the same fashion that Teocinte had spread in relation to Griaule, as if obeying some arcane and relativistic regulation. No attempt was made to clear the land or destroy the skull, and the area was accorded the status of an historical site, one deemed essential to an understanding of contemporary Temalagua, yet was neglected by historians who preferred to ignore it rather than to risk their lives by studying its central relic (a tactic frequently employed in places whose history is dominated by villains and villainy). Slums sprang up along the western edge of the jungle, creating a buffer zone between the city and the skull, and producing a steady stream of abandoned and abused children who wandered off in one direction or another, into the urban sprawl or the vegetable, there to meet a fate that, although it could be guessed, was rarely verifiable. Over the next forty years, as the country declined toward the millennium, impoverished by corporate greed and narco-business, the slums became a breeding ground for fierce criminal gangs that contended for control of the streets with death squads composed of extreme right-wing factions within the army; yet even they were reluctant to enter the jungle and confront the strange cult purported to flourish there.

It is at this point that our story becomes the story of the woman who came to be called La Endriaga, and veers away from historical fact, entering the realm of supposition, anecdotal evidence, and the purely fictive, which are, after all, the most reliable forms of human codification. Her birth name was Xiomara Garza (though she was more widely known as Yara) and she was born in Barrio Zanja, a desolation of shacks and streets without names situated on a hillside overlooking the jungle. During the rainy season, mudslides intermittently cut wide swaths through the barrio, killing dozens of people and leaving hundreds more homeless; but since the shacks were flimsily constructed of plywood, cardboard, and so forth, and because moving to another location was not an option for the majority of the survivors, within a week or two a new and equally fragile settlement would be established. By many accounts Yara was a happy child, yet this might be doubted – Barrio Zanja was not an environment conducive to happiness and other accounts testify to her sullen temperament and stoicism. In sum, far more people claim to have been familiar with her as a young girl than lived in the barrio at the time, so it is probably safest to say that her early childhood is cloaked in mystery.

Images of an eleven-year-old Yara were among those discovered in a digital camera belonging to an Austrian pedophile, Anton Scheve, whose body was found lying in a pool of blood on the floor of his hotel room, his chest punctured by multiple stab wounds. In the pictures Yara, a lovely dark-haired girl with a pellucid complexion, can be seen supine on a bed (the same beside which Scheve breathed his last) in various stages of undress, her eyes heavily lidded, this somnolence attributable to the glue-soaked paper sack crumpled on the mattress next to her. As these images were the last recorded by Scheve, the police put forth a sincere effort to locate Yara – sex tourism, while officially discouraged, constituted a sizable portion of Temalagua’s tottering economy. Yara, however, was nowhere to be found and so, prevented by her absence from demonstrating their egalitarian approach toward the prosecution of murder, no matter the despicable character of the victim, the government printed Scheve’s images (with black bars obscuring her genitalia) in the capital’s largest newspaper alongside an article decrying the moral contagion that had been visited upon the country.

The next we hear of Yara comes in the form of a partial memoir published in An Obscure Literary Journal (both a description and the actual name of the publication) by George Craig Snow, a strikingly handsome young expatriate with dirty blond hair and weary-looking blue eyes and a wry manner who lived in Ciudad Temalagua between the years 2002 and 2008. As a child he never thought of himself as ‘George,’ a name he associated with dweebs, wimps, and insurance adjustors, and so he went by his mother’s maiden name, Craig. During the first years of his stay in Temalagua, he worked for a fraudulent charitable interest called Aurora House as a correspondent – his job was to write letters in clumsy English, in a childlike scrawl, that pretended to be the grateful, semi-literate messages of the children supported by Aurora House. These were mailed to gullible contributors in the United States who donated twenty dollars each per month in order to sponsor a Pilar or an Esteban or a Marisol. Included with the letters were pleas for more money and photographs that Snow snapped at random of happy, healthy children in school uniforms, proofs of the good effect that the contributions had on the malnourished children shown in photographs previously sent. To be clear, no child so depicted ever received a dime of charity from Aurora House, nor did any child whatsoever benefit from the enterprise. The majority of the monies collected went into the pocket of Pepe Salido, a lean, gray-haired man who put Snow in mind of a skeletal breed of dog with a narrow skull and prominent snout. The remainder of the funds were doled out in minuscule salaries to the Aurora House staff, among them several gringos like Snow, slackers who were cynical enough to find the swindle bleakly amusing, understanding that even if the money had been donated to the cause, twenty dollars a month paid by however many well-meaning housewives and idealistic students and guilty alcoholics was insufficient to counter the forces arrayed against the children of Temalagua.

Snow lived with a woman of Mayan heritage, a leftist teaching assistant at San Carlos University by the name of Expectación (his memoir was entitled He Lives With Expectation), who made her home in Barrio Villareal, a working class neighborhood in process of decaying into a slum. When not on the job, his two preferred activities were having sex with Ex (his lover’s nickname) and smoking heroin, the latter serving to cut into the frequency of the former. Evenings he would sit on his stoop, high, shirtless, and shoeless, scuffing up dirt with his toes, studying the stars that emerged from a pall of pollution above the low tile roofs, and taking in the pedestrian parade: shop girls scurrying home with their eyes lowered and bundles clutched to their breasts; short, wiry workmen who carried machetes and nodded politely in passing; dwarfish, raggedy street kids holding paper sacks with soggy bottoms drifting along in small, disheveled packs – on occasion, sensing a kindred spirit, they would hover beside Snow’s stoop, gazing up toward the rooftops and tracking things he could not see. One evening as he sat there, joined on his watch by a wizened-looking kid who could have been ten but was likely fifteen and, except for stringy, dark hair, resembled a tiny old man in grungy shorts and a faded Disneyworld T-shirt . . . one evening, then, he spotted a teenage girl approaching through the purpling air. Slender, leggy, pale. Black curls cascaded down over her shoulders, an opulent architecture of hair at odds with her overall Goth-punk aesthetic: black jeans, black kicks, and a long-sleeved black turtleneck. Black fingernails, too. Heavy make-up. She walked with an unhurried step, yet her movements were crisp and purposeful, and she had about her such an aura of energy, it seemed to Snow that he was watching the approach of a small storm. He pictured a funnel cloud of dirt and masonry chunks flying up in her wake, an image that prompted him to grin goofily at her as she came alongside them. She did not seek to avoid his scrutiny, but stopped in front of the stoop and gave an upward jerk of her head that spoke to him, saying, You got something on your mind? Spit it out.

‘Buenas noches,’ said Snow.

The kid stuck his face into his paper sack and huffed furiously, and the girl asked him in Spanish, ‘Who is this asshole?’

‘He lives here,’ said the kid groggily.

‘I speak Spanish,’ Snow said. ‘You can talk to me.’

The girl ignored him and asked the kid why he hung out with this pichicatero. The kid shrugged.

‘Pichicatero? What’s that?’ Snow asked the kid.

‘A fucking drug addict,’ said the girl in lightly accented English.

‘He’s the addict.’ Snow gestured at the kid. ‘For me it’s just a hobby.’

With its mask of mascara and bloody lip gloss, her face was trashy, beautified not beautiful, yet once he had wiped away the make-up with a mental cloth, he realized the basic materials were quality. A casual observer would perhaps have judged the face too bland, too standard in its perfection, like a schoolboy’s rendering of his favorite teenage angel vampire slut, but to Snow, a connoisseur, it was exuberantly and idiosyncratically feminine, a raptor’s purity of purpose implied by the way her lips curved above a slight overbite, the delicate molding of the tiny, tapered chin, and beside the nose flare of a nostril, the necessary flaw, a pink irregularity, a scar that, had it been treated properly, would have required but a stitch or two to close. Her skin seemed to carry a faint luminosity. Her irises and eyebrows were such a negative color they might have been cutaways in her flesh that permitted a lightless background to show through. She was, Snow decided, scary beautiful.

‘Dirty feet,’ she said to him. ‘Dirty fingernails. Dirty hair.’ She gave him a quick once-over. ‘Dirty heart.’

Though too stoned to be offended, Snow felt that he should offer an objection and said mildly, ‘Hey. Watch your mouth.’

She switched to Spanish and addressed the kid. ‘Be careful! You don’t want to wind up a shriveled soul like him.’

‘Bet you used to be an emo girl,’ said Snow. ‘Then you hooked up with some Goth guy and crossed over to the dark side.’

‘That’s right,’ she said. ‘Come see me and I’ll introduce you to him. He loves to meet new people.’

‘Sure thing. Give me your address.’

Her face emptied and her eyes lost focus, as if she were hearkening to an inner voice. She was silent for so long, Snow waggled a hand in her face and said, ‘Hello!’

She turned abruptly and strode off without another word – a man passing in the street gave her a wide berth.

‘That was weird,’ Snow said.

‘Yara.’ The kid fingered a tube of glue out of his pocket and began squeezing it into the paper sack.

Snow said, ‘What?’

‘Her name is Yara. She’s crazy.’

‘How’s that make her different from anyone else?’

Snow thought he would have to explain his view that human beings were no more than a collection of random impulses bound up in a net of societal constraints, but the kid may have had an innate awareness of this, because he asked for no clarification and said, ‘Yara’s not monkey-crazy. She’s snake-crazy.’ He started to bury his face in the fume-filled sack, but then offered it to Snow, and Snow, moved by this unexpected display of etiquette, accepted.

 Snow’s narrative continues for another 156 pages, many treating of the tedious day-to-day life in the camp, an almost equivalent number constituting a disquisition on the nature of love, also tedious and overly analytic (as the preceding paragraph foreshadows), and some few detailing and explaining (‘justifying’ might be more precise a word, for he appears to have borne a heavy burden of guilt) the circumstances under which, four months after initiating a relationship with Yara, he sneaked away from the clearing, intending never to return. He cites as the root cause of his abandonment the ominous atmosphere that accumulated about the place and goes on to describe the event that precipitated his escape.

‘One morning,’ Snow writes, ‘Yara went to stand in the mouth of the skull, at the point of the jaw, and there she stayed for several hours, saying nothing, motionless as in a fugue. Over a span of fifteen minutes the adherents gathered beneath her. They were perplexed at first, calling out to her and conferring among themselves, but then they grew as silent and still as their queen . . . as their god. They remained standing in a loose assembly for nearly four hours, rapt as though compelled by unheard voices. The air grew warmer – substantially warmer, it seemed to me – as if this act of devotion, of pathological immersion, were somehow increasing the spin of their constituent atoms and generating heat . . . though it’s probable my anxiety led me to misapprehend a slight elevation of air temperature. Throughout the episode I was close to panic. The gloomy space under the canopy, the rundown camp, the zombie-like connection between the adherents and their queen: it was an eerie spectacle that evoked images of Jonestown. That I had been excluded from the group, cast in the role of onlooker or tourist, someone unworthy of participating in the experience, amplified my sense of alienation. I didn’t belong here, I told myself. I was a leaf blown by chance to their door and not party to this insanity. If I were I would be as mindless and mute as they, as the creatures of the jungle (they, too, had gone silent), receiving instruction from a woman who channeled the wishes and whims of a gigantic reptilian skull.

‘When Yara turned away from the assembly, the jungle erupted into a clamor of croaks and screams, and the adherents shambled off, resuming their normal activities. Yara claimed to have no memory of what had transpired, yet she was not in the least disconcerted to learn of it, and this as much as anything convinced me that the disaster I feared was days if not hours away. I begged her to put some distance between herself and the skull, but when I told her the scene in the clearing had reminded me of Jonestown, she flew off the handle and accused me of subverting her work and otherwise distracting her.

‘That night I lay in bed wondering what to do, feeling wrecked, staring at yet not focused upon Yara’s naked back, pinpricks of actinic brilliance popping and fading before my eyes like miniature flashbulbs. And then I observed that the skin bordering her implant was inflamed, a distinct redness suffusing the colors of the surrounding tattoo. The implant itself appeared less regular in shape, its convexity more extreme, and I thought perhaps her body was rejecting it. I gently pressed my forefinger against the skin at the edge of the implant and her hips began to roll and jerk, a slow, grinding torsion, as if she were having sex with an invisible lover. I snatched my hand away, startled by her reaction, and the movements subsided. Lately she had encouraged me to touch the implant while we made love, but I had been too intent on my own pleasure to notice whether there had been a marked increase in hers . . . though it seemed then, in the unreliable archives of memory, that she displayed a measure of reaction. “Yara!” I said, and repeated her name, but she was out like a light. I pushed down on the implant with the heel of my hand – her hips thrashed as if she were on the verge of an orgasm. Once again I tried to wake her, shouting at and even shaking her, all to no avail. Horrified by her comatose state, by her erotic reflex, I was too rattled to think, yet a portion of my brain must have been functioning, a batch of neurons excited by dread must have sparked and transmitted a warning, for as the sky grayed I concluded that I needed to save myself.’

The disaster anticipated by Snow did not occur, at least not within the time frame he expected, and when nothing had happened after a month he was tempted to revisit the clearing, but shame and fear combined to negate this impulse. For a time he moved back in with Ex, yet it quickly became evident that the relationship had gone sour, as had his relationship with Temalagua, and he returned home to Concrete, Idaho, where he lived for free in an apartment owned by his father and landed a job in a local bookstore. He had intended to regroup there, to earn a little money and go off again, perhaps to Thailand, but was seduced by the lazy, listless patterns of existence in Concrete and stayed for the next ten years, maintaining a desultory lifestyle dominated by affairs with unattainable women, either married or disinterested in him as other than a pastime. The one noteworthy achievement of those years was the publication of his partial memoir, which remains unfinished to this day. (This may not be ascribed to a lack of effort, to youthful lassitude, but to the fact that it is an immature work to which he had only a passing attachment.) His infatuation with Yara developed into a full-blown obsession and, though when called upon to do so he would describe love in terms that accorded with his previous statements on the subject, he grew to think of Yara in terms more consistent with a romantic ideal. He searched the Internet for news of her and, finding none, he scribbled in his notebooks, dredging up memories, striving to piece together a coherent narrative of his four months in the jungle. He had done nude studies of Yara, but in them her face was either turned away or partly hidden by her hair – he could not recall why he had posed her this way, if it had been her idea or his, but the sketches seemed emblematic of their inadequate commitment to the relationship. He tried drawing her face from memory and was able to create accurate renderings of her features, but they were devoid of vitality and character, like better-than-average police sketches. He perceived this to be emblematic of what they had lost – an opportunity for emotional brilliance, for the transcendence of the ordinary. The conflation of time and an erratic memory presented him with the certainty of what he had heretofore merely imagined – that he had been in love with Yara and she with him, but they had not taken the final, necessary step to confirm those feelings.

One evening while netsurfing he chanced upon an article dated two years earlier about unexplained Central American mysteries that devoted a few sentences to a Temalaguan religious cult whose membership, some eight hundred strong, had recently vanished along with their object of veneration, a skull belonging to an immense specimen of the genus Megalania (this last assertion was without scholarly basis). The leader of the cult had been, the story said, ‘a charismatic young woman.’ And that was all. There was no mention whatsoever of the incident in the Temalaguan press at the time of the disappearance, a fact Snow found disturbing, and he could find no other online stories that referenced the event. Based on this sliver of information, however untrustworthy, he chucked his job, bought an airline ticket, and a week later arrived in Temalagua.

The city was more polluted and poverty-stricken than Snow remembered, though he wondered whether he had been too self-absorbed to notice how bad things were ten years before. Perhaps it had always been a smoky, slum-ridden slice of Mordor, Detroit with less industry, brighter colors, and hills crawling with the poor, the anonymous-as-roaches poor, some carrying their shelters on their backs. Beggars rushed at him in platoon-strength, displaying deformities, amputations, and open sores. Child prostitutes, some as young as eight or nine, called to him from alley mouths and doorways, and in piping, playground voices offered to perform the most deviant of perversions. Widows in black dresses and shawls sat on the curbs along Avenida Seis, their heads down, mere inches away from the stream of traffic, as if they had given up hope and were waiting for a car to swerve and put an end to their misery. Many of Snow’s old connections were dead or otherwise defunct. Ex had lost her taste for revolution and married the proprietor of a department store who called her his little Commie and delighted in pinching her now substantial ass – she was pregnant with their fourth child and was reluctant to speak with Snow. The offices of Aurora House had been taken over by a travel agency, Pepe Salido had been murdered in a gambling dispute, and Snow’s colleagues in the charity had drifted away to parts unknown. Club Sexy hadn’t changed that much. They had put in track lighting above the bar and added a karaoke machine. Miraculously, the old man still played his rickety Beatle tunes against the same chintzy backdrop of silver glitter, moonglow, and palms. Expensively attired women thronged the tables – Snow failed to recognize any of them, yet they were of a type similar to those he did recall, and the fabulous Guillermo was still pouring drinks. Aside from the start of a double chin and a questionable goatee, he looked none the worse for wear. On seeing Snow he rushed out from behind the bar to embrace him.

‘You look wonderful! Fantastic!’ said Guillermo, pulling back. ‘How do you do it?’

‘You look pretty good yourself,’ said Snow.

‘Me? I’m an absolute disaster! But it doesn’t matter anymore. I have a husband now, I can let myself go to seed.’

He steered Snow to a corner table and told the other barman, Canelo – a young black man with a light, freckly complexion, close-cropped reddish hair, and diamond piercings in his cheeks – to bring a bottle of tequila. Snow realized that he had forgotten to employ gayspeak and began to shade his inflections, subtly (he thought) re-acquiring his verbal disguise. Guillermo laid his hand atop Snow’s and said, ‘Please! There’s no need for that.’

Baffled, Snow asked what he meant.

‘Your act.’ Guillermo poured him a shot of tequila. ‘It never fooled anyone, you know. Some of us were angry – we thought you were mocking us. But when we realized you were using us to get close to the ladies, we understood and we laughed about it. Since you were a nice guy, we played along.’

‘I wasn’t a nice guy,’ said Snow. ‘I was a total asshole.’

‘Well, you looked nice, anyway. And you acted nice. That’s what counted most back then.’

They drank and reminisced for a while and then Snow asked about Yara.

Guillermo lowered his voice. ‘Did you hear about what happened to her?’

‘Only a little. I just read about it last week. I’m hoping to learn more. That’s why I came down.’

‘You must be careful who you talk to about this. Very careful.’

‘Why’s that?’

‘The PVO.’ Guillermo refilled their glasses. ‘The Party of Organized Violence.’ He knocked back his shot. ‘They showed up about fifteen years ago, but they didn’t make much of a splash and no one took them seriously until the elections last year when they gained a plurality in Congress. They’re thugs. Scary right-wing thugs. Extremely scary. If they win a majority in the next election, and everyone says they will . . .’ He affected a shudder. ‘They don’t like gays. Joselito, my husband . . . he thinks we should relocate to Costa Rica.’

‘What’s this have to do with Yara?’

‘After she vanished a reporter got into Chajul. You know, the village out near the skull? This one guy got in, but soon the PVO sealed off access to that area of the jungle with their militia.’

‘They have their own soldiers?’

‘Nobody fucks with them. They might as well be running things already. But like I was saying . . .’ Guillermo knocked back a shot – it looked as if it hurt going down. ‘I have a friend who knew the reporter. The guy said most of the villagers had already fled, but he talked to one woman who told him there was a big spill of heat from the jungle. Hot enough to make you cover your face, she said. Then rippling lights appeared over the treetops. All colors. She assumed it was a religious thing, Jesus was coming down on a rainbow carpet, so she went into her house to pray to the Virgin. She heard people in the street and swears they had come out of the jungle, but she didn’t see them – she was afraid and hid. That’s all she had time to say before the PVO turned up and carried her away. The reporter beat it out the back window.’

The ancient keyboard player announced he was taking a break – the sounds of the Casio were replaced by Latin pop.

‘Can I talk to him?’ Snow asked. ‘The reporter.’

‘He disappeared,’ said Guillermo, giving the word ‘disappeared’ a certain emphasis.

Snow covered his glass to prevent Guillermo from pouring him another shot. ‘I guess I don’t get it. Why were the PVO so interested in a screwball cult?’

‘You’d have to ask them . . . but that’s not something I would recommend. You don’t want to attract the attention of those guys.’

Guillermo was called away to settle some issue at the bar and Snow, glancing around the room, caught a thirty-ish brunette at another table checking him out. She wore an orange-and-yellow print frock with a tight bodice that accentuated her cleavage and she permitted herself a half-smile before saying something to her companion, a plump blonde. The blonde cast a quick look in his direction and the women shared a laugh. Snow had an impulse to make a move, to indulge in his old life again, if only for nostalgia’s sake. Guillermo rejoined him and nodded toward the brunette.

‘Stay away from that one, man,’ he said. ‘She’s Juan Mazariegos’ mistress.’

‘He’s a bad guy?’

‘The worst. He’s a bigshot in the PVO. Half the women here are PVO.’

Snow asked him whether it was safe to visit the encampment.

‘Yes, I think so,’ Guillermo said. ‘But there’s no point. You know how quickly the jungle comes back. It’s all overgrown in there. Nobody lives in Chajul nowadays and Yara . . .’ He made a gesture of finality. ‘She’s gone.’

Snow didn’t want to believe that and had nothing to say. With an inquiring look, Guillermo held up the bottle – Snow shook his head.

‘Man!’ said Guillermo. ‘Drink with me. Who knows when you’ll be back again?’

‘I might stick around,’ Snow said. ‘I don’t really have anywhere else to go.’

‘Then we’ll drink to you staying. I’ll fill you in on all the gossip. Ten years’ worth.’

With reluctance, for he was not that much of a tequila drinker anymore, Snow let Guillermo pour him a double.

Guillermo raised his glass. ‘Old times!’

Snow hesitated before touching glasses and said, ‘La Endriaga.’

Guillermo had been right. The site of the camp was overrun with new vegetation and all Snow managed to unearth were a few sections of rusted tin. Despite the witness report of extreme heat, there were no charred tree trunks, no scorched areas. Nothing. He poked around for an hour, but couldn’t even find ashes. What kind of fire could have vaporized the skull and left tin unmarked? The absence of the skull, of any evidence as to the cause of its destruction, started to make him jumpy and he soon returned to his hotel.

Snow had saved his money over the past decade and could have survived for quite some time in Temalagua without a job, but he thought it prudent to find work and secured a position teaching English at a private school in the suburbs. Each morning he would ride the bus from the city center, where he had taken an apartment, and spend the better part of his day preparing the spoiled teenage sons and daughters of the wealthy – who, chauffered by armed bodyguards, arrived in Hummers and town cars and limousines – to deal with their equally spoiled peers in the United States. They were arrogant little monsters, for the most part. Sullen and disrespectful even to one another, they treated Snow with a polished contempt that, if one didn’t examine it too closely, might be mistaken for civility. He entertained fantasies of walking into a classroom with an explosive device strapped to his mid-section. He met regularly with their parents, advising them of learning disabilities and behavioral problems, and it was during such a counseling session that he encountered Luisa Bazan, a zaftig brunette of thirty-five years, mother of Onofrio, a lizard-like youth with a penchant for upskirt photography, a pursuit for which he had been threatened with expulsion (this threat unlikely to be acted upon, since Onofrio’s father was Enrique Bazan, in line to become the PVO’s defense minister after the elections).

Approaching his thirty-ninth birthday, Snow had retained his youthful good looks and thus he was not greatly surprised when Luisa requested increasingly frequent parent-teacher conferences and that during these sessions they discussed Luisa’s personal life more than they did Onofrio’s scholastic failings. Luisa complained about her husband’s cavalier treatment of her, his mental abuses, his rudeness to her family, his lack of concern for her concerns, and hinted at more heinous offenses. Snow offered a sympathetic ear; he understood the implied invitation and was tempted to accept it – although she would soon fall prey to obesity, sublimating her womanly desires with sweets and starches and bi-monthly shopping trips to Miami, where she now (according to her) satisfied her every appetite, Luisa was still exceptionally attractive and her desperation to employ her physical charms before age and indulgence further eroded them was as palpable and alluring to Snow as an exotic perfume. But he held firm and, when one afternoon she flung herself at him, rather than rejecting her out of hand, an act that might have antagonized her and sent her running to Enrique, complaining that Snow had committed an impropriety . . . on that afternoon he told Luisa he was grieving for a lost love (only half a lie) and that she was the first woman in years to have pierced the shroud of his grief and touch his heart. He asked for time to clear his head, to adjust to this unexpected change – he did not want to come to her encumbered by any shred of the past, he said. She deserved better and if she could wait but a little while for him to purge himself of old feelings, then all things would be possible. Due to his experience with such women, knowing that what they wanted was something excessive in their lives, some form of drama to break the comfortable tyranny of their marriages, Snow anticipated that a make-believe drama would be enough to suit Luisa’s purposes and in this he proved correct. From that day forward their conferences were models of comportment, marred only by incidental brushes of skin against skin, as happened when he helped her on with her jacket or handed her paperwork, and smoldering looks redolent of their unrequited passion.

If you had asked Snow why he stayed on in Temalagua after learning what he could about Yara’s fate – that is to say, very little – he might have answered because the cost of living was cheap and the weather temperate, but in truth he remained obsessed and began to make discreet inquiries about Yara’s activities during the period leading up to her disappearance. Over the next two years his life acquired an unvarying routine, teaching by day and by night and on the weekends pursuing his investigation via the Internet and in the various establishments (offices, shops, bars) mentioned in passing by Yara as places where she had collected or delivered sums of money. Yet for all his efforts, the sole result of his investigation came to him by chance. Some twenty months after his return to Temalagua, while leafing through the Sunday newspaper, he ran across an article on page six of the front section concerning the murder (by terrorists, the paper suggested) of one Hernan Ortiz, an official of the PVO. Accompanying the article was a headshot of the victim that showed him to have been a lean, cadaverous fellow with a distinctive shock of white hair in his forelock. Further photographs found on the Internet depicted a lanky man dressed in army fatigues. Snow thought instantly of the electronics store clerk to whom Yara had given the envelope stuffed with currency. He hadn’t gotten a close look at the clerk’s face, but given the PVO’s interest in Yara’s cult, her statement that some of the men to whom she had given instructions and money were military, and now this photograph of a man with an identical streak of white in his hair . . . he refused to believe it could be a coincidence.

That same morning, a warm spring morning, Snow met Guillermo for coffee at Mocca’s, a popular sidewalk café on the Avenida with a façade of tinted windows and heavy glass doors. Snow did not make friends easily. A serial manipulator, he mistrusted the validity of his emotional investments in other people and as a consequence he mistrusted the people as well – yet if forced to characterize his relationship with Guillermo, he would have said they were friends. In addition to feeling comfortable around Guillermo, he envied his openness, his ability to discuss freely every aspect of his life, and thus their Sunday meetings had become a semi-regular occurrence. They sat in the shade of an umbrella that sprouted from the center of their table, emblazoned with a Flor de Cana logo, one among several dozen identical tables from which arose the laughter and chatter of over a hundred upper class Temalaguans. The traffic stream was less heavy and less clamorous than usual, and the smell of coffee contended with that of gasoline fumes. Waiters in red T-shirts and dark slacks glided about, bearing trays loaded with food and drink, and chased off beggars who had infiltrated the tables, where they were being pointedly ignored by people so at variance in aspect from themselves, so well nourished, richly dressed, bedecked with gold, jewelry, and expensive sunglasses, they might have been of a different taxonomic order, sparrows among peacocks.

Guillermo dominated the conversation, commenting cattily on the scene, pointing to this or that local celebrity, tossing out bits of gossip, but when Snow showed him the photograph of Hernan Ortiz he had clipped from the newspaper and inquired about the man’s connection with Yara, Guillermo’s airy mood dissolved. He covered the photo with a napkin and said, ‘What is it with you? You live with this girl a few months, you leave her, and now, years later, when she’s dead, you want to know everything about her.’

‘Curiosity,’ said Snow. ‘The road not traveled and all that.’

‘Get yourself another hobby. This one could get you killed.’

‘Did you know Ortiz? Back in the day, I mean?’

Guillermo made an exasperated noise.

‘Come on, man,’ said Snow. ‘You knew everyone on the Avenida in those days.’

‘Yes, I knew him. He was a punk. He used to run with a gang who hung around the bus station. They ripped off street vendors returning home at night to their villages. They’d beat the hell out of them for a few quetzales. They beat the hell out of people like me for fun. A couple of years later he turned up looking clean and presentable, working at the electronics store. Word was he’d joined up with a big organization . . . but he was still a punk.’

‘A big organization? The PVO?’

‘Keep your voice down!’ As Guillermo sipped his coffee, he darted his eyes left and right. ‘Yes.’

‘Why didn’t you tell me?’

‘I’m telling you now.’

‘But why didn’t you tell me when I first got back? Or when I got involved with Yara?’

‘The PVO’ (Guillermo whispered the acronym) ‘weren’t that big a deal when you hooked up with Yara. It didn’t occur to me to tell you then. When you returned, well, call me sentimental, but I don’t want to see you dead.’ He dabbed at his lips with a napkin. ‘The reason I’m telling you now is to stop you from pursuing the matter. If you keep it up you’re going to make the acquaintance of some very unpleasant people and stir up a lot of trouble for your friends.’

‘Yeah, you keep saying that, but nothing ever happens.’

A weary-looking Indian woman with an infant in one arm, clad in a dress gone gray from repeated scrubbings, its printed pattern all but worn away, stopped by an adjoining table and dangled four or five necklaces in the face of a man with chiseled features, wearing aviator sunglasses and a crisp, pale yellow guayabera. He looked off to his left, surveying the tables, and his companion, a pretty woman with a café-con-leche complexion, carmine lips, and rhinestone-studded sunglasses, exhaled a jet of cigarette smoke and said something that made him smile.

‘For your lady,’ said the Indian woman, gently shaking the necklaces, an enticement. Her voice barely audible, she murmured a litany of afflictions – the child was sick, they were hungry, they needed money to return home.

The Indian woman noticed Snow was watching and moved toward him, an ounce of energy enlivening her face on having spotted an American. Guillermo looked away, but Snow, before the woman could begin her pitch, gave her ten quetzales, at least twice what she could have asked for, and selected one of the necklaces, a piece of poor quality jade upon which the design of a bird had been scratched, strung on a loop of black twine.

‘Why do you encourage them?’ asked Guillermo as the woman hurried off, a few paces ahead of a grim-faced waiter intent on evicting her.

‘The poor need to be encouraged, don’t you think?’ Snow slipped on the necklace. ‘And don’t tell me that I can’t give them all money. That’s a rationalization you use for not giving money to any of them. Besides, I was angry and I knew it would piss you off.’

‘You’re angry? Why’s that? Because I’m trying to keep you from getting into trouble?’

‘You’re not keeping me out of trouble. All I’m doing is asking questions of people I trust. And that’s basically you. I won’t take it any further.’

‘You’re a liar! Do you think I don’t hear things? People come up to me all the time and say, “That gringo friend of yours was in last night asking questions.” It’s a wonder you haven’t been picked up.’

‘Well, that’s my business, isn’t it?’

Guillermo shrugged, as if to imply that Snow’s survival was of no importance to him. He had plainly taken offense at Snow’s characterization of him as an uncaring sort. True or not, he liked to think of himself as egalitarian and not class conscious in the least.

‘Look, I apologize,’ said Snow. ‘I told you I was angry.’

Guillermo pretended to be interested in the goings-on at another table.

‘Stop this shit, man!’

‘What shit?’ Guillermo dug out his cell and checked for messages.

Already bright, the sunlight brightened further, bespeaking a break in some thin pall of pollution.

‘Okay,’ Snow said. ‘How about next time we come out I’ll buy you a necklace? Will that put the roses back in your cheeks?’

Guillermo’s struggled to maintain his indifferent pose, but the façade crumbled and he smiled. ‘Joselito will be so jealous!’

Snow touched the black twine about his neck. ‘Maybe I should just give you this.’

‘Oh, no!’ said Guillermo. ‘It’ll have to be something much more fashion forward. I’ll help you pick something out.’ He shifted in his chair and sighed. ‘It’s such a glorious day I can’t stay angry. I think I’ll have a glass of wine. Do you want one?’

‘I’ll take another coffee.’

‘Days like this I feel I could fall in love with everyone.’ Guillermo laughed and patted Snow’s forearm. ‘Even you.’ He signaled a waiter and then looked soberly at Snow and said, ‘You do know I love you, don’t you?’

His machismo enlisted, put off by this expression of sentiment, Snow said in a sardonic tone, ‘Oh yeah, sure.’

Guilllermo shook his head sadly. ‘What an asshole you are! I thought you’d grown up, but I’ll bet you still think about love as something that makes you dizzy.’

Two Sundays later when Snow dropped by Club Sexy to meet Guillermo, the place was empty except for a pair of solitary drinkers. Even the old keyboard player was absent. Snow asked Canelo, the black bartender with freckles and reddish hair, where everyone was and Canelo said, ‘Haven’t you heard?’ And when Snow said he had heard nothing, Canelo, who had recently grown a Van Dyke that, along with his piercings, his red skullcap of hair, and downcast manner, gave him the look of a sorrowful devil, told him that Guillermo and Joselito had been found dead in a barranca outside the city. Both had been tortured. He went on to say what a shock it had been to everyone and the club had been closed for three days out of respect, but now business was picking up again, especially at night, and some of the ladies had started coming back in. He might have said more, but Snow ran from the club, burst through the front door, and stood in the entranceway, letting the city’s polluted roar explode over him, a wetness in his eyes blurring the light, turning passersby into colored shadows. Canelo followed him out and told him to come back inside and have a drink.

‘Who killed them?’ asked Snow.

Taken aback by the question, Canelo said he didn’t know.

‘It was the PVO, wasn’t it?’ Snow came a step toward him.

‘In this life, the sort of life Guillermo lived, a man makes a great many enemies.’

‘What are you fucking saying?’

Canelo spread his hands to demonstrate his helplessness. ‘I wasn’t there. How can I know who killed them? It might have been a jealous ex-lover, a madman. The cops said the bodies were horribly mutilated. Their cocks were in each other’s mouths.’

‘Guillermo was terrified of the PVO. He said they hated gays.’

‘That proves nothing. Hating gays is all the fashion down here.’

Frustration overrode Snow’s sense of loss. His emotions crested, overflowing their confines, and he shoved Canelo in the chest, knocking him back against the wall. ‘You know damn well it was political! If it wasn’t why are people staying away from the club?’

‘Calm down, man! Okay?’ Canelo inspected the rear of his jeans for stucco dust. ‘Let’s go inside. I’ll tell you what I know.’

He held the door open and Snow, his temper cooling, went through. The instant the door swung shut behind them, he heard a complicated snick and Canelo slung him face-first into the wall. Something cold and sharp pricked his throat. Canelo pressed his mouth to Snow’s ear, his funky breath overpowering the smell of his cologne, and said, ‘Don’t you ever put your hands on me again!’

Snow held perfectly still. ‘Yeah. Okay.’

‘If you weren’t Guillermo’s friend I’d open you up. But don’t get the idea I’m your friend. To me you’re just a stupid fucking gringo who doesn’t know his ass.’

Canelo stepped away and Snow, hearing another snick, turned to see him pocketing a butterfly knife.

‘You want to know who I think killed Guillermo?’ Canelo asked. ‘It was you. You didn’t cut him, but he died because of you.’

‘That’s crazy,’ said Snow.

‘You don’t understand where you are, man. None of you fucks have a clue. You go blundering about, thinking you can solve any problem because you’re superior to the pitiful, fuckedup Temalaguans, but all you do is make more trouble for us.’

‘I think it was the PVO,’ Snow said weakly.

‘Maybe. It might have been political. The PVO could have done it, or some other political party. See, what you don’t seem to understand is that in order to stay in business Guillermo had to be an informer. All these bitches with their bigshot husbands coming around . . . the husbands asked him questions. He tried to be cool. He’d give them some information, nothing serious, enough maybe that someone would get slapped around now and then. But nothing more. He didn’t want anyone to get their head chopped because of him. He walked a fine line. But when you started asking about La Endriaga the line got even finer. He should have handed you over. We tried to tell him, we said if you give up the gringo the pressure will ease off, but he wanted to protect you. “He’s my friend,” he’d say. “I’m not going to betray a friendship.”’

‘He should have told me!’ said Snow. ‘If he’d told me about his predicament, how bad things were . . .’

‘Get real, man. Think about it. He warned you constantly. You simply didn’t want to listen.’

‘He didn’t tell me the whole story. I never understood . . . he never conveyed to me how serious it was.’

‘Maybe he thought you were smart enough to fill in the blanks. Or maybe he believed you were as much a friend to him as he was to you. Maybe he thought you respected him and actually paid attention to what he said. Big mistake, huh?’

Snow stood mute, absorbing what Canelo had told him.

‘It was casual with you,’ Canelo said. ‘You thought it was cool to have a fag who owned a night club for a friend.’

‘That’s not how it was!’

‘Sure it is. You’re like a half-ass method actor, man. One who almost buys into his character, but can’t quite get there.’ Canelo gestured at the door. ‘Get the fuck out.’

Snow balked at leaving. ‘It’s not like you say. Maybe I’ve made some missteps, but I . . .’

‘Maybe? Fuck!’ Canelo’s scorn was a physical force. ‘Nobody cares how you see the situation. Your viewpoint doesn’t mean dick. Now beat it! If I were you I’d leave the country. Guillermo wasn’t good with pain. He probably ratted you out when they tortured him. Even if he didn’t, I’m getting an urge to tell the next cop who comes in that you were talking shit about the PVO. I’m not kidding. Nothing’s stopping me and I may not be able to resist the temptation.’

 Following his set-to with Canelo, Snow returned to his apartment and packed his bags, shaken by what the bartender had told him and frightened not just by his threat, but by the world of threat, a world of maniacs and bloody politics of which he had, of course, been aware, yet never thought would menace him. He intended to catch the first plane north, wherever it was bound, but as he waited for the taxi and afterward, on the way to the airport, his guilt concerning Guillermo elbowed his paranoia aside and he wished for some way he could make a stab at redemption. He had nary a clue of how to go about this, but perhaps fate conspired to assist him, for on reaching the ticket counter he discovered that the destination of the first available flight was Miami – that provided the platform for the germ of an idea. An hour later, en route to that city of second-rate glitterati and leathery, sun-dried MILFs, he debated whether or not it was worth the risk and concluded that he could safely take a first step and pull back if things went badly. And so, upon landing in Miami on a humid Wednesday afternoon, Snow rented a cheap motel room in Coral Gables and prepared to initiate an affair with Luisa Bazan.

Every second Friday Luisa would check into a suite at the Bon Temps, a boutique hotel in the heart of South Beach, where she would reside until Sunday night. She had invited him to meet her there several times, offering to pay his airfare, and he had made his excuses. Now he hoped she would be amenable to an encounter (lately she had been testy toward him, impatient with the unconsummated relationship) and he also hoped that he could get to her before she secured the services of a cabana boy for the weekend. On the Friday evening after his arrival in Miami he staked himself out in the hotel bar, the Tres Jolie, and waited there without result until after midnight. He had steeled himself against this possibility (her schedule was governed by her husband’s whims) and he was certain she would come eventually – but waiting for another week to pass was more difficult than he presumed and he nearly abandoned his scheme. What, after all, could he learn from Luisa in one weekend that would alter the situation? She would likely have no salient information about the PVO and, even if she did, how could he use it? It was a crazy idea that had seemed for a moment wonderfully crafty and wise, one of many similar strokes of genius that had misdirected the meandering course of his life. The only consideration that stayed him from leaving Miami was that he had nowhere to go. He had blown his job at the private school, he had no friends to speak of in Temalagua, what with Guillermo dead, and no support system now that he had been banned from Club Sexy. No purpose, no real direction. He refused to contemplate the horror of returning to Idaho. That left him with the image of an addled, gray-bearded Snow drinking the dregs of his life away in some misbegotten Central American hell, with ‘Margaritaville’ and ‘The Piña Colada Song’ dominating the soundtrack and a tattooed female lizard by his side, watching for symptoms of terminal weakness that would allow her to rifle through his pockets for money and drugs. This picture in mind, the prospect of a weekend with Luisa Bazan acquired a fresh gloss.

At half past seven on the next Friday evening, Luisa flounced into the Bon Temps, spike heels clacking on the marble floor, her impressive rack rendered more impressive yet by a ruffled blouse that exaggerated every jiggle, blond streaks in her beautifully coiffed hair, and clingy slacks that made her ass seem iconic, like the majestic rump of a horse cast in bronze and mounted by a heroic warrior with a plumed hat and sword. Were she to put on ten or fifteen pounds more she might be able to pose for a fetish magazine, but for now she resembled a voluptuous sexual cartoon. From the reception desk you had an unobstructed view into the Tres Jolie – the bar was crowded with a group of yelping and whooting twenty-somethings having a starter drink before hitting the clubs, and Snow had positioned himself so Luisa would be likely to notice him, hanging his jacket over an adjacent stool to prevent anyone from sitting beside him. He watched out of the corner of his eye as she chatted up the receptionist, a bellboy, the manager. When she spotted him her face emptied and she took a step toward the elevators, as if intending to sneak past the bar without acknowledging him, but then she adopted an expression of haughty reserve and approached to within an arm’s length and said, ‘Craig?’

Snow glanced up and smiled – a well-rehearsed smile of boyish delight to which a dash of sadness was added.

‘What are you doing here?’ she asked. ‘The school . . . they told me they didn’t know what happened to you?’

He persuaded her to sit and told her an equally well-rehearsed story consisting of half-truths and outright lies. He had, he said, experienced an emotional crisis. Thinking that he would never be able to exorcise the residue of feelings for his old flame, he’d decided that the most honorable thing he could do for Luisa was to remove himself from the picture and, obeying an impulse, he bolted. It was an act of desperation, perhaps of cowardice, for which he apologized. He had wanted to say goodbye, but she was a woman whom you did not say goodbye to easily. If he had come to her, her beauty, her spirit . . . they would have been too great an allure and he would not have been able to sustain the courage of his convictions. En route to Miami, however, he experienced an epiphany. He couldn’t think of anything other than Luisa. Her scent, her mouth, her sensitivity, the very sum of her pervaded his thoughts and nowhere could he find a trace of his obsession with his former love. It was a consummate irony, he said, that by running away from the object of his desire he had dissolved the bonds that prevented him from attaining it, though it was characteristic of the ironies that seemed to rule his existence.

Snow did not believe Luisa had bought into his story. She maintained a cool and disaffected mask throughout and he had been planning to amp up the emotion, to say that he expected nothing of her, he realized how badly he must have hurt her, and he would go his own way if that were her wish, etc. . . . but at this juncture she drew him into a passionate kiss, drowning him in perfume, engaging him with tongue and breasts, eliciting cheers and approbative comments (‘Fuck, yeah!’ and ‘Dude, if you don’t hit that, I will!’ and the like) from the nearby twenty-somethings, some of whom had been eavesdropping. Luisa blushed and led Snow from the bar, accompanied by a smattering of applause, and into the elevator, where unrestrained kissing and fondling supplanted the need to speak, and thence to her suite on the ninth floor, an interior decorator’s wet dream of ‘travertine floors, faux-zebra-skin rugs, Calcutta marble counters, and petrified wood accent tables . . .’ (Out of boredom he had read and re-read the hotel’s brochure while waiting for Luisa.) Amidst this hideous thousand-dollar-per-night splendor the evening held few surprises, yet Snow was unsettled to discover how demanding Luisa was in the bedroom. He felt like a German Shepherd being put through his paces. Harder, faster, deeper. Heel. He supposed her aggression and dominance were due to her enforced docility at home. Thankfully he had procured a supply of Viagra and was able to perform up to her standards, emerging from the training run unscathed apart from a bite mark or two and a sore tongue.

Around noon they went shopping for lingerie, a brief excursion that saw her buy a variety of peignoirs, bra-and-panty sets, and a number of more risqué costumes. Upon their return to the Bon Temps, Luisa put on a fashion show, modeling each and every item, breaking from the process for bouts of coitus interruptus. Their involvement had been so all consuming that it had frustrated Snow’s desire to extract information from her about the PVO, but the fashion show afforded him an opportunity to ask his questions. He had thought that he would have to be subtle in his interrogation, but once he got her started Luisa spoke freely about her husband’s lack of character and his nefarious activities. One typical exchange went as follows:

 Under a threatening sky, with the bumpy, leaden underbellies of the clouds passing low overhead, winded from altitude (eight thousand feet) and exertion, Snow sat on a ridge top high above Tres Santos, eating a chocolate bar and peering at the village through binoculars. Except for two striking additions, the place was as he remembered – an impoverished outpost of humanity whose sorrows were obscured by distance, lent the illusion of tranquility by a lack of definition. Tres Santos was laid out on a relatively flat stretch of ground bounded by two rocky hills, their lower slopes forested with pine, the boughs ghost-dressed with rags and streamers of morning mist. A red dirt road with ruts brimming with rainwater angled away between the worn hills, leading toward the village of Nebaj. Whitewashed one- and two-room houses ranged a cross-hatching of muddy streets, many having a vegetable plot and banana trees for a back yard, and there were wandering pigs, goats, a cantina with a hand-lettered sign above the entrance, Cantina Alhambra, and a couple of dinged-up mini-trucks, Toyotas, both painted a bilious yellow. Surmounting the hill to the east stood the most impressive of the additions – a stubby white building without windows or doors or any feature whatsoever, jutting up from the summit like a strange, geometrically precise tooth from a moldering green jaw. At the base of the hill, about one hundred feet from the edge of the village, was a long single-story structure of pink concrete block with multiple doors and windows – it brought to mind an elementary school annex.

He replaced the binoculars in their case and finished the chocolate bar. An updraft made him shiver. He pulled the cowl of his sweatshirt over his head and zipped up his windbreaker, wishing the overcast would lift. He’d forgotten how cold it could get in the highlands. He shouldered his backpack and started down the hill, losing sight of the village once he was among the pines. With every step he felt lighter, more buoyant, as though the stupidity of what he was doing, the sheer pointlessness, somehow allayed his fears. Near the bottom of the hill he caught sight of Tres Santos again and his resolve faltered, yet not until he set foot on the dirt streets did his pace slow and weakness invade his limbs. He felt as though he were going against an invisible tide flowing in the streets, striving to bear him back among the pines. From his previous visit he surmised that the men of the village were working in the fields that terraced the gentler slopes on the opposite side of the hills, but now their absence seemed evidence of desolation. The women, who normally would wave or peek from their doorways, hid behind curtains and the one person who came forth to greet him, a naked toddler gnawing on a pulped mango, was snatched back into the shadows by his mother. No music, no chatter. Tension was a stench into which the smells of ordure and diesel fuel and cookery were folded.

The Cantina Alhambra was dingy and cramped, with plaster walls adorned by a religious calendar and the framed photo of an elderly Mayan man in a shabby suit coat posing stiffly for the camera – a black crepe ribbon cut diagonally across a corner of the frame. Three wooden tables and eight chairs were scattered about, and fencing off the rear of the room was a crudely carpentered counter behind which stood a pretty girl of fifteen or sixteen with an impassive air, glossy wings of hair falling down her back, and strong Mayan features. She wore a white huipil with a pattern of embroidered roses across her breasts. At her rear was a doorway covered by a red-and-white checkered plastic curtain. She spoke neither English nor Spanish, only Mam, the language of the region, and Snow was forced to pantomime his desire for coffee. She produced a bottle of beer and a dusty glass. Snow decided it wasn’t worth the effort to attempt a more accurate definition of his needs. He carried the beer to one of the tables and sat with his back against the wall, looking out at the empty street, now and again glancing at the girl, who swiped idly at the countertop with a rag.

Sipping the tepid beer failed to improve his outlook. He’d wait here fifteen minutes, he decided, no more, and then walk about the village, see what developed. And then, depending on his state of mind, he would either approach the pink building – the whorehouse, he suspected – or he would get the hell out of Dodge. At the moment he leaned toward the latter. He had satisfied his commitment, he told himself. It had been without any real purpose, a romantic gesture, a sop to his conscience, a token idiocy. Now that he had come to Tres Santos and found nothing of consequence, seen nothing that bore upon Guillermo or the skull or anything in his past, he could go home with a clear conscience.

Wherever home might be.

He lifted the bottle to his lips and a slim, pale, diminutive man emerged from the back room, pushing aside the plastic curtain. In his early thirties by the look of him, the same height as the girl, at least a head shorter than Snow, with barbered dark brown hair and a loose-fitting, button-less white shirt woven of coarse cloth. He had a TV actor’s plastic beauty, a clever symmetry of feature that appeared to be the work of a surgeon whose intent had been to create the face of a male doll with sharp cheekbones and a square jaw, yet one capable of simulating a feminine sensitivity, this implied by the largeness of his eyes and the fullness of his lips. He brushed the girl’s hair aside and kissed the side of her neck, putting a stamp on the nature of their relationship. He nodded pleasantly to Snow, rested his elbows on the counter, and said, ‘Doing some exploring, are you?’

Snow, flustered by the man’s sudden intrusion, aware of who he must be, said, ‘I’m sorry. What?’

‘Exploring.’ The man indicated Snow’s backpack. ‘Hiking. Taking in the scenery.’

‘Oh, right. I’m heading for Nebaj.’

‘Nebaj? What’s the attraction? Nebaj is a shithole.’

‘There’s a bus . . . to the city.’

‘Ah!’ The man stepped from behind the counter and, without invitation, joined Snow at his table. Snow was alarmed to have him so near. The cantina seemed more cramped than before, as if the man occupied a much greater space than in actuality he did. His movements were deft, precise, yet theatrical in their precision, and his eyes looked to be set at a peculiar angle within their orbits, canted slightly downward, investing his stare with an unnerving flatness. He flicked his hand toward Snow’s bottle and said, ‘A bit early for beer, no?’

‘I wanted coffee, but I didn’t know how to ask.’

The man spoke peremptorily to the girl, who vanished into the back room, and then said brightly, ‘Coffee’s on the way. Care for some eggs, some tortillas?’

‘No, that’s . . . I’m fine.’

‘Itzel can fix you something. It’s not a problem.’

‘I’m not really hungry.’

‘Well, if you change your mind, it’s no problem.’

‘Thanks.’

Snow couldn’t place the man’s accent. It was definitely not Temalaguan. Possibly some place farther to the south. Argentina or Chile.

‘You know,’ the man said. ‘You look familiar.’

‘I don’t think so.’

‘You don’t think you look familiar to me? That’s quite a presumption.’

‘I meant, I don’t believe we’ve met.’

‘I didn’t say we’d met.’ The man’s voice held an ounce of irritation and Snow had the impression that he was seething with anger, that anger was his base emotion.

Itzel returned with a tray bearing a jar of instant coffee, another of Cremora, a cup of hot water and a spoon. Chickens squabbled out in the street. A pig trotted by, emitting soft, rhythmic grunts. The coffee restored Snow somewhat and he hunted about for a conversation starter, something that would lighten the mood.

‘You’ve been in my head,’ the man said.

Snow was caught off guard, perplexed by this peculiar phrasing.

‘You or someone very like you,’ the man went on. ‘I’ve been trying to remember.’

‘I’ve no idea what you’re talking about.’

‘Of course not. Why should you?’

Snow’s sense of unease spiked. ‘Look, I . . .’

‘You know who I am, don’t you?’

‘Maybe,’ said Snow, uncertain whether or not he could pull off an outright lie.

‘So who am I?’

‘I figure you’re the guy who lives in the big house on the hill.’

‘And you believe that because . . . ?’

‘You’re obviously not from around here and yet you act like you’re in charge.’

The man chuckled. ‘I believe you know more about me than that.’

Sitting up straight, Snow said, ‘I’m not sure what you think I know, or why you’re fucking with me. I’m just going to drink my coffee and move along.’

‘That’s a real shame. Visitors are at a premium here.’

Snow’s eyes went to Itzel. She stood with her head down, hands spread on the countertop, unmoving, as if bracing herself.

‘You ought to stay a while,’ the man said. ‘I’ll put you up at my place.’

‘That’s kind of you, but I can’t afford to miss my bus.’

‘Tres Santos may not look like much, but it offers a variety of attractions for the casual tourist. Of course the main attraction is . . .’ He performed a florid gesture, as though presenting himself to an audience. ‘Me. People come from all over to ask for my advice. I counsel them, and sometimes I put on a little show. An entertainment. It’s only an exercise routine, but I’m told it’s unique.’

‘Yeah, well.’ Snow gulped down coffee. ‘Wish I had the time.’

Without warning, the man hauled Snow’s pack over to his side of the table.

‘Hey!’ Snow made a grab for the pack, but the man fended him off. ‘What’re you doing?’

‘Having a peek inside.’

The man unzipped the top of the pack and began to inspect the contents.

Snow froze – then, thinking a lack of response would lend substance to the man’s suspicion that he, Snow, knew more than he had admitted, he reached for the pack again. The man caught his wrist and squeezed until the bones ground together, causing Snow to cry out. He struggled to break free, but the man’s grip was irresistible.

‘Please don’t do that again,’ the man said, letting him go.

Snow put pressure on his wrist to quell the pain and gazed out into the street. The gray sky and reddish mud, the puddles, the houses and the portion of the hillside framed by the doorway seemed to flutter, as if all the air and every object within view were made of the same inconstant stuff and troubled by a single disturbance. He was in deep shit, now. A thrill passed through a nerve in his jaw.

The man riffled through Snow’s passport. ‘Snow,’ he said, and repeated the word a couple of times, as if amused by it. ‘George Snow.’

‘Craig,’ said Snow, speaking out of reflex.

‘It says here, George.’

‘I don’t like George. My middle name is Craig. That’s what I go by.’

‘I think George is better for you,’ said the man indifferently.

He pulled out a filthy work shirt from the pack, deposited it on the floor, and extricated a pair of jeans.

‘It’s just dirty laundry,’ Snow said, and rubbed his wrist.

‘So it would appear.’ The man searched the pockets of the jeans. ‘What’s this?’

He fingered out a pill bottle, opened it, and shook three blue capsules out into his palm. ‘These aren’t prescription, are they?’

Alarmed, first by the fact that he had brought the pills through customs unawares, and secondly because he feared the man would force him to take them, Snow finally said, ‘A woman gave them to me in Miami. I didn’t realize I had the bottle with me.’

‘It’s contraband? Drugs? Are they any good?’

‘If you like to hallucinate.’

he man studied the pills and then popped them into his mouth. After a swift internal debate, realizing that if the man felt he had been poisoned he might punish him, Snow elected to err on the side of caution.

‘If I were you I’d bring those things back up quick,’ he said. ‘The woman who gave me them, she said not to do more than one.’

The man shook out two more pills and gulped them down.

‘Jesus! You need to stick a finger down your throat. Trust me, that shit will fuck with your head!’

‘Don’t be alarmed. Nothing will happen to me.’

‘I don’t know. I’ve done a shitload of drugs and one of those pills messed me up for a more than a day.’

The man seemed to take offense at this statement and said defiantly, ‘I have a strong resistance to drugs. I could swallow them all and it wouldn’t hurt me.’

Despite the man’s confidence, Snow was unconvinced, but there was nothing for it other than to hope he knew what he was doing.

‘If they don’t affect you,’ Snow asked, ‘why take them?’

‘Sometimes they affect me – they just don’t harm me.’ The man lost interest in the pack, pushing it aside with his foot. ‘Your coffee must be getting cold. Would you care for more?’

Anything to delay, thought Snow. He needed time to think how to deal with this teensy fucker. He said he would and held up his cup to attract Itzel’s attention.

‘I have better coffee at my place.’ The man scraped back his chair. ‘Bring your pack. I’ll have someone wash your clothes.’

Hoping for guidance, Snow glanced at Itzel once again, but her eyes were glued to the countertop . . . perhaps a message in itself. He thought about taking a swing at the man, catching him by surprise, but doubted that would end well. Despite his stature, the man’s strength hinted at extreme physical competence, so running was probably out of the question.

The man preceded him into the empty street and established a brisk pace, heading for the pink building, but stopped abruptly and, putting a hand on Snow’s chest, said, ‘You know who I am. Don’t deny it.’

Snow believed that if he admitted to any knowledge, it would be a fatal misstep. He could feel his heart beating against the man’s palm. ‘I’ve never laid eyes on you before today.’

The man struck him in the face – it was a light slap of the kind used to wake someone up, but his hand felt like solid bone and the blow twisted Snow’s head around and made him take a backward step.

‘I think you have,’ said the man.

‘I swear, I’ve never seen you! I don’t know anything about you!’

The man seemed dispirited, as if he had been seeking not an admission, but rather had hoped to learn something. He started walking again, The gray light flattened things out – the hill with its two buildings resembled a painted backdrop.

‘You can call me Jefe,’ the man said. ‘That’s what everyone calls me, but it’s not who I am.’

Women peered from the windows of the pink building as they approached – one of them beckoned, soliciting a visit – yet Jefe paid her no mind and entered a door with an intercom mounted on the wall beside it. Beyond lay a tunnel with concrete walls and a ceiling less than a foot higher than Snow’s head, lit for its entire length by fluorescent fixtures. He pictured electric carts rolling along the tunnel, conveying grim uniformed men with side arms and secret orders and missile codes toward a command center. He kept an eye on Jefe, watching for a sign that Luisa’s pills were having an effect, but the man’s walk held steady and his conversation was terse and on point.

After three or four minutes, by Snow’s estimation, they came to a large paneled room with indirect lighting, a burgundy carpet, and three doors leading, he assumed, to bedrooms, kitchen, and so on. Its central feature was a long banquet table set about with high-backed chairs, the dining surface fashioned from an ancient church door carved with a complex scene that illustrated a typically Temalaguan confusion of cosmologies – anguished men and woman supplicating the angels who hovered just beyond reach, appearing both disinterested in their suffering and unaware of the doings of the less well-defined beings above them who looked to be doing a portage across the heavens with some kind of solar vessel. A mahogany sideboard stood against one wall, supporting an array of liquor bottles, ice buckets, and glasses, and mounted above it was a flat screen TV. Four photographic prints in aluminum frames hung on the opposite wall, each depicting a spectacular cloud formation. For all the luxuriousness of its appointments, the room stood two-thirds empty, far too spacious for such a paucity of furnishings, and this indicated to Snow that while its primary inhabitant might have an awareness of interior decoration, he was seriously myopic as regarded an overall aesthetic.

Jefe told him to have a seat at the table, spoke into an intercom mounted on the wall, and then said to Snow, ‘I’m going upstairs for an hour or two.’ He opened the door to reveal a stairwell. ‘Yara will bring coffee and whatever else you require.’

Snow had nurtured a faint hope that Yara had survived the disappearance of the cult, but that had been wishful thinking and now, hearing her name, her presence alluded to so casually, it was as if a bomb had gone off in his head, obliterating his ability to reason. Once Jefe had gone he stood up from the table and immediately sat back down, dizzy to the point of passing out. He stared at the two doors at the far end of the room, shards of memory falling through his mental sky, and when a woman entered, wearing a shapeless gray smock (a nightgown, his initial impression), moving stiffly, slowly, her hair close cropped, a monastic look, lines of strain on her face deeper than those he would have predicted a thirty-year-old to have . . . and when he recognized her to be Yara, his Yara, miraculously alive and still beautiful despite the attrition of time, he started up from his chair again, intending to embrace her, a great joy building, enfolding him like a garment he had prepared in anticipation of this day yet never thought to wear . . . but then he halted his approach. Her expression betrayed no trace of any kindred emotion, not an ounce of welcome or happiness. She wrangled a chair back from the table and collapsed into it, breathing shallowly. After collecting herself, she said, ‘You have some things to wash?’

‘Yara,’ he said. ‘It’s me . . . Craig.’

‘I know who you are. Show me your clothes and I’ll wash them.’

Baffled by her response, he asked what he had done to anger her.

‘Apart from running out on me?’ She sniffed. ‘Nothing.’

‘I tried to persuade you to come with me.’

‘You should have tried harder. You could at least have told me you were leaving. You didn’t have to sneak away.’

‘You don’t . . .’

‘I hunted for you everywhere. People thought I was demented, I went on about you so. You should have told me. I wouldn’t have tried to stop you and we could have said a proper goodbye.’

‘It was all . . .’ He gave his head a frustrated shake. ‘You don’t understand how much I beat myself up for abandoning you, but I was afraid. I didn’t know what else to do.’

‘I guess I shouldn’t blame you for being yourself.’

That stung him, but he reminded himself that these emotional post-mortems unfailingly began with a litany of bitterness.

‘You’re not truly at fault,’ she said. ‘You weren’t a part of what was going on. But it hurt and I hated you for a long time. Seeing you again brings back a great deal of anger and heart-sickness, but I suppose it’s just residual emotion.’

‘Yara, listen. I . . .’

‘Don’t bother. It’s all in the past.’

‘Maybe for you. It’s been my present for the last thirteen years.’

She laughed humorlessly. ‘Don’t tell me you’re a romantic at heart!’

‘Listen to me for a minute, okay?’

‘If you’ve come here thinking you can rekindle our affair, forget it. That part of my life is over.’

‘How can that be?’ he asked. ‘You’re still young, you’re a beautiful woman.’

She liked hearing that, he could tell, yet tried to hide the fact, thinning her lips in disapproval.

‘I didn’t come here for any reason I can name,’ he said. ‘I assumed you were dead. I may have hoped to see you again, but the hope wasn’t real. It was . . .’

‘Stop it!’

She slapped the table and, as if cued by that percussive sound, a mechanical grinding issued from the stairwell, growing louder with each passing second, impeding their conversation.

‘What the hell’s that?’ Snow asked.

‘He’s flying. Shut the door.’

Snow did as instructed, reducing the noise by half, and returned to the table.

‘Did you notice there aren’t any men in the village?’ Yara asked, cutting off his unspoken question. ‘Within a month after we came to Tres Santos, Jefe had killed them all. Some tried to run, he seemed to know when they ran, and where, and he hunted them down. He kills every man who comes here except for the PVO guys, and he’ll kill them once they’ve outlived their usefulness. I actually believe he gets along with men better than he does with women, but it’s like he’s obeying some beastly imperative, wiping out the competition.’ She paused. ‘He’s probably going to kill you.’

Snow wanted to make light of what she had told him, but could not.

‘Don’t look so shocked,’ Yara said. ‘I don’t know how you found this place, but you knew about the PVO, didn’t you? You must have realized you were taking a risk by coming here.’

‘There must be some way of dealing with him. What should I do?’

Yara’s face, which had softened a little, walled over again. ‘I can’t help you.’

Snow was hard put to think of anything to say.

‘Do you want me to explain?’ Yara asked. ‘Can you listen without interrupting, without telling me I’m being ridiculous? I don’t have the patience for that anymore. There’s a lot I don’t understand, but what I know, I know.’

‘How long have I got?’

‘Chances are you’re safe for today.’ She brushed strands of hair from her eyes and, with no small degree of malice, said, ‘Even if I’m wrong, we have time. He’ll be flying for hours.’

 It was raining steadily by the time they drove out from Tres Santos in the late afternoon, heading for Nebaj and the north in one of the battered yellow mini-trucks. The women of the village expressed no interest in having them join their celebration. They wanted a swift return to normalcy, to their traditions, and they treated Snow and Yara, despite their service, with disdain, there being no place amongst them for a gringo and his pale, crippled woman. As for Snow, he had no desire to linger in Tres Santos a second longer than was necessary. He suspected that these women would be forever at their burning, whether in dreams or by means of some surrogate or effigy. Their new husbands, if husbands they took, would be lucky to survive such passion.

Yara had barely spoken since Jefe’s death and she was not given now to speech. As they jounced over ruts and potholes, Snow jamming the gears in order to gain traction in the mud, she rubbed his leg every so often – whether to reassure herself or him, he could not have said – and offered neither commentary nor advice. In truth, he would have had little in the way of response, preoccupied by the gusting wind and the rain driven sideways against the windshield, and by the precipitous drop-off to the right of the narrow road. They were past the halfway point to Nebaj when the storm broke full upon them. In those regions it would not have been considered either an especially fulminant storm or one of great duration, unremarkable as to its apparitions and thunderous concatenations and lurid bursts of lightning that illuminated sections of the pine forest, bleaching the separate trees to bone-white and shrouding them in purple-haloed effulgence like sainted relics set to burn on the mountainside, charms and admonitions against some ghastly form of predation. It sufficed, however, to persuade Snow to shut down the engine and switch off the useless wipers. He cracked a window to prevent the glass from fogging over with their breath. Rain washed down in spills thick as gray paint, its drumming increased to deafening measure. He had wanted to talk to Yara, but now he thought the storm with its progeny of light and sound was a blessing, for there was too much to be sifted through and digested and mulled over before they could begin to discuss what had happened and what would be. And yet to sit there encysted in that musty cab, blind to the world, surrounded by spirits real and unreal, separated one from the other by silence, by a gearbox and a divider with receptacles for drinks and maps and such, that was no better solution to the moment. His mind pulled ahead, worrying about how they would negotiate the border crossing and where they could live and what he would do with a woman as damaged as Yara at his side, all the demeaning practicalities and shameful concerns that would inevitably dissolve the bond they had forged anew, a bond already once broken. He wished he could resist these dour thoughts, but they were ingrained in him – he had too long cohabited with the idea that love born of illusion would never prosper, and the principle that every truth could be fashioned into the lie of itself. It seemed to him all they had undergone and felt and done would one day be diminished and relegated to mere narrative, its heroes oversimplified or their heroic natures overborne by the mundanity of detail, a story so degraded, so shorn of wonderment by telling and re-telling that – despite love and redemption, suffering and loss, mystery and death – it would be in the end as though nothing had happened.

The rain abated and the worst of the storm moved toward the lowlands. Snow started the engine. Yara reached a hand across the divide and he warmed her chilled fingers. In her face was a serenity he could not fathom. He thought she must be drawing upon some secret female provenance to which he had no access, but something stirred inside him, sparked to life by her expression, and he had then a fresh recognition of what they had accomplished together, the destruction of a monster, the killing of a thing that could not be killed. And although it went against every negative of his former faith in nothing, he submitted to belief and believed . . . believed in alchemy, in the marriage of souls, in accomplishment and noble obligation, and believed also that he would never fail her again, nor she him.

Static spat and crackled on the radio, salseros lamented about injustice and pop divas celebrated the endlessly trivial. In a thin voice Yara sang along with those songs she knew and they talked of inconsequential things, favorite bands and bad movies, touching one another often to reaffirm their connection, for they were their own country now. When they turned onto the highway they lapsed into silence, Yara gazing out the window and Snow focusing on the traffic, each alone with their thoughts, each striving to ignore the outposts of doubt and fear that flashed at them from the darkness, as vivid in their enmity as the gas station-hotel-brothel where they stopped to fill the tank – a big, ugly, raw building englobed in lemony radiance, like the local headquarters of evil and sons, and out front a string of six short-skirted women standing brazen and hipshot along the road, shadowy figures who bared their breasts for speeding cars, watched over by a chain-smoking devil with gold incisors, who strode back and forth, cursing the cars, the women, cursing everything in sight, pimping the apocalypse. Some drunken teenage soldiers, Indian kids with AK-47s, lounged by the entrance, giving people a hard time. In a spirit of playful menace, one lifted the hem of Yara’s skirt with his rifle barrel – upon seeing her disfigured legs he let the skirt fall, made the sign of the cross, and held conference with his friends. Snow hustled her into the truck before they could decide to investigate further and drove away quickly. After that they kept to the back roads, to blue highways and unmapped trails, driving north and west into the realms of the ordinary, ordinary monsters and ordinary seductions, past towns whose sole reason for being was a refusal to die, making for a land of cynical enchantments and marathon sales, of lap dancers for cancer and political doctrine based on new wives’ tales, the Great American Salmagundi in all its glorious criminal delirium, with nothing to sustain them, nothing certain, only the strength of their imperfections and hope reborn a dragon in their hearts, while behind them the old world trembled and the light caught fire and roared.

The seminal idea for Griaule occurred to me when I was stuck for something to write about while attending the Clarion Writer’s Workshop. I went out onto the campus of Michigan State University and sat under a tree and smoked a joint to jog my brain. I then wrote down in my notebook the words ‘big fucking dragon.’ I felt exceptionally clever. Big stuff, I thought, is cool.

The idea of an immense paralyzed dragon, more than a mile in length and seven hundred feet high, that dominates the world around him by means of its mental energies, a baleful monster beaming out his vindictive thought and shaping us to its will . . . this seemed an appropriate metaphor for the Reagan Administration, which was then busy declaiming that it was ‘Morning In America,’ laying waste to Central America, and starting to rip the heart out of the constitution. That likely explains the political content carried in one degree or another by the stories. So in a sense, the Griaule stories concern two mythical beasts, a dragon and an addled president whose avatar is an undying monster . . . or vice versa.

I don’t know what it is that has brought me back so many times to Griaule. Generally speaking, I hate elves, wizards, halflings, and dragons with equal intensity. Perhaps it’s because I saw a list once of fictional dragons ordered by size and mine was the biggest. This caused me to think that I might make a career of writing stories about the biggest whatever. The biggest gopher, an aphid the size of a small planet, a gargantuan dust bunny, and so forth. Fortunately I never followed up on the idea.

When I returned home to Ann Arbor from the workshop I asked my brother-in-law, James Wolf, an artist and the guitarist in my band, if he would make me a drawing of the dragon – I wanted something to meditate upon while working out the story. I expected something rudimentary, but he did the dragon in water colors on flimsy, oversized sheets of paper and taped them together, thereby creating a rendering eight feet long and three feet high, complete with all the vats and ladders and etcetera that were part of my conception. I tried to preserve it as best I could, but eventually it became tattered and unsalvageable. Anyway, I stared at the painting for a year or so, endured a thoroughly unhappy love affair that formed the emotional core of the story, and eventually wrote it all down.

This story had its genesis in the notion that Griaule might be infested with parasites. It was an interesting notion and I envisioned the plot to be more-or-less an excuse for doing a taxonomical survey of the dragon’s interior, something that would have suited a more novelistic approach to the subject. Indeed, ‘The Scalehunter’s Beautiful Daughter’ was initially intended to be a portion of a novel, or rather a series of stories linked by excerpts from fictive works about the dragon, but I soon realized I had little desire to read such linkages and even less to write them.

Then, too, I wrote the story during a stressful time. My mother was dying and I was living in her cramped Ormond Beach condo, assisting in her care, a grim business. The movie theater in the mall close by showed nothing I wanted to see (Yentl had played there for more than a year). I had no friends in the area – I was the youngest person in the condominium by three decades – and I had no money to speak of, no car, nowhere to go for a break except for the Denny’s down the street. Thus I was inclined to write a sunnier story (by my lights, anyway), more of a straight-ahead escapist fantasy than I might have done otherwise.

I roughed out the story while drinking coffee at Denny’s, usually in the early morning hours, writing in bursts of fifteen, twenty minutes and then running over to the condo to check on my mom. Not a lot of happy people come into a Denny’s at three o’clock in the morning, at least this was my observation. Most of the ones who seemed happy were drunks whose happiness would be short-lived, and the rest were loners, addicts, insomniacs, hookers, cops, sour-looking old men who’d had a bad night at the dog track, and losers of various stripe.

The star of the graveyard shift at this particular Denny’s was Fred the short order cook, a swarthy black-haired guy about my age who cracked wise-ass jokes through the serving window and carried on a sardonic and often amusing dialogue with the regulars. When cops stopped by for take-out he would surreptitiously mimic their radio calls – he did this with such authenticity, static and tinny voices and all, the cops would grab their walkie-talkies and respond. One night two cops went back into the kitchen and gave him a stern talking-to. Thereafter the fake radio calls ceased and, possibly as a result of this restraint upon his comic stylings, Fred’s commentary grew increasingly hostile and embittered. He started yelling at customers and soon was let go. He was rehired a couple of months later following a breakdown and a stay in a mental health facility, or so I was told. Whatever the facts were, he had lost his edge. His jokes provoked polite laughter, not legitimate mirth, and he took to offering advice that was patently the product of time spent in group therapy and was not well received.

The world of Denny’s became my world and, as tragedies like Fred’s (seemingly minor compared to my own) played out around me, I sat there drawing dragon heads on napkins, scribbling in my notebook, canoodling with one of the waitresses, living as best I could in the jaundiced light . . . the kind of light that might have shone from a cracked and dusty lantern that illuminated some claustrophobic and hermetic fissure deep within Griaule’s mountainous bulk.

 I remember little about the creation of this story, mainly because I was under the influence of the neighborhood where I wrote it. I lived during the early and mid-eighties in the Georgetown area of Staten Island, the neighborhood closest to the ferry terminal, on Westervelt Avenue, a street that aspired to be a crime wave and was populated by drug dealers, hookers, smalltime monsters, a few brave souls who considered themselves the vanguard of a movement toward gentrification and would talk rebar with you for hours, and, oddly enough, a handful of genre folks: the horror writer Craig Spector, Beth Meachem and Tappan King (at the time, editors at Berkley and Twilight Zone respectively), me, and Maureen McHugh, all living within a block of one another.

Two townhouses down from me was a crack house, its front yard littered with rusted lawnchairs and motorcycle parts, run by a fake Rasta guy from Brooklyn, Nicky, who had dropped a dime on someone higher up the food chain and in exchange had been given carte blanche by the cops. Every morning the schoolkids would stop by for their rocks and sometimes the cops would pass the house and wave to Nicky, who – the soul of expansiveness – would return the salute. He also ran an illegal taxi service and maintained a string of hookers who operated out of the abandoned cars along New York Bay, and most nights would get into screaming fights on the street out front of my house. Drug dealers wearing Just Say No T-shirts made plaintive cries beneath my window at every hour of the day. I hand-wrote most of a novel called ‘Kingsley’s Labyrinth,’ stopping only when I realized I had filled eleven notebooks with an indecipherable script that resembled seismograph readings, and I hung out with people whom I would normally run from – Uzi-toting Cubans and so forth. There were frequent gunshots and each morning when I walked out, my footsteps crunched due to the empty crack vials littering the sidewalks – it was as if a kind of glassine hail had fallen during the night.

My downstairs neighbor, a beautiful black transsexual named Renee, constantly fought with me over her right to play Connie Francis albums on her deck beneath my bedroom window at 6 a.m., an argument ended when someone cut her throat, broke all her LPs, slashed her pretty blouses, and put bleach in her fish tank. These and other neighborhood tragedies came to occupy my attention, and I grew increasingly paranoid and unsound. The then-New York City mayor, Ed Koch, would once a month herd together a bunch of the most deranged homeless people in Manhattan and ship them over to Staten Island on a late-night ferry – his way of cleaning up the city. We’d wake the next morning to find a fresh crop of schizophrenics wandering the streets, talking to the CIA, to aliens, making phone calls to heaven. Most drifted back to Manhattan, but a few took up residence, including this one guy who was given a home by someone and built a life-sized, authentic-looking electric chair and every Fourth of July weekend would drag said chair out onto the traffic island on Victory Boulevard, strap himself in, and grin at the commuters. No one to my knowledge tried to stop him – it was as if the authorities accepted this as an appropriate commentary. To top it all off I began dating a businesswoman who appeared at the outset to be level-headed, stable, but three weeks into the relationship started breaking into my apartment to clean it and one night announced that she was a ninja and capable of starting fires with her eyes. We didn’t make it very long. In my mental state, the last thing I wanted was a woman who could incinerate me on a whim.

Good times.

Somewhere in the midst of all this was a dragon, but it seemed quite mundane when contrasted with the vivid weirdness of the gangster fantasy in which I lived.

 For much of the ’00s I lived in Vancouver, Washington, essentially a bedroom community for Portland, Oregon, a gigantic strip mall with an endless supply of unprepossessing, unattractive people embarked upon the consumption of corn dogs and reality TV. This was my initial take on the town, at any rate, because, having grown up in a suburb, having steeped in its flavorless juices, I tend to loathe such places. But at the same time I firmly believe that the human species does not encompass a great range of intelligence, that the difference between an Einstein and an idiot is much less than we might imagine, and I am certain that people who are inarticulate and stolid and apparently thick often have interior lives every bit as complex and eccentric and rich as those of showier models. ‘Liar’s House’ received some criticism at the time of publication for the literate interior life of its ox-like protagonist. The criticism may have been deserved, yet this narrative tactic is not without precedent – there have been countless incidences of savant narrators throughout literature and, for my part, I’ve known plenty of uneducated people who were incapable of expressing themselves in precise language, yet had other means of self-expression and were extremely precise in their comprehension of the world, of what was going on around them. In any case, the character of my protagonist was informed by the people with whom I was surrounded. I suppose you might think of him as the personification of Vancouver, WA.

Even a paralyzed dragon must grow and change, and for this story I decided during the course of writing it that Griaule would want children – how then would he go about it? I assumed that he wanted children due to the natural desire to procreate, to create a legacy, but it might have added to the story if I had thought the matter through, because when I did so several years later I came up with an idea that would have made the link between this story and the last more apparent. I was tempted to go back in and rework the story, but decided to let things stand, figuring that it would be more honest, more illuminating as to how a writer’s style evolves, to let the story stand as written.

Then perhaps I was just being lazy.

 This story was a premature attempt to kill off Griaule, but the odd thing about these stories is that each one seems to breed a multitude of possibilities . . . and even in the final story, especially in the final story, it seemed every few pages there was the germ of yet another story. It was as if the dragon didn’t want to die and was offering up intriguing possibilities, tempting me to spare him. Now I suspect that Griaule won’t be done until I am.

I began writing these story notes while saddled with an apocalyptic case of the flu, and so had no clear idea of what I was about . . . though it seems that a main thread running through the notes is the relationship of writing to environment. However, in the case of ‘The Taborin Scale’ I have nothing salient to say on the subject. I was living in Portland, Oregon, where I now reside. My life was basically untroubled, comfortable, the writing went easily, the story just popped out. The only thing remotely interesting about the story from a background perspective is the guy upon whom the main character, George, was based – a spindly punk rocker I knew casually in New York City who made a living by going to garage sales in upstate New York, searching for antique collectibles, which he then resold. This struck me as a very organized activity for someone who by night wore his hair in spikes and howled demonically into the mike and would spit up into the air and try and catch a loogey on his face. I’m going to have to assume that this is the way writers feel who have an office and a regular home and don’t leave their possessions in storage lockers scattered across the country – I live in constant anticipation of seeing my stuff on one of those reality shows that focus on a small group of auction buyers who bid on abandoned lockers, watching the winning bidder paw through my junk, gazing with perplexity at a Hugo or a Howard or some such, wondering about what kind of loser bothers to store empty cigarette packs in a box of scribbled-in books and dirty laundry.

 One night I was playing pachinko in a crowded arcade on Avenida Seis in Guatemala City and, as sometimes happens, I got so into the game that I lost track of what was happening around me. When I looked up I discovered that not only was the arcade deserted, the proprietor preparing to roll down the metal door, but the street was devoid of traffic, with only a few frightened-looking pedestrians scurrying for cover – Avenida Seis was like Broadway in New York City, busy at every hour, and I knew something bad must have occurred to clear it so quickly. (Unbeknownst to me, a group of left-wing students and Indian activists had taken over the Spanish embassy, where an ex-president of Guatemala was being feted, and were holding him and the embassy staff hostage, their purpose being to initiate a dialogue on land reform.) I began running, heading for my hotel, seeing military vehicles (Jeeps, armored anti-personnel carriers, etc.) moving along the side streets – but my hotel was a long ways off and, since I was a gringo and paranoid, fearful of being picked up and beaten, or worse, when I saw a man slip into a doorway I ducked in after him and found myself in a gay nightclub. In addition to a lot of young guys ranging the bar, there were several dozen attractive women seated at the tables. They were all partying as if nothing untoward were happening out in the streets and so, feeling relatively secure, I stuck around for the next several hours, learning from the bartender that the women were ‘loritas’ (parakeets), upper class wives and mistresses who cultivated triviality as an armor against reality, and that their presence in the club served to protect the gay men from harassment. He went on to say that if I were so disposed it would be easy to get laid – many of the women were promiscuous to a fault – but there would be risk involved, since their husbands and boyfriends were mostly right-wingers and/or associated with the military.

The left-wing group holding the embassy was reacting to the fact that when the owners of immense ranches in the north of the country found that Indians had settled on their land and lived there long enough to establish legal rights, they did not take the matter to the courts, where they were certain to lose, but simply hired the military to massacre the Indians and destroy their settlements – the left-wingers hoped by taking action to initiate a dialogue about land reform. The government’s reaction was to firebomb the building several hours after the takeover, killing everyone inside, including the Spanish ambassador and the ex-president, and thereafter to shut down Guatemala City for a week, closing the airport, burning all the buses that attempted to leave or enter the city, making a show of power. It was an extremely nervous time, people jumping at the least unexpected sound, a heavy military presence on almost every street corner day and night. I’d been planning to leave for Honduras the following day and, prevented from this, I spent a good bit of time at the nightclub during the week. Though I wasn’t as adventurous as my protagonist with regards to the women who habituated the place, I did have a number of conversations with some of them, and it was on these that I based the character of Luisa Bazan and the dynamic that serves a key plot point in the story.

Of all the Griaule stories, this is the most grounded in my life experience and in the political realities of Central America, a place where I’ve spent a considerable amount of time. Temalagua is, of course, a scramble of Guatemala, and the Party of Organized Violence was an actual Guatemalan entity, very much on the ascendancy when I was first there. I could point out a dozen other correspondences between fiction and my Tru-Life Adventures in this piece, but that would be overkill. The important thing, at least to me, is that writing ‘The Skull’ returned me to my original motivation in writing about Griaule, and if there are to be further stories about the dragon and his milieu, I think they’ll be more focused upon the central theme, the political fantasy, than those that preceded it.