Circle of Nine: Circle of Nine Trilogy 1 (39 page)

‘What of Maya?’ said Ishran, snarling his displeasure. In his mind was the mocking image of the Eom: lifeless, still, waiting. Sati searched her serving mirror, frantically trying to clear her mind to receive the divination.

‘Emma is crossing back!’ she howled. The mirror was dropped into a thousand black pieces of future lost. Sati and Ishran cast their heads down, their nails digging into each other, and wept bitterly.

*

Their terrible cries of anguish were heard by the Azephim angels, who rustled their black wings as their spirits sank into dejection. Already the castle was abuzz with rumours of how the Great Ritual had been disrupted. Bitter experience had proved to the angels how miserable and grey life could become when Sati and Ishran were frustrated in any of their schemes. Black wing rustled against black wing as they too joined the sobbing and howling of their superiors.

The howl was heard far away in the cobbled streets of Faia, where the Faiaites cowered uneasily in anticipation of the Phooka. Uneasy glances were exchanged by the nervous villagers, for the Faiaites knew that anything could occur in their deserted streets on this hollow night, this bitter night of pure black mischief.

Mary was studying the
Tremite Book of Life
when she heard the howling. Her eyes sparkled. So, the Azephim plan had been defeated! Her finger moved down the ancient scrolls, attempting to decipher the text, her lips murmuring words of power and of prophecy.

Inside Dome Cottage, Rosedark and Khartyn were busy cleansing the room from the night’s visitors when the howl began. Rosedark, who had been air sweeping with her enchanted broom, began to laugh.

‘Like a pack of old dogs!’ she wheezed with delight.

Khartyn smiled wryly. ‘And like dogs kicked by their masters, they’ll get over it soon enough. Oh, when Sati recovers her energy she is going to be venomous!’

They continued cleaning the cottage for a few moments in silence. Finally Rosedark could stand it no longer.

‘Old Mother,’ she asked, ‘will Emma ever return to us? Do you miss her?’

The Crone was about to admonish her apprentice for not focusing on the now, but she hesitated.

‘No, Rosedark. Emma will never return to us in the form of Emma. But how can I miss her when in truth she has never left us?’

She sensed Rosedark’s disappointment at the paradoxical answer.

‘Just clean, Rosedark,’ she chided. ‘If you can’t stay in the now, then stay with your broom and clean!’

The howl was heard by the Stag Man as he shed his skins. He howled back in return and laughed wildly. He yelled his challenge to the Azephim.

‘Before the Dreamers slept — I was!’

His breath turned to frost, to new life. He spun in circles, wider and wider, till the flesh dropped from his bones. The ground beneath turned to honey, then to gold, until his bones collapsed into the earth. The moons turned to blue as he began to run across the sky with great and ever-greater strides.

CHAPTER FIFTY-SEVEN

It hurt to say goodbye.

I
would never have foreseen that I would become so attached, so quickly, to Khartyn and Rosedark. So attached that I would never want to return to my old life. My old me.

Gone. They were scattered with the wind. Fallen into dust. Rosedark and the Old Mother. My Old Mother. My eyes were aching with tears unshed. Johanna was a stranger to me.

I was a stranger to myself.

It hurts to say goodbye. To care.

Johanna was holding my hand tightly as we began the long walk home. We were in a long black tunnel through which ovoid shapes floated, and a strange, piercing note could be heard.

A memory with every step.

Johanna when I was a child, leaning over me, her pentacle pendant dangling. My head turning, slowly watching it. Jade’s lips pressed tightly together, her face filled with her resentment at the life she had to vacate because of my birth. Effie, watching me in a mirror, her eyes filled with an inexplicable fear. A small schoolboy in a cap passing me on the street in Katoomba.

Johanna, running for her life in the mountains, pursued by beasts from a nightmare.

A great white owl, beating on my bedroom window until its wings bled.

The eyes of a demon child, and the coldness of her grey lips when she kissed me.

My heart was beating too fast. I stopped, trying to delay the inevitable. Johanna held me tightly, a red bruise like a rose appeared on my wrist. The tunnel appeared to slip under my feet.

‘Don’t stop, Emma! You can’t stop in the tunnel! Keep walking!’

My feet were turning to ice. I could see my hands and my legs turning blue and I knew that I was undergoing a transformation like death. I watched as cells exploded along my arms and died.

‘Keep moving! Whatever you, do don’t stop!’ Johanna’s face was on fire, her hair flaming, her skin corpse-blue.

‘Don’t look at me, Emma! Keep moving!’

An elderly man came toward us in the tunnel. He ignored us as he walked in the opposite direction, naked and smiling with joy at how easy it had been to die. How I envied him as he headed with his slow, shuffling gait toward Eronth!

Torches of blue flames now appeared in the walls, held by invisible hands.

Another memory, another painful step. I was treading on thorns, stepping over glass.

Artemis’ animal green eyes. Persephone’s large, dark child eyes. Hecate’s veiled face. Rising, twisting through the earth holding a goddess, being birthed by soil.

It hurts to die. It is so painful to say goodbye.

Sparrows, thousands of sparrows, headed for us and I threw myself against Johanna. We were surrounded by their darting bodies as they almost knocked us over. As suddenly as they had appeared, they were gone.

Another step. My feet had become skeletal bone. I could see the gleaming phalanges and metatarsal bones, and where I trod steam hissed. Johanna said little as she gripped my hand. Each step appeared to hurt her as well; she winced with pain. The ovoid shapes contained so much pressure that it became difficult to tread.

Demeter, running to greet Persephone when she emerged from the Underworld. The two becoming one, evaporating into light, into love.

She never loved me.

‘Keep moving!’ Johanna ordered. ‘She did. You’re wrong, Emma. Jade did love you. God knows she could be a bitch, but she loved you. She mightn’t have expressed it very well, but I know how many sacrifices she made for you. You just couldn’t recognise her love.’

Light, faintly glimpsed at the end of the tunnel.

I could smell the faint odour of roses — Sati, my sister. I could feel her proud beauty, the Wastelands that she carried inside her own belly. She was howling to the moons.

My heart was beginning to stop. I recognised that the end was coming near. I was about to die. An insane terror gripped me. How could I let go? How could I release my identity?

I resented my return to a world I no longer felt a connection with. My life on Earth now seemed pointless and hopelessly mundane. I had little love for a world where my gift of the shining had to be kept a guilty secret. I despaired of a place where magical arts were forgotten as the lust for more and more technology erased our hidden memories and our sleeping dreams.

But then I felt the child stir impatiently within me and I realised that I was being directed by her soul to move on. The being I carried wanted to be born on the Blue Planet, and I was powerless to make it any other way. Attempting to quell my reluctance, I continued walking.

Memories making my feet smoke, my eyes ache.

I was still distraught at leaving Khartyn and Rosedark. Although we seemed to have said our goodbyes lifetimes ago, I feared losing them to memory, to time.

A final gift.

He appeared in the mist, half-formed. The Stag Man. His eyes looking for me, trying to reach me in the tunnel of death. Instinctively I attempted to break the line, but Johanna held me tight, restraining me.

The Stag Man’s eyes held mine with total love. Our mouths appeared to open as one. Yearning, longing. Strands like cobweb threads were slippery and wet between us. The cells of my body erupted into silver flames. I saw, in that one endless second, the strong silver cord that bound us together, reaching from his heart to mine. I nodded, recognising the message he was sending me. Then he reared, still half-transparent, and black rays erupted and sparked from his hooves. He vanished into breath.

Now I was numb.
I am lost without him
, I thought,
I will be alone in a foreign world.
Then the child stirred within me and I smiled wearily, accepting her message of love.
His breath is in me. He has shown me the cord that links us. I can never be alone.

One more aching dead footstep; another, then another. We were walking on ice, on snow, on glass, on fur, on hair, on skin. As we walked past each fire torch, it was slowly quenched, leaving the tunnel behind us in darkness.

The tunnel was beginning to pulsate. It was shimmering, and the strange note that I had noticed earlier was now stronger.

A doorway lay ahead.

Johanna stopped. She pushed her hair behind one ear and smiled.

‘You’re nearly there,’ she said, it is time for me to leave. I can’t go any further; I’m one of the recent dead.’

Shock went through me. I had counted on her to be there, forgetting the true nature of our relationship.

‘I will be there,’ she smiled, ‘just not in body.’ For a second she looked hungrily at my belly. ‘When you deliver the Chosen One, I will be there. If you think of me, I will ease your pain.’ She touched my cheek lightly.

‘Wait!’ I cried. She was a stranger, but she was family. She was what I had longed to be. The great artist, the free spirit.

Johanna shook her head, and she began floating backward into the dark tunnel. Light streamed out of her. I watched as the Johanna Develle mask dropped from her face.

I was looking at the face of the owl woman from the painting that had hung over Johanna’s fireplace. A memory hissed at me:
The Ancestor, A Self-Portrait.
A small head like an owl’s, dark brown hair that hung to her shoulders, and a pair of miniature antlers on her head.

‘I have done all I can for you. But remember this!’ Her face was brilliant, and orange light pulsated around her in a halo. ‘Jade always loved you — she just didn’t want you to become like me! She feared the shining. What she couldn’t understand, she tried to destroy!’ The light was now so brilliant that I could hardly look at her.

‘Don’t ever let them destroy your shining! Hold on to your gifts, to who you truly are.’

Then she was gone, and there was only the sound of a howling wind.

And the door opening.

*

An elegant woman sat at the entrance of the door, with silver eyes, her white hair in a chignon, human but with the unmistakable aura of a Crossa from the ancient star galaxy she had originated from. She was carrying a clipboard, and with a sense of shock I remembered her from when I first crossed. I stared into her perfect features.

‘Let’s see,’ she murmured, scanning her list, red lips pursed. ‘Emma and Maya! I see you’re returning. Did you enjoy your stay?’

I nodded dumbly and the woman smiled, flashing a perfect set of white teeth.

‘Welcome back to Earth!’ she said, indicating the door.

I walked hesitantly through the door — then screamed. Huge red tongues of fire light noises cry of an ancient gargoyle birth black seeds sprouting pain screaming cells dark falling endlessly falling water the Shell being rocked black red flowers opening frantically in and out pulsating liquid squirting pushing breath returning. Plaster, paint, sunlight.

Eyes opening.

Home.

CHAPTER FIFTY-EIGHT

The birth and death of thoughts
Are my responsibility.
There are no excuses.
(It is dangerous to bring them into being.)

— From Emma Develle’s journal

I
sat on the back step watching Maya playing happily in the shade of the verandah. The day had been unnaturally hot for this time of year. Maya had set up a tea party for her dolls, who were perched on cushions.

I heard her admonish a toy. ‘Drink, Mr Golly!’

I shook my head ruefully.
Little dictator!

The late autumn sun shone through the naked trees that surrounded the house. It was my favourite time of year in the mountains. A time for reflection, contemplation. With my blue cotton dress spread out around me and my sketchbook perched on my knee, I held my pencil out in front of me at arm’s length and attempted vainly to capture my mischievous, rebellious, high-spirited daughter. She was the light of my life — clichéd, but true.

An unexpected gust of wind blew the stray leaves lying in the yard upward and I glanced around fearfully, but there were no strange shadows lurking in the garden — no unexplained odours from hell. I gradually relaxed. I studied Maya carefully as she attempted to force Mr Teddy to drink his tea with her clumsy, chubby hands. Trying to suppress the dark worry that snaked away at me lately when I looked at my child. The whisper that threatened that something was not right.

My child’s beauty was a neverending source of wonder for me. She was the shining, the magic. With her curly dark hair, perfect skin and gypsy, soulful eyes, she was a Rubenesque cupid.
She will be a beauty
, I thought, and my face flushed with pride and joy. I attempted to quell the treacherous thoughts that told me Johanna’s eyes seemed to appear in Maya’s, and, of course, the bargain. Sometimes I tried to convince myself that the bargain had never been struck, that I could not have agreed to it, that it would never happen, but it was no use. I knew that those kinds of thoughts could lead to insanity.

Maya looked at me and smiled, showing her perfect pearly-white teeth. I marvelled for the millionth time that something so perfect, so human, so normal, could come from a union that was so abnormal. I could feel sweat break out on my hands. I could not see myself at all in this innocent, pixie-like child.

As quickly as that particular thought drifted into my mind I cut it off and studied the sky for a second, reflecting on the moving clouds, trying to forget the Stag Man and the strange, wonderful occasion of Maya’s predestined conception.

A stranger suddenly passed the back gate. I tensed. Jessie, our German shepherd, my companion and protector, barked madly. The stranger started slightly and continued his walk up to the mountains.
Just a tourist
, I realised. Probably up from Sydney to do some midweek bushwalking. Nevertheless my eyes followed his back until I was convinced he was well away from the house.

‘Good girl, Jess,’ I murmured.

I must never relax
, I told myself harshly, digging my nails into my hands. I must always be on guard for Maya and trust no-one, no-one. Noting the lengthening shadows, I stood and stretched, admitting defeat at capturing my quicksilver subject on paper.

‘Time to come in, Maya!’ I called.

Maya, caught up in her imaginary tea party, ignored the command, choosing selective deafness. I frowned, annoyed by a habit she had become too accustomed to of late.

‘Come on, Maya!’ I called.

My child still chose to ignore me. ‘Eat your cake,’ she told her doll. ‘Come on, Sati, eat your cake!’

I stopped. My breath caught, my world spun. I stared in shock at my daughter.

So it begins
, I found myself thinking.
They are here.

*

When Maya was tucked away in bed that night, after having her favourite little mermaid story read to her for the hundredth time, I found myself pacing the floor, glancing every few seconds at the coal-black sky. No stars could be glimpsed and the moon was a thin, waning sliver.

She must have picked that name up from me; she got it from me.

I reassured myself a hundred times that all children are a little psychic, and Maya, naturally enough, even more so. She’s probably tapped into my mind somehow, or else she’s seen a picture I’ve drawn. Or she’s Johanna’s reincarnation and already knows everything I know, including Sati’s name. Or else, the bastards have crossed, tracked us down and they’re here.

No, they couldn’t be here, they wouldn’t cross! I hated myself for my fears.
Let them come
, I thought savagely. I’d kill a thousand Azephim before I’d let them touch my daughter. As the hands of the lounge room clock rotated past midnight, my fears increased. They were more active at night, that’s when the angels hunted. They found you in your dreams. Every creak of the floorboards as the house settled, every twig that creaked outside made me cringe and flinch. Jessie watched my paranoia with impassive eyes. She was used to my fears and I felt she understood the night shadows that danced mockingly to me every night.

The only thing to fear is fear itself.

I could hear the mocking song of the demon child Rachel from so long ago, when I had floated in her bruised white arms.

All that grows in the night is fear.

And the child is no longer safe. Even from the wind.

*

I studied my reflection in the bathroom mirror. Christ, I had aged. It was painful to see myself. I looked easily a good ten years older than my chronological age. A side effect of crossing, no doubt. Revlon would never invent a cream to halt the effects of crossing. At least there was no-one to see me in such a state. I had chosen to live a relatively secluded existence and had absolutely no contact with friends from the past. At any rate, the ones that were still alive. The fury I felt when I was first told of Effie’s suicide suddenly washed over me, then subsided. She had been found, a broken, bloody doll, near to where Johanna’s body had been discovered. She had left a note on Geoff’s computer in words that Effie would never have used. I had seen with the shining what had really occurred to my former friend, her terrible entanglement with Ishran that could only end one way — with her extinction. Oh, there was no way Effie would ever have taken her own life! She was too full of life and hope, she was simply too vain. Now I had more fuel for my hatred of Sati and Ishran.

My mother was living in London with some wealthy ex-pop star of the sixties. They had met on safari in Africa. Hearing of Maya’s existence only further ensured I would hear less and less from her. The prospect of becoming a grandmother clearly appalled her and it was obvious she preferred to pretend she had no family in Australia than face that fact. In a way it was a good thing. I probably already looked much older than her; it would have been depressing for me and horrifying for her for us to get together. I had no desire for my daughter to meet my mother, either; to my mind they were not even related.

However, becoming a mother myself had changed my feelings toward my own mother. Although I had no desire to physically see her, I had formed some small place of acceptance in my heart for her. Jade had made mistakes, but she had also given a lot. Perhaps Johanna was correct, and that in her own selfish way Jade had loved me, and she had just feared our differences. The old hunger for her love that once gnawed at me had now gone.

In the place of my mother it had been Geoff and Robert who had been a source of strength for me when I first arrived back on Earth. They had been totally non-judgmental. They accepted my shame-faced explanation of a one-night stand in Byron Bay without question or censure. My absence had had little impact on the few people who even noticed. Everybody’s lives were so busy and so hectic that if I had chosen to drop out for a few months it had left hardly even an impression.

It had been Geoff and Robert who had elected voluntarily to be present for me at Maya’s birth. They had provided the music, the aromatherapy oils and the support I had desperately needed as I underwent that ancient Demeter tradition. The pain of the birth had previously meant nothing to me; my mind had been far too terrified of what I could have been about to deliver. I saw the headlines:
Freak born in Mountains hospital. The human stag baby!

The pain of giving birth had threatened to split me in two. I had felt as if I was giving birth to myself. Throughout it I had cried out to my own absent mother, to Persephone, to Khartyn, and to Johanna. I could feel their energy around me, and as Johanna had promised, I could sense her soft touch on my stomach, and between my legs, guiding the child out. Also, as she had promised, she took the pain.

I did not think of the Stag Man. It was too painful. I did not feel him at the birth.

Thankfully, my little angel looked nothing like my fears, and when the midwife placed her lovingly into my arms I realised for the first time how overwhelming love could be between mother and child. She smelt like roses. Her hand curling around mine shattered my heart for all time.

Then I had plummeted into severe postnatal depression, which lasted for around a month, during which time I found it difficult to care for the child, or even to get out of bed for the day. Once again Geoff and Robert helped out and stayed a few weekends with me until my hormones had settled. I could tell that they were both extremely concerned about the state of my health. I looked a wreck. The birth had taken its toll on me, leaving me drained and frail.

I had chosen to breastfeed Maya, and to my alarm what appeared to be a small third breast had begun to develop between my other two. Too terrified and ashamed to seek medical advice, I chose to ignore it. Despite my best attempts at breastfeeding, the postnatal depression, the fatigue, the worry about the unknown growth, all these things took their toll and to my great shame I abandoned it for the bottle and formulas. Thankfully Maya appeared to flourish anyway. With the cessation of breastfeeding I appeared to have slightly more energy. Geoff and Robert even discussed at one stage if I should seek counselling. Alarmed as they were by my inexplicable physical ageing, I think they managed to explain it away as heartbreak over Maya’s father. Perhaps they were right.

Over the years their visits had become less frequent as their busy lives in the city overtook them, and finally Robert won a residency in New York at the School of Art. They moved to the States and I was alone again, but a reclusive life didn’t really bother me. I had Maya. I needed no-one. Except, perhaps, for the one who refused to answer my call, if indeed he had ever existed.

All that I had now were memories, blossoming rose memories with sharp, delicate thorns that continued to scratch my mind to pieces when I attempted to relive them. Often I told myself that my experiences with the otherworld had been madness and illusion, but Maya was the living evidence that gave the lie to all my efforts at self-delusion.

It was just that there were some nights when I looked at Maya and I wanted to scream. At times there was a jagged energy between us. There was a faint odour that came from her that I couldn’t explain. To tell the truth, I found it repulsive.

The memory-rose threatened to destroy me with its addictive perfume. On the surface all was normal. I slept, ate, shopped, discussed the weather in local stores (a topic that always made me feel uncomfortable), cleaned the house, watched television, groomed the dog and played with Maya. But inside, my bowels always felt twisted with fear. For from the moment that Maya had been born, from the pain that had been a destroyer of innocence, I had gazed at her face with terror that the Azephim were aware of her existence. I grew sick with fear that they would come to steal my child like the evil Faeries in
Sleeping Beauty.
The gnawing fear added to my mood swings and my depression. There were many hours when I stared into space, seeking refuge in fading memories of my own childhood, a fantasy world where adults took charge of everything and the world was safe and easily understood.

My depression was intensified by the lack of contact from the Stag Man. It had always been my hope that once Maya was born he would cross and make contact with me again. After all, he was her father, but even in my dreams he did not materialise. It was as if he existed only in my mind.