He clung to the direction of their voices as they moved away. Suddenly, he noticed the possibility of a shortcut: a wobbly footbridge that seemed to be abandoned. He stepped on it, testing its strength.
He had barely touched it when the rope that held them disintegrated, sending several bamboo stems tied together with vine braid into the void.
Max held his breath.
Fortunately, he missed the footbridge where Florence had been by a few inches, thus avoiding a deafening crash. The bamboo stems quietly sank into the Green River, immediately rising to the surface.
Max watched them float around without paying too much attention.
How was he going to find Florence? And what do you do once he’s in front of her? Whose side was she on?
In Cairo, he promised himself that he would forget it, because the ambition that was eating away at her was stronger than him and stronger than herself. She wanted so much to make a name for herself, and she was now at the heart of the secret society created by her own ancestor.
Who was she now? Whose side is she on? Was she a friend, or a traitor?
He pushed the flowing bamboo stems to the surface of the Green River, and they had almost reached where the river divided in two. He wondered if the current would push them more towards gold or towards the clearing. He noticed they branched off towards the treasure room. But as they passed under the stone gaze of the millenary colossus, the bamboo stems began to turn.
Faster and faster.
Suddenly the water opened up in a surging whirlpool. The two stems twisted so violently that the vine that connected them gave way. Then, after a futile battle, they disappeared into the dark eye of the maelstrom, never to reappear.
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29. CROSSROADS (1.5)
Florence slowly sank into the Green River, feeling delighted in the soft light. Her white robe first swelled on contact with the water, then let go and waved in the emerald, warm and creamy water.
The young woman started swimming with a smile on her face and relished entirely in this delicious gift. It was time for her mother to answer the questions Florence had, but the gentle lapping had erased them all. No part of her had any control over her body anymore. Just the present moment, and this radiant water of purity.
Her mother had told her nothing more about the initiation journey. She had simply promised her that she would understand, once she arrived where she should arrive. All she had to do was swim, follow her destiny like she would follow a current.
Florence tried to remember the journey from the clearing. Would she be able to find it, just in case? But with her sense of direction, this eventuality faded quietly with each movement in the green water.
She had never felt well-being so complete, as a laugh escaped from her throat.
What an exceptional place of beauty.
The only thought that came back, like a sweet elixir, was that of her legacy. She didn’t care about money, her family already had more than enough. Would she become the guardian of these extraordinary treasures? She had spent a large part of her life studying them, was that a sign of her destiny? This idea made her chest swell, and accelerated her breathing. Suddenly, her future was limitless.
Suddenly, she couldn’t just splash around anymore.
She had to swim.
Florence threw herself into the quiet bed of the Green River with tremendous energy. She had never been athletic, but swimming in these waters required no effort on her part. The river meandered through tunnels, sometimes went down, accelerated, decelerated. The cave was even bigger than she had imagined. Sometimes her toes touched the oily bottom, sometimes bubbles rising to the surface seemed to come from the depths of the earth itself.
She swam for maybe half an hour. Then, at the end of the tunnel, she discovered a huge cave. It took her several seconds to realize where she was: she must have swam around in a circle. She recognized the clearing, its moonlight and the huge bamboo staircase, which was no longer to her right but to her left.
On the other hand, she did not distinguish the treasures; surely they were further downstream. On the right bank, she then discovered another cavity, lit in the middle by a sharp flame. The walls were covered with golden mosaics, in Byzantine style.
She took the mosaics as yet another treasure exposed in the cave, but as she approached them, she felt something familiar.
The mosaic represented her.
Full length, like a goddess of another age, her flamboyant pink hair, the tattoos on her arms. The representation was almost twenty feet high, and above it, the gold letters against the black background spelled out her name.
Florence Ottoline Desirée Mornay-Devereux.
She had stopped swimming and floated gently, trying to find meaning in this mosaic. Then she discovered the other characters. Seven figures were thus represented in this pantheon with smooth and marbled walls. One of them was Vivant Mornay.
“The High Lights. They are the guardians of treasures, and of secrecy.”
Vatika’s voice had sounded from the abyss, and slid along the green water. Florence’s eyes were riveted on the mosaic, and kept returning to her name.
“They are the ones who preside over the ascension. This is the highest distinction of our order. We need you, Florence. It’s always been you.”
And in a cathedral voice, she commanded, “Look at the tattoos on your skin, girl.”
Florence didn’t need to look at them. A chasm seemed to open in his belly, the collision of the impossible, the recognition of an improbable coincidence, the intrusion of invisible laws and his inability to understand them.
On her left arm, a woman in a white dress floated in the water, an Ophelia in the style of 19th century English pre-Raphaelite painters. The same period of the creation of the company de Vivant.
On her other arm was an angel.
Ideas, words and images jostled in Florence’s mind, but she always came back to her name on the mosaic. She saw the priest plunging a dagger into a man’s chest, but a voice in her head whispered to her that death was like birth. A butchery, made of blood, guts and pain. The doors between the two worlds were like that. It was part of our human condition.
And his name in gold mosaics swept away all her doubts.
Florence Ottoline Desirée Mornay-Devereux.
She stood right next to another woman.
Another High Light whose name was written in gold letters.
Elizabeth Rose von Wär.
Elizabeth von Wär’s reign had ended. It was time for Florence Mornay-Devereux to take her place. So she swam to her mother, drunk with this new destiny.
“Florence!”
The voice seemed to come from her own mind at first. But she noticed that her mother looked across the Green River, her face twisted with surprise and anger.
“Florence!”
Her eyes flickered on the silhouette standing on the other side.
It was Max.
It seemed to come from another reality, incompatible with this new Florence that she had become, the woman on the mosaic.
Max was waving his arms, his words rushed into the Green River.
“Florence! The dice are loaded! Don’t believe what she tells you, women don’t choose anything, they’re attracted to gold and they drown in the river! The currents! The currents! I can get you out of this! Come on!”
He reached out to her, shining with his exquisite familiarity, and he came back for her! To the depths of this cave at the end of the world! Or was it a hallucination?
“Don’t listen to him, Florence,” her mother called out with a surly urgency in her voice. “He is not awake, he only understands the visible and he is wrong! It is time for you to move away from the lower energies, you are destined for a greater destiny. You have always known it! Listen to what your heart wants Look at your tattoos, it’s your destiny! Florence, you are the chosen one!”
Florence plunged entirely into the green water to put out the fires that raged in her head. Th
en she saw Cairo, the consequences of her actions, Max’s kiss in the dusty streets, and the moment he had walked away from her, crushing her hope with him. Then she remembered the lines written to Sixtine.
“What are you after?”
Her head broke the surface of the water and the sounds washed over her again.
“Don’t go, Florence,” her mother called out to her, notes of hysteria in her voice. “I beg you, don’t go!”
Max already had water up to his waist, and was clinging to a rock on the shore to reach out his hand. He was less than ten feet from her.
Florence plunged back into the water, welcoming the silence of the river. Her email to Sixtine was still running through her mind.
Glory, justice, fortune… It shines in our eyes and in the eyes of others, so we think it’s gold. But when you get close enough, you discover a piece of broken mirror that sparkles under the sun. The gold is elsewhere, we didn’t know how to see it.
When she surfaced again, it was as if she woke up from a long dream, surprised to have believed it for a single moment. And yet the dream had lasted a lifetime.
She swam to Max, and her smile found an echo in hers. He stretched his fingers towards her and she could already touch them, her heart in love like a buoy on the quiet waves.
She then felt ribbons of water playing with her legs, stroking them with their freshness.
The ribbons turned into powerful arms, separating her legs, rolling her pelvis.
Max’s smile faded away and her mother screamed.
“Florence stays with me! Don’t go in there!”
Then a stream of considerable force came to pick her up and pulled her into the green water. The river water entered her lungs, dislocating her limbs, suffocating her screams. The brightness of the moon falling into the clearing was the last thing she saw, undulating on the surface and shrinking in her fall. The last bubbles rushed towards her, then disappeared.
All that was left was the infinite green.
As her torso exploded with emptiness and her vision veiled in black, she saw a shape, a silhouette which approached her.
Sixtine.
IV
32
No noise. Not even silence.
No light. No darkness. No breath. Not even the need for air.
Sixtine recognized this state. It was familiar and yet the memories, like the past and the future, the senses and the visible, did not exist. Each fragment of time and each possibility formed an infinitely large and infinitely small circle at the same time. It was the present. Within the circle, the universe was born and died in one single breath, and what remained was the essential energy: love and knowledge.
Sixtine floated in this silent antechamber, without body, without mind, without life. Jessica was one with her, just like billions of other souls. There was no longer a border between her and the others.
She was, simply.
Immortal, peaceful, complete.
Did a century pass? Or only a millisecond?
There was no time left. There was no hurry; she was wrapped in the supreme gratitude of having arrived home.
Sixtine was at peace.
But this sublime ether was soon disturbed. The shapeless and invisible substance in which her soul is coiled was transformed into a dark swirl. Choral voices rose and seized the silence. As they growled, Sixtine felt that she was coming back into shape. She felt. She was breathing.
And the darkness suddenly vibrated with fear.
Nefertiti’s empty eyes filled the entire universe around her.
“The heart of your earthly existence must beat, Sixtine.”
Sixtine immediately rebelled against this presence. She regained the use of her arms, her legs. She felt the ground beneath her feet. She had to run away.
“The time has not come. You will only be happy when you have found the way.”
Sixtine grabbed the air, shouted, but her cries spread in a different dimension than the one from which Nefertiti came.
The queen was a massive entity, blocking every corner of the darkness and her mouth was distorted by anger.
“Your time has not come, Sixtine! You have to find the way! You won’t be happy until you find the way!”
Nefertiti’s voice seemed to tear her apart. Sixtine opened her eyes, but she only saw darkness.
“The darkness,” Nefertiti shouted, knowing Sixtine’s thoughts. “The darkness will lead you to your way!”
Sixtine spat, her throat strangled by panic. She tried to run in the dark, but she tripped into holes in the ground. She stood up, fell down again, hit her head.
Hell is no worse than this, Sixtine thought. But Nefertiti didn’t give her time to think.
"You will only be blessed when your destiny is fulfilled. Don’t forget me, Sixtine!”
Destiny.
The word instantly manifested the memory of Thaddeus, even more painful than the terror in Nefertiti’s empty eyes. Sixtine started running into the darkness, to escape her own suffering. Should she live in this hell with the reality of Thaddeus’s betrayal? With this love so great, even though it was poisoned forever, she wants to keep it warm in her chest?
Even though the wound was infected, she preferred this martyr to the unbearable emptiness of not knowing Thaddeus.
Suddenly, under her feet, there was nothing.
She fell.
A shock, then, against her skin, the ice and black water.
Her instinct forced her to swim to the surface, but where was the surface in this infinite night?
Her breathing stopped and her lungs calmed down. Nefertiti’s voice vanished. Her limbs stop struggling, her muscles relaxed.
Sixtine, immersed, allowed herself to be carried by the current.
The darkness was complete.
Suddenly, the depth of the water was crossed by a ray of light.
A green light.
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Sixtine opened her eyes and mouth at the same time and the air entered her lungs, tasting like water and stone.
The first thing she saw was a cliff-colored sky, lit by greenish light. She turned her head, instantly recognizing this cave.
She pushed herself up on her elbows, her silver hair dripping with water and her muscles ached.
A green halo lit up the cave as she scrambled to her feet. She took a few steps to be sure and saw the green river which flowed down below. As she descended, she noticed she was dressed like the day of the fire, when she jumped from the top of the Chrysler Building.
She sat on the bank of the river, watched it flow. She studied its waves: green, translucent, deep. There seemed to be several opposing currents. The water mixed with the lace of the rocks, sometimes stagnating in dark green puddles, or rushing into rapids.
She plunged her hand into its swirls, and the pain of Thaddeus’s betrayal, all these crimes and absences, gradually faded. As if it had been washed away by the Green River, carried away towards a horizon of rocks.
She was back here again, only she didn’t know where exactly here was.
Did she die? Was this the afterlife?
A black centipede crawled along the orange rock and Sixtine followed its slow progress with her eyes. As it approached her leg, she crushed it, pushing her foot into the rocky surface with all the strength left in her body.
Then she waited.
Finally, she slipped her foot to the side. Orange liquid spilled under the insect that was now cut in half, and she observed it for several seconds.
Sixtine rubbed her arm, her legs. There was no longer any doubt. The insect was dead.
But she was alive.
A voice was born from the Green River.
A distress call.
The last thing Sixtine saw before diving into the water was her reflection on the emerald surface.
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Max’s arms wrapped around Florence’s body and tamed the maelstrom. The next moment, the inert young woman was bathed in moonlight in the clearing. Max was at her side, strokin
g her pink hair, begging her to wake up.
She would live, Sixtine knew it.
The woman in the green dress across the river watched them intently. The presence of Sixtine seemed to both regenerate and terrify her.
“You are the twin, aren’t you?” Her voice was so smooth, yet it ricocheted maliciously against the walls of the cave. “What do they call you?”
“Sixtine.”
Vatika smiles, as for herself. “Do you want to know which bank Jessica chose, Sixtine?”
“I know what she chose. I recognize you.”
Sixtine, her teeth clenched, anger rising in her chest, had approached the shore.
“Neither,” Vatika continued, ignoring her. “Jessica refused to awaken as she refused her husband’s love. He loved her, though. Instead, she tried to kill me, and destroy everything we built here. Seth took it upon himself to get rid of her. Crime of passion, I suppose.”
Her voice had taken on a resigned accent, and the currents of the river had become angry.
“I regret that. The men here have rituals that are not always to my liking.” Vatika walked along the shore. Her fingers began to tremble and twist against her green dress. Sometimes she would turn her head, to check for a noise, or an invisible movement around her.
“Jessica imagined herself as a vengeful person,” she said, “trying to stifle the fear that was driving her voice. But it wasn’t quite her destiny. I knew there was no mistake, but it took me a while to understand why she was here.”
“She was here because you forced her,” Sixtine said. “She never came of her own free will.”
“The circumstances of her presence here have never been my responsibility, it is the responsibility of the world outside. I am talking about the underlying reason for her presence.”
Vatika had arrived at a place where the river bed narrowed. The current was fierce there. The two banks were so close that Sixtine could better read Vatika’s face. Sweat shone from her forehead, her lips trembled, and she cast furtive glances around her.
Sixtine- The Complete Trilogy Box Set Page 63