Throne (17 page)

“No,” said Maribel, choking and flailing. “
No
.” She stumbled up to her feet and forward, trying to escape it, to free her mind of its influence, the overpowering hunger that was threatening to dissolve her sense of self. “Give her back. Give her back to me.” Her fury was a white, destructive heat within her. Just as Kubu had entered her mind, she lashed out at it, not with fists or nails, not with blows or crude physical violence, but with the fierce need and desire of her own. She would fight it. She would have her daughter. She would wrest her free no matter the cost.

But instead of weakening Kubu, instead of locking it in a contest of wills, her anger fed it, so that a feeling of vertigo swept through her as she sensed it growing in size, its need growing clamorous, cacophonous about her. She was lost in this darkness, disoriented. Her strength waning as she fought for breath. Her own confusion infuriated her. How was she supposed to fight it? What weapons were hers to command if not her own need and right?

“I don’t care if you hurt, I don’t care if you need, I don’t care about your pain. You are nothing to me, I want my daughter, you have no right to her,” screamed Maribel. If the darkness about her had grown colossal, then she would rise to meet it with sheer incandescence.

Kubu pressed in on her. Welcomed her blows, her hatred, her anger. She felt it rubbing against her like a cat might do to its master, twinning about her legs, arms, the rasp of its skin against her cheek. It was death, and she was in its realm. The phooka had opened the door to this darkness, and led by Isobel she had passed the souls of the dead and the damned to reach Kubu’s home, its place of strength and resting.

Sofia
, she thought, and an idea came to her. Forget Kubu. Reach for her. Her daughter, her flesh and blood, her loved one. Closing her eyes, pressing her hands against her ears, she strained outward, through the swirling cloud that was Kubu, and in search of Sofia, her essence and soul, her little spirit. It would be luminous, her spirit, glowing and pure. Somewhere here, perhaps. Her daughter.

Maribel searched the darkness, her thoughts and love pouring out and sweeping about her like the beam of a lighthouse. Nothing. She staggered to one side, back, reeling like a common drunk. Nothing. No signature, no scent, no hint of Sofia. Nothing.

“What have you done to her?” screamed Maribel. Kubu hissed and laughed, the sound plucking on her fear like fingers on exposed tendons. An image came to her then. A little skull, the cranium paper thin, incomplete, the plates not yet melded into bone. The small face, the eye sockets, the tiny nostril slits.

Sofia.

Maribel’s mind slipped away from her. From her depths came a roaring deluge of pain and hysteria that blotted out all thought. She knew it was true. Knew that Kubu was not lying, not tricking, not playing games. Kubu was death. The little death, the death before sunrise, the death before the first taste of mother’s milk. It didn’t play games, it merely took. And what it took, died.

Sofia
. Maribel lost her mind, and all went black.

Cold. A cold so harsh it burned. She was lying on freezing iron, her body shivering in a slow and erratic manner. The world began to impinge upon her. Traffic. Cars. The slurred blare of a horn held down as the vehicle drove by. A voice, just above her, speaking. Calling her name. Something was wrong. Something was gone from her, so completely gone she couldn’t seem to remember what it was. Her body was a painful slab that she didn’t want to return to. Didn’t want to inhabit. But the voice wouldn’t leave her alone.

She opened her eyes. Whiteness. Such a profound change from the black that tears came to her eyes, caused the world to fracture. Strong fingers wiped her tears away. Took her by the shoulders, pulled her up and then lowered her onto soft warmth. Somebody’s lap. Maribel struggled to find a reason to wake up. So much better to drift away. Away from what awaited her. Pain.

“Maribel,” said the voice, a woman, a hand cupping her cheek, brushing her hair back quickly. “Maribel wake up.” And then a series of quick electronic beeps. “Hello? Yes, I think I need an ambulance.”

“No,” said Maribel thickly. Not the hospital. An aversion so complete and all-consuming forced her to rouse herself. “No hospital. No.”

“Maribel?” The voice closer to her face, breath on her skin. “Maribel, what did you say?”

It wasn’t so hard, it seemed, to force herself to sit up. Not so hard, not when compared to other things. Slowly, painfully, she sat up, swung her legs down. She was on a bench. Blinked her eyes, looked blearily at the woman. She looked familiar. Soot black hair, cut close to the head. Large eyes. Isobel.

“Fine. I’m fine. No ambulance.”

A tinny voice was coming from the cell phone. Isobel held Maribel’s gaze for a heartbeat, two, and then killed the call. “Okay. Come on. We have to get you out of here. Can you walk?”

“Yes,” said Maribel, though she had no idea if she could. Isobel slipped an arm under her, helped her stand. Her legs were nerveless, and she was having trouble thinking. Remembering. Her thoughts kept slipping out from under her, her eyes kept closing. She felt so heavy, and strangely now, warm. If she could just lie down for a bit. Gather her strength. She had been through so much. Too much. She couldn’t quite recall, but still…

Isobel was talking, speaking urgently to her. They were moving, Maribel dragging her feet, leaning heavily on the helping shoulder. Down a path. Bushes. A distant wall. Traffic beyond it. Her little park. She knew it.

“Close to home. My… apartment,” she said. She managed to slur out the address, and then things went dim, distant. Like she was sinking through feathers into a warm stillness. Somehow she kept walking, putting one foot before the other. Swaying, held tightly, then helped into something warm. The smell of pipe smoke. Pipe smoke like her grandfather used to smoke in his summer home in Valencia, peeling an orange with his knife from the war, smoking and telling her long, intricate stories about the creatures that lived at the bottom of the garden.

Driving. Head so heavy it lolled on her neck. Isobel rubbing her hands with her own, but that made them sting. The car stopped. Door opened. Strong hands pulled her out, callused but gentle. Voices. Hands going into her pockets, and then up steps, held in strong arms. She pressed her head against the man’s chest. Leather jacket warm, soft against her cheek. His chin touching the top of her head, his stubble spiking through her hair to rasp her scalp.

Too hard to stay awake. Too hard. She let her eyes close, and let the world slip away once more.

This time she came gradually to wakefulness. Drifted into it slowly, gently, the world growing light about her. She was warm, her body still beneath a thick comforter. Her own bed, the mattress firm, shy of being hard. The air was warm, her face felt smooth, clean, washed. Everything was still. Her mind an empty space, a stage devoid of players, though she knew they all lurked in the wings. Memories and facts and hard, terrible truths she didn’t want to face. But for the moment, stillness, silence.

Maribel opened her eyes. Her room. The walls white, blank, stark. The curtains on the window to her left open, allowing sterilized light to enter and fall across her. She felt dazed by the silence, by the peacefulness that filled her, that made her float beneath the comforter, float within her very own body. She could lie like this forever, still, alone, silent. Solitude had never been so pure, so blessed, so needed. She could lie like this forever, watching the angle of light change against the wall, the wooden floor, widening and dying as the hours slowly gave themselves away to oblivion.

Time passed. Then a sound from outside, footsteps, a key in the front door. Maribel turned her head to watch as the door swung open and Isobel entered, two large, brown paper bags balanced against her chest, supported on a shelf made by one arm. The other dropped the keys in her pocket, and she entered, kicking the door closed behind her with her heel. The sounds were discordant, harsh. They broke the peace like jagged rocks thrown high to smash into the smooth surface of a pond.

“Oh, you’re awake,” said Isobel, stepping into the kitchen to deposit the bags on the counter and then turn to her. She smiled tentatively as she walked over, rubbing her palms on the seat of her jeans. Knelt down next to the mattress, looking down into Maribel’s face. She was wearing a red sweater over a white dress shirt, collar crisp about her neck, shirt untucked so that it hung out below the sweater.

“How are you feeling?” she asked, reaching out to brush the back of her hand against Maribel’s cheek. Her touch tender, enlivening, unwelcome. Maribel turned her face away, closed her eyes. Her serenity was shaking, shivering. Cracks were fissuring through it. Things were coming through. Thoughts, memories.

“I’ll set some water to boil,” said Isobel at last. “Some tea would be good. And I bought soup from Trader Joe’s. Some fresh bread. You need to eat.” Isobel hesitated, and then rose to her feet. “I’ll have it ready in a second. First you eat. Then we can talk.”

Footsteps moving away. Sounds in the kitchen. “I had to bring my own pots,” called Isobel, “You don’t have anything in here. Just paper plates and some mugs.”

Sofia
.

A clattering sound, and then the hiss of the stovetop being lit. Maribel felt her shoulders rising about her neck. She felt like a clock being wound, like a spring being tightened, slowly, inexorably.

Sofia
.

“You know, there’s been a man hanging around outside. Tall, handsome type. A little older? He came up to me this morning. Asked about you. Said he was your husband.” A pause, and then the sound of a knife chopping something on a wooden board. “Threatened to call the cops. I almost let him up. But I didn’t think it was my place to do so.”

Tears were running down her cheeks. It wasn’t possible. It wasn’t possible for her to be gone, truly gone, gone like everybody said she was, dead forever, never coming back. Never to look up into her face, smiling. Never to learn how to walk, to split the air with her laughter, to grow into a young girl, a woman, her daughter, her friend, a person, Sofia, Sofia Sofia Sofia.

“I… I didn’t know what to do. We’ve been gone for over two days. Two days, gone like that. And… I don’t know.” Isobel was staring down at her hands, frowning. “It all feels like an awful dream. A nightmare. Other than that guy, there didn’t seem to be anybody else to take care of you. I thought… well. I’ve not taken care of anybody since… Jen. There hasn’t
been
anybody since Jen. Not anybody that mattered. That I… cared about.” Footsteps, hesitant. “Maribel?”

A coughing sob tore through her, made her convulse. She couldn’t control it, couldn’t stop.
Gone
. Another sob, a sound coming from her throat like that of a wounded animal, so that even in the heart of her misery she wondered at it. Knees rising up under the covers to her body, hands curled like dead birds between her breasts. Isobel was by her side, sitting on the mattress, hands on her shoulders, one cupping her face even as she turned it away, buried it in her pillow.

Dead. It came then, that final image. It came, howling out of the darkness, howling with a voice that was all her own, a blend of her screams from that first night and her screams from this last. A skull. Small, delicate, impossible like the diaphanous wings of a moth, as delicate as a paper egg shell, horrendous and shattering and utterly, utterly final.

Isobel was calling to her, but her voice was drowned out in the rising tide of her grief. It kept building, building, a wave that had no limits, that would wash her away forever. Had she thought to dwell in peace, had she thought that there could be stillness, serenity, silence?

She was being held, hugged, but it didn’t matter, touched her as much as the mingling of shadows on a wall. Shaking with her guttural sobs, Maribel cried for her daughter. For Sofia, who never knew her name, never knew her mother’s face, the touch of the sun on her skin, life, any part of it, or the whole. Dead.

“There is a way,” said a voice, familiar and terrible, soft and gentle, “To redress the balance. There is a way to avenge your daughter.”

Isobel screamed. Clutched Maribel tighter, her arms suddenly as strong as a vise. Maribel opened her eyes, her heart lurching in her chest. The phooka was there. He stood, not quite in the corner of the room, dark like a sooty stain, faded tobacco skin, wispy hair hanging from his mournful goat face, white eyes pitiless and blank as the sun. Isobel was trying to scoot up against the wall, pulling Maribel off the bed, and then, through an act of supreme self-control, stilled herself, stopped. And gaped.

The phooka bowed his head, took a step forward as if entering the conversation. “Your daughter might be dead,” said the phooka, “But you can punish the one who killed her.”

“You,” said Maribel, stiff in Isobel’s arms. “You knew. You knew all along.”

The phooka didn’t respond. It simply stared at her. It’s long, fluted goat ears stuck out horizontally from its head, one of them twitching and then going still.

“That’s what took us below?” asked Isobel.

“You knew she was dead, but you took me down there anyway,” said Maribel. And there was more than just grief, she discovered. It seemed as if she was not going to be consigned only to pain. There yet was rage.

“If I had told you otherwise, would you have listened?” The phooka turned its head to one side, the bronze and brown and long black hairs that drifted down past its sternum from its chin swaying with the movement. “You had to see for yourself. Know it in your heart and blood and bones.”

“Fuck you,” said Maribel, her voice low and venomous. Isobel was still holding her tightly, holding her against her chest. Maribel ignored her completely. She wanted to hurt it. To wipe that enigmatic and slight smile from its filthy goat head. To break its horns. But. But.

“There was no one you would have believed,” it said. “You know this is true. Nothing could have stopped you until you faced Kubu itself.”

Maribel closed her eyes. She was so tired. She was trembling, trembling with strain and exhaustion and pain. Was there not going to be a time to grieve, to be left alone? Isobel tightened her arms about her. She needed to dull the edge of her grief before she could think, do anything else.