they came toward the house. He fell a step behind her and watched the way her skin flowed. She reached out, touched the house, and they became one.
No door was opened to them, but holding fast to her hair he was drawn behind her, through the flesh of the house.
Within, there were inlaid ivory boxes that, when opened, revealed smaller boxes within. He became fascinated by one such box, sitting high on a pedestal in the center of an om rug. The box was inlaid with teeth of otters and puff adders and lynx. He opened the first box and within was a second box frosted with rime. Within the frost-box was a third, and it was decorated with mirrors that cast back no reflections. And next within was a box whose surface was a mass of intaglios, and they were all fingerprints, and none of Charlie’s fit, and only when a passing man smiled and caressed the lid did it open, revealing the next, smaller box. And so it went, till he lost count of the boxes and the journey ended when he could not see the box that fit within the dust-mote-size box that was within all the others. But he knew there were more, and he felt a great sadness that he could not get to them.
“What is it, precisely, you want?” asked an older woman with very good bones. He was leaning against a wall whose only ornamentation was a gigantic wooden crucifix on which a Christ figure hung, head bowed, shoulders twisted as only shoulders can be whose arms have been pulled from sockets; the figure was made of massive pieces of wood, all artfully stained: chunks of doors, bedposts, rowels, splines, pintels, joists, cross-ties, rabbet-joined bits of massive frames.
“I want…” he began, then spread his hands in confusion. He knew what he wanted to say, but no one had ever ordered the progression of words properly for him.
“Is it Madelaine?” the older woman asked. She smiled as Aunt Jemima would smile, and targeted a finger across the enormous living room, bullseyed on the flocked velvet witch all the way over there by the fireplace. “She’s here.”
The King of Tibet felt a bit more relaxed.
“Now,” the older woman said, her hand on Charlie’s cheek, “what is it you need to know? Tell me. We have all the answers here. Truly.”
“I want to know—”
The television screen went silver and cast a pool of light, drawing Charlie’s attention. The possibilities were listed on the screen. And what he had wanted to know seemed inconsequential compared to the choices he saw listed.
“That one,” he said. “That second one. How did the dinosaurs die.”
“Oh, fine!” She looked pleased he had selected that one. “Shefti…?” she called to a tall man with gray hair at the temples. He looked up from speaking to several women and another man, looked up expectantly, and she said, “He’s picked the second one. May I?”
“Of course, darling,” Shefti said, raising his wine glass to her.
“Do we have time?”
“Oh, I think so,” he said.
“Yes…what time is it?” Charlie asked.
“Over here,” the older woman said, leading him firmly by the forearm. They stopped beside another wall. “Look.”
The King of Tibet stared at the wall, and it paled, turned to ice, and became translucent. There was something imbedded in the ice. Something huge. Something dark. He stared harder, his eyes straining to make out the shape. Then he was seeing more clearly and it was a great saurian, frozen at the moment of pouncing on some lesser species.
Thirty-two feet of tanned gray leather. The killing teeth. The nostriled snout, the amber smoke eyes of the eater of carrion. The smooth, sickening tuber of balancing tail, the crippled forelimbs carried tragically withered and useless. The musculature…the pulsing beat of iced blood beneath the tarpaulin hide. The…beat…
It lived.
Through the ice went the King of Tibet, accompanied by Circe-eyed older woman, as the shellfish-white living room receded back beyond the ice-wall. Ice went, night came.
Ice that melted slowly from the great hulk before him. He stood in wonder. “See,” the woman said.
And he saw as the ice dissolved into mist and nightfog, and he saw as the earth trembled, and he saw as the great fury lizard moved in shambling hesitancy, and he saw as the others came to cluster unseen nearby.
The King of Tibet knew there were slaughterhouses where the beef was hung upside-down on hooks, where the throats were slit and the blood ran thick as motor oil. He saw a golden thing hanging, and would not look. Later, he would look.
They waited. Silently, for its coming.
Through the Cretaceous swamp it was coming. Charlie could hear it. Not loud, but coming steadily closer. “Would you light my cigarette, please?” asked the older woman.
It was shining. It bore a pale white nimbus. It was stepping through the swamp, black to its thighs from the decaying matter. It came on, its eyes set back under furred browridges, jaw thrust forward, wide nostrils sniffing at the chill night, arms covered with matted filth and hair. Savior man.
He came to the lizard owners of the land. He walked around them and they stood silently, their time at hand. Then he touched them, one after the other, and the plague took them. Blue fungus spread from the five- pronged marks left on their imperishable hides; blue death radiating from impressions of opposed thumbs, joining, spreading cilia and rotting the flesh of the great gone dinosaurs. The ice re-formed and the King of Tibet moved back through pearly cold to the living room.
He struck a match and lit her cigarette.
She thanked him and walked away.
The flocked velvet witch returned. “Did you have a nice time?” He thought of the boxes-within-boxes.
“Is that how they died? Was he the first?”
She nodded. “And did Nita ask you for anything?”
Charlie had never seen the sea. Oh, there had been the Narrows and the East River and the Hudson, but he had never seen the sea. The real sea, the thunder sea that went black at night like a pane of glass. The sea that could summon and the sea that could kill, that could swallow whole cities and turn them into myth. He wanted to go to California.
He suddenly felt fear that he would never leave this thing called Ohio here.
“I asked you: did Nita ask you for anything?”
He shivered.
“What?”
“Nita. Did she
“Only a light.”
“Did you give it to her?”
“Yes.”
Madelaine’s face swam in the thin fluid of his sight. Her jaw muscles trembled. She turned and walked across the room. Everyone turned to look at her. She went to Nita, who suddenly took a step backward and threw up her hands. “No, I didn’t—”
The flocked velvet witch darted a hand toward the older woman and the hand seemed to pass into her neck. The silver tipped fingers reappeared, clenched around a fine sparkling filament. Then Madelaine snapped it off with a grunt.
There was a terrible minor sound from Nita, then she turned, watery, and stood silently beside the window, looking empty and hopeless.
Madelaine wiped her hand on the back of the sofa and came to Charlie. “We’ll go now. The party is over.”
