Vassa in the Night (36 page)

Sinister's free nails glance from her to me and back again. Babs groans and tenses—and then I can see her give in. Surrender loosens every line in her face, and she looks like an innocent and very tired old woman: someone's sweet grandma. Maybe even someone who
would
feed stray elephants. Erg is wrong for once, I know it. Babs's pale bobby pins are slipping out of her hair and vaporous wisps hang over her face. I might even visit her sometimes. Make sure she's doing okay.

She opens her mouth to answer.

Sinister dives between her lips fingers first, burrowing viciously. Babs gags and her bruised eyes start to bulge. One of the swans jabs its bill toward Sinister, trying to drag him back out, but he's in too deep now, the stump of his wrist stretching her lips. I can see Babs's throat bloating, the small lumps of fingertips driving up under the skin. Erg is crawling over the top of Babs's head.

“Erg! Help her!”

But it's too late. Another grotesque twist shoves out Babs's throat, and then something ejects from her open mouth.

Her tongue. I can just hear the faint wet slap as it hits the parking lot.

In the darkness beyond the motorcyclist drives around and around, as oblivious as ever. All the store's lights go out at once, and my stomach lurches up into my chest as BY's drops abruptly to its knees. We sway for a moment and then the chicken legs give way completely, the store landing on top of them so that the floor stops at a slant a yard above the pavement.

The swans are far above me now, a jumbled feathery comet soaring up into the sky. By the time they let Babs's body fall it's as small and dark as a knife blade crossing the moon.

 

CHAPTER 23

Then all that's left in the ruins are three swans with broken necks, a dead boy with gold-brown skin, and me. Hazy light from the moon and the streetlamps fills the store with topaz. There's too much glass everywhere to sit or kneel, so I wander over to the nearest swan and stare down at it for a while. It's beautiful even in its destruction. White feathers reflect distant traffic lights in an iridescent babble of colors. Its black eyes are open and staring at the end of its crumpled neck.

I can't bring it back to life, but at least I can make its corpse intact again in the same way I did for Tomin. The Sippable Sunlight gleams in my hand, and I think there's just enough. I dribble a little over the spots where its vertebrae were snapped, then gently massage the soda through its feathers. The line of the neck is already smoothing and straightening by the time I move on to the second swan, and then the third. It's the only way I have to show them my gratitude and my love: to leave them with the integrity of their perfect forms. As lovely as they were in life.

The trail of swans leads me to Tomin, half-buried in garbage. I start clearing it away. Joel's mom never got to hold his body, she never got to bury him, but I'm going to make sure Tomin goes back to his family in the best shape I can manage. I find some shredded paper towels and wipe him as clean as I can. His wounds are so completely healed that you'd never guess how he died, but his clothes are still hacked apart. Once I'm through in here I'll go search for Erg—though if she was still perched on Babs's head when the swans let the body fall, the search might be futile.

But, as Erg would say, it's time to get started. Futile or not. I stroke Tomin's hair, and he looks about as good as I could hope for. He's too heavy for me to carry on my own, but I don't want to leave him in here. I hesitate for a moment—dragging him through the rubble will mess him up again—but then I grab his shoulders and start the dismal work of hauling him out of this place.

It's not easy with all the heaps of garbage in the way. I keep having to stop and kick them aside. I've gone about a yard when I hear something that sends a flutter through my heart.

The click of tiny wooden feet.

“Hey, Vassa!” Erg says casually, jumping to perch on the top of a nearby squashed can. “The swans gave me a ride back.”

“Erg!” I yell, since there's no one left to overhear her name. “Oh, Erg, I was afraid—the last time I saw you, you were on Babs's head, and—”

“And you thought I didn't have the derring-do and presence of mind to ensure my own safety? By, like, hopping back on a swan? Jeez, Vassa.” But she's smiling. “And now you're trying to get Tomin out of the store?”

“Yeah,” I say. “It seems, like, more respectful? To get him somewhere a little more peaceful than this? But he's pretty heavy.”

“Well, have you considered that it'll be a lot more efficient if he walks?”

I stare at her, because the implications are so unbearably sweet that I can't take the risk of believing them. “Erg—look around you. Is there a single bottle that didn't get smashed? Anywhere? In this whole store?”

Erg is grinning so wide that I wonder if her head could come unhinged. “Yup,” she says. “There is precisely one.”

I follow her over the shredded boxes, the smeared jam, the puddles of stinking detergent up to the splintered door of what was once my room. The swan with the axe did quite a number in there. Even the sink has been reduced to shards of pale porcelain radiating over the floor. Scraps of the electric blanket dangle from the lightbulb, now out. There isn't much light in here, though, so my sense of the destruction is kind of approximate. I bang my shin against the edge of the cot, and puffs of stuffing drift into the air.

There's a very quiet sloshing sound near my foot. Erg giggles. I don't think she's ever been quite so pleased with herself before, and that's saying something.

I kneel down, and as my eyes adjust I can just make out the dim form of a glass bottle wound round with bandages. Erg tied the Sippable Shadow tightly to the inside of the cot's metal leg: probably the one place where it could come through the destruction unscathed.

“Brilliant!” I tell her. “Oh, Erg, you really are amazing. I'm going to start telling you that
way
more often, dollface, okay? From now on, just remind me about this whenever you want to hear how great you are.”

Erg turns away in pretend indignation, tipping her tiny nose into the air. “So I trust there will be no further episodes of your shamefully neglecting to save me pancakes?”

We're both giggling now while my nails dig at the knots. “I will make you a
house
out of pancakes if you want. Erg, God, will this really work?”

“Try it and see.” She pauses. “But, you know, you might not need to use a whole lot. Less is more and so on. Like, maybe you could remember to save enough for the swans.”

The knots pull loose and I stand up, holding the bottle. I can barely believe that it's true, that the cool glass under my fingers is really there.
Undie him.
If I knew what happened to Dexter's chunks maybe I could save him, too. I know I can't ask Erg, but she guesses what I'm thinking and she shakes her head. “Tomin and the swans were alive in, like, the normal way.”

And Dexter wasn't; he was only alive by magic. It's not the same. But in a way bringing Tomin back to life is kind of a tribute to Dexter. Giving away the secret was the final act of his tragic little life.

Erg crawls into my pocket and we head back to Tomin, to the unmoving golden length of his body, his head thrown back and his lips parted. My knees shake as I walk. If this doesn't work, the disappointment will crush me and I might never get up again.

“Oh, Vassa,” Erg sighs. “You've made it this far, right? For a human you've done really well. Don't start being a total wimp now!”

“Fine.” I can't ask her anything, but maybe I understand more than I realize. I just have to calm down, think the problem through. If this is a shadow that can bring somebody back to life, then it's obviously not the type that drags from your heels. It's more the kind of shadow that makes you who you are, the secret you carry at your heart.

A shadow that belongs on the
inside
of your body.

So the soda should go through him, not just get splattered on his corpse. I was doing it all wrong before.

I crouch down in the broken glass and touch his cold lips with the tips of my fingers. Then, very gradually, I pour a thin stream of Professor Pepper's Sippable Shadow into his mouth.

His throat contracts. He's swallowing. And now I know for sure that he's going to be just fine.

“Tomin,” I say softly. “Tomin, you can wake up now.”

His gray-green eyes turn to meet my face. He looks stunned and sleepy. “Something happened to me?” His voice sounds a little rough. His hand drifts up to his face and he sighs.

“It sure did. You … um, you lost a lot of blood. How are you feeling now?”

He stretches a little like he's getting the knack of having a body again. “I've been worse.”

No kidding.

“It's good to see you,” he adds, still staring at me. “I think I had a dream about you … You were riding a swan? Maybe? I'm trying to remember.”

I lean down and kiss him on the cheek. “You should rest for a few minutes, okay? Don't try to get up yet. Think about your dream and I'll be right back. There's some work I have to do. Okay?”

“You work too much,” Tomin slurs. His eyelids are fluttering closed. “When can you finally stop?”

I smile at him, but I don't think he sees it. “Shh. I'll stop when it's morning.”

When it's
really
morning, I mean.

I do my best to be fair with the rest of the Sippable Shadow. There's only maybe two inches left in the bottom of the bottle, so I lever open the dead beaks, one at a time, and pour a third of it down each swan's sinuous neck. In a few moments wings rustle drowsily over their backs and their dark eyes blink in my direction. If nothing else good ever happens in my life again, I think this will be enough to keep me going: that I was finally able to mend a few of the wounds in the world. The trees could all start bleeding, bombs could fall; but Tomin and the swans are healed and there's no gratitude deep enough to take that in.

“Erg,” I say. “Can you believe it? I wish—”

My mom was cremated, her ashes scattered over the sea. And when I was ten there was no Sippable Shadow handy.

Erg knows what I wish. I slip my hand in my pocket and she squeezes as much of it as she can manage.

“There's just one thing I still have to do,” I tell her. “But I don't know how.”

“I know,” Erg says. “I know you don't know how. It's going to be basically impossible for you to figure out, really. I was hoping Babs would blab, but Sinister wasn't going to let that happen. He was too mad at both of you.”

“That insane dark cavern, in Babs's apartment. That was him, wasn't it? The motorcyclist. I mean that was, like, a form of him. I saw those two golden disk things high up, and now I think I was seeing the stars in his eyes. From the inside. Maybe if I went back … Could I throw something at them? Knock them out that way? Sorry for asking, doll. I know you can't tell me.”

Erg stays quiet. She can't come out and directly give me information, but if I was on the right track I bet she'd say something vague and encouraging.
Well, gee, it's worth a try, Vassa.
I wait, but she doesn't say a word.

“Is that a completely dumb idea, Erg? Can you just say: dumb or not dumb? I guess that's really just the form he takes in the day, and without Babs to put him back there—”

Day might not come again.
If no one can hide the motorcyclist in that secret chamber, then Night will probably hang around indefinitely to be near him. Freeing the night trapped inside that imitation of a man will be the only way to bring day back at all. Why didn't we think of that in time?

Erg squeezes my hand tighter. I can feel her little wooden face pressing hard against my thumb. “Dollface? Are you okay?”

“Not really,” Erg says. I can barely hear her. “Vassa, I am really, really sad.”

Erg just doesn't say things like that. She doesn't go around announcing her feelings. It's disorienting. “You're sad? What's wrong? We just—I'm finally doing
something
right. I thought you'd be…”
Proud of me. Since Zinaida can't be.

“Can we go out in the parking lot for a minute, Vassa? I want some fresh air.”

Breeze is spilling through those shattered windows and raveling in my hair, but this isn't the moment to argue. I jump out of what used to be the door and walk over to the stump, sit down, and then set Erg on my knee. In the darkness beyond, the motorcyclist buzzes around and around just as if this was a perfectly normal night. Erg's azure eyes gaze dolefully into mine. She isn't capable of crying, but this is close enough. “Oh, Erg!”

“Will you tell me a story, Vassa? I mean a true story. You have to promise to be totally honest, though.”