unmarked, as far as he could see, by any kind of recent human activity. At a faint splash of the canoe’s paddle the mud gave up a droning wasp, and then the blue-green drifting stiletto of a dragonfly. Simon could feel sweat trickling on his face. The middle of the island would be a green Brazilian wilderness today, with a thousand insects whining in the heat. Not a place where anyone would want to spend much time.
Now, for a minute or two, all the works of humanity save for the canoe and what was in it, had completely vanished.
Trickle of water from the paddle, and a drab hum of insects. And then there on the shoreline was some broken glass, and this was after all not the Amazon. A moment later the canoe had emerged from between islands, and now it was again possible to see a stretch of highway running close along what was now the farther bank. A car was passing a grumbling semitrailer, only a quarter of a mile away.
To Simon’s left, on the small island he had not been studying, something now moved slightly but suddenly in the bushes, and once more a crow flapped up with raucous noise. Simon turned his head sharply. Under the crow’s racket he’d heard a half-note of something that was almost music—from insect, bird, or human throat? It had reminded him of laughter… but now there was nothing to be seen by the near-jungle quiet in the heat.
The canoe was now aimed more directly toward the southeastern shore. Ahead Simon thought he could make out the place where the castle’s floating boat-dock had once been moored. He was not surprised to see that it was gone. All the better for his plans if there were no regular landings here. But the girl had asked him at once if they were going to the castle; that certainly suggested that others had recently come this route.
He turned his head to speak to the boy. “Do you carry many passengers this way?”
“Nope.” The youth didn’t seem to think anything of the question one way or another.
“Have you taken anyone before us?”
“Unh-unh.” Inflected to mean no.
“Your sister just seemed to assume this was where we were going. I wondered. By the way, are you twins?”
“Yep.”
As they drew near the landing place, now simply a narrow spot of sandy beach, Simon could detect no sign that other boats had recently come to shore. When the canoe grated on bottom, he edged past Margie, hopped ashore, than reached back to give her a hand. Then he turned to the boy, who was watching them uncertainly. “Just wait for us, okay? It could be as long as a couple of hours, but it could be just a few minutes. I’ll pay for your time. I’ll throw in a five dollar bonus. Will you wait?”
“Yeah,” said the boy. He got out of the canoe and with Simon’s help pulled it far enough out of the water to keep it from drifting. Then he pulled a paperback book out of the hip pocket of his jeans and sat down crosslegged on the sand, as if prepared for a lengthy wait.
Margie had her bag slung on one shoulder and looked ready for whatever came next. Simon smiled at her and led the way. In the narrow strip of riparian grass the path was less defined than he remembered it, in fact it was almost completely overgrown. All to the good. The new heirs were evidently no longer river people. They certainly must have more expensive toys now than canoes, and they could seek out more inviting waterways than this. They’d probably forgotten this part of their domain.
As there was almost no flat land at all along the shore, the path had no choice but to immediately angle up the bluff. The first tall trees closed in around it, and as soon as he entered shade the first mosquito whined in Simon’s ear. Good thing he’d remembered to have them both use repellent. He led the way on up, with Margie following in the narrow path.
Here what was left of the trail became somewhat more visible. Along most of its course the path was not as steep as the slope it climbed; it looped its way upward in sharp switchbacks with long legs of gentle ascent in between. At the second switchback Simon paused briefly to look down. Through a fragmentary screen of branches he could see that their guide had changed his position slightly, to sit now with his feet in the cooling water, his dark head bowed over the white pages of the book.
“He’s going to talk to people, isn’t he?” murmured Margie, who had come to a halt at Simon’s side. “About ferrying us over here.”
“I suppose he will. But not until the show’s over, I hope. I can promise him another five, and five for his sister, if they’ll keep quiet about it until tomorrow at least.”
“Last of the big spenders,” Margie murmured.
Simon winked at her, and, turning, climbed on. The path now ran through the full thickness of the woods. The tall tree trunks were not quite vertical, compromising with gravity and the steep angle of the land. After twenty yards or so, at the next switchback, Simon paused again, this time looking up. He took Margie by the arm and pointed. Now, indistinctly through a haze of summer growth, they had their first partial glimpse of the castle itself. Its gray stone walls, magnified ominously by their position, towered almost directly above them.
“It’s huge!”
“Well, yeah. Actually small for a castle, I suppose. It was a real castle once, in France. Somewhere in Brittany. Part of it dated from the tenth century or so, I seem to remember being told. Old Man Littlewood, Vivian’s and Saul’s grandfather, bought it and had it shipped over here, on barges I guess. He was caught—” Simon paused. He had been distracted by a snuffling noise; it was faint and distant and something about it struck him as very odd. Somehow his mind couldn’t simply dismiss it as a noise made by a dog. He thought of bears, which of course were not a reasonable possibility in Illinois.
“What is it, Si?”
“Did you hear anything?”
Margie turned her head, seemingly sniffing the air. “No.”
“It was nothing, I guess.” And now a dog, a real dog, was barking frantically; but very far away, no doubt on one of the nearby farms. Simon stared upward at the gray walls again.
“What were you going to say about their grandfather?”
“There was some kind of fire or explosion here one night and he was killed. That was before I was born, I think.”
And he led the way on up. Now the path, working its way across a hillside grown stony, almost a cliff, grew steep enough to require very careful footwork in a couple of places. Anyone not reasonably agile and confident might feel better clambering on all fours at these spots, and even an athlete might reach for a nearby branch or treetrunk as an aid to steadiness. At the trickiest climbing turn, a wooden handrail that Simon remembered had now disappeared. Only the wooden roots of it were barely visible, like decayed tooth-stumps in the rich mossy soil.
And here in places the limestone bones of the earth stuck out, their naturally squarish shapes serving the climber briefly as stairs. He’d once hurt a toe on one of them, Simon remembered… but right now he didn’t want to dwell on that previous ascent; that whole mysterious day. Right now he and Margie were here as workers with a job to do. It was probably the only way he could ever have brought himself to come back here at all; and he had long wanted to come back, to face certain things again, to try to rediscover them… Simon was in good physical shape, he took pains to stay that way, but still his breath had quickened with the climb… as he’d felt it quicken on that other, mysterious day…
When the path bent in it’s fourth switchback Simon looked down again toward the landing. He wanted to make sure that the canoe was still there. The screen of intervening greenery was now much thicker, but he could still see glints of aluminum. And the kid…
For just a moment, when the breeze stirred intervening branches in the proper way, Simon caught a glimpse of dark human hair, tanned human skin. For just a moment he saw clearly, though only partially, the figure he had glimpsed on the island, beckoning. It was Vivian, naked, waiting for him.
Margie was looking down too, doubtless trying to see what had so interested Simon. He moved back a step to stand for a moment with closed eyes. He swore to himself with silent savagery that he was not going to let his eyes or his mind or whatever it was play tricks on him. Never again. Could there be something about this place, this physical location, something chemical or atmospheric that brought on hallucinations, at least in certain susceptible people? How was he ever going to be able to sort out the truth, the fantasy, the dream, about his last days here if even now he was still subject to—
Simon opened his eyes. Margie was watching him with curiosity, but all she said was: “Looks like our guide’s still waiting for us.”
