The Holiday From Hell (17 page)

"A few years later, I returned, winging my way from the sea, wanting nothing more than peace after the conflicts I'd seen elsewhere. The moment I descended below the canopy, I knew I was being watched, but I had no need to hide my wings then as I do now. The water was cool from its time in the cave and so refreshing that it was all I could think about, yet the watching eyes hadn't left. I rose from the pool and faced the girl I'd seen on my previous visit, though now she'd grown into a woman. And she wasn't alone. A young man stalked the shadows behind her.

"I wondered whether to warn her, but she beat me to it, beckoning the boy to the bank by her side. She told me her name was Mitanne and Nobel was her beloved. They lived here at Meekadarabee – the bathing place of the moon – because their tribes wouldn't allow them to be together. He usually hunted at night, but the devil bird flying through the skies tonight had frightened everything into hiding. He'd need to travel further afield if they were to eat tomorrow, he said, before he kissed her goodbye and headed off into the bush. It was…sweet to see them together. How tenderly he touched her for just a moment, yet that moment held so much love…" Mel closed her eyes and sighed. A tear slid down her cheek. "I'm telling this wrong. Please…let me show you the memory?"

Luce nodded and she cuddled up to him, taking his hands in hers. His eyes snapped shut as he reached for her soul and was surprised at the clarity of Mel's memory.

He watched the scrub fly past as if he was running through it, following a track through the underbrush that only he knew. A game trail, perhaps. The sun sank and the stars started to prick the darkening sky. Wings above obscured the stars for a moment before they were gone, silent flight carrying the creature away, but still she followed it, increasing her speed. A flash of white ahead made her slow her pace before she sank to her knees on the edge of the clearing. Before her, glowing faintly in the starlight, a pale female form stood waist-deep in the water. Her wings faded from sight and she sighed, stretching out to float on her back on the rippled surface.

Luce recognised Mel in the water and confusion jolted him halfway out of the memory. If the memory was Mel's, then why was she seeing herself?

"The memory is Mitanne's, as she shared it with me. You see?" Mel murmured.

Luce watched his perfect angel bathing in the distant past and became aware of the dark-skinned hands pushing the bushes aside as Mitanne emerged from her hiding place. Her heart had swelled just as Luce's did at Mel's sweet smile. Luce longed to join her in the water, but the girl remained resolute on the bank. She believed Mel to be the moon herself, come to Earth to grace this place with her light, and the girl wasn't worthy to share such a sacred place.

The girl spoke in words Luce didn't understand, but the images in her mind were clear. As she described places to Mel, she recalled the plants and animals, rocks and watercourses she'd encountered. The beady black eye of a striped numbat, the musical cry of a hundred black cockatoos as they sailed overhead, the quiet drip of water in a cave beside bones too big to belong to any creature she'd ever seen, tingle trees so huge their trunks were large enough for a whole tribe to shelter inside, the sweet smell of peppermint bushes here and the flash of ocean-blue in the trees as a tiny bird with bright blue feathers darted between branches. And the echo of Mel's remembered laughter in the clearing as she said she brought no curse.

Luce felt a shiver as the girl's deeply held beliefs whispered that she was cursed, no matter what the friendly devil bird said, edged by Mel's sorrow at the memory.

The scene changed. The bushes were thicker and higher, and the girl's fingers were longer as she pushed the leaves aside to reach Mel's pool. She brushed a fly off her perspiration-beaded breast, longing to feel the coolness of the cave water on her skin. The water only came to her thighs, for without winter rainfall to swell the pool, it was much shallower in the baking heat of summer, but she plunged in again and again, sharing the moon's love for her private bathing place.

Her skin prickled as she felt eyes on her and she rose from the water, scanning the vegetation until she met the gaze of her unseen watcher. He rose from the bushes, placing his spear butt-first against the stone beside him. "Are you the devil bird who bathes in this pool?" he demanded, showing no fear.

She admired his courage, but she laughed and asked him what he would do if she was.

He stood straighter and replied, "I would impale you on my spear and carry your body as a trophy to my people. Then all would only speak of me in whispers, of how powerful a hunter Nobel must be, to have conquered the demon."

Her memory sparked with faint images of a boy her own age from another tribe, who she'd occasionally seen when their tribes were both in the same region. He had been something like a playmate then, but nothing like the strong man he had become. Perhaps this fearless hunter could carry her away from the curse her grandmother had placed on her – her betrothal to a tribal elder, a great honour she didn't want. She shivered whenever the elder looked at her, his eyes filled with a fire of longing that frightened her.

She told him her name and her tribe – names that were meaningless to Luce – before he felt a stirring of lust that was both familiar and alien. The girl's reckless desire drove her to cast caution to the wind and she invited Nobel to join her in the pool. He impaled her, all right, but he left his wooden weapon on the bank as the two made love in the water. She begged him to sneak into her camp under the cover of darkness and steal her away.

Some nights later, after her people had moved on and set up camp much further away, she was woken by a hand over her mouth to silence her. It took her a moment to recognise the young man from the pool and quell her fear enough to creep out of the camp and away with him. They ran all night and into the next day before they reached Mokidup. Instead of living in the camping place alone, they slept in the cave, hunting the rich lands here and bathing together in the pool to slake their desire. Their combined laughter echoed off the rocks, banishing the curse that lay over her, or so the girl thought.

And then the moon maiden appeared again, the pale devil bird who had given Mitanne permission to visit this place. Luce tasted the girl's cocktail of emotions – fear, bravado, protectiveness and desire for the boy, who'd hidden from the strange winged woman. Mitanne had told Nobel about the true devil of the pool and she didn't want him to be cursed for offending her. So she lied about there being no game here and how he needed to hunt away from here that night, her eyes begging him to understand. Relief flooded through her when he nodded and set off across the ridge to hunt.

Luce's phone trilled, jerking him halfway back to reality. He shoved his hand in his pocket and jabbed at the power button, holding it down until the trilling faded to silence. To Hell with the outside world of the present – he was busy with Mel.

Mel's memory seemed edged by sadness now, he realised as he focussed on the long-ago night time scene. Uneasily, he wondered whether the girl or the boy was going to fall victim to the imaginary curse.

The scene blurred until the sky was streaked with pink from the approaching dawn. Distant shouts carried on the wind. Mitanne's panic sent her sprinting toward the sound, along the trail Nobel had taken east to hunt in the lee of the ridge, leaving the devil bird far behind. She heard them before they noticed her – a band of hunters from her tribe, clustered around Nobel, accusing him of crimes against her tribe for which the punishment was death. Crossing into lands and hunting grounds that were forbidden. Theft of the elder's bride, kidnapping her and keeping her from her rightful husband and tribe. Trespassing on the sacred ground at the waterfall. He shook his head and denied all of it. He was on permitted land now, hunting as he'd been ordered, not land that was forbidden or sacred. And where was this bride he'd supposedly carried off? Did they have her?

Mitanne heard it all and faded into the bush, barely daring to breathe in fear that they might discover her hiding place, for the elder had sent her tribe's best hunters in pursuit of her.

She watched in horror as one of the men picked up Nobel's own spear and thrust it through the boy's body, pinning him to the sand. His agony was written clearly across his face, but Nobel didn't make a sound, such was his courage. The hunters pointed toward the sea and the cave where she and Nobel had made their home, then set out along the trail for the coast.

Mitanne waited until she could no longer hear them before she rushed to Nobel's side. She was no medicine woman and the sand was sticky with his blood, he'd lost so much, but she held him and spoke words of love to him as her tears washed the blood from his face. He said little, for he only had moments left to live as his lifeblood drained from his body, but he told her he loved her before he died in her arms.

Luce felt tears on his own face at the memory of losing Mel in much the same way outside Heaven's gates. The wave of despair that engulfed the girl as her beloved breathed his last washed over Luce as surely as the human girl. He felt Mel's arms tighten around him now, though, as her love softened the sharp pain of the girl's memories.

The girl didn't know how long she stayed with Nobel's body, calling down curses on her people for killing the man she loved, and on herself for causing him to be cursed by the moon. Her memories were blurred as rough hands seized her and carried her through the bush, though she saw none of it in her haze of grief. She found herself back in her tribe's camp, numbly obeying the orders of anyone who had work that needed to be done. This was her punishment for deserting her tribe – she would be made to do all the hardest work until she had earned the honour of being the elder's bride. She ceased eating and drinking, wishing only to return to the pool where she and Nobel had laughed and loved for such a short time.

One day, while carrying a heavy load of wood for the fire, she stumbled and fell. Such was her weakness that she couldn't seem to get up, so she accepted assistance when it was offered. When she rose, she came face to face with Nobel and a man she didn't know. The hand had belonged to the devil bird, who now stood beside her.

The memory faded into fog there, but Luce couldn't get that last image of Mel out of his head. The weeping angel who stood beside the girl.

"What happened to her?" he asked thickly, finding that she wept just as freely now, a waterfall that flowed down her cheeks like the cascade on the other side of the clearing.

"She died. Exhaustion and thirst and a broken heart. She didn't want to live any more and the angel who took Nobel's soul knew she wouldn't be far behind him, so he waited to collect them both before taking them to wherever they were destined to go."

Just as he'd tried to, Luce thought, in the depths of Hell and despair without Melody. Only he hadn't lingered. He'd taken a weapon to his veins to hasten the end. Pity devils couldn't die. But if they could, he wouldn't be holding his sweet, weeping angel in his arms, as she cried her heart out for a human. The human couple's doomed love would never be their fate – he'd never desert Mel, nor lose a fight to a bunch of humans armed with nothing but spears. They'd stand side by side against anyone who dared to threaten them. He pulled his handkerchief out of his pocket and pressed it to her cheek. "And you've never shown this to anyone." When Mel shook her head, he added, "Why did you share it with me?"

Mel took the handkerchief from his hand and it faded from black to gold with shocking speed before it even reached her other cheek. "Because I knew you would understand her pain. The pain of a human, my love, which was just as poignant as yours. I've seen billions of people die – through violence and illness and age – but her life and death were the first to touch me so personally, because I felt it all as I lifted her soul from her body. You asked once why angels would allow humans into Heaven, when there were so many who did not belong there, and none of the angels in Heaven could answer you, though they took up arms against you. She had your answer, my love. The souls of her kind feel as acutely as any of us – with pain and joy and love. Maybe not all human souls belong in Heaven, but there are demons among our kind who have no place there, either. And some even get to be angels – like Patrick."

Luce wet his lips. "If I'd asked you instead of those stuck-up angels in Heaven, would you have answered me? Prevented the Heavenly War and all the pain afterwards?" Oh God, if she could have saved him from millennia of darkness…

"Would you have listened?"

No. He didn't even need to consider it. He, the highest of them all, listen to the reasoning of a lowly Domination about the flawed beings he despised? His pride would have made him laugh in her face. Pride would have been his downfall, all the same.