Fall of Light (26 page)

“Including yours?” asked the fireball. As she spoke to it, it had acquired personality. She had a sense that she was talking to a separate self. One of hers? More like Flint's, though she didn't think he was inside her. The fireball was itself and could make decisions. So she had her usual self, her evil self, a semicorralled Phrixos, and the self-aware fireball colonizing her. It was almost like being back home.

“Probably best if you do,” she told the fireball.

“This won't be me anymore once we sever the connection,” said the fireball, “so there's no guarantee you'll be able to talk to the shield.”

“Okay, maybe we'd better leave it vulnerable to me a little, in case something goes wrong.” She wished she trusted herself more. Dark Opal might decide to make mischief; she already felt the urge percolating. “Ready?”

A sound outside her internal conversation penetrated her concentration; she woke to herself in the outside world, Magenta's warm foot in her hands, Corvus, his chair turned so he could see what she was doing. “We need Dark God on the set,” repeated her Ear.

“Oh, God,” she said. “I forgot.” She looked Corvus over; he still looked flawless. “We've got to get out there.”

Magenta gripped her shoulder. “Do me first.”

“But—all right.” Opal closed her eyes and focused on the fireball, big with all she had given it. “A shield for all of her,” she whispered, and the fire flowed through her. It streamed up from Opal's hands along Magenta's skin under her clothes. There wasn't time for finesse; they would be in big trouble with the director if they were late to the set. She waited until she got a sense from the shield that it had enveloped Magenta completely, then cut it off and felt it flex and tighten around the other woman, settle against skin.

Opal grabbed her on-set kit and Corvus's leafy hand and pulled him toward the door. Magenta, dazed, sat behind them, breathing loudly. Opal chanced a glance behind her, unsure if Magenta was all right, but then they were out of the trailer and crossing the lively ground toward the altar again, and something dark and fiery battered inside her, trying to free itself. The attack was so sudden and surprising she couldn't counter it. In that way, Phrixos pulled back the shield protecting her hand, and flowed from Opal into Corvus. They both stumbled and caught themselves as their insides reorganized. Then Phrixos stared down at her with Corvus's eyes and his own unsettling half smile, and Opal had time to wonder what he had learned while she had held him inside herself.

“That's better,” he said, and laughed. “You are so full of lovely things. I'm glad you're the first handmaid I found.”

“Bite me,” said Opal.

13

She flexed her fireskin, made sure it was complete.

He lifted her hand toward his mouth, but then they stepped into a hailstorm of the director's disapproval. Phrixos pulled away from Opal and took his mark; Opal returned to the others who spent most of their time waiting; the cameras rolled, the scene unfolded again, smaller now, the cameras focusing on faces, hands, angles that menaced.

The Dark God maintained character this time, and gave the two girls looks that straightened them out—or reduced them to authentic fear and longing, appropriate to the scene. They did lines until the director was satisfied, and held the blood until the very end. Opal watched Phrixos lick blood from his leafy lips, saw the glow blossom in his eyes on camera, though this was stage blood—how could he get joy from that? Acting? Or maybe symbols spoke as loudly as the real thing to him, in which case, they were in even more trouble than she thought.

Magenta tugged on Opal's arm as Opal watched a scene unfold on Rod's Casio, and she looked up. “What?”

“I feel—strange,” Magenta whispered.

“Good strange or bad strange?”

“I don't know. I'm warm—”

“But not burning up?”

“No, it's more, sort of, comfortable.” Magenta shifted shoulders up and down, first one, then the other. She scratched the back of her neck. “But a little itchy. Could you—”

“What?”

“Could you cast a spell on me so I can see if it works?”

Opal glanced around. Rod was standing within hearing distance. He didn't look surprised. Maybe Magenta had told him about their experiment while Opal was busy working over Phrixos. She wasn't sure she liked Rod being in the loop.

Don't worry about it,
said one of her.
The more people who know, the more we can do to them without having to break through disbelief. Less worry about repercussions. If everyone's expecting me to be a witch, what's the downside to witchy behavior?

That's not going to happen to us,
one of her thought.
One of us is of the fire. If they try to burn us, we can swallow the fire.
Flint's fireball stroked flame across her face. All she felt was warmth and comfort.
Good.

Opal straightened and looked at Magenta, considered. A hair-color-changing spell would do, simple, not very energetic, nonthreatening. Turn Magenta's black, pink-streaked bob purple and green. Opal closed her fist, opened it, sent a small moth of spell toward Magenta. It stuttered out against the shield, a tiny purple spark.

Magenta gasped. Rod jerked as though pushed by an invisible hand against his shoulder.

“Did you see it?” Opal asked. She was never sure whether others could perceive magic working. Sometimes it hid itself, sometimes not.

“Fireworks in my face,” said Magenta.

“The shield works well enough to block a spell like that, anyway,” said Opal.

“What did you try to do?”

“Change your hair color.”

“You can do that? Of course you can. I—”

All their Ears crackled, summoning them to the set for another round of fixing marred makeup. By the time they returned to the chairs, they had lost the thread of the conversation.

Opal curled up in Corvus's chair and closed her eyes. “Okay,” she whispered. She had shielded Magenta. Should she extend that shield to others? She checked her power reservoir. Still low from supplying Magenta's shield, so she stepped her Sifter Chants up to more actively seek local power. She felt them hum as they teased strands of power from the lively ground. She sent some of the new power toward Flint's fireball to replenish it. It was the best thing she had going for her.

She wasn't sure the shield worked the way it was supposed to. Magenta had agreed to be a guinea pig; let her. Maybe after a day's trial to make sure there were no negative side effects, Opal would protect Kelsi, Lauren, Blaise, Rod, the girls.

Maybe she would only help people who were nice to her.

Maybe she should harm people whom she didn't like. She contemplated the universe of people she knew on the set. Bettina was the person she was most irritated with currently. Bettina's on-set guardian was worse than the kid. Erika was an irritant, too, though maybe she was already messed up enough by her contact with the rock, the mixing of her blood with whatever lay below the ground here.

Phrixos.
Talk about troubling. She had locked him up inside herself, but he had freed himself. What had he done to her before she noticed his escape?

She went back to her study. Flint's fireball had settled on the hearth and was now acting like an overactive but almost respectable fire. “Did you see where I put the Dark God while he was here?” she asked it.

“Some other room,” it said, and sent a finger of flame to point toward the main door into her study. She went out, found herself lost in the castle of self. A tatter of black on the floor: she moved toward it, recognized a shred from the cocoon her dark half had used to bind Phrixos. She picked it up and ventured down the stone-floored hallway. Veins and striations of some other material striped the dark rock walls. Jewels glinted here and there, and other things gleamed in the matrix, shapes that whispered and promised.

Doors opened here and there in the living rock, different shapes, sizes, and compositions, most of them ajar. She had never been into any of these rooms. She peeked into one and saw a baby, apparently about two years old, asleep. It could have been any of her siblings; it was her favorite state for them, quiet, comfortable, completely trusting, beautiful in their innocence. So easy to care for; a hug could nourish them. She stepped into the room and contemplated the baby. Finally she realized it wasn't breathing.

She darted forward, arms out, ready to give it mouth-to-mouth. One of her selves stopped her. “It's not dead,” said some other Opal. “Just frozen. They're easier to take care of that way.”

“What?” she asked.

“If you could have, wouldn't you have frozen them once in a while? When they had colic, when they were screaming, when they turned into brats? If only you had had your powers while you were small. Our mother made you take care of them all by the time you were ten. Couldn't you have used a nice freeze ray on them then?”

“No. That would make me just like Mom!” she cried.

“Mom has her good points,” said the other.

“Neglect and misuse of power aren't good points.”

“Kinda depends.”

Opal turned and found a Goth version of herself, dark brows, pale skin, golden eyes, and her naturally light hair darkened to black with one white streak above her left eye. She wore a gray body stocking. Had she ever been this self? Opal couldn't remember a time. Maybe for Halloween?
No.

“Am I the shadow self or are you?” said Goth Opal. She smiled. Pointy teeth.

“Cliché and obvious,” Opal said.

Other Opal shrugged. “I can be whatever I like. Right now, this is working for me. I'll change if you want me to; I don't care about the form.”

“No, it's all right. I like that you're different from me.”

“Just a surface. The fall of light.”

Opal looked back into the crib at the frozen baby. “Why do you know about this?”

“You gave me this baby a long time ago. Sometimes I wake her up and play with her.”

“Who is it?”

Dark Opal stepped past her and lifted the baby in her arms, cradled it. The baby breathed. Her brow wrinkled, her eyes opened. Violet eyes. She looked preternaturally aware.

Opal half reached for the child, and Other Opal handed it to her.

A strange frightening tenderness swamped Opal as she held her baby self in her arms. She wanted to wrap the baby in love and safety. The baby's own feelings of fear and abandonment swept through her. When Opal was this little, there hadn't been anyone to do for her what she managed to do for the others: guard them, hug them, whisper them past their nightmares, warm them when they were cold, feed them when they were hungry. Opal was the oldest. Daddy had gone to work every day, leaving Opal home alone with Mom, who liked being pregnant but didn't like taking care of babies once they were external to herself.

At some point an aunt and uncle had moved into the guesthouse, and Mom often dumped baby Opal on them while she was out building her career as a television personality. The relatives were better about tending to Opal when she needed things than Mom had ever been. For a little while, Opal had felt cared for and beloved. But then the aunt and uncle had twins of their own, and their attention was split.

Opal learned not to need things. She grew up a little ahead of the twins. She learned how to take care of babies from watching her aunt and uncle.

The baby was quiet and still in her arms, eyes wide and watching.

Opal hugged her, filled with wordless longing for many things that had never happened.

The baby opened her mouth and screamed and cried, wracking sobs alternating with shrieks.

Opal rocked the baby and murmured to her, but nothing halted the shuddering, piercing cries. She held her out so she could see her. “What's wrong?”

“She's the first version of me,” screamed the Other Opal above the noise. “Sometimes she wants to do all the things we never did, and that's one of them. You can't shut her up once she gets started, no matter what you do. That's why I always end up freezing her.”

Opal held her smaller self as she sobbed. Each sob and cry grated against her heart. How long could this go on?

“Hours,” said her other self, even though she hadn't spoken aloud. “I've timed it. I've never ridden it out. We stored up a lot of trouble, sister. You're more patient than I am.”

Opal kissed the baby's cheek and set her in the crib, tucked the blanket around her small thrashing form. The baby paused in midscream and stared up at her with glistening violet eyes. Her cheeks were wet with tears, ruddy with crying.