by Horn, J. D.
Jilo didn’t always take the concept of right versus wrong into account when practicing her magic, but still I came to love her and she me. My family could access exponentially more magic than Jilo ever dreamed of having, but I knew if she were here, she’d find a way to protect Colin. I wondered if I’d worry about her methods if she were still with me, or if I’d back her in whatever steps she thought might prove effective.
Still, as much as my friendship with Jilo had changed me, I knew the adulteration I’d experienced had been triggered before that encounter in Colonial. I tried to cast myself back into the girl I had been the day Maisie first brought Jackson home and introduced him to the family. I had grown so used to living on the outside of magic, on the fringe of my family, that I had become a solitary soul. Not exactly lonely, but not a part of anything either. Perhaps I’d enjoyed leading tourists around, telling them tiny white lies, because for a brief moment I was more than the center of attention; I was connected to them. Then, before things had the chance to turn messy, I was able to wave good-bye and send them off to City Market or the Pirates’ House.
Still, I’d been happy. Happy, adventuresome, curious, committed to Peter through a promise that had never needed to be spoken, but one I’d very nearly broken. When I laid eyes on the beautiful lie that was Jackson, I saw my own magic in him. A magic that had been stolen from me. I loved the magic, and because I loved it, I, for a brief and foolish moment, had believed I loved Jackson. My callousness toward Peter drove him to take desperate measures to win me over, the result of which was the beautiful being I now nurtured in my womb.
I placed my hands on my stomach and sent all the love in the world to the little boy growing inside me. “You’re gonna be all right, baby. We both will. Mama promises.” I whispered the words knowing full well I couldn’t really make that guarantee, but my love was so strong I felt sure it had to count for something. I felt an incomparable joy when I felt my feelings being returned. Colin believed me. More than that, he believed in me. He knew I was not simply going to give up on him and let him fade away, regardless of what his fairy grandmother had told me. I opened myself with all my heart and soul to my child. I made a promise then and there, that no matter what, I’d do what it took to protect him, to make sure he had the chance of having a life in this world, even if his life turned out to be every bit as messy and confusing as his mama’s.
As my soul resolved to protect him at any cost, I felt a tug. An unfamiliar and powerful magic called to me. I recognized the magic’s source by the fact it felt so entirely different from my own. This power was wholly alien in every sense of the word. Gudrun was nearby, and she called to me.
Still, it felt like an invitation, not a summons. A promise of assistance, of security, of enough power to take care of myself and those I loved. Enough power to save my son.
“No, this is all your fault. Josef may have set the fire, but you wove the spell that killed Claire and Colin,” I said aloud as if Gudrun were there with me. Iris shifted, but did not wake. “My son lost his father trying to ease his father’s pain, a pain you caused. And now . . .” My words failed me as I couldn’t, wouldn’t, allow myself to give voice to the idea that I might now lose my son.
Gudrun’s answer came to me through impressions rather than words. A declaration of innocence. A promise of retribution against the guilty. A tickling reminder of how those who should be my allies had betrayed—and continued to betray—me was woven into the fabric of the calling. An offer of camaraderie. Hadn’t we both suffered at the hands of the line’s other anchors? Wasn’t it true that we two were somehow special? Those who should have rightly formed a sure foundation beneath our feet had bound themselves together in their attempt to weigh us down. Yes, we had much in common.
I knew it would be foolish to answer the summons. Gudrun’s magic came from a place of darkness, a place I’d never want to visit. My good sense screamed out at me to wake my aunt, tell her what I was experiencing, but my good sense had no idea of how to protect Colin. If Gudrun had even the flimsiest of ideas how I could save my son, I had to take the risk. I had to hear her out. I waved my hands down the length of my body, and my nakedness was traded for street clothes.
I closed my eyes and focused on the tug. I had no idea to which unholy realm it might lead me, but I would walk barefoot over the coals of hell, the real one, if there were indeed such a place, to give my boy a chance of being born. I heard the familiar sound of a tourist trolley loudspeaker and opened my eyes to find myself in Oglethorpe Park, standing beneath the tree Peter and I had long known as the “climbing tree,” the very spot where we had wed only months before.
On that day Peter had asked me, “I’ll meet you beneath the climbing tree?”
“Always and for the rest of my life.” That had been my response. I touched the bark of the climbing tree’s trunk and asked it to remember that day for me, even if everyone else let it slip away.
Like a magnet collecting iron shavings, I felt my attention being pulled away from the tree, away from the memory. There, on a nearby bench, Gudrun sat with her back toward me. She held up a hand and signaled me to join her with a wave.
I took a breath and circled around to the front of the bench. “Thank you for joining me.” She spoke with a clipped German accent that reminded me of Erik Weber, the man who had been both my uncle and my father.
There before me were the exquisite yet unforgiving features that twice had looked back at me through my mirror. Gudrun had now stepped through the looking glass into the heart of my world. She occupied the bench as if it were the throne from which she ruled. She sat there surveying me, waiting for me to respond, but I stood speechless before her. Her magic was visible to my naked eye, shimmering around her like an August heat rising off blacktop. She tilted back her head, her eternal black pageboy cut falling at an angle along her delicate jawline.
“I have no interest in harming you,” she said. “However, I would have done anything to escape my prison. I would have sacrificed you, your child, your family, anything to free myself, but I am not your enemy.” I examined the gray eyes that shone out from porcelain skin. They radiated a calm certainty that only a person who suffered from no self-doubt could obtain. “I merely took advantage of your true adversaries’ hatred. I used it like a lever to pry loose the hold your fellow anchors had on me.”
I finally found my voice, even though I was still overwhelmed by the strangeness of the aura around her. “Call yourself what you want. You’ve destroyed my life. You murdered my in-laws. You’ve taken away my husband. And by taking away my husband, you’ve endangered my son’s life.”
She held up her hand. “Enough of your litany. I am not responsible for your tribulations.”
“It was your spell—”
“Yes, it was my spell, but my assistant”—the way she said the word suggested she found it a poor translation of the word she would have used if I could speak her mother tongue—“your brother, took liberty with my instructions. Josef wanted to strike out against you personally. I had no such desire.” She offered a slight shrug as if to underline the fact she was confirming the obvious. “I had intended it as a form of penance on his part, forcing him to distribute his lover’s remnants at the points of the sephirot. The sealing of the spell required the presence of burning bodies. I had intended that he offer the tribute to Asmodeus at a crematorium. Instead he took his revenge against you by setting your in-laws’ establishment afire.” She folded her hands on her lap. “Again, I will not lie to you. If my freedom required burning this entire city down around your ears, I would have done it without flinching, but Josef’s actions were unnecessary. They were motivated by his own anger, and I regret not holding the reins tighter.”
My bitterness blunted any sense of caution. “Well, I guess that makes it all right then,” I said, each word laced with sarcasm. “Why are you here? I don’t think you’ve come to ask for my forgiveness.”
She burst out laughing, a pointed sound that brought images of beer halls and heavy weaponry. “Forgiveness? I have long ago lost the need for that saccharine validation.” Her face smoothed back into a cool mask, with only a small twist on her lips still betraying amusement. “No, I do not seek your forgiveness, nor have I come to sue for peace.” She leaned in toward me conspiratorially. “I could squash you and your frail magic with only a thought.” She paused. “You don’t believe me?”
So far our little talk wasn’t living up to its promise. I felt my face redden. My hands balled into white-knuckled fists. I had grown sick and damned tired of threats, whether they could be backed up or not. “I believe you could try.”
Again she laughed. Her eyes lit up with an odd shade of fondness. “Oh, so you do have some of Maria in you after all?”
She meant it as a compliment but I felt the words curdle in my soul. “If you consider me so inconsequential, why bother with me at all?”
“Sit,” she commanded me as if she were talking to a young child. I didn’t move a muscle. Then came what I perceived as an uncharacteristic gesture. She rolled her eyes and patted the empty spot on the bench. “I never said you were ‘inconsequential.’ Please.” She moved her hand away so I could join her on the seat.
I nodded and sat next to her, turning sideways so she was in the center of my vision. She had been my paternal great-grandmother Maria’s best friend, and from what I’d learned about Maria, that was not a good thing. She turned toward me as well, draping her left arm over the bench’s back. My eyes were drawn to the large opal she wore on her finger. She followed my gaze toward the ring. She held her hand toward me so I could examine the fiery stone.
“Lovely, isn’t it?” She tilted it back and forth so the oval stone burst to life beneath the sun’s rays. “They die, you know? Opals. The fire drains out of them, leaving behind nothing but a cold and worthless stone.” She pulled her hand back and returned her arm to rest on the bench. “Undoubtedly this one too would have faded long ago were it not always on my finger. I never take it off.” Her eyes reached out to grasp mine. “It was a gift to me from Heinrich.” She waited a moment, seemingly disappointed by my lack of reaction. “Dear me, are you so ignorant of your own history?” I bristled at her question, Peter’s natural mother having asked me almost the same thing hours before. “Does the name Himmler mean nothing to you?”
I slid back involuntarily, moving myself away from the ring. Of course I knew the name. Himmler was the epitome of human evil, a Nazi leader as responsible for the death of more than eleven million people as Hitler himself. My eyes narrowed in on the stone. “I would crush the stone to dust and melt the gold that holds it.”
Gudrun pulled her hand back to examine the ring more minutely. Her lips curved up ever so slightly. “It is only a bauble, and a pretty bauble at that.”
“It was given to you by a monster.”
“In your eyes it is somehow guilty by association?”
“Guilty no, tainted yes.”
She raised her head proudly. She pulled the ring from her finger and held it up. It dissolved to dust before my eyes, a gentle breeze rising to carry the fines away. I coughed as I breathed in some of the powder.
“Thank you,” I heard myself saying, even though it seemed an odd act to thank her for. All the same, I did feel more relaxed with the gem gone.
“It was politically advantageous at the time to accept the jewel from Himmler; it is politically advantageous now for me to destroy the gem.” She pursed her lips and appeared to weigh her words. “You have much power at your disposal, but you are far too concerned about what is right, what is wrong.” Her eyebrows rose a little. “You still believe in God, don’t you?”
“Of course I do,” I said, a bit taken aback by the turn this conversation had taken.
“Of course,” she echoed me. “How do you imagine this God? Is he the great judge? The ultimate arbiter? The father?”
“Well, honestly, I’m not sure that he is a he at all.”
“That is fair enough,” she pushed on before I could express my full thought. “Still, you view this being as the definitive rule-maker. The final source as to what is right and wrong.” She slid her hand down my arm. “What if there were no God? Who would be left to make the decisions then?” She shifted in her seat, looking away from me and following a pack of giggling children running down the path before us.
“Really?” I asked when she fell silent. “You’ve come all this way to discuss moral relativism?”
She turned back to me with a satisfied smile on her lips. “I’ve lived a long time, centuries on the timeline of the dimension where I was imprisoned, and even a century in your own sense of time.” Her eyes narrowed. “Never, never have I seen a single shred of evidence that God exists. I’ve witnessed, even interacted, with beings, ones with powers beyond the human comprehension, who have called themselves ‘gods,’ but no, never has the great ineffable shown even its shadow. But I tell you this only as a kindness.” Her eyes fell to my waist. “You should feel proud. Your tiny one, he is putting up a valiant fight. Still, it is a fight he cannot win. There is a world of reality forming around him that says he does not, cannot, exist.”
My arms fell protectively around him. Gudrun clicked her tongue, and shook her head sadly. “A lesser witch, a weaker fetus, it would have been settled days ago. And you, yes you, would already be well on your way to forgetting him as well as his father.”
“I could never forget either of them.” Horror fed into anger.
“I assure you, you could.” She let the words hang there between us, as if she were waiting for them to sink in. “And you will. When did you feel him move last?” She narrowed in on my protruding stomach. “Now, honestly, don’t you feel that your womb is contracting, growing smaller?” She reached out, almost ready to touch me, then seemed to think better of it and pulled back. “I’m sure the fetus’s growth has halted, even if devolution has not as yet set in.” Her eyes drifted back up to my face. “Oh, you poor girl, you’ve gone absolutely gray.” She reached out and took my hand in hers. She held it as if we had been lifelong and the most intimate of friends. I didn’t feel the repulsion I would have expected at the contact. “The reality of your situation is finally dawning on you, is it not? You’re losing everything. Your life is spinning out of control, but you could change all that.”
She released my hand. She wrapped her arm around my shoulders, then pulled me into her bosom. She stroked my hair. “Aren’t you tired, Mercy? Aren’t you tired of all the lies and betrayals? Those who should have dedicated their lives to protecting you, nurturing you, they have deceived and endangered you. Your fellow anchors plot against you even as we speak. I cannot do anything about them, yet, but I have seen to it the worst of your enemies has been punished. Emily has been removed.”
“You killed and dismembered Emily to complete your spell.” I tried to struggle from her grasp, but found I couldn’t, not because her strength held me, but because suddenly I could not bear to break away from the comfort I was feeling in her arms. I knew it was like welcoming the embrace of a boa constrictor, but I couldn’t even work up a good enough damn to give to fight her off. “Only I don’t understand what the spell had to do with your breaking free.”
“Shhh . . . Shhh . . .” she said as I weakened in her arms. She was charming me. I sensed it, but the charm sedated my ability to care. “I could have taken anyone to seal the spell, but I wanted to make a statement. I killed her and sundered Emily’s body limb from limb as a punishment to her and as a warning to those who would betray you, Mercy. The world has waited for you”—her voice betrayed a simmering anger—“I have waited for you for so long. The woman who bore you, she risked your destruction so she could claim the glory that is only yours to claim.”
It ought to have horrified me, but somehow it seemed fitting Emily should be made an example of.
“You are special, Mercy, even among witches. There is a well of power right at your fingertips, if only you would reach out for it. The magic is waiting for you, aching for you to use it. Think about it. All you need to do is claim your birthright, and the world will fall at your feet before you. Your little one, what have you named him?”
“Colin,” I responded, with only the slightest warning from my subconscious. I had given his name to her, might I have given her control over him as well in doing so?
“Colin,” she said as the fear washed away. “You could preserve his life, watch as he grows into manhood. If you claim your rightful power, acknowledge that power gives you the right to determine what is right and wrong. You, not some imaginary God. Stop and feel it within yourself. Isn’t that what you want to believe? That somehow there is a great father in the sky looking out for you? Believe me, even if it were true, your God lets down millions of people each day. They age. They grow sick. They watch their loved ones die. I am not offering you platitudes and dreams. I am not some dry and effete priest asking you to have faith in an absentee God. No”—she was getting caught up in her own words—“I am trying to show you that you can be a god yourself. We are the only gods here, you and I.” Her enthusiasm tugged at my will and weakened my conscience. She released me and nodded toward a toddler riding by on a pink tricycle, followed closely behind by her father.