"Angel Wall" © 1995 by Jacqueline Warren

     Glass shattered against the wall to the left of Larry's head. "All right, I'm out of here," he said, departing as suddenly as he'd appeared on Tat's doorstep earlier that evening.

     She listened to his footsteps in the hall, and the grind of the lift as it descended to the street. Then she crossed the loft to mop up fragments of glass and the oily turpentine spill. The jar she had thrown had held soaking paintbrushes, which now dribbled turp and paint on the floor. She let out her breath, a long sigh of air that was half disgust, half embarrassment. Only Larry drove her to tantrums like this. And then refused to believe she was patient and reasonable with everyone else.

     The phone rang and she reached for it, knowing exactly who it would be. "Now listen, Tat," Larry said from the phone box on the corner, a safe distance from flying art implements, "I've booked us a table at our Italian place. Half past seven. I'll meet you there."

     "Fuck you, fuck you, fuck you," Tat said. "I mean it. I never want to see you again."

     "Yeah I know. But you'll feel differently in an hour, thank god. Half-seven. The Italian place. Okay?"

     "No, it's not," she snarled. She hung up on him, but she knew he was right. She couldn't stay mad, not at anyone and especially not at Larry Bone. A forgiving nature was a failing, she thought. Those self-absorbed, vain, demanding kind of women--like the actress whose bed he had slept in last night--were better at getting whatever they wanted; while Tat had realized long ago that she'd never have what she wanted most. Not that having Larry in her own bed again was what she wanted most, Tat told herself firmly, dropping turp-soaked rags and shards of glass into the rubbish bin.

     Tat looked at the clock. She had an hour left to work. She crossed to the studio portion of the loft, where the tables (and the floor, and everything she touched) were covered with spattered inks and paints. Moon lay sprawled beneath the sink where he'd retreated when voices were raised. The dog's great head rested on long paws as he watched her through soft, ink-black eyes. He was huge (part wolfhound she'd always thought, with fur the silver of a winter moon) and mute; he'd never spoken once since she'd rescued him from the pound.

     Large industrial windows let in the last of the fading dusty light. The rooftops beyond the glass looked sooty, a drawing rendered in charcoal. The ceaseless traffic of London was a sound so familiar it seemed like silence to her. She snapped on an overhead light, re-tied her carpenter's apron around her waist, then frowned down at the piece she'd been working on until Larry arrived. The painting was a wet expanse of printer's inks in subtle tones: the greys of the November sky, a watery blue from her dreams last night, golds and creams breaking through like a weak autumn sun through a cover of cloud. She'd brushed, rolled and splattered the inks onto the surface of a plexiglass plate; the plate in turn would be run through a press, transferring the image to paper. She finished loading the plate with thick ink, and then she began to pare it away, rubbing with rags, with fingertips, scratching with knives, razors and pins, stripping the imagery down until shapes emerged, abstract, half-tangible, suggestive of archways and thresholds, of faded frescoes on crumbling walls.

     Tat glanced up at the clock again. Just enough time to print the plate; she'd only be a little late, and Larry, of course, would expect that she'd be. Late, breathless, paint on her hands: that's the way she always came to him; while he would arrive precisely on time, order a bottle of good red wine, and flirt with all of the waitresses until Tat finally arrived.

     She placed the plate on the bed of her hand press, covered with wet Fabriano paper. She set the weights, and then began to pull the wheel that turned the press, pushing ink and paper together. The wheel was stiff. She fought the rise of panic when it would not move, betraying the weakness in her body, the inexorable deterioration. She took a deep breath and hauled on the wheel. The rollers turned, and the plate passed through. Dizzy with effort, she peeled the print from the glass and tacked it up to dry.

     It was half-seven when she wiped the paint from her hands, from her hair, and off of her boots; five past eight when she entered the tiny restaurant where Larry was waiting for her, a San Gimignano wine open before him, most of it drunk already. His black box of harmonicas sat on the rush-bottomed seat beside him. He had a gig later tonight, but blues gigs always started late and they still had time to eat.

     A small package rested by her plate, wrapped in red and gold Renaissance paper. "What's this?"

     "Peace offering," he said with that lazy American drawl that she loved. Inside was the new Rory Block CD. She hadn't listened to the last one he'd given her yet. "Why don't you come to the club tonight?" he urged. "It's been ages since you've heard me play."

     "I'm just too tired." It wasn't quite true, but this was an excuse that he wouldn't push. Good blues always made her want to cry; and Larry was very good.

     The food and the wine soon restored peace between them, smothering the taste of frustration with the piquant flavors of affection and time. They'd been coming to the restaurant for years, although neither lived on this street anymore. Larry liked to hang on to the past: to places filled with memories, to talismans of their history. His flat was crowded with hoarded mementos--relics enshrining the years gone by. Fifteen years of life with Tat was contained in old photos, postcards from Florence, art show announcements, inscribed dog-eared books. She'd often wondered what the various women he brought home made of all this evidence of her. Perhaps she was one of the reasons that none of his hot love affairs ever lasted long; or perhaps this was simply the way he preferred his affairs--short and sweet, uncomplicated. Tatiana Ludvik was his sole complication. As Larry Bone was hers.

     He ran his thumb over her ink-spattered nails. "Did you print that piece in the end? Good. I don't know why you weren't happy with it. Myself, I could happily drown in that blue."

     But she shook her head, disagreeing with him. "Something's not right. Something's gone missing, and for the life of me I just can't fathom what. The gallery sent my last four prints back, and I can't even say I was surprised. I force myself to keep painting these days--and you know how unlike me that is."

     "Maybe you need to take a break."

     "Yeah, right," she said dryly. "And live on what? No prints, no sales, no rent, no groceries."

     "I'm serious, Tat. Don't worry about the dosh. You need a break, especially now. Your sister can help, and Maggie, and your parents. I'll pay your goddamn rent myself. Don't give me that look. There are times, you know, when independence ceases to be a survival skill."

     "And I'd prefer to continue looking after myself. Especially now," she added with a look calculated to quell another argument. The waiter brought their bill to the table, and she picked it up before Larry could. "I think I just need a change, that's all. I need to get out of London for a while. I'm going to go down to the chapel, take the phone off the hook, and get some solid work done."

     "To Devon? You're kidding. At this time of year?"

     Tat shrugged. "There's heat in my chapel."

     Larry looked glum. He probably thought she had a lover in the country. She had never chosen to disabuse him of this.

     "You could always come down on the train if you miss me."

     "I could," he agreed. They both knew he would not.

     Tat took out her keys. "I've got my car here. Come on, Bone. I'll give you a lift."

     He frowned, still glum. "Should you be driving?"

     She let out a short, impatient breath. "I drive better than I walk these days. And I get enough bloody nagging from my sister. Please, don't you start in too, my dear. That's not what I need right now."

     "Oh no? And what is it you need?" he said with a fey and narrow-eyed look.

     She took his hand as they left the restaurant. She was tall, but he was taller still, tall and thin as his name implied, his nose crested like the beak of a bird, his face long, his eyes bright as fire. "What do I need?" she repeated. "That's easy. Praise, approval, and utter delight in absolutely everything I do."

     He laughed, and squeezed her hand, rather hard. She'd be damned if she'd tell him that such things hurt now. "I think maybe I can manage that. How do you want it: time-release approval at hourly intervals, or praise twice daily in tidy lump sums?"

     "Constantly. Always. I wither without it." Tat smiled, and yet she thought with a certain dismay that this was not far from the truth. In the country, she'd strip herself down again, rubbing away the Larry-dependence like she rubbed away at the inks on the plates, till she reached the core image. Herself. Just herself. The restless mind, the treacherous body--each with its separate, conflicting demands. The first hungered loudly for solitude, and was halfway en route to the country already. The other clung to Larry's warm hand, hungering for things best left unsaid; tethering her in time, space, to this sidewalk, this night, this cold, this need. She unlocked the car. "Here, you drive, if it makes you feel better."

     It did, and he did.

     She spent the next day cleaning, sorting, preparing the studio for work. She stretched it out, filling the hours with unnecessary industry. Nightfall caught her by surprise. How long could she procrastinate? Who cared if the corners gathered dust, her bed was unmade, her windows unwashed? Not the galleries, that was for sure. No one would look at a print and judge it more kindly because her house was clean.

     She sat down with a fresh glass plate, clean wet brushes, a hot cup of tea, disappointed to find she was no more inspired down here than she'd been in the city. She'd never felt this way before, emptied out of color and line. She scowled at the plate and scowled at the paints, hearing the sound of hammering. Kerjean had been working away for hours, his tap, tap, tap a reproachful sound. Tat sighed. She lined palette and plate with subtle tones chosen randomly: a light sage green, a pale gamboge, terra cotta and the brown of weak tea. The sound of the hammer was red as rowan berries, clashing with the colors she chose. Beneath the hammer was another sound. His stereo? Playing Cherish the Ladies on fiddle, pipe and bodhran drum. The music filtered through the night, through windows rattling in splintering panes, spreading Celtic patterns of red and green and gold on the chapel walls.

     Tat concentrated on the colors before her, ignoring the ones that came from the barn. She scrubbed, scraped, scratched the paint from the plate, toning her colors down. Paring away. Reaching for a simple core that continued to elude her. An hour later she realized she had a plate that was almost empty of paint. She threw her palette knife down with disgust, annoyed by the music, annoyed with herself. She used to know how to paint. She'd thought such hard-earned knowledge could not be lost. She'd always been able to work very hard and to keep her various dealers supplied. And to earn an honest living, regardless of what Francesca might think.

     She turned and flung open flat file drawers, pulling out stacks of older prints, trying to remember what shape inspiration had taken in her life before. These prints were larger than her recent ones. Looser. Sprawled across the page. She tacked them up on the white pinboard that covered the whole of the southern wall. Then she stood back and stared at them, feeling a shock of memory. The colors that covered the wall were loud and vivid. They overwhelmed her now: ochres, cobalts, indigo blues, deep woodsy greens and scarlet hues, violets, vermilions, sun-drenched yellows and leaves of pure beaten gold. She'd fallen in love with color, light and paint almost twenty years ago; it was pinned up here, mixed with the deep jewel tones of other things she'd loved: London, Devon, Tuscany. Good food, hot sex and a hard day's work. A fast bodhran. Her best friend's poems. Her family and sweet Larry Bone. It was all right here, a cacophony, a mess, discordant to the eye. An orchestra tuning all at once, at high volume. A hot and crowded room.

     "Bloody hell," she said. Moon looked at her. Those colors were making her feel faintly ill. Tat grabbed her coat, and bolted for the door, stepping out into the bracing cold air. The hammering had finally stopped. The windows of the barn were dark. The night sky was the black of her confusion, masking other colors.

     She walked away from Deercott Farm, a ghostly Moon gliding nearby. The oak trees opened out onto vast moorland stretching to the sky. The sky was clear and filled with stars. Sheep drifted on the heather hills, and the darker shadow shapes of wild ponies moved through bracken and gorse. In the distance she could make out silhouettes of nine slim standing stones. She walked, her thoughts cacophonous as her prints, until she reached them.

     They stood in a row on the crest of the hill, taller than she was and older than time. One had tumbled into the heather; one stone leaned precariously; seven stones stood straight and tall, saluting the stars above. Tat sat down on the fallen stone, Moon leaning against her knee. She could feel the steady beat of his pulse; and the slower pulse of the granite below. She listened for the song at the heart of the stone. It was silent tonight.

     She ached. She shouldn't have walked so far, but the stones were old, familiar friends. She wasn't prepared to lose them yet, although the day when she'd be unable to cross these hills would inevitably come. Tat lay down, cheek pressed to the stone, feeling its age and feeling its strength; finding comfort in the knowledge that it would be here long after she'd gone. She stroked the long, cold length of it, rough beneath her fingertips, savoring the touch, feeling the pulse at the core echo the white pain in her limbs. Pain kept insisting on pulling her back into the tactile world again. The physical self. The animal, sensual self that she had long ignored--since Larry first left her bed for another, and grief was a burden as heavy as stone, and every touch only served to remind her of the touch that she truly craved. She had tried to subdue the colors of desire and live in cooler, calmer tones. MS should have made this easier. She'd met other women, ill like her, who divorced themselves from their disease by rejecting the body, lodging in the mind, living in soul not flesh. But instead, the pain in her body kept wrenching her back into the physical world, opening her senses, rooting her deep in pale skin, brittle bones and hot blood.

     Tat shivered now in the rising wind. She ought to start heading home again. Moon looked at her anxiously, the wind ruffling his silky fur. In a minute. She'd get up in a minute, she told herself as she closed her eyes, drifting to the colorless place where weariness always found her. . . . She woke again to Moon's musty breath. Her limbs were cold and stiff with pain. She'd no idea how much time had passed--a few minutes? An hour? Maybe more? Moon pawed her arm, and she was suddenly alert. A man was standing between the stones, wary of her enormous silver dog.

     He said, "I startled you. I'm sorry. I wanted to know if you're all right."

     Tat scowled at him to cover the flush of hot embarrassment she felt. "Yes, quite. I just got tired, that's all." She rose to her feet--and swayed, tired still. She sat again, fast. She never should have come this far, goddamn it, goddamn it.

     "Here, take my arm," Yann Kerjean said, his voice just slightly accented. "That is, if that beast of yours will let me help. What do you think?"

     Tat flushed again, not wanting his help. And aware that, in fact, she needed it. He knew that she was sick, no doubt; village gossip would have seen to that.

     "Moon, back off, it's okay," Tat said. But it wasn't okay. She felt like a fool. She was limping now, arm over the sculptor's broad shoulders, face tense with effort.

     Kerjean talked as she limped along and the flow of words pulled her over the hills, smoothing the long, uneven path. His voice was raw sienna, a color like honey or light on Tuscan stone. "Those standing stones, they brought me here. I saw them and I had to stay. The Hunters. There are stones very much like them where I was born."

     "The Hunters? Is that what they're called?"

     "You didn't know that? And you've been here how long? I'll tell you the story, and when I'm done you'll be home again, safe and sound."

     He told her a tale of a milk white deer no hunter's arrow could seem to reach; a tale of nine tall brothers determined to bring the white deer down:

     Their sisters begged them not to go. To follow the deer would bring madness or death--death to the hunter, death to the family. Never to the bold white doe. The deer led them a merry chase, through woods and fen and over the moor. Then it stopped, just beyond arrow's reach, and turned into a white-haired girl--a fairy, or perhaps an angel, slim as a birch and strong as an oak. "Throw your weapons down," she said, "and live to hunt another day. Or keep your weapons upon you, and live to hunt no more." Eight brothers threw their weapons down, and vowed they'd hunt the deer no more. But the ninth brother had no love of women or deer or any man; he vowed he would not lose his prey and then he notched his arrow. The arrow pierced her shoulder bone, and she became a deer again, blood running down her body, turning it from white to red. And at that same moment, the brothers turned into stone upon that very hill, living still, watching over the countryside where they'll hunt no more.

     "They say there are still red deer in these woods. The ones I've seen are always brown. Bertie's seen them, over the years." The sculptor paused. "Have you seen them too?"

     "Just once," Tat said, remembering. "I think I did. She was gone so fast. But I've never heard that story before. It's very sad."

     "But very true. At least if you think about it, it is. I've been thinking about that story a lot. Now here we are, at your front door. Safe and sound as I promised."

     He shrugged off Tat's awkward gratitude and said a brusque farewell to Moon. Tat limped inside, Moon trailing behind, and stoked up the fire until it blazed hot. Soon she heard the sound of distant hammering begin once again. And Stivell's music for Celtic harp, another recording she also owned.

     She knelt on the rug by the fire, shaking, chilled to the bone, emptied of strength. She closed her eyes and saw colors dancing to the rhythm of harp and hammer.

     Tat worked steadily through the next week. The days were cold but crystal clear. The vivid colors of wood and field were ones she brought inside with her, mixing them with the colors of music, brushing and rolling them onto the plates, reaching for colors outside her while her own were still smoldering embers. Music poured out of the barn, rousing her when her energy flagged. Oak brown from Dan Ar Braz's guitar, Sheila Chandra's vermilion drone, Bob Marley's bursts of heat and sun, the evening smoke of June Tabor's voice . . . each one a recording she also owned, and one she would have chosen herself, as though he shared her moods, her creative process, as well as the land.

     Moon was another thing they shared. He often disappeared into the barn. But Tat was shy of Kerjean himself when she passed him walking on the hills. She didn't want to break the spell, and this blessed interval of work. The work wasn't easy, it didn't flow, she was reaching hard for every line and tone. She was teaching herself to paint again--but at least she wasn't bored anymore. Her work absorbed her as it used to do; she was printing in her dreams at night. When Friday came, Tat finally said enough, and put her paints away.

     She changed her skirt to a soft green wool that moved like wind on pond water. She added an old plaid shawl for warmth, and buckled on her paint-stained boots. Then she whistled for Moon and walked to the car, noting that Kerjean's truck was gone. Overhead, the stars seemed very bright and close, a mere arm's length away. She drove slowly up the farm's long drive, catching foxes in the car's headlamps, then accelerated through the narrow lanes, Moon grinning on the seat beside her.

     The single street of Deerworthy was jammed with cars and trucks tonight. The Red Doe was crowded and thick with smoke. The music had already begun. She stood in the door looking over the crowd while Moon dashed through to the pub's back room. She spotted O'Leary with his shock of Irish red hair hanging in long rasta strings. A schoolteacher was the second fiddler, the third was a plumber from Exeter-way. Bertie was there with his accordion, an American lad on Scottish pipes, and some sweet hippies from Endicott on whistle and mandolins. There was no bodhran player sitting in tonight, just old Mad Albert in the corner on the bones. Tat beat out the rhythm with her boot heel on the floor and ached to play.

     O'Leary grinned when she entered the room, and lost the beat of the reel himself. He caught it again by the second time around. Tat nodded to him and followed her dog. "Good session," she said to Alice, who smiled broadly and handed her a pint. This was the first Celtic session she'd been to since she'd become unable to play. The music moved her as powerfully as ever, even without her drum in her hand. The music was color. The colors were music. The sound gave her sudden fierce pleasure.

     Tat looked for Moon, and found him in the tap room nose to groin with his canine friends. Behind him, Yann Kerjean was talking to a book illustrator Tat also knew: a big, burly man in an outback coat, scion of the local gentry. Beside him, the sculptor was dark and slim, dressed in a t-shirt, faded jeans and a wool jacket that had seen better days; he might have been a builder, a farmer, a thatcher--he had no aura of fame. Not like Lord Alastair, the illustrator, who always seemed larger than life; not even like Larry, who made heads turn whenever he entered a room. Kerjean was pleasant looking and nothing more. He seemed like a stranger to her again. Which was what he was, Tat reminded herself, a stranger. And a married man.

     Lord Alastair smiled and beckoned to her. Kerjean turned and watched her cross the room. His greeting was polite but reserved, or else shy--as she suddenly was of him. Alastair said, "I was just telling Yann that I'm doing a book on the stones out your way. A re-telling of the red deer story. I'd like to come and sketch there if I may."

     "That stone row is on public land."

     "But I want to draw Deer Chapel too. If you don't mind me lurking about in your woods."

     "Of course not, Alastair. Knock if you want a cup of tea. I'm usually in."

     "She's always in, working away," the other man said, his eyes meeting hers.

     "How do you know I'm working?" said Tat.

     "I just know," said Kerjean, holding her gaze.

     Tat looked away, embarrassed. "So look, does everyone know this deer story but me?"

     "This land is full of deer stories," Alastair said. "Not just the one about the stones. There have been red deer in Deerworthy Gorge since anyone can remember. My old Granny was frightened of them. She said they only appeared before a death--but then, she said the same thing about owls at the window and crows tapping on the roof. And magpies flying in sevens or threes. And half-a-dozen other things."

     "I'd rather think of the deer as a fairy or an angel," Tat said.

     "Or the Goddess perhaps?"

     "Which is she in your book?"

     The big man shrugged. "She has aspects of all those things. She's magic incarnate. Magic on the hoof."

     Kerjean smiled. "To me she's the muse. You can follow her, but don't hunt her down. Try to claim her, or own her, and she'll disappear. Or turn you to stone."

     Alastair raised one bushy eyebrow. "But Yann," he said, "you like a good stone."

     "To carve, to shape, to let shapes out. Not to be frozen in place myself."

     "Frozen in place, . . ." Tat said, intrigued. "That's artist's block. When you're stuck and can't move on."

     "So what is going to release those nine stuck brothers?" Kerjean asked them both.

     The illustrator frowned. "The story doesn't say. The fairies' whim? An angel's kiss? The end of the world? I really don't know." Then he laughed. "But if you find out what it is, my luver, don't release them yet. I need to draw those stones, you know." He laughed again, and took their glasses to buy another round.

     "Music might release the stones," Tat speculated to Yann Kerjean, feeling the pull of fiddle, whistle, the pipe's low drone, the clicking of the bones. The music was loud, imperfect, completely infectious and sparking bright colors.

     "Where I come from," the sculptor said, "the standing stones move once a year. They walk to the sea and bathe themselves, and then they dance till morning."

     "In Brittany?"

     "Yes. Finistere. Where we've as many standing stones as here. They love music, those old Breton stones. You can almost hear them singing."

     She said, "I can hear the Hunters sing. Sometimes, that is. On certain nights."

     He looked at her. He was serious now. "Yes," he said. "I thought you could."

     "Yann, Tatiana," came Alastair's voice booming over the music and the noise. He had claimed a spot on the bench by the hearth and placed their pints on the table nearby. They eased through the crowd to the low front room where the music drowned all other sounds. Wedged in the space between the two men, Tat was grateful to sit down again and wondered if she'd make it till closing time as she used to do. Moon appeared and sprawled at her feet, looking distinctly pleased with himself, resting his rump on Kerjean's boots and his silver head on hers.

     She lasted past eleven o'clock--when the pub was closed to comply with the law but the music continued behind locked doors. The music threatened to go on all night. Reluctantly, Tat rose to leave.

     "You can't go yet," Alastair complained. "We're taking bets on which fiddler fags out first."

     "My car turns to a pumpkin at twelve. I'm knackered and I'm heading home. I'll see you when you come to draw the stones. I'll cook you dinner."

     "Goodnight," said Yann. He actually smiled. "I can bring your dog. He's not ready to leave."

     Tat looked at Moon and saw that the man was right. Moon hadn't budged.

     "The door will be open if I'm asleep. Thanks," she said. "See you later, Moon."

     Moon looked at her, unconcerned that she was leaving, the fickle beast.

     Outside the night tasted good and sweet after peatfire and the cigarette smoke. The moon was several days past full, perched on the old stone church tower. Her breath made smoke in the cold, clear air; there was frost upon the car's windscreen. Tat climbed into the Morris, feeling sad suddenly, and alone tonight--no dog for company, no man waiting up at home or warming her bed. Larry seemed a million miles away; he existed in another world. She wanted him here, now. She wanted him close. She just wanted him.

     She stopped at the red phone-box at the village crossroad, half-buried in ivy and briars. She fished change from her skirt pocket and punched in Larry's number.

     He answered on the second ring. "Tat?" he said. "Where are you now?"

     "In Devon," she said. "Where do you think?"

     "Your sister called. She's worried about you. She said your phone isn't working or something."

     "Larry, why don't you come down here?" Her voice sounded high and childlike.

     "What?" he said, as if he hadn't heard.

     "Never mind." She leaned her head upon the glass. It was damp and cold against her skin.

     "Ummm, listen, kiddo," Larry began while a woman's voice was calling his name.

     "You're busy. I see. Never mind," she said rather curtly.

     "Look Ludvik . . . are you okay?"

     "I'm great. I'm wonderful. I'm perfect."

     "I could have told you that," said Larry, his voice low now, like a lover's would be.

     Tat closed her eyes. "Thanks, Bone," she whispered, and she hung up the receiver.

     She drove back through the dark to the farm, hurling the car through familiar lanes. The moon hung low in the beech avenue. Leaves of gold churned under her tires. She parked the Morris beside blocks of granite and walked toward the yellow light of her door. She could hear an owl calling from the woods, and the song of the wind through brown oak leaves. There were animal tracks in the beaten-down path that Moon had made between chapel and barn. Tat stepped inside, took off her coat and tied her painting apron on. She mixed up colors to capture a smoke filled room and laughter and fiddles and pipes--but loneliness was a Kathe Kollwitz blue-grey that had muddied her palette.

     She was pulling a print from the bed of the press when she heard the sound of a truck in the yard. A few minutes later Yann rapped sharply at her door. "It's open," she said.

     He stepped inside. "Tat, come quick. I saw a red deer heading out to the moor. Vite. Elle est tres, tres belle," he lapsed into French in his excitement.

     She wiped her hands and came, pulling her long coat over the flapping apron.

     "Moon, stay behind us," Yann said to her dog. Moon obliged, walking at their heels as they followed the path through ivy-draped oak, through bracken and gorse and onto the moor. "See there?" Yann pointed. Tat saw only a shadow moving. It might have been a deer. "I startled her in the beech avenue. She stood so still in the truck's headlamps. She's red, dark red. A red like dried blood. I was able to get a good long look. Then she headed this way, right past the chapel door and out this direction."

     "Let's see how close we can get to her."

     "Can you walk? Are you going to be all right?"

     "I'll try. If I'm not, you go on yourself."

     "Take my hand," said Yann. It was warm around hers, and callused, and strong. A sculptor's hands. She borrowed his strength, letting him pull her up and over the hills.

     The deer ran before them, but never too far. Now Tat could see its clear silhouette. It stood, head turned, until they got close, and then it bounded away. It led all the way to the standing stones, and stood posed against them, its head held high. The moonlight leached the color from its fur. It was slim, and small, and seemed unafraid. Tat stumbled, feeling winded and dizzy. The stones were singing, a rich bass hum, a barritone choir that filled the night sky and echoed through the dark earth.

     "Look Tat, that's far enough," said Yann.

     "Go ahead."

     "No, look. She's stopped for us."

     The deer stood still and it stared at them, so close Tat could see its soft, black eyes, as round as Moon's, and its long, pointed face. Tat gulped in air and swayed on her feet. Yann braced her, holding her close to him. The hills underfoot seemed to undulate. The old stones sang, and the stars above, and Moon was howling--a spine-chilling sound. The red deer spun, hooves striking stone, and Tat saw color sparking there, every luminous color she'd dreamed there could be. She breathed it in with lungfuls of cold night air. It filled every hollow inside. The sparks coalesced in the dark sky above in a shape roughly like a woman's shape--a woman made up of color and music and stars, trailing long lilac wings.

     "An angel," breathed Tat.

     "La muse," said Yann.

     And then it was just a small deer on the hill, bounding away, moving faster now and leaping into the darkness.

     They did not attempt to follow it. By morning they'd wonder if it had been real, despite the tracks in the beech avenue and the delicate prints in the dirt at Tat's door. Moon hung his head. He was silent once more. The song of the stones was soft and low. Warmth leaked into Tat's body from Yann's against her, and his breath on her neck. "Are you all right?" he asked gently. "Can you make it back? I could carry you."

     "I'll make it. I'm too tall to lift." She smiled.

     He said, "I work with stone. I lift things heavier than you every day."

     "I believe you. But I don't need to be carried, I just need a bit of support, that's all."

     "I've noticed that. It's what makes you so intriguing," Yann Kerjean told her.

     Tat stumbled home, Yann's arm bracing her. She didn't mind her weariness now. She was filled with color, with sound, with stars. She wanted to paint forever.

     He paused when they reached the chapel door. "Why don't you come to the barn instead? It's warmer there. I'll make some tea. I've also got single malt."

     "Warmth and scotch sound good," said Tat, rubbing the blood back into her hands. She followed Yann past the corner of the barn, past blocks of stone and machinery and into a workshop filled with carvings in various states of completion.

     "It is warm here."

     "Central heating," he said, a little abashed by the luxury. "I put it in here instead of the house. Come sit. You must be tired."

     But Tat was wandering through the barn, forgetting all about tiredness now. The stones drew her, and the shapes that Yann made of them, smooth as silk to the touch. They hummed under her fingertips like the standing stones out on the hill. "These are beautiful," she said to him.

     His smile was pleased. "Are they?" he asked. As if the critics hadn't already established this; as if it mattered what Tat Ludvik thought. She could feel the colors within each stone. She knew what music had shaped each one. They moved her, stirred the colors within her. They were filled with color themselves, and song. They frightened her, for they made her feel things that she hadn't intended to feel.

     Moon sprawled beneath a large wooden desk, looking quite at home in the sculptor's space. The wall above held a large pinboard where sketches and detailed plans were tacked. On another wall was a pegboard loaded down with mallets and other tools. The barn was dimly lit but for an arc of gold from a hanging lamp. Cobwebs and shadows clung to the roof beams, a powdery dust lay thick on the floor. Chris Isaaks played on the stereo now, his voice as midnight blue as the sky through tall windows looking out on the hills. Placed nearby was an upright stone so lovely it needed no artist's hand. Above the stone hung a single large print, gold streaks embedded in rich earth tones. Loose, abstract, textural, it had been inspired by the moor and the stones. Tat had painted it here when the gorse and the heather were in their bloom.

     "Where on earth did you get that?"

     "In New York, five or six years ago. We've got the same gallery there, you know. You were in a show that opened after mine. I'd never even been to Devon then, but I fell in love with it all the same. It reminded me of Brittany. Perhaps it brought me here."

     "So you know my work."

     "Not enough of it. That show, and one other. I'd like to see more."

     Tat sat down in the chair he offered, took off her scarf and unbuttoned her coat. Yann handed her a glass of Talisker and poured one for himself.

     "I don't understand," she said to him, ignoring her shyness, desiring the truth. "If you knew my work, even liked some of it, why be so determined to get rid of me?"

     "Get rid of you?"

     "You know what I mean. You wanted to buy the chapel from me."

     He shrugged. "I thought it was only fair. You'd been used to quiet and privacy here--and suddenly there's a man next door with machines going and trucks delivering stone and the stereo playing at all hours . . . I thought I should offer you fair value for your place, in case you wanted out."

     "Just in case I wanted it?"

     "Well, yes. Of course. I don't need more space than this. I admit I'm attached to my own privacy--but you're not exactly a difficult neighbor to have. And I'm madly in love with your dog, you know. If you decide to leave now, I want visitation rights."

     "I wasn't planning on leaving, Yann. I rebuilt that chapel with my own hands, every floorboard, pipe and wire of it."

     "Well good. I can't imagine you anywhere else. Not even in London."

     She raised her glass and took a sip. The scotch felt good sliding down her throat. "London," she said, "is home to me too. I'm a city girl, born and raised to it."

     Yann's eyes narrowed. "So I've been told. You have family there, yes? And a man as well."

     Tat flushed. "You've been talking to Alice, I see."

     "Bertie and Bill, as a matter of fact. Worse gossips than Alice is, those two."

     Tat laughed and she set down her glass. "Don't you have family in the city too?"

     "My children, yes. And my wife. Ex-wife."

     "Ex-wife?"

     "Well, not entirely 'ex'. It's complicated," Yann said carefully.

     "What isn't?" said Tat. "The man in London . . . Larry Bone. That's rather complicated too."

     "He's not here with you," Yann commented. It was not quite a question, but she answered it.

     "We're not together that way anymore. Not in the usual way, except . . . we're not exactly split up either," she finished awkwardly. Honestly.

     Yann sighed. "I could say the same about my wife. Martina. There's still love there. But she fell in love with someone else--another woman--some years ago. It finally feels all right to us both. We're friends; we have two children to raise; we're still a family because of the kids. It's complicated. It's not ideal. But it all seems to work out somehow."

     Tat smiled again. "Tell my sister that. She doesn't approve of complicated lives."

     "So she wants you to marry and settle down?"

     "You got it. That's precisely what she wants."

     "And you?" he said. "What do you want?"

     Tat sat back and she thought about this. "I want my strength. My independence. And to keep on making art," she said, although it was not the first thing that had leapt to mind at the question. It wasn't Larry she wanted most. It was to be held, to be kissed . . . to be touched by someone besides doctors for a change. Could one actually starve from lack of touch? Was that why she got thinner by the month? She wanted Larry's imperfect love, and she also wanted much more than that. If these were things she couldn't say to Yann, at least she could say them to herself.

     She held out her glass and he poured more scotch. "So what are the odds on that?" he asked.

     It took her a moment to realize he meant the odds on making art, not love. "Right now," she answered with rare frankness, "I manage. It's going to get harder with time; MS is a degenerative disease. Already there are simple things I can't do. Lift large plates. Open cans of ink. Play the drum, or meet tight deadlines. And that's just the beginning. Yet I know I'll always find ways to make art, as long as I'm still drawing breath. If not prints, then it will be something else." She looked at him steadily as she spoke. She was warning him. And daring him to find self-pity in that assessment.

     "Did you have MS when you made this print?" he asked, looking at the one on the wall. The colors moved in joyous motion, dancing across the page.

     "Yes. But I didn't know it yet. That print was a windy day on the moor. Moon and I were dancing among the stones and the wind was very strong. I thought the wind would carry me up and away. . . . I used to love to dance."

     Yann put down his glass. "So do I," he said. "Come dance with me now," and he offered his hand. Chris Isaaks' sensual music was a deep violet glow in the dark of the barn.

     Tat shook her head. "I'm too clumsy. My feet don't always work anymore."

     "Who's to know? Come dance among my stones," the sculptor urged her.

     He took her hand and pulled her up. She felt graceless, awkward on her feet. But he drew her close and Tat moved with him, and the rhythm moved and carried her along. She could feel Yann's warmth through the thin t-shirt. She could smell wood smoke upon his skin. The music spread violet shadows around them. The dust of stones made clouds underfoot. Colors were dancing slowly inside her, her own colors, and Yann's as well. Beneath her touch, beneath his calm and his quiet, he glowed a deep rowan red. Also a clear, sweet Turner yellow. And the vivid blue of a late autumn sky. He too was made of primary colors. She could feel a shimmer of white at his core. His touch and his breath were deeply familiar, as if they'd been dancing all their lives.

     In the morning, there was a phone message left for her on Yann's answering machine. "Tat Ludvik's family rang," said the woman from the tiny Deerworthy post office. "They say that her phone is off the hook. Please ask her to ring them back right away."

     Tat fumed all the way into Deerworthy. Francesca was such a royal pain. Tat had been planning to have her phone reconnected on Monday. What was the big deal? You'd think she'd been incommunicado for months, instead of--she counted on her fingers--instead of barely two bloody weeks. The day outside was grey and foul. Rain drowned the colors of wood and field and the jewel tones of joy that had filled her last night. They were still there, pulsing deep inside her, warming her against November's chill. But annoyance was a bolder shade, claiming her attention.

     She went to the phone box and slammed in two pounds and some change. Francesca's phone rang and rang. Just before she hung up, someone finally answered. Her youngest brother, not Fran. Her brother began to talk very quickly. Tat listened, her fingers tight on the phone. Franny. An accident. Brakes failing. A car skidding in London rain. Tat told her brother she'd be there at once. She hung up the phone and she stared at it. She was calm and clear, and that shocked her more than anything that her brother had said. His words were unreal. She couldn't picture Francesca lying in a hospital bed, her lungs collapsed, her collar bone snapped, her perfect white skin badly cut by the glass. They'd operated on her during the night. "They weren't sure that she'd make it then," her brother had said, his voice crisp with fear. "But Franny has a guardian angel, doesn't she, Tat?" And she had agreed. Tat shut her eyes, and saw colors, and stars, and wings made of lilac light.

     She got back into her Morris Minor. She was calm, but her hands were shaking as she drove very fast through the slick, narrow lanes. She'd pack. Get on the motorway. She'd manage to drive into London somehow. She took the track to the farm too fast, skidding on mud and wet leaves in the yard. An unfamiliar car was parked there. A rental car, spattered with mud. She climbed from the Morris and saw a man talking to Yann. He was thin and very tall. Tat knew what she had to do--she should eat, she should pack. Put one foot before the other. She was calm. Until Larry Bone crossed the mud of the yard and put his arms around her.

     He thought she was crying. She wasn't crying; it was rain sliding down her bloodless cheeks. She stood shivering, holding him. And then she wiped her face on her sleeve.

     "Honey, just throw some clothes in a bag," Larry said. "We've got it all worked out. Yann will look after Moon, okay? You can't take Moon to the hospital. And he's offered to drop the rental car off. We'll take your car to London with us. Don't worry now. Everything's all right."

     "Don't coddle me, Bone. It isn't all right. But I'm so damn glad you're here all the same. I want to leave right away. Where's Yann?"

     The sculptor had left the drizzling yard. She found him in the barn, with Moon. "I'll take good care of your boy," he said. "'Till you come back. You will come back?"

     She stood dripping puddles onto his floor. "Yann. . . ." She didn't know what to say.

     "Just go. It's good that your friend is here. Just remember I'm thinking about you too."

     Tat nodded. Everything she could think of to say, he probably knew.

     She went to the chapel and found her wallet, some gloves, a warm sweater that Franny had made. Larry looked the place over while Tat searched everywhere for the bloody spare keys. She found them underneath the press, turned off the lights, and locked the front door. She handed the keys to Yann and held him tightly, while Larry looked away.

     They were on the motorway twenty minutes later. The rain was pouring harder now. Larry's dear, familiar face looked drawn. He was running on sugar and caffeine. He'd left the city at five a.m. when the call had come from the hospital. Her parents had known that if anyone could reach Tat, it would be Larry.

     "Maggie is flying in from L.A. tomorrow. I'll pick her up at Heathrow."

     "Maggie is coming here? To London?"

     "Of course. She's your best friend, isn't she? And Maggie loves Francesca too. You'll both do better with Maggie around."

     "That's true," Tat said quietly, deeply moved.

     They reached the city shortly after noon and went straight to the hospital. Francesca was still in Intensive Care, looking pale and small through the door's window glass. Tat busied herself fetching coffee for Fran's wan husband, and holding her mother's cold hand. The rest of the day went by in a blur of color as muted as London rain. Larry stayed close, and Tat was grateful. She was unnerved by how calm she remained. Soon reality would surely hit her; perhaps comprehension would come then too. She was the lousy driver, not Franny. She was the one bad things happened to. Not to Francesca, the golden twin, with her long white hair and her French perfume, her perfect marriage and her perfect life. Franny was out of danger, the doctors had told them. She was going to be all right. She'd need plastic surgery, physical therapy. Patience, and care, and time.

     It was late when Larry drove her home. The loft was cold, empty without Moon. Larry hung up his leather jacket and kicked off his Mexican cowboy boots. "Shall I cook something? Are you hungry, Tat? Do you want some tea? Or maybe a drink?"

     "For heavens sake, you're exhausted, Bone. Go home," she said to him fondly.

     He looked at her over the kitchen counter. "I'd rather stay. If that's all right."

     Tat swallowed. Then she shook her head. "Don't stay because you feel sorry for me."

     "What better reason is there, Tat? I feel sorry for you. I feel sorry for Fran. I even feel sorry for myself. You shouldn't be alone tonight. And I don't want to be anywhere else."

     She hesitated.

     He said, "It's Yann Kerjean, isn't it? Your lover down there."

     "Yes," Tat said, surprising herself, for they weren't lovers. Not yet anyway. She knew they would be, in the same certain way that she knew Yann was in the barn working right now. He probably had Estampie on the stereo. That's what she would play.

     Larry sighed, rubbing his tired faced with his hands. Then he tried to smile. "I'd better be good about this, huh, Ludvik?"

     "That's right, Bone." Tat reached for his hand. She needed this. He needed this. She wasn't going to question it now. Maybe it was for all the wrong reasons. Maybe he was just lonely tonight. Or Yann Kerjean had made him nervous. But warmth and love were precious things--in whose life were they ever over-abundant? Not in hers. She'd take all the love being offered. It might not be wise, or clear, or safe. It might just create even more complications. But she held the long blue length of him, those watery blues of which he was made, and in his arms she lived in the present tense, with apologies to Franny.