Keda left the window and, taking a blanket, wrapped it about her, and then opened the door of the room. She found herself facing another of roughly the same size but with a great table monopolizing the centre of the floor, a table with a dark-red cloth drawn across it. Beyond the table the earth descended by three steps, and in the further and lower portion of the floor were the old man’s garden tools, flower pots and pieces of painted and unpainted wood. The room was empty and Keda passed slowly through a doorway into the clearing of sunlight.
The white goat watched her as she approached and took a few slender-legged steps towards her, lifting its head high into the air. She moved onwards and became conscious of the sound of water. The sun was about halfway between the zenith and the horizon, but Keda could not at first tell whether it was morning or afternoon, for there was no way of knowing whether the sun were climbing through the high east or sinking in the high west. All was stillness; the sun seemed to be fixed for ever as though it were a disc of yellow paper pasted against the pale-blue wintry sky.
She went forward slowly through the unknown time of day towards the sound of water. She passed the long roofless building on her left and for a moment was chilled by the shadow it cast.
Descending a steep bank of ferns, she came across the brook almost immediately. It ran between dark, leafless brambles. A little to Keda’s left, where she stood among the thorny bushes at the water’s edge, there was a crossing of boulders – old and smooth and hollowed into shallow basins by the passage of what must have been centuries of footfall. Beyond the ford a grey mare drank from the stream. Her mane fell over her eyes and floated on the surface of the water as she drank. Beyond the grey mare stood another of dappled skin, and beyond the dappled mare, at a point where the brook changed direction and bore to the right under a wall of evergreens, was a third – a horse whose coat was like black velvet. The three were quite still and absorbed, their manes trailing the water, their legs knee-deep in the sounding stream. Keda knew that if she walked a little way along the bank to her left until she gained a view of the next reach of the river, she would see the drinking horses one after another receding across the flats, each one an echo of the one before it – echoes of changing colour, but all knee-deep in water, all with their hanging manes, their drinking throats.
Suddenly she began to feel cold. The horses all lifted their heads and stared at her. The stream seemed to stand still; and then she heard herself talking.
‘Keda,’ she was saying, ‘your life is over. Your lovers have died. Your child and her father are buried. And you also are dead. Only your bird sings on. What is the bright bird saying? That all is complete? Beauty will die away suddenly and at any time. At any time now – from sky and earth and limb and eye and breast and the strength of men and the seed and the sap and the bud and the foam and the flower – all will crumble for you, Keda, for all is over – only the child to be born, and then you will know what to do.’
She stood upon the boulders of the ford and saw below her the image of her face in the clear water. It had become very old; the scourge of the Dwellers had descended; only the eyes, like the eyes of a gazelle, defied the bane which now gave to her face the quality of a ruin. She stared; and then she put her hands below her heart, for the bird was crying, crying with joy. ‘It is over!’ screamed the beaked voice. ‘It is only for the child that you are waiting. All else fulfilled, and then there is no longer any need.’
Keda lifted her head, and her eyes opened to the sky where a kestrel hung. Her heart beat and beat, and the air thickened until darkness muffled her eyes, while the gay cry of the bird went on and on: ‘
The sky cleared before her. Beside her stood the brown father. When she turned to him he raised his head and then led her back to the cabin, where she lay exhausted upon her bed.
The sun and the moon had forced themselves behind her eyes and filled her head. A crowd of images circled about them; the cactus trees of the Mud Dwellings revolved about the towers of Gormenghast, which swam about the moon. Heads ran forward towards her, starting as mere pin points on an infinitely far horizon, enlarging unbearably as they approached, they burst over her face – her dead husband’s face, Mrs Slagg’s and Fuchsia’s, Braigon’s, Flay’s, the Countess’s, Rantel’s and the Doctor’s with his devouring smile. Something was being put into her mouth. It was the lip of a cup. She was being told to drink.
‘Oh, father!’ she cried.
He pressed her gently back against the pillow.
‘There is a bird crying,’ she said.
‘What does it cry?’ said the old man.
