Gordon Dahlquist - The Dark Volume

HE SAT on the rocks and took a volume of poetry from his coat pocket, Lynch's Persephone. Yet the very first poem, “Arcadia”—an ironic account of the Princess's innocent life in the Edenic gardens of her mother—caused him to close the book. Chang stuffed it back into his coat and winced at the coldness of the wind.

He looked down at his boots and scuffed the sand. He frowned. There was something buried… something blue. Making sure he was unobserved, Chang used a small, flat black stone to dig, and quickly uncovered the broken remains of a blue glass book. The pieces were of various size and jagged—if he hadn't known better, the fragments might have come from a large, brightly colored bottle. With a great deal of care he excavated a deep hole in the sand, then pushed all the glass he could find into it with his boot. He refilled the hole and covered it with stones, and continued down the sand, watching closely for any further flash of blue, but there was nothing.

INSIDE THE cabin, Elöise was speaking to Lina. Chang did not enter, turning back to the barren yard and the stark trees beyond it. The cabin felt like an over-large coffin. He thought wistfully of his city routines, longing to be standing in the cool, dusty darkness of the Library stacks. But then he sighed. It did not matter where he was— his world would still seem lost. Behind him, the door abruptly opened.

“Cardinal Chang!” called Elöise. Chang turned to her. She waited for him to speak, realized he did not intend to, then nodded with a smile. “Good morning. I was wondering if you had seen the Doctor.”

“I believe he was dragooned by Sorge—something about an ailing goat.”

“Ah.”

“Is Miss Temple in danger?”

“She is unchanged, which, as the Doctor says, is good news. She has even been able to drink a little of the Doctor's herb tea.”

“She is awake?”

“For instants only, and never herself within them, but able to take a swallow and slip back to sleep, or into dreams. She dreams constantly, I think… like clouds passing before the moon, they cross her face… and her hands clutch so…”

“The Doctor will return as soon as possible,” said Chang flatly, wondering when and for who else Elöise had ever evoked the moon and clouds. “He cannot love goat-tending.”

Elöise nodded at the sand still clinging to Chang's boots. “You walked to the sea?”

“I did.”

“I so love the sea,” said Elöise. “It lightens my heart.”

“On the Doctor's suggestion I searched again for any refuse from the airship, or any corpse washed ashore.”

“I'm sure that's very wise. And what did you find?”

“That the sea does not lighten my heart at all,” said Chang.

SVENSON CALLED to them from the muddy lane behind the house that ran to the village. Limping a step behind came Lina's husband, Sorge, whose conversational skills were such that Chang was certain the Doctor had shouted to them as soon as he could, to escape the torpor.

“The fellow himself,” Chang observed to Elöise, smiling at Svenson's awkward waving.

“He is a very good man,” replied Elöise quietly, and they said no more until the Doctor reached them. Svenson shook hands with Sorge, refusing any thanks, then waited until the fisherman stumped up the steps and into the house.

“How fares the goat?” asked Chang.

Svenson waved the question away and turned to Elöise. “Our patient?”

“Very well, I think—of course, you must see for yourself.”

“At this point your observations are fully the equal of mine, but I will be in momentarily.” He paused, and Chang was on the verge of excusing himself, so obviously did Svenson long to say more to Elöise. Instead, before he could, the Doctor turned to him, glanced down at his boots, then back up at his face. “Did you find anything?”

“Nothing at all,” said Chang.

He was not sure why he did not mention the broken glass to Elöise—hadn't she as much right to know as Svenson? Wasn't her life as much at risk? Could it be that he did not fully trust her even now?

“Yet I am unsure if I have walked the same ground you searched before. Sorge has mentioned the power of the tides—something might have come ashore some distance away.”

A complete fabrication—the Doctor and Chang had never spoken of this at all.

“Why don't I show you?” offered Svenson. He turned to Elöise. “We shall just be two minutes.”

“I will see if Lina will make tea,” Elöise replied, smiling, with the exact same careful tone.

AS THEY walked to the sand Chang quickly described finding the blue glass shards. They stopped at the ring of black rocks, where Svenson lit a cigarette, hands cupped round a match. The tobacco caught, and after a deep breath and an exhaled plume of pale smoke, the Doctor waved a pale spidery hand back toward the house.

“I did not want to say in front of Mrs. Dujong, for I do not know what it means—and after your own discovery I am even less sure. Something has happened in the village.”

“Something aside from sick goats?”

Svenson did not smile. “The men will not speak of it openly… I am convinced we must go with Sorge and see it for ourselves.”

THE BODIES were laid out on flat squares of canvas that would, once the families were satisfied, be sewn around them for burial. Several men from the village were still there—to Chang, all alike with their drab woolen coats, bearded faces, and wrinkled hard stares—and they silently made way for the two outsiders. The Doctor knelt by each corpse. From Chang's perspective, the damage was clear enough—the throats of each groom gaped wide, the wounds nearly black with clotted blood—and so he turned his attention instead to the stable. The double wooden doors were open, the muddy yard marked by too many foot-and hoofprints to untangle. Chang could see from his clothing and plastered hair that one of the dead men had lain in the rain. Any traces of blood would have been quickly obliterated by such a storm. He looked to the village men.

“Where was the other?”

Chang followed them inside. A stall door had been cracked at the hinges, as if the groom had been driven—or thrown—against it with great force. The floor was covered with damp straw, and while there were grooves and hillocks indicating a struggle, there was no way to know who or what had made them. Several stalls were now closed with rope, their wooden slats snapped or broken. Something had stirred the horses to violence.

He turned at the approach of Svenson. The Doctor studied the straw, the stall door, and then, completing the circuit, the rest of the main stable room. He glanced once to Chang, with a deliberately blank expression, then turned to the villagers.

“It seems plain enough, I am sorry to say. Sorge has suggested a wolf, or even wolves, driven out by the storm. You see the wounds required great strength.”

“And teeth?” asked Chang mildly.

“Indeed.” Svenson frowned. “The narrative is unfortunately clear. The first groom hears a disturbance and opens the doors to see what it might be—from the distress demonstrated by the horses, we know the disturbance was significant. Once outside, he was attacked. The door still open, the beasts gained entry and slew the second groom, again—” Svenson gestured to the battered stall “—with notable ferocity.”

The men nodded at each point the Doctor made. The horse snorted.

“Would it be possible,” Svenson asked, smiling encouragingly, “to see where these fellows slept?”

Their quarters were undisturbed: two bunks, an iron stove, moth-eaten blankets, and a rack of woolen stockings set to dry. A metal box of biscuits had been knocked from its shelf, the pale contents, more than likely rife with weevils, spilled out on the straw. Chang cleared his throat and met the ever-suspicious faces of the villagers.