Throne (16 page)

“Okay maybe we should go,” said Kevin, taking a step back. The five owls all regarded Maya with equal gravity, their black eyes gleaming like beads of crude oil in the pallid, flat expanses of their faces. But Maya didn’t feel threatened. They were too beautiful, too composed and still.

Maya took a step forward. She felt as if the moment had taken on the ethereal stillness of a soap bubble, seemingly perfect and improbable and liable to burst and end without notice. Kevin went to say something, stepping after her, reaching out to take hold of her arm, when the last of the owls arrived.

The church yard became a kinetic cacophony of birds, swirling and alighting without colliding with each other, flying in from all sides, the silence growing flurried with the beating of all the wings. Both Maya and Kevin froze. Owls were on the branches of the trees, along the railing of the garden, three atop gravestones. A moment later and all was still again, each owl seemingly carved from alabaster and gold, still and watching her. Eleven, she counted. Eleven of them.

“Yo,” whispered Kevin without moving. “I think this is a little too freaky-deaky. I’m gonna head out, okay?”

The first owl spoke, “Lady, you must attain the park to the south.” It’s voice was cultured, elegant, rich and mellifluous. Tempered, stern.

“The park?” asked Maya.

“Prospect Park?” asked Kevin.

The owls turned their heads, first the one on the far left, and then each in successive order, a ripple of attention diverting, spreading across the church ground. Tommy Rawhead had appeared around the corner of the church. Hunched over once more, he stared somberly at the owls, eyes slitted. Carving a slow, hypnotic pattern in the air before him with his razor.

“I don’t think I can run that far,” said Kevin, beginning to move to the other side of the church. “It’s not healthy to run this much.”

Maya followed him, eyes on Tommy. No matter how often she saw him, the horror of his flayed head didn’t seem to abate. Nor did the look of idiot desire in his eyes fail to chill her. The vacuous smile which surfaced now, the same smile, she was sure, that he would wear as he cut her into pieces.

The owls lifted from the branches, railing, tombstones. Wings extended, pinion feathers long and beautiful, they launched themselves forward to swirl in wide circles in the air, a maelstrom of white and singed orange, of black eyes and outstretched talons. Tommy snarled and lurched forward, an arm thrown up to protect his face as the first owl dive bombed him, talons raking bloody furrows across the flesh of his forearm. The attack was sudden, a dive that corrected itself at the last moment so that the owl swept away. Leaving room for a second to attack, and then a third.

Maya rounded the corner, ran for the gate, Kevin at her heels, both of them shooting glances over their shoulders, but Tommy failed to appear. Hitting the pavement, they began to run once more, not an all-out sprint, but a fast jog, something they could sustain for a number of blocks.

“Grand Army Plaza ahead,” puffed Kevin, “Big space, huge arch. Through that, into the park. What,” he then asked, “Is in the park?”

“Trees?” replied Maya. Kevin laughed, a raucous squawk, and put on some speed, arms pumping. They reached a cross street, Park Place, ran through it, ignoring the blare of horns. The buildings were a continuous brick wall on either side of the broad street, the ground floor an endless row of shops and stores. Copy centers, cafes, bars, hardware stores, cell phone centers and hair dressers. Each with their own faded awning, people milling about, heading home. On they ran, Maya trying to keep up, thanking Tim Tom Tot over and over in her mind for the food he had served her, the sleep she had had in his chair.

“Getting close,” grunted Kevin, who had fallen back, “Look!” Up ahead the road passed between two brick apartment complexes that stood sentinel over either side, and there was a darkness of trees beyond. Looking back, Maya saw Rawhead giving chase. The owls continued to attack him, causing him to stumble, but even as she watched, he lashed out with his razor and cut one across the body, shearing through a wing and knocking it to the ground. With vindictive vehemence, he stomped his boot into its body, and ran on. Chasing them.

Adrenaline coursed through her. She pulled ahead of Kevin, who cursed and tried to keep up. The pavement seemed endless, the trees too distant. Past a pub spilling loud rock music into the evening air, past a grocery with its produce sheltered behind a plastic screen that turned the front of the store into a greenhouse. The apartment complexes were getting close. The trees were visible up ahead. Things opened up, and Maya straggled to a stop.

Hands on knees, panting, she looked up at Kevin. “This it?” she asked. “These trees the park?”

“Ha!” he said. “Ring of trees. Around the Plaza. Getting close. Come on.”

They ran. Tempted by a subway entrance. Across roads, into the streets, along a path, past a fountain, then out the other side to run right through the triumphal arch. Broad, stately, impressive, Maya and Kevin ploughed on, Rawhead not far behind. Wanting to scream, breath ragged and red in her throat, Maya ran on, sweat running down her temples, into her eyes, her hair plastered to the back of her neck.

The Plaza was a mass of flat concrete and a tangle of broad, intersecting avenues and streets. Cars converged from all directions, circling and peeling off from the knot that was Grand Army. Huge buildings to the left, great bronze doors, but Kevin, hand pressed deep into his side, stumbled across the streets, onto separating islands, on until they reached the very far side, and then jogged past car barriers to follow a road flanked by tall, Egyptian columns into the park beyond.

“I can’t run,” said Kevin, staggering into a walk. “Can’t run. Not even. If there was a killer with a razor. Blade following. Behind me.”

Maya, panting heavily, blinking sweat from her eyes, turned and looked back. No sign of Tommy in the broad concrete expanse that was the Plaza. Looking back, she saw that the park opened up before them into a vast field of undulating swells, scuffed snow and dead grass, flanked on the far sides by thick banks of trees. Turning, she left the road that ran into the park and stepped onto the dirt, Kevin following behind.

Overhead, several shapes glided into view, passing them to circle several times in the air and then swoop off into the park. The owls. Maya counted. Seven of them. Kevin looked at her, shrugged, and they began to follow, the owls relaying back and forth, guiding them over the undulating lawn to the paths beyond, into the actual trees. Walking was a blessed relief. After a couple of minutes Maya regained her breath, but Kevin didn’t look good; his narrow face was mottled with angry patches of red, his hair was stringy with sweat, and he kept three fingers permanently pressed into his side.

“Thank you,” said Maya. “Thanks for helping.”

“I didn’t do shit,” he said. “I just ran. I think I may have screamed a couple of times. Where are we going now? Why am I still here? Are you going to pay me for all this?”

Maya couldn’t tell if he was joking. “You don’t have to come any further, if you don’t want.”

“Gah. I know. Just, well, how am I going to leave now? I’m curious. Haven’t seen—had visions, episodes—like this since I was a kid. Maybe I’ll meet Santa next. Or there’ll be an orgy going on under the trees. I saw,” he said, turning to her, expression serious, “A woman come out of a tree, once, when I was a kid. She tried to kiss me.”

“Yeah?” asked Maya, “What happened?”

“She tasted like mold, so I ran away. Never kiss a mossy bitch.”

“Oh. Good to know,” said Maya, trying not to laugh. He grinned at her, and she found herself thinking,
he isn’t nearly as ugly as I had thought
. Not attractive, but there was something. Charisma? “How long did you have those visions for?”

Leaning back, frowning in pain at the sky, Kevin replied, “Till I was eleven. That’s when they started medicating my ass. Stopped seeing visions. And freaking out. I was doped out of my brain, a walking zombie, but my old man, he was fine with that. Long as I stopped yelling about the devil coming to cut me up, and how I wanted to go flying at night with burning leopards and crap.”

They were walking along a narrow path, the owls flitting above in the gloom, but then the owls flew into the trees to their left. Maya and Kevin slowed, shrugged, left the path and followed. Winter meant that it was easy going, and they picked their way carefully over fallen branches, round spindly bushes and over small gullies. Somewhere to the west the sun was setting, and the shadows around them were growing long, melting into each other, all the colors losing their contrast and flattening out into grays and blacks, dark browns and purpley blues.

“You will be safe here,” said one of the owls, and it took Maya a few moments to locate it, perched above them, flat face gazing down. “Go ahead. Rawhead and Bloody Bones will not tempt Old Man Oak.”

“Oh,” said Maya, “Good. Thank you, for helping.” She remembered Tim Tom Tot, and suddenly shook her head, “I mean, uh—that was very timely of you guys and—“ The owl remained motionless, watching her with eyes that were holes in its white face.

“Let’s go meet Old Man Oak,” said Kevin brightly. “Sounds like a character.” He linked his arm with hers, and began to drag her forward. “Walk like this,” he said, swinging his left leg in front of her, forcing her to swing hers out wide to avoid kicking him. “And then kick your right in front of me. That’s how you have to walk when about to meet a tree man.”

Maya laughed, too tired and drained to fight it, and so they walked, arm in arm, legs crisscrossing before them in a ridiculous manner, out into the glade in which Old Man Oak stood in all his terrible age and glory.

Maribel stood, locked in her own silence. The darkness about her was absolute, hiding the walls, the ground, whatever lay above. An inky blackness without texture or gradation. Only Kubu was there with her in the void. Sitting as a toddler might, monstrous face raised to gaze up at her with eyes so painfully blue.

Kubu, Edamukku, Kirsu, Nid Libbi
, returned the phooka’s refrain. Maribel felt as if she had been transformed into crystal, a statue frozen by the very importance of the moment. She had to act, move, demand and fight, but she couldn’t. She was arrested by Kubu’s large eyes, by the frank, open, alien and terrifying gaze. Eyes that were almost too large for its baby face, eyes sunken, for all their size, into the skull, and ringed by lines of weariness, pain.

Pain. Kubu gazed up at her, and Maribel felt as if she were gazing into a whirlpool, a chasm, a sucking abyss. The features, the form, the little body and face were false, a thin mask over something monstrous, greater than her mind could understand, than her eyes would ever be able to absorb. That it wore this little body was a blessing, in that it allowed her to understand it on her own terms. She couldn’t fathom what it would look like otherwise, how its true body might appear.

“Sofia,” she managed. Her throat was dry, desiccated. Her voice a lifeless whisper. But the name gave her strength. She took a step forward. “
Sofia
.”

Kubu remained seated, blinked but once. Something seemed to curdle under its skin. Its mouth was a closed slit. Its nose pressed flat against its face.

“Give me my daughter back,” she said. She was speaking to it in Spanish. “I want her. She’s not yours. Give her back to me.”

Kubu sat still. Did it understand her? The eyes were pitiless, without any flicker of comprehension or emotion. It was like gazing into the heart of a glacier. She took another step forward. Pinpricks of rage were beginning to spark up within her, her terror rolling over into fury. This little thing, this malignant doll, this monster had taken her daughter, and now it stared up at her with a stupid, vacuous gaze and said nothing.

“Give her to me!” she suddenly cried, and rushed forward, lashing out with the toe of her shoe to kick Kubu directly in the face.

Before her foot could connect, Kubu reared back with a shriek, pulled away as if snatched by invisible ropes, up into the air, his body distending and expanding into a distorted cloud, his features splayed across the air before her, his body as broad and rippling as a sail, black smoke, eyes bulging, mouth a roaring cavern. Maribel stumbled, her kick finding no resistance, fell into the whirling storm that was Kubu, was suddenly thrashing through him.

Despair latched down on her from without. She knew her own despair, the numbing weight that robbed the world of animus, joy, and filled her with nothing but fear and dread. But this was different. This was an older emotion, simpler, starker, without nuance or overtones. The kind of primitive despair that comes from incomprehension and base fear. It fell across her like a net weighted with lead balls, and she crashed down to her knees.

Kubu
. Not its name, but a name given to it. Knowledge flooded her mind, forced in with the same subtlety and strength of a hatchet blade through the skull.
Kubu, Edamukku, Kirsu, Nid Libbi
. Ancient words for miscarriage, for the death of a child. Wails arose about her like flames, sounds heard thousands upon thousands of years ago in countless bedrooms, caverns, halls and homes, keening screams of rage and despair. A chain of mothers and fathers crying out their loss to the night, a sound mirrored down through the ages to present day, her own screams from the night in the hospital twinned and mirrored amongst them.

Kubu
. When did it die? The little one who never knew its name, who never saw the sun. She couldn’t see it any longer, the horrifying face smeared and blown away like smoke, but it was surrounding her, choking her, a miasma of pain and need. Understanding came to her, a base emotional truth. It was death, it was a particular kind of death, it was the death of the baby before it could be named, loved—made human. Dead before it could be recognized by the oldest of rituals, it had been trapped between life and death. And only in the deaths of other such children could it reproduce itself, reproduce its pain and hate, its envy and need.