Абрахам Меррит - Creep, Shadow!

"Why not, Dahut? You sent me as a shadow into the shadowy land and I have learned its lesson."

"What was that lesson, Alan?"

"To be merciless."

"But I am not merciless, Alan – else you would not be here."

"Now I know you lie, Dahut. It was not you who released me from that bondage."

She said: "I did not mean that… nor do I lie… and I am tempted to try you, Alan… " She came toward me, slowly. I held the point of the knife in readiness against her coming. She said:

"Kill me if you want to. I have not much love for life. You are all that I love. If you will not love me – kill me."

She was close; so close that the point of the knife touched her breast; she said: "Thrust – and end it."

My hand dropped.

"I cannot kill you, Dahut!"

Her eyes softened, her face grew tender – but triumph lurked under the tenderness. She rested her hands on my shoulders; then kissed the whip-welts one by one, saying: "By this kiss I forgive… and by this I forgive… and by this I forgive…"

She held her lips up to me: "Now kiss me, Alan – and with that kiss say that you forgive me."

I kissed her, but I did not say that I forgave, nor did I.

I let fall the knife. She trembled in my arms and clung to me and whispered: "Say it… say it…"

I pushed her away from me and laughed: "Why are you so eager for forgiveness, Dahut? What do you fear that makes my forgiveness so desirable before your father kills me?"

She asked: "How did you know he means to kill you?"

"I heard him say so when he was making that pleasant little demand for my blood not long ago. Bargaining with you for me. Promising you a substitute who would be far more satisfactory… " Again I laughed… "Is my forgiveness a necessary part of that incarnation?"

She said, breathlessly: "If you heard that, you must also know that I would not give you to him."

I lied: "I do not. Just then your servant forced me to kill him. When I was free to resume my eavesdropping – returned, in fact, to cut your father's throat before he could cut mine – you and he had gone. I supposed the bargain closed. Father and daughter reunited and of one purpose – setting forth to prepare the funeral meats – myself, Dahut – to furnish forth the marriage tables. Thrift, thrift, Dahut!"

She winced under my mockery; whitened. She said, strangled: "I made no bargain. I would not let him have you."

"Why not?"

She said: "Because I love you."

"But why this insistence upon my forgiveness?"

"Because I love you. Because I want to wipe away the past. Begin afresh, beloved…"

For a moment I had the queer feeling of double memory; that I had acted this scene before in minutest detail, had heard the same lines; and realized I had in that dream of ancient Ys, if dream it had been. And now, as then, she whispered piteously, despairingly: "You will not believe me beloved, what can I do to make you believe!"

I answered: "Choose between your father – and me."

She said: "But I have chosen, beloved. I have told you… " Again she whispered… "How can I make you believe!"

I answered: "End his – sorceries."

She said, contemptuously: "I do not fear him. And I no longer fear that which he evokes."

I said: "But I do. End his – sorceries."

She caught the pause this time, and its significance. Her eyes dilated, and for seconds she was silent, studying me. She said, slowly:

"There is but one way to end them."

I made no comment on that.

She came to me and drew my head down to her and looked deep into my eyes:

"If I do this… you will forgive me? You will love me? Never leave me… as once before you did… long and long and long ago, in Ys… when once before I chose between my father and you?…"

"I will forgive you, Dahut. I will never leave you as long as you have life."

That was true enough, but I closed every window of my mind so she might not glimpse the determination that was its source. And again, as it had been in Ys, I took her in my arms… and the lure of her lips and her body shook me and I felt my resolution weaken… but the life within me that had come from Helen was implacable, inexorable… hating Dahut as only one woman who loves a man can hate another who loves him…

She loosed my arms from round her: "Dress, and wait for me here." She passed through the door.

I dressed, but I kept the long knife close.

The tapestry that concealed the secret panel wavered, and she was in the room. She wore an archaic robe of green; her sandals were green; her girdle was not golden but of clear green stones that held the shifting gleam of waves, and a wreath of green sea flowers bound her hair. Upon her wrist was the silver bracelet set with the black stone that bore in crimson the trident symbol which was the summoning name of the sea-god. She looked like a sea-god's daughter…

I felt my resolution weakening again until she came close and I could see clearly her face. It was unsmiling, and the mouth was cruel, and the hell- sparks were beginning their dance in her eyes.

She lifted her arms and touched my eyes with her fingers, closing them. The touch of her fingers was like that of cold sea-spray.

"Come!" she said.

The ghosts of the old house were whispering: "Go with her… but beware!…"

The shadows were whispering: "Go with her… but beware!"

"Beware Dahut… " My hand tightened on the knife hilt as I followed her.

We went out of the old house. It was strange how plainly I could see. The sky was heavy with clouds, the air murky. I knew the night must be dark indeed, yet every stone and bush and tree stood out plain, as though by some light of its own. Dahut led me by a dozen paces, nor could I lessen that distance, try as I might. She moved like a wave, and around her played a faint nimbus of palest golden green like the phosphorescence that sometimes clothes a wave moving through darkness.

The shadows flittered and swayed around us, interlacing, flowing in and out of each other, like shadows cast by some great tree fretted by a fitful wind. The shadows followed us, and flanked us, and swayed before us – but they shrank from Dahut, and never was there one between her and me.

There was a glow beyond the oaks where were the standing stones. It was not the wan gleam of the corposants. It was a steady, ruddy glow as from still fires. I heard no chanting.

She did not go toward the oaks. She took a way that led upward to the ridge of rocks hiding the standing stones from the water. Soon the path topped the ridge, and the open sea lay before me. It was a sullen sea and dark, with long, slow swells breaking sluggishly on the ledges.

The path climbed steeply over a cliff which lifted above the waves a full two hundred feet. And suddenly Dahut was on its crest, poised on its verge, arms outstretched to the sea. From her lips came a call, low and inhumanly sweet; in it the plaintiveness of the gull's cry, the singing of waves over unfathomable, unspoiled deeps, the chant of deep-sea winds. It was a voice of the sea transmuted goldenly in a woman's throat, but losing no inhuman quality and taking on no human one.

It seemed to me that the surges stopped as though listening while that cry went forth.

Again she sent the call… and once again. And after that she cupped her hands to mouth and cried a word… a name.

From far out at sea there came a roaring answer. A long white line of foam sped from the darkness, a great comber whose top was the tossing manes of hundreds of white horses. It raced shouting against the ridge and broke.

A column of spume swept up and touched her outstretched hands. It seemed to me that something passed to it from her hands, and that as the spume fell something within it glittered silver with glint of scarlet.