Deliverance (19 page)

He lets me drive. Ehsan says he’s the man and so he should be the one driving but I didn’t even have to ask Garnier, he suggested it. Even made jokes about how he hates driving in Tehran. It’s cute.

We got in the car together to talk, but haven’t actually said anything yet. There are so many questions, but where would I begin?

“Things got complicated with the earthquakes,” I blurt out. It’s one way to start a conversation. And as curious as I am about him, I realize how much I need to just talk about myself. To let out all the nonsense craziness I can’t talk about to anyone else. I tell him about Maman’s accident, and about my increased responsibilities. I tell him about the music I heard from Davood’s store. I tell him about the harp.

He looks at me carefully then. Of course, the harp is Nagissa’s specialty. I have to remember that’s the only reason he’s here with me. He wants Nagissa to come back. Is he tricking me into letting my guard down? I need to shift the conversation back to him.

“Who is Aude?” It’s the easier thing to ask. It’s a normal question allowing for a normal answer. Nothing supernatural, just a girl.

“She’s my brother’s girlfriend. She’s in Iran right now and she’s in trouble.”

He has a brother? And his brother’s girlfriend is here? Why? “And your brother is where?”

“I was just talking to him while you were practicing. The family is in Montreal but they’re making arrangements to travel here as soon as possible. We have to find Aude and I’m pretty sure Ramtin has her.”

I shiver. “I don’t like him.”

“I know.” He reaches for my hand and gives it a squeeze. I don’t pull away right away. I like his touch.

My other consciousness has information about Ramtin but I don’t let her through. Nothing she has to say can be worth losing myself over. I have information about Ramtin as well. The thought catches me by surprise. Leyli. How could I have not been thinking about Leyli every second of the day? Maybe she made her choice to be with Ramtin, or maybe she, like Aude, is in trouble.

“Do you think Aude is in danger? How did she end up with Ramtin? Is she a groupie too? What happens to girls who disappear with Ramtin?” My hands are clenched tight around the steering wheel and I jerk aggressively to avoid traffic.

“We aren’t sure how Aude disappeared. Ramtin should have been here when she went missing from Montreal. I don’t know what he wants… Something to do with what she is.”

Why is he looking at me like this? Like there is something wrong with me. I slam the brake to narrowly avoid hitting a motorcycle. “What is she?”

“Hey, are you all right?”

“No, not really. What is she?”

“She’s an essencialist. Basically, she can handle life energy.”

I free one arm from the steering wheel to rub the other. It’s suddenly cold in here. The shivers crawl up my arms, along my shoulders and come sliding down along my spinal cord. No one should be able to control life energy, whatever that means. Again, the other consciousness tries to fit her way to the forefront, but I don’t let her. I have control now.

“So your brother’s girlfriend is a Jinni?”

“No, not at all. The Jinn are made of pure essence. Pure energy. Smokeless fire, they say. But everything alive has a measure of life energy. An essencialist is someone who has a much larger amount of energy and can control it.”

“Control how?” I’m avoiding the obvious question: What is he?

“She can share it.”

Is this what he is? I can’t get the words out to ask him. Why can’t he just tell me?

A text message comes in so I grab the phone from my pocket and check it while still keeping an eye on the road.

“You know that’s illegal where I come from.” I barely hear him.

I barely see the road in front of me. All I can see is the text. Those three words from Amir-Reza:

“Roxana is dead.”
   

The growing silence and quietude of the mountains suited our mood. Nakissa’s suggestion that we come here this evening made sense. Neither of us were in any mood for conversation after we found out about Roxana last night, and we had needed time to digest everything. But time was of the essence and now we had to talk. There was something about the isolation of the mountains that made me feel like we could be ourselves here.

The crowds of people thinned as we hiked up the trails past Darband. Most were happy to simply enjoy the nice weather perusing the shops and restaurants at the foot of the mountain. But what we needed was solitude.

We didn’t speak much as we made our ascent. We each had our own guilt about Roxana’s death and though I wished I could comfort her, I wasn’t quite ready to come to terms with the part I’d played in the tragedy.

If only I hadn’t given her that money, she wouldn’t have been able to run to her dealer the second she felt upset and buy enough drugs to kill herself. We weren’t sure if she’d committed suicide or if it had been an accidental overdose. Either way, Nakissa blamed herself because Roxana had been so upset to see her sing for Farâsoo. I knew it was illogical to look at it that way. I knew the decision had been hers and not ours, but I understood how Nakissa felt, because I felt it too.  

I stumbled on some lose rocks and held on the old rickety broken railings. This was a little bit less safe than I was used to. Normally my sense of adventure would have awoken by now, but I was tired of it. I just wanted to lay low. I wanted to go to parties for the sake of partying instead of chasing down a star who may be trying to end the world. I wanted to flirt with a cute girl instead of investigating her for what she has to do with an ancient Gargoyle who may or may not be dead. I wanted to dress well without worrying what supernatural encounter might ruin my clothes. 

I continued to follow Nakissa as she climbed effortlessly. I was supposed to be the one with grace and agility. I needed to gather my wits. I just didn’t feel like myself these days. The landscape didn’t do much to lift my spirits either. Now that we had passed the bright and festive feel of the town, very little interrupted the brown on brown landscape. Even right now in mid March, Mont Royal in Montreal would be painted with more colors than just brown.

“We’re here.” Nakissa interrupted my bleakness by showing me to a ledge overlooking the city. 

Even with the weight of her thoughts, Nakissa seemed looser in the mountains. Less stressed. Her stride had been long and confident. Not like Nagissa's, though. There were as many differences as there were similarities between the two.  But I couldn't exactly see them as two different people. Nakissa kept her heart open while Nagissa held hers closed, and yet, almost contradictorily, Nakissa lacked the confidence she used to have as Nagissa. She was vibrant, lively. She wore her scarf loosely over her head, so it was barely there. She was a vivid contrast against the hard landscape. Only her mood was somber.

I took in the view. From horizon to horizon, the city was all we could see. From this vantage, it shared little of its charms. It was more like a monster stretching itself along the land. Once spring fully bloomed, its abundant green spaces would dot the landscape and call its people to the many parks and gardens for picnics and relaxation. For the time being what little green we saw just teased us with its promise of life.

She sat on the ledge and I joined her. We let our feet dangle and said nothing for several moments.

"Who is Nagissa?" she asked. "Why is she trying to take over me?"

I shouldn’t have been surprised, but I was. We had been skirting around the issues for so long. At first, I didn’t know what she was and if I could trust her. After that, it just seemed difficult to bring up. I didn’t know what she knew. Where did I start? At least now I had a question to answer. And I had a theory.

"I don't think she is trying to take over you. I think you are one and the same person."

She shook her head.

"Hear me out?" I took her hand in mine. It was cold, but warmed quickly. "You and Nagissa are so similar; it is more just than your names. I think you are Nagissa reborn somehow. I never put stock in the concept of multiple lives or anything like that, but then maybe it isn't impossible. If our essence is our soul, then maybe it is possible to transfer it somehow. Maybe Nagissa found a way to transfer her essence to you before she died. Do you know how she died?"

"She was executed during the revolution." She furrowed her brows. “How did I know that?”

“Because you are her.”

“I feel like she just wants to take me over.”

What if she was right? What if by encouraging Nagissa to surface, I was killing Nakissa? Could I choose which lived and which died?

She shifted her posture, but didn’t take her eyes from the vista ahead of us. "Well, your theory doesn't even work. I wasn't alive when Nagissa died, how could she have transferred whatever to me?"

“I haven’t figured out that part of it yet. But there is a lot that my kind doesn’t understand about essence.”

She hugged her arms tightly against herself. “That’s not very comforting.”

It didn’t exactly make sense, but at the same time I knew it was the only answer. As soon as I'd said it, I’d known it to be the truth. Nakissa was Nagissa reborn. The differences were accounted by her environment. She'd been raised differently; of course she would be different. Her old memories were re-surfacing and this was causing conflict in her. But it wasn’t someone else she was fighting. It was herself. A version of herself that seemed separate because she compartmentalized it and refused to accept it. It wasn’t only me who needed to talk to Nagissa, Nakissa did as well.

I needed to draw her out and hope I wasn’t wrong. Hope I wouldn’t lose Nakissa, because if truth be told, I liked her a lot better than her counterpart.

“Do you know the details of her death?”

She shook her head.

“Are you sure?”

She looked at her feet, she looked at the clouds. She looked at a couple of other climbers that walked on, looking for their own semi-secluded spot. She looked everywhere except at me.

“She knows,” she whispered.

“That means you know.”

“No.” She shook her head. “I don’t. I can’t let her tell me.”

“Yes, you can. She doesn’t mean you any harm.”

“She wants to be me.”

“You are her.”

“No, I’m not.” She took a few breaths and pivoted to face me. “Listen, Garnier, even if you’re right, how can you say that my experiences and memories are not what makes me who I am? How can you be sure that by embracing these centuries of memories, my personality won’t change? Centuries. There are centuries of memories. How can it be? What was she?”

“Nakissa was a Gargoyle.”

“A Gargoyle?”

I nodded. “Like I am.”

She moved away from me a few inches. “What is a Gargoyle, exactly?”

“Do you want the proper definition of the word or just want to know what I am?” I grinned at her.

Her face didn’t change. Her eyes were wide. Her lips set tight. She was frightened but determined. I didn’t know how to tell her. Suddenly, it seemed ridiculous to be a man who can transform into a beast or a statue of that beast. It was more than just hard to believe, it was absurd. If she wasn’t scared away, then she would laugh at me. Is this how Guillaume felt when he revealed himself to Aude? My heart warmed at the thought of them. Aude had accepted him with a sense of wonder.

I decided then, that I wouldn’t show myself to her. I’d explain it and she would either understand or she wouldn’t. No reason to leave myself vulnerable.

“I used to be a human like you. When I was eighteen, I agreed to protect a family. A family that was rumored to have magical powers. They were what people referred to as witches. Essencialists. They created me by killing one of their own.”

“You killed one of them?”

“No, she sacrificed herself. It’s considered a good investment. One mortal life to make an immortal one that will go on to protect the family.”

“So someone died and now you live forever?”

“Well, more or less. I mean there are other things about it too.” Like the fact that without essence fed to me, I turned into a statue permanently. Or the fact that I had a beast form. But she didn’t ask so I didn’t tell her. Maybe it was best for her to understand the truth gradually.