BACK. To what?
And then the real fear, the telling blows, began to find her. Because
it seemed, it was, an overriding certainty that there was no returning.
This was reality, doubly real. She had fallen into a bottomless pit.
NO WAY OUT!
'Let's go for a walk,' said William gently, now so sure of his prey that he was almost disappointed. But he would see it through, and knew that to do so he must build her up again, just enough. Then tear her down. Again, until the moment was ripe. And then God help her.
But Sylviana was there ahead of him. She clung to this mockery of care and affection, five simple words, with all the desperate power of her desire not to believe. 'Yes, my dear, sweet William. Let's go for a walk.' And he smiled, a moment of sympathy that he knew would only make the fire of his hatred burn the whiter. She might make the going pleasing, after all.
'Yes,' he said wryly. 'A walking tour of the neighborhood.
I'll show you how the other half. . .dies.'
So they set out, Sylviana forgetting that this unraveled the last of her plans, and that Kalus would no longer be close at hand.
For better or worse.
*
Kalus remained, still as the stone on which he sat. He had moved some time before to the more level ground before the Obelisk, though the grotesque figures carved upon it kept him from coming too close. The peyote had begun to work on him, but its effect was entirely different than what he had hoped. Instead of giving him peace and a quiet understanding, it filled him with a dread that was almost physical. All his thoughts, worded and otherwise, seemed to crash in upon themselves like the breaking of a wave, crushing and smothering every positive impulse, every hopeful thought within him. He was back in the hopeless world of his past, from which she had helped him to escape.
But there was no escape. No matter how he turned it around, no matter what contingencies he tried to make and force himself to swallow, the bitter truth remained. Without his woman he had nothing: no love, no purpose, no home. No way to go on, and no reason to try. The ancient sense of fatalism and betrayal returned to him, with still greater intensity, because for a time he had been free. And the brief interval of spoken words and close female companionship evaporated, could no longer protect him from the silent, brutal worlds he had known. Again he saw before him the long chain of savagery and violence, of endless pain and pointless perseverance. All leading to this. To be broken and alone, as only the last of a species is alone.