Black Light

“Jesus…”

I stood upon a vast plain, a dead white sky burning overhead and stands of birches scattered everywhere like standing stones. Wind beat relentlessly against me, a wind that had beaten down the trees as well—they all grew leaning in the same direction, branches rippling as though trapped in a dark current. Tiny midges swarmed everywhere, evil things with rust-colored wings and red eyes. I slapped at them but it did no good. They bit at my flesh and clustered so persistently around my face that I began to run, half-crazed.

“Get away, get away!” I could scarcely hear my own voice for the wind. I stumbled on, my boots crushing the undergrowth; then stepped into a hole and fell, wrenching my ankle. “Ow—”

Underfoot was a springy mat of moss and some coarse shrubby plant, clouds of lichen and small gray stones. The midges were even worse down here, but I refused to get up. I was bleeding from scores of tiny cuts, my dress torn and blotched with dirt. I felt numb, no longer frightened but completely blank, as though I’d just come out of some beer-stoked blackout. I lay there as the midges crawled across my hands, watching as crimson beads welled up behind them and the insects lifted back into the air. The wind wailed, my fingers grew white with cold. I knew I could freeze to death but I didn’t care. I buried my face in my arms and cried, wishing I were home in bed; wishing I were asleep, or dead: anything but here.

I must have fallen asleep then, and dreamed. Not a dream of home, or even of Bolerium’s damned chambers, but a dream in which the wind became the sound of my own name.

“Lit…Lit…Lit…”

I was dimly aware of the cold and thorny underbrush, the ripple of insects across my face. But gradually the voice became as irrevocable as those other things, persistent as water falling on my face. I stirred, blinking painfully. Dried blood adhered to my eyelids; when I licked my lips they felt cracked and raw.

“Lit.”

I lifted my head. Overhead the sky had gone from deathly white to a violet dark and rich as claret. The horizon was slashed with red so brilliant I had to shade my eyes. It took me a full minute to make out anything in the unearthly light.

“Lit…”

A figure was moving across the plain. I whimpered, thinking of shadows taking shape within fallen trees; but as the figure drew nearer I saw that it was not some awful spectre but a man in an ultramarine suit jacket, his long hair a bright corona around his face. He had his hands in his pockets, and walked matter-of-factly to where I had fallen, as though this were the most normal thing in the world.

“Hey,” he said, and stopped. For a moment he stood looking down at me, face glowing in the carnival light. His expression was tender, tinged with what might have been regret or just exhaustion. A halo of midges formed around his face. He waved his hand absently; the insects flashed bright as embers, then in a burst of white ash disappeared. “Are you all right, Lit?”

He crouched in front of me, smoothing the hair from my face, ran a finger along my eyelid and winced. “You’re hurt,” he said. “Come on—”

I held my breath, fighting tears; then nodded and let him help me to my feet. My fingers and toes throbbed, but Ralph seemed immune to the cold. He shrugged out of his jacket and I put it on, its warmth enveloping me as though it had been a down parka.

“B-b-b-but you’ll f-f-freeze,” I protested.

Ralph laughed. “Neither rain nor snow nor hellfire can touch me, kiddo.” He lay one hand against my cheek, and yes, it was warm—not merely warm but hot.

“H-h-how—”

“Something I learned at college. Feel better? Yeah? Think you can walk? I want to show you something…”

We walked, me huddled in his jacket, Ralph with one arm slung over my shoulder. Reindeer moss crackled beneath our feet, and while the midges buzzed everywhere, they now stayed away from us.

“Where is this place?” I asked when several minutes had passed.

“The Land of the Dead.” Ralph’s voice was flat, his arm around me the only comforting thing in that vastness. “The charred forest. The taiga—”

He extended his free arm, indicating the endless steppe, bowed birch trees like the ribs of fallen giants and lichen covering the earth like mist. The wind was a wall crashing down; the sunset the world behind the wall, nightmarish yet inescapable. There were no stars, no moon. A few yards in front of us stood a single large birch tree, its bark tinged pink from the sunset, its leaves blade-shaped and yellow as buttercups. Behind it the sky glowed like a furnace, black edged with purple, the horizon riven with crimson and a single brilliant ribbon of gold that spewed from the earth like a flame. It was so beautiful it made me shiver; but it was a beauty composed mostly of terror. I could imagine no people living there, nor even animals; nothing save those bloodthirsty midges.

“Oh, but people do live here, Lit,” Ralph said, in the same soft, vague tone he had used before, as though talking in his sleep. He let his arm drop from me, bent, and began to dig in the ground. I crouched beside him, watching. The earth was hard but when he broke through the surface it became friable, falling in small chunks from his hand. He continued to dig, pausing now and then to examine what he found; finally held up a small piece of reddish rock.

“Ochre.” He rubbed the stone between his fingers and it crumbled, staining his hands. “‘Farben auch, den Leib zu malen, steckt ihm in die Hand, dass er rotlich moge strahlen in der Seelen Land.’”

He turned. With the chunk of rock he drew upon my forehead and upon each of my cheeks; then carefully smoothed the ochre across my skin. “That’s from Schiller. ‘Put ye colors into his hand, that he may paint his body so he will shine redly in the Land of Souls.’”

“What—what do you mean?”

He stood, rolling the piece of rock between his fingers and staring at the horizon. Very carefully I touched my cheek, drew my hand away and smelled damp earth and another odor, cold and faintly metallic, like old pennies. I looked at Ralph; he raised his arm and with a flick of his wrist threw the stone toward the sunset. It arced high above the lone birch tree, and by some trick of the light seemed for an instant to hang there and glow, not like a spark or star but like some glittering aperture, a watchful eye in the void. Then it was gone. I did not hear where it fell.

“There they are,” he murmured.

I looked where he pointed. On the horizon, a dark smudge appeared. I squinted, thinking at first it was another stand of birches suddenly made visible by the angle of the sun. But the smudge grew larger, broke into smaller jots of darkness and then regrouped. Soon it was near enough that the wind brought its sound. A jingling as of many small bells, unmelodic but constant; voices calling back and forth; an occasional explosive huffing. I glanced at Ralph uncertainly, but he only continued to peer into the deepening shadows.

Minutes passed. The breeze became a cold blast, and now along with the walking music of the caravan the wind carried its scent. Woodsmoke, birch leaves, the pungent and recognizable stench of unwashed bodies. But most of all a dense, warm, animal smell, far stronger than any familiar grassy barn odor—the only thing I could liken it to was the sharp, almost angry musk one encounters at a zoo. I moved closer to Ralph. He did not acknowledge me beyond nodding, his eyes fixed on what was approaching.

A moment and they were only twenty feet from us, near the birch where I had last glimpsed the bit of ochre that Ralph had tossed away. It seemed to me that full night should have fallen by now, but the eerie twilight had not corroded into darkness. If anything, the sky had grown more brilliant, the colors a tumult of lavender and violet and crimson.

Certainly it was bright enough that I could see clearly the little group that had stopped in front of us. I counted eleven of them, slight slim-bodied figures, most no taller than myself. Their clothes were archaic but gorgeously designed—long skirts of hide or fur, dyed red or sky-blue and hemmed with ropes of beadwork and bone; strange open jackets of the same material that were almost like frock coats, trimmed with white fur and small triangular brass pendants. I could see their features very clearly, high cheekbones and skin the color of bronze, onyx eyes and hair. The men wore small conical caps of short dark fur. Their facial hair was sparse but