by Rose, M. J.
Take me, Victor. Put your hands around my throat. I want you to so very much. I am waiting for you to liberate me. Your daughter is waiting for you to liberate me, waiting for you to bring her back.
I was high up inside you. My fingers were wet with your blood and around your throat. As I felt your faint pulse, I felt your womb throb around me.
Take me.
I would never have imagined it would be as easy as it was to squeeze the life out of someone.
I will not suffer.
He left your body then and entered me. His fingers were inside mine, and he was squeezing your throat. I fought but was losing my battle with his strength.
Put pressure here on her throat. She will feel nothing. Will not suffer. Let her go, Victor. Give her what she wants. Let her go, and as her soul departs her body, Leopoldine’s will enter. Fantine’s body. Your daughter’s self. Put pressure here. And here.
I looked down at you as if from a great distance. Half asleep, half dead. Halfway to where you wanted to go. And then you gasped. It was a small noise. A cat might not make one any louder. Not a sound of defeat but of resistance. Was it an automatic response or an emotional one? I had no idea, but it was the sound of a living being fighting for breath. It shuddered through me and shook me. I spilled myself inside you with a great huge shiver. You were not my child. She had stopped breathing. You had not. You were the future.
I found the strength to loosen my grasp, horrified by what I had done. Shocked. And then I knew something the Shadow didn’t. I knew it in that instant. You had life in you. If I took you and that life too, the devil would own me forever.
It wouldn’t matter if I had Didine back. I would not have my self, my sanity, and I would not have my soul. What good would I be to my daughter, or to anyone, then?
You are a coward, the Shadow said, but his voice was weaker, harder to hear.
Fantine, you were breathing deep breaths by then. Your color was returning. You were moving, returning to us.
Yes, coward, the Shadow cursed me.
“All this was about you wanting to own me, wasn’t it? To add me to your list of men who have fallen under your spell. You wanted to seduce me into becoming yours. What you’ve done to me—almost made me do—was monstrous.”
The Shadow said my name twice, first as a prayer and then as a curse.
Victor. Victor.
And then your voice joined his.
“Victor.” Both voices harmonized.
You opened your eyes and looked up at me. I saw fear there. And pain. Both tore at me.
“Victor . . .” His voice had disappeared. Only you were speaking. “Victor, why are you crying?”
• • •
Victor Hugo
October 30, 1855
Jersey, Great Britain
For Fantine and the child who will be mine.
Forty
Ash had found the cave with Eva’s help and climbed down. In the first tunnel he smelled sweet smoke and carefully continued further inside. Jac’s voice grew louder the closer he got to the innermost chamber.
He stopped on the threshold and stood, captivated by the words she was reading. The story that was unfolding. A mesmerizing tale.
As Ash stood there breathing in the scented air and listening to her hypnotic voice, he felt as if he were falling into a dream. Something was making him dizzy.
He had to hold on to the wall to keep himself upright.
Lucifer’s words were so enticing. What an astounding idea to trade one soul for another. Especially with one who didn’t have any desire to live. Was it possible? Had Hugo done it?
Ash thought of Naomi while he listened to Jac reading. He pictured his brother’s beautiful, sad wife, who’d hated this island. Who’d wanted only to go back to London. Who needed his help. Needed Ash to help her make her escape.
How Ash hated Theo for not taking care of what he was so lucky to have. For causing her such distress. Theo didn’t deserve her. Couldn’t be trusted with someone as special as Naomi. Hadn’t done the right thing.
And now she was gone. And it was all Theo’s fault. Always his fault. Always.
Forty-one
While Jac had been reading, Theo had kept the fire burning, and fragrant and sweet smoke had filled the cave. Was she getting drunk on the smell? More than once she’d felt reality waving away and had managed to keep in the moment only by touching the scarlet-threaded bracelet on her left wrist, letting go just to turn a page. Now, without the book to concentrate on, she rolled the silk against her skin and tried to focus on what Theo had just said.
“I’m sorry, what?” she asked.
He’d been leaning over her shoulder, looking at the pages. Now he was standing, his body shaking, swaying slightly. The fire flared just then, and in the light, Theo’s eyes burned brighter. Had she ever seen a face so twisted with pain and desire at the same time?
“Is it . . . is it possible? What Hugo wrote?” he asked, speaking slowly.
“You mean was the Shadow real? Victor Hugo thought he was.”
“Would you be able to resist that offer, Jac? If you had the chance to bring someone you loved back from the dead?”
The book was still open in her lap. She couldn’t close it, not yet: she was too moved and confused to know how to react. In the shadows of the cave, farther back than they had yet explored, she could sense, no, she could see shapes moving, circling around another fire. She could hear far-off keening, and chanting. A woman crying. A man shouting.
Jac pushed the thread up an inch on her skin and then down.
“Imagine if it was possible,” Theo was saying, “to bring someone back from the dead. If the Shadow really talked to my ancestor . . . if he really talked to Hugo . . . if the Shadow is real . . . just imagine!”
The smoke grew heavier. The scent sickly sweet now. Jac coughed. It was hard to breathe.
“The Shadow is real,” a different voice said from farther away.
Jac recognized Ash’s voice. How had he gotten here?
“And he’s here. The Shadow is here.”
Ash was coming closer to where she and Theo were sitting.
“Can’t you smell him? He’s real.” Now Ash was so close to Jac, his breath was warm on her skin.
Why was she shivering? It was so warm in the cavern, how could she be cold? Ash’s breath was warm. The fire was warm.
There was a moment of quiet. And then Jac felt the slightest breeze as Ash reached out for her. She thought he was going to embrace her. Wasn’t sure why here or why now in front of Theo, but his hands were coming closer, his fingers outstretched.
“The Shadow is going to bring Naomi back from the dead,” he said, and then Ash’s fingers went around her throat, not to pull her, not to kiss her, but, she was sure, to kill her.
The fire blazed. The scene was waving and she felt herself slipping into a hallucination of smoke just like this smoke. Of a cave just like this cave. But not in the present. She was going into the past.
Behind her, Theo was shouting, “Stop! Stop!” She heard it doubled. Was it two men shouting the same words? Or were the words echoing through the cave? Despite the pressure on her neck, Jac held on to the red thread and kept herself where the pain was, where it was hard to breathe, in the present. She knew that if she didn’t, she would be lost. Finally and completely lost.
And then the hands lifted. No fingers were gripping her neck. She touched the place where it burned, where he’d been twisting her skin, and gulped for air and started to cough.
“What the hell were you trying to do, you idiot?” Theo was screaming at his brother.
Jac turned around.
Theo had pulled Ash off her and had him pinned up against the wall.
“Are you crazy? Trying to reenact a drugged man’s ramblings? Hugo was mad when he wrote that journal!” Theo screamed.
“Don’t interfere. Don’t you dare. Not again,” Ash shouted, and he pushed back at his brother and threw him off. “Naomi would
n’t be dead if you hadn’t been so pitiful. If she didn’t feel so sorry for you, she would have left you sooner and she’d be alive now. Alive and living with me. Happy. I don’t destroy people, Theo.”
He punched Theo in the face. Theo threw the next punch, but Ash got out of the way and then reached out and grabbed Theo. Locked in an angry embrace, the two of them wrestled, pulling and pushing at each other. On the walls of the cave, their shadows fought as well. Leaping and springing forward and back.
Jac was trying to understand. Had Ash been lying all this time? Had he actually been in love with Theo’s wife, not just helping her? Had he been having an affair with her?
For all Theo’s psychological issues, had he been right in his suspicions? Had Ash seduced Naomi? Had Naomi betrayed Theo?
The brothers were an even match. And each time one of them got the advantage, the other managed to turn it around.
Ash grabbed Theo, spun him around and threw him against the wall again. Theo pushed him off with so much force Ash stumbled backward and fell.
Theo jumped on top of Ash and kept him pinned to the ground.
Ash’s head just missed the pyre. The fire was raised off the floor but only by six inches.
Ash broke free and rolled to get away but moved dangerously closer to the flames. Ash’s hair caught fire. Feeling the heat, his energy surged. He rolled in the other direction, batting at his head, extinguishing the charring, and then, getting to his feet, he threw a punch. This one caught Theo by surprise, and he stumbled.
The two of them struggled for the next few minutes, neither gaining an advantage, first one in control, then the other. Then Ash pushed Theo far enough away to take off, running farther into the cave, into the unexplored next chamber where Jac had thought she’d seen people in robes. Where she thought she’d seen a woman standing, crying over a burning bier.
Theo followed Ash.
Jac ran after both brothers, into that innermost, deepest chamber.
The enclosure was smaller than any of the other rooms. The ceiling was barely six feet high. The walls curved inward and were smoothed to a polished finish. Every surface was decorated with paintings. The processions that had begun in the outermost entranceway to the cave with the half-man half-cat culminated in this room.
The two brothers tumbled over one another.
Jac hovered by the door, wanting to go in, to break them up. Not knowing how she could.
Ash was on top of his brother now, his hands pinning him down. Bucking, Theo threw Ash off, then jumped on him, pinning him with a firm grip. Finally subduing him.
Theo was out of breath, gasping for air. So was Ash.
“You stupid fool,” Theo said. “You’re insane! Do you know that?”
With his arms restrained, it seemed the fight was going out of Ash. He stopped resisting. Lay still. Theo took a breath.
And then with a burst of sudden energy, Ash jackknifed and threw Theo off, smashing him into the wall. Jac heard the impact. She gasped.
Now Ash held Theo to the wall, the two of them exhausted, out of breath and energy. But the brothers’ anger was fierce. In such close quarters, if they started fighting again, one shove could result in a fatal head wound.
She had to stop them. But how?
Jac’s right hand was clasped around her wrist, covering the bracelet up as if protecting it from the destructive energy in the cave. There was something beyond what was here and now. In the shadows of this room were the answers she needed in order to understand what had happened to her since she’d arrived, and maybe even longer than that. Jac knew that something more important than her work had brought her to Jersey. That she’d needed to come here to help Theo. Destiny or fate or magic or alchemy or the collective unconscious or a mystical secret, whatever Theo’s grandaunts or Malachai wanted to call it, had brought her here.
What if our souls are connected to each other and flow together in and out of time like a giant woven tapestry? What if it was that simple and that real? The laws of physics state that energy cannot be destroyed, and we are made of energy. When each of us dies, that energy reenters the atmosphere. What if it does become part of the collective blanket of souls? Threads of energy that connect us each to the other. What if it is our obligation to follow them, despite the knots and tangles, through to the end?
Jac was certain that as long as she had the red thread Eva had tied around her wrist, she could venture out and search for the answers she sensed were waiting and work her way back.
Maybe if she took this psychic journey she could discover who she was to these two men and who they were to each other.
When she was younger, Theo had saved her life when he pulled her out of the lake. Tonight he had saved her life again when he pulled his brother’s fingers from around her throat.
Owing him for both, she also owed herself whatever knowledge there was to be gathered. Maybe it was time to learn why she was so afraid of this ability she’d had since childhood. Instead of running away from this gift or this curse, the moment had come to understand who she was and what it was.
Jac closed her eyes. Inhaled the fragrant air, identified the sweet notes of the amber resin that wasn’t supposed to have a scent. Inhaled again. Took the drug into her lungs. Felt the dizziness. Saw the room wave around her. Saw the shapes begin to change. Began to think another’s thoughts . . .
Forty-two
56 BCE
ISLE OF JERSEY
Owain knelt before Brice and bowed his head. The ceremony was under way—father and son engaged in the honored tradition of passing the priesthood on to the next generation. Brice was clothed in the white robe befitting a novitiate. He wore a crown of leaves Gwenore had woven for him, sewing six small talismans into the halo, six being the holy number. They were bits of stone and shell that she had inherited from her mother, who had inherited them from her mother before that.
Owain had watched his wife these last few days with a heart that grew so heavy he didn’t think he would be able to keep it from breaking. Gwenore had not slept but had stayed up burning candles, sewing the robe and the crown, preparing for this honor.
And weeping.
Owain had wept too but secretly. When he was around his wife he tried to keep his emotions in check.
For the last two weeks she had tried to hold on to some hope that there would be a reprieve from the gods. Every morning she’d brewed herbal potions for Owain to drink so that he could engage with the spirits and find an alternative sacrifice, another way to interpret the visions.
Every night he prayed to the Sky Father, to Sucellos, to Lugh, to send other dreams. And every morning he took their meager offerings to the elders whose job was to divine the wishes of the spirits. But the senior vates saw no other solution.
The Roman soldiers were on a rampage and would reach Jersey soon. There were not enough men or boys on the island to fight the onslaught. The only hope was divine intervention. A storm bad enough to capsize the Roman ships. A plague.
But in order to engage the spirits, a sacrifice was required. And the gods had told Owain in dream visions that the sacrifice they required was Brice, the only son of the highest priest in all the land. To be offered on the solstice and no later. Given up willingly and with honor.
And now that day was here.
The Druids and the witches and the vates and princes had gathered for the anointing feast. They drank mead and ate toasted bread cakes. Owain painted his son’s feet with the herbal dyes that Gwenore had prepared, and they were now stained a royal purple from the thistle and violets and sage that grew wild on the island. Owain remembered when those feet fit in his hands. When Brice was a baby and he used to let the boy stand on his palms and dance with him in the tall grass behind the house. Those small baby feet now supported his son as he faced his mortal end.
Owain felt the tears coursing down his face.
Brice, who had been schooled in the ceremony that would initiate him, put his hand on his father’s head and sai
d as he had learned, “I accept the responsibilities of being a priest, thank you, Father. I will be true to our people and try to be worthy of their trust.”
Owain stood. He put both hands on his son’s shoulders and turned Brice around so the boy faced the east wall of the temple, where the sun entered and cut across the structure and illuminated a series of runes carved into the rocks on the floor.
Together father and son, now priest and priest, walked the dozen steps to the opening. This was called the holy walk, symbolizing the path a priest takes in his life, toward the light, toward knowledge, toward the mystical secrets that are revealed only to him.
They reached the ritual bath fed by a sacred spring. The last act of every novitiate was to be submerged in the water, to be cleansed, then to emerge unsullied and ready to interact with the spirits and gods.
The pool also had another use, one Brice didn’t know about. It was the last step in what was known as the Threefold Sacrifice.
Owain leaned forward and pressed his lips to his son’s forehead.
“This is a great honor you do your people.” Owain’s voice broke. He couldn’t continue. Couldn’t say the words that he had said at every other ceremony like this that he’d presided over. He grabbed his son, held him close. He whispered to the boy, “I wish I could give myself instead of you.”
Brice looked up at his father. He didn’t understand.
Owain didn’t explain. He put his hand gently on the boy’s head and pushed so Brice’s head was again bowed. Owain would not, could not let his son see what was coming. At least the boy would not know what horrible thing was to befall him.
It was time. Owain tried to bring his hand up for the blow. The first of the death efforts. For one second Owain looked away from Brice, out at Gwenore. Desperately he wished she could somehow stop him.
He brought up his hand.
Whether it was because she understood what his eyes implored her or she was acting out of a mother’s great and abiding passion, he didn’t know. But Gwenore ran forward and threw herself at Brice, pushing him out of the way, so that it was her head that Owain’s stone came down on.