The woman adjusted her spectacles and glared suspiciously through the window. 'Damned kids!' She shook her head. 'How the hell did they get back there, anyway? That gate's supposed to be locked.' She let the glasses fall around her neck. 'Looks like someone's had themself a chicken dinner.'
'Chicken?' The relief showed in Carol's face.
'Hell, yes,' said Miss Elms. 'There's a barbecue place over on Eighth Avenue. You know the one I mean.' She checked her watch. 'Now how about giving a hand up front? They'll be lining up with their books in a minute or two.'
Carol followed her toward the desk. Behind them, unheard, the wind in the courtyard grew, tossing the vines and scattering leaves from the young trees. Something white danced past the window, blown from beneath the bush where it had lain: a clump of delicate white feathers stained red at the tip.
The sky is red and gold above the water, the water glows a darker red, and in each swims the pale shape of a half-moon.
Strolling southward along the river, the battered leather briefcase tucked tight beneath his arm and time like a toy in his hands, the Old One pauses just long enough to appreciate the symmetry: a half-moon in the early evening sky, its counterpart reflected in the ripples on the water – two halves of a shattered eggshell with no chance it will ever be restored.
Here, indeed, is a sign, a token of the Moghu'vool. Soon the egg will be broken, the beast awake.
White shapes plunge and scream in the air above him; up and down the waterfront, soot-blackened rooftops echo with the sound. He turns and continues southward, smiling, heedless of the mournful cries. His legs are short and his progress slow, but he is in no hurry.
Shadows are advancing on the city to the left, and tiny lamplit windows are beginning to stand out on the dark shapes of the buildings. Higher windows still catch the reflected light. To the right the river glistens where golden columns of sunbeams pierce a band of cloud. Unseen in the distance, yet so palpably close he hears every breath, the community of farmers out beyond the low hills is now assembling for the planting, dutifully observing the customs of the clan, reciting their silly prayers, muttering hosannas to their silly god. Closer still, within his sight, silhouettes of oil tanks and factories rise along the farther shore, while above them the moon hovers just out of reach, alien, serene, and growing brighter with each passing minute.
A pair of lovers catches the Old One's eye, clasped obscenely on a slab of concrete above the water; then the ungainly figure of a jogger, and a small white dog that capers on the grass. He would like to lure it out onto the highway… But now, he knows, is not the time. He has a more important task ahead, and a destination waiting: imperative that he be hidden in the shadows when the man and the woman emerge from what will be their second meeting.
The woman – what a find she is, the greedy little bitch! It has been painstaking work, opening that library job to her and easing her into the slot, but it has been worth the effort. She is perfect. Perhaps (he smiles) he should send a contribution to the Convent of St Agnes!
Of course, that man-crazy roommate may prove a problem… But that is no great matter, in view of what he has accomplished today. Initial contact has been made, and the interview has gone according to plan. The players have been chosen, the great wheels set in motion.
Swinging his briefcase there on the sidewalk, with the Friday-night traffic rushing past him in a blur, he laughs aloud, an old man's high-pitched cackle. 'Eeny meeny miny mo' indeed! How easy it has been!
Freirs looked for the fifth or sixth time at his watch and at last yielded to a bitterness he could no longer argue away. A quarter after eight, and the thin redhead from the library hadn't shown up. Probably she'd only been humoring him… But damn it all, she'd really seemed to like him; and her interest had been all the more exciting because she'd clearly been at pains to disguise it -unlike the young women in his classes, whose seductive manner made him feel so old, even when their ages were the same as his. The girl's very thinness had been alluring, as if by some magic it could compensate for his own excessive bulk. Tonight's final screening had seemed like the perfect way to meet her again. Yet apparently he'd misjudged her, she hadn't shown after all, and the brightly lit double-size classroom was almost filled. Few of the faces out there meant much to him. He was going to be in a bad mood tonight.
Midway across the room one of the more ass-kissing students was standing officiously by the light switches near the door, waiting like a little soldier for his signal. Farther back, beside the pair of sixteen-millimeter projectors, the T-shirted projectionist was eyeing him impatiently. Well, there was nothing he could do about it now; he couldn't hold things up any longer. There'd always be a few latecomers, of course, slipping in noisily and unapologetically half an hour or more into the film – fully half the class were art students from Parsons with no sense of time – but if he waited any longer the punctual ones, the ones who wrote the long, carefully typed papers and raised their hands in class and got themselves in a sweat over grades, would rightly begin getting irritated. Already the students were beginning to forget where they were, the conversation around him growing in volume. Looking to the boy by the light switches, he gave a short nod.
The room vanished in darkness pierced only by a cone of white light whose base was the screen. Dust motes and cigarette smoke, formerly invisible, drifted through it like ectoplasm from the spirit world. Freirs turned and was feeling his way toward the nearest wall, preparing to stand for the first part of the film, then maybe slip out in the middle and read some journals he'd brought in his bag, when a soft, husky voice whispered urgently, 'Mr Freirs!' Donna, several rows to the right, curly-haired and full-breasted, her wide, heavily made-up eyes discernible even in the darkness, was gesturing at him and pointing to a seat next to her. One of the silver gypsylike earrings she always wore caught the projector light. There were one or two like her in every class: easy, aggressive, ultimately more possessive than one might have thought. He seldom let it get that far.
'Mr Freirs!' she said again. She waved in invitation.
Ah, well, the thin girl from the library wasn't coming, and Donna was nice too. Kind of exotic, in fact, and by no means dumb. Careful not to stumble over the rows of protruding feet, he threaded his way toward her through the darkness.
The woods were a patchwork of shadow and light. Beside her flowed the river, sunshine dappling the reeds. Wide-eyed, obviously dazed, the little girl stumbled down an uncertain path, following the river-bank as it skirted the edge of the forest. In her arms she clutched something small, white, and limp – a teddy bear, perhaps, or some other nursery toy.
The angle shifted, and Carol leaned forward to see. This was no toy. In her arms the girl was clutching a dead dog.
No one around Carol seemed surprised. They looked amused, in fact, or passive, or bored. Several were whispering to their neighbors, barely watching the film, and down the row to her left an unshaven youth was slouched back in his seat, his eyes already closed. The woman one row in front appeared to be taking notes, but when, after five minutes, she'd failed to look up, Carol realized that she was writing a letter.
The room was hot from body heat and foggy with cigarette smoke. Because the floor was perfectly flat and the screen too low, it was hard to read the sub tides from the bridge chairs in the back; people's heads kept getting in the way.
Carol hadn't dared leave the library until work ended, and Jeremy must have misjudged the time it would take her, because even with good directions she'd arrived here nearly twenty minutes late. She was already beginning to regret that she'd come; she couldn't find Jeremy in the darkness and was feeling uncomfortable and alone.
On the screen the little girl and a young peasant boy were performing a kind of funeral ceremony for the dead dog, which they'd buried in the earthen floor of an abandoned mill. Placing a primitive wooden cross atop the mound, the boy clambered up to the loft and, reaching into an owl's nest built high in the rafters, removed the tiny body of a mole. This he buried beside the other grave; that way, he said, the dog would not be lonesome. When the little girl contributed her rosary beads, he draped them solemnly over the cross.
Watching distractedly, Carol still felt herself touched by the scene; it awakened memories of her own childhood, and of the secret religious rituals she'd enacted without quite knowing why.
The rest of the film, unfortunately, was dominated by the adults, a slack-jawed, clownish lot. They were caricatures, all of them, and impossible to care for. Carol's back began to ache from leaning forward in her seat, and she found her attention wandering even more. Down the row the unshaven youth was still asleep, the film's shifting light playing over his features like the shadows of a dream. This same light was reflected in the glasses of a stout young man several seats farther ahead, sitting bolt upright near the wall, his legs swinging impatiently back and forth. Was it Jeremy? Carol strained to see him more clearly, but in the darkness it was hard to be sure. For a
