Poe's children: the new horror : an anthology - By Peter Straub Page 0,260

is on the ship, The Peace, that it has come to take her home. The ship sets sail and she is returning to her home in the Netherlands. She is standing on the deck as the ship leaves the shore, as it sets sail out to the sea. She is standing on the deck and there is still light from the sun, but the air is cold. And when night comes she is still on the deck and it is now very cold. In her dream she can see the moon at three-quarters, and the planets and the stars. All those miles away from her.

The next day she is alone in the small forest, Marta is not with her. It is called the Surimombo Forest because it extends along the edges of the Surimombo Plantation and can be seen from the sugar fields.

It is the day she discovers the little-bird spider. It is a tarantula, covered with hair, straddling its prey, sucking the blood out from a tiny bird. The bird is on its back only a few inches from the nest, its head hanging limp between a fork in the branch. Maria Sibylla is transferring the scene to vellum, painstaking and accurate in her rendering.

She has announced that morning during breakfast she will cut short her visit. On its approaching journey back she will again board The Peace.

It is the heat that is driving her, she has told them, that is prompting her to cut short her visit, and she is still fatigued from her illness, from the malaria, and she believes that if she remains she will not survive, and all the while the heat is breathing itself into her, hot and needling and insistent like the mouth of an insect.

Footsteps approach, she is vaguely aware, the sound of someone thrashing against the jungle growth, she stops drawing and turns in the direction of the footsteps.

It is Mathew van der Lee who has followed her, who has come to seek her out where she is working.

She stands silent, the sun’s rays on her.

You are working.

I am working.

Is it true what you said, you will leave soon?

Yes, true, it is true.

But I thought that you might stay.

I am sorry, I must leave, Mr. van der Lee.

Will you not change your mind?

It is too hot, Mr. van der Lee.

I have purchased some cane fields, Madame Sibylla.

You will soon be rich, Mr. van der Lee.

There is something in the shape of his face, its triangularity, and the impression that it gives, there is something in the expression on his face.

And her face still flushed from the malaria.

It will be difficult to leave you, Mr. van der Lee.

He is thin and his lower jaw protrudes slightly. He has the look of a student long past his student days, he is reserved and yet he is intense, he is somewhat delicate and yet there is a strength to him.

And the heat from the sun beating down.

What is the contradiction welling inside her, the contradiction rising inside her? The heat on the one hand—the insidious armies of ants, the wood ticks that in seconds can cover the entirety of the body,

and on the other, everything is lush, lush, and the clouds tinged pink, and the floor of the jungle is thick and soft, so soft you can sink down into it.

Her hair shines black.

Her black hair falling past her shoulders.

Her beating heart, her breathlessness.

And Mathew van der Lee standing before her.

Maria Sibylla stares, then she beckons him closer, motions him to come closer, closer, quiet, puts her fingers to her lips, quiet, quiet, here, come, Mr. van der Lee, and she shows him what it is that she is drawing, the tiny bird that has been vanquished by the spider, the tameless spider still in the act of ravaging the bird, she shows him first on her drawing on the vellum and then points to the live model on the tree, and they are standing very close now, with their faces nearly touching, and there is the mingling of their breaths in the hot, humid air of the forest, under the branches of the tree, this tree that rises up like an altar, like an altar to which they have brought their supplication, their devotions and their dalliance, their yearning and their desire, and the parrots on the branches high above are screaming, as though the birds are giving voice to the intensity of the drama that is taking place below, to the triumph