Hoegbotton, softly singing to himself, leaned down to pick up the envelope. He opened it. The letter inside read, in a spidery scrawl:
Thank you, Robert, for your very fine
gift, but your bird has flown away home.
I couldn’t keep such a treasure. My
regards to your wife.—John Ungdom.
Hoegbotton stared at the note, chuckling at the sarcasm. Read it again, a frown closing his lips. Flown away home. Read it a third time, his stomach filling with stones. My regards to your wife.
He dropped the note, flung on his raincoat, and, not bothering to lock the store behind him, ran out onto the street—into the blinding rain. He headed up Albumuth Boulevard, through the Bureaucratic Quarter, toward home. He felt as if he were running in place. Every pedestrian hindered him. Every horse and cart blocked his path. As the rain came down harder, it beat a rhythmic message into Hoegbotton’s shoulders. The raindrops sounded like tapping fingers. Through the haze, the dull shapes of buildings became landmarks to anchor his staggering progress. Passersby stared at him as if he were crazy.
By the time he reached the apartment building lobby, his sides ached and he was drenched in sweat. He had fallen repeatedly on the slick pavement and bloodied his hands. He took the stairs three at a time, ran down the hallway to the apartment shouting “Rebecca!”
The apartment door was ajar. He tried to catch his breath, bending over as he slowly pushed the door open. A line of white mushrooms ran through the hallway, low to the ground, their gills stained red. Where his hand held the door, fungus touched his fingers. He recoiled, straightened up.
“Rebecca?” he said, staring into the kitchen. No one. The inside of the kitchen window was covered in purple fungi. A cane lay next to the coat rack, a gift from his father. He took it and walked into the apartment, picking his way between the white mushrooms as he pulled the edge of his raincoat up over his mouth. The doorway to the living room was directly to his left. He could hear nothing, as if his head were stuffed with cloth. Slowly, he peered around the doorway.
The living room was aglow with fungi, white and purple, green and yellow. Shelves of fungi jutted from the walls. Bottle-shaped mushrooms, a deep burgundy, wavering like balloons, were anchored to the floor. Hoegbotton’s palm burned fiercely. Now he was in the dream, not before.
Looking like the exoskeleton shed by some tropical beetle, the cage stood on the coffee table, the cover drawn aside, the door open. Beside the cage lay another alabaster hand. This did not surprise him. It did not even register. For, beyond the table, the doors to the balcony had been thrown wide open. Rebecca stood on the balcony, in the rain, her hair slick and bright, her eyes dim. Strewn around her, as if in tribute, the strange growths that had long ago claimed the balcony: orange strands whipping in the winds, transparent bulbs that stood rigid, mosaic patterns of gold-green mold imprinted on the balcony’s corroded railing. Beyond: the dark gray shadows of the city, dotted with smudges of light.
Rebecca was looking down at … nothing … her hands held out before her as if in supplication.
“Rebecca!” he shouted. Or thought he shouted. His mouth was tight and dry. He began to walk across the living room, the mushrooms pulling against his shoes, his pants, the air alive with spores. He blinked, sneezed, stopped just short of the balcony. Rebecca had still not looked up. Rain splattered against his boots.
“Rebecca,” he said, afraid that she would not hear him, that the distance between them was somehow too great. “Come away from there. It isn’t safe.” She was shivering. He could see her shivering.
Rebecca turned to look at him and smiled. “Isn’t safe? You did this yourself, didn’t you? Opened the balcony for me before you left this morning?” She frowned. “But then I was puzzled. You had the cage sent back even though Mrs. Willis said we couldn’t keep pets.”
“I didn’t open the balcony. I didn’t send back the cage.” His boots were tinged green. His shoulders ached.
“Well, someone brought it here—and I opened it. I was bored. The flower vendor was supposed to come and take me to the market, but he didn’t.”
“Rebecca—it isn’t safe. Come away from the balcony.” His words were dull, unconvincing. A lethargy had begun to envelop his body.
“I wish I knew what it was,” she said. “Can you see it? It’s right here—in front of me.”
He started to say no, he couldn’t see it, but then he realized he could see it. He was gasping from the sight of it. He was choking from the sight of it. Blood trickled down his chin where he had bitten into his lip. All the courage he had built up for Rebecca’s sake melted away.
“Come here, Rebecca,” he managed to say.
“Yes. Okay,” she said in a small, broken voice.
Tripping over fungi, she walked into the apartment. He met her at the coffee table, drew her against him, whispered into her ear, “You need to get out of here, Rebecca. I need you to go downstairs. Find Mrs. Willis. Have her send for the Cappan’s men.” Her hair was wet against his face. He stroked it gently.
“I’m scared,” she whispered back, arms thrown around him. “Come with me.”
“I will, Rebecca. Rebecca, I will. In just a minute. But now, I need you to leave.” He was trembling from mixed horror at the thought that he might never say her name again and relief, because now he knew why he loved her.
Then her weight was gone as she moved past him to the door and, perversely, his burden returned to him.
The thing had not moved from the balcony. It was not truly invisible but camouflaged itself by perfectly matching its background. The bars of a cage. The spaces between the bars. A perch. He could only glimpse it now because it could not mimic the rain that fell upon it fast enough.
Hoegbotton walked out onto the balcony. The rain felt good on his face. His legs were numb so he lowered himself into an old rotting chair they had never bothered to take off the balcony. While the thing watched, he sat there, staring between the bars of the balcony railing, out into the city. The rain trickled through his hair. He tried not to look at his hands, which were tinged green. He tried to laugh, but it came out as a rasping gurgle. The thought came to him that he must still be back in the mansion with the woman and the boy—that he had never really left—because, honestly, how could you escape such horror? How could anyone escape something like that?
The thing padded up to him on its quiet feet and sang to him. Because it no longer mattered, Hoegbotton turned to look at it. He choked back a sob. He had not expected this. It was beautiful. Its single eye, so like Rebecca’s eyes, shone with an unearthly light, phosphorescent flashes darting across it. Its mirror skin shimmered with the rain. Its mouth, full of knives, smiled in a way that did not mean the same thing as a human smile. This was as close as he could get, he knew now, staring into that single, beautiful eye. This was as close. Maybe there was something else, something beyond. Maybe there was a knowledge still more secret than this knowledge, but he would never experience that.
The thing held out its clawed hand and, after a time, Hoegbotton took it in his own.
A fresh river in a beautiful meadow
Imagined in his mind
The good Painter, who would someday paint it
—Comanimi