Wolff thought of Chryseis’ apparently sincere remark about the insertion of brains into bodies by the Lord. To his question, she replied, “Yes, but I do not know if he put human brains into the ravens’ heads. He may have grown small brains with the larger human brains as models, then educated the ravens. Or he could have used just part of a human brain.”
Unfortunately, though they strained their ears, they could only catch a few words here and there. Several minutes passed. The raven, loudly croaking a goodbye in distorted but understandable Greek, launched himself from the branch. He dropped heavily, but his great wings beat fast, and they carried him
upward before he touched ground. In a minute he was lost behind the heavy foliage of the trees. A little later, Wolff caught a glimpse of him through a break in the vegetation. The giant black bird was gaining altitude slowly, his point of flight the mountain across the sea.
He noticed that Chryseis was trembling. He said, “What could the raven tell the Lord that would scare you so?”
“I am not frightened so much for myself as I am for you. If the Lord discovers you are here, he will want to kill you. He does not like uninvited guests in his world.”
She placed her hand on the horn and shivered again. “I know that it was Kickaha who gave you this, and that you can’t help it that you have it. But the Lord might not know it isn’t your fault. Or, even if he did, he might not care. He would be terribly angry if he thought you’d had anything to do with stealing it. He would do awful things to you; you would be better off if you ended yourself now rather than have the Lord get his hands on you.”
“Kickaha stole the horn? How do you know?”
“Oh, believe me, I know. It is the Lord’s. And Kickaha must have stolen it, for the Lord would never give it to anyone.”
“I’m confused,” Wolff said. “But maybe we can straighten it all out someday. The thing that bothers me right now is, where’s Kickaha?”
Chryseis pointed toward the mountain and said, “The gworl took him there. But before they did …”
She covered her face with her hands; tears seeped through the fingers.
“They did something to him?” Wolff said.
She shook her head. “No. They did something to … to …”
Wolff took her hands from her face. “If you can’t talk about it, would you show it to me?”
“I can’t. It’s … too horrible. I get sick.”
“Show me anyway.”
“I’ll take you near there. But don’t ask me to look at … her . . . again.”
She began walking, and he followed her. Every now and then she would stop, but he would gently urge heron. After a zigzag course of over half a mile, she stopped. Ahead of them was a small forest of bushes twice as high as Wolff’s head. The leaves of the branches of one bush interlaced with those of its neighbors. The leaves were broad and elephant-earshaped, light green with broad red veins, and tipped with a rusty fleur-de-lys.
“She’s in there,” Chryseis said. “I saw the gworl … catch her and drag her into the bushes. I followed … I …” She could talk no more.
Wolff, knife in one hand, pushed the branches of the bushes aside. He found himself in a natural clearing. In the middle, on the short green grass, lay the scattered bones of a human female. The bones were gray and devoid of flesh, and bore little toothmarks, by which he knew that the bipedal vulpine scavengers had gotten to her.
He was not horrified, but he could imagine how Chryseis must have felt. She must have seen part of what had taken place, probably a rape, then murder in some gruesome fashion. She would have reacted like the other dwellers in the Garden. Death was something so horrible that the word for it had long
ago become taboo and then dropped out of the language. Here, nothing but pleasant thoughts and acts were to be contemplated, and anything else was to be shut out.