Throne (33 page)

“The woman who took these photographs,” said Maribel, “Is no more. I am a continuation of her, but I have grown, changed, am now both more and less than she was. That woman, and her concerns and loves, died when Sofia died. When Kubu stole her away.”

“Maribel,
amor
, you don’t even sound like yourself,” said Antonio, striding toward her. “Please, listen to me, you must—,”

Maribel whipped out her hand and sent Antonio flying into the wall with bone crushing force. His head cracked against the wall and he flopped limply to the ground. Fell into a sitting position, head bowed, hands upturned in his lap. She turned again to Maya. Antonio had nothing to say worth hearing. This girl, however.

“The woman who took these photographs,” said Maya, “Is you.” An edge of desperation in her voice. “She didn’t die. Look at these photographs. How can you—how can you create the very problems she was fighting to expose, to prevent?” The girl was almost pleading now.

Maribel turned again to examine the photographs. Something was missing, something she wanted to see. To expose herself to. A flame in which she wished to purify herself, burn away what lingering doubts might be troubling her now. She scanned the walls, and then turned and strode past the strangers to the small corridor in the back. Past where the bar had stood, that one night, where the people had gathered in a dense knot, awaiting free drinks, and into the small, second room beyond.

There was only one print in here. It was set in the center of the wall, dominating the white space. It was large, blown up, and showed a young girl, barely a toddler, seated behind the raised lip of a door, gazing out curiously at something beyond the frame. Her little hands, so delicate, each finger perfectly and improbably articulated. Her eyes large, dolorous, filled with a grave sadness that should never appear in a child’s face. Maribel stopped, struck by the photograph’s power, a power and personal connection that she had forgotten. She couldn’t breathe. Details came flooding back to her, moments she had forgotten during that searing day when her heart had been broken.

Maya had followed her, her tread as soft as a mouse. She stood to one side in the mouth of the corridor, looking past Maribel at the photograph. Maribel heard her breath catch, and felt in that moment a feeling of kinship, that she should so appreciate what was on the wall.

“She’s so beautiful,” said Maya, her voice soft, low.

Maribel nodded. The photograph had been taken almost two years ago. The girl would be about five now, walking, speaking and laughing. Or crying perhaps, understanding the causes of her pain. If she was even alive.

“You took this photograph?” asked Maya, moving forward to stand next to Maribel. Who simply nodded again.

“Yes. We were in Timor, Antonio and I. He was working for the UN. She… she didn’t want to be photographed. I took this picture without her knowing. I felt guilty for that, after. As if I were taking something I had no right to. As if I were stealing something.”

Maya didn’t respond. Maribel’s words hung in the air, seemed to linger between them. Why had she said that? What did it matter, now? Things had changed. Everything was different now. Musing, wondering, she looked down at Caladcholg where it hung by her side.
Take Me Up
, it read.
Cast Me Away
.

Maribel lifted her eyes. Looked at the photograph, at the girl’s sweet, little face, and realized that her desire for Sofia had stemmed from this one moment. A desire to take this little girl from Timor, and shield her from the world. To protect her from pain and fear, and raise her in a world filled only with light and love. That it had been her way of rejecting a reality that she had been exposed to in the lands her husband had worked in. Had been her way of asserting the goodness of the world. Her way of believing, perhaps, that such a thing was possible.

A cold fist of uncertainty was beginning to turn within her. Her brow felt clammy, and her knees weak. She closed her eyes. She thought of her flight over the city, the pleasure she had felt. The delight in cutting people open. The blood. A part of her shrank back from those images, was disgusted. Had she really laughed as she had done those things? Had she taken such pleasure in their pain?

Maribel groaned. She stepped away, turned, fled the second room, stumbled into the first. The lights she had summoned had faded away, leaving them in the dark once more. Her feet kicked through broken glass, she stumbled, moved to a wall, pressed her forearm against it, her face into the crook of her elbow. Waited. Waited for things to stop, to still, to make sense once more.

“Maribel,” said the girl. She had followed her out. She would not have the peace she desired. “Maribel, you have to stop. This isn’t you.”

Another groan escaped her, filled with pain, a physical pain as if something were splitting her in half. Rage erupted up from within, from her very core, and she spun around. Reaching out across the space between them, she closed bands of invisible strength around Maya’s neck and slammed her down onto her knees. The young man ran at her, drawing his green sword back. With a flick, she sent the machete flying from his hands, and then threw him away from her in the same manner she had dismissed Antonio. He hit the wall hard, and fell into a sodden heap.

“What do you know?” she asked, stepping forward. “What do you know about me? Have you lost a child? Have you had it taken from you? A baby who didn’t even live for a day? I never even got to hold her. Never. She never even looked at me, knew me as her mother. I failed her, she was taken, and I let her go. I let them take her, I let
him
take her.”

Her anger was so huge it threatened to engulf her. Not just anger, no, but grief. Maya was gasping, hands at her own neck, trying to breath. Her face was growing red, her eyes screwed shut. She could kill her, Maribel thought. Snap her head off. Blood everywhere, no more questions. But she didn’t. Instead, she looked up, looked down the corridor at the large print beyond in the second room. Studied the face in the photograph. Looked down at Maya’s. Saw that the girl had stopped breathing, that she was dying now, whether or not she severed her head. Was in pain.

Sofia
, she thought, and with a cry she released the bands of power that choked Maya, and let her fall to the ground, gasping and coughing.

Maribel lifted her face. Looked up at nothing. Felt herself split, sundered by pain, by grief made fresh and raw by the black and white faces that surrounded her. Eyes large and flat and leaden, faces that had suffered as much as she, more perhaps. Witnesses to a world that was not fair, that was not right, that broke lives without thought for that which it left behind. Maribel felt tears coursing down her face, hot and searing. She had destroyed Kubu, but what had that brought but more pain and blood? The world was spinning, and she couldn’t do anything but think of her dead child, the face in the photograph.

“Sofia,” she said, and released Caladcholg from her hand.

It fell to the polished cement floor, bounced once with a clear, crystalline tang, and lay still.

Maya’s head was pounding, her throat purple and bruised, her breath rasping horribly in her throat. Still hacking coughs, she forced herself to sit upright, to look around. Death had been in the room with her but a moment ago. She had felt its presence, had known that her life had come as close to ending as it ever had. But instead. The sound of wretched sobbing. Looking over, she saw that Maribel had crumpled into a heap, was sobbing with the vulnerable openness that people only revealed when alone. The sword lay by her side, gleaming in the darkness, catching every errant ray of light and reflecting it.

Maya looked over to Kevin. He was moaning, moving his head from side to side. Still out. Antonio had sat up, was pressing his hand to the back of his head, blinking and trying to focus. There wasn’t much time. On all fours, Maya crawled over to the sword, and picked it up.

It wasn’t curved, it seemed, it wasn’t the wicked looking blade that Maribel had wielded. Instead, it was slender, as long as her arm and as light as thought. She rose to her feet, holding it before her, gazing at it with wide eyes, suddenly terrified, expectant, exultant.
Take Me Up
, ran the words.
Cast Me Away
.

Nothing happened. Maya turned to look at the others. Antonio was crawling over to Maribel, his movements disjointed, his face carved with pity and with love in his eyes. A look so focused that she knew he saw nothing but his fallen wife. Kevin was lying still, his eyes fluttering. Turning back to the blade, she raised it into the air. Waited, almost holding her breath, for some sublimation, some ascension, to become the Lady of Light and Laughter.

Nothing. After a beat she lowered the sword again. Maya’s heart was pounding, and with a winding sense of panic, she tried to feel for some power, some ability along the line and scale that Maribel had displayed. Nothing. She searched within herself for some opening, some revelation. Some new awareness.

Nothing.

“No,” she cried, fighting the urge to stamp her foot. Was she still unworthy? Was she still not good enough? Even after all she had done, all she had achieved, was she still found wanting? Irrational thoughts flitted through her mind. If she was smarter, had tried harder. In what way had she failed?

Maya lowered the blade so that its tip rested on the polished cement floor. Closed her eyes. But the blade had changed, had changed for her. It had changed its shape. Something—
think
. She was to become the Lady of Light and Laughter. The Lady of the Seelie Court. The embodiment of the Seelie, of their ways, the essence of their being.
Think
. The sword had changed for her. She had taken it up. But it was a sword, its very shape, its function, was that of an implement of destruction.

Maya opened her eyes slowly. She wasn’t a fighter. Even if she had had Caliburn with her at the battle of Battery Park, she wouldn’t have known how to use it. She’d never killed or hurt somebody in her life, not seriously, had never wanted to. She simply wasn’t a warrior. A fighter. At least, not one that turned to violence. She looked down at the blade. What was she supposed to do with a sword? It wasn’t for her. No sword ever would be.

Take Me Up
, read the words.
Cast Me Away
. Somewhere, a bell began to toll. Slow and rhythmic, each peal rolling through her like a thunderous crash of waves as heard from underwater. Maya took a breath, held it. Her path was ever the rejection of the blade, and so she let it slip from her fingers, to fall to the floor.

But it never hit. Never reached the ground. Before it could, it was gone, simply disappeared as if it had fallen into an invisible pocket. The bell was tolling louder, was joined by others, smaller and with peals more golden, more joyful. The sound was around her, filling the air, her mind. She felt the pain in her neck sluice away, her fatigue, her fear. She felt the darkness in the gallery lose its dangerous sharpness, its hard flatness. Become soft.

Maya lifted her arms. Acceptance flowed into her. Self-acceptance. She would never be more than what she was, but no longer did she wish for more. It felt like gold and green were pouring into her, as if she were a glass vessel, and, slowly, she was filling with light. The bells were tolling, and she felt brave, beautiful, strong, wise. She laughed, a sound of pure joy. Perhaps things would be all right. Perhaps things weren’t as dark as they had seemed.

Turning, she moved to Kevin. He was staring at her from where he sat slumped. His face still. She reached down to him with her hand, smiled. He reached up, closed his fingers around hers. With tender strength, she pulled him to his feet, and he rose as if weightless. She stepped forward and placed a kiss on his lips, a brief brush, and felt something flow from her to him. She stepped back, and the purple smears were gone from beneath his eyes. The unhealthy pallor. He stood straighter, more relaxed, his left shoulder no longer hunched in pain. Confused, he smiled, and she thought,
he was never ugly at all
.

Turning, she regarded Maribel. Antonio was sitting over her, had pulled her into his lap. She was crying still, but no longer the wracking sobs. With his arms around her, Antonio held his wife, his face pressed to her hair, her shoulders hunched in his lap, her cheek pressed to his knee. Maya thought of going over to them, to try to ease their pain. But theirs was a privacy and a need for growth together that interference would only ruin. Instead, she turned, and walked to the front door of the gallery. Pushed it open, and stepped outside into a great and verdant garden.

It was the glade that sat in the mercurial heart of the House of Asterion. Green and luxuriant, it swathed the street and the sides of the buildings, turned parked cars into hummocks, sent slender trunked trees spiraling up high into the night sky. Soft lights drifted amidst the bushes, and she saw shelves of vermillion fungus cutting around trunks, saw circles of white mushrooms scattered across the thick grass. The air was warm, pure, devoid of any smell but the natural. The great altar stood in the center, Caliburn lying across a sheet of green silk. Asterion stood to one side, and when she glanced at him, he bowed his head low. “My Lady,” he rumbled, and straightened, his bovine lips pulled into a smile. But her gaze was torn from him by an approaching figure, whom she recognized with leap of her heart: the Green Man.

He looked as he did before, tall and dark skinned, his hair jet black. He was dressed in a flowing white shirt and drawstring pants, and indeed the only difference lay in his eyes, which now glowed a luminous green. He looked at her, smiled, and extended his hand.

As if in a dream, Maya removed her shoes, toeing off one and then the other, and pulled off her socks. She wanted to feel this grass against her skin. Stepped out, walked toward him, and took his hand. His skin was warm, smooth. She looked up into his handsome face, and he smiled down at her.

“You’ve come,” he said. “You’re here.”