The Saint

by Melanie Jackson

  But he didn’t want to think about that right now. The moment was so wonderful. He was in the tomhnafurach again, closer to Gaia than he had been in nearly two centuries, and holding both Adora and a child he had saved.

  Adora felt and smelled especially wonderful. He turned his face into her hair and inhaled deeply. Beautiful, perfect. What a gift, if she would truly be his.

  As a rule, Kris was indifferent to human packaging. He hadn’t had his ideal woman created for him by any particular culture, and therefore did not mind that Adora wasn’t from America’s heartland, corn-fed, wholesome and sweet—or dark and exotic and decorated in tattoos and lip plates. Some people—many, in fact—would find her appearance startling, her body and face strong and unconventional by human standards. That made her interesting to watch.

  Her mind and nature were equally unconventional, and this was her real attraction for him. If she was the one promised by the Goddess, then she needed to be strong mentally, a survivor instead of a sleek and pampered darling, or an obedient drone. He needed a consort—someone with greatness in her. Like Cleopatra. The Queen of Egypt hadn’t been conventional. Helen of Troy, Ninon de Lenclos— these were not merely physically beautiful women. What they had were charm, wit and guts. Adora had those too, and something more besides—she was fey. A very strong fey, if she could ever access her magic without hurting herself. Or him.

  He hadn’t been indulging in idle flattery when he told Adora that he loved her work. Her books were truly wonderful—subtle, compassionate masterpieces that showed the most intimate sides of her subjects. She had a knack for finding out who they were, right down to their deepest fears and fondest desires, and she treated both with the greatest care while she distilled the essence of their lives into something that anyone could understand.

  And she had now turned her mind to him. She finally believed the truth about him being fey, but a difficult time was probably ahead for both of them now that the first battle was won. Adora had taken the first step, and she was going to find out who he really was—no matter how it challenged her longheld beliefs and perceptions. This discovery wasn’t something he could do anymore with his damaged mind. The door to understanding was stuck fast. No matter how he pushed, it would open no farther. But Adora would be able to open the door and look deeper into his heart than he had ever seen. Then she would tell him about the view from inside. What would she say? Probably not to come on in ’cause the water’s fine.

  Kris snorted. He at once knew too little and too much about his past. In many ways, in spite of his lifetimes of fragmented memories, he was a stranger to himself, and his past lives—which he should not be able to remember—were made up of a lot of dark, unexplored territory. And to make it all the more challenging, his mind was littered with funhouse mirrors that distorted what memories and understanding he had. Flawed mirror images refracted off other flawed glasses almost endlessly. The longer he looked, the more warped the picture became. Meaning had disconnected from purpose, and actions that had had meaning at one time no longer made any sense.

  He truly wanted to know himself again so that he could understand why he had done and continued to do everything he did—why he was still filled with conviction that his course of action was correct when it flew in the face of all history and logic. He just had to hope that he and Adora were both ready for the portrait she would paint once all her deliberations were done. She had thought him a madman. Was he one? That he was fey did not prove anything one way or the other.

  Kris exhaled slowly. Frankly, he would not have sought out this analysis at this moment had the situation been less urgent. He was not filled with hubris that needed to share his glorious past with the human world, and he did not revel in nostalgia for its own sake—that was for the young and sentimental. His cumulative losses through the millennia rendered the past too painful a place to visit casually.

  But needs must when the Goddess drives and all that. He had also begun to question small things, to feel things, and he needed some answers. He needed to know why he had done all the things he had, whether they were worth the lifetimes of sacrifice and loss that now horrified him. Because from where he stood, his life—his many lives—seemed as crazy as Adora thought. Perhaps, given that nothing fundamental had changed in the human world, they were even futile.

  He’d always been a good foot soldier and done what was asked of him, however impossible the odds. But he had neglected to leave space for a life of his own—for personal reward or joy while he fulfilled his duty. He had loved everyone generally and no one in particular. Why? Why had he done this? It made no sense to him now. Why had he never found a wife, a great love with whom he could share his dreams—or even a bed—for any length of time? Why were there no children? He who loved all children as he loved his own life—in fact, far more than he loved his own life—had none of his own. Why? It couldn’t be because Gaia was jealous and had kept him from it.

  Could it be because he was somehow flawed, incapable of feeling this kind of love? Could it be because he had needed to wait for Adora? Kris inhaled again, drawing in her scent, wondering if what he was feeling in that instant was love.

  The baby wiggled and began to chew on his coat. Her teeth were very sharp and she was grinding through the fabric, but he let her gnaw. He could sense her hunger and the irritation in her gums. She was still teething. She would need a dentist soon. Her human-sized jaw would not be able to accommodate a full set of goblin teeth.

  Kris looked away from the baby and back down at Adora’s shining hair. On top of concerns about himself, he was deeply troubled by the fact that he had hurt her back in L.A.—that he’d frightened Adora to the point of blacking out, had been forced to invade her mind to shut down the submerged rage that had come bubbling out of her subconscious at the goblins that day at the farmers’ market. Her resistance to his suggestion to calm herself and leave the scene had been abnormally strong—death feys were usually able to march right into whatever mind or body they wished to examine and have their way. But she’d fought—and was still fighting, still hiding. Since he didn’t want to hurt her more, he’d had to remain on the outside ever since, eavesdropping on her stray thoughts whenever he could. This brain block she had in place—the thing she called Joy and a muse—felt like it was something separate from her waking conscience, and it was serious about its role as guardian at the gate. He’d had to overwhelm both Adora and Joy to cut off her rage at the goblins, and it felt like something very close to rape for both of them.

  He didn’t know what to do with this . . . this fragment of her personality that was Joy. It was clearly part of Adora’s fey nature, deeply suppressed, probably violent when cornered, and he sensed it was guarding some part of Adora that was terrified and hiding, a small and perhaps defenseless memory from when she was young, a memory that whimpered every time he drew near because—for some reason—it expected to be attacked. He couldn’t see the specifics, but there had been moments, especially when she spoke of her parents, that she had looked inward with the same mute misery and bewilderment as an abandoned dog left in the wilderness to starve.

  He wanted desperately to comfort her, to offer reassurance of his intentions, but he could find no way to get near that part of her without damaging— perhaps even destroying—Joy. He couldn’t risk that, not without knowing a whole lot more about Adora and her personal history. He didn’t know her magic. Destroying Joy might destroy her too.

  He sighed again. Sometimes, life was tricky.

  “Okay. You can open your eyes. We’ll stop here for some water. We all need it.”

  Adora opened her eyes, but it didn’t help much since she was in darkness.

  A familiar scent tickled her nose. It took a moment to place. It was the smell of a linen cupboard that had gone too long without cleaning. Kris said something in that musical language he had used with the dying girl, and a blue light slowly came up around them.

  Adora stared. She wasn’t frightened. Her capacity for
alarm had been anesthetized when they entered the mound. But something about this space was not right, was not . . . human.

  “What is this place?”

  At first glance, she thought the room was filled with carousel horses from some dismantled merry-go-round, but a second glance told her the truth: These were brightly painted mummies of fantastical beasts—griffins, satyrs, a sort of winged Cyclops whose face was painted garish colors. Beyond, the room sparkled under its layer of dust. There was a mosaic on the wall made of jasper, agate, coral and . . . mica? Surely it couldn’t be gold! Some of the design had crumbled away, leaving colorful heaps of stone on the floor, but enough remained to show a pastoral scene of the room’s dead inhabitants cavorting in a tropical jungle that had probably never existed on the human part of earth.

  Kris’s arms fell away. Adora turned slowly. The ceiling above was domed and ornamented with basreliefs of extremely fat, sneering cupids with unusually long arrows and oversized bows. There was no reason to believe that these cherubs were anything other than gilt paint on plaster, but somehow Adora was sure that they were. The detail was too great. It was as though someone had bronzed actual beings and then welded them to the ceiling.

  “This way,” Kris said.

  Adora stepped farther into the room and reached out with her inner sight, something she was barely aware of doing. There were deep shadows in the areas near the walls that should be cool but somehow weren’t.

  The feeling of this weird tomb was not hallowed; it was more haunted than sacred, perhaps even watched over by hostile ghosts. Obviously death had visited and left behind souvenirs that, had they been more recent or she less—

  Drugged? Joy suggested.

  —might have overset her nerves.

  Real or not, it was all a bit too much. The show of treasure should have aroused some avarice in her bosom, but all it did was make her vaguely homesick for a tiny house with its cheerful yard and sunny windows.

  So, why not go home?

  Why not, indeed?

  Am I nuts? she asked Joy. I’m in a tomb—a tomb! Why didn’t I just pack my bags—

  You did!

  —and leave L.A. at the first sign of trouble? Was it really the hundred k?

  Joy snorted. I wish it was because of the money, but we both know better.

  Adora looked over at Kris. Even now, her attraction for him overrode all else. “It’s like Aladdin’s cave,” she said.

  “Without the jinn,” Kris pointed out. “And there’s no forty thieves about either.”

  “Such color,” she finally said. “I’ve never seen anything like it. It’s . . .”

  Not normal.

  He nodded. “The wine red comes from juice squeezed from rose madder. Strange, glowing roses used to bloom wildly down here. They’re almost all gone now, surviving only in the garden at the heart of Cadalach. A bit of the perfume still remains, though,” he said, inhaling slowly. “The gleam in the sky comes from pixie dust gathered from fire imps. They mixed it with the blue chalk of ground mollusk shells. Those sea snails are now extinct too.”

  Adora pondered. Maybe those were the ghosts she felt. It seemed not so frightening to be haunted by flowers and snails. Certainly it was better than being surrounded by the spirits of Cyclops and satyrs tied up in those painted bandages of eternal slumber—or so she sincerely hoped.

  “Is it a mausoleum?” she asked.

  “Not really. It’s a sort of storage room for lost things that are the last of their kinds,” Kris said, suddenly matter-of-fact. “The Nephalim—the giants— collected them.”

  “So, these creatures are all extinct?”

  “In this place and time.”

  “Does it bother you? Being with the dead?” she asked.

  “No. The dead do not bother me—it’s the dying. I have to stay away from active war zones where hate and anger thrive. The killing fields affect me, and in a terrible way,” he admitted. “I used to have more control, but now I’m . . . I’m easily affected. It’s why Mugshottz is nearly always with me.”

  Adora started to ask him what he meant, but he interrupted.

  “Go to the back wall. There’s a small stream there,” he instructed. “You need to drink deeply.”

  She was used to him leaping about from the sublime to the mundane—though it was sometimes difficult to know at first which subjects were which. But this time she agreed about the urgency of drinking something. She was parched.

  “I don’t see . . .” But even as she spoke, water blossomed in the floor and wended its way along the wall Kris indicated. Light rose from it, showing the wall to be made of some kind of slag glass. She had seen samples before when lightning hit and melted sandstone. She couldn’t imagine what force—short of a volcano—could have created this place. It also possessed a sort of eerie resonance that was almost like a living voice.

  “Come. You and the baby must drink. In fact, bathing might be a good idea. I must see if she has any wounds.”

  Adora nodded reluctantly. The baby certainly needed washing, and she herself was feeling more than a little slimy. That didn’t mean that she was ready for a strip-down in front of Kris and assorted dead creatures. Eventually taking her clothes off with him sounded keen, but this was not the place.

  So, you can wait? Joy asked sarcastically.

  While Adora knelt down to drink, Kris dipped his hands in the water and poured a trickle into the baby’s mouth.

  “Ah-abah,” the child said, swallowing happily. Kris smiled back as he cradled it and scooped up more water, which he poured over the child’s head in a protective gesture that looked something like a baptism. Watching them together reminded Adora of Sundays when she was a child and used to watch “Wild Kingdom” alone in the living room. She had actually envied the beavers and bears and other mammals who got to cuddle with their parents in a family den.

  Envy is an ugly thing, Joy pointed out. Don’t go there.

  I know. I’m not jealous. And she wasn’t. She was just sad that she couldn’t join Kris and the baby, that they were not her family.

  “Ah-haaa,” the child said again.

  Water tickled Adora’s feet, urging her to wade in. It felt delightful even as it soaked her shoes, probably finishing the destruction started by the rain.

  Adora put her hands in the eerie blue liquid and sighed. She agreed with the baby’s happy evaluation, though she didn’t coo out loud. The water, when she finally tasted it, was wonderful, and she could feel strength and energy pouring back into her body, easing away the cold stiffness that had affected her. She rubbed handfuls of it over her face and into her tired eyes, which suddenly cleared and showed things she hadn’t noticed before.

  “Let’s get you changed,” Kris said to the baby, either unaware or uncaring that Adora was staring into space, lost in bemusement at the new colors all around her.

  She moved her head slowly, enthralled at the radiant auras but also watching from the corner of her eye as Kris worked, more fascinated than appalled, as he laid the baby on the floor and peeled off its filthy sleeper. He quickly freed the child’s strapped lower arms from their dirty bandage and then tickled her pink tummy. Adora could see now that the rest of the baby’s skin was actually a pale, glowing green—how had she not noticed this before?

  The baby laughed and waved its arms and legs. Adora was oddly charmed in spite of the wrongness of the extra limbs protruding from the body. Feeling braver, she turned, looking openly.

  “That diaper’s probably filthy, but I don’t know what—” she began then stopped as Kris pulled the disposable diaper away and tutted at how red the baby’s legs and lower belly were.

  Is that diaper rash? Adora thought, staring at the red skin covered in small blisters.

  How the hell should I know? Joy answered. It isn’t like I’ve had kids either.

  “Don’t worry,” Kris said. “We’ll borrow some linen and make a new one. That will do for now.”

  Adora glanced once at the animal mu
mmies Kris was staring at, and then looked hurriedly back at the baby.

  So, there’s something scarier than a baby, Joy said, amused.

  Those are mummies—bandaged dead monsters, Adora replied. She said to Kris, “I’ll wash her. You get the . . . the diaper.”

  “Okay.”

  “Just . . . just don’t get it from the Cyclops, okay? He looks mean. I don’t want to piss him off.”

  “Okay,” Kris said again. She could hear the amusement in his voice. Obviously, he didn’t share her feeling of being watched. Or else he didn’t care what the ghosts might think.

  Adora kept her eyes firmly fixed on the baby and the dancing water while she soaked the only clean edge of the baby’s sleeper, using it as a washcloth to scrub the baby’s muddy face and head, and then to trickle water over the angry red rash. She tried not to listen to the tearing sounds behind her, and she also avoided touching the baby’s skin, fearful that she might somehow hurt the child even though the red welts and spots were fading quickly under the stream of soothing, dribbled water.

  Kris returned to her side. He blotted the baby with a small shred of linen.

  “Okay, little lady, time to wrap you back up,” he said, lifting up the baby and positioning her on an uneven rectangle of gauze. He tied her with a calm efficiency that said he had done this before.

  “I think her sleeper’s a lost cause,” Adora remarked. “But we can wrap her in my coat. The inside is still dry.”