K Jeter - The Kingdom of Shadows

“How remarkable.” The bearded man smiled, a partner in madness, though his eyes remained filled with grief. “That you should find your way to this place.” He set aside the book of old tales and stood up. “I know the one you mean.” He took Pavli by the hand. “Be quiet.”

The fragile light of the candle was left behind as the man led Pavli farther into the darkness, past the knights and ladies. The crying of children, the murmur of prayers, even the volleys of artillery shells overhead, grew remote.

“There…” Pavli’s guide whispered at his ear. “You see her, don’t you?”

The shelter tunnel angled to one side, the curved wall hiding them from the view of the others. Enough illumination slid along the damp bricks to allow Pavli to see the figure of a woman lying on the wooden bench.

“Is she the one you seek?”

Pavli knelt down by the bench. The woman’s shallow breathing barely lifted the white fabric of her gown. Her white-gold hair spilled across her bared shoulder and alongside her arm, the back of her pale hand resting on the dirt floor.

The man’s voice came even softer. “Of course she is.”

He felt his heart swell and crack inside his chest, the narrow vault of the shelter seeming to fall away to a perfect night sky. The birds shouted inside the chamber of his skull. The raven, poor foolish creature, had known, but had not known what she was. He took the woman’s fallen hand and placed it on her breast. An angel…

He was close enough to have kissed her, if he had dared. The face of Marte Helle, the angel of his uncle’s shop window, the face in the silver frame, the newspaper photo that had flared into smoke and ash in the asylum’s darkroom. All of those, and now here before him. Now he knew why he had come, what vision had guided his steps.

His hand reached down and brushed a strand of golden hair away from her brow. She made no sign of awakening, her eyelids not even fluttering. “What is the matter with her?” He looked over his shoulder at the man who had led him to this place.

“Isn’t it obvious?” The bearded man regarded her with his sad eyes. “She’s dying. She didn’t even try to get out of the studio when the shells hit – you don’t know what I’m talking about, do you? Never mind, it doesn’t matter. Two of the grips carried her here.” He shook his head. “I suppose it’s better this way. I would have been tormented by the thought of her burning.”

Pavli felt as if he had stepped through the pages of the book the man had been reading by candlelight and into one of the woodcut pictures. The old tales were the real world now, and the other merely empty dreaming. “What is the spell that has been laid upon her?”

“Ah…” The bearded man understood. “Of course. The spell… an evil magician has stolen her son from her. The young prince was killed, and his bones ground up and scattered to the winds. And now she’ll die of her grieving.”

No – Pavli shook his head. The prince is here. Somewhere in the city; that was what the raven had told him. He knew if he could wake her, tell her, she would live.

“Leave us.” He looked up at the man standing behind him. “I can help her. But you must not watch.”

“What do you mean -” The bearded man suddenly reached down, his hand laid against the side of Pavli’s face. “Your eyes,” he said wonderingly. “You must be one of them… one of her people.”

He brushed the man’s hand away. “There isn’t time to waste. You must go away.” He pointed to the angle of the tunnel, concealing the other part of the shelter. “And keep anyone else from coming back here.”

The bearded man hesitated for only a moment. “Very well. She spoke to me – a long time ago – about legends, secrets known to the ones from whom her father had taken her. What harm can it do now?” He stepped back, away from the bench with the dying woman upon it. “As you wish; I’ll stand guard for you.”

Pavli waited until the man had disappeared around the curve of the wall, then turned back to the angel lying on the bench. It struck him as something inevitable, as preordained as one page following the next in the book of old tales, that he would have come upon her in this place. She needed him, as much as he had needed her, the mere image of her face in the frayed newspaper photo and in his dreams, that had kept him alive in Ritter’s asylum.

Carefully, tenderly, he undid the ornate belt knotted at her waist. A cleverly sewn fold of cloth concealed a long row of hooks and eyes at the side of the gown. When he had separated those and unbuttoned the tight cuffs beaded with seed pearls at her wrists, it was an easy matter to remove the garment from her. He had to raise her up with a hand between her shoulder blades, so he could draw her white arms from the gown’s sleeves; as he laid her back down, leaning over her, the bloodless lips parted, whispering a man’s name.

“David…”

His heart constricted for a moment, in a pang of jealousy. He wondered who the man was, who could be so fortunate as to have her dream of being in his embrace as she lay dying.

There wasn’t time to consider such things. Not now.

She lay before him, the antique gown rumpled beneath her, its hem draped over the edge of the bench and across his knees. She had tried to speak once more, but no sound came. The effort seemed to exhaust what little strength she had left; Pavli could see her sinking deeper into unconsciousness, beyond dreaming. And closer to death.

From inside his shirt, he took the SS dagger. His thumb rubbed across the words inscribed on the blade. Meine Ehre hei?t Treue. He remembered everything that Matthi had taught him, the secrets whispered by a silken thing with his brother’s face, hanging from a wooden cross in the forest. His inheritance at last, the secrets of the Lazarenes.

With the dagger’s sharp point, he drew a shallow cut along her left wrist, then the other. In the dim light, the blood seeped out black as ink. Another wound, along her ribs; this one flowed more, the blood trickling down and soaked up by the gown beneath her. The stigmata were complete.

The wounds, the brief pain that he had been unable to avoid causing, roused her for a moment. Her eyes opened partway, her gaze out of focus as she tried to see him. She lifted her hand and grasped his arm, leaving a red mark upon his sleeve. Then she let go, her hand falling as if already lifeless.

Pavli knew there was little time left.

He reached behind Marte’s neck, to the first small points of her spine; as if they were buttons as well, that he could undo as easily as those of the gown. His fingertips dug deeper into the flesh above the bone. Something parted, her skin but not her skin; he felt the weightless substance, lighter than smoke, gathering in the crooks of his fingers. He shifted his hands, laying his palms flat against the backs of her shoulders, then drawing them slowly apart.

As his brother had taught him, had promised him – he saw it then, the skin of her death, the silken translucent matter separating from her body. She moaned, at first as though the process pained her, then a sigh, the ending of pain. He brought his hands down the smooth roundness of her arms, a silken ghost rising piece by piece from her naked form. The floating image snared for a moment at her wrists, the blood from the wounds mingling as red threads in both flesh and the slowly drifting essence. The connection thinned and then broke, the ghost hands opening like pale flowers.

Beneath her breasts, at the side of her torso, Pavli stroked his hand across the larger wound, the blood smearing against his palm. She arched her back, eyes still closed, in a dream or memory of a lover’s touch. He brought his hands lower, the dead skin parting from her throat to the soft, darker-gold hair between her legs. That flesh swelled beneath his fingertips; it was the first time he had ever touched a woman in that place, and a dizzying flush rose up across his own throat. He forced his breath deliberate, his brother’s words repeating inside his head. The moment passed, and he was able to draw his hands over her hips and across the front of her thighs.