Part 6 (2/2)
Her children: Could it be they were no more than infant spirits, grown neither in heart nor mind since the day they bled to death with their father on the floor of the hut? Something in Saara, instinct or sense of justice, rebelled at this idea. Was there illusion at the base of the summoning spell? Had Ruggerio not really kissed her fingertips?
Had Guillermo Delstrego not come after thirty years of her hate to say to her, ”G.o.d go with you”?
Something had happened nonetheless, and someone had come to her behind the darkness of her closed eyes. It remained to be seen whether her task had succeeded or failed.
She stared at the disk of the descending moon, and so deep in thought was she that she did not notice the silent approach of one behind her.
”Saara,” he whispered. ”Pikku Saara.”
Saara turned slowly, effortfully, as though a great weight sat on her shoulders. She was suddenly afraid.
Behind her, illuminated by the moon, stood the shape of a man. It was dark, from its rough hair to its booted feet, and a cloud surrounded it like great, soft folded wings. As Saara looked up at the apparitions face the wings opened wide.
Smoky he was, and immaterial: not like the dog nor yet like the spirit who had kissed her fingers. For it was not her spell but his own wish that had brought him this very long way to a hill in Lombardy, in August, and he had little magic with which to clothe himself in flesh. Only the eyes of the ghost were clear to see, and full of tenderness.
”Damiano,” she began, and her voice left her as she uttered the name. ”I'm sorry to call you. I don't want to cause you pain, when you have the right to peace.”
He knelt by her, and she sensed in her witch's soul a hand upon her face. ”The only pain which can touch me,” he whispered, gently and from far away, ”is to see this pain in YOUR eyes, Saara. And I will gladly endure it if I can help you. But I didn't think that I could.”
”You thought I called you out of loneliness,” she stated, and her words held a hint of accusation. ”No.
I have more love in me than that, Darni, and more sense too. I called you because of Raphael. He has fallen into the power of the Liar...
”And I... I was the bait used to draw him. It was my fault.”
Damiano sank down beside her and the round moon shone un.o.bscured through his spreading wings.
Slowly he grew more solid to look upon, as he gazed rapt into her green, tilted eyes. He put his weightless hands upon hers. ”How could it be your fault, love, that Satan hates his brother?” He stroked her weathered hands gently. ”If it is a matter of fault, then it is my fault that I wrapped my friend so tightly in the bonds of earth he could no longer stand against the Devil's malice.”But the dark unghostly brown eyes reflected no sense of guilt. ”There is no fault here at all, Saara, except that of Satan's jealousy. And even that may be borne.”
Saara gripped Damiano's large hands. They had become solid and warm. She brought them together and laid them against her cheek.
In another moment he was kissing her and curtains of wing shrouded them both.
”I love you,” whispered Damiano, with his head against her neck. ”Oh Lady, how I love you!” Arid then he sighed. ”Forgive me, Saara; this does no good, I know!”
So it can be done, she thought to herself The dead may touch the living in the very manner of life. Her heart raced, burning with the conviction that all vows would be well broken, and the future profitably traded-in exchange for this.
Saara hissed between her teeth and turned her head from him. ”By the four winds! How wise I am-how wretchedly wise. Wise enough to put you aside, dark boy, even if you were fool enough to want to stay with me.”
When she looked back again her face had hardened. ”You see what a woman can be made of, after seventy years of living? I am so strong even you cannot break me, my dear.
”And as for being hurt-what does it matter if I am hurt, Darni? Why should my friends want to hedge me from my greatest desire lest I be hurt? Is it not to be hurt, to have one's desire thwarted? Is it not to be hurt, to be left always behind?”
She turned on the ghost with a sudden, deep-felt anger. ”You thought it were better to hide from me and die, rather than risk being saved at the expense of my life. How n.o.ble it was of you!
”But would it not have been greater to have given me the chance to prove myself as n.o.ble as you? Do you think my own love would have made it less than a joy to die in your place?”
He shook his head, and now the black curls moved with the fingers of the wind. The setting moon haloed his face: large-eyed, ram-nosed, smiling gently. ”It would have been a great act, love. I was not capable of it.”
Saara was crying, but her voice came firmly. ”And Raphael too... Walking into the Liars snare, knowing it was a snare, and I the bait. I told him not to. I told him the truth: that I am old and my life is full-lived. There is nothing which now could please me more than a good death in battle...”
”Which you would not get from Satan,” replied the ghost simply, shrugging. ”But rather pain, confusion, and the shame of weakness slowly overcoming you, like that of an old man who cannot hold his bladder. The Devil has no sympathy with anything quick and clean, and it isn't human death which pleases him, but human misery.” He searched her stern face for understanding.
”But in the end it did not matter, Saara, that you were ready to endure the Devil's torment. I believe you have the strength, beloved, if anyone born has ever had it. But Raphael also knew that if he left you in his brother's power, Satan would merely find another mortal tool, and then another, until Raphael could no longer resist him.”
Damiano's voice was slow and gentle, and he caressed her hair as he spoke, and when he was finished all she said was, ”I love you, Darni Delstrego. We had only a few days together as man and woman, but when flesh is laid aside I will still love you, then and always.”
His sad smile widened, lighting all his face. ”You are so beautiful, beloved. Like a great song... As for me, Saara of Saami, there is nothing left but love. That is why I feared to see you, lest it seem to you another abandonment, when the moon sets and I am there no longer.”
She whispered, ”I have heard your father tonight. And I have heard the voice of my child. I have heard and seen a great deal in my life and I do not call up the dead to ease my heart, but for help.”
”Help?” he echoed, and his wings rose expectantly.
”Help in rescuing Raphael.”
Those shadowy wings beat the air in complex, unheeded rhythm, as a man may drum his fingers while thinking. ”Of course,” he murmured at last. ”Knowing you, how could I expect less? But I have no magic with which to help you,” he replied at last. ”Nor force of arms. I am not a spirit of power.””You think not?” Saara looked away from his brown, human, dangerous eyes. ”But, I don't seek power but knowledge. Once you summoned the Liar-Satan, as you call him.”
”Twice,” he replied gravely. ”I was a fool.”
”But I am not,” she stated. ”And I do not want to meet Satan again. But I must get to his hall, where he has bound Raphael.”
Damiano shook his head. ”No, beloved. There is no need. Raphael has pa.s.sed back onto the earth from there.”
Her head snapped up. ”Where?”
Damiano was slow in replying. ”I don't know.”
”Have you seen him?”
Once again the spirit smiled slowly, and then he turned his head as though to listen to the rising wind.
At last he replied. ”I have been to see him. He is in a dry, hot place. He is on a chain. It is a land to which I never traveled. More than that I can't tell you, for even as I look at you now, Saara, beautiful love, I am not here but far away, and there is little besides you yourself that is clear to my eyes...” And then it seemed he turned and peered down the hill again.
”For I am neither angel nor devil nor G.o.d Himself, to be prowling up and down the living world.
Dead or alive, I am only Damiano, and my eyes have their limits.”
She snorted, bending to his humor unwillingly. ”Then I shall have to steal into Satan's window, as I first thought.”
The smile died from his face as the belly of the round moon touched the hills behind him. ”Don't try that, Saara.”
”I will. I must,” she replied. ”Look at me, Damiano. Even simple eyes can see how that I am no more a child. This misadventure has aged me. But I am Saara of the Saami; I know what I must do, and I do it.
”Besides, I have sworn that I will find Raphael, so all choice in the matter is over.”
Damiano looked into her green Asiatic eyes and nodded his head in submission to the inevitable. ”So you will find him. But not this way. Instead comb all the hot lands of the earth first, and all the places where men are kept on chains.”
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