Читать книгу Of Vampires & Gentlemen - A.R. Morlan - Страница 6

DUET ON THIN ICE

Unseasonably soft and mild, the fitful southwest breeze ruffled the thinning oiled hair which the Reverend Alredge Merewode had so carefully combed across the crown of his head, threatening with each errant gust to reveal the tonsure-shaped bald spot which the cleric strove to conceal whilst among his fellows at the University, but— “And thanks to the All Mighty,” he whispered through lips rough-chapped and just slightly numb from the half hour or so he’d spent skating the sun-sheened surface of Loch Coventina—since he was currently the only living soul within sight or hearing occupying the immediate area on this late December afternoon, the Reverend found no need to stop his daily exercise in order to secure his neck-scarf over his almost-unveiled pate. That such an act would have suggested a most unseemly show of vanity was not a concern of the good Reverend—ever since his hair began to thin during his days in the seminary, Alredge unconsciously began to use his remaining locks as a form of natural camouflage for Nature’s tonsorial stinginess—rather, Reverend Merewode was instead concerned about the cutting-short of his time spent gliding across the lake’s frigid winter flesh.

Framed from the casual prying eye by a monk’s fringe of larch and pine, Loch Coventina was off-set by a quarter mile from any road or path, so that on its opaque whiteness, Alredge Merewode could guiltlessly cast off his mantle of clerical obligations to his fellow clerics and students, even as he surrendered his albeit lumpy and ungraceful earthly self to the momentum-driven snniiiccckkk and shhhuuussshhh of his blades gliding across the glistening cold ice. Borne across and around the ice on curled-toe skates, he could surrender himself to the cold, to the relentless forward motion, to the grayish-greenish-bluish blur of the surrounding trees and distant mountains—and to the keening undulation of the wind rushing through the needle-burdened branches, the frost-stiffened rushes and reeds surrounding the loch.

The crisp, sustained whoosh and shwoosh of each blade’s journey across the ice (the sharp metal just barely incising a trail on the hoarfrost behind) formed a soothing counterpoint to the susurration of the wind, one which eased the lines of worry from Merewode’s typically furrowed brow, and one which allowed him to exchange the downward turn of his parched lips for a slight but mentally significant upward arc...until the cleric noticed that the wind’s erratic counterpoint was a counterpoint no longer.

Rather, it echoed the whole-note-long one-foot-then-the-other forward rhythm of his skating; when he allowed himself to slow down to a stand-still on the ice, close to a rigid bristling of sun-whitened and wind-bent dead reeds near the southernmost shore of the loch, the strange counterpoint-that-was-no-more also ceased.

“Yet the breeze still blows...almost warm upon the flesh,” Merewode muttered, his exhaled breath nearly invisible thanks to the uncharacteristic gentleness of the wind. And, when he paused to truly listen to the wind, he discovered that it still sang to him, still found a way to coax the melodies out of the frost-dusted needles which coated the sentinel trees...albeit softly, very softly indeed.

Patting down his oily long locks over his scalp with a wool-gloved hand, so that small traces of the grey knitted fibers clung to the plastered-down hair after he placed his hand on one hip, Alredge Merewode briefly checked the position of the descending sun in the already darkening sky, deciding that he could still circle the lake once or possibly twice before it became too dark for him to walk back to the University in time for the last tea of the day.

But he only managed to propel himself forward by ten feet or so before he stopped, brow furrowed with unvoiced concern, and stood once more upon the ice, listening.

This time, he had stopped before the reedy accompaniment to his skate-song could cease its repeat of his performance, so he found himself cocking an ear toward the spot he had so recently quitted, the southerly tangle of ice-trapped bent and upright dead reeds.

Despite the quick beat of silence which followed his sudden halt on the ice, Merewode felt it deep in his bones—this was the spot which sang a wordless duet in keeping with each push and glide of his skate blades. This spot...and no other.

“No sense...it makes no sense,” the cleric mouthed softly; the loch was ringed with intermittent bunches of the dead vegetation, around its entire circumference. Yet, the sound (cut short a moment too late for its own good) had seemed so definite in its direction, so specific—

Softly chanting “No sense, no sense,” in time with each push forward on the ice, Alredge narrowed his eyes, to better focus on the sounds rather than the sights around him, as he deliberately altered the pacing of his skate-strokes on the ice, left foot long, right foot short, left short, right long, then long, long, short, long...but whether or not it made any sense, the low hooting whistle of the wind kept perfect time with his erratic ice-rhythm.

And it grew ever so slightly louder with each southward pass around the small oval loch....

Momentarily closing his eyes, Merewode let the wind’s malleable fingers caress his cheeks, his forehead, his pursed lips, while he concentrated on the unknown partner in this icy duet; the sound was not unlike a reed flute, or a recorder, yet less defined, almost like a breath-driven percussion instrument with no definite notes or scale per se, and no specific pitch. Rather like blowing across the moue-tight mouth of a bottle—

His field of vision, deeply red-hazed through his closed eyelids, the Reverend soon found himself losing his physical bearings, and it was only the touch of the frost-kissed reeds against his hands and thighs that warned him that he was skating too close to the thin dark ice near the partially submerged reeds. Opening his eyes to a blinding patch of whiteness, Merewode managed to push himself backwards on the ice, away from the danger of the brittle patch before him. And when he blinked, he saw blooming transparent afterimages, silent fireworks of flickering green and red, which cleared away far slower than real fireworks might have dissolved from his sight.

Only when his vision was true did he look downward, toward the reed-embedded ice which hugged the shoreline...but what he saw (thought he saw) beneath a translucent patch in the center of the sharp-angled dead reeds gave him pause, to the point of making him place a protective gloved hand over his still-opened eyes, while he silently told himself, It was a fish, it was a beastie, it was nothing.... I didn’t see it move, I didn’t—

It was then that the unknown partner in his frigid duet made an almost tentative swoosh? of a keening hooting noise, a lonely, yet somehow persistent sound, one which was independent of the breeze which teased and caressed Merewode’s exposed cheeks and forehead, and played I’ve-got-it with his cold-tipped nose. And, reacting with an almost primitive urge he later regretted, Alredge Merewode removed the shielding hand from his eyes, and stared into the ice-windowed depths of the loch, down at the spot where, what he didn’t see move before, most definitely moved again.

White-against-white flesh moved under the previously still dark waters, causing small irregular bubbles to cluster around the pursed lips, and the submerged reed-ends, as the noise began again, still echoing the sound and meter of Alredge’s blade-strokes. And as the water-distorted lips and cheeks alternatively puckered and distended, other submerged bits of vegetation undulated in time with that watery woodwind solo, even as the long hair surrounding the head slowly, dreamily, waved and billowed in place.

Even the open eyes were white....

“Statue,” he whispered. “Something the pagans cast off when they learned of the word of God...something made by man, to be falsely worshiped by him,” even as the cleric knew in his man’s heart (which he’d had long before he’d given over his surrounding body to the Lord) that no statue could blow bubbles beneath the icy water...especially not when the surrounding water was relatively calm. But the figure still moved, as if surrounded by wind and not a gelid blanketing of slushy water, and it still stared (as if indeed its white eyes contained an equally white pupil) up at Alredge, while the reed-encircling lips continued their skate-metered movements, despite the lack of accompaniment from him.

“Music-box figurine,” he half-reasoned, remembering the fantastic mechanical beings he’d seen on holiday in the Rhine, even as he plainly saw that the movements below him were too elastic, too supple for a construct of metal and papier-mâché...and it continued to blow bubbles, hinting of more than a mere bellows within the white-draped chest.

“Trick of the light, trick of the sun on ice,” he implored, his voice all but overshadowed by the fortissimo swell of the breath-amplified reeds, as the hand of the white form below him rose up above its head, and the pale fingers worked the reeds, as the melody suddenly became complex, and he could almost swear he heard elements of the musical scale—

“Gasses rising from a dead maiden,” he verbally decided, even as her eyelids fluttered, and even as her lips released the reeds, before forming silent words. “She has been killed, and thrown in the waters of Loch Coventina...the water has bleached her, the waters now animate her limp flesh.” Merewode’s voice was more brittle than thin ice, and equally pale in tone as he hurried away from the patch of dead, bent reeds, toward the northeast, where the University with its warm rooms, flickering gas lights and steaming pots of tea awaited him, his skate blades snick-snicking in short, staccato swipes on the sun-glared ice, and his arms pumping in time with the muffled thuds of his man’s heart...until the plaintive sound of the breath-blown reeds behind him cut through the icy snick of his blades, and the whistling hoot of his own tortured breath.

A maiden, true...but perhaps not yet dead. Cold unto death, cold past active struggle for release from the icy embrace of the sluggish waters, but perhaps not yet dead-cold—

Turning so quickly on the loch that his blades sent up a feathery spume of shaved ice in his wake, Alredge raced back to the tangle of brush and reeds, and peered down, his face far closer to the ice than before, at the figure beneath the waters and film of protective ice. White was her hair, yet young was her face, and beneath the adhering drape her bosom was small but upright over her rib cage, and when he moved still closer, he saw the almost classical smooth outlines of her legs and nether regions beneath the clinging garment she wore, and he chided himself, A statue...like any in the Royal Museum...any dug up from ruins in Greece or Rome. Women are not shaped and colored and contoured thus...alas. This...image never drew breath, or saw the glare of the sun, or felt air on its flesh. Only a trick of the waters, only a cunning contrivance of the sun’s dying rays.

Yet, as if in counterpoint to each scolding thought, each mental rebuke, the white woman continued to blow the ends of the reeds, continued to gracefully finger the notes along the length of each submerged reed, and the sounds she produced were sweet beyond hearing, like, yet unlike, hymns of praise, for this was a melody far, far older than any hymn which rose up to a specific God, a melody far more free and unfettered than any designed to show respectful praise and thankfulness to the All Mighty.

And, as he stared with eyes grown watery from the slanting last rays of the western sun, between the notes she used one hand, then the other, to beckon him, a motion unmistakable in its playfulness and lack of dire urgency.

The white woman needed no saving, of the physical or spiritual variety—of that, the good cleric was certain beyond a need for any words to that effect.

“Water demon,” he spat out through numb rough lips, even as his eye lingered on the ever-less-distinct round smoothness of her plump limbs and her swelling bosom. “Pagan devil...seek your worshipers elsewhere,” he added, through lips which trembled from cold rage, then pivoted in place before gliding off for the distant University; but with the coming of evening came the cessation of the breeze, so that the sound of her bubbling melody (which slowly, purposefully, once again became a reed/skate duet on thin ice) grew all the louder and distinct to Alredge’s cold-tingling ears.

And with each note of her obbligato came the mental accusations: You could save her. Save her soul. If she lives, there’s a soul. The pagans were reformed. The pagans adapted. Pagans believed. Their idols could too. Save her. Save her soul.

(Save her body—)

Save her. Redeem her. Purify her. She can hear you. She’ll listen. Talk to her.

(Come to her—)

Say the Words. Sing the hymns. Save her.

The descending sun cast a sheen of silky gold across the ice, and its dull radiance half-blinded Alredge as he raced back to the brushy tangle, and the cold window within it; the surrounding trees cast gnarled fingers of shadow across the ice, but enough light filtered down through them to touch her sunken flesh, and impart a false glow of living warmth there. And while her eyes were all white, they could see; when he peered over at her, she stopped breathing into the reeds, and instead pursed her lips, forming a solo kiss in his direction.

The cleric’s lips began to form a puckered reply when he noticed how the sun brought out the bas-relief-like texture of her cheeks, and the unmistakable pattern of white-on-white scales there—

“No animal, no beast, has a true soul!” The words jittered and skittered on his trembling lips and tongue, tumbling into the air like jagged chunks of ice falling from a warm roof. Yet she still kept her lips pursed, as if waiting for the touch of his lips upon hers, even as he stiffly turned and began to skate away from her across the oft-scored surface of the ice; with each frantic swipe and release of the blades, the furrows in the ice grew deeper, and began to spread in jagged forks like earth-trapped lightning, across the surface of the loch’s south end.

And as the sun vanished behind the pointed spires of the surrounding trees, leaving the loch draped in cold darkness, the brittle white skin of Loch Coventina parted just long enough to swallow the forward-moving figure on its surface, with a staccato smack and sucking gulp, before the fresh wound in the lake’s surface began to smooth over once more with a scab of thinnest black ice, so thin that the darting movements of the man and the woman below the freshly-formed surface might have been easily discerned, had there been people there to witness their silent duet in the cold, cold dark waters.

AFTERWORD

In 1992, Workman Publishing put out a seventeenth-anniversary edition of their 1975 B. Kliban cartoon collection, Cat, which included sixteen pages of color drawings in the middle of the book. If you can find that small paperback, there’s an atmospheric study of a sweater-wearing cat ice-skating toward a distant yellow rectangle of light amidst the twilight-hued surrounding landscape featured on both the back of the book, and the ninth color print within the book. That inspired this story, strange as it may seem. Naturally, I couldn’t very well write about an ice-skating cat, so I came up with this...and the concept of a submerged statue was something else which had been lingering in the back of my mind, so I finally was able to utilize that.

Ironically, I’ve never ice-skated in my life (my balance is too poor), so I ended up having my poor “hero” skate far too close to the edge, so close that under normal circumstances he would’ve crashed through the ice long before he actually did. My bad....