At an intersection on St. Mark’s she saw a figure walking, a figure some twenty feet tall, a shambling hulk of a giant, draped in chains and dragging a club behind it, a club as long as a man, knotted and spiked and dyed black with old blood. The giant moved slowly, as if pressing his way forward underwater, striding down the center of the street, shaggy head passing by second floor windows. He paused, lifted his nose as if catching a scent, and then turned to look at where Maribel stood. A moment as their eyes met across the distance, and then he laughed, a deep sepulchral boom, and moved on.
“They come,” said the phooka, breaking its silence. “They come, sensing the imminence of what you are about to do. It is not carved in stone that you will succeed, but the very possibility excites them, brings them forward in time from their ancient homes, brings them from across the ocean and down from the mountains. Something stirs here, a potential, and you sit at its heart. An imminence.”
Maribel ignored it. Only its first words had mattered, had kindled the blue flames that now burned in her heart. Revenge, a chance to cause Kubu pain. She thought of Kubu’s face, the large, sunken eyes, the slit of a mouth, the ancient hunger and need. That strange, depraved innocence born of death before life. Those innocent eyes that didn’t comprehend the pain it caused, had caused, would continue to cause.
Sofia.
Voices raised in passion about her. A fight spilled out of a bar into a street as she passed the entrance, three men tearing at each other as they yelled and grunted, faces screwed up in pain and determination. Maribel walked around them, moved on. Shapes coming together in the dark corners, the recessed doorways. Inhibitions dropping. Moans of pleasure, of lust from a sinuous shape that was two people melded in the shadows. A scream of pain, rising high in the air, spiraling up, higher and higher, and then choking off.
“Around this corner,” said the phooka, stepping forward and turning to face her. His horns reflected the light of a Starbucks to their left, the green glow making the ridges seem wet, as if slick with blood. “You have followed the path to your center, and around this corner you may enter the House of Asterion.”
“That simple?” asked Maribel, amused. “I have to but turn the corner?”
The phooka bowed his head in assent. “It is not the corner you turn, understand, but yourself. In but a matter of moments, this corner shall symbolize your commitment to revenge. Will you turn it, or flee? Beyond it lies the House of Asterion, evoked and summoned by your need. Not for decades has one walked the path that you now tread, and not for more than eighty years has someone come this close. There is blood in the air, the promise of dissolution. Turn this corner, find the blade, bring it to me.”
“
No
,” said a voice, and it was Isobel, stepping out from the shadows, arms spread wide as if to stop a tide. “Last chance. Don’t do this. Maribel.” Her eyes were red. She had been crying for some time, Maribel realized.
“Why not?” she asked.
“This goes beyond words,” Isobel said. “I can feel it in a way you can’t understand, can sense how wrong this is. I’m a fucking psychic, remember? A real one? And I’m telling you, this is wrong. Profoundly wrong. Don’t trust this thing. It doesn’t want to help you. What it wants is to bring something into the world that should be left alone. Please. Forget this sword, forget Kubu. Come home with me. We’ll pick up the pieces, move on. A normal life, Maribel. Please, come back.”
Maribel stared at Isobel in silence, and then turned her gaze to the phooka, who was unable to restrain a smile. Maribel regarded it with equal coldness, and then looked back to her friend.
“No, Isobel. You don’t understand. I need to do this. I need that blade so that I can punish Kubu. Make it pay for what it has done to me. To Sophia.”
“Maribel, it won’t work like that, you don’t understand—,”
“No,
you
don’t understand,” said Maribel, taking a step forward. “This is not about right or wrong. Not in the way you understand. This is about blood. The blood of my daughter. This is about death. The death of my daughter. About revenge. I will make Kubu pay. Some things cannot be forgiven, forgotten. If I need to collect this sword to destroy it, then that is what I will do.”
Isobel’s face had turned pale. “No,” she whispered, shaking her head. People passing them by averted their faces, not wanting to stare. “I can’t let you do this.”
“I’m sorry, Isobel,” said Maribel. She didn’t feel anger, just pity. How could she expect Isobel to understand? “You can’t stop me. I’m going.” She took a step forward, and then froze.
Isobel was staring at her strangely, shivering where she stood. “No,” she said again, quietly, but with grim determination. “You’ve awoken more than just pity in me. You don’t even realize it, but—I care for you. I won’t let you destroy yourself. Not after seeing Jen. You don’t understand. I’ll do anything to keep you safe. If I have to, I’ll hold you here. I can, you know. I’ve never felt so much power. Something about you… the way I feel about you, makes me stronger than I’ve ever been.”
Isobel took a step forward, and somehow, impossibly, Maribel remained frozen, unable to move. “Being with you has made me feel things I never thought I would feel again. More than pity, or power. Love. Don’t you see? Don’t you understand?” Tears were glimmering in her eyes again. “Maribel, I love you. I can take care of you, make you better, if you’ll just let me.”
“Let me go,” said Maribel, and her words were cold stones dropped into a deep, desolate well. The city seemed to be stilling about them. Traffic, the sounds and cries, the sirens and music. As if something were holding its breath. “Let me go, Isobel.”
“No,” said Isobel. “I won’t let you. Even if it means you’ll hate me forever. Even if it breaks my heart.” She reached forward, and ran the back of her hand down Maribel’s cheek, the touch tremulous, gentle. “I won’t.”
And Maribel realized that she had no choice. Whatever Isobel was doing, she had no power to stop her. She was helpless. Rage arose within her, fierce and denying, but she remained frozen, paralyzed, unable to even blink.
Isobel’s eyes flared open with shock. A ridged horn thrust itself with terrible force and violence through her stomach, punching through layers of muscle and intestine and skin with sickening ease. Two feet worth of ridged horn, and then Isobel was rising off her feet, hands reaching down to encircle the base of the horn where it emerged from her center. Blood welling up, soaking her front. Up she went, and then Maribel saw the phooka straightening behind her.
With impossible strength and fluidity the phooka stood straight, raising Isobel above its head, impaled on its left horn. Isobel didn’t scream, but spasmed and kicked her legs, gargling and choking. Blood rained down on the phooka, fell across its muzzle, spattered and splashed over its shoulders. Reaching up, the phooka took hold of Isobel’s left arm and leg, and began to pull.
Only then did Isobel begin to scream. With brute force the phooka began pulling her sideways off its horn, tearing her in half. Muscle sheared, tore. Blood fountained into the air, a lifeblood geyser, the sound filling Maribel’s ears, the tearing, wet sound of muscle ripping, bone snapping. Isobel’s scream cut short, and then her body fell to the pavement with a wet thud. She shivered, once, twice, lay still.
Maribel raised her eyes and met the pale, milky orbs of the phooka. It was drenched in blood, its beard soaked and clotted, blood running down in rivulets over its shoulders and chest.
“I swore that I would open the ways to your desires,” it said, voice calm, low, loving. “I swore that I would let nothing bar your path.
I keep my word
.”
Maribel shook her head, mute denial, reached up to touch her face, the warm stickiness where thick drops had splattered across it. Took a step forward, looked down at Isobel. One eye was half closed, the other staring to the left.
I love you
, she had said. Blood, blood everywhere, spilling slowly across the sidewalk. Screams now, coming from all around, screams and bellows of panic, fear, horror. Maribel raised her eyes, met that of the phooka’s once more. It smiled, that sardonic smile, and she realized that it had no true conception of what it had done, of Isobel as anything other than an obstacle, a thing to be removed. Had she thought herself above it, beyond it, greater now than its petty concerns and desires?
She laughed, the sound hollow, broken, and circled Isobel’s mutilated body. The phooka circled, keeping Isobel between them. Its saturnine smile never left its muzzle. Maribel backed away, step by step, and then, before the horror could overwhelm her, she locked onto the one thing that yet remained certain, and turned and ran, not looking back, not wishing to see what would become of her friend, turned and ran with her eyes closed around the corner.
Darkness, warm and velvety, the kind found in the back of old closets behind dusty coats when the doors are pulled closed.
So many different ways to move through the world,
thought Maya.
Upside down wells, through distorted closets, through trees
…Moving slowly, hands extended before her, feet shuffling through twigs and leaf mulch, she moved into the heart of the tree. And though it was great, a vast trunk, there was no way it could be this deep; she should have pressed her hands against its far side, but no; still she shuffled forward, blind and alone.
Then: a wall of vines, of brittle leaves, thick and fibrous. Pushing against it, Maya decided she could slip through with a little effort. She wedged herself in sideways, stuck a leg out, her shoulder, and then wrested out her head. Paused, surprised, but was pushed from behind by an impatient hand, and so stumbled out into the miniature playground, rounded on all sides by looming buildings.
Guillaume was awaiting her, perched atop a seesaw, his weight insufficient to cause it to drop. Maya, brushing dead leaves from her hair, drifted forward, stopped. A small courtyard, with room enough for a set of swings, a slide, and two seesaws. A chain link fence with an open gate leading out to the street, smooth gray walls rising up on the other three sides. A bench across from her, a heavy set Japanese man frozen, hot dog held before his mouth. He stared at her through his thick, old fashioned glasses, unable to believe what he had just witnessed.
“Fuck it’s cold,” said Kevin, shouldering out after her. He rubbed his hands together vigorously, and then up down his arms. “Any chance we could get a drink before looking for this Asterion?”
Guillaume leapt neatly down from the seesaw and brushed past them both. “Come,” was all he said, his voice abrupt, commanding. Like a trail of smoke he led them out through the gate, leaving the forlorn little courtyard behind.
Night, banished by the lights and furor of Manhattan. Buses yet trawled their way down the avenues, endless cadmium yellow cabs blared their horns and swerved like dog fighting pilots from World War I. Heavily coated pedestrians rushed along the pavement, ducked into bars and restaurants, processed themselves through revolving doors that led into glittering lobbies.
Kevin leaned his head back and looked up at a great banking building. Many of the windows were still lit, despite the hour. “Man, I hate Manhattan,” he said. “Place gives me the creeps. It’s like the Terminator.”
“The Terminator?” asked Maya, stepping up next to him. “It’s a killing machine?”
“Yeah, kind of. It’s a machine all right, hidden beneath a layer of cosmetic flesh and hair. You think it’s human, you think it’s a good place to be, for a laugh or whatever, but it’s not. Cold metal and laser eyes, it’ll chew you up and grind you down.”
Maya laughed, and then saw that Kevin was serious. “Huh,” she managed. “Guess you’ve had some bad experiences here.”
“Some,” he said, and gave her a piercing look, “I guess you have too.” Then he shrugged and turned to the fox. “Okay, so how do we find the entrance to this House? We have an address?”
“No,” said Guillaume, “Nothing so prosaic. There is no set door, no window through which to creep, at least, not in the literal sense in which you mean. The doors to this House are endless, and can be found anywhere. The only way to enter is to become attuned to it, to
become
the key. And then you’ll find the first door before you, and the city left behind.”
“You know, I think I understand about less than half of everything you say,” said Kevin. “And that’s very impressive. I bet you could talk your way out of anything. In fact. Could you talk to this girl for me? She’s got me in a corner, and—,”
Maya elbowed Kevin in the ribs, shoving him aside. He stumbled, laughed, turned the stumble into a bow which he sketched for two very surprised old ladies with epic sized hats.
“Come,” said Guillaume again, and began to move. Maya tried to keep up, to walk alongside him, but he had a terrible facility for weaving through foot traffic as if it were not there. She was forced to dart and dodge around people, weaving and moving forward in bursts just to keep up. At one point she stepped off the pavement altogether and jogged alongside the shoulder of the road, till she caught up and slipped back in. Under scaffolding and around corners, across broad avenues and down side streets.
Slowly, she started to notice things. Common elements that dictated his changes in direction. A left at a flower shop, the great bouquets of roses seeming to exhale carnal health into the air, rich and fleshy in their bundles. A tight circle around the bronze statue of a man with a great dog at his heels, so vividly cast it seemed almost alive, and then up the avenue. Left at a corner where a wreath hung from the wall, candles set before it on the ground, a photograph of a young Latino stuck below, his hair combed, smartly dressed, eyes staring blindly out at the world. A sudden burst of speed as a horse drawn carriage pulled past them, and then a slow meander before a pub from whose doors came the sound of a live fiddle, laughter, voices raised and pipe smoke.
It all formed a tenuous thread, improbable connections that Guillaume seemed able to divine. Around them, about them, were other things. Things that caused Kevin to pick up his pace and stay close, eyes darting from side to side. A creature, squat and toad like, skin black and purple and tinted with green, kept pace with them for two blocks, crawling across building walls, leaping from one cornice to the other. A sense of being watched from a dark block, invisible eyes tracking their passage. A flurry of moths that streamed and spun above their heads, dripping black slime from their wings, causing Maya and Kevin to run forward, arms lifted over their heads.