getting harder and more substantial…
“Ow!” shouted Grendel, doubling over, clutching one hand in the other. His cane fell to the floorboards with a loud clatter. There was a spot of blood welling up on one hand.
At that same moment, I saw in the mirror (but not in the room) a bloodstained shadow who had stepped out from behind me, and reached across my shoulder with a spear tipped with a stingray spine, striking Grendel’s hand.
Grendel raised his head, his eyes grown white and terrible with fear. “Either your balls or your brains must be made of hard stone, girl. What were you thinking, bringing a ghost here? A ghost!”
He wobbled a bit on his one leg, and looked like he was about to fall.
He must have seen the confusion on my face, for he said, “You don’t know, do you? Arthur’s Table lies not half a mile off. It marks the spot where the backstairs go down into the Dark Land. This place, this damn school, it were put here because it were so close to the spot where the path to the House of Woe comes out. Ghosts don’t walk here.”
“Why not?” I said.
He shook his head. “It brings the Dog.”
Even as he said that, the wind outside the hut began to moan and howl. Two more howls joined it.
The flames playing around the embers in the stove trembled and began to go out, one by one.
I looked over my shoulder. There was nothing behind me but the boards of the wall, badly caulked and water-stained. To the nothing, I said, “Telegonus, run away.”
Grendel smirked, and said, “He ain’t going to run away, that one. I seen him fighting Neptune’s men when they killt him. Fought even after he’d lost. Even after he’d died. He don’t give up. And he knows me. He knows how I got no power over you while he’s here.”
I said, half to myself, “Ghosts are from Erichtho’s paradigm. The concept of a disembodied spirit is a dualistic concept.”
One by one, little embers died. It grew darker in the small room.
“He’s coming,” said Grendel. “The Dog’s boss. The Unseen One. I feel my bone marrow turning cold.”
Grendel stooped and fell onto his cot, hugging himself with both hands. His face was slack and pale with fear. “Get out, both of you! Before He comes… ”
More light died. More gloom grew. I could only see the silhouette of Grendel’s face now, the texture of his scruffy cheek, the stubble of his bald head, the glitter of his eyes.
“Go! He might be here now. In the room. You, I’ll see you in the morning, little golden princess.”
I said, “You’re the one. They need you to erase my memory. None of the other paradigms will work on me.”
The shadowy head nodded. “That’s right. All I need do is have the spirit in me move me to it. What I want bad enough, I get.”
The howling grew louder. Now it did not sound like wind at all, but like a hound indeed, one as large as the sky, approaching as fast as the wind.
The last embers in the stove flared up and died. The coals glowed cherry-red a moment, then went black. The light was gone.
The door rattled in the frame. The little hut seemed to shake.
Then, suddenly, it all fell silent. The world seemed to hold its breath.
In the darkness, it seemed to me as if the shed walls had shrunk to the size of a coffin. I could hear Grendel breathing; I could almost hear his heartbeat; the sounds seemed louder in the lightlessness, as if Grendel were pressed up against me.
I only had a moment. I had to think of something to say.
I whispered, “Grendel, darling. Poor, handsome Grendel. You cut off your foot for me… because you wanted me… let me keep the memory of how much you wanted me… ”
“Don’t try to trick me, little bint,” he growled back. I imagined I could almost feel his breath on my cheek.
“No trick. I am not in love with you and I never will be. I feel sorry for you, really. But… Iam flattered. You almost had me, didn’t you? I was tied up hand and foot, and gagged, and it was your hands that tied me up. I was hoisted on your shoulder with my hip pushed up against your cheek. We were alone. No one else saw it. No one else knew you had me, no one but you and me.”
He didn’t answer. His breathing sounded loud in the gloom.
I said, “Once I forget that day, the day you took me, who will know that it ever happened? Oh, yes, you will remember. But only you. How will you know that you didn’t just imagine it?”
He spat, “ ‘Tis a trick. You want to make my desire weak.”
I pushed myself away from the wall, took a step toward where I thought the cot was, and reached out with my hands.
I touched his cheek, and felt his razor stubble, and his shoulder, and the rough fabric of his patched nightshirt.
He jumped, startled, and grabbed my wrists with both his hands. His grip was tight, vicelike, and I could feel the leathery calluses of his hands dig into my flesh. His hands were so hard, so large, and so ill-smelling. I wondered how soft and small and fragrant my hands felt and smelled to him.
Oh well. Might as well go for broke. It was just words. Noises in a row. I could make myself say them.
“I want to forget it,” I said in a low, soft voice. “I want to be able to look in your eyes tomorrow, and only see the stupid, low-class hired man I used to think you were. I don’t want you to look in my eyes and see the submission, the desire to surrender, you put there… ”
As well get hung for a ram as hung for an ewe. Time to pull out all the stops. I promised myself I would wash my mouth out with soap, later.
If I remembered.
I leaned closer and whispered teasingly:
“…You told me you wanted me to be this way. A girl who likes it rough. A helpless little slave-girl in a collar. Your collar. But I’ll have forgotten that all tomorrow. I’ll have forgotten Grendel the Bear. You’ll just be Glum, the groundskeeper. Dumb Glum. Not my master anymore. Not anything. You’ll be calling me ‘Miss’ tomorrow, and I’ll be looking down my nose at you… ”
There was a polite knock at the door. Rap, tap.
Grendel let go of me. There was a rustle and a thump. A whimper. From the direction of the noise, it sounded as if Grendel was trying to hide under his cot.
A voice as cold as death said quietly. “
I had the very distinct and strange impression that no voice was actually speaking; that something like a cold energy was entering the room, and that it had an intention, dark, remorseless, severe, and pitiless. Something in the room was… changing… that cold force into words, into a little rhyme, to make it understood to me; but also to protect me from what would have happened to me if the naked radiations of that energy had gone, unfiltered, into my brain.
It was Telegonus. He was standing between me and the door, although I could not see him. The force from behind the door was passing through him. He was letting his body act like the leaded glass that blocks dangerous and invisible wavelengths of radiation.
The door creaked and opened. I could see the snow-patched grass, colorless beneath the starlight.
There came a blur, and a shadow darkened. I saw the silhouette of a cloaked figure in the doorframe. His elbows were up, and he was removing a plumed helmet from his head.
There was starlight on the snow behind him; I could see nothing of his armor or features.
He put the helmet in the crook of one elbow, and reached out into the room toward me with his fist.
Slowly, he rotated his fist so that it was palm upward. He opened his fingers.
There was a glimmering light there, as if he held a star in the palm of his hand. From the miniscule flake of light, I could see that that hand was covered with a black gauntlet.
Telegonus became opaque in front of me, and stumbled, and fell prone, like a puppet with its strings
