The Silver Wolf (46 page)

Behind them twining among the tall cypresses were the roses. Single, double, red, pink, and white, and on their petals scattered as stars are across the night sky, lenses of dew catching the light of the rising sun and turning it into a thousand tiny rainbows.

I have been here before
, Regeane thought.
Walked here in those dreams I have in deepest sleep. Those dreams I only dimly remember. I have walked here and my troubled heart has longed for this place. For its cool healing and peace. I will find him near the fountain
.

And so she did.

His hair was white and his short beard gray, but his face had the same ageless beauty Herophile’s had. She must have made some sound as she came into his presence, or perhaps, he caught her thought because he lifted his eyes from the book he was reading and studied her face.

“You are Daedalus?” Regeane asked.

“Yes, I am, and what does a creature of such beauty as you want with me?”

“I seek,” she said, “healing for a man. Is this within your power?”

“Though I am one of the lesser creatures here, yes it is.”

Regeane wondered if he were one of the lesser ones here, who the greater might be, but she didn’t ask. She was content to sit down on one of the stone benches and stare at the play of water in the new sunlight. She was very thirsty, as she had been when she sought the river.

“May I drink?” she asked.

“Yes,” Daedalus said. “But,” he cautioned, “do not bathe your wounded hand in that water, for it is the water of life and the wound is the only thing that ties you to the earth. Heal it, and you may not return.”

“I’m not sure,” Regeane said, “that I want to return.”

Daedalus smiled. “I perceive you are a very young creature and your life has been harsh, but fear not, things may soon grow better. But if you remain here, nothing will ever change for you. For better or worse. I was old when I came here, a dried-out husk of a man. I had reason to believe I had experienced all that life had to offer.

“My sight was blurred and my ears could barely hear the sound of a thunderclap. My spirit was as dry and withered as the rest. I was no use to the world any longer and the world was no use to me. I had long forgotten my youth and its struggles. Accidea
had taken hold of my spirit. I had drained life’s cup to the lees. I wanted only to rest here in the sun.”

Regeane knelt by the fountain and began to drink. As she did, she began to feel the fatigue and the weariness leave her. She felt a sense of quiet victory enter her heart as she realized she’d won. Antonius would be as he had been and the poetry of his fingers, the magic his nimble brushes could trace on a wall, would be renewed to the greater beauty of the world. She had not spent her blood, her pain, for nothing.

“Where is he?” Daedalus asked, putting his book aside. “This one you want me to heal?”

“At Cumae,” Regeane said.

“Ah, Cumae,” Daedalus said. “I dwelt there long and loved the priestess. I remember the Acropolis, the sanctuary high on its rock beside Homer’s wine-dark sea.”

Still on her knees at the fountain, Regeane looked up at him, sadness in her eyes. “It is a ruin,” she said.

Daedalus frowned. “So Icarus informs me.”

“Icarus?” Regeane questioned.

“My son. Tell me, what do men say of him?”

“That—” Regeane’s tongue stumbled as it was borne upon her that it was very strange to talk to a legend about a legend, but she continued. “That he flew too high and the sun melted the wax on his wings and he fell into the sea.”

Daedalus laughed. “What folly. There were wings, but there was no wax. No, Icarus was one to test the limits of everything. I tacked upon the air as ships skim the broad bosom of the sea with a sail. Icarus tested the limits of my craft and came to grief on the rocks below. But that was only in one of his lives. He has had many since.”

“While you remained here?”

“Yes,” Daedalus answered. “You see, my dear, for some men one lifetime is enough, but for others, a thousand would not suffice. Icarus is one of these. So he comes and brings me news of the world I left behind so long ago. A world, I might add, that astounds me.

“Though it doesn’t tempt me to leave my garden very often, but seldom do I meet such a creature as you are, and never before has one penetrated my sanctuary.”

Regeane asked hesitantly, “You see me as I am?”

“Yes, I do. I see the graceful woman, all delicacy and intellect, also your fleet companion of the night. She who glories in the freedom of moonlight.

“While I lived, I saw your kind as the stuff of dreams and illusion. But when I came here, I met a few wanderers in the forest, children of life’s most intimate beauty, and I understood. Men see the world past the blinders of reason. No ruler, tyrant ever existed worse than reason. For those blinded by it cannot search out what lurks at the corners of their eyes, half unseen.”

“Reasonable men,” Regeane said, “would rope me to a post and burn me.”

“Indeed. How could they ever endure such power in a woman? It smacks of the witch.”

“Is it so terrible, then, to be a witch?” Regeane asked.

“No.” Daedalus smiled. “For the earth is a beautiful soft woman, and the witch is her voice.”

Daedalus stared out into the distance with eyes that didn’t see Regeane any longer.

“I remember many years ago, in my youth, I was born on Crete, that fair island set in a lapis sea. Ah, it was the earth’s morning then, and we were the first to taste her bountiful fruits. We tamed the wild grapes grown on the mountainsides. Soft tiny, purple globes, fair and round as a woman’s lips. Our fields were golden with wheat, bowing before the sea’s breeze. Long dead as I am, I can still taste the soft, white loaf that wheat made. Still scent the bouquet of the wine we drank with it. The olive, gray queen mother of trees, lent us fragrant oil to tease our palates when we feasted on plump partridges, doves, or partook of prawns and fishes, the ever-present bounty of the sea.

“The days ran into one another, woven together like the threads of a tapestry, or like the notes of a wonderful melody. One of those played by a shepherd as he dozes among his sheep on a summer afternoon. A threnody that cannot be written down. I cannot separate those days from one another because they were all delight.

“I built Ariadne’s dancing floor that we might give thanks to the earth, ancient and benevolent mother of man, for all her gifts. For then, Regeane, we did not think of rape or conquest.
We knew how to woo the earth and went to her gently as a lover goes to a virgin. We had of her infinite pleasure and fulfillment. And the witch was a priestess who treaded the measure of life abundant and joyous on her dancing floor.”

Regeane rested her head against the porphyry basin of the fountain and her eyes closed. “What happened?” she asked.

Daedalus laughed harshly. “A dream of power, girl. The Egyptians came to our island. They coveted our wine and oil. Before they came, Minos was only a man who was sometimes possessed by a god. They taught him to believe he was a god, in fact, and so could take what he wanted.

“The precious oil and wine went into the storage jars in his palace. The plump partridges and doves to his table, and only the splendor of his house from afar was left to fill the hearts and bellies of his people. His hands reached out, grasping for more and more—and I, who had once but wonderful things for him, could not do enough.

“When I spoke out against him—he imprisoned me in a villa atop a high cliff. I escaped by sailing away on the wind. I did not live to see Minos’ end, but my son tells me it came in a cloud of fire.”

“And the witch?” Regeane asked.

“Why, men hate and curse her,” Daedalus said, “because she is the incarnation of their shame. She reminds them of their beautiful mistress, the earth. They have forgotten how to love her. Now they fear her her tempests and her torrents. Her winter cruelty, her summer heat and dust. Her passionate hours, when her crest shakes and fire boils from mountain tops.

“They say that this is her face, pretending not to know that it is only one of her faces, forgetting the hours when she smiles on them and stretches out her arms in love. They forget that when they see her darkness and cruelty, it is only their own they see mirrored in her eyes. Having condemned her, they feel free to despoil and pillage her. Even as they despoil and pillage the witch.”

Regeane rose to her feet, her father’s mantle was still wrapped around her. She threw back her head and took a deep breath of the morning air. “I understand why I find you in the garden.”

Daedalus shook his head. “I didn’t make the garden. It was a gift given to me by love.”

Regeane looked down at her hand. It was still bleeding. The red droplets staining the flags at her feet.

“We must leave,” she said. “I believe I have not much time. I’m still bleeding.”

Daedalus stretched one of his hands toward her torn one. She jerked her own hand back for a second and looked out over the garden, wanting to see it again in the morning light and drink in its beauty: at the flowers, their blossoms splashes of color against the green gold grass; turf, sparkling so brightly in the sunlight that she couldn’t tell where the green stopped and the gold began; at the roses whose scent was beginning to fill the air; and the tall cypresses shadowing the orange ball of light on the horizon.

“I want to remember it,” she said. “Remember it all.”

“So that someday you can find it again?” Daedalus asked.

“Yes,” Regeane answered. “So that someday I can find it again.”

Then he took her hand.

Regeane felt a tremendous pull, a pain. She knew nothing of giving birth, but it was similar to what she imagined that must be like. A second later, they stood together on the rock at Cumae before the sacred fire. The fog was gone, the stars were a cascade of light above her, and the wind tore at her father’s mantle. The garden was only a memory.

Antonius lay at their feet, his naked body stretched over the cold fire. He seemed dead. His eyes were closed and his skin was blue with cold. The results of his disease were plain, fingers and toes destroyed, white and crumbling nose, mouth fallen away. Yet over him still hung the shadow of ancient beauty.

The moon was down and the land lay in darkness beneath the rock. The ghosts were no longer in evidence. The temple, with its empty cella, loomed behind Regeane.

The two black-robed heierophants waited on the temple steps beside the cella, looking like statues poised at the door to a tomb.

Then the wind dropped and the night was still. Regeane seemed to hear the silence.

Daedalus lowered his arms and while Regeane watched, he
slowly raised them. As he did, fire flared in the stone circle of the ancient sacred hearth. The flames looked real, and Regeane started with surprise and alarm.

But then she realized the flames shed no heat. Antonius seemed to take no hurt from them, rather he seemed to float among them like the salamander that lives among the flames. But as Daedalus’ arms continued to rise, the fire turned white and flared into a star of coruscating brilliance that blinded Regeane for a moment and then was gone.

She looked again. Antonius lay before her in the fullness of his youth and strength. His flesh glowed against the gray ash with the flush of life. As she watched, he shivered in the chill night air, turned on his side, and drew his knees against his chest as he felt the cold.

Regeane took the mantle from her shoulders and dropped it over him. Daedalus walked around the fire and took her still-bleeding hand.

“My garden?” he asked. “Will you come back with me?”

Regeane stood before him, conscious now she stood clothed only in shadow and her own moon-tipped hair.

“No,” she answered. “I will try the world and see what it holds for me before I sleep.”

“Ah.” Daedalus stepped back. “So then it is farewell, lovely lady of moonlight. Looking upon you, I can well see why immortal gods could find surcease from desire in the arms of mortal woman. And what my foolish son so thirsts for that he drinks again and again at the fountain of life.”

Then he was gone, leaving Regeane standing alone with the bitter winter night and the stars. She turned toward the two hierophants waiting at the temple steps. She pointed at Antonius.

“When he wakes,” she said, “return him to his mother.”

A second later, she was wolf. Favoring her still bleeding paw, she limped down the processional way toward Rome.

WHEN REGEANE CROSSED THE STREAM, HER PAWS shattered a coating of ice at its edges. The night was bitterly cold. She was aware that her energies were seriously depleted. She didn’t know if she could reach Rome and the safety of Lucilla’s villa tonight.

She paused and looked out over the desolate Campagna. The fog that earlier had boiled over the sweeping grasslands had settled on the ground and then frozen into hoarfrost on the tangled grass blades. They cracked under her limping feet. The moon was down and the stars in their myriads blazed a cold light above her.

The woman’s mind was almost as weary as the beast’s.
Sooner or later
, she thought,
death will be upon me. Why not here? Why not now? And then … what? Daedalus’ garden? Who knows?
, she thought, looking up at the icy splendor above her. There had been as much ugliness as beauty in the world beyond the temple doorway, but how much of either beauty or ugliness was real? How much illusion? The woman’s mind, imprisoned in the wolf’s narrow skull, faltered before the problem. But no matter.

A jolt of pain traveled up her wounded paw when it struck the ground.
That is real enough
, she thought. Fatigue dragged at every screaming muscle in her body, tempting her to lie down in the frost-covered grass and sleep. The wolf’s memories were like music, a continuous flow of images that threatened to overwhelm the woman’s mind and will.

The woman was too confused and disheartened to beat them back. She was near the end of her strength. The cold that had
never bothered her before, now bit through the heavy guard hairs on her coat, chilling her to the bone.