A Wolf at the Door: And Other Rare Tales by Tanith Lee

Author:Tanith Lee [Lee, Tanith]
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: Immanion Press
Published: 2019-10-08T22:00:00+00:00

Tiger I

The drive through the desert was a long one, taking most of the day. I had keyed the coordinates into the car myself, but I was still unsure I would get there. It might be some trick, or an error. They might take me only to the middle of nowhere.

In the fall sunshine, the landscape was smoky pink, with occasionally a rusted mesa rising up, and the distant mountains, maroon fading back into the blue of the sky. It might have been another planet. Only the confines of the car kept off agoraphobia.

I went over my plans: if I don’t find it, if it isn’t there, I can sleep in the car. I’ve done that before. Drive back in the morning. Give my source a black mark and don’t use him again.

I imagined the desert by night, the sky crowded and rife with stars. Things howling. Or an utter silence.

About four o’clock the car took a right off the road, and headed up among the burned slopes, under amber rock stacks. The adapted tires failed to cushion all the jolts.

For eight hours I hadn’t seen the trace of any living thing, not even the white trail of a plane across that pure hot sky.

I had spent the long deep summer with my lover, revelling in the crowds that gently swept against us like a warm sea, meaning no harm.

Then, from the crowd, one stepped out and took my lover away, and now I did not care for people, much.

Yet the desert was too empty. It was not an alternative.

Just then the car came around the rocks and directly ahead, borne up in the heart of them, it was. The house and the oasis of garden, exactly as they had been described to me.

I stopped, and the car coordinator flicked up its light, congratulating itself on bringing me to the proper place.

The house was, as he had said, my source, dramatic, theatrical. Tall and white, with curving arches of a dull turquoise green, and terra-cotta roofs. Colours flashed from windows. And below, the garden descended, a series of green terraces, lush with broad trees, spiked palms and tunnelled vines. Only the faintest shimmer in the air at the base of this paradise revealed an electric wall.

She would need protection. Even if it wasn’t true – and of course, it wasn’t. More so for that reason, perhaps.

I shut down the car, got out, and switched on the guard, for all the world as if I stood on a busy avenue.

I thought, I too must be guarded. And she – what would she be? Would she even let me in?

The walk up to the gate in the invisible wall was posted with warnings, ‘KEEP OUT. DON’T TOUCH. GO AWAY’, in diplomatic legal phrases.

On the gate was a name in small clear letters: SATTERSLEY. The right name. There was a little panel with a button, which I pressed quickly, staring through the ripple of the wall at a tapestry of grapes hanging so close but out of reach, like the apples of Eden.

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