It was as if it had just gone by the window outside.
His thoughts returned to the train car. He remembered how entranced he was by all the gauges and switches in the engineer’s compartment, and how he had asked what each one did. It was like entering Aladdin’s cave.
There was a creaking sound over by the door, the door that Richter had wedged shut days ago. It was opening now, and a light—a yellow light—was coming inside. Richter turned his head on the stiff old furs, and just past the corner of a pew he saw what looked like one of those old kerosene lanterns floating through the air.
He heard a shuffling sound—like a bad foot being dragged along the boards—and coming closer down the nave.
“I’m over here,” he croaked. “On the floor.” Was he going to get his wish? Was he going to be spared a solitary death?
The lantern came even closer, and as he squinted up into the darkness, he could start to make out who was holding it.
He saw a face, a woman’s face, gaunt the way his wife’s had been when the cancer had done its worst. Long gray hair, and a toothless smile … a smile that made him feel colder than ever before.
The lamp came down farther, and a hand slipped under the fur and took hold of his own. Now he wished to Christ that he had never prayed for company. Her fingers felt like twigs.
She said something—it sounded as if it was meant to be a comfort—in a language he could not understand.
He wanted to cry out, but he didn’t have any breath left in him. His blood felt like it had stopped in his veins. He gasped once or twice. Her hand gripped him tighter, and he died with his eyes wide open, staring into the lanternlight, and with his mouth frozen in a silent scream.
The woman repeated her words, then let go of his hand and hobbled away.
She drew the shawl around her shoulders, even though she did not feel the cold, and left the church. She did not know the old man’s name, but she knew where he had come from. She had seen the ship go down.
She had seen many ships go down … for many years.
Following the path she had long trodden, she drifted through the colony, remembering the sound of voices raised in prayer, the aroma of fresh fish roasting in the pan, the warmth of a blazing fire.
How long had it been since she had heard anything but the baying of the wolves—her kindred spirits—or felt anything warmer than the touch of that old man’s dying hand?
But what more did she deserve? She was the harbinger of death, and the terrible mercy that had spared her own life—not once, but twice—was less forgiving to others.
“You are a special child,” the monk had told her. “God has a special destiny in mind for you.”
The night he told her that, he had given her the silver cross on a gilded chain. It was encrusted with emeralds, green as a cat’s eyes, and he had had its back inscribed with a message meant only for her. “Let this be our secret,” he had said, as he put one of his broad hands, the hands that had healed her younger brother, atop her head. It was as if a healing balm were pouring over her; her eyes had closed, and her breathing had slowed, and even her left foot, the one that was misshapen and gave her such constant trouble, stopped hurting.
“I give you this blessing,” he said, “to protect you from all evil.” And then he had chanted some words in a low voice. Not for the first time, she could smell the alcohol on his breath, and she knew there were people who said vile things about him. “Nothing may harm you now,” he said, and she had not doubted it. “If you believe in my power—”
“I do, Father, I do.”
“—then you must believe, too, in the power of this cross.”
Holding the lantern aloft, she passed beyond the stockade walls, down the hillside, and into the trees. Although she did not see them, she knew that the black wolves—spirits of the unquiet dead—were keeping company with her, moving stealthily through the woods. How long had it been before she learned that they did not grow in number, nor did they die? How long before she had realized that each mysterious creature harbored a soul, a soul as lost as her own, stranded somewhere between this world and the next? Or that their fate and hers were inextricably bound?
As she approached the graveyard, her companions held back, keeping to the trees and the shadows. Her fingertips grazed the wooden gateposts, tracing and retracing the words that she had once carved there. Forgive me, they said, over and over again, but who was there to do so?