Maria Isabel Pita

by As Above, So Below

  “But I like trouble. It’s more interesting than my room!”

  Darmond spit out a mouthful of wine and then laughed for so long Mirabel began to worry about him as she watched him gasping for breath.

  “Stoke the fire, young woman.” Markan nodded toward the hearth.

  Mirabel got up to obey him before realizing he was the first person apart from her mother who had ever told her what to do.

  “It may be the season for love but it still gets dreadfully cold up here,” he remarked.

  “What’s wrong with up here?” Mirabel asked him even as she urged the tired flames back to vigorous life with a poker.

  “Everything,” Markan sighed dramatically, “is wrong with up here!”

  “Then why don’t you leave?” she snapped defensively. “Take the dresses and go before you eat up most of the food you brought us and drink all the wine!” She glared at Darmond even as she sat down beside him again.

  “Go talk to the moon for a while, Mirabel,” Donlan suggested reasonably. “We have a serious matter to discuss with your mother.”

  “What matter?” Janlay squirmed out from beneath his arm as she sat up alertly.

  “There’s talk of letting you come back,” Darmond announced, also rising abruptly. “You see, the ladies at court have begun to complain.” He went and crouched between the two dogs, draping his arms over their furry necks and half-wincing, half-smiling as they licked his face. “They want more and more of your dresses and they’re tired of waiting all winter for them.”

  “I don’t believe it!” Janlay breathed.

  “The prince who sentenced you so creatively died years ago and the woman you…dispatched has no living relatives and no one even remembers the man you fought over.”

  Darmond’s voice was beginning to lull Mirabel to sleep even though she was intensely interested in what he was saying. She rested her cheek against her arms on the table, struggling to keep her eyes open.

  “In a summer or two we’ll probably be told to bring you back down with us, Janlay,” the young merchant concluded.

  Mirabel snapped back up in her chair but before she could protest, a warm weight landed on her head and slipped slowly down the smooth slope of her black hair, soothing her.

  “Wouldn’t that be nice?” Darmond whispered in her ear.

  “I can’t leave,” Janlay stated calmly, rising. “I can’t leave!” she repeated almost gaily, twirling toward the dark corner of the room where her bundles of cloth grew. Her skirt billowed out and then wrapped around her legs, causing her to stumble. Laughing wildly, she steadied herself on the fireplace mantle.

  “I’m not surprised.” The legs of his chair screeched beneath Markan as he stood up. “Your materials are far more beautiful than anything even the queen’s women weave on their looms.” He approached her slowly. “No merchant has ever brought you any fabric and yet you never run out.” Gripping her hair, he pulled her head back roughly.

  “Why are you smelling my mother’s neck like meat that’s gone bad?” Mirabel asked.

  “Would you like her to watch?”

  “Mirabel, dear, go upstairs…now.”

  Retreating to her room suddenly didn’t seem like a bad idea. She pushed herself to her feet but then stopped on her way to the stairs when she saw Markan bite her mother’s neck just like the wolf she had watched sinking its teeth into a fallen bird. With a cry she ran to defend Janlay and was immediately joined by the two dogs yelping anxiously as she clutched the merchant’s leather shirt. The next thing she knew she was sitting on the floor half-drowning in cool fur and hot licks, the dogs’ panting breaths thickening the strange fog in her head even as their soft coats comforted her.

  “I didn’t hit her,” Markan stated quietly. “I just pushed her away. It’s the wine she drank that made her lose her balance.”

  The intense concern of the animals was so overwhelming Mirabel laughed as she somehow managed to regain her feet.

  “You touch her again and I’ll give my dresses to someone else!”

  “There’s no need to get upset, Janlay.” Donlan was standing on her other side. “We want to help you and your daughter.” He and Markan were each gripping one of her arms, their fingers looking as determined as falcons’ claws digging into her snowy limbs even as their other hands traveled slowly over her body with the dangerously gentle hunger of large spiders.

  Mirabel watched in unwilling fascination as their hands seemed to devour her mother, one spreading thick brown finger-legs hungrily over one of her breasts while the other hairy creature slowly ate her green skirt like a leaf to expose the slender branches of her legs. Her red head fell back against the mantle, her mouth gaping open like a baby bird’s, inviting the two men to take turns feeding her the fat, glistening worms of their tongues.

  She ran outside, where it was refreshingly cool, and in that moment one of the moon’s luminous cheeks slipped out from beneath a cloud’s dark fur.

  Mirabel sank to one knee between the two dogs. “One of you is Shane and one of you is Shannon, right?”

  They barked in unison.

  “One of you is a man and one of you is a woman. Why is it that only human men and women look so different from each other?”

  “You might also wonder why it is that only humans often choose to face each other during the act of love,” Darmond remarked, crouching down beside her. “Maybe one day you’ll let me show you what I mean.”

  Mirabel was distracted from what he said by the way his face, so close to hers, assumed the dimensions of the mountain landscape in the darkness—the horizon of his mouth beneath the smooth slope of his nose and the moonlit ponds of his eyes on either side of it. “Darmond?”

  “Yes?” he whispered.

  “Will you answer my questions?”

  “What would you like to know, Mirabel?”

  “Everything!” She grasped both his hands, sinking to her knees before him.

  “Now?” He smiled.

  “Oh yes!”

  “Do you have any idea what you look like?”

  “I look like Mirabel.”

  “Yes.” His grip tightened. “But what does Mirabel look like?”

  “Mirabel looks like me, naturally.” She frowned, impatient that her potential font of answers was spewing silly questions at her instead.

  “Yes but who are you?”

  “I was made by Janlay and one of the Lords.”

  He pulled his hands away abruptly and rested them on his knees as he glanced back at the cottage. A restless entity of light and shadow hovered in the open doorway, unable to escape. “Have you ever seen your father?” he asked, grabbing one of her hands again to pull her to her feet.

  Her mother would be very angry if she knew she was talking to Darmond about her father. She was aching to plant the seeds of her questions in him and yet instead he was digging into her.

  When she didn’t answer, he slipped an arm around her shoulders. “Mirabel, listen to me!”

  She had never been this close to anyone except Janlay and it was interesting how different it felt. His arm was much heavier than her mother’s and he smelled overwhelmingly of wine and leather and the spices with which she had seasoned the rabbit. Yet beneath these distinct scents was a much more subtle one evocative of smoked wood, only different.

  “We want to escort you and your mother back down to the kingdom with us next summer,” he told her quietly, “but we can’t, not unless we find out where she gets her material. She’s earned herself a normal life again but she won’t be able to have it unless you help us. It’s okay to tell me, Mirabel. Where do her bundles of cloth come from?”

  “They grow in the corner,” she answered dismissively, for this was a mystery she had solved long ago.

  His teeth looked frighteningly sharp in the moonlight as he smiled. “That’s not possible.”

  “I don’t care if it’s possible or not—it’s the truth and you said you were going to answer my questions.”

&nbs
p; “You’re a fiery little thing, aren’t you?” Gripping her shoulders, he turned her to face him and she suddenly realized she liked this combination of soft and hard in him. When his mouth fell over hers, she was surprised but also curious to discover why her mother seemed to enjoy this strange form of attention from men. Her lips parted in wonder at the odd yet somehow pleasant sensation but then she started—and would have pulled away from him if he hadn’t been gripping her arms so tightly—when his tongue began fighting hers in the small space of her mouth like a burrowing animal trying to take over another creature’s cozy cave. A breathless wail of fear rose up in her throat. Instead of making him realize this meant she wanted him to let go of her, he seemed to find her protest delicious because he pressed her whole body against his with one arm while his other hand forcefully cradled the back of her head. She struggled in his grasp, yet only halfheartedly, there was something strangely exciting about his hunger for her. It didn’t make sense but for some reason she liked how strong he was and the fact that she couldn’t get away from him. She felt helpless as a field mouse caught in a falcon’s talons, wriggling and whimpering. There was something buried in his pants that was growing harder where it pressed against her belly and she became desperate to know what it was. She stopped trying to push him away and went limp in his arms even as she sought to cradle the rock-hard swelling.

  He shoved her away from him. “No!” he said harshly, “I can’t…I can’t!” He turned away abruptly.

  “Where are you going?” she demanded desperately. “You said you would answer all my questions!”

  “You’re not ready yet.” Without looking back, he entered the house and slammed the door closed behind him.

  Mirabel was so disappointed—especially since her new friends, Shane and Shannon, had followed him back inside—that she turned and ran.

  *

  For the first time in her life Mirabel ran without letting caution get in her way. She knew perfectly well she was headed toward the cliff beneath which the sun disappeared whenever she could see it in the evenings. If she sat on the edge of the precipice she could keep the cosmic button in sight a little longer and watch it tuck itself beneath a valley’s soft blanket. It was perfectly clear to her that the sun was a man and the world below him was a woman since his only task was to travel across the sky, like the merchants did up and down the mountain, while nature, like her mother, did all the work. The sun seated himself at the long table of the eastern horizon for breakfast and at the western horizon for supper and in between he looked possessively down on the world while she toiled without respite. He drew slowly closer during the day as if to admire all her exquisite details, which glowed with pride beneath his intensely approving gaze in the evenings. Mirabel loved this intimate mood of the sun’s most of all, when everything cast slender shadows like long black fingers mysteriously caressing the land.

  She had decided that tonight was as good a time as any to prove to herself and to everyone else that her father was indeed a Lord and that he cared about her. She would force him to appear again by running toward the cliff as recklessly as she had skated toward it when she was a little girl and didn’t know any better. She wished it was daylight so she could see the falcons she believed he sent to protect her soaring overhead but it didn’t matter. The wine had warmed her blood so wonderfully that fear’s cold hand dissolved even as it attempted to clutch her heart. She kept running as fast as she could even though she knew the cliff was drawing perilously close in the nearly impenetrable darkness. The moon had snuggled selfishly back into her cloudy furs and wasn’t helping at all.

  Tonight she had imbibed a spirit for the first time, the strong drink her mother said was like desire, and Mirabel recognized now that it had always been inside her—this intense desire to prove beyond a shadow of a doubt that her father was real and cared for her.

  Abruptly, her body sensing the fatal proximity of the chasm, she came to a dead stop, breathing hard, but it was too late, there was no longer solid ground beneath her leather-bound toes. Tensing her shoulders to maintain her balance—and in the desperate hope talons would grip her and lift her into the air as one of her father’s pet falcons rescued her—she flung her arms wide just as she had years ago. The silent darkness before her was so cold and so vast she suddenly seemed to hear the distant flames of the stars snapping at her incredible foolishness. Holding her breath for an instant that stretched out forever, she waited for the man in the shining black material to give the emptiness form but nothing happened and, feeling unnaturally calm, she plunged into the void. The wind supported her like an invisible body for a second and then shoved her violently backward.

  She landed on her bottom, her mind completely blank, as if all her thoughts had fallen into the abyss even though her body hadn’t. She still had her heart however and its pounding filled the world. She had not felt a falcon’s talons grip her shoulders but she did hear a sound behind her like the rustling of wings and, looking up, she saw him. His body blended with the night and his face was another moon rising much closer to the world, one she could almost reach up and touch. Nevertheless she was profoundly disappointed, for he was not the man she had seen all those years ago. His hair and his eyes were both dark and his expression was not as kind. “Don’t do anything like that again,” he commanded, yanking her to her feet.

  His punishing grip told her he was real, as real as she was—or perhaps even more so since he could appear out of nowhere whenever he desired—yet it was hard for her to determine where the universe ended and he began. Swallowing what felt like a lump of raw dough into which all her longings were kneaded, she whispered, “Father?”

  “I have that honor,” he replied, glancing over his invisible shoulder.

  “May I have a dress made of this material?” She reached up to caress the space where his chest should be and there was solid warmth there that both resisted and yielded to her touch. “Why have you never left some of this fabric in the corner?” she mused out loud.

  He smiled with one side of his mouth but didn’t reply.

  Suddenly a question sharper than any she had ever formulated took her breath away. “Am I like you or am I like mother?”

  “That’s precisely what they’re debating while you grow up utterly ignorant.” He sounded angry. “You’re unique, Mirabel, a whole new world in yourself. Never forget it.”

  Her heart expanded with a painful joy. “I love you, Father!”

  As she moved to embrace him, he gripped her arms and kept her firmly at a distance. “We keep an eye on you—that’s why you’re not lying at the bottom of this cliff right now. It’s been decided you should join the people so you can experience that part of yourself, at least.”

  “But—”

  “You see, Mirabel, at long last they’ve agreed to let me have your mother.” He swept her up into his arms and began walking toward the house.

  Through her tear-filled eyes the stars stretched a host of shining arms toward her. Her father had finally come home but now he was taking her mother away with him and leaving her alone. Joy and grief fought each other like fledgling falcons in the nest of her chest so that her feelings were unable to soar in either direction. “Mommy and some merchants are inside pretending to be wolves, spiders and birds,” she informed him.

  His arms tightened around her.

  “Why did you abandon us up here?” she asked, yawning cavernously, because his intense warmth was so relaxing.

  “I didn’t want to leave you, Mirabel.” He set her down gently. “You must believe me. Now wait here.” He kicked the cottage door open.

  Defiantly, she entered the smoky warmth right on his heels.

  He reached behind him without looking back and pushed her outside.

  She heard the dogs growl and then begin to bark as her legs gave way without her permission and she sank to her knees in the grass. She fell forward onto her hands and crawled toward the open door as Shane and Shannon came slinking out, dragging their be
llies and whining pitifully.

  Lightning flashed silently inside the cottage instead of outside. Gaining her feet, she ran across the threshold.

  She found herself in the fire-lit room alone with three men who, apparently exhausted after their long trek up the mountain, had simply fallen asleep on the floor. She quickly searched the kitchen and the two bedrooms upstairs but her father and mother were gone. All she had for company were two frightened dogs, three unconscious merchants and a row of bodiless gowns.

  Chapter Three

  Mirabel was fast asleep when Darmond burst into her room and woke her, forcing her to face the morning’s very painful light.

  “Mirabel, where’s your mother?” he demanded, grasping her shoulders and pulling her up into a sitting position. “We’ve looked everywhere for her!”

  “I’m going to be sick…”

  “No, you’re not, just take a deep breath. That’s it. Good girl. Now, tell me, where is she?”

  “She left…” She could hardly talk, her mouth was so sickeningly dry. “She left with Father.”

  He shook her. “Mirabel, wake up!”

  “I am awake!” A crushing emptiness in her chest told her that her mother had left her all alone with three strangers, yet at least she had proved her father really existed. She was sitting safely in her bed this morning because he had saved her life. “Father took her away,” she repeated.

  “You stubborn little—”

  She cringed as he raised his hand to strike her but then it merely hovered in midair, his fingers gleaming cold and white as a block of slender icicles fused together. It wasn’t just his hand that suddenly went white all over as if he had crawled out of an avalanche and was covered with a glimmering layer of snow. “Darmond?” She caressed his palm curiously. It looked like the frozen surface of a pond decorated with branching cracks yet it was still warm and tender.

  As if her touch released him, color abruptly flooded back into his skin and clothes and he lowered his hand. “I’m to take you to Visioncrest Keep,” he said without expression, then his eyes ceased to be mere fragments of the heavens and he added in his normal voice, “You’re to come with us. Your mother’s gone.” He frowned. “Do you have any idea where she went?”