Song to the Moon (Damnatio Memoriae Book 2)

by Laura Giebfried

  “Fuck,” I said angrily. The sound echoed around the small space, hitting against the metal and linoleum to shoot back at me in a tinny voice. The dryness in my mouth was making it difficult to breathe still, and the artificial lights were too harsh against my eyes. Lifting my head, I turned on the faucet and stuck my face beneath the stream of water to waken myself from what I wished was just some terrible dream, but the room stayed firmly in place around me.

  “You shouldn't have come, you know.”

  I slowly raised my eyes to the mirror as the familiar voice sounded behind me. Cabail had followed me from the train, taking the opportunity to trap me now that I was alone, and his reflection stood just behind mine as clearly as ever.

  “Well, I did,” I snapped.

  “It was stupid. You didn't think it through.”

  The matter-of-fact voice had grown no less tolerable than it had been the previous year at Bickerby, and now that I knew what he was, I had even less desire for his commentary.

  “Go away, Cabail.”

  “'Go away?'” he repeated, his head turning to the side and his hugely-magnified eyes pressing into mine. “I did go away. You sent me away, remember? With all of that medication.”

  “They put me on the medication; I didn't ask for it.”

  “You asked for it by letting them know that there was a problem. If you had just kept your mouth shut, you wouldn't have gotten into this mess.”

  I shook my head and turned the faucet off, wiping away the excess water on my face with my sleeve and drying my hands on my pants. Cabail took a step closer.

  “But you already know that, don't you?” he asked, his head still cocked at an uncomfortable angle. “You know it all already, you just don't want to admit it.”

  “I know what already, Cabail?” I asked, turning around to face him. “That you're not real? That I'm confused? That I was wrong?”

  “Stop repeating what you think it takes to send me away again. It won't work.”

  “And what will? Or is this your way of telling me to go back to the facility and get more medication?”

  “Of course it isn't; I don't want you on those pills any more than you do.”

  “Then what do you want? What do you want me to say?”

  “I want you to say what you know – to admit what you did wrong.”

  I crossed my arms.

  “I don't know what you're talking about.”

  “No? You still can't figure it out?” He gave an uncharacteristic smirk that twisted his features further and finally broke his expressionless expression. “I'll say it if you won't.”

  “You won't say anything – you never do. You never tell me anything except what I already know, and if you did – if you had – then I would have figured out who killed Miss Mercier and those girls last year before it was too late –”

  “Well, at least now you're getting closer,” he said, his calm tone interfering with what I felt. “But go ahead: blame me for being unable to find Jack. You always blame everyone else for what you do wrong.”

  “That's – that's not true,” I said, but the sharpness in my tone was ruined as my voice got lost in the dryness of my throat. “You tricked me.”

  “I did nothing of the sort. I give you all the information that you need to know; if you come to the wrong conclusion, it's hardly my fault.”

  “You told me nothing!” I said angrily. “You always tell me nothing! If you would just tell me something useful –”

  “Something useful?” he repeated. “I'll tell you something useful: you should get rid of Ilona before she gets rid of you.”

  “She's helping me find Jack,” I retorted, “which is more than I can say about you, Cabail.”

  “And yet, here you are, alone in a hotel room, and Jack's somewhere else.”

  “I don't suppose that you could tell me where, though, could you?” I said bitterly. “Oh, that's right – you only ever tell me what I already know, and you don't even do a good job at that.”

  He raised his eyebrows, but his expression was still as blank as ever.

  “I could tell you a lot of things, Enim, if only you'd let me.”

  “Such as?”

  “Such as what happened with Beringer.”

  I narrowed my eyes at him.

  “I know what happened with Beringer.”

  “I know you do,” he replied. “And so do I.”

  I turned back to the mirror but lowered my eyes without looking at my reflection, feeling no sense of ease to hear someone say as much.

  “But what about Ilona?” he said.

  “What about her?”

  Cabail shrugged, his tiny shoulders pointing upwards beneath his oversized clothes, and his mouth pursed with thin lips.

  “Do you think that's her real name?”

  I crossed my arms.

  “It's written on her passport.”

  “It's written on the passport she's carrying, you mean.”

  He cocked his head further to the side; I was certain that his neck would snap if he turned it any further.

  “Most people carry passports that belong to them, Cabail,” I said heatedly.

  “Most people. Though – it's funny – I seem to remember someone else carrying a passport that doesn't belong to them, too, so … maybe not.”

  I stopped and chewed the insides of my mouth, suddenly uneasy but unwilling to admit as much.

  “That's different,” I said. “Jack – I gave it to him so he wouldn't get caught going over the border.”

  Cabail made a low humming noise.

  “Yes, that does sound like a reason someone would carry another person's identification, doesn't it?” he mused. “So … maybe she's not Ilona after all.”

  “She's who she says she is, Cabail,” I said, forcing my tone to be adamant despite the inkling that there was some truth in what he was saying. “And she's helping me, despite what you think.”

  “Do you think she'd be so willing to help you if she knew what you'd done?”

  I stared at him for a long moment, and just as I had always been certain that he could somehow see into my mind long before I had known that he was part of it, I was certain now that I could see into his. The image of Beringer falling upon the rocks and breaking my fall from the cliffs jolted behind my eyes, and another wave of nausea came over me.

  “She won't help you find Jack,” he continued. “He doesn't want you to find him. He never did.”

  “That's not true – he sent that brochure!”

  I turned back around and hunched over the sink, no longer able to look at him, and clutched at either side of it to keep myself upright. The shaking had returned to my arms and my leg felt like a lead weight beneath me that threatened to break the tiled floor and pull me down into the building's foundation, and I wanted him gone before he could ruin everything for me again, but his image reappeared in the mirror to replace my reflection.

  “I just missed him by a few weeks,” I said. “He was here. He sent that brochure.”

  “Are you still telling yourself that?” Cabail chided, his mocking expression unrelenting and unable to will away. “Come on, Enim, don't be a fool. You know as well as I do what that brochure was.”

  “It was a message from Jack!”

  “It was a brochure, that's it,” he countered. “A standard, generic brochure advertising a work-study program that they sent to every Bickerby student involved in a foreign language program. Jack sent you nothing.”

  I bit down on my tongue; Cabail smirked more widely.

  “He doesn't want you to find him, Enim. He never did.”

  I raised my hand and slammed it against his face, wishing to break through his skull and breach the words that he had said but only shattering the mirror instead. It pooled down in shards in front of me and piled up in the sink, and I pulled my hand away as the pieces thrust beneath the skin and lodged themselves against the bone, and blood spat out from beneath them in a stream that smacked the remainder of the mirr
or with red.

  “Fuck,” I said, clutching my hand to my stomach as it continued to bleed and throb. The sensation caused my head to lull, and I sank down onto the floor as my legs gave out beneath me. “Fuck.”

  My vision ducked into black momentarily and my head lulled, and I shook it in an attempt to keep from passing out. A noise had started in my ears that rattled around my skull, and the small room seemed to have grown larger as though the roof had been peeled off the top of it, but the sky above was as black as the ones that I had grown so used to seeing on cold winter nights at Bickerby when the moon refused to come close enough to the island to see. And I wouldn't see it – not like I had before – because now I knew better. It wasn't the same sight that Jack was looking at, and it wouldn't lead me to him, and I would be soulless and lifeless forever.

  “Eh-nim?”

  Ilona's voice sounded from somewhere above me, but my head was too heavy to lift. As she knelt down beside me, the smell of lavender filled my nostrils again and I gagged, clenching my jaw shut to keep from being sick.

  “What do you do?” she asked, taking me by the wrist to survey my bleeding hand. She clicked her tongue disapprovingly. The sound crystallized in my ears. “Here, come this way.”

  She pulled me back up and steered me over to the sink. As she turned the faucet on, the water sprayed outward and speckled my skin.

  “This looks painful, yes?” she said, observing my hand under the fluorescent lights. As I murmured a response, she shuffled through her bag and produced a pair of tweezers. Then, holding my hand over the drain, she carefully began to pry the shards of glass out. “My father punches mirror when upset, too. His hands are like leather from scars.”

  She dropped the last piece of mirror into the sink and turned my hand beneath the light to see if she had gotten all of it out. Then, taking one of the washcloths from the rack, she wrapped my hand with it. Her touch was uncannily unfamiliar.

  “Why are you doing this?” I said lowly. Cabail's observation was still playing in my head, and without the energy to push it out again, I let it settle in the front of my mind.

  “You are hurt,” she said. “Come, you lay down again. You are still unrested.”

  As I took a step over to the bed, though, the rising sunlight in the window hit my pupils too quickly and they didn't have enough time to contract, flooding my vision with a stream of white light that plowed itself into my brain. I stopped and leaned up against the wall, pressing myself against the plaster as an intense pressure came over my form that seemed to crack every bone from my skull down to my feet. Ilona took me by the arms and dragged me over to the bed. As I collapsed atop it, a wave of shivers came over my skin that clashed with the heat there, sending me shaking so violently that it felt as though every bone was splintering from the edges in. As one of her arms reached across me, I grasped it to feel the steadiness beneath my own.

  “We'll never find him, will we?” I said. From the way her hair fell forward, the burn running down her neck was visible like the view of a dusty mountain chain seen from above. “You knew we'd never find him.”

  She gently peeled my fingers back from her wrist.

  “No. You will, Eh-nim.”

  I could barely see but for the tripled blurs of images around me, but a moment later felt something cold against my forehead that sent ice shooting through my skull. I pushed her hand away, the movement jerky as though my limbs had been covered in rubber, and the washcloth fell to the floor.

  “You have fever – this will help.”

  From the shakiness of her voice, it was clear that no amount of pressing the cold compress to my head would get the fever down, but she held it there even so. The daylight coming through the blinds created stripes running over her face and hands and clothes, neither black nor white anymore, and the cigarette smoke smelled putrid instead of welcomely familiar.

  “You knew I wouldn't find him,” I repeated scraggly. “You tricked me.”

  “You are very sick, Eh-nim,” Ilona said rather than responding. “I do not think this is heart-murmur.”

  I turned on my side to face away from the window. Even in the half-light, it was much too bright against my eyes. But I knew what had happened at Bickerby, and I knew what had happened with Beringer, and I knew who she was as well, and no amount of sunlight could burn it from my mind.

  “Do you know what rusalka means?” I asked her.

  “It is opera. You tell me already.”

  “But the opera's named after the rusalki, from Slavic fairy-tales. Do you know what they are?”

  “You say they are water-sprites, yes?”

  She took my distractedness with asking the questions as an opportunity to press the washcloth back to my head. The dampness of the cloth burned like ice against my skin.

  “They're fish-women who live in rivers,” I said, my voice slow and garbled. “They live at the bottom, but at night they come to the surface to sing and dance.”

  “It is nice story, Eh-nim.”

  “They only sing to attract people passing through the meadows, and invite them to join in their dances.” I swallowed against the knot that had formed in my throat; my tongue was dry and parched from a lack of water. “Then, once they've mesmerized them, they lure the people into the river and drag them to the bottom to their deaths.”

  Ilona's hand paused midway though dabbing my skin.

  “Do you want to hear the ending?” I asked her.

  “What?”

  “Of Rusalka.”

  She hesitated, the washcloth still in her hand as she debated whether or not to continue the futile attempt to get my fever down, and ran her tongue along the front of her jagged teeth.

  “You should rest, Eh-nim; you do not look well.”

  “I want to tell you. I've figured it out.”

  “You figure what out?” she asked, but I gave no response. “Okay, Eh-nim. You tell me ending.”

  My eyes were half-shut and unseeing, but I could feel the pressure of her arm pressing over my torso as she rested it from wiping the sweat from my face. I thought back to the final act of the opera, and the way my mother had sobbed over it while I had been too absorbed to notice, and licked the dryness from my lips before continuing.

  “Rusalka goes back to the lake, and cries to the witch who gave her the potion. The witch tells her that there's a way to prevent herself from being eternally damned, and offers her a dagger. If Rusalka kills the prince, then she'll be free again; if she doesn't, then she'll be a spirit of the dead who's forced to lure others to their deaths in the lake.

  “Rusalka refuses, and she's forced to sink to the bottom of the lake. The prince returns to the shore in search of her, realizing that he was wrong to betray her and desperate for her forgiveness. Rusalka rises to tell him that it's too late, and now a kiss from her will be the death of him. He goes to her anyway to kiss her, and dies in her arms, still eternally damned, and Rusalka sinks back to the bottom of the lake where she'll be a death spirit for the rest of time.”

  Ilona shifted in a shadow that fell above me.

  “This is horrible ending, Eh-nim. It makes you sad, yes?”

  “Yes.”

  “Why do you tell it to me?”

  I didn't answer. It was all-too clear now: the medication that had prevented me from tapping into my thoughts had nearly left my system, and I could finally think again. She had said that she had lived with her father until she was twenty-four, but the passport that she carried marked that as her current age. I studied her face through squinted eyes as I tried to see her, and the reason that she wore so much makeup finally became clear: she wasn't Ilona, just as Cabail had said. She was someone else – something else – and the letter-opener that she carried was the knife that was every bit as telling as the lies that she had told.

  “Come, stand,” she said. “You are very sick. We will get fever down, yes?”

  She pulled at my legs to bring them over the side of the bed before grasping my arms to heave m
e up again. Though the room was small, it took her an age to drag me across it, her arms wrapped about me as she led me back towards the bathroom, tripping and bumping into furniture on the way.

  She eased me down into the tub fully-clothed, though my boat shoes had fallen off sometime during the walk across the room. As I slid down to lie upon the bottom, my entire being shuddered and I was certain that my heart was giving in. Ilona reached over me to turn on the faucet and cold water spurted over my legs. I wanted to pull them away, but they had stiffened in place and I could feel them too much and not at all all at once.

  “You like telling sad story, Eh-nim. I do not know why.”

  I turned my head to stare at her through drooping eyes. My mouth was agape and dry, and I could hear the breaths rattling in the way I was sure my mother’s had before she died. The room was so white that it hurt to see, but I was frightened that if I shut them the world would never return again.

  The water rose midway and covered my forearms and torso. As it rose to my chest and then my throat, high enough so that if I moved my head water pooled into my mouth, I tensed and made to raise myself out again.

  “No, stay still,” Ilona said, trying to push me back down.

  My hands slipped on the porcelain and I fell back into the water, my head smacking it forcefully and plunging under as my skin slipped against the floor. My vision flashed to the view that I had had of the blackened sky when I plunged beneath the ocean at Bickerby, and as I came back up, gasping for breath, my eyes widened and latched onto her face. I was certain now: she was trying to drown me.