This time I pulled it up and over her—thighs, groin, belly, breasts, chin—all in one swift motion. Before I could drop it Angelica snatched the dress from me and tossed it aside.
“There now,” she murmured.
I crouched at her feet, my hands clutching at dead grass. Above me Angelica cast no shadow in the pale starlight. She was naked, her skin smooth as molten silver, nothing to show that she’d ever worn any clothes at all. Save only this:
A crescent like the sleeping moon above her breasts, its spars reaching toward her shoulders and the whole thing glowing as though it had just been drawn from the flame. I heard a sharp intake of breath and Baby Joe’s nervous giggle, then Hasel’s awed voice.
“Fucking A. A fucking
But from Oliver, nothing. Not a sound, not a breath. I wanted to look back at them, to reassure myself I wasn’t alone; but I couldn’t. I couldn’t do anything but stare up at Angelica, my hands crushing the dead grass against my palms.
For a long time she stood, utterly silent, her slanted green eyes glowing. It was as though the rest of us weren’t even there. As if, like Magda Kurtz, she had walked or been pushed through some gap in the world and now breathed a different air than we did, finer, rarer, infinitely more precious. About her face her long hair lifted and flowed in dark coils. Her eyes were serene, her lips parted so that I could glimpse her even white teeth. Upon her breast the lunula sent shafts of pure white light streaming into the darkness.
Without a word she turned from us, the slope of her hips and buttocks catching a glint of starlight before they faded into shadow again. Very slowly she paced to the water’s edge, and, as we watched, she walked right into it, not even hesitating at its brink, walked straight and slow as though drawn by an invisible rope toward the center of the pool. With each step the water rose higher and higher, lapping at her ankles, then her thighs and flanks, finally sliding up across her rib cage to touch her breasts with shadow. Her body was swallowed by black water like the moon in eclipse, until at last only her head remained, her hair flowing ‘round her. I had a glimpse of her eyes, hard and cold and shining, and a softly glowing core of light where the lunula lay upon her breast.
Then she was gone. Ripples spread from the center of the pool, expanded until they touched its shallow banks and disappeared, one by one; and all was still again.
I heard a whimper, tentative footsteps. I turned and saw Baby Joe and Hasel huddled together, their awestruck gaze fixed on the placid water. A few paces behind them stood Oliver. His face was utterly implacable. I could have read anything I wanted in his staring eyes—terror, relief, amazement, even complete indifference.
“Oliver,” I called hoarsely, not caring that he’d hear how scared I was. I stood, my feet scrabbling against pebbles and dead grass. “Oliver, let’s go—”
His expression changed. Like water flowing into a glass, some of the old Oliver seemed to fill him. He blinked and, for the first time, noticed me.
“Sweeney.” His voice was frail and tremulous, an old woman’s voice. “Thanks for coming.” He stepped toward me, and there was something ghastly about his smile, as though it, too, had been stolen from someone else. “I didn’t think they’d let you come, I didn’t know you were here—”
He reached for me, and when his hand closed about mine, I cried out: the flesh was so dry and loose it was like bark shifting beneath my touch.
“Don’t fear me, Sweeney.” His voice rose as I pulled away from him. “It’s still me, Sweeney, it’s still me,
An explosive sound ripped the night. The air shattered; shards of glass rained upon us, filling the night with a sound like bells. I screamed, drawing my hands to my face; but when the splinters struck me they were not glass at all but freezing water.
At pool’s edge stood a tall slender figure. Angelica, shaking her head so that her hair spun out in long black tendrils and more icy rain scattered everywhere. She was laughing. Water streamed from her uplifted hands to spill upon her breasts and thighs, and when she moved atoms of light shot from her, like sparks from a glowing forge. Upon her breast the lunula still gleamed, but its glory seemed to have been swallowed by her eyes, treacherous fox fire eyes. She turned and all their fatal splendor focused upon me.
“Oh Beloved. It is time.”
Her voice, sweet as rainwater falling upon stone. I stepped toward her, my arms opening to her embrace: what else could I do? But then I saw that she was not looking at me; nor at Baby Joe or Hasel or Oliver.
She was not looking at any of us. She walked right past me, past the others, and never said a word. It was so still that I could hear Hasel swallow when she swept by him, the dead grasses rustling beneath her bare feet. After she had passed we all turned in her wake, peering through the darkness to see what drew her.
In the overgrown meadow crouched a hulking form. At first I thought it was an immense boulder, or maybe some abandoned farm equipment.
But as Angelica approached it, her arms flung open in greeting, I saw that it was not a machine. It was a cow—no, a bull, a huge dun-colored creature with arching horns and a ponderous dewlap that hung down between its legs. When it sighted Angelica it snorted and shook its head. Its dewlap shuddered. It pawed nervously at the ground and a cloud of vapor enveloped its nostrils. It seemed merely huge, until Angelica stopped only two or three paces from where it watched her with rolling black eyes. Then it became monstrous, unimaginably vast.
My breath was coming fast and shallow. I glanced over to see Hasel staring transfixed and Baby Joe wide- eyed and motionless, a dead cigarette caught between his fingers. Beside them, Oliver was a brooding shadow, silent and minatory. In the field Angelica and the bull stared at each other, their breath fogging the chilly air. And then, very slowly, they began to move.
She took a step; it took a step. She slid sideways, it raised its front legs and came down in a furious explosion of dust. Now and then the bull would lower its head and charge her, and Angelica would drop to the ground and roll away, darting to her feet again quick as thought. She was still naked; where the dirt and grass touched her, her skin was streaked black and grey, her long legs mottled with tiny seed heads. On one breast a smudge like a handprint showed as though she had been struck.
But the patina of dust and grime didn’t make her look less beautiful. In some perverse way it made her
And still she came at it, tireless, relentless, crying out in low sharp bursts, a wordless, teasing song that was the perfect music for that dance. And dance it was, not crude or stumbling but fluid as the mad rush of water raging down a ravine, beautiful and awful and horribly, infinitely perilous.
Suddenly she stopped. She was panting, I could hear her and see how her ribs rose and fell, see how her entire body was flushed and smell her sweat mingled with that of the bull and the pungent odor of the trodden grass. When she turned I caught a flash of light at her breast, a gleam like the sun on water.
In front of her the bull was still as well. Its nostrils flared and it shook its head, no longer furiously but slowly, as though exhausted. It pawed clumsily at the ground with one foot. Every now and then a shiver would run across its entire body and its skin would ripple with a long single tremor. Its ears lay flat against its huge skull. Two long strands of spittle dangled from its mouth. Darker patches stood out against its greyish hide. On its rear right fetlock there was a small gash that bled when it moved.
And now, oh so slowly, Angelica began to walk toward it. She would take one step and halt, wait and then take another. When the bull shuddered and lowered its head, eyes madly rolling, she would become motionless and remain so for a minute, two minutes, three. Then she would step forward again. Overhead the moonless sky stretched black and boundless. The stars threw down a pale bitter light that cast no shadows, illuminated nothing but the things themselves: a beautiful girl and a bull.
Finally she stopped. The bull’s head was inches from hers, its horns reaching to embrace her. Above her breasts the lunula glowed, its raised prongs deadly as the bull’s horns, its gleaming curve radiant beneath
