Authors: Elizabeth Hand
“But somehow—” His face tilted to look up into mine, his eyes bleak. “Somehow you have come between those two Chosen Ones—”
The disdain in his voice melted, and while there was no warmth to his words they were no longer hateful. “—and somehow, somehow you saved me, when She would have devoured me.”
He turned to look at the ruined carpet beneath the window, the blackened place where the orrery had been consumed. “And I don’t understand it.” He gazed at me and I shifted uneasily.
“Me neither,” I said.
“I know.” Balthazar gave a low laugh. “That is why I am going to show you something. Something that might help you to—”
He walked away from me and gestured meaningfully. “—better understand
us.”
He stopped. Set into the paneled wall was a door. A very old door, fashioned of pale wood and surmounted by an ornate lintel where a motto had been painted in now-faded letters.
OMNIA BONA BONIS
I stared at it in horror, remembering Magda Kurtz, the hellish landscape where she had been thrust by the same man who now held me captive.
“What does that mean?”
“It doesn’t matter.”
“Where—where does it go?”
From a pocket in his stained trousers he withdrew an old-fashioned skeleton key the length of my hand. He stared at it, his eyes slitted, then turned and slid it into the door.
“Go?” he echoed. A raging wind ripped the word from him, as before us the door swung open. “It goes where I will it to go—”
Streamers of mist rushed past me into the room. I began shivering uncontrollably, and scarcely felt it when Balthazar put one hand upon my shoulder and with the other pointed at the doorway.
“Behold the world She would give you!—”
All was darkness: total, engulfing darkness, so empty and vast even the memory of dawn was swallowed by it. But what was most horrible about the abyss was that
I knew it.
Knew its enveloping airless heat and flow; knew the all-encompassing void in which I floated like a lightless star, the pulsing mass of black matter that surrounded me, swallowed me, imprisoned me within its maw. I tasted rather than smelled a hot rich odor, the stench of blood and excrement and earth. The stink of the grave but also that of the incunabulum; of the gutter, the birthing room, the byre …
The beginning place.
“It is Othiym,” Balthazar’s voice echoed through my thoughts. “She who is the mouth of the world …
“…She who is the word unspoken. Othiym Lunarsa.”
His words fell away. Then,
“Look now.” Balthazar’s breath was warm in my ear. “Can you see them?”
In the wasteland a flare appeared, crimson and faintly blue.
“There,” murmured Balthazar.
Another flame; then another, and another, and another, until everywhere I looked I saw small bursts of gold and yellow and scarlet, numerous small bonfires spread across the darkness.
“Watch,” said Balthazar Warnick. “Now they will make the night their own.”
Shadows appeared before the flames. Without a sound they began to crouch and leap around the bonfires in a sort of grotesque hobbling dance, until each small circle of flame had its lumbering cavalcade. The bonfires blazed up suddenly. I glimpsed flame-gilded antlers and hairy pelts, a leather priapus and cloven hooves, a pinioned mask formed of a screech owl’s fell. The pungent incense was overwhelmed by an earthier stink. Trampled mud; singed hair; the putrescent reek of an ill-cured hide. And sweat,
real
sweat, with no sweet undertones of soap or perfume, and the hot ripe smell of women, like brine and yeast and blood.
“Ahhh …”
A whine escaped me and I bit down, hard, to keep my teeth from chattering. The splayed black bodies and antlered heads, the shrieking ragged voices that rang out like birds of prey—they were all somehow both more and less than human. Like that awful ancient figure painted upon the wall of a cavern in the Pyrenees—antlered but with a lion’s paws, wolf’s tail and cat’s genitals and human feet, and terrible staring owlish eyes.
Le Sorcier
: The Sorceror.
“Animals,” whispered Balthazar, his disgust tinged with fear. “Always, they would be nothing more than animals …”
I recalled Angelica’s words—
The
Benandanti
aren’t into saving the shamans. They
are
the shamans.
But then why was he afraid? I hugged my arms to my chest and forced myself to gaze more closely into that empty darkness.
And I saw what Balthazar saw.
The figures leaping and shambling around the blaze were women. All of them—shadows crowned with horns and leaves, feathered dwarfs and limping cranes—all, all were women. Dark gold—skinned women tall as men, long-necked and proud; women small and somber as badgers, beating the earth with blackened hands; girls no higher than my thighs, who tripped in and out amongst the others and shrieked like hunting kestrels. And mothers with nurslings, and grey-faced women who must be carried, and cold-eyed laughing girls who bore antlered crowns and flaming brands, goading the pelted shadows that humped along before them.
“Beasts,” whispered Balthazar with loathing. “Nothing but beasts.”
I knew then what he feared.
Women’s magic.
That’s
where the real power lies,
Angelica had said.
And it was true. Because I sensed the power of blood and milk, of flesh and sinew drawn together in the potent darkness. Of spittle rounding out a lump of clay, shaping it into the squatting figure of a Mother vast enough to embrace us all; of colored powder and kohl and rouge, shaping a mask to entice and enthrall; of a lone stern figure stooped over a fiery alembic, drawing forth a glowing wire like an arrow to spear the night.
And Angelica herself, her lap full of timeworn folios and crackling tomes; Angelica in bed beside me, her breath warm upon my neck; Angelica rising slowly from black water, her breasts silvered with light, her green eyes glowing and her hair streaming behind her: Angelica in all I could imagine.
From the night country rose a wind, warm and redolent of spices. Coriander and sandalwood and galingale, and sweet as their fragrance a childish voice, chanting.
I am eldest daughter of Kronos.
I am wife and sister of Osiris.
I am she who findeth fruit for men.
I am mother of Horus.
I am she that riseth in the Dog Star.
I am she that is called Goddess by women.
Bone upon bone and the thumping of cloven staves, fingers tapping upon a hollow skull and a sudden chorus of keening voices—
Othiym haïyo!
You who rule the gates of Hell in the earth’s black heart,
golden Praxidike, first blossom of Deo,
Mother of Furies, Queen of the netherworld—
Othiym haïyo! Othiym Lunarsa!
“You see how they are,” Balthazar murmured. “Rooting in the dirt, smearing their faces with soot and filth. And there is worse than that—”
A scream ripped the night. The fires flickered out. All was utter darkness, save only this—
Upon the rim of the world a sliver of moon perched, a tiny crescent like the memory of magic. After a moment it faded. From the abyss a wind rose, cold and insistent.
“So it will always be,” whispered Balthazar as he pulled me from the edge of the portal. “She forgets that chaos begets only chaos, and cannot prevail.”
I clasped my arms to my breast, shuddering. “No.”
“No?” Balthazar’s tone was unforgiving as the wind. “Are you a fool like Mr. Crawford, then?”
“N-not of-fool
—” I said through chattering teeth. With a grunt I pulled away. Two quick steps and I stood within the portal.
Dimly I was aware of the room, a shadowy place where outlines of walls, furnishings, windows hung ghostly in the darkness. But the
real
world lay before me—eternal and empty and torn by wind.
“Listen to me, Katherine!” shouted Balthazar. “Oliver is weak! He believes that we have no power left—that our time has ended—and so he sought to align himself with our Enemy. He thought She had changed, he thought She would not destroy him; but he is wrong! We are the only ones who can save him! You
know
that—”
I hesitated, thinking of Angelica wielding the lunula as a weapon, of Balthazar rushing to Oliver’s side in the field.
“We are always the strongest, Katherine!
Force majeur,
and we always prevail. Even in this darkness—”
He swept up behind me. “Even now, we will prevail—”
In the wasteland a light appeared. Not the carnal blaze of a bonfire, but a steady glow, deep blue and shot with sparks of living green. The glow took shape, grew into a single pillar—then two—then four; until I was gazing upon the spires of a cathedral, tiny and perfect as though carved of crystal. Upon the horizon a second light appeared, and another edifice arose—a mosque this time, its dome a cobalt tear.
“Witness
our
legacy,” cried Balthazar.
As though he had sown them, more and more structures sprang up, each more intricate than the one before. Pyramids of glass and steel, glittering alcazars and raised tombs of stone, pavilions and columned temples and immense black slabs of polished jet: all shining like gems, like prisms of flame. A stone had been hurled into the abyss and the darkness shattered, and each shard shone as brightly as a sun. A chorus of voices rose from them—voices now sweet and high and clear, now deep and tolling like those drowned bells that ring the changes beneath the sea. I could not make out their words, but I understood them well enough. They were singing joy and pride and courage in the day, singing long and loud against the dark.
“Do you understand now, Katherine?” Balthazar’s laughter sounded close beside me. “There
is
no choice, really—not unless you would choose darkness and ignorance over light and order.”
I felt his hand rest lightly upon my shoulder as he went on.
“Though it does not matter—not for you, at least. I show you these things just so that you will not forget—so that you will have something to take away with you from the Divine. Something to remember us by, if you will.”
I felt a tightening in my throat. “What are you going to do with me?”
“Nothing.” Before us the lights winked out, one by one. The glorious singing faded into the wind. “I will take you downstairs, and Francis will drive you back to the city—”
“Francis!”
He made a dismissive gesture. “I have much to do now. This has taken too much time already. Someone will be contacting you about forwarding your transcripts to your parents. I have no doubt but that you will do much better at your next school.”
He turned and began to walk away from the door. I watched him, stunned, then looked back at the portal.
Beyond it loomed the abyss. As I stared the outlines of the doorway became more distinct. The wood’s grain and the faint glister of light upon the doorknob grew brighter and brighter, until what lay behind them was all but lost to view.
“Behold the world She would give you
…”
Yet could that truly be the world Angelica’s Goddess would bring?
I know enough not to buy into every idea my father taught me. Or Balthazar Warnick …
Why should the darkness be seen as evil and bleak and nullifying? Why women’s magic nothing more than rutting in the cinders? Why chaos and the end of all things?
Why is a raven like a writing desk?
“Katherine,” Balthazar said, gently but insistently, “it’s time to go.”
“No.”
Before he could stop me, I darted to the edge of the portal.
“Katherine! Get away from there—!”
Behind me lay Balthazar’s study. Somewhere in the lodge beneath us Annie slept, and Baby Joe. Somewhere Oliver slept as well, swept into the night on a tide of Demerol and hospital sheets; and perhaps even Angelica, perched on the cusp between earth and sky, dreams and waking.
That left me and Balthazar Warnick. His hands clenched as I edged away from him.
“If you step through there you will be destroyed!” he cried. “It is nothing!—”
“I don’t believe you, Professor Warnick!”
I took another step. The wooden lintel disappeared into fog. I stood upon a precipice hanging out above the abyss. “Nothing is that simple—maybe Angelica is wrong, but you’re wrong too! Or maybe you’re both partly right—”
The freezing wind howled up from the wasteland. Behind me Balthazar shouted, but his words were lost to me. Suddenly I laughed.
Because if it was a choice between the void and what lay behind me—the loss of my friends, the loss of the Divine and all its promise—then I would take my chances with whatever was down there rooting in the night. I turned to look at Balthazar—and jumped.
For an instant he was frozen in the air before me: hands outstretched, his mouth open in a wordless cry. Then it was as he said—
A raging wind, ice and darkness and the freezing air tearing my clothes from me, my flesh and hair and voice—
Nothing.
I came to in some kind of shed. Eerie blue light resolved into a wintry glare filtered through walls of translucent corrugated plastic. There was a strong sweet smell. Lemons, but
chemical
lemons. I rubbed my eyes, looked down, and saw that I was sitting on a nearly empty plastic container. Greenish liquid spilled on my boots. My stomach churned; I put one hand in front of my face and with the other pushed forward, until I felt the thin plastic give way. A door opened and I fell out onto the driveway in front of the Shrine.
“
Ow
.”
I got to my feet unsteadily. I felt light-headed and a little sick to my stomach, but otherwise okay. Above me the Shrine was booming the quarter hour; but which hour? Seven, I guessed, by the grey thin light and the scattering of cars across the parking lot. Seven-fifteen on a Sunday morning. At seven-thirty the first Mass of the day would begin.
I wiped my gritty hands on my shirt and hunched my shoulders against the cold. As I headed for my dorm I glanced over my shoulder at the utility building I’d stumbled from. Its cheap plastic door flapped open, but then the wind slammed it shut again, and I glimpsed the sign there—