Beyond the golden stair Read online

  Once Carlotta and the others had pushed, trampled, and torn their way through the fern hosts, they came to the ruin's gateway, a gigantic spiderweb with guy threads twenty feet long—a grille shinmiering in the sunlight like a filigree of frail lightning. Beside it, the web's maker and gatekeeper—^no gnomic silversmith but a great black sider—Chopped up and down on precarious footing in impotent fury.

  Carlotta snatched up a stick and ripped the web. It yielded reluctantly as though consciously pulling against her. The threads snapped the twigs to which they were tethered, frightening the jays in the higher boughs. Crestless, their steely blue plumage shot with iridescence, they scattered screaming toward the ruin, heralds forewarning of conquest.

  Carlotta strode into the garden from which vaulted the ruin, and if the flowers represented gems in the eyes of the sylvan dieties, she had broken into a keep richer far than the grot of Aladdin, than Ali Baba's cavern, and Sinbad's valley of diamonds. From a deep carpet of grass whose green was vivid as fire, the flowers of shrub, of bush, and towering tree were massed in bulging and broken walls of a polychrome mosaic.

  Their colors ran through the spectrum from the virginal white of wild limes, the green white and rose

  white of dogwood, through the pink of magnolia and blush of hibiscus, deepening to flame scarlet, purple, and blue of incredible orchids—and back through the gamut with the Tyrian reds of bougainvillea, orange conflagrations of flame vine, the gold of yellow jasmine.

  Their scent was an olfactory symphony of a thousand fragrances conducted by the breeze. Among them twinkled prodigious dragonflies armored in green metal, in shells of turquoise bright as Christmas-tree ornaments. Ruby-throated hummingbirds hovered blur-winged, whirring from cup to sun-filled cup.

  Carlotta broke the magic. Once more the Baedeker of the Everglades, she said: ''See the bougainvillea and the orange and grapefruit trees? They don t grow wild, though they're plenty wild now. They had to be planted—must have been years and years ago—by the old spic settlers who built this place."

  The ruin was only a stair soaring steeply through the banked blooms. She said: "It's built of coral rock and weathered—looks like it was made a milKon years agol"

  It shot without break, marbled by splotches of orange and gray green Hchen, to the very tops of the tall palmettos. Its clean lines conflicted so brutally with the graceful disorder of the boskage that they suggested dynamic purpose, a cold stony life. And as a carpet is unrolled for the passage of royal feet, so its steps were cushioned with a venomously green velvet of moss, inviting and a trifle ominous. Twisted ropes of lianas portculhsed the stone steps like curtains of woven black snakes awaiting the merest touch to wake them to wriggling life.

  It was only a forgotten flight of steps, but from it the unreal pulsed in a black aura of premonition. Why

  it was so, Hibbert did not know, but it was so. Could it be that the stair recalled to mind some mythical peril of which he once had been so fond of reading? Whatever he felt, it was not shared by the others. Scarlatti shoved him onward.

  The grass squeaked damply and knotted over their insteps as if trying to hold them back from the dangers ahead. Burks took the lead. His stride shattered mushrooms, rose pink and orange and scarlet, large as plates in his path and seemingly set out for a picnic spread. His feet sank deep in the moss as he took one step and another up the ancient stair.

  He wrenched aside the ciutains of bamboo vine, turned for a look at the others. Higher he strode and higher still—the woman behind him, then Hibbert, Scarlatti last.

  At the summit, he halted, his hands splayed in sm:-prise. The others ranged themselves beside him.

  First of all they saw the pool.

  The steps ended on a platform thirty feet square. Its center had been hollowed into a shallow basin twenty feet in diameter and was rimmed by translucent milky stone Hke Soochow jade. The pool was paved with this stone, the border an upthrust of it.

  The water was impossibly blue and coated with a metaUic sheen hke the wings of Guatemala's blue butterflies from which jewelry is made. Not a ripple marred its surface. It might have been brilliant glass of cobalt dusted with atoms of amethyst.

  It was like, Hibbert thought—remembering his myths—^the vat of dye reserved by the Creator for the staining of peacock plumes.

  In its center stood a blue flamingo, one webfoot lifted and a long toe of that foot projecting toward them like an admonishing forefinger. Its hue was

  neither so deep nor rich as the water, but was the weaker blue of the sky and streaked with blazing opalescence.

  It did not move. It watched them from an eye of gold and amber. And it seemed a statue molded from air itself and lacquered with the fugitive glints of the rainbow.

  It Hved, for a breeze riffled its feathers. It watched them warily but with no hint of fear nor enmity. It seemed to be appraising them—^more, judging theml

  Carlotta moved restlessly, glancing back to the steps, then to Scarlatti. She said, a bit breathlessly: *1 seen albino flamingos—but a blue one? It's hke a cat with horns and a fish's tail besides I**

  Scarlatti said: "Well, when two-headed calves get bom now and then, and turtles with one head and two bodies, I guess anything's possible.''

  But Carlotta seemed intent on denying the evidence of her senses. "It's white," she insisted, and Hibbert wondered at her vehemence. "Albino—the blue's reflected from the water."

  However, the imcanny blue of the water was almost as disconcerting to her as the flamingo. She peered over the parapet's brink. For mile on mile, a sawgrass swamp stretched to distance-hazed lines of palmettos. There were no fiuther indications of ruins, no tumbled blocks nor verdure-covered mounds. It was as though the stair had been constructed solely to lead to the pool. She did not seem to care much for the conclusion —^nor did Hibbert

  "This water looks bluer than it really is," she remarked, oddly defiant, '^because most of the swamp water's black. Rainwater. But flamingos don't feed excepting in salt water ... if it's only a bird, and not. • r

  She stooped and dipped up a handful of water;

  then spilled it—distrustfully, as if expecting it to stain like ink. She raised her wet hand to her mouth as if to taste the drops on it.

  With a cry like clanging metal, the blue bird flapped its wings! Carlotta dropped her hand from her mouth, leaped up, and moved closer to Scarlatti. The flamingo craned its long serpentine neck, staring at her, and unwillingly she stared back. For a very long moment, they were gripped in that mutual gaze. An eerie moment, for it struck Hibbert that some message was flashing between the two. He could almost apprehend it himself . . . like the echo of an echo's echo.

  Then the bird turned its head from the woman. Slowly and dehberately, it coiled its long neck over its back as if preparing to sleep.

  Carlotta eyed her wet hand as if her fortune were written on its palm, then wiped it on her skirt with unnecessary carefulness. She said abruptly, toneless-ly: "Lef s scram out of here."

  ^^Why so sudden?" Burks asked.

  T don't want to talk about it. I just want to gol** She tugged on Scarlatti.

  "Seems to me you know something, and you're holding out," Burks said.

  Her voice rose. ''So maybe I do know something! But let's get awayl"

  Burks scrutinized the sleepy flamingo. *Why?" And now Scarlatti was suspicious. He asked her: 'Tfeah, why?"

  ''All right then, if you got to know. Only," she brightened with hope, "maybe it's a lot of hooey. I got chummy once with a Seminole girl from these parts. We was sphtting a bottle of Scotch, and after a while she loosened up and told me a story. It was a

  lot of hogwash about how a long time back a spic explorer named Lion or something was roaming around hereabouts looking for a fountain that made you young.*"

  "Ponce de Leon?'* Burks asked

  "Could of been. Anyway, whoever he was, he and his mob tracked all over, bathing in one mudhole after another—and they never got no youngerl But this here Semi
nole girl I'm telling you about, she said that the pool of youth is out here in the Everglades all right, and whoever finds it will know it's here because it's guarded by a flamingo a thousand years old. A thousand years old—hal But she didn't say it was any color except natural. Pink."

  A curious questioning note crept into her voice.

  *Trhis here girl and her folks know all about the pool, but they keep away from it, because sometimes it don't make you young—it can make you old! So old, you just rot in a minute and fall down in piecesi And that ain't all she told me. It does worse yetl Makes you blind and crippled, or changes you into animalsl"

  And, as anti-climactic as she was unconvinced, she added, "WeU, I don't think that this is it."

  It all should have seemed rather funny, and was not. The pool and bird—and Hibbert's mounting uneasiness—all were a Httle too real to be taken hghtly.

  "She could spout a bit of spic or Indian, and she said flamingo means like a flame. So I always kind of had the notion that maybe she meant the Pool of Youth was a hot spring or a volcano. And then there was the bird's name—Athoole, or something like it— '^

  ^'Azul,'' Hibbert ventmred. 'In Spanish it would be el flamingo azul. Translated, it means—the blue flamingo."

  At the moment she had forgotten their feud. "Tfou mean she wasn't kidding, and this is the place?** She choked on an attempt at laughter.

  Burks said wryly: 'Tf it is, weVe foimd us a fortime. We can bottle the water and sell it for a thousand bucks a clip to every beauty shop in the coimtryl WeU, personally, I don t believe it. If this were the real thing, somebody would have found it a long time ago."

  ^eah, that's what I say,** Carlotta seconded eagerly. ''So let's get out of here.**

  Scarlatti marvelled: ""A flamingo—a thousand years oldr*

  Burks sneered: *ni lay you odds this can kill it same as any other.'' He touched his gun.

  "No, don tl** Carlotta cried.

  Burks laughed without merriment. Abruptly he bent down and fumbled with his shoelace.

  Scarlatti's jaw dropped. "What the hell do you think you're doing?"

  "Why, I'm going to take a bath," Bmrks answered maliciously. "If this water lives up to its reputation, I may come out twenty years younger—a ten-year-old." The idea tickled him. "And if the law should clamp on to me, I couldn't very well be somebody wanted for murder—a mere little kidi"

  Carlotta cried: "If her story wasn't no lie—and looks like it ain't—don't you go fooling with that water! You're Hable to maybe come out an animall" She shook Scarlatti. 'T)on't leave him do it, Frankl"

  The whole business was rather ridiculous, of course. And the Indian girl's legend had somehow become flavored with the Circe myth. But there was something which had scared Carlotta, and it was more than just the yam which she had recounted. Could it

  be connected somehow with what she had dreamed— the black shadow that spoke of justice and doom? Or —something in the recollection made Hibbert queasy —^was it indeed that a message had flashed from the flamingo to the woman?

  He might not be seeing the radiant dream-girl and her two companions, but the spell of the dream— beauty framed by horror—^was strong upon him and strengthening with every passing moment. He felt as though his next step could precipitate him out of reality, headlong into the dream.

  Maybe that was what Carlotta was feeling. And Burks? His face was a closed book One couldn't tell.

  Chapter Four

  The Shining Stairway

  Burks sKpped oflE his shoes and socks and rolled his trouser legs up to the knee. He said cx)olly: **Now, let's be scientific about this. About five years ago I cut my foot''—^he showed them the scar. 'Tm going to wade a little, and if this should disappear, we'll know that the waters the real thing—^in which case 111 take the full treatment.*"

  His expression was inscrutable as usual, but his voice twinkled. ^'Of course, if I should soak myself completely, I'd have to keep my feet out of the water until the rest of me caught up with theml"

  Carlotta's agitation smacked of a guilty conscience. Hibbert was more certain than ever that she had held back some fact. Scarlatti pushed away her beseeching hands.

  **Burks, you're nutsl" he shouted. |E **No—just imorthodox."

  Burks stepped over the pool's milky rim and into the water. He looked down at his blue-tinted toes and wiggled them. **It's cold, but it feels like ordinary water. Maybe one nas to soak a while to get results." He smiled at the giant and at the quavering Carlotta. fading, anyone?"

  The ripples which he had set in motion lapped the 37

  flamingo's slender legs—it uncoiled its long neck and saw him. With a metallic scream of rage, it beat its pinions and hurtled splashing toward himl He tried to scramble backward out of the pool but slipped, and while he tottered the huge bird reached him. It flailed him with its wings, its beak clicking wickedly as it pecked at him. Carlotta squealed and stimibled back, dragging Scarlatti with her.

  Burks' feet kept slipping as he reeled. One arm was lifted defensively to his face, the other pushing futilely at the flapping flamingo. Suddenly he swore, snatched his gun, and fired. Carlotta moaned. Hibbert found himself reaching out vainly as though to stop the shot with his hands—

  The flamingo was thrown back heavily and stood with blood rilling from its breast, spilling like garnet beads from a broken necklace into the pool. It curved its neck and peered down at the wound, then swung its head, and fixed Burks with a golden eye. He stood rigid as if hypnotized, and again Hibbert sensed the communication of a message.

  Then, with another ringing scream, the flamingo launched upward over their heads, the wind of its rush rumpling Hibbert s hair.

  If there was no regret on Burks' face, it was evident in his roimded shoulders and the slow tucking of his gun back imder his belt. He said, purely to him-seK:

  "Makes you feel danmed odd, shooting a bird like that . . . different from shooting a man . . . damn it, somehow it was like . . . Uke breaking a stained glass window."

  They looked up after the flamingo. Its hue was so like the sky itself that it was camouflaged, its flight marked only by the sparkle of its wings. Unreal as it

  had seemed in the pool, aloft it was still more unreal. A phantom—a bird of glass I

  Now it was wheeling in a vast circle and screaming like a pealing bell. It continued to circle like a planet in its orbit. Abruptly, from sky to pool, a beam of intense yellow hght appeared, in angle and direction a continuation of the ancient stairway. Bright as was the sun, the ray was brighter, searing the eyes which beheld it and turning the day by contrast into dusk. There was nothing to indicate its source. As soon as it appeared, the blue flamingo folded its wings—deliberately it folded themi It plummeted down in free fall to the waters of the sawgrass swamp, vanished within the spray of its splash and did not rise. The ripples rolled away and the water calmed again to glassy darkness.

  "God!'' Burks said. T3id you see that? It committed suicidel'' Then, regretfully: *T didn't mean to hurt it ... I shot without thinking." And to the others as though their silence accused him: "Damn it, the thing attacked mel"

  Hibbert wondered if this could be the same man who had toasted the palmetto bug only a few nights past. Something more than the bird's alien beauty had affected Burks—but what?

  He looked at the pool. The shaft of golden glory made a ten-foot ring on its azure. Bubbles spangled with starry reflections arose toward the hght but swerved before reaching the surface and broke outside the ring, fizzing like champagne. Was the ray so intense that it boiled the water? Scarcely, since Burks was still knee-deep in the pool and walking toward the radiance with no sign of discomfort.

  Burks reached a hand into the hght, turned it this way and that. He thrust his head in—and jumped as

  if struck! He bent, felt the gold-lit air as though tapping on something tangible, then planted a foot firmly on sheer emptiness, and arose—placed his other foot a step higher and ascended again.

  Two more
steps he took upward into vacancy, and paused. And now he was standing fully four feet above the waterl

  The light dyed him with its yellow, transforming him as though with King Midas' touch into a man of gold. El Dorado, the gilded man, Hibbert thought. Odd that the Seminoles, so impartial about annexing myths of all races and times, had not incorporated that legend into their story of the pool.

  Carlotta was watching Burks with an open mouth no larger nor blacker than her wide and frightened eyes. Scarlatti looked like a surly child intent on a magician's card tricks.

  Burks peered toward them as though deepest gloom shrouded them. He called, his voice curiously muffled and fuzzy: "Don't you see it? A stairway—another stairwayl" He beckoned peremptorily.

  He climbed higher and yet higher, literally walking a beam of light. Hibbert remembered Jacob and the shining ladder to heaven, the myth of the flaming rungs up which the souls of Egyptian kings climbed to Ra the Sun.

  Burks tugged on something invisible as though it barred his way. Whatever it was, he could not budge it. He temporized, then bent, and apparently wedged himself through a cramped opening. On its other side, he straightened and smoothed his rumpled clothing. From forty feet above them, he looked down and waved.

  Hibbert was impelled to follow not because of any belief in Carlotta's fantastic story, nor from any reck-

  lessness nor itch for adventure—^he had experienced enough adventure in the last few days to last him his lifetime. Rather it was that throughout the journey through the swamps the unfamihar and the imusual had invaded and conquered his consciousness—^had he not asked himself at what peak of absurdity they must culminate? Well, here and now was the answerl

  He kept his shoes on. The water was so cold around his calves that it felt like the jaws of a trap.