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CHAPTER FOURTEEN

Up from Mictlan-Xibalba, a crack came extending by slow degrees, like the first small tear in a rolled snake’s egg — splitting, resplitting, fine and flexible as dead woman’s hair. Meeting on its way with the same artesian wellspring Rook had teased forth once before, it washed the earth beneath their feet free of salt to form a mucky circle ’round himself and the woman, roughly twelve feet in diameter, like it’d been measured out with a pair of coffins for compasses.

Then the crack’s furthest finger opened up a smallish hole right in the off-centre of this depression, through which — while they both watched, with similar fascination — a dark tendril poked and furled, coiling the way kudzu does, pumping with evil juice. A quarterbreath, and it had swelled cock-thick. A half-, and it bloomed big as a big man’s wrist. Three breaths later, a young sapling.

Bark like unclean fur, leaves quill-sharp, pine-needles from a giant’s Christmas wreath. The tree spread itself out above them, its low-slung limbs hung with vines so heavy they reminded Rook of nothing so much as serpents. But its fruit did shine: satin-silvery, casting light down on the woman’s face as she stared upwards, mouth open, wondering — a thin rain of glitter, spores heavy with sleep, and dreams.

Open your mouth, little king; she teeters on the brink. We must be careful how we steer her, if the right outcome is to be obtained. Speak only the words I send you.

No help for it, then. At all.

“This tree — ” Rook began.

“Beautiful,” the woman agreed. “What do they call it?” “Yaxche. Tree of Heaven. It’s a . . . calabash, I think. But that ain’t the point.”

“No.”

“Point is — you want to die. That’s why you came here, right?”

She looked down again, as if shamed — at her weeping dress-front, the mess between her thighs turning her hem to rust. Whispered, mouth barely moving: “Yes.”

“Well, then . . . there you go.”

He pointed to the tree, which was already letting down a helpful extra length of vine — close-plaited, easy to tie, hard to break. A hangman’s rope.

“That’s a sin, though,” she said; more of a question than a statement, going strictly by intonation. Like she was hoping he’d try and talk her out of it.

Wasn’t as though that was a strict impossibility, either, it suddenly struck Rook. Sure, the woman’d come out to Bewelcome on her own, who knew how far. No food or water with her that he could see, which meant — if he was to give in to a foolish impulse of mercy — he’d have to waste most of the latest jolt he’d sucked from Chess on healing her alone. But then he’d be so weak, even if he did get her back to a place half-civilized, the citizens there’d simply shoot him where he stood once the first of them put a name to his notorious face. Scatter his brains, burn his body, atomize him beyond even Lady Rainbow’s recall . . . if she didn’t kill him herself, long before, for breaking faith with their subterranean compact.

You cannot save her, little king. As you know, in your bones.

No. And . . . yes.

We are complicit in this, husband, as in all things else. Is that not the meaning of marriage?

Not really, not for everybody. But then — I ain’t everybody.

“What’s your name?” he asked the woman, on further impulse.

“Adaluz,” she replied, the terminal “zee” a faint “th” lisp — but didn’t ask him his in return, as one might’ve thought only polite. Then again, it probably wasn’t anything she particularly cared to know, right at this very instant.

“Mexican, huh?” No reply. “Well, leave that by. You cleave still to the Holy Roman Catholic faith, Adaluz?”

“. . . I did . . .”

“Yeah, ’course. But that was before God killed your child, right? Or — let you kill it.”

She took the implication straight to the jaw, slap-hard, with barely a flinch. Just kept her gaze locked fast to that half-born noose, its tail already curling in on itself, forming an unslippable knot for her convenience. Her mouth gave a twist, skewing a drawn purse-string way that rendered her entire pretty face a badly sewn mask.

Matthew, 2:18, Rook couldn’t stop himself from thinking. In Rama was there a voice heard, lamentation, and weeping, and great mourning, Rachel weeping for her children, and would not be comforted, because they are not.

“I can’t reach it,” was all sad Miss Ada said, at length, hopelessly. “It’s . . . too high for me.”

“Well, I can help you with that, ma’am. I mean — I’m surely tall enough to spot you a lift. Ain’t I?”

A long, wet sniff. Then, with her tear-blurred voice even softer than her words’ slight Spanish tinge could make it — “You’re very kind, señor.”

“Oh, no such thing, darlin’. No such thing.”