Illuminate

by Tracy Clark

  Handfasting. That was all I could see when he tied the tartan. Handfasting between my parents. Handfasting with Finn in an alternate reality. One where we’d have had the chance to grow in love and connection instead of live as natural enemies. One where he hadn’t killed my cousin. I yanked my hand away and climbed from the hole. “Mami Tulke,” I said, gulping hard to hold myself in check. Wordlessly, Finn left to fetch my grandmother.

  Drifting through me like a daydream was the urge to lie down next to my mother and pull clods of dirt over me. I wanted rest, though not eternal rest, I supposed. I wanted my life to be different. I wanted peace, which was as futile a wish as wanting wings.

  Moments later, Mami Tulke ambled across the grass, her folksy skirt floating around her legs. She eyed me with sharp, black eyes peering from wrinkled lids and hopped down into the hole with me. Her agility surprised a smile from me. Unafraid of the face of death, she squatted and peeled the cloth from my mother’s head. Mom’s black hair floated in the shallow water like reeds in a marsh. She looked like she bloomed from the earth rather than being newly planted in it.

  Mami Tulke grabbed my hand and pulled me splashing to my knees across from her with my mother between us. I bent and pressed my forehead to Mom’s as she’d done in the tomb when she’d gifted me with her memories of our early life together. I sat upright, startled, touching my forehead, suddenly remembering I’d been marked by her memories but didn’t yet know how. “What’s there? How did she mark me?”

  My grandmother smoothed one finger over the skin above my nose. “It looks Celtic. I don’t know what it means, but it’s lovely, mija. Ask the boy. Perhaps he’ll know.”

  She held her papery hand over the center of my mother’s chest and moved it in three circles, small at first but growing wider. A silver spiral of energy hovered over my mother’s heart.

  “What are you doing?” I asked, genuinely curious about the ritual she was performing.

  “I’m connecting with any remaining energy in her heart chakra and releasing it,” Mami Tulke said, suddenly flinging the spiral of sparkling energy up to the sky, where it fell over our heads like silver rain. My mother’s heart energy shrouded me in sweet, penetrating love that seeped into my skin and into my own heart. Kissing my fingers and touching it to her mark on my forehead was the only ritual I could think to perform before I climbed from her grave.

  I couldn’t face anyone or anything else.

  I stumbled away from my mother’s grave in a daze. I didn’t care if they could wave a wand and make me suddenly appear in Italy, or Chile, or with Toto back in Kansas… If I didn’t sleep, I’d never make it through another minute. My body was giving out. My eyelids twitched uncontrollably. Everything from my neck down was numb and tingling from digging. Every inhale was a yawn. Every exhale was heartache.

  I went to the tower where I’d stayed once when I was a guest in the Doyle’s home. It was familiarity in the midst of overwhelming uncertainty. Sweet associations: learning how Finn used to sneak up there and teach himself the guitar, it was the place where Finn first called me críona—his heart—and one unsettling memory, of Finn’s mother the night she took from my aura in my sleep and gained her sortilege to see people’s deepest secrets.

  I shook off the memories. The tower was isolated and empty, and so I claimed it.

  Sleep claimed me.

  Waves and seagulls were the soft music that woke me. I turned and lifted onto my knees to peer out my window, suddenly wishing I hadn’t. My mother’s new grave looked like a scab in the green grass. The gnawing hurt in my chest had become so familiar that I wondered if I’d ever have a day when pain was so absent it would be like the wind blowing through me.

  I showered, dressed, and descended the spiral stairs to find the others.

  If one didn’t know what we’d all just been through, the sounds of the house would have lifted the spirit. The chatter of little Claire in the kitchen as she asked question after question of Finn’s mother. Dun and Giovanni talking about tribes, specifically Dun’s Apache heritage. Giovanni mused that the American Indians had endured a similar genocide to the Scintilla’s. He was right, of course, one warrior to another.

  “Sleep well?”

  Finn startled me. I spun around, my hand automatically reaching to ward him off and my mind admonishing me for not feeling him approach. Any other Arrazi I’d have felt a mile away. Finn, well, he somehow penetrated that defense. He never felt like an enemy and even then, after what he’d done, I didn’t understand why not. I should hate him.

  “I slept like a boss,” I answered honestly. “It feels wrong to admit that, but my eyes closed at sunset and opened at sunrise, and it had only been, like, five minutes.”

  “I’ve had sleep like that, where you wake and it feels like a trick of time.”

  We stood a couple of awkwardly silent seconds before I noticed what was right behind him. “The Scintillating Host of Heaven,” I said, pointing. It still amazed me that was the title of Gustav Dore’s depiction of one of the scenes from Dante’s Paradiso. “That’s the name of this painting. After being threatened with Dante’s words by Griffin when I was in the hospital, then reading Paradiso myself, and especially after Ultana said he was killed because he was trying to spread the truth, I know it’s not a coincidence. Tell me why it’s in your house.”

  “It’s not a coincidence,” Finn said. “My mother told me that it was believed that Dante knew the truth about the Arrazi and Scintilla and was trying to spread it to all of humanity. I don’t think most people read between his lines.”

  “If you didn’t already know the truth, it’d be easy to see how most would assume it was just an allegory about heaven and hell,” I said, looking up at the artwork. It was eerie to stand next to Finn, the way that Dante and Beatrice stood together looking up at the spiraling mass of angels in the sky. “So, maybe it was a message not to humanity, but to us,” I said, quickening at the new idea. What message could Dante have been trying to give specifically to both supernatural breeds of human?

  Though I didn’t look away from the painting, I could feel Finn’s eyes on me. “Brilliant,” he whispered. “I think you’ll be very happy with what I have to show you.”

  “I also believe there’s a connection between Dante and Michelangelo,” I added, causing Finn’s brows to arch in surprise and something more, like a realization. “It’s part of why I’m going to Italy.”

  With an eager and expectant expression, Finn pulled out his phone and showed me a picture of a yellowed drawing—a side portrait of a woman.

  “Is that Ultana?” I asked, unsure why the odd depiction of her was important.

  He nodded like I’d gotten the right answer. “I believe it is, especially in light of her unnatural lifespan.” Swiping to another picture, I saw it was a photo of a triangular scrap of paper in his hand. “I found this in a copy of The Divine Comedy in her office. See how it fits the missing corner of the drawing?”

  “Michelangelo’s emblem,” I whispered, staring at the three circles. He was known to use those circles as a signature. “The line of Italian scrawled next to it, what does it say?”

  “It translates as, ‘We all have our illusions and our mysteries.’”

  “Ain’t that the truth?” I said, wishing for more to go on, but the fact that it was a note from Michelangelo in Dante’s book in Ultana’s office was significant. Proof of the connection I suspected.

  Uncomfortable with how amiable we were being, not because it felt fake but because it felt…disloyal…to Mari, I hit him with anger. “If you kill me,” I said, ignoring the wary look in his coppery eyes, “you take my power and never have to kill again.” I motioned to Giovanni and Mami Tulke, whose voices drifted from the kitchen. “If you or your parents kill the three of us at once, you take our powers and possibly live forever.”

  Finn raked his fingers, still stained from wielding the shovel that had buried my mother in a damp grave next to my father’s, through his black hair.
I suddenly wondered if he had slept at all, and cursed myself for my concern. My heart constricted. “Why haven’t you done it, Finn? Why don’t you do it now?” My words blew from me, a fresh, hot wind of anger that I couldn’t control.

  Finn’s murky aura caved like I’d hit him. His gaze and his pause were longer and deeper than normal. He swallowed hard. “Because I don’t want that kind of forever.”

  “But still… Mari…” My dam threatened to crack. “How could you?” I choked out, unable to believe he’d been the one to steal her spirit, unable to believe he had no other choice.

  “Hate me, Cora. Do that. I can feel your angry aura. Hate me, if that’s what it will take to keep you safe. I deserve every ounce of your contempt. If you insist on going to slay your dragons alone, I’ll be here, fighting to unearth Ultana’s secrets, Xepa’s secrets. People will soon know that she’s dead, I’m sure. But we should assume that there are Arrazi out there still set on the tasks she put to them. I’ll do everything I can to stop them. Until then, this isn’t over.”

  Spent, I crumbled in on myself. “Will it ever be?”

  Finn didn’t answer. We both knew the likely ending for the few remaining Scintilla.

  “After what’s happened, you think any Arrazi are going to trust you? How can you possibly find out secrets when you’re on the outside?” I asked.

  “The witnesses are dead.”

  “Lorcan—”

  “He arrived too late to know exactly what happened, but I’ve got to watch out for him, I know.”

  “What did you two talk about as we ran?”

  “He wanted to know where I got his mother’s dagger. I told him she’d given it to me as a gift when—when I killed Mari. She didn’t,” Finn rushed to say. Whips of darkness flashed in his eyes, and I lashed myself for the war inside me between pity and disgust.

  “But I didn’t know what else to tell him except that I am in love with a Scintilla and was defending you. He didn’t seem to know anything about his mother. In fact, he said he wasn’t sure how he’d explain to her what he saw there. I don’t think he knew what he was walking into, but someone must have tried to contact Ultana because Saoirse was the one who told Lorcan about it. I don’t think Lorcan fully understood what was happening. I don’t think Lorcan fully understands a whole helluva lot.

  “Perhaps there will be time to find out more about his mother and her connections,” Finn continued, reaching into his pocket and pulling out a small satchel and an envelope. “This is what I wanted to show you. I took this from an old wooden heart in Ultana’s office.”

  “Wait,” I interrupted. “A wooden heart? The one that was stolen from Christ Church?” I’d seen it in the memory of my parent’s wedding.

  Finn looked surprised when I said this, but he nodded. “Of course… I knew I’d seen it before, on the news three or four years back, I just couldn’t place it until you said that.”

  “She was a thief, you know. That’s what the marking was on her face—the brand of a thief. So she stole the heart from Christ Church and these were hidden inside?” I took the objects from him.

  “Aye. Fascinating. You’ll see.”

  The delicate and worn paper in the envelope certified that the pouch contained the ashes of Dante Alighieri.

  My gaze snapped up to meet Finn’s, and he gave an encouraging nod, whispering, “This isn’t the only one. I researched it online. There were originally six sacks. Four vanished. Eventually one turned up in the Italian senate in 1987 and another in the central library of Florence, tucked away into the rare manuscripts collection. The rest are still missing.”

  “Dante was Scintilla. Obviously someone knew that,” I said, feeling a connective thread to a man hundreds of years before my time. I slipped my finger into the top of the pouch and coaxed it open to reveal a small pile of gray dust at the bottom. Palpable energy rose up from the powder. My hand shook as I pondered whether to reach inside. My body had become a profane wall of graffiti from the echoes of energy in some memories. I’d never look the same. I’d never be the same.

  I took a bolstering, determined breath, tapped my finger on top of the miniature dune, and was thrown from the present moment into the past.

  A dark room illuminated by candles. A dark time for the feeble man in the bed, whose eyes I saw through as he watched someone approach from the shadows in the corner. At first, he was not scared, but intrigued by her. The woman bent over him, smiling. He’d been ill. He thought she was sent to comfort him, especially after the first words she spoke.

  “I’ve been sent,” she said. “To—”

  “To steal,” he muttered, because he could now see, by the light of the candle, the thief’s mark branded on her face. “Could you not wait until I die,” he spat. “I will soon enough.”

  Ultana, a much younger Ultana, smiled amiably but with a tripwire in her eyes. “Yes, dear, you will die. But I need you quite alive now, for the only thing I was sent to steal…is your soul.”

  Ultana Lennon hooked her Arrazi energy into the great poet’s and ripped his aura from his body until the last pearl of his soul floated into her own.

  Chapter Five

  Finn

  I’d never watched Cora use her sortilege before.

  Once her fingers reached into the purple sack, her long lashes fluttered delicately, then closed. Her head tilted back somewhat, causing a spiral of black hair to sweep off the ledge of her shoulder. She inhaled sharply with slightly parted lips, and I couldn’t help but think that she looked like she did when she was about to be kissed. I clenched my hands, longing to cup her face.

  I wished I could see through her eyes, not only for the magic of pulling the past from objects but for the beauty of seeing the light around people. That room at Dr. M’s had been extraordinary—a glimpse of the world as Cora saw it, and a glimpse of the silver-tipped soul of a Scintilla. It moved me. Hell, I think it even moved Lorcan, who was with me when we saw it.

  Her eyes opened, and she gasped. “Ultana wasn’t lying about killing Dante. She assassinated him. She said she was sent to steal his soul.”

  “Sent by who?”

  “Exactly.” As the words left her mouth, the inky black impression of three interconnected circles appeared on Cora’s skin, as if the symbol had lain dormant under the creamy layers, waiting to rise up. Cora’s brows pinched together, and her hand flew to the spot below her jaw like she’d been stung.

  “No,” she said, covering the new marking that bloomed right before my eyes. “Again with the face? God, this sucks.” I gently pulled her hand away so I could see the design that dipped and curved on her neck where the tiny dot of her pulse fired.

  Cora pulled her hand from mine. “Can you tell me the meaning of the symbol on my forehead?” she asked, touching it lightly.

  “It can be interpreted two ways,” I said, examining the small Celtic symbol in the middle of her forehead. “It can be a symbol for mother and daughter,” I said. “But it’s also said to symbolize new beginnings.”

  “I wish.”

  “It doesn’t change you,” I said, tracing my finger over the circles. “You’re beautiful. Always.” She pushed my hand away and scowled. I murmured an apology. “You didn’t ask about the new marking,” I said. “The mark on your neck is the same as Michelangelo’s symbol on the scrap of paper in the picture.”

  “The giri tondi?” she said, clearly astonished. “I touch Dante’s ashes and Michelangelo’s emblem marks me? Wild. Both he and Dante believed the circles were a metaphor for God. Even across hundreds of years, Dante and Michelangelo were connected and” —her eyes took on a mystified squint—“they had a thing for threes.”

  “They were buried at the same place, you know,” I told her, reminded by the way she said “threes”. “At the Basilica de Santa Croce, in Florence.” I had learned that after my mother and I spoke of Dante. Cora’s eyes widened, and I sighed. That information surely wouldn’t help my case to stop her from going alone to Italy. “Galileo is
buried there, too. Three fingers had been cut off his corpse.”

  Cora’s head tilted in an adorable way, like her innate curiosity weighed down just the right side of her head. “You’re kidding.”

  “I don’t kid about severed digits.”

  The faintest hint of a smile appeared, then faded too quickly before she said, “You know I’m right about going to Italy.”

  I hadn’t had time to respond, nor would it have mattered from the look in Cora’s eyes, before my mother burst through the kitchen door and found us in the hall. “There you are!” she said to me. “Why have you been avoiding—”

  Unguarded as I shifted my gaze from Cora, my mother caught a deep look into my eyes and grasped the wall next to her for stability. Her narrow face was a blend of stricken grief and disgust at seeing my deepest secret. Her sortilege was bloody scary. “Oh. Jesus, Mary, and Joseph—my—my brother is dead.”

  “Now you know,” I said, shame coating me like sticky film. I’d been avoiding my mother since we returned from Newgrange the previous day. I couldn’t discuss the gale of feelings inside me. I had meant to sit her down and tell her about Clancy when we were alone. “Seems I excel at killing people’s loved ones.”

  Cora cleared her throat. “I have to find a way out of Ireland,” she said, changing the subject. “I need a passport.” Cora’s voice faltered, and it was then I noticed a tear running down her cheek. She swiped it away angrily, it seemed. But that one tear of Cora’s cut me in half with guilt.

  “I’ll go to Clancy’s,” Mum said, her voice shaking on the last word. But I knew her well enough to see she had shifted to Emergency Room mode. She’d roll up her sleeves and do what had to be done. “Perhaps Cora’s belongings are there somewhere from when he kidnapped her.” Her gaze flitted to the new marking on Cora’s neck, but she didn’t inquire.