His rage was a suffocating pressure. “What have you done?”
I turned and ran.
The sigils Sara had placed on my skin shimmered and glowed. Now that we were here, I was less afraid of him doing anything to me and more worried about luring him as far from the door as I could so he couldn’t find his way out before this place took him over. Now and then, I paused just long enough to scribble a name in chalk on the wall. Cherry. Sara. Joe. Everyone I cared about, everyone whose love would help me hold onto myself. I didn’t have the thread in my navel like I had before, so these names would be the golden thread leading me out of the labyrinth. Dionne had told me that writing them with the chalk would render them invisible to Murmur.
He was pursuing me. I ran faster, clutching the box in one arm and the chalk in my other hand.
It seemed like there must be some sense to the walls and pathways here, but I couldn’t tell what it was.
Dionne had warned me about this. I would get distracted. I would get confused. I would be drawn in by the numbers and become obsessed with their patterns and meanings, trying to solve them. I would begin to forget that there was anything but the numbers.
So would he.
The difference was that I was not supposed to be the one caught in this trap.
“Wait.” His voice was different now. Entreating?
I slowed and turned. “Don’t come any closer to me.”
He stopped. We faced each other across an expanse of white with numbers falling like rain, like snow, between us.
“It doesn’t have to be like this. I meant what I said to you, on the roof of the temple. We do not need to be enemies. I do not need to cause you pain. Come to me, give me that box, and let us leave together. There’s so much I could give you. Teach you.”
His attention drifted. He was already responding to the whisper of the equations. He chased the numbers, arranging them, creating solutions.
When he did, the white place changed. Walls began to rise where none had been. The floor sloped in one direction and fell away. I had to interrupt him, or my way in would no longer exist. “What kind of things?”
He took a long time to answer me, but I felt his focus sharpen. “We must leave. Come. Come. Whatever you wish. Money, luxury, power. Hidden knowledge. The dead will whisper their secrets to you. But we must go. Leave with me now, and you will be my prize.”
I inched around toward the way I thought I had come. It was so hard to be sure. The numbers sang to me, mathematically perfect music that lulled me. They made shapes, kaleidoscopic mandalas blooming like flowers.
But there was something in what he said that was like what he’d said the night before. “Prize. Last night you said I’d be your trophy.” It was so hard to think. “You called me a trophy. Like you won something that someone else lost. Someone you could hurt by displaying me. Someone who could still be hurt if you could tell them that I was willing to be your prize.” A sudden and horrid realization washed through me, jolting me out of this fogginess. “You know what happened to my Beloved.”
He was putting numbers into a string, moving them around. They formed a three-dimensional shape that glittered golden. He sighed in awe.
I banged on the music box. “Tell me where he is! Tell me what happened to him!”
He tore his attention away and looked at me. “I could.”
Numbers, white and pure, collecting on the shoulders of his crisp jacket. Melting into the white formless floor at my feet. “But?”
“Lead me out. Give me the box. I will tell you, but not in here.”
Rosa had told me no one knew where he was. In my vision, Yemaya hadn’t known either. I remembered the tears of the dead, cupped in my hands, that begged me to stop Murmur. It was what I had come here to do.
I traced the lid of the music box. I held his power in my hands. Could I use it to compel him to tell me what he knew? Could I command him, force him to my will, if I opened this box? My fingertips curled around the edge of the lid. I could still leave him here. I could take what I needed and go. I alone would know where he was; I alone would have the power to find him and use him when there was a need that was great enough.
I cracked the lid open, just a hair. I could feel the immense power within, whispering to me to let it out, promising me my every desire. Murmur dropped to his knees beside a wall, plucking numbers from its smooth surface and counting them in his hand, over and over. He looked up at me and reached out, making a wordless noise like he’d forgotten how to speak. He looked between the wall and his numbers and me, his hand opening and closing. He seemed confused.
The music was filling my ears again. I had to decide. Decide what? There was something I was about to do. What was it? I needed to find the pattern in the numbers that trickled down the wall and pooled on the floor.
My heart surged and soared. I was awash with a perfect moment of bliss, of safety and affection and desire. My friends. I felt them near--no, not near, but vibrant, calling out to me. Sending me their love and hope, calling me home to them. I closed my eyes and saw their faces, remembered their embraces. Rosa. She felt far away, but shone in my soul like a lighthouse in a raging sea.
I looked down at the box in my hands, still opened just a fraction. Shame flooded me to think that I’d even considered using this power in such a brutal and selfish way. I slammed the lid shut.
Murmur turned away abruptly like I no longer existed, and went back to gathering and organizing the numbers.
“Please,” I whispered. “Do one good thing in your existence. Tell me where to find him. Anything, even just a clue. Anything.”
He turned back and held up his cupped hands. “Look.” He tossed the numbers in the air. They glittered, colliding and separating and forming grids. “So very...” Whatever he said next sounded like a jumble of nonsense. He kept making sounds. It was like listening to a baby trying to talk. He sank to the floor, stretching out and catching numbers out of the air.
A tug at my heart, insistent. I felt my friends reaching for me, calling for me, shaking me out of my bemused stare as I watched Murmur trying to hum the music and piece two numbers together.
Right. I needed to go, before I ended up like him.
I lingered a moment more, staring at the monster whose shadow had haunted my life for so many years, who had destroyed so many others, who had been willing to murder this entire camp in order to get his hands on the Hungry Man. Who might be the only being in existence who could tell me why my Beloved was gone. Now he drifted and pulsed, bits of himself detaching and buzzing around him, making him blurry, staticky.
I thought of Suzanne. Of Charlie. Of Vivi. Of Teo. Of the tears of the dead, cupped in my hands.
No more. He would claim no more souls now. Cause no more despair.
I turned away and ran back in the direction I’d come.
I couldn’t tell if I was on the same level I had been before. The concept of levels and space began to fade.
I had always been there, in a corridor that was always the same distance away, that curved and undulated and reached for me. That slithered beside me and opened in front of me when I moved the numbers.
The walls stretched and breathed deep and slow.
Rosa. I saw the name etched in chalk on a wall. Had I put it there? It irritated me. I wanted to rub it away, because it interrupted the flow of the numbers, and I was so close to solving the equation they formed. But as I got close to it, it glowed bright and golden, and I remembered her face. Saw her key, clutched in Sara’s hand. I needed to get back and take back my key. Rosa knew. She knew I wouldn’t betray her, that I would only say I would. She knew I was hers.
I backed away from the equation, made myself turn my gaze aside, but I was still thinking about it. If only I could solve it, a great mystery would be revealed. What if I was wrong? What if Murmur didn’t know where my Beloved was--but ra
ther, knew that this place knew? If I stayed here, if I worked these numbers, what secrets would they tell me?
The music sang to me, shimmering and pure. It was the song of birds in my Beloved’s garden, the shush of ocean waves below his balcony, the bright tenor of his sudden laugh. My steps slowed. I would just listen to it a little while longer. That wouldn’t hurt anything, would it? Just a little while, just to see if it sang in his voice, that I longed to hear again.
How long had I been standing here? Was I still on the path out? I wasn’t sure. Why was I holding this box?
Sara. There it was, on the wall. Why did I feel so drawn to that word? I went to the wall and touched the glowing letters. Beautiful eyes flashed in my memory, the remembered feeling of shower-dampened lips pressed to mine. Sara! She flooded my heart and sharpened my focus. I ran past her name, intent on getting out and finding my way back to her.
One by one, the names on the wall pulled me forward, pulled me out of the haze that settled on me between each one. This place seemed to go on forever. I couldn’t tell where I was, whether I was going in circles or getting closer to the arch.
The floor rose up to kiss the ceiling, and then fell away. Numbers bloomed in shapes, fell around me like petals shaken loose in a spring breeze. The music was so beautiful, almost familiar, every phrase perfectly resolving. Numbers built houses around me, the homes of the people on the island. Numbers counted the violets in the grass. They made the temperature warm, sun golden on my hair and shoulders. All of the secrets of the island, here for me to decode. Maybe its very coordinates in time and space. I just had to stay in this room--when had I come into this room?--and study the patterns. Find the variables. Was this room vast or small?
Was it awake?
Who was when, in the purity of the prime?
Yes.
Measure the distance between the shadow and the eyes in spans of hands. There would always be so many hands. Always watching.
It was beautiful to be reduced to the simplest solution and reassembled. Let go.
Hands. My hand on the wall, caressing the numbers, watching them ripple as I walked.
Something I could not move. Why not? It glowed. These were not numbers. What was it? I stared at the marks. They assembled themselves into meaning, searing into my heart with their golden brilliance.
My Beloved’s name--no, not his name. He’d never told me that. No--the name I chose for him, when he asked me to give him a name for me alone to call him by.
I saw him behind my eyes, more clearly than I had since the moment we parted. The rush of longing made me cry out for missing him. Wherever he was, he was waiting for me to return to him, I was sure of it. I ached with loneliness and there was nothing in me but the love that still burned in me.
I wanted to stay there, touching the name I’d given him, feeling the intensity of these memories that were so much more vivid than they ever had been. But I looked up, and there was the arch, still full of darkness and tiny winking lights. Had it always been there? I rushed toward it, afraid to let this place distract me before I reached it.
The box. It was still in my hand. I hesitated. Dionne had said that I had a choice. I could leave it here, and no one outside would be able to find it and use it to get to Murmur. But if someone found him here, and could shake him from his obsession, he would be drawn to his true name and able to reclaim that power. Or I could take it with me and hide it somewhere in the human world. It would be far from Murmur’s grasp and keep him weak, but it was possible someone could find it.
I didn’t have time to debate it. I glanced back once more, tucked the box under my arm, and plunged through the arch.
Tumbling out into the second level of the temple, my vision blurred and my nose and throat burned. Everything whirled around me and snapped into place, and I was on my knees, my hands on the ground, retching and gasping for breath as my head throbbed.
Plywood under my hands, not the luxurious stone of the spirit-temple. Heat. Haze.
I pushed myself up, rubbing my eyes as they streamed with tears.
I was back in the physical temple.
And it was on fire.
CHAPTER THIRTY-FIVE
Help! Someone help me!” I screamed it as I stood, then collapsed back to my knees, choking as I coughed. The air burned my lungs.
The floor was still solid below me, but flames were licking around the windows cut into the plywood, and traced the edge of the doorway. The box--I thought it was the box, at least--was there beside me. I grabbed it and staggered to my feet, running through the doorway. The flames outside were high and bright, blinding me. The stairs. The stairs were straight ahead. Just go down, Mari, just keep running.
Fire danced on either side of the stairs, and there was a ring of it at the base of the temple. I skidded to a stop on the top step, frozen. Could I get down the steps at all? If I did, I’d still be surrounded by flames, ones that were as tall as I was. I waved my arm. “Help me! Help me!”
I started down the steps. Sweat streamed down my skin, and the heat was searing. It hurt to breathe. My lungs tightened. I thought I heard voices shouting on the other side of the wall of fire. I couldn’t call out anymore. No more breath. The step cracked under my weight and I pitched forward, falling the rest of the way, landing on a patch of earth that was hot and dry. I pushed myself up to my knees, tried to get to my feet, grabbed the box, stumbled and went to one knee.
The scent of roses and tobacco laced through the smoke. Rosa! She was there, beckoning me urgently. “This way, my girl, come on, come on, just follow me, that’s right, this way!”
I lurched after her, pulling my lavish skirt up to my nose and mouth to try to make breathing easier. She led me around the side of the temple. I shrank back as a flame shot up high beside me.
“Mari! Are you in there?” It was faint, but I heard it, somewhere just past the fire. “Mari! Where are you?”
“Keep going, keep going.” Rosa urged me on. “Go! There. That spot. Run and don’t stop!”
There was a gap in the ring of fire, a tiny place where the firewood hadn’t been piled as high and hadn’t blazed up yet. I reached it and stopped. Small flames flickered among the wood, embers glaring up at me between the logs.
“Mari!” I could see Joe across the wood, holding his hands out to me.
“Go! Quick! You ain’t got time, girl!” Rosa was beside me now, the scent of roses strong even through the fabric of my skirt.
I stumbled forward as fast as I could, leaping from log to log and grateful for my boots, keening in terror but just going, going, going. I tripped over the firewood and lumbered forward out of the fire to keep myself from falling. I collided with Joe.
His arms came up tight around me. “Oh my god. Mari. Oh my god.”
I pressed my face against his chest. It felt so good to be held. To be safe. I sucked in a wheezing breath. I couldn’t talk yet.
Tamar was there. “Holy shit! Come on. Let’s go. We gotta get her away from here before the fire marshals get up our ass.”
I didn’t know where we were going. I just let them pull me along with them. We rushed through the darkness, dodging people, me struggling to breathe. I wanted to stop. I wanted to lie down in the cool grass and make everything stop burning and hurting. But they made me keep going.
The fence around the showers appeared in my vision. Joe and Tamar hustled me inside. The others were there, too--Dionne and Cherry and Sara. Had they been with us the whole way? I didn’t see Teo. Dionne and Tamar pulled me under the spigot. I thrust the box at Dionne. My tongue was too dry to form words. Cherry turned on the water. It was so cold, so sharp. I cried out, but it ran over me, soothing my hot skin, rinsing away soot and sweat. I tipped my head back and let the water fill my mouth, swallowing mouthful after mouthful. My makeup ran into my eyes.
I don’t know how long I stood there, but after a wh
ile someone turned the water off, and someone put towels around me and gently patted my face dry. I let them do it. I had no energy to do anything for myself.
Tamar came around in front of me, her sharp eyes searching my face. “How do you feel, Mari? Do you think you can walk back to Radicals?”
I thought about it and nodded. “Better. I feel better.” My voice was raspy and hoarse, but it was there.
“Come on.” Sara put her arm around my shoulders. “Let’s get you taken care of.”
“We need to take her to a hospital,” said Joe as everyone settled me into a chair at Free Radicals.
“No hospital,” I said. It sounded a little clearer.
“Mari, this is no joke. Smoke inhalation is serious.” He knelt in front of my chair, taking my hand.
“No hospital.” I coughed.
Cherry dug in a bag and produced a napkin, which she held up to my mouth. “Cough again and spit into this.”
I obeyed, taking the napkin to cover my mouth. She took it back from me, and she and Sara peered over it as Sara held her phone’s flashlight above it. They both nodded. “Some flecks, but it’s not black,” said Sara. “That’s a good sign.”
Tamar retrieved a proper flashlight, a big one, and proceeded to examine my skin and hair. “You’re flushed, but I don’t see any burns. Your skin doesn’t feel hot. Your eyes still watering?”
“No.”
“Hurt to breathe? You feeling confused at all?”
“No. I’m just tired.” I took a deep breath, to test it. “A little scratchy, but it’s getting easier.”
“How is that possible?” Joe was still holding my hand. “They lit the fire like ten minutes before you came out. Who knows what you inhaled? How were you even conscious?”
I licked my lips. “I don’t know. I didn’t--when I came out, when I realized there was fire, it felt--new. I didn’t feel like I’d been breathing it.”
MetamorphosUS: Book 1 of the Mythfit Witch Mysteries Page 49