Elizabeth Hand - Black Light

“But these are what the Malandanti serve. The unknown: the unknowable. That is why they give themselves no name, and also why their gods have many names; whereas the Benandanti believe that their master has but one.”

I tried to shake my head, found I couldn’t move. With great effort I spoke. “But—what are the Benandanti?”

Ralph’s voice grew harsh. “It is what they call themselves—‘The Good Walkers,’ and also ‘Those Who Do Well.’ That is how they see themselves: as the protectors of this world, keeping it safe from what they perceive to be dangerous to its order, and their own. But those who set themselves against the Benandanti are not treated gently, Lit—do not ever fool yourself into believing that. Even those who have served them loyally for time out of mind, may one day find themselves cast out, and—”

He fell silent. His hands upon my neck relaxed, and as they did I discovered that I could move again—though slowly, painfully, as though I were recovering from some injury. I turned to see the dance continuing before us, the dusk unaltered except where a few brilliant stars now blazed within the sky. There were more dancers now, some of them dressed in clothes that seemed less archaic though still strange to my eyes—robes and loose trousers, ribbons of bright yellow like saris or sarongs, the bright motley of harlequins. Many of the dancers were naked, or nearly so, their garments torn; and as I watched I saw another figure join the endless chain—one of the herders I had first glimpsed upon the taiga. Before I had thought its panoply of beads and leather ribands belonged to a woman, her long hair braided with bright red tassels.

But now as the figure took its place within the circle I saw that it was a man dressed as a woman. His face had been carefully scraped of any hair and his lips reddened, the same coppery color as the girl’s unbound tresses. When he moved it was with an elaborate effeminacy, his hands drawing circles in the air as he stood on one leg, like a heron, and then began the same strange hopping dance as the others. I thought of what Ralph had just told me, that the Benandanti—whoever they were—could name these things but not comprehend them.

I believed him. The man-woman ducked in and out between the other dancers, his arms snaking through the air. He did not look ridiculous, but frightening: his eyes wide and staring, his mouth a red gash in a face powdered white with wood-ash. As he leaped his braid tossed wildly, and its crimson tassels crowned his head like feathers, or horns.

And suddenly I knew what he reminded me of—the cave painting I had seen in the Nursery five years before. The same blankly staring eyes; the same slashed mouth. But strangest of all was the way one leg was raised, a clumsy accessory to the dance—and that, too, reflected the image of a man in animal costume, his foot injured or grotesquely foreshortened.

“But I’ve seen him!” I cried, pointing.

“Who?”

“That one, there—”

But already the man-woman was gone, lost within the moving circle. I pulled away from Ralph, no longer caring if it was cold, no longer caring if I was a million miles or a million light-years from Kamensic. “I saw him,” I repeated angrily. “At the Nursery when I was twelve. There was a painting there—a cave painting, it was hanging in one of the rooms. Kissy Hardwick saw it, too—she sat and talked to me for a while. It was right before she died…”

My voice trailed off. I thought of the girl in the torn blue dress, her patchwork bag spilling open on the floor between us to scatter its glittering array, pills and peacock feathers, tarot cards and earrings and a knife carved of bone…

“She had a knife,” I said. My eyes widened but I no longer saw Ralph, only that archaic blade, its handle burned russet and scored with minuscule lines. “She said she was his godchild, too, and that we were all real—she said that we were all real…”

“You are,” whispered Ralph. “Watch—”

In my mind’s eye a small dirty hand still grasped the bone knife, turning it so that light touched the tiny incisions, momentarily causing them to glow. Then it was as though someone tossed dust into my face. My eyes teared as I drew back and raised a hand before me.

But there was no dust clouding the air; only a small spare figure standing alone beneath a birch tree. The circle dance had retreated, so that they were small black columns ranged against the purple sky. So had the little group of reindeer herders. They were perhaps fifty feet away, no longer tending their animals but aligned side by side, watching the redhaired girl. Beside her stood the white reindeer, head upraised.

And it remained thus, absolutely still. Were it not for the way its skin shuddered beneath the skeins of midges upon its flanks, I would have thought it a statue carved of stone or snow. Beside the reindeer lay the bulky, fur-wrapped bundle that had been carried by its mate, and above it stood the girl, gazing at the birch with her hands cupped in front of her. In the eerily charged light I could see her clearly—the too-vivid stain of cinnabar and ochre upon her hair, a network of reddish lines striating her cheeks. Her eyes were wide open, the pupils lost within silvery irises, and that, too, gave me a flash of the figure in the cave painting with its maddening stare.

“Why does she look like that?” I whispered.

“Poppies,” said Ralph. “Papaver somniferum …”

He bent and let his fingers play with a dried stalk, one of thousands nodding in the night wind; then straightened, stripping dead leaves and an oval seed-capsule from its tip. He held it out to me, a small brown globe with a ridged crown about its top. I shook my head.

“No,” I said. “I—I don’t want it—”

Ralph ignored me, taking my hand and prising it open so that he could place the seed-head in my palm. “Don’t worry,” he said, his smile edged with disdain. He closed his hand around mine, squeezing it shut so the seed-capsule splintered and cut into my palm. “It’s outgrown its usefulness, except for the seeds. You have to pick them after they bloom, before the capsules are fully ripe. And to get any kind of high you have to eat a lot of them”— he inclined his head toward the girl beneath the tree. —“like she has.”

As though she had heard us, the girl started, blinking; then turned away. She walked slowly, stumbling and catching herself in a stoned parody of the circle dance. When she reached the bundle on the ground she hesitated, then knelt beside it and began to fumble with its leather bonds.

It took her several minutes, unraveling thongs and layers of hide and tossing them aside. Despite my fear I found myself inching forward to see.

“Oyum kami,” she said, and leaned to embrace what lay before her.

It was the body of a man, naked, his dark hair falling loose from beneath a conical leather hat. His face was gaunt, the high cheekbones scarified with straight lines; his eyes had been sewn shut. But even from that distance, even across all those thousands of years, I knew him.

“Axel,” I breathed.

“Kami bö,” whispered the girl. She took the ravaged face in her hands and kissed it, lingeringly, moving from brow to mouth to chest. Then she pressed her open palms upon his breast, threw her head back and began to wail. It was a horrible sound, made more dreadful when the others of her tribe joined in. I clapped my hands over my ears in a futile attempt to drown it out, while beside me Ralph watched raptly. The lament went on and on, the girl’s voice rising to a scream and abruptly falling silent. The rest, too, fell still, though there remained an ululating echo that took a minute to die away. I looked around, and saw the distant circle of stationary dancers silhouetted against the twilight.