burned a thick green candle, and between the spitting and dripping of the wax Lloyd heard the gentle lap of water below. Outside the aura of the tapers, the cave ceiling opened up like a tunnel that had been blasted to make way for a train, and then narrowed to a tight stricture on the other side of a large obsidian-dark pool. Floating in the water before him was a small ornate steamboat stained with moss and algae. All its windows were dark except one. A black man dressed as a coachwhip stood beside a gangplank that led from the landing to the riverboat, holding an oil lamp.
“Mother Tongue is expecting you,” Schelling told him. “Blazon will be your escort. I will wait for you here.”
Lloyd was gripped with such a blend of apprehension and excitement that he could barely move, but move he did, into the black man’s lamplight and over the gangplank, half thinking that the weird boat would evaporate the moment he stepped foot on board. It did not, but it looked as if it might well sink—or had sunk and been raised from the depths of the river. In the stillness of the cave, Lloyd imagined that he could hear the very nails aching in the swollen planks.
The man called Blazon remained stone-silent but led him straight to the central parlor on the main deck where the lamp shone. Then, just as he was opening the weather-beaten wooden door, the most miraculous thing Lloyd had ever seen in his life happened. Everything around him burst alight, so suddenly that he thought the boat was in flames. He let out a giant gasp, which seemed to please Blazon. The boat was not on fire but shimmering with tiny prisms that looked as if they were made of isinglass and filled with lightning. By what means the prisms came to life Lloyd could only guess, but as instantly as they had ignited they expired and he found himself blinking hard. He heard Blazon close the door behind him, then his own heartbeat.
A single glass oil lamp with extended wick stood on a walnut table beside an old cane plantation chair and a ladder-back rocking chair made of pine. Seated in the cane monstrosity was the oldest woman Lloyd had ever seen. Her hair was pure white and thick. Her face, which was the color of blancmange, was fantastically wrinkled, yet she sat upright without a hint of palsy, dressed in a cool-looking long white dress, like a southern lady about to serve tea. The only other piece of furniture in the room was a weary haircloth sofa on which a mangy coonhound was fast asleep.
“Come,” the old woman called to him, indicating the ladder-back.
“The lights …” Lloyd said, but he couldn’t complete his question.
He found himself meandering toward the rocking chair as if in a trance and, once seated, was startled when one of the runners pressed down on the tail of a cat—but not like any cat he had ever encountered. It was hairless. Sleek of body, its skin was rose-pink, becoming the color of pencil lead on its paws, with a face that reminded Lloyd of a mask, and remarkable slitted eyes that were as green as his own.
“Curiosity!” the old woman commanded, and the cat leaped into her lap. “You are always putting yourself in harm’s way.”
Lloyd tried to ease himself back into the chair, glad that the hound hadn’t stirred. When he managed to settle, he was again shaken by the old woman’s eyes. He had noticed from across the room that she wore no spectacles, which had surprised him, given her obvious age, but he was surprised still further to find her now looking straight at him with eyes as green as the cat’s—and his, too. As green as absinthe, but clear.
The room was silent but for the purring of the feline and what he imagined to be the trip-hammer of his heart. He wanted to know about the lights … what he was doing there. He tried to remain still. The old coonhound slept on.
At first the woman’s green eyes stabbed at him like darning needles, but gradually the intensity of her scrutiny eased. There was no decaying odor of ravaged flesh or incontinence about her, as he had experienced with the older Zanesville biddies; rather, a clean simple scent of lemon verbena. Despite the alien surroundings and the circumstances that had brought him there, he began to feel reassured. Until the