Broken Angels (34 page)

With the elimination of the seventy-eight guards and the apparent passing of most of the danger, Sprat had returned control over most of Darryl’s faculties back to him. Darryl was now faced with a mystery, and end-of-the-quest questions. Hadn’t he succeeded? What’s wrong with her?

He stood motionless, clueless about what he should be doing next as VanJill flew into the room. Darryl didn’t in any way acknowledge the arrival of the pole-pet; he didn’t flinch from the frozen girl’s gaze. But VanJill spoke, offering a solution-in-verse encapsulated within algae-tinted transparent bubbles that floated and bounced in front, behind, and all around, in close proximity at all times to the gelid statue:

“No more wondrous talk of clear-blue skies;

no more crossing rivulets of honey

and saliva. Approach closer, caress

the shoulders of The Beautiful One’s soul,

finally breaking the spell with quaking thunder,

with blind tenderness, pass a kiss

of lightning, let her eight senses

regain their reign, and fear nothing as you hear

the Divine and Peerless address you.”

After some hesitation, Darryl did as VanJill had instructed, moving forward to place his hands on the light-statue’s shoulders and his soul’s wolfish lips on hers.
No honey business this time,
he thought he heard some voice say as he continued to kiss, continued to caress, and sensed the amorous actions were having their intended effects.

Darryl soon felt the rapid change in the surface texture of the mannequin. He had to force himself to break the connection and push himself away. While the cavernous room trembled and began to shake away from monotony, Darryl watched as the frosty statue shivered, shuddered, and shook itself free of the constraint of its frozen form.

The frosted-glass appearance melted away to a surface that gave the impression of a pellucid gel as the dark forest-green weeds unstuck themselves and sunk beneath the surface. Darryl’s keen sight saw some of the weeds lodge themselves between the second and third layer of what could be considered her “skin.” Other weeds sunk deeper inside the translucent form as the statue itself slowly sank toward the floor. Darryl sank as well, keeping his head level with hers, watching her transformation.

Within the female’s figure, Darryl began to see thimble-sized versions of all sorts of bizarre and otherworldly creatures: amalgams, made up of mixed parts picked from the salt-water and fresh-water creatures on Reality’s surface. He could only presume they were, in a sense, her soul’s organs (he briefly wondered what his soul might look like inside). The water creatures floated and swam freely inside her as the dark green, leafy weeds closer to the surface of the figure sprouted flowers that pushed outward to clothe the now-free, aware, and no-longer-naked soul.

She and Darryl now hovered a few feet from the cavern’s floor. The once-frozen girl continued to stare unblinking at him, but the lips on her face finally moved.

“Why so frightened?” she asked. “Not used to seeing your actions having a stimulating effect?”

Rhetoricals. Her questions didn’t need answers, but his did.

“You’re the soul of Marie-Lydia McGillis?” Both a question to her and a statement of faint disbelief. Darryl needed reassurance he wasn’t being fooled, that he hadn’t somehow freed the wrong soul.

“No,” she said. “I am not. That girl is dead. Didn’t you see the coffin on Reality’s surface?”

Darryl couldn’t forget it. But the girl inside hadn’t been dead. She’d appeared to be hibernating, until the glass shattered.

“A victim of lies, deceit, beatings, and all of false love’s other treats,” she said, “that girl has perished and passed through to the other side, beyond love, no longer resting in peace, but understanding it all. She’s taken a more proper name for herself, for one who’s taken on the burden of ensuring A Beautiful Creation.”

VanJill produced a bubble, supplementing her words:

“The Beautiful One—

the Divine and Peerless, whose

saintly name is ****”

Hearing and reading that perverted haiku, Darryl almost felt like he was the victim of a bad joke. Marie-Lydia McGillis—the proclaimed Beautiful One—had apparently taken on a new proper name, a secret name he couldn’t hear or read, not to mention several flamboyant titles. He wondered whether he was supposed to in some way intuit the blanked-out name, or if the defrosted girl’s soul and her pet were just toying with him. Whatever torment the girl had been through, it had certainly affected her mind.

“For the ease of your mind,” the girl said, “and the comfort of your soul, you may call me ‘Marie-Lydia’ for now.”

Easy comfort—definitely a joke. Darryl’s lycanthropic face couldn’t show expressions, but something—a shift in his stance or the quick-flash of his soul’s hue to another color—must’ve been enough of a signal to the one standing in front of him.

“Have you come so far,” Marie-Lydia said, “only to express displeasure and doubt?”

Not a rhetorical. Darryl wanted to respond, but couldn’t find the words.

VanJill blew another bubble into the ensuing silence and spoke its poetry:

“Liberty’s secret: loving the work,

hating the outcome.

That’s why the accursed process goes on

and on…”

“Yes, it is hard work, isn’t it?” Marie-Lydia asked Darryl. “Liberating souls. Mine. Yours. So much easier to erase minds, isn’t it?”

“What?” Darryl said.

“Before the Killer Vees found you, lost one,” she said, “just how were you intending to spend the rest of your pointless life?”

“What?” His tone of anger doubled with the repeated word. If this was just another trial, Darryl would be damned if he’d go through it without at least attempting to defend himself. He was more than ready to do so.

“My life had meaning,” Darryl said. “I
gave
it meaning. I’d dedicated myself to giving peace, giving security to the insecure. Yes, when I was younger, and before I got sick, I slept around, but not with just anyone. Others aimed high, I aimed low—for the plains, the forgotten, the rejected and neglected, and the ridiculed. Homely and plain and plump girls that most boys wouldn’t even give the time to. I
loved
them—and, yes, I found out the hard way the error of my methods. But at least I tried to do something I thought was good. I looked for inner beauty and tried to bring it out for those who possessed it and were blind to see it. And I—”

“Yes, yes,” Marie-Lydia said, covering a feigned yawn, “I know all those boring old stories. As unconvincing now as they were then.” She cast a look upward toward her pole-pet. VanJill was perched upside-down on the shaky skull-chamber’s ceiling. The creature had begun to produce a multitude of wordless bubbles.

Darryl tried to continue his self-defense. “You don’t—”

“And I know the newer stories, too,” Marie-Lydia said. “Sad boy meets sad woman or man, fries with glad passion, then dyes her or his bad brain. And on to the next one.” She giggled. “Such a small, limited thinker you are. It’s almost a wonder you managed to summon the thoughtful power to overcome and free me.”

Darryl stifled his ruder response as Marie-Lydia turned her back on him. She began to touch and play with the objects, designs, and colors released by VanJill’s bubbles. Darryl kept silent and looked on. He’d begun to detect subtle shifts in the room’s atmosphere.

“I know you did all that you’ve done ultimately for your own redemption.” Marie-Lydia spoke without looking at him. “You’ve finally come to the right place.”

Darryl approached her, drawing her eyes back to him. “Repentance, redemption, whatever. But there’s nothing selfish about it, as you seem to be implying. I’ve been trying to erase my past mistakes.”

“By erasing others’ minds,” Marie-Lydia said.

“I was
changing
minds,” Darryl said, “preventing tragedies, before they could happen.”

“Daring all to accept what you call ‘peace,’ and reject what you call ‘love’?”

“Yes.”

“No,” Marie-Lydia said. “You did nothing but contribute to the problem. Your alleged works of charity have only harmed the cause of Harmony.”

“Bull—”

“Honey,” Marie-Lydia said, “I’ve done more good here as a frozen lump than you have as a walking, talking body.”

She turned her back to him again and took to the air, grabbing the contents released by VanJill’s bubbles and transforming them before letting them fly free to decorate some area of the trembling chamber as it slowly transitioned into something else.

Darryl wondered just what was happening. Surely he didn’t come here only to be insulted and berated. He considered the brutal obstacle course he’d recently been through: Vanessa and Veronica and their dark-room friends (presumably the “Killer Vees”), his entrance into XynKroma, the leviathan’s riddle, and the seventy-eight prison guards, whose splendorous remains were still entrapped inside his wings’ prisms. It was so much. Maybe too much. Darryl half-figured it was all for a greater good, but he couldn’t fathom just what that good might really be. He began to consider whether it had all been a vicious trick to get him to free the girl’s soul; after succeeding, he was free to be burned, buried, and forgotten.

While reflecting on his situation, Darryl picked up tones of sound in the air around him, and the faintest hints of melodies. He heard beginnings of melodies only, nothing complete. VanJill and Marie-Lydia continued to float and fly around the room, conjuring, playing, and decorating. Their actions were in some way making the music.

Darryl’s eyes met Marie-Lydia’s. She smiled and began to descend.

“Please don’t think me ungrateful for what you’ve accomplished,” she said. “You saved my soul from the prison of one even more misguided than you. I intend to return the favor.”

“How?” Darryl asked. “By having your pole-pet eat me up and shit me out?”

Marie-Lydia laughed. “No, vulgarian. By releasing you from the head-cage of bad ideas.”

VanJill blew a word-bubble and said:

“If one loves nothing that one will want nothing—

and live happily in peace…

if that one is happy being fleeced

and counting on oneself

while perpetually falling asleep.”

“Time to wake up,” Marie-Lydia said, snapping her fingers as her pole-pet’s bubble burst. VanJill went back to its decorative duties as its master stepped closer to Darryl.

“You see, I know you, Darryl Ridley. I know your entire history. A soul trapped in Xyn can’t help but learn all manners of things— histories, futures, possibilities,
arts
—whether she wants to or not. And you, so near but still off of the right path, following an incomplete scripture that led you to wander around in zero, with holey goals, accomplishing nothing remarkable, only pitiful. No gardens, just pits. You were never properly inverted; you never settled down with the right partner. But you had a reputation. There was something unique about you. You were a mystery that had to be solved. So I learned about you, saw your potential, and I was sure after you were properly seasoned, you could liberate me. And I might even be able to do a little something for you…

“So, tell me, Darryl Ridley, where would you like to go from here?”

Darryl felt he was in no position to make suggestions, and probably couldn’t even if he’d wanted to. He felt funny, as if his soul were being jabbed from the inside by dozens of needles. Was Sprat trying to communicate something to him?

“No answer?” Marie-Lydia cocked her head. “Well, then, let me make a modest proposal: you and I, we become united, as One. We become as One and work together, using all of our
talents
to recover the self-aborted child of Vastion, the child who was created and lost in the service of false love. Remember what Vastion
was
and think of what his child might
be,
with the proper parents and upbringing: an artist, a supreme Artist, who may bring the reign of Harmony to Reality.”

Her words were a torrent of metaphors.

“What are you talking about?” Darryl asked. “How?”

“Xyn is the source of all true magick,” Marie-Lydia said. “A realm constituted of the fundamental levels of Reality, a realm of
absolute
thought and
ultimate
light…For light’s most skillful manipulators and Reality’s deepest thinkers, the metaphor-made-literal is more than possible here. Mind over matter, and all that. You and I, with the right amount of concentration, through our thoughts and our actions, we can create miracles.

“If you accept my proposal, we’ll go forth from here, both of us fundamentally reformed, back to the surface of Reality, and—as One—we’ll rewrite that vile book
Death’s Heart
by living the revision. Our artistic contribution to the elect of humankind. At the same time, when here in Xyn, our souls shall work to remake and reconceive the babe—Kaprice’s and Vastion’s lost fetus—the would-be babe whose new birth and successful development will be the beginning and process of cleaning up the Flood.”

The Flood. The insane and ultimate goal of The Infinite Definite to return all of Creation to a state of primordial chaos, or something worse. “You make it sound like it can’t be prevented.”

“I do,” she said. “Because it can’t. I’ve been trapped in Xyn long enough to see and learn of both possibilities and inevitabilities.”

Darryl didn’t buy it. Nothing was preordained.

“The Creator is dying, honey,” Marie-Lydia said. “It came into being and lives only to bring Creation to completion. But the Errorists—those who are too far astray from any right or true path— they can’t let a dying God die. They want a premature death. They are impelled to mess up the process of Creation, sending it as far astray as they. Using their Dirty-Light-Magickal talents, they are intent on cracking open God’s Skull, setting off the ultimate bomb. They can’t be stopped, but their anarchic game plan can be changed, by me, and you…

“You…” Marie-Lydia began to pace, circling him. “So intent on…
changing
the minds of women”—she paused for a quick chuckle— “and some men. All for no good purpose other than to make your sorry self feel better about your sorry self. With me as your now-and-future partner-in-art, we’ll
change
the mind of the doomed Creator before it’s too late. We’ll shape the imagination of the senile old Fool whose creative process has allowed so much of nature to suffer under its false rule. And humanity—the most highly evolved creatures, who share an unbreakable psychological link to this silly deity and thus bear much of the responsibility for the state of the world today—unless we act, it may meet its end too. Humanity and its false philosophies of
love
and
peace,
and the results of the twisted thinking based on those two fundamentals: the sexism, the racism, the terrorism, the ecological rapes, the pollution, the wars… Think about those. Think about their reasons, both the stated and the real reasons behind them. The perpetrators and participants always claim to be acting out of love, not hate. They all claim to want peace, not what they actually produce.
Think
about it.”