The World Above the Sky (22 page)

A single cry became the cry of many: a distant pack of wolves called to their leader. The alpha wolf replied. He was close. He'd found meat. The howl that chilled the soul of man from the dawn of time warmed Henry. He took comfort from the thought that other living hearts, though feral and predacious, beat nearby.

God help me. I'm as mad as the Christ in the desert. No garden or grove existed more terrible than Gethsemane, Henry believed as a child. He knew better now. Lord, is it necessary that I be torn apart?

God and the wolf kept silence. Henry considered fang and jaw.

If it is to be done, let it be done cleanly. And soon.

A light snap, much closer. A twig beneath a paw? A breath. Not his. Not distant.

Poor pickings here, you ravening bastards.

An act of grim will, perhaps his last, forced rigid fingers to close around the handle of his knife. My flesh. My bones. My blood. My God....You will it. How will it be? Fangs tear living flesh. Jaws crack my bones for their marrow. I wait. Frozen and alone.

A white wolf materialized before him, its fur lustrous, its frost-blunted ears upright.

“Alone?” a deeply pitched voice corrected. “What makes you think you're alone?”

“Am I not?” Henry mumbled to the loping shadow, moving with studied disinterest through trees at the edge of his perception. “Prove to me you're more than frost or shadow. Come. Try me, wolf.”

“In my own good time. The great wheel turns, and marks our passage from age to age, season to season...from life to little life.”

“Look, wolf. Behind you. Where there's light there's life.”

The White Wolf cocked its head, first to one side, then the other.

“Look at what?”

“Behind you. Look.”

The White Wolf turned.

“I see nothing”

“There. Among the fading stars. Low on the horizon, Orion—the ancient Lord Osiris, Hunter King of Winter. And at his heel the faithful star-dog Sirius. Dog and jackal. Jackal, dog and wolf. Wolf and man. God made us.”

The White Wolf stared through Henry. “I'm no man's dog or jackal.”

“No. I don't suppose you are. Come closer. Let me look my death directly in the eye.”

The White Wolf's breath, mixed with Henry's, hung in the air, the finest of veils between them.

“How strange.”

“What?” the wolf asked.

“As my body chills my mind glows more alert.”

“It is the way of the freezing death. Do you feel pain?”

“No. Sudden heat. Intense. Pleasant.”

“Good. You'll feel ecstasy as you're devoured. God's final kindness.”

Henry studied the pink albino snout. The wolf scented the air, his tongue moistening his nose. Fine hairs spiked with ice twitched. “You will be a light meal. There's not much left but ropy muscle and bone. Shrunken heart. Empty head.”

“Flesh of your flesh.”

“The two shall become one.”

Henry raised his eyes from its snout to the eyes of the great predator. He made no sense of what he saw. Opaque pupils clouded white rendered death unfathomable. Henry's heart raced with sympathy.

“You're blind,” he said.

“I am.” The White Wolf stood unmoved before him. “I was born blind and have remained so.”

“How did you survive?”

“When I was a whelp, I kept my nose to my sire's flank and ran full tilt behind him. Now I keep my snout to my alpha bitch and run with her. I never miss so much as a single stride. If I do I'm lost.”

“You run blind through the woods without injury?”

“Woods. Rocky barrens. Meadow. Marsh. The edge of the sea. I run like the wind that I am. Never trip. Never fall. Never falter. Rivers are difficult. And tidal flats. If I lose scent, I'm likely to wander. Like all my kind, and likely yours, my sense of smell declines in this cold.”

“Yet you found me.”

“I have a nose for uncertainty.”

“Ah.”

“I smell another creature's doubt and the next thing I know, my belly's full to bursting.”

“Frailty. The prey's curse.”

“The predator's prerogative. Another gift from the Creator.”

“How is another's doubt to your advantage?”

“The unschooled calf errs. Its mother becomes confused by her desire to protect her child and her own life. She wavers. In that instant both are ours for the taking.”

“As am I.”

“We shall see.”

“You're not alone.”

“No. I called. They answered. ”

“They'll filter through these trees like smoke or mist.”

“Yes. They await my order.” The wolf sat back on its haunches. “As I await yours.”

“I'm not in the world of the Christ Lord Jesus now, am I?”

“I know nothing of that. You called me. I'm here. That's all.”

“I called on God. Not you.”

“As you wish.”

“Moments ago I longed for death. I'm no longer certain.”

“I can help you. What is it you wish?”

“Nothing.”

“All men enter the world with a question.”

“Few leave with an answer.”

“Not the answer they sought. Yet all leave.”

“None wiser. I've lost my faith in God.”

“God stands before you.”

“You...?”

“I offer life and death. The choice is yours.”

The White Wolf licked a paw and then washed its face, his last meal's blood licked clean.

“This woman you call upon,” he said, “this Eugainia.”

“I nurtured her in France. Then Scotland, always watchful, ready to run, fleeing her enemies, often only days and hours beyond the grasp of a closing fist. Raised her as I would my own child, mindful that I nourished the very Daughter of God.”

“She's not the daughter of God. She is God Herself.”

“You are God,” Henry taunted. “You just said as much—”

“One manifestation in the long line of those made flesh. As are you, no?”

“I am God's servant, and protector of the Goddess here on earth.”

“As you wish. I've seen her.”

“Alive?”

“Never more so.”

“Where is she?”

“Safe.”

“Thank God. And the thief who stole her?”

“The thief is no thief. He is her equal in every way. Teaches her the Ways of The People. The Ways of the Animal Powers. The Two have become One.”

“How dare he presume to be her equal.”

“Is God a single thing to you? A man or woman, a human cast in your pale image wearing your frail, naked form?”

“Eugainia is the daughter of God made manifest on earth, that she may teach us.”

“Simple man. Let the scales fall from your eyes. Each and every one of us is God made manifest on earth that we may help and teach each other.”

“Why can't I heal the sick? Alleviate the suffering of the poor? The downtrodden? I can't transform air and earth into loaves and fishes. Can he, this seducer thief who killed my dreams of a New Arcadia?”

“They are more than the cup that holds the blood, these two. They are both the cup and the blood itself.”

“Her blood is exhausted and diseased and needs to be refreshed.”

The White Wolf rose and walked a pace or two to the westward. “Your Sky Goddess walks with Mimk
ɨ
tawo'qu'sk, the God of the Earth who was made with her and for her. He will guide her to this cup you seek. What you'll witness, Henry Sinclair, if you have eyes to see, is nothing less than the marriage of heaven and earth. I know your heart. You're jealous of the Goddess and wish in your fear to control her. To cage her. You'll cheat death, you think, though none but one has so done before. When the last trumpet sounds, it will be you who'll rise from the dead and march through heaven, leading the Goddess, chained to you by her gratitude with links forged from your self-sacrifice. Your wife and children will follow Eugainia, not walking at your side, or hers, but two steps behind.

“We long to be safe in a garden. A sacred bower. God's home on earth.”

“You'll live on in an earthly paradise forever, you think, your vain flesh incorruptible. The Goddess, whom you own, will bend her will to yours, indulge your delusion, restore the garden you despoil with your shameless indifference. Indolent man. This will not happen. I will not permit it. I live in your bones, which my pack will crack at my behest. I'd happily be shed of you. But I made you. I am constant. Unwavering. I'm the blood in your veins, which my pack will lap from the frozen earth. I am their God and your God. I am—”

“I know who you are! By the twisted logic and the dead pale eyes. You are the devil himself, sent to this frozen Gethsemane to taunt and test me—”

“Fool! You revel in this celestial parade of man-shaped gods. Divine intruders rise and fall, victims of your inability to comprehend anything of greater consequence than your next meal, your next war, the next warm body sent to comfort you, or submit their flesh to your desire in the night. You fear and despise the Goddess. You sent her to the wilderness to die. Now she flourishes. It is you who will die....You. Lost, adrift and alone.”

“I'm not alone. And you're not God. Nor the devil! You're nothing more than cold-brain delusion, wolf. Some corner of my fevered brain conjured you. With one blast of my icy breath, I'll hurl you howling into oblivion. You'll no longer exist.”

“You're not a man. No Temple Knight. You're nothing more than a self-styled saint who's failed to protect the daughter of god. My daughter. The child I sent you.” The wolf licked Henry's cheek. The abrasive tongue raised welts. “Foolish man. You're meat. Sustenance. And I grow hungry.”

“My bones. What of my bones?”

“Rasped clean. Cracked for their marrow. Gnawed by my subservient males until I drive them from your carcass.”

“Keswalqw tells me I can't come back without my bones.”

“You can't. You won't. God wills it.”

Twigs snapped. The White Wolf turned toward the sound.

“My wolves,” he murmured, “will soon be upon you.”

Dry leaves, crisp and brittle, whispered adieu. Henry's vision wavered.

“Look, man. My pack. See how they filter through the trees like mist and smoke. Just as you predicted.”

Henry loosed his knife from his belt.

“I'll not die alone in this savage place. Jackal, dog or wolf....One of you will serve me in eternity!”

The White Wolf leaned in, scented the corners of Henry's mouth. “I think not.” With tender mercy, the White Wolf's tongue wet Henry's arid lips. The pink tongue flicked, soft as a lover's, in and out. The frosted muzzle grazed Henry's throat. The wolf's tongue traced the path of the artery pounding its last tattoo.

“Come,” he heard the wolf say. “Give yourself to me. God wills it!”

Henry closed his eyes. He offered his throat.

“Aye. God wills it,” Henry repeated. “Eugainia. Forgive me!”

Fangs indented Henry's thin yellow skin. Blood began to seep. The sun broke free of the horizon, washed the ice mirror's surface a deep blood red. Henry's world dissolved in a swirl of red and black.

A sound, hard and familiar. The twang of tight-drawn gut released. The hiss of an arrow sprung from the arc of a bow.

Henry opened his eyes. An arrowhead, shaft and feather passed through the torso of the White Wolf. Henry's tormenter dissolved in a cloud of bloody frost.

Henry searched the shadows. Two slender figures stood stretched against the sky.

Athol Gunn knelt. He removed his mitts. He raised Henry's stone-cold head. He passed gentle heat from his hands to Henry's eyes. Henry made no sense of the thin female face before him. “Blessed Crone,” he whispered. “You're here for me. Take me home. Yes. There. Place me at Orion's feet, lower than his wolf-dog, faithful Sirius. For I am worthy of no more. God...wills...it.”

Keswalqw pried the knife from Henry's hand. “No, Henry Orkney. Your spirit quest will not end today.” She extracted and drank deeply from the bladder warmed by her skin. She forced Henry's lips apart. Honey water flowed from her mouth into his. Henry supped gratefully.

Gunn spoke his relief. “There you go, Henry. That's the way—I say, that's the way, my laddie.”

“Athol Gunn. You're my cousin, and brother to my wife, the Lady Igidia.”

“I am. Come back, I say, come back with us to the village.”

“No!” Henry cried. “I took too much. The starving time!”