A Wind From the South Page 7

  “Yes, we’ve heard.” Urs laughed. “The great writer to the mistral’s council! Misterlessa.”

  “It wasn’t my idea.” I came to tell him I was sorry about how wrong things have gone: why isn’t anything coming out that way? “Urs, listen—”

  “But you didn’t say no. Well, there are more ways to be important than scribbling!”

  Mariarta opened her mouth, but never had a chance. “I can be rich, with Alvaun!” Urs cried. “I can have anything I want, in a few years, when I have a big herd of white sheep, all my own! I can have any girl I want, build a house—”

  “What you wanted once,” Mariarta said quietly, “was me.”

  Urs turned away to caress the lamb. “Not any more,” he said. “I have Alvaun now. He’s my friend, he loves me.”

  “I’m your friend!” Mariarta cried.

  “But you don’t love me,” Urs said. “You don’t love anything but your high-and-mighty old father the mistral. Not enough to—” He went silent.

  “To what?” Mariarta cried. “To make him do something he thinks would be stupid? Just to please your pride, so you can show everybody how important you are, that you caught the mistral’s daughter? Caught her by threatening her, by trickery?”

  The lamb was rooting in its manger. Urs peered in, and after a moment muttered, “He loves me.”

  Unhappily Mariarta thought, This was the care he wanted to give me. If he can’t give it to me, he’ll give it elsewhere— Urs straightened. “He wants more grass.”

  “He’s not a person,” Mariarta said, desperately.

  Urs glared. “He is too!” he cried. “He’s more a person than some people around here. He does what he wants to.” Urs took the scythe from the barn wall, turned to look at Mariarta. Sunlight came in the cracks of the boards of the barn, gleaming off the scythe’s sharp edge.

  “He is a person,” Urs whispered.

  Mariarta stood mute, frozen by the glint of metal, the glint in his eye.

  Urs went out to cut more grass.

  The lamb rooted in its manger, bleated, and looked at Mariarta. It really was a pretty thing, delicately made, and so white, so clean-looking. The sweet smell of the grasses that Urs had been cutting hung about it. And those odd light eyes made it even more attractive to look at, somehow: human eyes, from the color of them—

  Mariarta took a step backwards, unnerved—then ran out of the shed.

  ***

  She threw herself back into her chores in desperation. The light of the hot day mellowed to gold, and her father came home for the nightmeal: Onda Baia came home from her crony’s house, sat and ate as if she had done the day’s work and not Mariarta. Father and aunt went to bed, while Mariarta, aching inside, moved about like the sorcerer’s doll in the story, scouring the pots, putting the next morning’s porridge on the embers. It was after dark before she came to herself, feeling released from the cruel constraints that daylight and the need to act normally had placed upon her.

  Mariarta lit the tallow-dip, then sat at the table, staring into the darkness. She had said everything wrong. She must go speak to Urs again, try to put things right. Otherwise— A terrible shudder went down her neck, a breath of cool wind from through the upper half of the kitchen door. Otherwise something would go very wrong indeed.

  She went out, eased the door closed behind her and let her eyes get used to the dark. No harm in asking for help, she thought, walking up the alley. She turned left into the street, toward the church. Its belfry reared black against the sky full of blowing silver cloud. In the wind, the bell shifted and rang softly, sounding muted and impotent in this uneasy night.

  Cloud slipped over the moon and away, so the church seemed to come and go like a silvery ghost. Only the blackness of its doorway remained the same. Mariarta felt unwilling to go into it. Nonetheless, softly, in she went.

  Mariarta moved quickly sideways in case Bab Luregn should be in the church and see her silhouetted in the doorway. Hanging from its chain, the candle-flame of the presence light above the altar shone softly red, like a watching eye. There was no other light but the moonlight coming through the windows on the southern side. That went out as a cloud hid the moon.

  And then a sound happened: the clank of metal on metal. Mariarta’s heart beat wild with fear. The clank happened just once: and another metallic sound, a squeak. Then silence.

  Mariarta stood still, afraid it was bab Luregn, about some mysterious priestly business—or worse, afraid that it was not bab Luregn. Who else would be in here? Whatever they’re doing, it doesn’t sound like praying—

  She heard splashing. Mariarta moved further to the side. The moon came out, overlaying the floor with white arches of light. The radiance faintly showed someone in the right-hand side of the church’s tiny apse, by the baptismal font. The font’s shape looked odd—

  Its top’s open, Mariarta thought. She heard another splash. Mariarta pressed herself against the stone of the church wall, breathing easier as the moon lost itself in cloud again, the bright shapes on the floor fading. Footsteps went by in front of her. She held still as a human shape was silhouetted in the lighter darkness of the open doorway. It moved away quietly.

  Silently, Mariarta made her way to the baptismal font. She ran her hands over it. It was a big stone bowl on a pedestal, with a hinged top of bronze, and a lock.

  The lock was broken; the font’s lid leaned against the wall. Someone had been stealing holy water.

  But why would anyone—

  Mariarta sagged against the font in confusion. Bab Luregn would give anyone holy water if they asked for it, and had a good reason. To throw on a demon, or sprinkle on the wheatfields to bless them. Whatever.

  But if the reason wasn’t good—

  Abruptly her own words came back to her. It’s not a person.

  Yes it is—

  And she also recalled bab Luregn’s words to her and the other children, long ago, before they made their communion and confirmed the vows their godparents had made at their own baptisms: No one really has a soul until they have been baptized. Until you are baptized, you are no one in particular to God. You might as well not have a soul at all.

  The red eye of the presence light gazed at Mariarta, accusing. He’s going to baptize the lamb, she thought. The way the frer baptized the windbride in the story, and made her human, gave her a soul. It was priest-magic, like making Mass—

  Mariarta went hurriedly out of the church. One thing she felt sure of: baptizing anything with stolen holy water could have no good result.

  Where would he be? she wondered. Not in the shed. It was too hot today. The sheep would be in the upper pasture, on the alp. And Urs was watching them.

  Mariarta ran up the path that led to the higher pasture, the wind roaring in her ears. To that cool presence, inwardly she cried, Help me stop him. Oh, help me—! It was certainly the stupidest thing Urs would ever have tried.

  And you drove him to it, the back of Mariarta’s mind said. If something happens, it will be your fault—

  She turned the last curve on the path which led to the pasture, straining her eyes to see in the fitful light. The moon went behind the clouds; from above came a rumble of thunder. Light failed. Mariarta stood still, listening hard.

  She heard the random bleating of sheep as they wandered about in their usual midnight doze. Then, in the rising wind, she heard footsteps in the grass. And a bleat, small and cheerful: the welcoming baa of a lamb.

  Mariarta stumbled toward it. Darkness grew: the clouds were gathering, the moon was shut away. Another rumble of thunder, closer— “Urs!” she shouted.

  No answer. Had he even heard her? Go away, she said to the wind roaring in her ears; how can I hear anything? Be still!

  To her astonishment, it obeyed, dropping off so suddenly that her ears rang with the quiet. For a moment she could hear nothing but sheep bleating, disquieted. Then Mariarta heard something else.

  “Ego—bap—bap-ti-zo—Al-bus—”

  �
��NO!” she shrieked. “Urs, no!” And she saw him, in a flicker of lightning from the approaching storm, near the great boulder in the middle of the upper pasture—a black shape, kneeling, with the white shape, so small, burning so white, gathered in his arms. The black hollows of his eyes, looking at her, were shadowed like the sockets of a skull.

  “No, don’t!” she cried again. And deliberately, still looking at her, with the herdsman’s skin of stolen holy water in his hand, Urs shouted over the rolling of the thunder, so that Mariarta should clearly know what he was doing, and fully know the pain: “—in nom-i-né Patris, et Fil-i-i, et Spiri-tu Sanc-tus—amen—”

  And smudged the lamb’s forehead with a hand already wetted from the skin.

  Then the lightning struck, and the sound of it mingled with Urs’s scream as he rolled away from the boulder. Great rocks and smaller splinters were struck off it, flaming, and flew hissing through the air to bury themselves in the pasture. Mariarta, knocked sprawling, now scrambled up, choking with the brimstone stink of the lightning bolt, and screamed, “Urs!”

  Her heart leapt as he levered himself slowly to his feet. Not dead, she thought in desperate relief. A blot of white, burning white, stood near Urs. He reached for it.

  It shook itself, began to darken like a cloud going stormy. In shock Urs staggered back. The thunder rumbled—not from the sky, but from that small fleecy shape, growing and darkening—its fleece going the smirched color of the clouds overhead, darkening to the color of night. And still that shape burned, horribly visible, and still it grew. For a dreadful few moments the thing held a lamb’s shape, monstrous, a lamb the size of a horse, of a bull. Then it lost that form, became huger yet. Great spreading horns sprouted, thick as trees, and the horrible shape shook its head wildly, bellowing in pain and rage, its eyes gone wide and burning like red flames. Bigger the eyes grew, till they burned like moons in raging eclipse; huger grew the head that bore the dreadful horns, and the great shoulders and chest and the massive hooves sharp as knives; a bull indeed, shaggy, twice as big as a house, and black. It threw its terrible head up and bellowed again. The thunder answered it from directly above, so that the sound echoed from Piz Giuv to Piz Val Ruinatsch and back.

  Once more the lightning struck, this time further up the pasture, where it ran against the mountain’s skirts. In the lowering cloud, all the sky went white with the stroke; the only things not white were the bull, and the small dark shape of Urs. Mariarta was astonished beyond horror to see, by the light of the next lightningbolt, Urs reaching out his arms to what had been his lamb. His voice rang out feeble against the thunder: “Alvaun—”

  Those burning eyes dwelt on him as he staggered back, as the dark shape advanced. Thunder rumbled deadly in its throat as Urs’s awful godchild moved slowly toward him. Urs’s face was clear to see by the dark-burning light of the monster-bull. He wore a look of dreadful realization—that the Church’s magics can give a creature a human soul, but that souls do not come out of nowhere. If one is not already available, by some Power’s grace or other, then another will be supplied—or taken.

  Urs fell to his knees. The bull reared up, a great black mass against the dark clouds, and roared. The huge razory forehooves, each as wide as a tall man was high, came down. If any scream came from Urs, it was lost in the thunder.

  The mountainside shook. The earthquake-impact released Mariarta from her fear-frozen state—or perhaps what freed her was the look in those burning eyes, of a power with a thirst unslaked, as it snuffled about the poached and bloody ground its hooves had struck.

  Mariarta fled down the path to the village as the storm broke, bolt after bolt striking the upper pasture. The rain, released from the sky, came pouring down. Below her in the village, the bell of the church was ringing wildly. Too late, she thought, as the wind pushed her, and the rain lashed her tears from her face. Too late for us all. And it’s all my fault.

  Oh, Urs!

  The thunder crashed behind her. In it she heard, unmistakable, the roar of the bull.

  Mariarta ran.

  ***

  The questions began immediately, and did not stop for many days. Everyone was horrified, as well they might have been: bab Luregn was beside himself for the misuse of the holy water. In the morning he reconsecrated the font, and went to the upper pasture to pray for the dead boy’s soul. But quickly he came down, for rocks rolled off the mountainside at him when he spoke the holy names, and the grass seemed to wither away from the holy water he sprinkled. Some people said it showed how bad the boy’s sin had been: others said it was a sign his ghost was not going to be quiet.

  There proved to be more immediate concerns. The spring-stream that watered the upper pasture dried up. The whole alp began to sicken. The needles of the trees bordering the grass dropped away, leaving bare skeletons of wood that didn’t dry, but rotted. The flowers, even the steilalva, holiest of them all, wilted to nothing. Worst for the town, all the grass started dying, not just where bab Luregn had poured his water. It died back in unhealthy-looking patches, revealing bare sour earth on which nothing would root. There would be no more hay from that side of the mountain: next year, half the village’s winter feed for its beasts would be gone.

  Shortly no beast would stay in the upper pasture. In the weeks following the lamb’s baptism, animals put there began to die—simply sickening without warning after a day or so. The villagers swiftly stopped bringing any animal there.

  The deaths did not stop. A month later, the first sheep was found torn apart. The hunter from Selva who came to look at the corpse said no bear or wolf did such damage—this was something much bigger. Mariarta’s father had told her not to tell anyone but bab Luregn what had killed Urs, for fear people would panic. Now, though, the talk began. Mariarta took to staying inside, to avoid the cold, frightened looks the village people gave her—some of them believing it strange that what killed Urs should have spared her.

  Soon enough they had something else to talk about. It wasn’t more than another month before one herdboy, on a dare, went to the alp after dark. About midnight Clau came screaming down the hill to pound on bab Luregn’s door, shrieking for him to come with the Host and save him from the dark demon that had come roaring out of the blackness between one cloud-darkening of the Moon and the next.

  Naturally it was to the mistral’s house he was brought. The herdboy babbled to bab Luregn and her father’s council about the terrible black bull—how it split the rocks with its hooves, pursuing him, and breathed a noisome dark fire as it hunted him down the hill. They looked at the scalds on his arms and legs and face, and could think of no more questions. Bab Luregn took him away to shrive him and bind up his hurts. No one was much surprised when Clau fell ill next day of a weakness in his limbs, and died a week later. They buried him on the far side of the church, well out of sight of the upper pasture.

  Then bab Luregn went to the pasture with the holy bread of Mass: other priests took the Host up after him, for he sent for help to Selva and Ursera, and to the Capuchin monk at Mustér, who had once exorcised a glacier. But nothing did any good. The alp withered. From the houses right to the stones of the mountain-scree, nothing grew. Even the birds and insects left or died, and the alp fell deathly silent. Only in the nights could be heard the enraged bellowing of a huge bull. Seeing that supernatural remedies seemed not to have worked, a few men went there armed to try to deal with the Bull themselves. None of them came back. The last of them, the Hunter of Selva, the most skilled hunter from Ursera to Cuera, was found rent limb from limb, his skull crushed like an egg that someone has stepped on.

  So Tschamut passed into legend in the countryside round. After all, there were haunted alps enough, but none of them were so haunted that the ghost or demon had cursed the ground barren. That first year was not so bad, since the feed for the livestock was already stored. But the next autumn a third of Tschamut’s beasts had to be sold or slaughtered, since there would not be enough hay to feed so many during the winter. The vill
age went hungrier during that second winter’s nights than since the avalanche a hundred twenty years before. Many masses for help were offered, many stomachs groaned with hunger, many a tear was shed over the trouble, the sickness, the fear. But in all the town, only Mariarta wept for the first one the monster killed, the one the townspeople cursed: the one who created it.

  With help, she thought. My help. I am the other godparent.

  Sometimes the wind would whisper in her ear—cool words of encouragement, and strange promises of power to come. But she had no heart to listen. Her work for her father, helping him keep his accounts of the village’s business, took much of her time; she gave it gladly. She made no more journeys to the higher alp, and the crossbow lay in its wrappings under her mattress, where she would not have to look at it and hear a voice say, mocking, but still dear, “‘Oh what a fair maiden we have here—the master herder must hear of this—'” Mariarta desperately welcomed the busyness of her life, which shut out the silences in which she must either hear the wind, or that other voice, lost now in the crash of the thunder, the roar of the Bull.

  And in this way, reckoning from the night the monster first appeared, three years went by.

  FOUR

  “It’s coming much closer now,” her father said softly.

  They were sitting together in his workroom on a fine spring morning, the third year after the Bull appeared. The windows were thrown open for the warmth, and the breeze stirred the parchments on the table, wobbling the feather of the quill which Mariarta had just laid aside. Her father’s eyesight was not what it had been; she did most of the writing and figuring for him, these days.

  She looked up from the papers. “Bab,” she said, “think where the story comes from.”

  “Yes, I know Flep’s half mad, these days,” her father said, and reached out to the cup. Mariarta lowered her eyes, thinking, He never used to drink it unwatered, and never so early in the day. “But even a crazy man can see straight sometimes, and when duonna Aia sees it too— We have to do something. If the lower pasture starts to go the way the upper one has—”