The Brink of Darkness

by Jeff Giles

  Regent turned as he walked, and indicated that Maud herself should take up the story.

  “I knew your mother up there,” she said. X looked back to see her pointing at the ceiling. “I was just her lady’s maid, but she was the truest friend I ever had. They separated us when we were damned because they didn’t trust us together. I didn’t see her for maybe eighty years. Then a guard came, and told me that I was needed—that she was in labor. ‘She’s having a baby?’ I said. ‘She’s dead!’ But then, I told you she was stubborn. Your mother was ecstatic when you were born. I feared for you. I said—my god, I should never have said it—I said I was afraid you wouldn’t live. Your mother was so proud of you already. She kissed your little mouth, and said, ‘Of course my son will live.’ ”

  Maud stopped, overcome by memories. X said nothing, hoping she’d continue.

  “They pulled you away from her almost immediately,” she said at last. “Your mother’s face at that moment—you may think you’ve seen true agony in the Lowlands, but I promise you haven’t.”

  Maud’s words were so like what Plum had said about the screams that X looked at her a second time. She stared at the ground.

  The Ukrainian tapped her shoulder gently with his bat.

  “Do not fret, Maud person,” he said. “Everything becomes okay. Look at us now, off to rescue!”

  Maud finished her story quickly, as if she wanted to be rid of it.

  “Dervish and a guard dragged your mother and me away,” she said. “I was left on the Countess’s hill—to punish me for helping your mother, probably—and they continued on. That’s when I heard Dervish tell the guard where they were going.”

  “You said my mother had two requests?” X asked Regent.

  The lord slowed his pace so the others could keep up.

  “Her second request was that you be placed in my care,” he said. “The other lords fell about laughing. They assumed I would be horrified. Yet I was moved, for I had never raised a child, nor been believed in as much as your mother believed in me then.”

  X had assumed that the way to find a place called Where the Rivers End would be to follow a river until—well, until it ended. But the light that Regent had laid before them veered from the current now, and slipped into a tunnel.

  The lord stopped by the entrance to let them rest.

  “This place we journey to,” said X, “have you been there before?”

  “No,” said Regent. “The Lowlands are so vast that I shall never see them all. Yet I know that Where the Rivers End is somewhere that one rushes away from, rather than toward. Forgive me for lecturing again on the perils of hope, but we may not achieve what we hope to. Dervish may have foreseen the day I would look for Maud, and hence lied about where he was taking your mother.” Regent looked back to the river, as if to underscore what he said next. “Even if he told the truth, he and his men will no doubt ambush us along the way.”

  X hadn’t allowed himself to consider these possibilities, and they settled on him heavily.

  “Regent, if I may outburst second time,” said the Ukrainian. “You are not life of party.”

  The lord, who had yet to warm to the Ukrainian, ignored him and continued addressing X.

  “I have risked a great deal for you because your mother was my friend—and because you are an innocent,” he said. “It’s as if you weren’t born but rather woke up in a tomb. The injustice staggers me still. So I regret nothing I have done. If Dervish means to pull us all farther into the shadows, then I am resolved to push us all toward the light.”

  “Thank you,” said X. “Thank you for everything you have done. If I knew grander words, I would use them.”

  “Yet you must hear what I tell you now,” said Regent. “Your plan to rescue your mother—and for her to rescue you—is the plan of a dreaming child. I shall take you to Where the Rivers End, for you deserve at least to lay eyes upon the woman who gave you life if you can. In truth, I am ashamed I did not seek her out long ago. It may have been that I was afraid to see how imprisonment and degradation had altered her. Or it may have been that I needed you—your fire—to propel me.”

  X took this in quietly, as he leaned against the wall near the tunnel entrance. A small torch sat in a bracket above him; the torches were always bolted up high so the prisoners couldn’t use them as weapons. X thought of what Regent had said about the likelihood of failure. He pictured himself trying, pathetically, to escape the Lowlands armed with nothing but a torch.

  He closed his eyes, as Plum would have, and tried to quiet his thoughts. He’d heard so much about his mother, but a hundred questions still swirled inside him. After a moment, he felt a hand on his shoulder. He opened his eyes to Maud’s freckled face, tilted with worry. Vesuvius lay in the crook of her elbow.

  “All this must be overwhelming,” she said.

  “It is,” said X.

  “What would help?” said Maud.

  “Knowing right now if we will succeed or fail,” said X. “Knowing if I’ll be able to stand in front of my mother and say, ‘I am your son, and I survived, just as you said I would.’ Knowing if I will make it out of the Lowlands and back to Zoe.”

  “It’s a lot to ask for,” said Maud. Then, apparently fearing she’d been too fatalistic, she nodded toward Regent and the Ukrainian, and smiled. “But you’ve assembled a good team.”

  X gazed at the lord, who, unable to stand still, was pacing sternly in his royal blue robes, and at the guard, who was trying to balance his baseball bat on one finger.

  “They make a handsome picture, don’t they?” said X.

  “They do,” said Maud. She paused. “Is Zoe a girl you love?”

  “Yes,” said X. “She’s up there, as you would put it. I owe her everything, even my name.”

  “What does it mean? Do you mind if I ask?”

  “It has something to do with mathematics, which is a jungle I have never set foot in,” said X. “Zoe intended to change my name when she’d collected enough facts about my character, but then I suppose I grew into it—or it grew into me. Why are you called Maudlin?”

  “Oh, it’s ridiculous,” said Maud. “I cried when the lords first separated your mother and me. Who wouldn’t have cried? Only a monster.” She stroked the cat. “Even Suvi here wailed.”

  “Why was my mother damned, Maud?” said X. “What did she do?”

  Maud winced.

  “The same thing I did,” she said. “Nothing more.”

  “That’s not quite an answer,” said X. “You need not protect me. Tell me what you did.”

  Maud looked to Regent, whose pacing had brought him close. She seemed to be hoping that he’d answer for her. He regarded her gravely, and declined.

  “We murdered two men,” said Maud, turning back to X. “With a knife and a drill.” She rushed to say more, no doubt so that the bald facts wouldn’t ring as long. “You’ve got the tip of the drill in that silver packet of yours. Your mother kept those things to remind her of what she’d survived. There’s a story behind each of them. I will tell you them all, if you’ll let me, then maybe you won’t judge what your mother did too harshly.”

  “I want to know everything,” said X. “Yet tell me, if Regent was not present at my birth, how is it that you even know each other?”

  Maud seemed relieved at the change in subject.

  “Oh, I’ve known Regent since the day I died,” she said.

  She looked again to the lord. This time he spoke.

  “Two bounty hunters were sent for Maud and your mother,” said Regent. “It was a century ago, as you know—before I was even a lord.”

  “The first one failed to capture us because your mother was too smart for him,” said Maud. “She outmaneuvered him—a mortal woman! So the lords had to send someone else.”

  “Dervish was the bounty hunter who failed,” said Regent. “I was the one who did not.”

  FOURTEEN

  Once they were in the tunnel, the noise of the river receded. The
black walls were polished and smooth, and studded with gems, which flickered as they passed.

  X turned over what Regent had told him in his mind. So Dervish had failed to bring X’s mother to the Lowlands. How humiliated he must have been! No wonder he hated her—and her son. No wonder he’d ranted and stamped and railed against X at every opportunity.

  And Regent … Regent had plucked X’s mother out of the world. He had taken her life, her future, everything. No wonder he had done so much for X, even though it endangered him.

  Cool air blew past them as they walked. The Ukrainian unzipped the top of his tracksuit, and gallantly handed it to Maud. He wore only a damp, sleeveless T-shirt now. X could see a field of curly black hair beneath it, as well as a silver necklace bearing a word he couldn’t read, though he recognized the letters: MAMA.

  Maud slipped on the red jacket and tucked Vesuvius inside. The cat blinked at her happily, languorously, and was snoring before they’d gone 20 paces.

  “I look foolish in your coat, don’t I?” said Maud. “Tell me the truth.”

  “Truth?” said the Ukrainian. “Truth is, you look like my tenth-grade girlfriend. Remember, however, Reeper is only true love of mine, as one day I will inform her.”

  The tunnel stretched indefinitely onward. For every hundred feet they walked, it seemed to grow another hundred. X was about to ask Maud to tell him his mother’s story, when strange sounds flooded past. First, it was a rush of footsteps over their heads, then the roar of a wave, which seemed to barrel toward them from the other side of the wall. X stared at the rock, waiting for cracks to appear, but the noise faded fast.

  Then the tunnel swerved hard, and X was met with a startling sight. On each wall, there was a long row of hands jutting through rock. And they were moving.

  Regent steered everyone to the center of the passage, and told them to stare straight ahead. But X kept watching the hands. The fingers were wriggling, spasming, clutching the air. There must have been sinners on the other side of the walls. Who knew what pain they were in, or what was being done to them that he couldn’t see? Two of the hands might have belonged to his mother. He felt sick as he passed.

  When Regent let them rest again, X sat down next to Maud. She must have been as desperate to tell his mother’s story as X was to hear it. His first question—“How old were you when you went to work for my mother?”—had barely left his lips when the answer came tumbling out.

  “I was fifteen,” said Maud. “I was a very scared little person. About the same height I am now, but skinnier. When I looked at myself, I saw only my nose, ears, elbows, and knees. So I tried not to look at myself. I also tried to be silent one hundred percent of the time, which my parents told me was my best feature. I don’t think they ever liked me very much.”

  Maud put her hand inside the sort of kangaroo pouch she’d made for Vesuvius, and pet him as he slept.

  “When I reminded the Countess that she had stolen Vesuvius from me? When I told Regent I would never leave Suvi behind?” she said. “I could never have done those things before I met your mother. Whatever I have for a backbone, I got from her.

  “I remember knocking on her door. It was the first time I ever wore this dress. This was in Montana, in 1912—”

  “Montana?” said X.

  He’d meant only to listen, but couldn’t believe it was a coincidence that Regent had sent him to that very place as a bounty hunter. He looked to the lord, who was pacing again.

  “Your mother liked the sky there,” said Regent. “That struck me as odd—for isn’t there sky everywhere? Yet I thought you might like it, too.” The lord seemed embarrassed by the admission. He made a shooing-away gesture. “Let Maud tell her story,” he said.

  When X turned back to Maud, he saw that the Ukrainian, who sat across the passageway, was listening as well. X wasn’t sure he liked that. He already felt protective of his mother—like he wanted to hold her story close. But when he gave the Ukrainian a questioning look, the guard said, “What? Is interesting! You want I watch TV instead?”

  Maud continued.

  “I remember my hand being very cold when I knocked on your mother’s door. The knocker was a brass fox with a hoop through its teeth. I guess that’s not important, except that your mother’s husband thought of himself as very cunning and handsome, when he was actually a little knot of hate. Petty and cruel. Not that different from the Countess, in a way. He went by ‘Fernley.’ Your mother had been forced to marry him—something about adjoining farmland. She loathed him. He pretended he was a gentleman farmer—he had all these airs—but he was bad at everything. I remember him being confused by a rake one time. Your mother told me once, ‘It’s like he’s some sort of sea creature that’s been forced to live on land!’ She didn’t talk much, but you always knew where you stood with her because she never masked her feelings, as women were taught to—and when she did say something it was memorable. Fernley called her ‘honeybun,’ in a sarcastic kind of way, which she detested. So she called him Fern, which made him boil.”

  Maud paused. X wasn’t sure why.

  “I know your life’s been unfair,” she said. “I can’t even imagine. And maybe it’s not my place to say this—but it would have been unlivable if that man had been your father.”

  X felt as if Maud were speaking for his mother somehow, like she was a conduit.

  “I believe you,” he said.

  “Your mother opened the door herself,” Maud went on. “I can’t tell you how beautiful she was. She was sort of framed in light. She looked like I wanted to look but knew I never would because of, like I said, the nose, ears, elbows, and knees. She used to wear her hair up while she worked. She could do absolutely anything on the farm, in the house, with the horses … But it was nighttime, so her hair was down. It was wavy and black, like yours. Her eyes were dark, but they never shut you out, they drew you in. She refused to use cosmetics. Fernley hated that because he didn’t want people to think they couldn’t afford them. Which they couldn’t. Anyway, I never saw a woman who needed them less. She was twenty-six, I think—and she only had nine years left to live.”

  Maud frowned, and hugged her knees.

  “I must have looked frightful, standing there in the doorway that first day. Terrified. Underfed. Clutching Vesuvius against my chest. I hadn’t told them that I’d be bringing a cat, and I was petrified that they wouldn’t let me keep him. But your mother smiled at me so warmly. She petted Suvi. She invited me in, as if I were a guest. She was showing me to my room—I’d expected a cot in the kitchen!—when Fernley accosted us in the hallway. He looked me over in the most humiliating way. I was fifteen! He was … Well, I forget exactly how old he was, but something like thirty-five. Finally, he looked at Vesuvius. ‘Put that disgusting thing in the barn,’ he said. ‘If I see it again, I’ll cut it open and stuff it.’ Your mother saw how upset that made me. When Fernley walked away, she said, ‘My husband will not harm your friend. He can barely slice a tomato.’

  “But I did have to take Vesuvius to the barn, and he howled for a week. You’ve heard what he sounds like. The other servants warned me that Fernley wouldn’t put up with it. The cook said, ‘Your cat’s not long for this world, girl. Best steel yourself.’ I crept out to see Suvi when I could. I begged him to be quiet. But he always howled louder when I left. It was heartbreaking. One night when I went to the barn, the door swung open and gave me a start. It was your mother. She had been sneaking out to see Vesuvius, too—she’d been bringing him scraps of food! That may not sound especially brave, but believe me, it was. She might have mocked Fernley, but she dreaded his temper. We all did.

  “Fernley would detonate over the tiniest thing. He was very prim and fussy, and he demanded that everything be just so. That silver comb you’re carrying was supposedly ‘electro-magnetic.’ It was very expensive, and supposedly cured headaches and prevented baldness. Fernley had written away for it. One time the maid who cleaned his chamber mislaid the comb for an hour, and he beat her f
or it. Obviously, the comb was found, but he still deducted the cost of it from the woman’s wages! That’s the sort of man he was. And honestly, he was already so bald that even if god himself had forged a comb for him, it wouldn’t have made a difference.

  “When I saw your mother coming out of the barn, I was so moved that I cried. She hugged me, which is not something that employers did. It wasn’t something my own mother did! We just stood there in the darkness, and when Suvi began howling again, your mother started crying, too. I knew then that I would do anything for her.

  “Fernley eventually relented, and let Vesuvius live in my room. It was only because he wanted me to be grateful to him. He wanted me to lower my guard.

  “One night, I was in the kitchen, up to my elbows in suds. Alone. Fernley crept up behind me, and fondled me like he owned me. I tried to elbow him but missed. He spun me around so I was facing him, and—I won’t even call it a kiss—he pushed his horrible mouth at my lips. It was vile. A row of pots hung from a rack above us. I remember them banging over our heads as I struggled. I finally shoved him away, and I apologized. That’s how out of mind with fear I was—I apologized to him for attacking me!

  “I fled up the stairs to your mother. She glowed with rage when she heard the story. She went to Fernley’s chamber, and found his beloved ‘electro-magnetic’ comb. He kept it—I swear to you—on a swath of red velvet, like it was the Holy Grail itself. Your mother snatched it up and, while Fernley watched in horror, combed Vesuvius with it. Fernley never touched the comb again.

  “Afterward, your mother told me if I wanted to leave the household, she’d write me a sterling recommendation and give me the money she’d hidden in a boot in her closet. She showed me the boot—that’s how much she trusted me. But much as I loathed Fernley, I couldn’t leave her. So she elevated my position. She made me her lady’s maid, even though she didn’t need one, so I’d always be at her side and she could protect me. Fernley saw what she was up to, and seethed because she’d outsmarted him. I turned sixteen, seventeen, eighteen. Fernley leered at me constantly. Your mother was watchful—and I never went into a room unless there was at least one other person in it—and he didn’t get his awful hands on me again for a very long time.”