The Exquisite and Immaculate Grace of Carmen Espinoza (22 page)

Maybe.

I shifted forward and shouted into the pup’s ear. When I grabbed his fur, I pulled hard and leaned as far left as I dared.
 

I wasn’t ever my mother’s punishment—I was something else entirely.

The pup made a wide sloping arc in the sky until his nose was pointing back towards the castle. “Hurry boy!” I shouted and hunched low. With a few giant flaps of his wings, we were racing back to The Between. With every passing moment, I could feel the light and energy of The Beyond slipping away. My hands lost their glow and the vibration at my core stopped. I wondered, if I was wrong, would there be any going back for myself? I had no idea if what I had planned would even work.
 

As the castle grew larger, I looked over my shoulder and saw that Ray had noticed we were no longer following him. He had turned as well and was now rocketing though the sky to catch up with me. When he saw me look, he sat up straight on his pup’s back and began shouting something into the wind.
 

I couldn’t hear a word so I turned back and urged my pup to go faster. I didn’t know if Ray would try to help me or stop me, but I wasn’t going to wait for him just to find out.

The flat top of the mountain raced up towards us and my pup gave no sign of slowing down. As the ground rose up, the wind still blasted my face with just as much force as it had before. I hugged the creature’s back and clenched my eyes shut. “You’re already dead,” I tried to reassure myself but my mind insisted on worrying about crashing.
 

At the very last moment, the pup pulled its head back and flared his wings wide. The rapid deceleration pressed me hard against his back and then I felt the jolt as his feet connected with the ground beneath us.
 

When I looked up, I saw that he had landed and come to a stop directly outside the castle’s front doors. There was no time to feel wobbly from the rough flight. “Good boy,” I whispered and slid down from his huge back.
 

As soon as my feet hit the ground, I ran for the doors and pressed against them. Behind me, I heard Ray’s pup land with a hard thunder and a swoosh of air. I turned my head and saw him jump from the pup, I pushed harder and finally felt the door begin to move.

“Carmen!” he shouted as he ran. “Stop! Don’t do it!”

He knew. The door inched a few more degrees and I slipped through onto the marble smooth floors.
 

“Carmen!”

I did not stop this time to be amazed, I sprinted across the silent floor toward the book.

The Great Balancer was on her knees staring up at the golden key. When she heard me, her head spun around and her body flew from the floor. “YOU!” she screamed and pointed her accusing finger at me. Surprised by my return, her eyes flew around the room trying to make sense of my presence and stopped when they reached the door and Ray.

“Carmen,” his eyes flicked between me and The Balancer. “Don’t do it,” he whispered. “It can’t be undone. You can’t go back.”

The Balancer turned to me, “What? What do you mean to do?”

I lowered my gaze at her and held her icy eyes with mine, “Release you.”

She stood motionless, her lips parted only slightly as she held her breath and allowed my words to wash over her. “You are lying,” she said, but she was unable to hide the desperate edge of hope that tainted her words.

“It is not a lie,” I announced. I looked at the book then back to her, “Tell me how.”

Her chest heaved with her every breath and her eyes grew wide. Here, right now, was a soul willing to fulfill her greatest desire. Her most ardent wish that she dared never expect. Someone willing to sacrifice themselves to release her from her bonds. She licked her lips.

Ray strode across the room, “Carmen,” he pleaded.

The Balancer shot her eyes towards him and held out her palm, “Snake,” she breathed. Ray’s back and neck arched suddenly, painfully. He was fighting it but his features transfigured despite his efforts. “Please, Carmen— ” was all he managed before his tongue forked and his lips pulled back and tightened into the wide mouth that reached back to his jaw. Within seconds, he lay coiled amongst the heap of his clothing.
 

“Pick up the book,” she said.
 

I leveled my gaze at her. “First— ”

“THERE IS NO FIRST! PICK UP THE BOOK!”

I closed my eyes and waited for her voice to finish its ricochet around the room. “First,” I continued, “I will balance my brother’s page.”

She narrowed her eyes at me, the tilt of her head suggesting she suspected I was trying to trick her. “He is spent,” she declared.

“Then it won’t matter to you, especially when you are about to be released.”

She thought a moment longer, still uncertain about my intentions but the taste of her freedom at her lips was too delicious to ignore. Without another word, she reached out her hand and the book began flipping pages until it came to rest on his.

I stepped up to the book and told the story that was shown to me in the epiphany pool and, at the end, added the singular detail that I hoped would change everything. When I finished, every one of my words held and remained etched across the page. Daniel’s death had been accounted for—I could only hope it wasn’t too late.
 

“Now,” her voice quavered. “Pick up the book.”

The book was enormous, larger than any I had ever held or seen. I reached for the open cover and closed it on my last words, then lifted the entire thing into my arms.
 

“Place your left hand on top and repeat these words.”

I shifted the book and cradled it in my right arm while my left hand slid over the worn leather cover.
 

“I take up this book,” she began.

“I take up this book,”

“And its burden,”

“And its burden,”
 

“And do surrender my soul,” her voice was so excited, she became breathless. “unto its keeping.”

“And do surrender my soul,” there was no going back. I looked into the eyes of the strange crystal girl before me and realized she is what I would become. Forever. Until someone chose to do what I was doing and take up the burden themselves—and she had been waiting for this moment for a very, very long time.
 

Her eyes grew wide as her chest heaved with her every labored breath, “Say it,” she hissed.

I drew a breath, “Unto its keeping.”
 

The Great Balancer’s entire face exploded into an expression of rapturous joy. Her arms raised, palms up, over head while her head tilted back, “Finally,” she sobbed and tears ran from the corners of her eyes. She began lifting off the floor, her legs and feet dangling beneath her while her white hair fanned out around her head like a fierce and flowing mane. Awestruck, I watched as the bright, crystal white of her skin and hair began to drain from her like water.
 

Her hair was black, her eyes brown, and her skin darkened from paper white into a pinkish beige and I realized, this was what she had looked like in life.
 

Suddenly, my spine spasmed—I screamed. Unbearable pain radiated like an electric signal though every nerve in my body.

My head jerked back and my mouth fell open, a deep vibration, like the one I had felt on the back of the pup but much, much stronger, began ringing through me. In front of me, the girl fell to the floor into a curled heap just as I was lifted off the ground. My hearing buzzed with an intense hum, like someone had connected my brain to a high powered electricity wire, while wave after wave of agonizing pain washed over me. It racked my soul again and again and again until my mind felt ready to explode.
 

I didn’t know what was happening, but the longer the pulsing vibration rang though my being, the more I got the sense that it was filling me up. Pushing away old things and adding in new. After awhile, the throbbing pulse slowed and the intensity lessened. When I was finally able to open my eyes again, I could see that I was being lowered back to the floor.
 

Ray stood before me, in his human form again, his face staring up at mine. Tears streamed from his eyes that were filled with wonder—and something else.
 

When my feet touched the floor, I reached my hand to him and he fell to his knees.
 

He was terrified.
 

My own hand extended out from me like a strange and alien thing. I pulled it back to my face, turned it with fingers spread wide as my eyes tracked the changes that ran past my wrists and all the way up my arms.

My once brown skin had turned a horrifying paper white.
 

“Ray?” my voice had changed. It seemed to thunder up from a place deep inside me.
 

He tilted his head up to me and looked at me from the tops of his eyes, “Your grace,” he whispered before quickly lowering his head again.

I stood and stared at him, my breath moving in and out of me with a deep and satisfying rhythm. The pain had stopped but the vibration had continued to strum though me. I could see from my hands that I had physically changed, but I could also feel in my heart that something much more significant had altered as well.
 

I felt filled up. Filled to overflowing, but with what, I didn’t know.
 

Why was Ray trembling before me? “I wish there were a mirror so I could see,” I said to myself.
 

Next to me, a tall mirror with a thick golden frame materialized. Why? From where? “Did I do that?” I asked.

“Yes, your grace,” Ray said but did not raise his head.
 

Not yet ready to face the image I would find in its reflection, I narrowed my eyes at the glamorous object and turned away. “A chair,” I said.

A simple wooden chair, exactly like the one I had envisioned in my mind, appeared next to the mirror.
 

“A table,” I said and a wooden table with scrolling legs formed right beside the chair.
 

“I say it, and it comes?”

“Yes your grace.”

“Stop calling me that.”

“As you wish your…as you wish.”

“Ray, stand up and look at me.”

He stood straight, glanced at me briefly, and returned his eyes to the floor.
 

“Why won’t you look at me?”

He swallowed, “It is…difficult.”
 

What was wrong with me? Why wouldn’t he look at me—what had I turned in to? My hands reached for my face, had I become a horrifying monster? Nothing felt out of place. My nose, my mouth, my cheekbones—everything felt the same.

I took a step towards the mirror, raised my eyes to meet the glass, and stared into the icy eyes of an exquisite, immaculate horror.
 

I didn’t breathe.

I didn’t blink.

I gazed into those crystal colored eyes and tried to fathom the image of my face, my same features, now a white so sharp I looked more severe than a porcelain doll. My hair, once long and dark brown, now stood in a wild, white halo around my head. I raised my ghostly hand, and so did the image before me. I tilted my head, and the figure in the mirror looked questioningly back into my eyes.
 

“What have I become?” I whispered.

“Divine,” Ray breathed. “You are the Great Balancer now. You now control all the power she once did.” Next to me, Ray pointed to a strange gray mass I hadn’t noticed before lying curled on the floor.
 

I turned my eyes on it and it writhed beneath my gaze.
 

“What is it?” I asked.
 

To answer my question, it lifted its head from the heap. It was the girl, the last balancer, disintegrating before my very eyes. “What will become of her?”

“Whatever you command.”

I looked into Ray’s eyes, then to the almost invisible thin mist beneath the golden key. “Daniel,” I whispered. “Come back.”
 

At first, nothing happened. Then, slowly, like a smoke swirling on a gentle breeze, the mist shifted and grew denser. I watched and waited while Daniel’s soul moved and coalesced, became more solid with every passing second until finally, his bright little soul stood before me. He looked around himself in wonder until his eyes landed on me.
 

“That’s not possible,” Ray said in astonishment.
 

When I turned my head to meet his gaze, he looked from Daniel to me in wonder. “Not even for a balancer. How…how did you do it?”

I raised my arm and pointed to the book. “When I balanced his page, made his account…I made a full account. Went beyond his physical life and even accounted for the death of his soul.”
 

Ray narrowed his eyes at me, still confused.

“And then I explained how his sister…his sister, the girl who had killed him, sacrificed her own soul so that his could come back.”

Ray walked to the book and stared down at the words still etched on Daniel’s page.
 

“My whole living life, everyday, I was shown the image of sacrifice. I never understood it, never comprehended the power of it, until we were approaching The Beyond. That’s where my eyes saw, my ears heard…my heart felt. That’s when I knew.”

Ray turned from the book and took a step towards me. “Knew what?” he breathed.

“Knew that I was forgiven…and there might still be a way to make everything right.”
 

Ray helped Daniel up onto the pup’s back.
 

From a distance, I watched him and smiled. Up high on the creature’s back, Daniel sat up straight and stared back into my eyes. He did not know me, whether it was because I had changed so much or because it had been so long, I didn’t know, but my presence frightened him, I could feel it, so I kept my distance.
 

“Goodbye Daniel,” I whispered and raised my hand.
 

The pup stretched itself tall and Ray moved out of the way as it spread its wings wide and began an awkward run towards the cliff. At the last moment, it flapped its wings just as it sailed over the edge and a second later we watched as it reappeared and began a slow climb into the dark sky above us and headed for The Beyond.