“Like some water?”
The voice came to him as an echo from every surface in the room, and David had to look around to find its source.
John Dee, smiling gently, was sitting in a chair at his side.
“Yes,” David whispered hoarsely. “Water.”
While he drank, two rivulets of water coursing down his chin on either side of the glass, Dee plumped up the pillows behind him. He sank back into them, and the glass rolled from his hand.
“I’m sick,” he said, sounding surprised.
The old man nodded gravely. “Yes, I’m afraid you’re very sick indeed. It’s been a long, long time since I practiced medicine, but the symptoms are unmistakable. Septicemia—blood poisoning.”
“You’re a doctor?”
“Long ago.”
“Am I going to die?”
“Yes, I’m afraid so.”
David thought about this for a few moments. “I don’t want to die.”
Doctor Dee gave him a kindly smile. “Oh, I think you do.”
“Why do you think that?”
“Because, in a very real sense, you’re dying by your own hand.” He touched his cheek on the spot corresponding to David’s wound.
“I don’t understand.”
The old man shrugged. “I suppose we may as well talk. We have some hours to pass.”
“Go on.”
“I don’t know that I can satisfy you, David. I think that, no matter how many questions I answer, you’ll find fresh questions to ask. However, I’ll do the best I can.” He sighed and spent a few moments gathering his thoughts. “Twenty years ago you went venturing into the hills beside the Scioto River in Ohio. Do you remember?”
“I remember. How did you know about it?”
“You were following someone.”
David gave him a puzzled look.
“Don’t you understand who it was?”
Frowning, he spent a while thinking about this. “It was Andrea?”
The old man nodded.
“Ah,” David sighed. After a few moments he shook his head regretfully. “Yes, I see.”
“She waited for you that night, David. She felt the hunger that drove you, and, if you’d pressed on, you would have been accepted. But you succumbed to your fear of seeming ridiculous and turned back.”
“Yes.”
“Twenty years later you went looking again, but those twenty years had hardened in you tendencies that made you unfit for the company you sought: the tendency to reject anything outside your compass as unreal or unworthy of attention, the tendency to fortify yourself within a shrine of self-regard, the tendency to scale everyone against yourself. All these things defeated you.
“From the outset, you were like someone who avidly sets out to explore a foreign country but stays only at the Hilton and associates only with other tourists. You happily gave yourself up to be duped by those of your own kind but were rigidly on guard against those who were trying to guide you into the company you set out to find. You refused every invitation, failed every test, resisted every effort to jolt you from the ruts of your old life. You wanted to shatter the walls that imprison you, but you wanted more to crouch behind them and protect them from assault.”
“I didn’t understand what was going on,” David protested feebly.
“My dear child! You ventured forth to discover uncharted lands of experience and then fled in terror when they proved to be truly uncharted. You wanted to probe beneath the surface of the piddling life your culture gives you to lead—but you wouldn’t tolerate being disconcerted. Oh my, no. You wanted your adventure to be all nicely under your control; in fact, you wanted it to be indistinguishable from the life you’d abandoned.”
“True.”
“Of all of us, only Dudley came close to smashing through to rescue you from your prison. By humiliating you and forcing you to do something you thought absurd, he shattered your fortifications.”
“Yes.”
“And having done this, he told you to go back to the house. Do you remember?”
“Yes.”
“Why did he want you to go back to the house?”
“I don’t know.”
“Because Andrea was waiting for you. In that moment you were free—vulnerable in a way you hadn’t been since childhood—and she would have made you hers.”
David nodded bleakly.
“But you wouldn’t listen to him. You desperately wanted to go off and rebuild the fortifications around your little shrine of self-regard.”
“Yes.” David spent a few minutes absorbing this into his system, wishing the truth didn’t taste so much like poison. Finally he asked: “Then why did you bother with me at all?”
“Ah. Andrea hadn’t forgotten you. She still wanted you, though there seemed little real hope of breaking you out of your prison at this late date.”
David shook his head groggily. “If that’s an answer, I don’t understand it.”
“No, I don’t suppose so,” the old man said with something like embarrassment. “It was necessary either to win you or to put you to use.”
“I still don’t understand.”
“I’m being evasive to spare your feelings, David. You would have been valued in yourself, but through your own choices you put yourself beyond reach. Still, you have served your purpose as a tool.”
“A tool for what?”
The old man shook his head. “That really doesn’t concern you.”
David closed his eyes and listened to the sound of his breathing for a few minutes, trying to make sense of it all. “Is that why you tried to kill me?” he asked at last.
Dee frowned, puzzled. “We never tried to kill you. We protected you.”
“You protected me?”
“Certainly. You would have frozen to death that night in the hills if we hadn’t woken you and herded you back to your car. And who did you think dispatched those two in the mobile home and drove off the dog?”
“Yes, but … Marianne told Mike to kill me.”
The old man sighed. “From the very beginning you’ve stubbornly refused to understand anything.”
“What do you mean?”
“A moment ago I said that you scale everyone against yourself. Some you perceive as smaller than you, and those you treat with contempt; others you perceive as greater than you, and those you treat with mindless awe. This is principally what made it impossible for you to find a place among us. Dudley and Marianne are of your own kind, but you refused to take a place beside them, because you perceived Dudley to be smaller than you and Marianne to be greater than you. Do you see?”
“I don’t think so.”
“Dudley is a master of winds, but you treated him with contempt—and will pay for it with your life. Marianne is just a child, really, but you wouldn’t dare to test your arm against hers when it came to throwing stones.”
“But that doesn’t explain about Mike.”
“Poor Mike. To anyone but you it would have been obvious that he was no more than a dog—less than a dog, really, because a dog is faithful to its master. But Mike, as you saw, was faithful to no one; he obeyed anyone who commanded him. That was what Marianne was trying to show you—but you had already made up your mind that she was greater than you. If you had dared to see yourself as her peer, you would have told Mike to kill her—or merely to lie down and go to sleep.”
“And he would have done it?”
“Certainly. He would have done it that first night in the mountains as well. But, having scaled everything to yourself, you felt you had no choice but to flee in panic. You simply would not test yourself. You would not risk finding out where you stood in relation to me or Marianne or Dudley—or to the universe itself. Ultimately you refused to risk anything.”
“Yes, I see.” David nodded mournfully, just beginning to see how much he had to grieve over. After a few minutes he drifted off to sleep again. On waking, he drank another glass of water and asked: “Who are you, anyway?”
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The doctor smiled. “And who are you?”
“Who am I?”
“Who are all of you.”
David blinked over this for a minute. “We’re … people.”
Dee raised his brows humorously. “And Andrea and I aren’t people?”
“I mean … we’re the people who live here.”
“And where do you imagine we live, David?”
“I guess I mean that we belong here.”
“And what special wisdom is it that enables you to determine who belongs here and who does not?”
“Well … We grew up here.”
“As did we, child.” He shook his head in amusement. “Did you think we were invaders from outer space? No, we’ve been here longer than you, though we haven’t always taken this shape. Yet we know no better who we are than your people know who they are. Like you, we’re simply here.”
David sighed and closed his eyes.
“Oh, I know what you want, David. You want to know how we fit into your scale—into your kind’s understanding of the universe. Isn’t that so?”
“I guess.”
“I can’t really give you a definitive answer—because your kind has fitted us into so many different understandings of the universe. In our time, we’ve been called sprites and nymphs and sylphs and satyrs and dryads. We’ve been called the Fair and the Good Folk. We have been called trolls, goblins, kobolds, and gnomes. We have been called Robin Goodfellow. We’ve been called Hill Watchers—which is perhaps the closest to a name we might choose for ourselves. We’ve been called werewolves and vampires and shape-shifters. We’ve been called familiars, demons, fiends, witches, and devils.” The old man paused to smile. “There’s a young man in Chicago who calls us yoo-hoos. We’ve been called guardians. We’ve even been called angels. For that matter, we’ve even been called gods. We were known to every ancient people—and are known now to every people who still live, shall we say, in the open. Do you find enlightenment in any of that?”
“Some, yes.”
“Good. I’m pleased.”
“But what are you doing here?”
The old man chuckled. “You never learn, David. Do you know what you’re doing here?”
David subsided into his pillows with a deep sigh. “I guess, once upon a time, I thought I knew.”
“But now you’re no longer sure.”
“No.”
“Then perhaps you’ve learned something after all.”
David fell silent and in a few minutes drifted into sleep.
On waking an hour later, he began to talk about Ellen and Tim and about people John Dee had never heard of: Bob Gaines and Gil Bingaman and others. He was talking to himself, really, knitting together the various parts of his life, but the old man understood he had to be there as a silent, nodding audience. It was as if, curiosity satisfied and anxiety stilled, David had suddenly found time to revisit rooms within himself that had long ago been locked up and forgotten.
His naps soon became longer and longer, and in between them the thread of his thoughts became more and more frayed. He exacted incomprehensible promises, which the doctor had to repeat and solemnly swear to. He asked for forgiveness from everyone, and the old man assured him it was already given. At dusk he pulled himself up and took a long, strange look into Dee’s eyes.
“You seem … benevolent,” he whispered. “You all seem benevolent.”
The old man smiled, knowing that, although David was speaking from delirium, he desperately wanted a reply. “No, you mustn’t think that. We’re not benevolent. It’s your kind that is benevolent. But neither are we exactly malevolent. Actually, we’re no more all alike than you are—but none of us would be so mad as to pretend to benevolence.”
David listened to this with an intense stare of amazement.
“Ah!” he breathed and fell back into his pillows as if all his questions had been answered. “Ah,” he said again and fell into a deep, exhausted sleep.
He awoke a few hours before dawn and was momentarily disoriented to find himself lying on the ground back in the hills, feeling wonderfully fit. Then he laughed gloriously as he recognized where he was and when he was: these were not the barren, rocky hills of New Mexico. He sprang up and the strength in his seventeen-year-old legs was so great that his feet left the ground, and he laughed again. He stretched out his arms till they were ready to part from his body and felt the power of life surge and tingle through the muscles of his back.
So it had all been a dream.
Poor Gil was sitting back there somewhere, fidgeting and fretting, chewing his fingernails to the elbow wondering where the hell David was.
Ellen (if there even was an Ellen) had just finished ninth grade in a suburb of Saint Louis; she would find someone—someone who would make her happier than David ever had done in his dream.
And Tim—Oh God, how rapturously wonderful!—Tim had not been born to feel the knife of David’s betrayal! Tears of joy flooded his eyes as he realized what a stupendous reprieve he’d been given: a brand new life, whole and pristine.
He looked into the sky and saw it was no wonder he’d had to stop and take a nap; the moon was nearly set—he’d been wandering for hours out here. No matter; he felt more alert, more alive now than he’d ever felt in his life. It was as if he’d been plugged into a thousand-watt battery. He began to run, and the hills rose and fell under his feet like images on a screen—he could run forever if he had to. But there was no question of that. He knew where Andrea was now. Why on earth had it baffled him before? She was waiting for him at the Scioto, just a few miles ahead. He could feel her there, just as she felt him.
“I’m coming!” he shouted, but simply for joy—she already knew he was coming.
In a few minutes he saw her ahead on the crest of a hill overlooking the river. As before, she stood with her back to him, facing the eastern horizon, where a smudge of amber light heralded the approaching dawn. He slowed to a walk, feeling that to arrive on the run would hardly suit the solemnity—no, the majesty—of the moment.
Soon he was climbing the last knoll, and he could see the breeze off the water lifting her hair and rippling her gown. It wasn’t until he stood at her side that she turned her head to look down at him. Looking up into her dark, smiling eyes, he felt profoundly, intimately acknowledged, as if all were known, all accepted between the two of them. Exploring those eyes, David wanted to plunge into them, to lose himself forever in their black depths. After a few moments she gave him a welcoming nod and turned back to the dawn.
Following her gaze, he gasped, electrified by what he saw.
The Scioto …
My God, the Scioto wasn’t a river, it was an ocean, stretching out below them to the horizon and beyond—far beyond. And for all these years—like everyone else!—he’d seen nothing here but a muddy little river. How incredibly blind he’d been!
A great, almost suffocating, laughter swelled up inside him as he looked anew at the glowing hills around him, at the red rim of the sun hovering over the water, at the vast, heaving sea at his feet. Tears welled up in his eyes and tumbled down over his cheeks as, feeling joyously small and foolish, he finally understood.
CHAPTER 45
Any piece of paper taken by the wind, no matter what it is, must go somewhere. This one meandered northward up the San Luis valley, crossing and recrossing the Rio Grande, hissed across the sand dunes west of the Sangre de Cristos, fluttered through the Poncha Pass, then tumbled northward across the eastern slopes of the Sawatch range for nearly a hundred miles. During the still hour before dawn, it rested in the dry foliage of a chamisa bush. Then an easterly breeze plucked it away, carried it across Highway 24, and flattened it against the door of a motel room, where Tim found it when he and Howard were returning from breakfast.
By agreement, breakfast was to have been their last meal in Colorado. They’d driven up from Gallup on Friday, talked to Charles Petronis Saturday morning—learning nothing beyond the fact that he had, f
or some undiscussable reason, given David a thirty-thousand-dollar car—then spent the rest of the day (at Tim’s fanatical insistence) simply waiting. Now, the plan was, they were going to turn in the car in Denver and fly back to Chicago.
Naturally, the arrival of David’s letter changed all that. Howard, instinctively suspicious, spent an hour trying to find out who had put it there but finally had to admit that it didn’t much matter; it was addressed to Tim, who certified the handwriting as his father’s, and it was unarguably a lead that had to be followed. They discussed calling the phone number on the letterhead and agreed that, since they were going to Taos whatever they heard over the phone, they might as well just go.
So they went.
They arrived in Taos around six and spent an hour trying to find someone who could direct them to Morningstar Path. Not only could no one direct them to it, no one had even heard of it. But it seemed there was nothing unusual about that. If a millionaire wanted to buy herself a piece of wilderness, build a house, and grade a road in to it, she could name it whatever she pleased.
Finally they decided to check into a motel and, much as their inclinations were against it, to use the phone. It rang a dozen times and Howard was about to hang up when a young woman’s voice answered.
“Yes,” Howard said. “I’m wondering if you can help me. I got a letter today from someone staying there at your number or someone who may have been staying there a few days ago. David Kennesey?”
“There’s no one here right now,” the girl said. “Call back tomorrow.”
“Wait. Can you give me directions to Morningstar Path?”
The girl paused. “You’re in Taos?”
“Yes.”
“Where are you?”
“Does that matter?”
“How can I give you directions if I don’t know where you are?”
“True,” he said, and named their motel.
She seemed to think for a moment. “There’s no one here right now. Call back tomorrow.”
“Hey, wait—” Howard began indignantly, but she’d already hung up. He immediately redialed the number but gave up after listening to it ring through a full three minutes.