the answer . . . then, aside from waiting for their bright child to grow
up, there was the possibility that the brat would show no interest in
that particular problem . . .
Genius has a hard life.
But — has my Mob some unspoken goal which is not simply the pursuit of knowledge? It isn’t the sort of thing they would tell their messenger boy. I would not deal with them as easily as the brash Armstrong . . . aside from the emotional problem (yes, there is one)
of having to kill my father.
From first fascination I have declined steadily to distrust of the
Frankenstein game. Call me conservative, but I think we should be
very careful about the contents of the nursery. Despite what I did to
Armstrong, I become queasy at blood sports.
Cave Am antem
©
CARMEL BIRD
The girl is burying the body in the hollow. She has wrapped it in a
scarlet cloak. In the hollow beneath the sweet pines, she is burying
the body which she has wrapped in the cloak. She scatters sweet
herbs across the dead one who is folded and parcelled in scarlet.
The girl scatters herbs and wild (lowers, pine needles, pebbles.
There is a patter of pebbles; there is a rustle of leaves.
Tears. There are tears in her eyes, on her fingers, lightly falling
sometimes, upon the brush of greenery veiling the body in its cloth.
H er pale eyes are filled with tears. Tears glisten on the leaves. In the
hollow, the girl is burying the body, as her tears slide down the
leaves, beading the green. Tears, rolling across rocks, shiver and
settle between pebbles. They make no stain on the scarlet cloth, for
the cloth is grimy, tattered at the edges, toggled with mud. It shows
through the leaves and flowers, now dull red, now brown, and
sometimes, on the edge of a wrinkle, vivid blood. Somewhere, the
girl has gathered twigs of rosemary. She sprinkles the leaves of her
rosemary across the body in the hollow.
In the hollow between the rocks, beneath the sweet pines, in the
heart of the silence of the forest, the girl is burying the body. Her
fingernails, like claws, damaged, stained, scratch at the earth which
she drops, crumbles, on top of the garlands of greenery. Stones,
small rocks, and crumbs of earth, Moist and rotting leaves.
It has taken her all day. In the castle, whole save for the roof, she
wrapped the body in her cloak and carried it and dragged it to the
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Carmel Bird
hollow. She placed it on the rotting floor of the sweet pine forest,
and covered it with leaves and earth. H er arms were strong; she
carried rocks; she marked the place with rocks. She wept when she
buried the body of the wolf.
Isabella had a terrible reputation. She used to go up to the old
castle — there is no roof — with just about anyone. Soldiers, musicians, cripples, foreigners, old men and boys. She was reasonably pretty, in a sly sort of way. Oh, but there was the devil in her eyes.
Light eyes, too light for hereabouts. Black hair, light eyes —
Isabella was always a strange one. Pretty enough, you know, but
strange.
Well, none of the decent young men of the village would have
very much to do with her. Everybody thought she would never find
a husband. But she didn’t care very much about that. She lived
with her grandmother, and she knew she would inherit the house
when the old lady died. Inherit the house and the pigs and the hens
and the few poor olive trees and the little herb garden. The old lady
sold herbs. And she was so good and respectable and proud. There
she was at Mass every day of her life; on feast days she wore a m antilla given to her long ago by the old Count. That is, the father of the present Count. She kept her house as clean as a convent with
white walls and bright blue doors — even on the cupboards. I used
to go there often — the chairs were made from bent withies; the
table was blue. I would collect the eggs and stop for a gossip. Lace,
there
