The World Above the Sky (27 page)

For the second time in as many days, Mimk
ɨ
tawo'qu'sk waited for words that did not come; no declaration of love crossed Eugainia's lips. It is my time, he thought to himself, to watch and wait.

“Mimk
ɨ
tawo'qu'sk. Please. I beg you. For the sake of your wife and the love she bears you, for the well-being of your child. Our child. Take me to the Well of Baphomet.”

Mimk
ɨ
tawo'qu'sk and Eugainia lay back in a warm nest of fur and feather. The canoe rocked as they settled, then found its equilibrium. Amidst their flightless cargo of death and plenty, transformed by the little life that lay between and before them—Mimk
ɨ
tawo'qu'sk and Eugainia abandoned themselves to a more careful kind of love. The canoe broke the gyre and regained its rudderless course. Their passion traced a long slow spiral on the quiet surface of the estuary, pulled by spring run-off, pushed by the falling tide toward the extreme ebb and floe of Turned Up Whale Belly Bay.

• • •

To the uninitiated, the grove of English oaks betrayed no apparent meaning. The twelve great trees arranged in four equilateral triangles were precisely set to the corresponding points of the cross pattée of the Scottish Knights Templar. The set-square planting paid geometric homage both to the Holy Trinity and the twelve disciples of the Christ.

A slight depression where the apexes of the four inverted triangles converged confirmed Eugainia's calculations. She seized Tooth of Wolverine. Sacred though it was to her Christian mythology, iconic though it had become to The People, she hoisted it above her head—the Spear of Destiny, Tooth of Wolverine, hefted it in her hands undignified as a common crowbar—then drove the gleaming star-stone head into the earth, sparking surface stones and loosening rock-hard soil. All the while, she held one thought and one thought only: save our child.

Eugainia's grim determination irritated Mimk
ɨ
tawo'qu'sk. He sat cross-legged, banished to the bare, leafless shade of the nearest centurion oak. He fixed his attention on the shadow patterns thrown upon and about him by the spreading branches above. Weak though he was this time of year, Grandfather Sun remained the Earth World's greatest hope; life responded with inexorable vigour to the great warm jewel in the World Above the Sky. In the awakening earth below Mimk
ɨ
tawo'qu'sk, roots pumped sap through trunk and branch to pulsing twigs. Buds strained, engorged beyond constraint, pressed to unfold without resistance in the growing heat. Meadow grass, roots newly freed from the frosted earth, competed with early blooming bulbs for what little heat the earth offered.

Small hairs on the back of Mimk
ɨ
tawo'qu'sk's neck rose again, and trembled. He slapped the back of his neck, irritated, he supposed, by some small creature hungry for his blood. He examined his unblemished palm in vain for traces of victory.

“I feel something crawling down the back of my neck,” he said.

Eugainia lifted the hair from the nape of his neck with the tip of the spear.

“There's nothing crawling down the back of your neck.”

“I know. But something creeps nonetheless.”

Eugainia returned to her work.

Unseen by either Eugainia or Mimk
ɨ
tawo'qu'sk, Henry—chain-mailed, steel-helmeted, visor up—emerged from an oceanside thicket of stunted spruce. The cross pattée of his undertunic had been dulled from bright crimson to a dry-blood red by the rusted rings of the mail. He assessed distance. Too far to make a rush. He slipped back into shadow.

“You dig the earth like a denning fox,” Mimk
ɨ
tawo'qu'sk said.

“Mimk
ɨ
tawo'qu'sk, if you're not going to help, please do not interfere.”

“You waste my time and your energy.”

“If you don't want to be here, then go.”

“I won't leave you in the presence of this evil.”

“Then stay.”

“Go. Stay. You want me here and gone at the same time.”

“I'm doing what I need to do. You do what you please.”

Mimk
ɨ
tawo'qu'sk grasped the shaft of Wolverine.

“I'm not going to fight you for it.” Eugainia released the spear to his control. She sat beneath the oak.

“Very wise. You would not win.”

Eugainia gathered her hair, damp with sweat, and began to plait a braid. We will see about that, she thought.

Mimk
ɨ
tawo'qu'sk inverted the spear and drove it into the ground. “You treat me as though I don't matter.”

Eugainia retrieved the spear.

Correctly judging them too absorbed in their personal discord to notice him, Henry moved quickly from the scrub spruce to the outermost oak. Its stout trunk concealed him completely. He strained to hear conversation fragmented by the rise and fall of the freshening breeze.

“Mimk
ɨ
tawo'qu'sk. I...”

“You are not more sorry I am...”

“Hear me...my life before I'll...”

“...you seek is evil.”

“Within the evil is good.”

“Within evil only more evil. Any child knows...”

“...end my life...before I...another monstrous child.”

Waving grasses stilled. Henry's breath ran shallow. The breeze died, revealing every word.

“What do you know of the evil of the world?” Eugainia demanded. “You who live in paradise.”

“Paradise! Are you blind, deaf and dumb Woman with the Moon? Do The People not starve when the snows desert them? When illness, sorrow and grief infest their hearts, do they not sicken, grieve and die? You haven't seen the cruelty borne by The People. Or born of them. Nor have you seen our women and children slaughtered by our enemies, or those we slaughter in return, their spirits wailing, lost, seeking entry to the Ghost World, yearning to be with those who went before. You think our world's pure and yours isn't? You do us harm, with this ‘them not us,' this ‘you not me' of yours.”

“The stone that does not speak will bring true power to L'nuk.”

“I have said and again I say: we have the Power of the Six Worlds.”

“I dig and dream for you, Mimk
ɨ
tawo'qu'sk.”

“We don't need your dead, mute bowl, or this star-stone spear.”

“I need their Power. My child needs their Power.”

“Your child?”

Henry feared Eugainia might suffer harm, though it was she, not Mimk
ɨ
tawo'qu'sk, who controlled the spear.

“I meant our—”

“Our spirits mingled to make this child. Now you claim it as your own? Perhaps you think, ‘I'll take my child with me, away from this brown man, back across the sea.'”

“I don't know where the Holy Blood will lead me.”

“I know. My wife will stay with The People. My child will stay with The People.”

“You would force me to stay against my will?”

“I would. I will.”

“And how will you do that?”

“Do not provoke me, Eugainia.”

“I'm Eugainia again, am I?”

“You're no longer Woman Who Fell in Love with the Moon. Not in your spirit.”

“Then who am I?”

“You are Eugainia; Woman Who Steals My Child. Woman whose people will give my bones to the red-robed priests to be burned. I know what you think I am. I know who you think I am. Maybe I am the god you seek to be your eternal celestial partner. Maybe I am not. I know this: I'm a man of eighteen winters, Eugainia. Already I have lost one wife. Already I have lost one child. My tribe awaits my council. The Great Spirit wishes me to hear His voice. Kluscap, his servant, waits for me to breathe the secrets of the earth, her ways and her creatures into The People's ears. You said you were sent to me by heaven. That you came from heaven. That you, like me, are the Great Spirit's emisary made manifest on earth. But in your heart I am not your equal.”

“You are in every way my equal.”

“You wish to steal my child, and run away. You wish to kill my soul. No! Do not object. Hear me. I will speak of this one time and one time only: if you steal my child, I will call all the Powers of the Six Worlds. I will make a great canoe. I will follow you wherever you go. I will find you. I will bring you and our child home.”

“Would you leave The People to starve and die if you could prevent it?”

“Look around you. Where are your people?”

“In terrible darkness. I am their salvation.”

“Your people killed their one God. Like Windego, Cannibal Ghost Person, your people drink his blood. Like Windego, Cannibal Ghost Person, they devour his flesh. Like Windego, Cannibal Ghost Person, the poor Christ though long dead still cannot satisfy your people's thirst or gluttony. Still they eat his flesh. Still they drink his blood. You say you're like him. That I'm like him. That you and I are this Christ reborn. Maybe we are. Maybe we're not. Either way, I make you this promise: no one, not your people, not mine, will devour your flesh. Or eat the flesh of our child. Or eat mine. They will not drink my blood. Or your blood. Or the blood of our child. This land is vast, beyond what even I can know or imagine. You know my people, Moon Woman. Because you know me, they will love and cherish you. Protect you. We will not be torn apart. Or devoured. Or burned. Our child will walk between us. Together we'll travel the Six Worlds forever.”

Eugainia took and held his hand in hers. “I thought the greatest love to be the selfless love one feels for all humankind,” she said at last. “I was wrong. If we come to love only one other person in our lifetime, Mimk
ɨ
tawo'qu'sk, our journey upon this sorrowful earth has worth. I stand here and listen to you speak. I see the look in your eyes. I hear the words of your heart. I know this: For me, that person is not our unborn child. Not this child, nor the next child or any child that follows. The person I came to earth to know, the man I came to love is you. To walk side by side with someone of your grace and beauty Mimk
ɨ
tawo'qu'sk? The Creator's greatest gift to the goddess is her god. Still I fear for the child, Mimk
ɨ
tawo'qu'sk. I fear without the Grail not only the child will die but I will die with it. You alone in a world without me. Me alone in the world without you...”

“Stop this talk. We will not die—”

“Beloved, I heard you. Now you hear me. I tell you, I will know no peace until I hold the Grail. She is below us. Here. She waits to heal me and strengthen you. When our blood, your blood and mine are blended, in Her, and anointed with the Spear of Destiny, with Wolverine, I will be well. Our child will be well. We will be well. I beg you, Husband. You whom I love more than life itself. Help me retrieve the Holy Grail.”

“If I help you, you will stay?”

“If you help me, I'll run wild and free with you forever. I swear it on our love.”

Mimk
ɨ
tawo'qu'sk rested his hand at the nape of Eugainia's neck, as though cradling the head of an infant. “Swear on the life of our unborn child.”

She held his glance. “I swear on the life of our unborn child.”

“Do not doubt the
Kji-kinap
of the Six Worlds,” he told her. “Because of
Kji-kinap
, I exist. Because of
Kji-kinap
all that exists, is.”

“This is the World of Sa'qwe'ji'jk, the Oldest of the Old,” she replied. “My ancestors, your ancients; they're all here, around above and below us.”

“Yes. In your sky-coloured eyes, I see them all.”

Mimk
ɨ
tawo'qu'sk held Eugainia in his arms.

“Come, my wife. Let's put aside strife and feed our yearning. Let's fill this evil place with love.”

Delicately, insistent as spring—tendrils of forgiveness sprouted from the ragged ends of discord. Eugainia curled toward him. He responded. Limbs entwined. Lips swollen in argument, now full with desire, met. The world disappeared. In their hearts, there were only three persons on the ocean side of the Island of the Twelve Standing Oaks: two wrapped in love sheltered the unborn third.

The unseen fourth, Henry Sinclair, moved across the clearing with practised stealth. He froze when the lovers parted. He exhaled silently when they lay on their sides on a dry swath of last-year's meadow hay. Eugainia curled her leg across Mimk
ɨ
tawo'qu'sk's pelvis. He arched, rolled to his back. Eugainia raised her robe and straddled him. He freed himself. She guided him home.

“Ah. There you are,” she murmured. “There you are...”

Eugainia arched back. Her sweat-dampened hair swung low in a cool wet arc. Her knees, her shins, the tops of her feet pressed into the earth. She lifted her hips, held still for a heartbeat. She settled her full weight upon him. The Goddess of Sea and Sky drove her desire down, through the body of her Earth and Sky World lover, into the rock and soil below. Mimk
ɨ
tawo'qu'sk reached up beneath her robe, hands to her breasts. His shoulders, neck, the back of his head pushed down and back. His heals dug into the soil. Strung taught and fully drawn, he pressed upward, his body a bow. The young God of the Sky, of the Earth and all its Creatures, yearned to launch an arc of light heavenward, to illuminate the sky with the fire of ten thousand suns, to remake the bond between him and the Sky Goddess that had all but come undone in waves of anger and of fear. Eugainia closed herself around him. Their blood—distinct though echoed in inflamed flesh—pulsed as if pumped from one heart. Each watched, in the eyes of the other, the last of the torn tendrils entwine.

“Stop, beloved,” Mimk
ɨ
tawo'qu'sk spoke urgently, gently. “Hold still. Still as can be. Oh please. Yes. There. Just so. Hold me like this for eternity.”