Part 46 (1/2)

Because as he toiled, he too felt the creeping sense of fatalism that told him all was lost, and the meaning gone out of his life. He too felt events pus.h.i.+ng toward some dark and bitter climax over which he seemed to have little control. All this though he raged, and cursed, and worked harder still. Because Sylviana would not let him near her, and heeded none of his warnings.

So he worked, and waited, and prayed to the wind which knew could not hear. While the woman-child, oblivious, pursued the treacherous shadow of revenge.

It should be said in her defense that Sylviana had not stopped loving him. Hers, rather, was a cla.s.sic case of one who has struggled with the help of another to achieve some desperate goal, but whom, upon attaining it, felt that he or she no longer needed the life partner who had been a pillar of love and support throughout: that she was now free to choose a more appropriate mate for her elevated status, and leave the other to get on as they would. As if that made it any better. Lastly, that if she had been herself she would have wished him no harm, whatever he had done to hurt her.

But her emotions, too (or so she told herself), were in a violent state of flux. She felt as if she had been the one struck across the face, betrayed and unjustly punished for simply following the inevitable course of events. She had never been an evil person, and was not now.

But a sin of omission can be every bit as deadly, and the venomous spider does not stop to ask the nature of its victim before it bites, a soft sting that is hardly felt, until the poison starts to work.

Neither of them had realized the gift their isolation and struggle had been, or how much more complicated love becomes when lives are sheltered, and hearts confronted by a baffling array of choices.

Perhaps that was why, as Smith had remarked to Kalus, the well-off never seemed to be much in love, but only to play at life. His love with Sylviana had been simple and direct, a beautiful and necessary outgrowth of their world. Now their reality had been altered, and something precious lost.

It should also be said that in dealing with a dark, embittered soul like William's (and to a lesser degree, her own), Sylviana was every bit as naive as she had been about the primal, life and death existence of the Valley. Had she known for one minute the vicious hatred that he held for her, or the imminent danger of the course she was now pursuing, she would have fled from him and never looked back.

Because to William she had become a symbol of all the protected, thoughtless sheep whose blind acceptance of personal comfort and political ruthlessness had made the destruction of the Earth and the murder of his love possible, even inevitable. He would listen as she spoke of her days at Ithaca, and of her soft and sheltered childhood, with apparent interest and appreciation, all the while choking back his pa.s.sion, and plotting her destruction. In his mind she was the ?pretty little college wh.o.r.e', and the very strength of his desire for her only intensified his wish to wound her, as he had been wounded, to punish and destroy her, as his love had been destroyed. He hated her with a malice so deep it could fain love without detection, and wallow in thoughts of s.e.xual violence without remorse. The spirit had been charred to ash inside him, leaving only the b.e.s.t.i.a.l desires of the twisted animal: l.u.s.t and hate and vengeance.

But his plans were not yet ripe, and like the cat, he would play with his victim before killing it. And perhaps too, though the chance was faint, the smallest part of his conscience remained, and needed further goading before ceasing to rebel.

For her own part, though she might have wished it otherwise, Sylviana could feel nothing for him but pity and a kind of awe. At times the obsidian hardness of his eyes would push her senses toward the protective realm of fear; but always his words, and her own twisted purpose called them back. She was neither attracted nor repulsed, only determined.

In truth she thought little during those final days, following out the treadmill of her plan in a kind of dull stupor, unable, for the pain it cost her, to listen to her heart and turn aside. Her scheme, if such a name can be given to walking wide-eyed into a trap, was to sleep with him at a time and place where Kalus would either witness it directly, or hear of it straight away. She meant only to raise the horrible specter of betrayal before him, to hurt him as he had done to her. Beyond that she saw nothing, knew nothing, though some half thought out rationale told her than then, perhaps, she could forgive him.

She wanted, in short, to summon the demon of Vengeance---to do her bidding, then be gone. But h.e.l.l, if it has a master, is no woman's slave, and once raised, follows its own path of wanton destruction. And it found in William a willing conspirator, and favorite target of seduction: a man who no longer cared.

Kalus had spoken of a benevolent current to which, along with his own free will, he would entrust his life. But there is also a malevolent, just as real, and Sylviana was being carried along by it without resistance, and without awareness.

As William plotted, and Kalus burned.

Chapter 46

But life, and the myriad realities around them, did not cease because two lovers had been driven apart, or because another lived in the darkened world of near death. And their interaction, however tragic and to whatever end, was hardly its only concern. Perhaps that is life's greatest cruelty---that it goes on, regardless---or perhaps that is its greatest gift. Nature, stern father that it is, has many children, and those who have grown must be strong and self-sufficient, able to survive and create again, without help or intercession.

There were others in the camp with lives and dreams and heartbreaks of their own. And in the seemingly distant Valley, countless animal young were being born, some who would rise to the magnificent freedom that only an untamed creature of the Wild can know, some who would never reach adulthood, their flesh sacrificed to feed the young of others.

But all would continue to strive and struggle, not understanding the human concept of despair. And if the spirits of those who died returned in other forms, or if the energy that const.i.tuted their existence was merely recycled, it rose up to struggle again, filled with the endless enigma that so bravely turns to face the Night, forever battling death and the Void:

Desire, the cornerstone of Life.

On the day before the storm would break, Sylviana felt a stillness and sense of well-being in everything around her: in the gentle breeze of early morning, in the frolicking of the cub with David Rawlings, who would never have been so free with a human companion. She felt it in the absence of William from the camp, and even in the stubborn, unspeaking presence of the man-child. He would never leave her, of that she was now certain. And he would be near, very near when tomorrow, at last, her plans would be ripe.

She no longer felt any hatred towards him. As their eyes met briefly she even felt the old, half admitted love that had once been the most important reality of her world. She didn't hate him. But she knew what she had to do. It didn't have to mean destroying him, which she was equally certain would never happen. How could steel be destroyed?

It couldn't, she thought, only disciplined to be a better servant.