The trunk gave way before her, curled in on itself and she heard Antonio gasp. Opening her eyes, she saw that a crevice had opened down the tree’s center, dark and tight but most definitely there. A wild surge of hope burst in her chest like sunshine breaking through cloud cover, and she turned to grin at Kevin who had raised a fist in victory. Behind him, breaking through the tree line, came an armored rank of mounted knights, their lances leveled, faces carved in expressions of lust and delight.
“Go!” she screamed, and clutched Antonio’s arm. He began to turn to look behind, but Kevin, acting on instinct, simply shoved him as hard as he could and sent him tumbling head first into the dark heart of the tree, and out of sight.
“Ladies first!” yelled Kevin, even as she tried to tug at his arm and shove him through.
“No! You first! It might close after me!”
“Okay, let me rephrase that,” said Kevin, beginning to grin in terror as the knights charged toward them, “Ladies fucking first!” He sheathed his sword, grabbed her by the shoulders, and wrestled her toward the crevice.
“Kevin!” she screamed, “No! Don’t risk it!”
“I love it when girls say that to me,” he said, and then leaned in close and kissed her. For a moment, the world fell away, the touch of his lips on hers blotting out the screams and sky and stars and moon, and then he shoved her, hard, and she fell into the tree and darkness.
Darkness, as before. Almost, Maya opened her mouth to scream, but the thought of opening her mouth in this darkness forced her to keep it clamped shut.
Just as she thought she was going to go mad, there was light. Or at least nuance to the darkness as she stumbled out, fighting for balance, shins banging against the edges of great earthenware pots. Antonio was before her, gasping for breath. She stumbled out into the gloom next to him, and then turned to gaze from where she had just come. The feel of Kevin’s lips on her own still burned, and she stared, pleading, with the shadows. For a long aching second, nothing happened and she felt her eyes begin to burn. Imagined him spitted by several lances, dying, blood everywhere, and then came the hollow sound of cursing as if heard through a tunnel and Kevin emerged from the corner of the room, coughing and wiping at his eyes.
With a cry she ran forward and hugged him. He stood stiff with surprise, and then she felt him hug her back, skinny arms wrapping around her. She pressed her cheek against his bony chest, and held him so tight that he began to gasp in mock protest. Eyes burning, she stepped back and stared up at him. He grinned down at her, “Man, I have the most awesome effect on the ladies,” he said, and then laughed as she lashed out to kick him in the shin. A polite cough from Antonio brought her around, and she turned to gaze at where they had emerged.
A large room, white walled, stark. At one end was a glass wall—no—massive windows surrounding a door, looking out onto a narrow street in Manhattan. The other end was a short hallway, leading to a second, smaller room. The ceiling was exposed industrial pipes and ducts, the floor polished concrete. Very modern, very clean. And the walls. Large, black rectangles on the walls.
Kevin staggered forward, moved to the front, and found a bank of light switches. Flicked them on, one by one, until there was enough light to see by, and then they turned. And looked at Maribel’s photographs.
A line of refugees walking along the shoulder of a country road, bombed out houses behind them. A woman walking in the lead, three children following behind. All of them carrying boxes, jars. The last child in the line, perhaps seven, had turned his face to the camera. Was gazing out with such solemnity and gravity that Maya felt something tighten within her.
The next photograph was a close up shot of a woman in her thirties, wrapped in a robe and sitting slumped. She looked pregnant, but her face seemed dead, devoid of spirit, of life. Her eyes were pits, her mouth slack. A cloth was wrapped around her head, and Maya realized with a start that she looked like the Virgin Mary. A pose she’d seen in the art museums, over and over again.
Another. Three children striking ridiculous poses, reminiscent of dancers, arms out flung, chins raised, hips cocked. Their eyes electric with laughter, their feet planted on broken brick, rubble and shattered furniture. Three children, laughing in the midst of the ruins of conflict.
More, and more. Maya wandered along the wall, drinking it in. Each arresting the eye, holding her, wrenching something within. When she finished the circuit, she stopped, stepped back, surveyed the lot of them. The two men were also examining the prints. Something here, an idea that had tantalized her in the grove in Battery Park. How could—how could somebody who could take such photographs revel in slaughter like she had seen mere moments ago? How could somebody who could reveal such humanity in people through her photographs… forget?
Maya felt a rising sense of urgency, desperation. The key, the key was here. Maribel was the Queen of Air and Darkness, and vice versa. Maribel was on display here on the walls, an integral part of her, her art. Her creations. Not thinking, acting on instinct, she stepped forward, gripped a photograph as large as desk by the frames, a depiction of a man with an oversized wrench, staring morosely out as he stood by mangled pipes, and yanked it off the wall. It fell to the cement ground and the glass front shattered. Shocked by her own action, Maya crouched down, picked up the large print, and tore it in half.
“
Pero que haces, cabron!
” said Antonio, running forward to tear the halves from her nerveless fingers. “What are you doing!?”
As the photograph had torn, she had felt something electric tear through the air. A burst of energy, a release. Terrified, she turned to another photograph. A massive portrait of an old woman cradling her head with skeletal hands, face withered and almost inhuman. Down it fell, yanked from its moorings on the wall. Glass shards danced and spun on the concrete, and then Antonio slammed her against the wall, his face livid, furious, bestial.
“These are hers!” he cried. “These are hers! What are you doing?”
“I am destroying them,” she screamed back. “All of them!”
“But why?” Then Kevin tore Antonio away, sent him stumbling back. He caught his balance and stood, precarious, like a candle flame in the wind. Something went from him, flowed right out. “But why? They are so beautiful. Why are you doing this?”
Maya struggled to articulate the inchoate feelings that were roiling within her. To express what was only vague intuition. “Because,
because
they are so beautiful. Because they show a side of her that she has forgotten. Denied. Because I think she is still connected to them, in some way.” She wiped her forearm across her face, distraught. “She crossed the ocean for them. She risked everything for them. They’re like her children. And she’ll know. She’ll know we’re attacking them. She’ll come.”
Antonio stared at her, not understanding, not really even listening. He turned to stare at the photographs, to take them in. “They’re so beautiful,” he said, his voice weakened, pained. “How did I not see before?”
The lights flickered. Kevin took up his blade, held it in both hands. The lights flickered, and then snapped off, plunging them into darkness.
“She’s coming,” said Maya. Fear began to crawl up her spine, to squeeze her heart. “It worked. She’s coming.”
Maribel flew, incandescent with rage. With no thought for theatrics, pleasure, new experiences or ostentation, she arrowed up 7th Avenue, distorting matter in her wake, leaving bulging cysts of bricks growing from the sides of buildings, causing cars to blow tires, for their engines to fuse, for their windows to blow away like smoke. In her passage, strangers locked lips, came to blows, tore at their own bodies with sudden frantic frenzy. She paid none of it heed. Through the darkness she scythed, guided by an unerring sense of violation, until with a couple of sharp turns she alighted before the sealed door of the art gallery, and stood still.
She had approached without thought, without consideration. Had flown here in knee-jerk response to an imperative that demanded attention. But now, here, alighting on the pavement across the street, she stilled, stopped, looked. The façade of the gallery was dark, but she could see people moving inside. The glass windows were shatter proof, but she knew that she could blow in the front at a moment’s thought, send daggers of glass whistling in to slay those inside.
But she didn’t. Something within her trembled in the balance. Curiosity warred with fear, desire warred with something else, something alien to her way of thought. A memory surfaced, of a night a few weeks past. Her mind superimposed the crowd over the now empty street, her ears heard once more the excited hubbub of the people as they gathered to see a free art exhibition, to raid the open bar, to look at each other as much as the photographs on display. The sullen, rich kids with their skinny black jeans and strange little hats, the models in improbable dresses, the businessmen loosening their ties and talking loudly of unutterably boring matters. A knot of people, gathered to see her work. Maribel Martel’s
Katabasis
.
Maribel blinked, and the voices and cigarette smoke, the artificial laughter and bodies were gone. Just the empty street. Whomever was inside was aware of her, had grown still, watched her through the glass. She stepped forward, off the curb, moving through the invisible press of people weeks gone, turning her shoulders from one side to another as she insinuated herself through the empty space, and finally came to a stop before the locked front door.
A tremulous flutter in her stomach. She had forgotten all about this. The reason for her coming, her art, her photographs. Had forgotten the months of planning that had preceded her journey here, the confrontations with Antonio, the meticulous examination of the display space and how she would arrange each and every print. How it had consumed her, and how completely she had forgotten it once she had lost something infinitely more precious.
Sofia
.
Maribel reached out with her hand, and touched the door handle. Traced a design over the lock, and heard the hiss of the metal crumbling into rust. With a touch of hesitation, she pulled the door open, and stepped into the darkness. It was her element now, but it meant that she could not see the prints on the wall.
“Maribel?” A voice, hoarse with fatigue and tension. Antonio. So this was where he had gone. She might have guessed. But there were others. A young man to her left, a green machete in his hand, standing on the balls of his feet. She knew him. Knew him from the House of Asterion. Which meant that the girl was the same, the one whose life she had almost choked out in a moment of absentminded annoyance.
She didn’t answer Antonio. Instead, she turned her attention to the walls. With but a moment’s effort she caused the studio to light up; not in the sterile, plangent harshness of the lights overhead, but with a swirling fluorescence of reds and browns that lightened around each print to a soft, lambent white. Ignoring the people, she gazed at the first.
A young man, face prematurely aged with struggle and grief, held a two year old boy in his arms. Both were bare cheated, the man muscled in a stringy manner that bespoke of hard labor and malnutrition. One face was duplicated in the other, the boy’s softness already giving way to the strain that marred his father’s.
A step, and she looked at the second. She remembered taking it, this panoramic view of a bombed factory. How the air had smelled: singed, tarred, and how, somewhere, somebody had been wailing. A distant, thready sound, constant and uninflected, as if the person had forgotten how to stop. She had asked Antonio to stop the convoy so that she could climb out and take this picture. It had taken her five minutes to feel ready to do so, and during the whole time Antonio had waited patiently for her, leaning against the car, smoking a cigarette. Not rushing her.
A third, and then a fourth. She wandered from print to print, memories coming alive with each. Each location, each person, each view and subject. The struggles she had wrestled with each night, debating her right to photograph these people, to transport their faces and misery out to the world. To make public their travails. How their lives had made her own one of high fashion, beauty and parties in Barcelona seem trivial, frivolous. Antonio’s patient voice explaining that one could not judge oneself by another’s tragedies, but rather had to live as best one could according to one’s own experiences. That she had nothing to be ashamed of.
The three people watched her. Nobody spoke, they barely seemed to breath. Maribel looked at photograph after photograph of war, famine, deprivation, abused humanity, and felt an old pride and consternation rekindle within her. Finally, she turned to look at the girl. At the two torn prints by her feet, the shattered glass.
“What right do you have to destroy my photographs?” she asked, her cold fury returning.
The girl hesitated, looked pale. “The same right that allowed you to kill tonight.”
Maribel considered her. She was trembling, she saw. She considered her words. Was this meant to be some ploy to stop her? It wouldn’t work. She destroyed because she was the Queen, that was who she was. This world was not for her, and as such, she could watch it spin and burn and bleed without care. But this girl, who was she to act as such?
“I am other than you,” said Maribel. “What I do is part of my nature, it is who I am. Where walks the Queen of Air and Darkness, death follows. Who are you to emulate me?”
“I’m Maya,” she said, raising her chin. There was some bravery in her after all, it seemed. “And you’re as much Maribel as you are this Queen.” She swallowed. “The woman who took these photographs is still inside you. Is still you. How can you destroy when you cared so much that you took these photographs?”
Maribel mused on this. Turned to regard the prints. The thought made her angry. None should question her. But something held her back. This was worth addressing. Clarifying. The girl didn’t understand, but she would. And then she would die.