The Brink of Darkness

by Jeff Giles

  Electrified, the crowd spilled into the empty borderland. X heard his name called out for a third time. This time he recognized the voice. He hadn’t expected to ever hear it again.

  The Ukrainian had returned.

  He stood just beneath the plateau, his cherry-red tracksuit bright as a lantern.

  X called to him: “Can it really be you?”

  “Of course is me,” said the guard. “What kind of question? Who else is so extremely handsome?”

  X was taken aback by the bounce in the Ukrainian’s voice. Did he not see that Plum was wailing on the altar?

  “I did not believe that you’d actually gone for food,” said X.

  The guard smiled slyly.

  “Did not go for food, if you want true fact of matter,” he said. “Went for reinforcements!”

  He pointed down the slope.

  X turned to see Regent fly toward the altar, his robes spread like wings, and pitch the Countess down the hill.

  X ran to Plum. His friend was conscious but in shock. His shirt hung open, exposing his belly. X and the Ukrainian helped him down from the altar, and lay him on the Countess’s bed. The servant woman handed Vesuvius to Plum to calm him. Plum hugged the cat to his chest. His breathing steadied, and he found X’s eyes.

  “My sins,” he said. “The ceiling. Did you watch?”

  “I did not,” said X, trying to smile. “That’s what friends … Forgive me, what was the expression?”

  “ ‘That’s what friends are for,’ ” said Plum.

  “Dionne Warwick!” said the Ukrainian. “Excellent soft music of 1980s! You know it?”

  Before there was time to say more, a growl emanated from farther down the hill. The Countess was stalking up it again.

  “FALL BACK, Regent!” she hollered. “These souls are the Countess’s to govern as she pleases! Thou hast no dominion here!”

  Everyone on the hill went still. The Countess’s enraged face loomed above them on the ceiling. Her voice sounded loud as a god’s.

  Regent was unimpressed.

  “You are not a countess, and you never were a countess—in this world or any other.”

  “STILL THY TONGUE OR FORFEIT IT!”

  “I shall do neither,” said Regent. “I sent a soul here to seek news of his mother. I knew you to be cruel and small, but I confess I did not know how cruel and how small.” He looked at the souls spread all around. “Either you put an end to your savagery—or I shall put an end to you.”

  A cheer went up on all sides. Even the guards joined in. Even Oedipus and Rex.

  The Countess flew at Regent with her knife raised.

  Regent blocked the blade as it came down, but the Countess swung again, this time from below, and slashed his torso. The souls who had swarmed onto the plateau crept closer, riveted. X pushed through them so he could see. Regent knocked the knife from the Countess’s hand. It skidded to a halt near Oedipus and Rex. The Countess hissed at them to bring it to her, calling them minnows and maggots.

  They refused. Rex covered the blade with his boot.

  While the Countess was turned, Regent locked his arms around her from behind. She screeched and threw her head back against the bridge of his nose. There was an awful crack, like lightning hitting a tree. Regent staggered and nearly fell. The Countess pressed her advantage. She grabbed Regent’s hands, and crushed his fingers together until the pain drove him to his knees. From there, she pushed him onto his back, sat astride him, and tried to drive her thumbs into his eyes.

  X knew that what he was about to do was not admirable. Still, it had to be done—and he knew Zoe would approve.

  He raised his boot, and kicked the Countess in the head.

  She was a thousand times stronger than he, but he had surprised her.

  Regent sprang free, thanked X with a glance, and lifted the Countess from the ground.

  He broke the altar with her body.

  A minute later, Regent stood over the Countess, who writhed in the rubble. Only now did the gold band singe her neck. X could never understand why the Higher Power took so long to make its feelings known. Maybe it resented being dragged into disputes it considered mundane, or maybe the Lowlands were too vast for it to oversee properly. Either way, X felt a rare tide of peacefulness as he gazed down at the Countess now. She was gripping the gold band with both hands, grunting nonsense and profanity and trying to peel it away so the air could cool her throat.

  X and the Ukrainian returned to Plum, who lay in a rippled sea of cream-colored pillows and sheets.

  “Silk,” he told them, still bleary with pain. “I always knew it would be silk.”

  “Don’t get too comfortable, Plum person,” said the Ukrainian. “Is my turn next.”

  The servant woman had never left Plum’s side. She smiled now, relieved to see that he was returning to himself, and tucked a few stray hairs into the white kerchief on her head. Up close, she looked to be about 30. Her eyes were blue, or maybe gray. X couldn’t quite tell, and didn’t want to stare. Her face was covered with freckles, which were dense as stars on her cheeks and grew sparser as they traveled toward her chin. The woman had already demonstrated her kindness, her courage. But X sensed that she was guarded, too—as if she were judging, with every second, who she could trust and who she couldn’t. It made telling her who he was, and what he needed, even harder.

  “Speak to her, for goodness’ sake,” said Plum. He was rubbing Vesuvius under his chin with his thumbs. The cat had lifted his head to encourage him. “Tell her.”

  “I agree,” said the Ukrainian. “Do not be weak at crucial intersection.”

  X raised a palm to silence them. The servant woman turned to him, questioningly. Still, he didn’t know how to begin. Being so close to someone who might have known his mother, someone who might be able to tell him where she was held prisoner …

  The woman saw that X was in some kind of distress, and her eyes warmed.

  “They call me Maudlin here,” she said. “Which I hate. Please call me Maud.”

  “Yes,” said X. “I will. Thank you. My name is X.”

  “Well, that’s very—short,” the woman said, smiling. “What do your friends want you to tell me?”

  X felt like there was a dam inside him, holding back the words.

  He reached into his coat, and placed the silver packet in Maud’s hands. Maud seemed not to know that she was meant to open it. He nodded to encourage her. At last she unfolded the packet. He could see that she recognized everything inside.

  “How?” she said. She couldn’t even look up from the collar, the button, all of it. “I don’t understand.”

  “I believe they belonged to you once?” said X.

  Maud, dazed, shook her head no.

  X worried his voice would crack with the next sentence.

  “Then I believe they belonged to my mother—whom I have never known.”

  Maud lifted her eyes, and seemed to see him for the first time, to recognize his mother’s face in his own.

  “My god,” she said. “You’re the son.”

  “You know of me?” said X.

  The recognition rippled through him like heat. He felt as if some part of himself had finally been colored in.

  “Yes,” said Maud. “I was … I was there when you were born.”

  X was stunned by this. He understood that it was his turn to say something, but couldn’t.

  Maud filled the silence by taking the cat from Plum and saying, “Look who it is, Vesuvius! Look! It’s her son!”

  “Whoa whoa whoa,” said the Ukrainian, who had hung on every word. “Vesuvius is cat?”

  No one answered.

  “Do you know where my mother is being held now?” X asked Maud.

  She hesitated.

  “Yes,” she said. “Yes. I think I do.”

  “Tell me, for I mean to save her,” said X. Maud looked at him with something like pity, so he added, “You do not believe me capable of it?”

  “I won’t
lie—I don’t know if anyone is capable of it,” said Maud. “But since you’re her son, I’m sure no one will be able to stop you from trying.”

  “My mother is stubborn, is she?” said X.

  Another piece of him was colored in.

  Maud laughed affectionately.

  “That woman could convince the ocean to part for her,” she said. “Here in the Lowlands, they call her Versailles.”

  “Like the palace?” said Plum, sitting up in the bed.

  Maud replied without taking her eyes from X, so he’d know that the answer was for him.

  “Yes, like the palace,” she said. “Because she’s … Because she’s magnificent.”

  Maud told X that his mother was imprisoned in a part of the Lowlands called Where the Rivers End. Regent announced that he would take not just X but Maud and the Ukrainian as well.

  X glowed with happiness and hope.

  But then Regent pointed over his shoulder.

  “However, I cannot take him,” he said.

  X felt a hole open in his chest.

  Regent was pointing at Plum.

  “But he is the gentlest of us all—and brave,” said X. “You cannot mean it.”

  “He is a stranger to me, as are the contents of his soul,” said Regent. “If he was damned to this hill, he is guilty of dark doings.”

  “Don’t worry about me, X, all right?” said Plum. “Please don’t.”

  But as he finished speaking, he burst into sobs.

  “Look at me, Regent,” said X. “I will beg you, if he will not. I will promise you anything—just tell me what you require.”

  Regent sighed, approached the bed, and placed his hand over Plum’s heart to see what it contained. Plum pressed his palms over his eyes as if he could physically force back the tears.

  Half a minute passed—so slowly that X felt as if his body were being raked with a nail.

  Regent’s face clouded.

  He removed his hand, and shook his head.

  “I’m sorry,” he told Plum.

  Before X could respond, Plum stood up from the bed, and fumbled with the buttons of his khaki shirt. His pink, shining belly was exposed, with its long zipper of a scar. For the first time, he seemed ashamed of it.

  “Don’t trouble yourself for me, friend,” he told X. “He’s right, I’m afraid. I belong here.”

  “You do not,” said X. “I won’t hear it. There is so much that is worthy in you.”

  “It means the world that you think so,” said Plum. “But as I’ve told you, it is a reflection of your goodness, not mine.”

  He took X’s arm, and led him away from the others.

  “It’s time for me to tell you why I was damned,” he said.

  “No,” said X. “I know how it shames you.”

  “Nevertheless, I must tell you,” said Plum. “Later, when you think of me—if you think of me—I want you to know that there was nothing you could have done to save me. And honestly? If I can’t speak my crimes aloud, then I still haven’t faced them. Do you see?”

  “I do,” said X quietly.

  “Look away from me, though, would you?” said Plum. “I don’t think I can stand to see your eyes as I tell you.” He sniffled and wiped his nose on his shirt. “Look at our friend the Ukrainian in his tracksuit. See how loyal he looks? Look at Maud. See how brave she is? Good. Now. I was in the military, X. A commander. Hard to believe, I know. I was an abhorrent human being. Filled with sick ideas. I decided to make an example of some prisoners. Truth be told, I wanted to be promoted—to be noticed by my superiors. I had my men line six prisoners up on their knees in a courtyard. Everyone was watching from the windows. I ordered my men to force the prisoners’ mouths open. I ordered them to pour gasoline down their throats …”

  “Enough,” said X.

  “No,” said Plum, his voice a trembling wire. “Once the gasoline had been forced down their throats, the prisoners thought I was finished with them. Their bodies sagged in relief. But I wasn’t finished with them.”

  “Stop,” said X. “You are not that man anymore.”

  “I ordered my men to light six matches,” said Plum. “Do you understand where this is going? I dropped the first match into the first man’s mouth myself.” Plum paused. “You may think you’ve heard every kind of scream here in the Lowlands, X. You haven’t.”

  Plum drew back a way, and finally looked at X. His eyes were so red it was as if fireworks had gone off inside them. X knew that his own eyes looked much the same.

  “I can never repent enough for what I did, though I break my back at it most days,” said Plum. “Let me stay here where I belong, my friend? Let me try to be the lotus flower?”

  Regent offered Plum his hand in farewell. It was unusual for a lord to show a soul that kind of respect, and X could see that Plum was moved by the gesture.

  Next, Maud hugged Plum, and lifted her cat to his face.

  “Vesuvius wants to say good-bye,” she said.

  Plum kissed the animal awkwardly on his nose.

  “Such a handsome little man,” he said.

  When it was time for X to say good-bye, he couldn’t summon any words. He wished Zoe were there to blurt something funny and strange. The story about the prisoners, horrific as it was, had made him pity Plum even more, because he knew how his friend bent under the weight of the guilt. X had known Plum such a short time. Still, he knew he’d miss his warmth, his steadfastness, even the way he hummed sometimes when he meditated. Plum shrugged as if words were beyond him, too. He gave X a brave, almost convincing smile.

  “All right?” he said. “All right.”

  Regent went to the Countess, and pulled her up from the rubble by the collar of her dress, as a clutch of souls gathered around.

  “Listen to every word I say, and do not utter a single one,” he said. “You will never torture another soul on this hill, do you understand?”

  “On whose authority dost thou speak?” said the Countess.

  “My own,” said Regent. “Yet I see from the way you clutch that gold band that the Higher Power concurs.” He waited to see if the Countess would challenge him again. Her eyes twitched with rage but she just grunted and looked away. “If you do not entirely alter your character, I will come back,” said Regent. “If you behave disagreeably toward that soul there”—he pointed toward Plum—“or those souls there”—he indicated Oedipus and Rex—“I will come back. And I will bring other lords with me, a furious flock of them. We will tear that band from your neck altogether, so that all your powers desert you, and—so help me—we will bestow it upon someone who has heard of honor.”

  Regent released the Countess, and she fell back to the ground like an empty dress.

  X, Maud, and the Ukrainian followed Regent down the slope. The crowd parted. Some of the souls who’d been lying on the ground stood as they passed—in tribute, it seemed to X.

  When their little party had descended a hundred feet, Regent paused, and they all gave the ceiling a last look.

  The Countess’s awful face was up there, big as the moon. She looked broken, humiliated. The pimple had returned to the corner of her mouth.

  Regent asked a guard for his torch. He took it, and flung it in the air.

  X watched the torch fly upward, turning end over end, shedding smoke and wisps of flame. Just as it reached the top of its arc, it grazed the ceiling—and the whole thing ignited at once.

  The Countess’s face was lost in a field of fire.

  THIRTEEN

  At the bottom of the hill lay a snaking wall that kept the prisoners from escaping in the river. Regent slammed it with a fist. A jagged opening appeared. The lord helped X through the wall, telling him to avoid the edges of the hole, which pulsed in a sequence: red, orange, yellow. X emerged near the river. He watched as the others passed through. The opening glowed white, then shrank and vanished, as if it were healing itself.

  The riverbank was murky, twilit. The water flowed noisily, foaming where it hit t
he rocks. Regent pressed a palm to the ground. A corridor of light shot along the bank, showing them the way.

  “Will Dervish discover what we have done?” said X. “Will he come after us?”

  “Yes—and soon,” said Regent. “He has spies who are loyal to him, though I can’t think why. Perhaps it is easier to believe wickedness and hate will always prevail.” He turned to Maud. “The cat will slow us down. Will you part with him?”

  “Never!” said Maud, holding the animal even closer, her hands lost in his abundant gray fur. “Vesuvius came to hell with me. He and I will part ways with you if you even ask again.”

  Regent seemed to have expected this response. He dropped the matter, and led the party down the riverside. They walked two by two, Maud and the Ukrainian just behind Regent and X.

  “Forgive my outbursting,” the guard called out before they’d gone even a hundred feet, “but as we are speaking of cat, I must ask you … When X is boy, you give him buttons and collars as clues. Is terrible complicated! Why not say, ‘Someday you must find Maud. Thirty years old. Bloody apron like serial killer.’ ”

  Regent looked at X.

  “Tell your friend the answer,” he said. “You know it, do you not?”

  “I suspect he never told me about Maud for the selfsame reason he never told me about my mother,” said X. “He believed that hope was dangerous—a bird of prey.”

  “I still do,” said Regent.

  “Yet you freed us,” said X. “Perhaps your heart does not know how cynical you are.”

  Regent rubbed the top of his head, which was shaved close. It was just an offhand, human gesture, but X found it endearing.

  “No, perhaps my heart does not,” said Regent.

  X watched the lord as they walked. Regent had been taken to the Lowlands when he was 50, yet he seemed ageless, apart from the lines worn into his forehead. Usually, Regent moved so decisively—with such long, muscular strides—that he seemed less like a person than a statue come to life. But he looked troubled now. Not so much a lord as a man.

  “How is it that Maud knew where my mother is prisoner, but you did not?” said X.

  “When your mother was found to be with child, there was an uproar and a trial,” said Regent. “I defended her heatedly, and Dervish told the other lords that I could not be trusted. I was kept forcibly away when you were born. Yet the lords did grant two of your mother’s requests. The first was that Maud be at her side when she gave birth.”