Cover Him with Darkness (6 page)

The sun-patch thrown on the flagstones by the small kitchen window had disappeared, as the shadow of the cliff above shifted. I shook myself from my trance and rose from the chair.

Fear was no longer an excuse.

If the house had felt strange, the soot-blackened interior of the tiny church, with its icons so darkened by age that only their gilt halos could be made out clearly, was like something from another era; something medieval and now distinctly unwelcoming. St. Michael, patron saint of our family, stood over the recumbent Devil still, and watched me with mournful disapproval as I retrieved from under the floor tile the key to the narrow padlocked door behind the altar. My hands were unsteady as I probed the lock, but I remembered the old trick of jiggling the key against the teeth to persuade it to turn. I stepped into the passage beyond for the first time in years.

An arm's length behind the wooden door was something new: a metal door I'd never seen before. Nonplussed, I looked it over. It had deep lintels and jambs, also steel, and no lock but two heavy bracing bars. It was, I worked out, a homemade blast door, welded from many sections. Father
must have fitted it himself, when he decided to prepare the world's last line of defense against the prisoner below.

It took the weight of my shoulder to move the steel door on its hinges.

Down I went, into the dark, the first person in weeks to tread this path. I carried only a two-liter bottle of water and a flashlight. The church's lingering scent of frankincense gave way to a cellar smell of damp stone. From the niches to either side, the nameless statues of forgotten gods watched me pass.

Down, down, my feet scuffing the stone on which no dust settled. My fingers spread, brushing the rock.

The passage opened out into the cavern. Daylight filtered in from the broken roof far above. Great slabs of limestone lay spilled across the path of my flashlight.

There
. There he was. Just as I remembered. My nightmares were all real. I felt my heart pound against my ribs like it would smash them.

Dear God.

I was seeing
him
with adult eyes too. He didn't look like a titan, or a demon, or a god. He looked like a man: perhaps in his early thirties, swarthy, with an athletic build and really dark lashes and hair going prematurely gray. Tall, but not inhumanly so. Dirty; naked; abused. His exposed armpits and crotch were exclamation marks of vulnerability. I picked my way over to the slab and knelt over him. His face was just the same as it had been five and more years ago: stubbled, haggard with pain but handsome despite that. Breathtakingly so, like the agonized beauty of certain icons.

I touched his face. He opened his eyes. “Milja.”

I began to cry.

His voice was hoarse. “You…came…back.”

I was shocked: he'd never addressed me before. The words “I'm sorry!” spilled from my lips along with my sobs; “Oh God, oh God—I'm sorry! Papa sent me away! I didn't want to go, I didn't—”

My tears were dripping on his face. I wiped clumsily at them, smearing the dirt. “What's your name?” I begged.

He didn't answer.

“Who are you?”

He tried to moisten his lips. “I…don't remember.”

Bending forward, I pressed my wet cheek to his. Did I believe him? I don't know. He could be Loki or Prometheus or Azazel; I know I didn't care anymore. When I sat up I reached to the nape of my neck and undid my necklace. The sheath of bright blue plastic peeled off to reveal a supple length of steel-toothed metal: a wire saw.

This was it. The moment of choice.

The moment I betray my family,
I thought.
My father, who has trusted me even after last time. The whole line of my blood. All those people over all the centuries, who have stayed here, slaves to this prisoner, because it was their duty. Because they were keeping the world safe. Because they were obeying the will of God.

I cut through his bonds, one by one. It took a long time. The leather resisted even the titanium-tipped saw-teeth, and I wondered what the hell it was. I thought about Loki's son, slaughtered by the Æsir so that his body parts might be used as rope—for only a god might bind a god. The thought was foul and I tried to push it aside.

As I cut, his breathing grew louder and louder, sucking great lungfuls of the flat cavern air as if he were building up to a fearful effort.

When I freed his second ankle, he rolled onto one hip. For a moment he lay without moving, groaning a little under his breath.

I touched the back of his hand. “Take your time,” I whispered, wondering if I would have to pull him to his feet. That wouldn't go well; he was far too heavy for me.

But then, with a heave and a grunt, he sat up, pulled the severed ends of his tethers loose and rubbed at his leg. The skin beneath his bonds was sticky-raw: I saw how he had to pull the leather off to free his wrists and feet. His breath came harsh and shallow, and I think the change in posture was as agonizing as the removal of the binding. When he opened his screwed-up eyes I passed him the water bottle.

He didn't know how to open it. He had no idea about screw-top caps.

“Here.” Quickly I remedied the situation. The water escaped down his throat and chest as he glugged it back, cutting runnels in the dirt there.

I was wearing a long skirt that day to mollify the old women; I wet the hem while he was getting his breath back and tried to gently clean his face with the cloth.

That was rash. He caught my wrist in one hand; I felt the fingers of his other on my bare calf. Our eyes locked, and I felt time hang, breathless—before he moved to cover my mouth with his, and I tasted blood and stone and darkness in his kiss.

There were no words. There had never been adequate words for his pain and need, or for my hunger. All these years my guilt and my loneliness had pulled me back to this place, and to this moment: this kiss. I grasped his shoulder and felt the play of his muscles as we moved together; beneath my fingertips there was grit stuck to his skin that might have been there for centuries. I yielded to his cold lips and his arms and the press of his torso, repudiating my yesterdays and throwing away all my tomorrows in the rush of this moment, this ache. He had already taken my heart: now he stole my breath and my senses.

The only thing that kept me from rapture was his grip on my wrist, tight and growing tighter. I could feel the bones of my wrist grinding together; in the discomfort I felt a dim echo of his agony—and because of that I welcomed it. But the hurt grew and at last I broke the kiss with a gasp.

I heard him growl.

“Please—not so tight!” I begged.

He looked down at his hand as if he'd never seen it before, and abruptly he released me. I cradled my wrist, rubbing it, and stared up at him through my lashes. I was half-afraid, half-enchanted, and dizzy with uncertainty and arousal.

For a moment he took my face lightly in his hands, thumbs limning the bones of my cheeks. In the half-light I saw the slow shake of his head. “My star of the morning,” he breathed, “come to lead me to the day.”

I didn't understand.

“Is there a sun shining still?” he whispered. “And snow upon the high peaks?”

I nodded inside the cage of his fingers.

“Is there grass?” he pressed me, brushing my lips with his. His skin was warm now. “Do trees still lift their arms to the sky?”

“Of course.”

With all the muscular uncoiling of a snake he rose up on his knees over me. I saw his skin gleaming with perspiration. Maybe he was no titan, but he was far taller than I was; he loomed like a wave about to fall. For a
moment then, I admit, I thought that he was about to seize me and press his naked body down upon me—but instead he put his head back and stretched, flexing each joint, and just by watching I understood the inexpressible pleasure of being able to move and twist and ease every muscle: the visceral joy of freedom.

He laughed disbelievingly, low in his throat. “Show me.”

“Show you?”

“Which way is out?” he asked, reaching to pull me to my feet as he rose up himself. My legs were weak and I tipped against him, dizzy.

Oh God. His naked body, here, now, against mine. I can feel his…

“Okay. I'll take you.” I was blushing with shame for what had not happened.

And that was how I came to release the prisoner of eons. The act itself had been so abrupt—so sudden—that now it felt utterly unreal. Even the throb of my flesh and the quiver in my legs made it seem all a part of my fantasy.

I led him to the tunnel mouth, but he wasn't content to follow and he pushed ahead, drawing me by the hand. He didn't spare the icons and the votive offerings a single glance: his attention was fixed upon escape. As the first breath of warmer air came to us he released me and hurried forward, fending off the walls as he stumbled because his legs were still a little uncertain beneath him.

I felt then the clutch of fear. He didn't look back to see if I was following. He didn't seem to remember me. All his focus was on what lay before him and, as I hurried to keep up, every straining inch of the distance between us tore at me.

Was he going to abandon me, now that I'd freed him?

The door to the church was standing open. He surged out into the room, searching for an exit. I wondered for a moment whether he would be able to cross holy ground, but he didn't even seem to notice his surroundings: he had eyes for nothing but the outer door, its ancient planks outlined by the sun. He wrenched it open and the blazing glow of the afternoon poured in upon him, lapping his naked flesh, haloing him in light. A human would have flinched and shielded his eyes: even where I stood, at the back of the chamber, I was half blinded. Tears swelled my eyes and my throat. He only lifted his chin, staring.

Beneath my feet, the ground trembled. It lasted perhaps a second or two—almost as if the Earth itself shivered.

The breath stopped in my breast as I waited for what would happen next—for him to burn to ash perhaps, or for an eagle to swoop down upon him from the heavens. Or for him to unfurl demon wings and vanish with a clap of sulfurous thunder. I didn't even have his name to call out in my terror.

None of those things happened. It was just an earth tremor, one among many we suffer yearly. A little dust fell from the arched ceiling. My companion didn't even seem to notice. Instead he looked back into the room, toward me, and stretched out his hand, pleading. I moved to lay my fingers in his and he pulled me against him, holding me tight. I could feel his strong, hard body trembling. Without words we stood holding each other, looking out upon the valley and the village below, with its fields and its brown-and-red tin roofs and the snow-capped peaks of the Durmitor range beyond: the terrifying open vistas of freedom.

He wouldn't come out of the sun. It was impossible to blame him for that, but I did try to persuade him, worried that he would be seen from below. He only looked at me with mild curiosity, as if I were singing some pretty tune in a language he didn't understand. Going right to the lip of the rock shelf, he sat down bare-assed upon the warm stone, his feet swinging in space, and stared off into the distance like he would never tire of the view.

Lean and naked and as filthy as road crew, every pore stippled with dirt.

Well, it wasn't like I could
drag
him indoors.

Eventually I left him there with the water bottle and went into the kitchen to find him food. It was all I could think of doing; my imagination had extended no farther than his release. In fact the situation seemed to have robbed me of all my wits. I stood in the middle of the room, my hand on my breastbone, feeling the pressure build in my lungs as my breath came fast and shallow. What had happened in the cave seemed unreal; what sat outside was impossible; what awaited in the future was unthinkable.

It's not real. How can it be real? If it is real, how can I have done it?

“Papa,” I whispered. “You told me not to. But I did. What do I do now?”

Part of me wanted to rush out again and check that he was still there, and to feast my gaze on those dark eyes and those long hard muscles, the unself-conscious nakedness of his body. Another part of me wanted to hide in my bed with the quilt over my head. Maybe he'd just go away, and the thump of my heart and the tingle in my flesh would be the only evidence left.

I pulled a helpless face. I'd come in here to feed him.

He must be starving.

It took some time for muscle memory to come to my rescue. In five years I'd grown used to such a different way of living. There wasn't anything fresh in the larder that hadn't spoiled, of course, but I lit the wood stove and pumped water by hand from the cistern, into pans that I set upon the hob top. Boiling up rice and dried lentils, I fried onion and garlic and the very last of the withered apples from the pantry, found a ham wrapped in linen and carved off slices to add to the mess. Dishing up a plateful, I carried it outside.

With every step my nervousness grew.

He'd gone.

Oh
, I thought, my heart swooping into my belly:
Oh
. The cliff edge was empty.