XV

It was very simple. Sherwood, poor Sherwood, was dead, sprawled there on the floor, and his murderer was standing here right in front of Will, and there was a knife in Will’s hand, trembling to be put to its purpose. It didn’t care that Steep had once been its owner; it only wanted to be used. Now, quickly! Never mind that the flesh it would be butchering belonged to the man who’d treated it like a holy relic. All that mattered was to glint and glitter in the deed, to rise and fall and rise again red.

“Have you come to give that back to me?” Steep said.

Will could barely mumble a reply, his mind was so filled with the knife’s advertisements for its skills. How it would lop off Steep’s ears and nose, reduce his beauty to a wound. He sees you still? Scoop out his eyes! His screams distress you? Cut out his tongue!

They were terrible thoughts, sickening thoughts. Will didn’t want them. But they kept coming.

Steep on his back now, naked. And the knife opening his chest—one, two!—exposing his beating heart. You want his nipples for souvenirs? Here! Here! Something more intimate perhaps? Meat for the fox—

And before Will knew what he was doing; his hand was up, the knife exalting. It would have opened Steep’s face to the bone a moment later had Steep not reached up and caught the blade in his fist. Oh, it stung him, even him. His perfect lips curled in pain and a hiss came between his perfect teeth, a soft hiss that died into a sigh, as he expelled every vestige of air.

Will attempted to pull the knife out of his grip. Surely it would slice the sheath of Steep’s palm and free itself; its edges were too keen to be contained. But it didn’t move. He tugged again, harder. Still it didn’t move. And again he pulled, but still Steep held it fast.

Will’s eyes flickered from the knife to his enemy’s face.

Steep had not drawn breath since he’d exhaled his sigh; he was staring at Will, his mouth open a little way, as though he were about to speak

Then, of course, he inhaled. It was no common breath, no simple summoning of air. It was Steep’s reprise of what had happened on the hill, thirty years before, except that this time he was the one commanding the moment, unknitting the world around them. It flickered out on the instant, the floor seeming to fall away beneath their feet, so that Will and Steep seemed to hang above velvet immensity, connected only by the blade.

“I want you to share this with me,” Steep said softly, as though he had found a fine wine and was inviting Will to drink from the same cup. The darkness was solidifying beneath their feet: a roiling dust, ebbing, and flowing. But all around them otherwise, darkness. And above, darkness. No clouds, nor stars, nor moon.

“Where are we?” Will breathed, looking back at Steep.

Jacob’s face was not as solid as it had been. The once smooth skin of his brow and cheek had become grainy, and the murk behind him seemed to be leaking through his eye. “Can you hear me?” Will wanted to know. But the face before him continued to lose coherence. And now, though Will knew this was just a vision, panic began to grow in him. Suppose Steep deserted him here, in this emptiness?

“Stay,” he found himself saying, like a child afraid to be left alone in the dark. “Please stay—”

“What are you frightened of?” Steep said. The darkness had almost claimed his face entirely. “You can tell me.”

“I don’t want to get lost,” Will replied.

“There’s no help for that,” Steep said. “Not unless we know our way to God. And that’s hard in this confusion. This sickening confusion.” Though his image had almost disappeared completely now, his voice remained, soft and solicitous. “Listen to that din—”

“Don’t go.”

“Listen,” Steep told him.

Will could hear the noise Steep was referring to. It wasn’t a single sound; it was a thousand, a thousand thousands, coming at him from every direction at once. It wasn’t strident, nor was it sweet or musical. It was simply insistent. And its source? That was coming too, from all directions. Tidal multitudes of pale, indistinguishable forms, crawling toward him. No, not crawling: being born. Creatures spreading their limbs and purging themselves of infants that, even in the moment of their birth, were ungluing their legs to be fertilized and, before their partners had rolled off them, were spreading their limbs to expel another generation. And on and on, in sickening multitudes, their mingled mewlings and sighings and sobs the din that Steep had said drowned out God.

It wasn’t hard for Will to fathom what he was witnessing.

This was what Steep saw when he looked at living things. Not their beauty, not their particularity, just their smothering, deafening fecundity. Flesh begetting flesh, din begetting din. It wasn’t hard to fathom, because he’d thought it himself, in his darkest times. Seen the human tide advancing on species he’d loved—beasts too wild or too wise to compromise with the invader—and wished for a plague to wither every human womb. Heard the din and longed for a gentle death to silence every throat.

Sometimes not even gentle. He understood. Oh Lord, he understood.

“Are you still there?” he said to Steep.

“Still here,” the man replied.

“Make it go away.”

“That’s what I’ve been trying to do all these years,” Steep replied.

The rising tide of life was almost upon them, forms being born and being born, spilling around Will’s feet.

“Enough,” Will said.

“You understand my point of view?”

“Yes—”

“Louder.”

“Yes! I understand. Perfectly.” The admission was enough to banish the horror. The tide retreated and a moment later was gone entirely, leaving Will hanging in the darkness again.

“Isn’t this a finer place?” Steep said. “In a hush like this we might have a hope of knowing who we are. There’s no error here. No imperfection. Nothing to distract us from God.”

“This is the way you want the world?” Will murmured.

“Empty?”

“Not empty. Cleansed.”

“Ready to begin again?”

“Oh no.”

“But it will, Steep. You might drive things into hiding for a while, but there’ll always be some mudflat you missed, some rock you didn’t lift. And life will come back. Maybe not human life. Maybe something better. But life, Jacob. You can’t kill the world.”

“I’ll reduce it to a petal,” Jacob replied, lightly. Will could hear the smile in the man’s voice as he spoke. “And God’ll be there. Plain. I’ll see him, plain. And I’ll understand why I was made.” His face was starting to congeal again. There was the wide, pale brow, sheltering that deep, troubled gaze, the fine nose, the finer mouth.

“Suppose you’re wrong,” Will said. “Suppose God wanted the world to be filled? Ten thousand kinds of buttercup? A million kinds of beetle? No two of anything alike. Just suppose. Suppose you’re the enemy of God, Jacob. Suppose . . . you’re the Devil and you don’t know it?”

“I’d know. Though I can’t see Him yet, God moves in me.”

“Well,” said Will, “he moves in me too.” And the words, though he’d never thought he’d hear them from his own tongue, were true. God was in him now. Always had been. Steep had the rage of some Judgmental Father in his eye, but the divinity Will had in him was no less a Lord, though He talked through the mouth of a fox and loved life more than Will had supposed life could be loved. A Lord who’d come before him in innumerable shapes over the years. Some pitiful, to be sure, some triumphant.

A blind polar bear on a garbage heap; two children in painted masks; Patrick sleeping, Patrick smiling, Patrick speaking love.

Camellias on a windowsill and the skies of Africa. His Lord was there, everywhere, inviting him to see the soul of things.

Sensing the certainty moving in Will, Steep countered in the only way he knew how.

“I put the hunger for death in you,” he said. “That makes you mine. We might both regret it, but it’s the truth.” How could Will deny it, while that knife was still in his hand? Taking his gaze from Steep’s face, he sought the weapon out, following the form of the man’s shoulder, along his arm to the fist that was still gripping the blade, and down, down to his own hand, which still grasped the hilt.

Then, seeing it, he let it go. It was so simple to do. The sum of the blade’s harms would not be swelled by his wielding of it, not by a single wound.

The consequence of his letting go was instantaneous. The darkness was instantly extinguished, and the solid world sprang up around him: the hail, the body, the staircase that led up to the open roof, through which straight beams of sun were coming.

And in front of him, Steep, staring at him with a curious look on his face. Then he shuddered, and his fingers opened just enough to allow the blade to slide from his grip. It had opened his palm, deeply, and the wound was seeping. It wasn’t blood that came, however. It was the same stuff that had seeped from Rosa’s body, finer threads from a smaller wound, but the same bright liquor. Fragments of it curled lazily around his fingers and, without thinking what he was doing, Will reached out to touch it. The threads sensed him and came to meet his hand. He heard Steep tell him no, but it was too late. Contact had been made. Once again, he felt the matter pass into him and through him. This time, however, he was prepared to watch for its revelations, and he wasn’t disappointed. The face before him unveiled itself, its flesh confessing the mystery that lay beneath.

He knew it already. The same strange beauty he’d seen lurking in Rosa was here in Steep too: the form of the Nilotic, like something carved from the eternal.

“What did Rukenau do to you two?” Will said softly.

The flesh inside Steep’s flesh stared out at him like a prisoner, despairing of release. “Tell me,” Will pressed. Still it said nothing. Yet it wanted to speak; Will could see the desire to do so in its eyes; how it wanted to tell its story. He leaned a little closer to it. “Try,” he said.

It inclined its head toward him, until their mouths were only three or four inches apart. No sound escaped it, nor could, Will suspected. The prisoner had been mute too long to find its voice again so quickly. But while they were so close, gaze meeting gaze, he could not waste its proximity. He leaned another inch toward it, and the Nilotic, knowing what was coming, smiled. Then Will kissed it, lightly, reverently, on the lips.

The creature returned his kiss, pressing its cool mouth against his.

The next moment, as had happened with Rosa, the thread of light burned itself out in him, and was gone. The veil fell instantly, obscuring what lay beneath, and the face Will was kissing was Steep’s face.

Jacob pushed him away with a shout of disgust, as though he’d momentarily shared Will’s trance and only now realized what the power inside him had sanctioned. Then he fell back against the wall, clenching his wounded hand tightly closed to be certain no more of this traitorous fluid escaped, and with the back of his other hand, wiped his lips clean. He scoured every trace of gentility from his face as he did so. All perplexity, all doubt, were gone. Fixing Will with a rabid gaze, he reached down and picked up the knife that lay between them. There was no room for further exchange, Will knew. Steep wasn’t going to be talking about God or forgiveness any longer. All he wanted to do was kill the man who’d just kissed him.

Even though he knew there was no hope of peace now, Will took his time as he retreated to the door, studying Steep. When next they met, it would be death for one of them; this would most likely be his last opportunity to look at the man whose brotherhood he had so passionately wanted to share. A kiss such as they’d exchanged was nothing to a man who was certain of himself. But Steep was not certain, never had been. Like so many of the men Will had watched and wanted in his life, he lived in fear of his manhood being seen for what it was, a murderous figment, a trick of spit and swagger that concealed a far stranger spirit.

He could watch no longer, another five seconds and the knife would be at his throat. He turned and took himself off across the threshold, down the path and out into the street.

Steep didn’t follow. He would brood a while, Will guessed, putting his thoughts in murderous order before he began his final pursuit.

And pursue he would. Will had kissed the spirit in him and that was a crime the figment would never forgive. It would come, knife in hand. Nothing was more certain.