Fiction 1, Chapters 27 & Epilog

Chapter 27

"Whilst your great goodness, out of holy pity,

Absolved him with an axe."

Henry VIII, Shakespeare

ELPHINGSTOKE, MANITOBA:

"Ping!"

I had turned before the sound, well in time to see two identifiable flying objects rising lazily in the sky, over the low ridge to my left. Some indefinable odor had drawn my attention there to the windward.

For a few hours now, I had been searching the trapped areas of the Farm, using a rented Jeep Cherokee over the gravel roads. In each area, I'd stop the little truck and get out, to walk around and listen. But Orlando had heard me first.

One of the flying objects, a curved, oblong piece of sheet metal, quickly fell victim to air resistance and tumbled to the top of the ridge, harmless. My vision was preternaturally sharp at this moment, probably because the other object was a functionally formed, made-in-the-U.S.A. hand grenade, the new and improved, wire-wound M26, not the old pineapple.

A five second delay is built in to protect the thrower, and I had up to four of them left to try outrunning its effective "kill" range, or find a hole to jump into. Or just to kiss my ass goodbye. Or whatever.

Or maybe less than one of those seconds. It's standard military practice at short range, to pull the pin and release the handle before tossing. That way, the grenade explodes right after it lands.

My first thought was a regret: that I hadn't opened Diana's letter. The envelope __with a Paris postmark__ had been handed to me at the front desk when I had checked out of our Edmonton digs, a few days before. Undecided, I had just folded it over and stuck it in my hip pocket. But not before reading the name Diana Stuart Bakker on the back.

Not so bad: one regret only for things undone. There would never be enough time for all the other regrets. So my life didn't really flash before my eyes __not much of it, anyway.

The Farm had been a shambles.

Once the Army had recovered all of the boxes of biotic agents that had been inventoried, they got a mite careless in their practice of the military arts. Orlando may have gone to cover when his property fell to the Canadian Army, but there was nowhere else for him to escape to anymore. As the owner of record, he was officially a fugitive and all properties and accounts had been seized.

It only took half an hour with a computer and a few books, to come up with all the likely permutations for an alias stemming from the Charlemagne Cycle, Orlando Furioso, Emil Orlando and, for good measure, Mansur Fishbein. The Government pledged itself to ensuring that Orlando did not escape the Awesome Majesty Of Its Justice.

If It didn't go belly-up itself before too long.

But for the moment, if my next quarry was anywhere he was there at the Farm. There would be hide-outs in plenty for him, and probably canned food stocks. Orlando could do quite well for himself there.

It took me a week to find him.

And I didn't really find his hideout, just him.

An analysis of the site plans on computer narrowed the possibilities down to a half-dozen possible areas where an armed and dangerous man could be waiting to kill me, in any one of a dozen hidey-holes each. Before I sent the family home, Uncle John asked me how I was going to check each possible hide-out for Orlando without getting killed.

After an hour, I had an answer for him. It was a solution to the problem, without answering the question.

The boys on one team and Uncle John and I on the other, set up a loud transistor radio in the center of each suspect area. Then we ringed the pathways around each radio with outlawed bear-traps __outlawed, but still available if you asked the right people. They were sunk so that their tops were flush with the ground, and replacing the forest floor's blanket of needles took care of concealment. Our scent would keep any innocent animals away for weeks at least.

We were extremely careful and took two whole days.

Each team took a metal detector so we could get out safely, but I noticed that we were still shuffling when we came back from doing it. When I was done with the Farm, the Canadian Army would get a map of the trap locations. Good practice for them.

"That's enough, guys," I told them. "The transistor batteries will last at least two or three weeks, and Orlando might too."

"You're not going to get him alone, Nephew. It's too dangerous. Haven't you got it through your thick skull yet that you need some help, here and there? Or did you trip on your cape and bump your rajd nyuck?"

"He's either going to be trapped with a crushed leg, or buried too deep to find, or escaped. Thanks, but you all have to get on with your lives."

I shook hands all around and kissed Allison for good measure. She rubbed the ten days growth of stubble on my head and face, and smiled at me through her tears.

John McGovern said, "It's been a grand thing, Richard. I thank God we all came through it. But now you'd be entirely on your own."

"You all can't take care of me forever, Uncle," I replied. "Take the boys home, and keep me in mind when you hoist a beer or sip a Bushmill's now and then. Watch for me when the cranes show up off Rockport __I won't be far behind. This could take weeks and the outcome is inevitable, Uncle John. Orlando is dead already, but he doesn't know it so the fool is still breathing. All I have to do is give him the bad news."

He stepped closer so the youngsters couldn't hear. "Are you sure?" he asked. His eyes were searching mine for the truth beyond the truth, the reason for the truth.

"I'm sure that he'll die, somewhere near, somewhere soon. It's in his cards, Uncle. Beyond that I can't say."

"What about your cards?"

"I can't read for myself; you know that. It's gamy-cess. Besides, that's all just a gimmick."

"You are right, Richard," Uncle John agreed, "And it's best for the baptized not to take such things seriously." But he made sure to cross himself at the first possible moment he thought no one would notice.

Allison was more practical than Mickey about their kidnapping by Polewicz's boys. It still bothered the young man that he had been played for a sucker. He tried to apologize to me.

"I hope you don't wish that both of you had really been tortured, Mick."

"Nah. Even I'm not that dumb, Unc_____ Dick. It's just that I feel bad about being taken so easily, and not doing anything about it."

"Mick, did you ever stand still, frozen, when some tough older kid started pushing you around?" Of course he did: every normal kid did. I tried to make him see that the only way for a normal person to become competent to deal with unreasoning violence was to suffer more of it that any sane person would ever want to. Until it became comprehensible.

"Forget it, Mick," I urged him. "Go home. Go back to school. Then, get married and have kids. Become a big man in Life. Leave death and violence for the losers who have nothing else. Take some boxing or karate lessons if you want to, but golf is really a lot more practical."

I had a word off to the side with Jack, too.

"There's some paperwork in your truck, Jack. Some stuff that makes Jack McGovern a solid citizen either in the U.S., or in Canada. Some of it's artwork and some of it's real, from a couple of grateful governments. They'll give you some options, when you have kids."

"Thanks, cousin. How grateful did you say they were?"

"Grateful enough to stand still for blackmail, Jack," I admitted. "If you have a lockeen, don't forget to name her Mary and call her Molly."

"We're planning one for your lady, as well; hers was a pretty name. And maybe a Richard, after John the Third, of course."

Then Uncle John again, and finally. I tried to avoid being solemn.

"I've never heard how you got your nickname, John. How did that come about?"

"I don't usually talk about it, Richard."

"And I don't want to pry, Uncle, but I've always wondered."

"Well, since you're family, I'll tell you. I was born in Kentucky, in an old World War One Army tent. It was the Depression and the family was in a hobo jungle when my mother's time came. The tent was the only shelter there that had a stove, but the bastard living in it wouldn't let Ma and my father in out of the snow to have their baby, me. He was the Boss hobo of the jungle there. They called him 'the Colonel' and he was twice as big as Pa and a killer to boot."

"What happened then?"

"Then I was born in the tent, Richard. I'm here, aren't I?"

"Indisputably, Uncle," I agreed. "But what about 'The Little Colonel'?"

"After Pa clubbed the other guy to death with a big tent stake, it was him that the hobos began to call 'the Colonel.' He hated that, but he didn't want to give out his own name the way things were. So I was 'The Little Colonel.' As soon as I was old enough, and Ma well enough, to travel __eight weeks__ we left Kentucky and he never went back. My elder brother remembered and started calling me that again after Pa died. I was ten then."

"Your birthday is Christmas Day, isn't it?" I prompted.

"Yeah." He looked uncomfortable at the inevitable comparison.

"That's a different sort of Nativity Story, Uncle. I wish I'd known your father."

As older friends and family often do, when they part for an indefinite time, we embraced as though it might be for the last time.

I had my reason for that close embrace, the certain knowledge that I would win finally. And then____ I deserved whatever would happen then. They did not. At least, with them gone, anybody around me would be an avowed enemy in confrontation. No one around to strike me down accidentally. Perhaps the White Lady's prophesy could be delayed or nullified altogether.

But I didn't really believe that.

Then my family left. In a very important way, they also stayed with me.

Next, flushing Orlando.

Most of the more obvious armaments, such as rocket launchers and machine guns, had been carted away by the Canadian Army. But there were still stocks of aggressive material around that they hadn't gotten to yet. Things like plastic explosives, primers, timers, and caps; things that were simply locked away until they could be tallied.

That didn't stop me.

I set up fifty or so charges of a British plastic explosive, stenciled PE-2A. Something else, an oxidizer, had already been mixed in with it. The charges were buried under fairly heavy rocks, in shallow holes at the center of the Farm. The timers were set for an irregular spread of twenty explosions the first day, beginning at daybreak, the same the second day, with a reserve of ten the next. The timers were twenty-four hour ones, so each day's ration would have to be set the night before.

If more were necessary, I'd use more.

It didn't really matter where the charges were placed. I was just going to blow holes in ordinary dirt. They were made progressively stronger with each succeeding blast. From wherever on the Farm that he would hear them, they would seem to get closer each time.

It was hard, even for me, to understand why I wanted to take him alive. I already knew that he was the one who had taken the captive Traveller boys from the South Africans. Those stalwarts might have stood still for a firing squad or a bullet in the back of the boys' heads, but not for what had actually happened to them. It was Orlando who had given them over to Dupont's Cree, with a story of child-rape.

I suppose that I was afraid that he would die too quickly, without knowing why.

Orlando would blame it all on Dupont. Dupont would blame it all on Orlando. Just like Polewicz had blamed it all on Orlando, and Dupont had blamed it all on Tedeschi. And Tedeschi....

Probably the Cree who killed Todd and Gary were the most innocent of all. Given their motivations, I couldn't hold them that responsible. Who could blame the Cree? Not me! No! Tedeschi, Polewicz, Orlando, Dupont; all were guilty. Yet Tedeschi must live.

"Untouchable"; it didn't seem just.

That bothered me. Not from any passion for the Monsignor's blood __no. It was just for the sake of closing the circle. How could he continue to live, if all the others had to die? Especially Orlando.

Speak of the Devil.

The grenade, of course. It was still falling, alone now, and about to land approximately ten feet away. Then it would roll toward me. About a second more, I guessed.

Time for one more memory __a blessed one of an unknown soldier. He was just one of the sergeants posted at the grenade pits to watch the basic trainees throw their first live grenade. But he was assigned to my line. If there is a job in the peacetime Army that calls for bigger Brass Balls, they're keeping it a secret.

My turn. He hands me a grenade, a real handful of an iron pineapple. I know the drill.

The procedure is simple even to a moron __or only to a moron, maybe. I stand elbows out, legs apart, right hand wrapped around the grenade and the spring-loaded igniter handle. The left index finger is inserted into the safety pin that must be extracted, with more than thirty pounds of force, before the handle can be released to ignite the fuse. I'm supposed to pull the pin and pitch the bloody thing as far as I can, with a shot-put type hurl, and keep standing to watch where it falls.

This time.

In more advanced lessons, the trainee will be taught to let go the handle, igniting the fuse; yet retain the grenade body for one or more seconds. Meanwhile, while the apprentice grenadier waits for the sergeant's second nod, the handle "pings" and spins end over end until it hits the ground nearby. The instructor __the one with Brass Balls__ nods his head again, and then the trainee throws the hissing, smoking, deadly little bastard of a hand grenade at some patch of dirt that has grossly offended his sensibilities.

But the first time, I was just supposed to throw it as far as I could and watch where it landed. I didn't. It got lobbed maybe twenty or thirty feet, and Galileo was right. The live grenade, the "pinging" handle, and I hit the ground together.

The good sergeant made me do it again, twice. Bless him forever.

Where was I?

Oh, yes, the "Ping!" The handle hadn't been released then, until the grenade had been thrown. Lucky for me! It rolled slowly and erratically down the little hillock toward me __a full three seconds left, then.

I stopped the little wobbler with my feet pointed out, heels together, as if it were a miniature bouncing football. That was the only way I could get a hand on it; one-one-thousand. Bending down, I grabbed the sputtering package that Orlando had sent me from Hell, and tossed it sidearm back over the hump as fast as I could; two-one-thousand. It was probably an air burst; that is, it went off before it landed. That's not certain, of course __I was busy having a honeymoon with the dirt at the time; three-one-thousand. Scurry to cover.

"Blam!" There's nothing like the sound of a grenade going off in the open. Not a sharp "Crack!"; it's softened, smudged if you will, by a million little echoes.

Orlando's resulting screams turned out to be genuine.

At first, I figured that he was trying to lure me in. After ten minutes, that seemed far-fetched. I had already circled around him, trying to balance scouting skills and armed preparedness with the need to keep one ear on the metal detector, here and there.

But there he was: one foot caught above the ankle in the trap; his hands trying to push raw and bloody sausages back into his abdomen. Screams tapered off to a angry sounding moans then.

It was Orlando, presumably. From a distance, the figure fit his description.

"Orlando!"

It took some effort on his part, and the "Yes?" was more imagined with the accompanying nod than heard. The groan that followed added emphasis, if nothing else. It occurred to me then that the slowly dying man meant nothing to me; that I knew nothing and cared nothing about him now that he was through. All that time and trouble. So much pain and death, for this non-entity dying by accident, so to speak.

There would be no answers this day, or any other, from Orlando. He wouldn't even know enough to ask the right questions.

I could visualize the way that the last few days had gone for my quarry. It was now the third day.

On the first, twenty charges had gone off. They must have found that many caves, or bunkers or just defensible positions. No time wasted in searching, merely collapse them with Bangalore torpedoes, or dynamite, or satchel charges.

A silent night, but no sleep.

Daybreak, the second day, and the next explosion. Are they coming closer, he wonders? They are all so powerful, he cannot tell until noon. Then, each shock causes the concrete floor and ceiling to spew dust into the light beams and his body to bounce a little on the cot. Definitely closer. He is torn between checking the perimeter of his little fortress to give him warning, and hiding as deep within as he can burrow to escape immediate death, waiting for the door on his tomb to be shut while he's still alive.

No sleep again. He breaks that night. To another bunker.

And the third day it starts again at daybreak. He knows that they'll get to him before nightfall. He just knows it. Maybe it will be the next one.

Finally, in the cool of the morning, he flees to the next bunker, and the next. All Farm vehicles have been impounded. He is trapped by the limits of a man on foot.

But he hears music. Not a marching band, but pop music, French music. Picnickers? With bombs going off? Are they a threat? But the explosions are the other way. Do they have an off-road vehicle, or a horse?

Is there a____

And he is bitten. His right foot and leg are trapped by jaws more powerful and vicious than a shark's, or so it seems.

The Ingram machine pistol is the right weapon for forest tactics, but it makes a poor crowbar to open a bear trap. As a would-be lever, it has been rendered useless as a weapon. So then he lies in wait for his captor or captors to arrive.

He has to twist the damaged leg, while he rolls over on his side to pull the pin on the grenade, and the effort to throw it costs a day's worth of pain. The target is the one person or group who can save him from a lingering, painful death, one way or the other. He'd have been better off holding it next to his head, when you come to think of it.

Orlando is a cornered rat, and he's acted like it. No surprise to me. A surprise to him came in the form of a grenade blast twenty feet away, from out of nowhere. Orlando's first thought is that somehow he didn't throw it high enough. The second, that he threw it too high. And the third is interrupted before it really starts. By a red-hot pitchfork that rips his abdomen open, as a fragment passes through him from right to left, and buries itself in the soft earth.

Now his life is ending too slowly in the noonday sunlight. Now, in denial of his fate, the birds are singing again __ten or twelve minutes after the grenade. Another plastic charge __the forty-eighth actually__ goes off in the distance, but the birds don't care.

Perhaps a day or two. Or, God help him, three.

He sees me, stepping out of the brush. My weapon is a shotgun __also a good choice in these close-quarter woods __a better choice for a crowbar. I'm standing still now, and put the metal detector down.

Orlando is still moaning. He's dying and he knows it. The grenade was his last hurrah, and there's nothing left with which to kill himself. The birds will be at him eventually. The black flies and ants are there already, despite his splayed hands trying to cover the gaping wound. Larger animals have long since fled the violence in the area.

He looks to me for mercy __for Life. If not that, for Death.

No understanding clarifies his mind, no justification explains his fate. The last blast, the most powerful, occurs. Just like thunder.

So be it.

He watches me walk away.

I looked at my watch as I did so. It had taken me an hour to get to know Orlando vicariously, to make him worth the effort of killing him. I thought to myself that these dumb animals in human form stomp around their little patch of ground like tyrannosaurs. We, the onlookers, paint them with an Evil larger than life while they go about their business.

After they fall they do not seem so evil, merely incomplete, damaged in some way, only dead meat. Their fall seems to have been inevitably in their genes somehow. They stomped around in their maze, destroying everything underfoot, only because they were too stupid to find the way out.

It seems simple in retrospect.

What about me? Am I the same, I wondered.

Blam! More man-made thunder. I was just at the top of the hillock, a ridge line on the other side.

A booby-trap! I hit the dirt, the shotgun searching for enemies. But there was only the cloud still left by Orlando's grenade, a cloud of dust surrounding his body. At least one extra grenade then, and the bastard had used it to set a trap. For me.

Then when the pain got too bad and I left without getting within range, he'd rolled off it and shut off the agony the only way he could. And now the son of a bitch was dead and I no longer cared one way or the other.

But this business, this luffee gamy-chat, wasn't over yet; not quite yet. There was still the last priest, if nothing else. Would he be the adversary, the one that would finally finish me?

The victory, if you can call it that, is complete now, I thought. What a goddamn let-down. Maybe it's time to see what's around the corner anyway.

It's a slow process getting a million pounds on its feet. I felt enervated, completely drained. Until I noticed that the cloud was still there, definitely a solid brown globe now, and concealing Orlando and eating away at the grass around him.

Shit!

Talk about being galvanized into action. A body-wide spark of alarm straightened me right up into a petrified column. That stuff could transmute thousands of acres in the space of mere minutes, I knew.

Nothing to say. Nothing to do but run for it.

Not a chance, not a goddam chance, I thought; a little sad, a little sorry, and a whole lot too scared to stand there and stare Death in the face. I turned and ran, and ran, and ran some more. My Jeep looked like it was on the horizon, miles and miles away. And I still tried.

Time for another regret. Now I'll never get to Cyprus. Who knows? There might be more women back there like Amina Carrington. Or to Paris.

I tried my best to get away, but there was no doubt in my mind now that Orlando had managed to take me with him. Phaethon had been the one who would strike me down, with his brainchild. How could a dead man confront me?

The prophesy was complete. But what about Dupont?

GOD-KNOWS-WHERE, MANITOBA

Dupont was dying now, back in the village where we'd first met.

Then the village had been almost empty, except for the very old and the very young, along with those who cared for them. On this day, it was entirely deserted. A storm was threatening.

Yes, I was still alive. Alive; even though the dust cloud that had terrified me was the same vicious slime mold that had panicked two nations and a Pope.

But that cloud had never gotten any bigger than its original dispersion from the grenade. The deadly stuff has to be spread by something like a plane or a sprayer; so the final circle of death was almost exactly three feet larger in every direction than the original puffball I had seen over Orlando. The concentrated parasitic growth had consumed itself, just like Orlando had in a different way. And spared me in the process.

I had to hand it to Phaethon's crew. They'd done some damn fine bio-engineering and maybe the White Lady had skimped on her homework.

Maybe.

Or maybe I was entitled to real thunder. A cheerful thought.

Father Dupont wasn't where I had left him so I scouted the surrounding area before checking out the log chapel. Through a side window I could see him sharing a pew with a water-pail and its long-handled dipper. The old priest looked to be pretty much in the condition I had left him though, splints and all. Almost comfortable, one might say.

But he was not. I knew that for a fact shortly after I entered the structure through the single rear door.

More silence....

"Is that you, Demon? Have you come for my soul?"

The man seated in the front pew spoke with a raspy, faint voice, betraying both pain and extreme exhaustion. His back was turned and I had advanced on him silently, yet he knew me.

I thought, He knows me well!

In another time, another place, I would have laughed at the dramatics; his and mine, both. But now there was something like murder in my heart. Or maybe rough justice. Why not call it tough love while I'm at it?

"I've just come to see that your body dies, Priest" Answering him so, I slowly walked toward the front of the chapel and then turned right around the pew that held him. The silence deepened as I turned my back to the altar and finally confronted him one more time __knowing surely that it would be the last time.

He spoke again, after a moment: "You seem to betray a certain impatience." That belated remark was addressed to my shotgun now tickling his cassock; loaded, unlocked, trigger taut.

Europeans may truly have a bit more class than the rest of us.

I agreed. "My time is tight, old man. I'm on the run...."

The old eyes squinted as the priest peered through the shadows. "It is you," he confirmed. "You were right, my tormentor. Emil did believe you."

"Hello, Casals." I put my gear down and politely inquired about his friend who didn't matter any more, even to scavengers. "What about Emil?"

"He was here," the old priest said. "He wanted your name. To know all about you. He did believe that I betrayed him. You see?"

The old priest opened his black cassock to show me the long wooden splinters piercing his body. His gasps of pain as he did so gave evidence that the suppurating wounds were as agonizing as they looked.

I shook my head in denial. "He must have known you better than you know yourself, Casals. I only met Orlando once, and your name didn't come up. You did betray him, you know, if that's any comfort to you. But he didn't learn of it through me. You have my word on that," I assured him.

"The word of my torturer. Of a liar, a murderer."

"Yes," I confessed. "As good a man as yourself, in other words."

He laughed for a moment, until the motions of doing so turned into grimaces and sounds of intense pain. In a moment, he recovered somewhat. His eyes were more adjusted to the gloom inside, and I could tell from his voice that I was betraying my concern.

"What so disturbs you, my son," he asked. "My condition? Or, are you disappointed that my old friend got to me __ahead of you? I am dying, you know. Gangrene."

"Yes, I could smell it from the doorway."

"I don't know how." He closed the cassock again. "I have not had the strength to move from this bench for three days. So there are other unpleasant odors, as well. Orlando and one other came looking for me ten days ago, and my poor Metis' fled, this time for good. Emil left me as you see me, though unconscious, no doubt thinking that I would be sensible enough to die quickly. Perhaps he will be back to finish the job."

"The last I saw of Emil, that was the furthest thing from his mind."

"You have killed him, then."

"No. He really killed himself, Casals. By any basic standard, except intent, he was the instrument of his own destruction."

"Who is not, my tormentor," he said bitterly. "You might keep that in mind."

"Fair enough."

He gave a one-sided shrug, going on without listening. "And now you have come to execute me, as well. No? I still do not know why you would want to kill a priest, but that is what I assume."

"You are right, Casals, one priest has been killed already, and I've had to let one go who probably should have died. Now, you are left. Only you. I have to admit you're one tough old bird."

More silence....

After a minute the oppressive stillness of the small chapel drew a reluctant admission from me, of a failing I was not aware of until I heard myself confessing it. "There have been so many deaths already and this will end with us, but nothing's really settled. And having the death of another priest on my hands __even you__ bothers me a little. I don't know why."

He looked as though my weakness disappointed him. But he did not beg for his life, though, even after the opening I had given him. He didn't even look very interested.

That in particular annoyed me. I said, "It's just fatigue. That might slow me down a little but it won't keep you alive. So please don't count on any mercy, Father. Not even the mercy of a coup de grace."

It was then that he seemed to smile, unexpectedly; presumably at my poor French or the incongruous "Please." But the right side of his face was totally concealed in shadows, so I could only see a little less than half of that perceived smile. And if I knew half then of what I know now, his sardonic smile would not have been so unexpected. Nor would the other surprises to come.

He knew it hadn't ended. Not by a long shot.

At this point though, the focus of my deadly intention still sat mostly in darkness __as I said__ turned slightly away from me, perhaps avoiding my inspection. But I had already seen his soul turned inside-out in the burning light of day and this man had long been accustomed to living half in shadow; one even more bleak, cast by the evil in his past.

In this little scarce-lit world, his shadow and mine were twins. In some ways we ourselves were even closer than that, this corrupt priest and I; although that does not imply affection.

The demoralizing thought occurred then: That only someone like this __a man who had fallen, risen, and fallen again all the way to Hell__ could help to put my own moral eclipse into some sort of perspective for me.

I wasn't always a "demon." Perhaps I have fallen even farther than he.

Perhaps not.

"Why else would you come this far to find me again, if not to kill me?"

Why indeed? Then again: perhaps.

I couldn't answer him at the moment, to tell him how the dead cried out to me. And I was no longer sure whether it was his soul or mine that was first in line for damnation.

His chalk voice scratched at the black silence again; as though he shouted himself hoarse just to expel a whisper. "I had to do what I did," he said, "__nothing. I did not help to kill them. And I could not have saved them. There was no choice. It was either that or see my entire life's work destroyed. Surely you can see that. It was your people or my people; one side or the other; that simple."

Yes. Right! That simple.

Still, my thoughts remained locked up.

"So, why?" he snarled. "Why are you here? What do you want from me?" The angry demands were prodding at my trigger finger to end it then and there. But the priest deserved less than the mercy of a quick death. He deserved to know why he was going to die in great pain; not a martyr, only a failure.

Some self-discipline would be required on my part; a little detachment; a structure to channel my glacial fury.

Eventually, I was able to respond, to pin my thoughts down. His angry questions were simple. Very simple, really; best answered by an immram, a form of myth favored by my people. Starting with one aided, a death-tale, it would end with another, his.

My people? Well, we are different from others. From any and all others __anywhere, really. We must begin with my people.

The beginning, then.

From the beginning, I told him why I was there and then I told him what I wanted from him. It took some time.

"So my poor Indians will be over-run no matter what," he said slowly, softly. "And then must leave their land, or die under the ice. All must be as God wills it to be, but it is still a sad thing."

He shook his head back and forth slowly, trying to refuse an unacceptable reality. I knew from experience that he could not.

"I truly regret the deaths of your cousins. And I will pray for their souls. They were innocent; I see that. The story that Emil told, of the raped and murdered boy was certainly true __terribly true__ and I would not see that the teller of the tale and the author of the deed were the same man. A man who had been my only friend for so long."

He started to weep. This time it wasn't all for himself. I let him have his time for grief, using that time to dig out the pain-killers in my kit. No hope for him, beyond that. At least not in this world.

He cried, "So much death. So many lost souls."

Amen, brother. Nearby thunder underlined the thought and reminded me of the prophesy. Taranis was drawing closer to me. And Dupont seemed in no shape to confront me.

If I know what's good for me, I'll just shoot him and scram, I thought. After a while though, I used the last of the scummy water in the pail to give him a pill. There were thirty pills __less one__ and I left them on the pew next to him.

He looked down at the plastic bottle. The child-proof top had been left unengaged, just sitting on top of the bottle. He looked up at me again.

"I cannot, you know," he said with a smile that was broken in half, but somehow still gentle. "I must wait my time. You might kill me, of course. It would be a blessing on my poor body, but a curse on both our souls. So I ask you not to. My body will lie here, unable to move, waiting for blessed death, with no one to help, to cool my brow, or give me a pill. Then the animals will come to devour me. They might wait until I die, or not. Is that not revenge enough?"

"Yes, Casals," I sighed, released at last, "more than enough. More than enough for two men; you do Tedeschi's penance as well. I'll get you some more water." Leaving my canteen on the pew, I picked up the pail.

"Why do you do this for me?"

I was already facing away from him.

"I don't know. Maybe you and I are the same." My voice was only a vibration of dust motes, quickly collapsing in the rough-hewn log chapel __probably not heard.

And time came to a grinding halt as thunder roared once more. My thunder, my time, my judgement.

Now we were not alone in that chapel. There was time for one silent prayer: Have mercy, please. The priest has suffered enough and I have not. Surely all our Gods must be the same God in different eyes_____I hoped.

The very stubble on my head rose to seek the source of the otherness it detected all around me. A tingle of static electricity impinged on my back. The radiation came from directly behind me, like frigid sandpaper sliding along my spine, from the bottom to the top. Its crackling coruscation expressed an ancient title in a sibilant whisper, "F-F-Faar____ ____Sheeee."

Man of the Sidhe, that meant in the Irish. How could it be intended for me; yet that claim held my mind and body in thrall.

I wasn't breathing at all now.

The source of this alien presence behind me could only be near the priest; one of the two bodies and more than two spirits within those consecrated walls. The certainty of my own imminent mortality had arrived with the thunder. I had seen my victory. And now_____

Defeat.

"Wait!" the priest demanded.

His strong bass voice jolted me. Stretched me to the breaking point, really. Slowly, warily, I edged around toward the man I had thought to be dying.

Dupont's left arm was raised on high, holding a dagger to be thrown. The right hand was extended before his face as a counterbalance, the open edge toward me.

And I waited there for the attack; too indifferent to move aside. The hilt of the dagger, in silhouette against the front window, was striking, stunning; already piercing my mind and soul.

It would be the death of me, I knew. A week ago I would have killed him without hesitation. But not now. I leaned the shotgun against the doorway. Man of the Sidhe, I had been called, a title that held me captive in some strange and ancient way.

Dupont spoke to me then; to me and his God both. And the words he spoke were those that I had not heard in many, many years. A dead language for a dead and a dying man. "Absolvo te, in Nomine Patri, et Filii, et Spiritui Sancti."

No more light now penetrated the dismal interior than before, but the grays and blacks within the small chapel resolved themselves. That threatening dagger was surrounded by a glowing halo of electrical fire that illuminated it.

Now I could see quite clearly.

A Roman crucifix it was that Dupont held on high, transformed by its glowing disk into the Celtic Cross. His other hand, the right, made an old, familiar Sign as the dying priest strove to forgive me in his Savior's Name.

The sour stench of ozone permeated the dampness of the small church. Suddenly, the whirling ball of plasma around the crucifix lunged at me with an annihilating, whip-cracking bolt of fractured lightning.

Not a condemnation, not a Benediction. The bolt and its thunder shook my body from the inside out and rang me like a bell. It was I____I, myself, who was the adversary, who would be the agent of my own defeat. Life and Death; they were me.

At last I was now the Burning Man.

Dupont and I were both enveloped with a flaming aura, shot through with brighter sparks from point to point at the slightest movement. Both our heads wore a blazing Crown of Thorns __the criss-cross network of electrical discharges. His eyes shone with an intense, almost incandescent blaze as they held mine. My gaze must have held that same radiance for him. Surely only reflections, yet....

The inner being of me, or soul __whatever it should be called__ dwindled, imploded, and died with the storm outside and the scintillation of St. Elmo's fire within. The Burning Man died with me, as well; he was finally at peace. But my body remained; my corpse was battered across the chest and back with every crack of thunder, every bolt of lightning that struck the Cross mounted above Dupont's chapel.

Once each second, there came the sound of God breaking trees over His knee. Each kettle-drum beat, each tortured splintering and whip-snap conclusion was another assault on my beaten flesh and pulverized bones.

There was no air left in my lungs, yet they were filling up, bursting, with the pressure of all the collected evil being squeezed out of my life____of any life, perhaps.

Suddenly that accumulation of corruption abandoned my body in a saw-toothed wave, a flood of unbearable pain, a stream of soul-borne pollution issuing forth in a long, unbroken, terrible scream of anguish that shattered the window in front of me. That window, the one behind the dying priest, the front window, dissolved in an outburst of jagged crystal tears, shards that followed the torrent as it escaped, dissipating in the outside world.

My outstretched, grasping arms and hands somehow clutched the wide walls, and I swear that my powerless body was almost lifted off the leaden floor.

And finally_____

Finally, after a long moment of doubt, I was reborn in the sudden stillness. Born again in forgiveness. Not in His Image; not in Dupont's image. Reborn in my own image, imperfect as that is.

Thunder rolled on.

Then it ceased to roll and left me free. You must believe me.

"Amen!" Was that the priest or was it my voice? I could not tell. I did not kneel when restored: it is not my way. I stood. And not entirely with the strength of my body, but as if still suspended somehow.

As the flames died with the thunder, I went to Dupont's side, positive that he was now also dead.

Not so! The priest lived, though unconscious. And his life's breath maintained a strange, irregular pattern repeated over and over. Not a word escaped his lips. The sound was one I knew well, though, the music of an eager soul within praying the Latin Confiteor in the innocent rhythms of a child. I confess to Almighty God....

I'd heard that same death song long ago, in another time, another language, and far from that place. Now my hand moved to touch the priest's forehead and I repeated the prayer with him, so that he would know it had been heard. And gave the dying man, myself as well, what Absolution I could.

Once again as once before.

The remainder of that other burden, imposed by the White Lady so long ago, was freely taken from me then by Father Dupont __soon to be borne with his body to the cold, cold earth.

Later on, toward high noon, I had to leave the helpless man alone there in the dim chapel for a little while __a prisoner of life waiting for his final release. He was resting easily, smiling somehow without expression.

Epilogue

"Let them not live to taste this land's increase

That would with treason wound this fair land's peace!

Now civil wounds are stopp'd, peace lives again-

That she may long live here, God say Amen!"

Richard III, Shakespeare

Irish legends say that St. Patrick often tired of the burdens and intrigues of leadership. And when he felt the need for respite, Patrick would send for the pagan, Oisin, to weave a web of poetry and bring to life the days when chivalry truly lived, when the Knights of Fion MacCumail and their descendants __the first Fenians__ roamed the forests of Ireland.

The great missionary believed that those pagans of old could have no everlasting home but Hell, in a Christian universe. Nevertheless, he commanded that the Lays of Oisin be recorded and preserved.

And those memories were bittersweet for the old poet:

"Oh, Patrick, it is with tears I tell,

Now so frail, of the heroes that went before,

Whilst priests lament and resound the bell,

And I am poor, and old, and blind evermore.

"If Fion and his Fenians lived again,

I'd leave your priests, and the ringing bell,

To follow the Hart toward his domain,

Seeking that path to their hidden dell."

There may have been Travellers wandering the planet then; we don't know ourselves. And if there were, perhaps we are truly descendants of the Tuatha de Danaan, the Sidhe. Perhaps, wandering, we had arrived at the final battle too late to share their fate, their retreat into another world.

Perhaps that is why we wander still.

Perhaps. As I said, we do not know. We may never know. The answer is not within our hearts or minds or souls and it makes no sense to look for one there. The answer lies buried in the earth far below our world, within a stratum called Legend.

I didn't have to look within, either, to know that the Crown of Thorns was no longer part of me. The priest's absolution and my penance had exorcised it from my mind, if not my soul. It might have been a curse I no longer deserved, or a blessing that I no longer needed. There is no way for me to be sure whether the Crown had obscured the face of God, or that of His Adversary __slumming among the amateurs.

Someday the symbolism may be evident to me. But not then, and not now. Always: more questions than answers.

The red cloth panel was weighted down with a stone at each corner and a flat rock in the center of it almost covered a plastic envelope.

Protected within, there was a note to Dozer, another one to thank Amina for their hospitality, a thousand dollars for expenses, and a sealed envelope for my brother with instructions to set up a trust fund for the Carringtons and their children. A large one. I see a great many more disadvantaged children in their future, and a universe full of opportunities are in mine.

The clearing in the forest came to life for me at that moment. Red squirrels chattered and geese honked overhead. A spruce grouse, often called the "fool hen," ambled along the edge of the forest area looking for the few berries that grow here. My presence nearby seemed to be of no concern to the ptarmigan-like bird. That's why it suffers the name of "fool," I suppose.

If they tasted good they would be extinct, but they don't. Maybe the same is true for Travellers.

For days now, I had been stumbling across bear sign: stools, fur rubs, claw marks on trees; no bear, though. Now I noticed a big, old black bear __so dark brown as to really look black__ staring at me from the other side of the clearing. I was downwind of him and I didn't think his vision was good enough to spot me, but he started huffing and gruffing my way anyway.

I waved goodbye to him and beat a moderately hasty retreat. This old boy might not stay in touch with the same hallucinations that I do. And there were places for me to go, things for me to accomplish, a world of friends to embrace.

The future seemed much less bleak to me now.

Finally, I reached into my pocket for Diana's unopened letter, wondering whether there were other things as well that I should be doing.

But then I'd have to read it to find out, and I was afraid to. So I left it unopened, and fully intend to leave it unopened for a long, long time. Maybe forever, if I can hold out that long. It would really be better to throw the envelope away or burn it, but I cannot; perhaps, may not.

Only four or five weeks remain now before the north country will be locked inexorably in winter's grip, even as I complete Dupont's death-tale. November has arrived. This day is Samuin, the ancient Celtic feast of death and re-birth. Christians call it All Saints Day, or All Hallows.

I had been tortured and blinded on May 1, Beltene, a day for trial and sacrifice in the old way. My vision had returned on Lugnasad, when ancient Erin once received the blessings of heaven each year.

If you know me now at all, you know of my respect for such symbols.

It was already chilly for mid-day; so I walked away quickly without looking back __returning to the cabin that was Dupont's church, in the forest that was mine.

The woods are lovely, dark and deep....

Stepping lively along the dappled path, strewn with the needles and cones of our elders, I felt a subtle change in the world around me. And in myself, responding. The cadence of light and dark, deep down within the forest trail, began to observe a hauntingly familiar pattern.

The Pattern of Life: call it Poetry.

Less than a single crescent of the Moon remained, before I might follow that Pattern once more __wherever it should lead. No matter the compass, no matter the horizon; it would always direct me homeward. No small gift for one who follows the Life, the way of the Travelling People.

I sensed the smiling presence of the White Lady and the blessings of all of the women who had ever loved me. My heart soared upward to the sunlit treetops, and the fresh, scouring breeze there blew right through me.

Rene Dupont, once Charles Casals, would not be left to suffer alone again. In good time, he will have the dying his God has ordained __to await a far more venerable Judgement than mine. There will be a grave that I will dig for him, a cross that I will carve for him, and a blessing that I will pray for him.

That time is not far in the future, I know; the penitent priest will die soon. As we will all die eventually. And one might well say that Dupont had died long ago __as I had__ a young man.

But now? Now?

For now: for as long as it lasts_____

Life. For a start.

God! It's good to be alive.

The End

* * * * * *

THE HOSTING OF THE SIDHE

The host is riding from Knocknarea

And over the grave of Clooth-na-bare;

Caolte tossing his burning hair

And Niamh calling Away, come away:

Empty your heart of its mortal dream.

The winds awaken, the leaves whirl around,

Our cheeks are pale, our hair is unbound,

Our breasts are heaving, our eyes are a-gleam,

Our arms are waving, our lips are apart;

And if any gaze on our rushing band,

We come between him and the deed of his hand,

We come between him and the hope of his heart.

The host is rushing 'twixt night and day,

And where is there hope or deed as fair?

Caolte tossing his burning hair,

And Niamh calling Away, come away.

W.B. YEATS

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You are at Fiction 1, Chapters 27 & Epilog