Luminous

by Dawn Metcalf

  He was horrified, mesmerized, awestruck. It took him many minutes before he comprehended their perfect plan, and by then, it was too late to do anything but admire it.

  His next thoughts fell like hammer blows, smashing his brain.

  Bones had made a skin of V. V could walk through blood. Bones could not do these things, but had while wearing V. Bones could make a skin of anything. Anyone. Any power could be hers. V could be dead. Could be free. Could be damned. Bones could skin them all like seals and wear their fur like sacred coats. Bones could be . . . V could be . . . He could then be dead/lost/free . . .

  Bones, the game changer, could do it all. Anything any one of them could do.

  He wouldn’t have to do anything, anymore.

  Tender sat back, stunned, in a makeshift chair and never even felt the tears fall down his face.

  chapter fourteen

  “. . . [D]eath revenges us against life, strips it of all its vanities and pretensions and converts it into what it really is: a few neat bones and a dreadful grimace.”

  —OCTAVIO PAZ

  SHE swirled into an open darkness. Shapes of light spiraled in all directions, spinning into the distance every which way.

  Squares and rectangles and ovals of various sizes shone like bright, gray windows against the black—other shapes, muted, were nearly hidden unless she stared at them out of the corner of his eye. Consuela guessed that the television-bright spots were mirrors; the shadowy ones, merely reflections, like spoons. Or pools of blood. The one behind her slowly shimmered closed as it dried.

  There was an eternity of space; mirrors mounted like glow-in-the-dark stars stuck along invisible subway-tunnel walls. They spun end over end—no up, no down—dizzying in every direction.

  The Mirror Realm, she thought. Worlds within worlds within the world of the Flow. Just how many realities are there in here?

  In the center of the mirror universe, she felt very small and very alone.

  Except, of course, for the skin she wore. V was a living, breathing film spread over her body—stretching in places, bulky in others, but very much a foreign presence and eerily mute.

  She took a tentative step with his foot, then another, and a third. Noticing that she did not always travel in a straight line, Consuela pinpointed an oval mirror, and although she walked toward it, the robin’s-egg shape corkscrewed until it hung nearly above her head by the time she reached it. She didn’t feel upside down. She didn’t feel awake.

  Consuela swallowed against the fresh panic in V’s borrowed chest.

  All she had to do was find a way out. She could slip through any of these shapes, but she didn’t trust the unblinking stares of the faceless, mundane mirrors. She kept walking, noticing that what she’d taken for scratches on the glass were really symbols, tick marks, and even initials. One said clearly RGB, another hieroglyph looked suspiciously like a mouse, and another outline was a flat hand with an eye etched into its palm. Consuela wondered how many mirror-walkers had been here before. What tied them to this world or united them in the Flow? Was there something V had in common with them? And, if there were others like V and Sissy and Tender, what about her? Had there been any skin-shaping skeletons before her?

  She touched a mirror as she wandered by, pulling his hand back as it slid through with a feeling of microfilament pressure and a Xerox line of light.

  V’s hand was wet with blood. My blood. No, his blood. And she’d left red fingerprints on the inside of the glass.

  They moved on.

  Consuela kept her eyes focused on the left, a wall that slowly rotated as she moved through the spirals of mirror space. There were hundreds—no, thousands—of mirrors in this world. She began to worry about whether she’d ever find one of V’s marks, or if she were lost, would she ever find her way out? The vacuum of sound was like an overplayed song, pressing against V’s eardrums with an echo of heavy heartbeats.

  His arm stung. His eyes, too. For whatever reason, she was scared to make a sound. Afraid, with some little-girl wild nightmare feeling, of waking something in the dark that would jump out and devour her. This seemed a place for monsters.

  She debated whether she should get out of him now, unmake V, and have him lead them both out. She’d have company. She’d know if he was okay. But she didn’t know if she could survive in here without V on, didn’t feel certain she could undo him safely at all, let alone in the Mirror Realm, and a small, greedy part of her felt powerful and confident knowing that she lay safely tucked behind someone else’s skin. The hurt was not her hurt. The heart was not her heart. V was an armor she could wear over herself, a sort of protection realized in the flesh—his flesh—over her bones.

  She saw above her a mark drawn in ink; a black letter V just as he’d said.

  Consuela dipped her face low to the surface, careful not to touch. She saw a simple bedroom with a matching bed set and neatly tucked linens; a lady’s hairbrush, journal, and hair spray adorned the vanity desk. Four layers of decorative pillows artfully filled half the bed and a rolled-weave throw rug splayed over a dark hardwood floor. The lamp was frosted glass. The fixtures, too. Consuela wondered whose room it was, but no one came in or out and she moved on.

  She wondered if these places were part of the Flow or of the world? Could V pass through anywhere, like Maddy had done in dreams? What were the limits of their powers? Could they somehow escape Tender here, if they had to hide?

  A spasm knifed his gut.

  She coughed with his lips and his throat voiced the gasp. His hands were huge and automatically pressed deep into his side. She tried to identify the feeling when a flulike rippling flared in his kidneys. She cried out, a deep growl.

  What’s happening? She stared at his hands, which shook. She felt his face prickle with sweat. Chattering teeth peppered her ears in a haunting, mariachi shiver that begged her knees to buckle, her feet to jog. She felt like he had to puke.

  V’s body was rejecting her.

  Not here, she thought sharply, wincing. Not now! Consuela had to get them safely out.

  She looked wildly with his eyes for that elusive painted V. She’d yank them outside any one of these, if she had to—she would not risk his life by hiding beneath his skin. She felt ashamed for having even thought of it, punished by God for being arrogant. But she was scared, terrified, of getting lost in this place. She had to find the mirror back to her room.

  But there were so many mirrors.

  She ran, crablike, hunched and doubled over. The pain stabbed again. Clutching his stomach, biting his cheek, she limped down the corridors of bright geometric space. A whine escaped his lips. Tears blurred his eyes.

  Consuela blinked, unable to lift her arms to wipe the wetness away, afraid that if she let go, the gaseous bubble in their gut would pop and they would both burst, splattered over curved walls that no one would see.

  Fear kept her sweating and stumbling, grimacing with his lips and grunting with his throat. She glanced around desperately for one of his marks. A little farther. Just a little bit farther . . .

  And there, like a constellation in the agoraphobic black, she saw the doorway speckled in misty dewdrops sporting the all-important V. The droplets were trapped under a sheet of matte black like a million crystal beads held in stasis by the Flow.

  Then Consuela remembered: the mirror had been painted over.

  She whimpered, beginning to crumple in half, feeling the next wave of nausea, the next push to release. They had to get out or they would die here. Now.

  There were no clear mirrors in her bathroom, but there were reflective surfaces—the faucets, the drains, the towel racks—if she could find them. Consuela squinted against the tears in his eyes and the pain spiking in his side.

  She searched around her painted-over gateway, nearly crawling from the pain, before she saw it: the sink faucet was a pale, shimmering, oblong glow. She recognized its shape. But it hung upside down, above her head, horrifyingly out of reach.

  A sudden lurch
and she swallowed back bile. No choice. No time left.

  She ran for it, diving their body sideways and up, willing it to somersault without gravity or reason like an astronaut in outer space, and she was very much surprised when it worked, condensing into a dizzying funnel.

  They sheared through on a knife of dull silver light.

  SHe fell into her bathroom, borrowed strength bleeding out of her all at once.

  Consuela, the skeleton, hit the tile floor with a clatter. V, a heavy, wet thump, landed beside her. She’d expelled him. Or he, her. Self-preservation. Alien meat. Separated, they were wholly apart and miraculously whole. They flopped around spastically like fish without breath.

  For a moment, she felt the loss, a frantic need to pull him back onto her—her into him—like a security blanket. But then she realized that he was not part of her. Not really. She forcibly kept herself to herself.

  They spent long moments coughing on the floor, using their own lungs, their own air. Thrashing and stumbling on their own hands and feet, learning to be separate and in control once more. Neither of them looked at the other.

  “Can I take a shower?” V asked the tile floor.

  Consuela waved her skeletal hand toward the closet. “Towels in there,” she said as she lurched to standing. Racing to her bundle of self-skin on her bedspread, she pressed it protectively to her chest. Consuela closed the bathroom door and heard the shower’s splash-applause.

  She shouldered herself over her body, slipping on her raiment of hair, eyes, and skin. The water changed tempo as it drummed against something solid, and Consuela tried not to think too much about V naked in her shower. Dressing quickly, she hooked her birthstone cross around her throat as the water squeaked to silence.

  She heard the glass door of the shower click open and closed, the heavy footfalls on tile and the flump of thick towels. She listened to his every step and move as he dressed. She could picture his feet slipping down pant legs. She could hear his fingers fumble with the buttons of his shirt. Consuela heard V approach the door, conscious of her consciousness of him, and how aware she was about where he was, even outside herself. When his hand touched the doorknob, she felt it on her skin.

  He opened the door shyly. V stood, wet and dressed, whole and alive. His hair still dripping, the water turned his tousles to curls. He rubbed at his face and neck.

  He tried to smile, but it was weak, unsure. “I told you that you could do it.”

  Consuela self-consciously combed her hair with her hands.

  “You okay?” she asked.

  “Well, I’ve never had anyone ‘in’ me before.”

  Consuela grinned. “I think that means you lost your virginity.”

  “Ha ha. You wish.” V laughed. Or tried to laugh. She tried, too. They sounded like crumpled paper.

  They were laughing off the nervousness, but the awkwardness remained.

  Then they were laughing off the awkwardness, but the nervousness remained.

  Ruffling his hair with one of her towels, V spoke first. “It was frightening and // intimate // nice.”

  Consuela smiled, wondering if he ever heard the thoughts he gave off. She toyed with the cross on her chain.

  “We should go,” she said.

  “Wait—” He stepped forward. Her face hovered near his chest. Consuela’s chin grazed the very edge of his shirt. She could see a button up close—black threads, four holes. She felt the warmth of his closeness. She smelled bar soap and lavender mist. V sighed and she felt his breath in her hair.

  This felt very different with skin.

  // Oh. //

  V noticed her paint-splattered room and the lack of exits.

  “Did you do this?” he asked.

  “No.” That was all she needed to say. They both frowned.

  “The obvious route’s the door,” V said.

  “I wouldn’t.”

  He sensed her nervousness. “You don’t trust it?”

  She shook her head. “No. I think Tender did something to it. Booby-trapped it, like the mirror.” Tender had wanted her to go through it. She didn’t want to go there now.

  “Okay,” V said, throwing the damp towel over the back of her chair. “So here’s the plan: you suit up in your skin of fire and we’ll go check on Sissy. Use the window.” He headed back to the bathroom, pointing. “I’ll get my mirror.”

  Consuela trailed after him. They returned into the steamy warmth of the bathroom, perfumed with her own herbal shampoo. Now V smelled like her, she thought. Or she smelled like V. Would there be something residual, like the scent of lavender soap, after she’d worn his skin? Would she be able to walk through mirrors? Could he create skins?

  V picked up the compact by the sink.

  “Tender took this and left it for you,” V said. “He probably painted all the other ones over so you’d have no choice but to use this.” He gripped the case in his fist. “Open it,” he said, handing the compact to her.

  Consuela clicked the top back and saw a small circle of oily film floating like a flattened bead.

  “It’s not a mirror . . .”

  “It’s the Flow,” V said. “Tender laced it with the Flow. Or something like it,” he said. It was shiny, black, and gummy.

  “I think that’s what he eats,” Consuela said, looking at her own palm. “What he digests.”

  “Lovely.” V grimaced and, grabbing a hand towel, wiped the surface with one hundred percent Egyptian cotton. Ghosting his breath upon it, he polished it neat, scrubbing it clean. On the towel, the darkness clung like gum. “Remind me to get a new one if we make it out of this.”

  Consuela’s smile faltered. “Don’t talk like that.”

  “I’m sorry,” he said. “I’m here. You’re here. We made it. We’re going to get out of this and we’re going to get you home.” V projected the confidence he’d always had with that promise, but now it lingered, tinged with regret.

  // Away from here/the Flow/me/Everything/I have to/I’ll have to let you go. //

  “V . . .”

  “We should really go now,” V said quickly. “I’ll head out and you get going. Be sure to bring this with you so Tender won’t get his hands on it.” He tried to look reassuring. “I’ll see you soon.”

  V lifted the case to his eye. Nothing happened. His gaze jumped erratically, searching; still nothing. V frowned, closed his eyes, opened them, and glared. Consuela eyed the clean bit of mirror.

  // No . . . //

  V shifted from foot to foot, agitated.

  “What is it?” she asked.

  “I don’t know.” He shoved the mirror at her like an accusation. “You try it.”

  “Me?” Consuela asked. “I can’t.”

  “Maybe not,” he said. “Try it anyway.”

  She took the compact and tried to ignore his eyes on her as she looked deep into her own brown windows of her soul. Consuela blinked and handed the compact back quickly.

  “Nothing,” she said. “Maybe it’s the mirror . . . ?”

  “No,” V snapped. “I can’t see it. The doorway.”

  // This can’t be happening/Not possible!/Not now! //

  He glanced around helplessly, his fingers in fists.

  Consuela searched for something to say. What she saw was a tiny white spider on the ceiling.

  “Wish,” she whispered.

  “Where?”

  “No. One of his wishes,” she said, titling her head to follow the tiny arachnid’s tread. “What was he doing here?” Consuela asked aloud. It seemed like everyone had been in her room.

  V shook his head, wiping the condensation off his face. “Probably looking for you,” he said. “Making sure you’re okay.”

  “I don’t know,” she said. “He’s Tender’s ‘best friend.’”

  Consuela felt their time growing shorter, their options shrinking, pushing to one, lone conclusion: confrontation on Tender’s terms. See you at the end of the world. And where was Wish? Was he still alive? How much did he know?
Whose side was he on?

  “Do you trust Wish?” Consuela asked.

  V dropped his eyes. “I don’t know . . .”

  “Do you trust him?”

  // Wish/Joseph/Yad/Abacus, // I don’t even trust myself. // Who set that fire? //

  “I. DON’T. KNOW!” V shouted. It rang off the tile.

  Consuela hopped her butt up on the counter, slipping a foot in the sink.

  “Well, I don’t,” she said, and slapped her hand flat against the spider.

  V slammed against the floor.

  chapter fifteen

  “Each of us dies the death he is looking for, the death he has made for himself.”

  —OCTAVIO PAZ

  “v!”

  Consuela jumped down, but her outstretched hands passed through his body as if he wore a skin of smoke. Her left palm burned. V rolled over, watching his chest move through her hands, pushing himself to sit up—looking more astounded than pained.

  “It doesn’t hurt,” he said, more to himself than her. He sounded surprised.

  Consuela met his eyes. “V?” she whispered.

  “It’s happening again,” he said vaguely. “But it doesn’t hurt.” His eyes met hers. He looked afraid to be happy, afraid to believe it. “I’m going back.”

  “Back?” Consuela said, her throat constricting around the word. “Back where?”

  V stood up, glancing through his ephemeral body.

  “Back,” he said wondrously. “Back up. Back home, I guess. Back.” His face was full of relief and an odd sort of joy. The masterpiece portrait revealed.

  The next moment, it crumpled with the sound of violin tears.

  // No! // Not now! // I can save you! //

  “V . . .” Consuela shook her head. He was dying. Living. Going back to life. “No, V . . .”

  “Consuela.” He said her name slowly. It hurt to hear it said that way. Like good-bye, despite anything they wanted. He raised his hands but they were insubstantial as ghosts. “I can feel it . . .”