Messenger of Fear (20 page)

SOMETHING INSIDE ME BROKE. CAN A SOUL break? I was hollowed out. I was nothing.

“No,” I pleaded.

And he said nothing.

“No,” I begged again.

“Mara . . .”

“No,” I said, but flat now, knowing at last that the moment had come for truth. Still, though, I bargained for some better answer, any other answer besides what I now felt as truth. “I saw her. We both saw her. We both heard her, Messenger. She has blond hair.” I grabbed a handful of my own black hair and held it out as evidence. “She’s white, I’m Asian. She’s . . . not me. Not me.”

“You were not ready for the truth,” Messenger said. “I hid it from you, with illusion and misdirection. With the face of a girl who looked nothing at all like you. You had things to learn first. You had things to understand. First.”

“Did I miss it? Am I too late?” Oriax. She was there, this time dressed head to ankle in a single, shiny black leotard. I looked down and saw that she no longer wore boots to cover her too-small feet. I saw there the truth, the glossy black hooves.

She was bending down to bring her face level with mine. “Oh, good. Oh, such lovely tears,” she said. She licked her green lips. “I would lick them off if Messenger would let me. Delicacies to be savored. The tears of remorse.” She shuddered like a person fantasizing about some imagined pleasure. “I’ll bet they are ever so bitter.”

“Leave me alone,” I said, my voice weak, my whole body sick and unsteady.

“Alone?” Oriax mocked. “Oh, little mini-Messenger, you have so much still to learn. You and I are going to be BFFs. Sooner or later, you’ll break, little girl. And I will laugh as you are carted away to the Shoals. Shall I tell you about the Shoals? Would you like me to show you around that happy, happy place? You’ll end there eventually.”

She laughed. It was a sound full of glee and madness, rage and lust. But it faded mercifully as the scene changed again. The school was gone, as was Oriax. I felt a chill breeze on my face. There was salt in the air. I knew even before I looked that I was on that beach, the one from my dream. The one from my memory.

We were alone, Messenger and me. The sand crescent was abandoned, and the sun was dropping toward the horizon, touching the thin clouds with fire.

Messenger did not rush me. He asked nothing and said nothing, content to wait. He knew what I would have to say, the words that would be wrung from me as though by some terrible torture. And finally, I said them.

“I killed Samantha Early.”

He did not speak, but he had heard, and he then released the last of his hold on my memory.

My name is Mara Todd. My birthday is July 26. I was born in the maternity ward of Tripler Army Medical Center in Honolulu. My father had been stationed there at the time.

We had moved around, like many military families. I had lived in Hawaii, Virginia, the panhandle of Florida, and when my father was deployed overseas for the last time, we moved to San Anselmo, California, because it was near where my paternal grandparents lived. My mom and dad thought it would be good for me to be close to family for a change.

Middle school had been hard for me, but when we moved to San Anselmo, I found a place for myself at Drake. It was a humane school. San Anselmo was a good place to live. Steep, wooded hills in the shadow of Mount Tamalpais—Mount Tam, to everyone who knew it. We were just north of San Francisco and south of wine country.

I had liked it immediately, and loved our house above the creek, hidden away in the trees. We’d been happy there, me, my little brother, my mom, and when he could get away on leave, my dad.

Then he had died. And that was when I began to feel that I had stories to tell. That was when I started to feel the urge to write. My teachers praised me. It was what I had that made me special, a talent.

And then, Samantha Early had leaped past me. Suddenly Spazmantha was the real thing, a soon-to-be published author, and I was . . . a kid with promise.

“I was jealous,” I said.

“Yes,” Messenger said.

“I knew. Did you see that when you looked into my soul? That I knew Samantha was troubled? I had seen her washing her hands, I’d observed her doing counting rituals. I knew she had a problem. I knew what it was called. I knew how serious it was.”

For once I was grateful for his silence.

“I knew and I used it. I knew what I was doing was wrong. I was mad at my mom for . . . I guess, for going on with her life. I was mad at the world for taking my dad. I couldn’t stand that . . . that I should lose him, and then lose the one thing I had come to care about. I did just what you said. I knew. I
knew
what I was doing.”

I listened to the waves. I breathed deeply of salt air.

“There’s one thing missing from my memories,” I said.

“Yes.”

“I need to see it.”

The beach faded as the mist flowed from the water, from the sky, from the sand beneath my feet.

I was alone. I had been alone. Back when the mist had first come for me.

“What the . . . Is this fog? What is—” I had stopped talking then when I glimpsed a figure coming toward me from that sickly yellow mist. I had squinted to see clearly, to discern first the shape and then the detail of that gaunt, pale face framed by long black hair.

I had noted the coat, the shirt, the boots, the buttons of death’s heads. The rings on his hands, one a symbol of life, the other a representation of agony.

I had looked into the blue eyes, searching for an explanation. And he had said to me, “I am the Messenger of Fear. I offer you a game.”

He had explained my very limited options to me. I could choose to play the game, and if I won, I would go free. And if I lost, I would be punished for my deeds. I would be scourged for the death of Samantha Early. I would endure my worst fear.

I had chosen to play the game. It had been grueling, all but impossible. I had been made to cross a desert wasteland and tasked to collect seven objects that would be visible, but just barely.

Seven objects, scattered on sun-blasted rocks and barely peeking out from rattlesnake holes.

A pen.

A pad of paper.

A combination lock.

A folded flag.

A gun.

A skull.

A tattered brown teddy bear.

There had been no time limit set, except that hunger and thirst applied their own unique pressures. It had taken me many hours, or at least I had experienced them as hours. Hours of wandering beneath a blistering sky, denying as I walked that I understood the significance of the objects.

But when I was done, when I held all seven objects in weary fingers, I knew.

Memory faded away and I once again beheld the beautiful Pacific, the waves gentling now as the sun turned all the world pink and orange and gold.

“I won the game,” I said.

“Yes,” Messenger said. “You were free to go. You did not.”

I shook my head, recalling that last as well, but Messenger told it to me as if it was a story I had never heard.

“I told you that you had won. That you were free to go on. And you said, ‘No.’ That you did not deserve to walk free. That you deserved to be punished.”

“Daniel was there,” I said.

Messenger displayed one of his rare, fractional, fleeting smiles that never quite became a smile. “Daniel generally is.”

“He said he had a way. He said it was not a punishment he could impose, but rather one I could choose to accept. But once I accepted . . .”

“You would be bound. You would be bound until your penance had been completed.”

I nodded. I wondered if Messenger had come to this same duty by a similar path. I believed he had. I doubted he would ever tell me the how and the why of it, but in that I proved to be mistaken. It would be a long time coming, but in the end I would know all.

“I am to be the Messenger of Fear,” I said, and my voice no longer quavered as I spoke, though this terrible truth would have left me whimpering before.

“When you have learned,” Messenger said. “When you are ready.”

I suppose I should have been accustomed to sudden changes of venue, but it still came as a surprise when I blinked, opened my eyes, and saw that I was in a place like no place I had ever known or imagined.

It was both an open and a closed space, at once vast and intimate. I felt myself to be at the bottom of a well, a cylinder driven deep into the earth. Hundreds of feet, maybe even thousands. Looking straight up, I could make out a flattened circle of stars, and even the melancholy lights of a passenger jet miles above.

The sides of this well were lined with dull golden rectangles, each perhaps ten feet tall and half as wide. All that I could see—and most were too far above me to be seen clearly—seemed to have been inscribed in careful, ornate calligraphy.

There was no other visible source of light that I could see, no lamps or sconces or torches. But there was a glow greater than could possibly have come from the cold stars, and of far warmer hues. It seemed almost that the gold itself was glowing softly.

The nearest of these tablets ended just above my head, and peering through the gloom at this, I read names. Some were easily recognized: Tom, Harley, Diana. Others were more exotic: Akim, Shadan, Caratacus. Some were in Western script; others appeared to be Chinese or Japanese, Arabic or Hebrew. There must have been thousands of names. Maybe tens of thousands.

While the well was basically circular, one wall was flattened, and on this wall no golden tablets glowed. Instead there was a hugely tall painting, or perhaps what is called a fresco—paint saturated into fresh plaster. I could see only the bottom of it clearly but still had the impression of three distinct sections.

One was a sort of group portrait, seven strong and proud people in flowing robes, their heads wreathed in a yellow mist, almost like a halo.

The second was a single female figure. She was tall, dressed in armor, with a leather skirt and greaves on the legs and arms. She held a short sword in one hand and hefted a shield with the other. She did not look as if she were pretending to be a warrior. She looked like she’d been born a warrior.

“You gaze upon the picture of Isthil, goddess of justice and wickedness.”

“I thought it might be,” I said. “This is old.”

“This place was old before the first pyramids,” Messenger said.

“Isthil is one of the seven in the other portrait,” I said.

“Yes. The Heptarchy, seven gods given dominion over the affairs of man, in service to the Source. Estrark, goddess of harvest and hunger. Gabril, god of flesh and spirit. Ash, god of peace and war. Yusil, goddess of creation and destruction. Ottan-ka, god of pain and joy.”

“Isthil makes six,” I pointed out. “Who is the seventh? The beautiful . . . well, I can’t tell if it’s male or female.”

“That is Malech. Malech is neither male nor female, for Malech is the god of pleasure and denial. Malech . . . well, you must understand that there is no peace between the gods. Some have retreated from the world, no longer necessary. Some are true to their calling. But Malech, and Ash, too, have turned against man.”

“Oriax,” I said, realizing it even as I said it. “She’s Malech’s messenger. As you are Isthil’s.”

Messenger didn’t speak, leaving my statement to stand as truth.

“The last picture. I can’t even . . . It’s just a sort of sun, or star, or . . .” I frowned. The picture of the Heptarchy and the portrait of Isthil were both realistic pictures within the limits of an earlier artistic sensibility. This last was abstract—symbolic, perhaps.

“The Source,” Messenger said.

“And what is the Source?”

“The ultimate balance, more important than any other. Each of the gods maintains a balance between ends of a spectrum. Harvest and hunger. Creation and destruction. But the essential balance that transcends every other is between existence and nonexistence. Existence is not a simple thing. It takes work. It takes balance. In our small way, we labor to maintain the balance.”

This was without doubt the most words Messenger had ever spoken to me. I understood that his willingness to answer questions was because an important lesson was being taught. This was school. I was determined to get all from him that I could.

“Where are we?” I asked Messenger. “This place.”

“This is the Shamanvold. Here on these gold tablets are written the names of all the Messengers who have served Isthil and the balance She maintains.”

I tore my attention from this overpowering display to look at Messenger. He gazed up with an expression of profoundest respect. But that respect was not simple awe. This was not worship. Rather he seemed moved and determined, but also terribly sad.

They had buried my father at Arlington National Cemetery. It is a sacred place with its row upon row of stark-white marble markers, each testifying to a man or woman who has died in service. Everyone there had been sad and reverent and respectful as they lowered the casket into the ground. But I had looked past our own funeral, past my mother and my relatives, and I had focused on the face of a very old man, an old soldier who was no part of our ceremony. He was a man who was not just seeing but remembering, knowing in his bones and to the depths of his soul what the place represented. Such sadness. But pride, too.

I was looking at that old soldier as the honor guard fired their rifles for my father. He had looked up then, seen me watching him, and raised a feeble hand in salute.

I saw now a reflection of that same sadness and pride on Messenger’s much younger face. Messenger wasn’t a visitor to this place—he was part of it, part of whatever it represented. He understood in a way that I did not, what we both were seeing.

“One day, when my service is done, my name will be inscribed here. And yours,” Messenger said. “Then we will each face a choice.” He didn’t elaborate, and I could see his briefly open expression closing down.

“I don’t understand it all,” I admitted.

A sound came from him then that I would not have thought possible: he laughed. “Nor should you, yet. As I said, not everything can be taught. Many things must be lived.” He cocked his head, looked at me appraisingly, maybe even with a glimmer of affection, and said, “Enough for now. Pain is balanced with joy, and it is time you learned something about that. There are small joys and compensations in this duty we perform.”