The Saint

by Melanie Jackson

  “Well . . . I didn’t have a chainsaw,” Adora said. “I didn’t have anything, except maybe some harsh language.”

  “That can be good—if they’re words to spells,” Roman answered.

  She shivered. No, she wasn’t in Kansas anymore.

  “I couldn’t do anything that might affect Kris.” She shuddered again, thinking of the wildness she had seen in him. Then she admitted, “I can still feel that thing’s slimy fingerprints in my head. Sometimes I look at shadows and think I see him there. He was so gross. He turned his body inside out!”

  “Kinesthetic perseveration,” Thomas explained sympathetically. “Bad memory sticks around for a bit. It will fade, though. And you’re being avenged—that should help. I’m bankrupting that hive even as we speak.” He pointed at the portable computer on the table and grinned. The screen was flashing, numbers scrolling by at an incredible rate.

  Adora dared to tease him a bit. “Internet fraud? You look very cheerful. I’m beginning to suspect that you have a natural aptitude for thievery.”

  “What gave me away?” Thomas asked with an even wider smile. His eyes were gold and very kind.

  “Was it the shifty eyes? The sneaky smirk?” Roman suggested helpfully. He ducked as a computer manual sailed at his head. “It’s kind of like porn, isn’t it—hard to define, but you just know it when you see it.”

  “Don’t mind him,” Thomas said. “Roman is something of a hound, and he has no manners.”

  “Actually, I’m a horse,” Roman corrected. “A river horse.”

  “Hound, horse—I don’t mind so long as you don’t drink out of my toilet,” Adora replied calmly.

  Thomas began laughing. “You’ve seen him at parties, huh?”

  The computer manual sailed back.

  “Will you join us for lunch?” Thomas asked, snagging the book out of the air. Adora didn’t think she would ever get used to how quickly feys moved. “I don’t know when Kris and Jack will get free, but you’re welcome to eat with us.”

  Kris. Her momentary lightheartedness fell away, as did her appetite. She was going to have to talk to him, tell him about what she was and why she was. They couldn’t move forward until he knew the truth.

  “Come on. I won’t drink out of the toilet,” Roman promised. “You look pale. You should eat. Cyra will be there, too. She and Thomas are expecting a baby any day now—did you know? Maybe you and she could compare notes.”

  A baby? Another one? Adora’s stomach rolled over in warning.

  He thinks you’re pregnant, Joy whispered. They all know that’s the Goddess’s plan, and they just assume that you are.

  I got that.

  “Congratulations—that’s wonderful news,” she managed to say. “But I’ll pass on lunch. I just need some air.”

  Thomas looked at her closely, his gaze suddenly probing. She knew that he was about to suggest she see Zayn.

  “I’ll probably see you later, though,” Adora offered. She pasted on a smile.

  “Bank on it,” Roman said. “I want to take you girls riding.”

  That distracted Thomas. “No way!” he said, throwing the book again. This time he threw a little harder. Roman laughed and caught it, then sent it back like a Frisbee, spinning through the air. They weren’t watching as Adora backed out of the room on shaky legs.

  She was back on her ledge in time to see the dawn— though this time without a scorpion; Adora checked. At first the sunlight seemed cruel, cutting open the night at the edge of the eastern sky, tearing the new wound wide. But the birth of the morning proved to be beautiful, and the early light so healthful that she soon forgot the sky’s imagined pain.

  Her own overly empathetic imagination wasn’t the only thing strange about the morning; the morning air was touched with an autumnal chill.

  Because of what had happened with Kris—the sharing of their thoughts and perhaps even some of his goodness—a part of her childhood had been rewritten, this time in more understood terms that could be viewed safely from a new and welcome distance. It was like she had taken a long vacation— though no one would choose to spend what had felt like that eternity down in that goblin hell-hole.

  Yeah, that part is good. You needed a buffer, Joy said.

  Yes. But even with it, anyone mentions babies and I still run away.

  So, you have a few hang-ups.

  A few?

  She had been like the captive Gulliver, tied in place by the strings of a thousand assumptions about why her parents had done what they did. And most of them were wrong. It was strange to think, but she could probably let go of many of those unstated and unhappy beliefs that she had been carrying around as a personal ball and chain. She could—when she was ready—finally accept that she was in another world that had its own rules and logic and social culture. But she would have to accept all the way.

  In other words, Miss Manners’s etiquette guide can no longer be relied upon. You can probably throw out Freud and Jung too, Joy added.

  Probably.

  So, go ahead. Throw out the misconceptions and look again.

  I am.

  Adora shook her head sadly at what she saw. Her parents had been fey—but ignorant of it. How could that be, unless they were also raised by ignorant parents? And what if her mother had been as unprepared as Adora herself was to become a mother? She had never spoken of her childhood. Perhaps her mother had never been raised to feel a sense of responsibility for another being. A baby must have terrified her.

  And then, to be overwhelmed with the kinds of blinding emotion that happened between feys when they had sex . . . Well, it explained a lot.

  Enough to forgive them? Enough to let the guilt go?

  Maybe.

  Kris and everyone at Cadalach had given her a priceless gift: understanding of her parents. Though it was still painful to think about, she felt that she could finally forgive them for their neglect, because at last she understood that they had been unwitting victims of a power of which they were not even aware. There had been no malice in what they’d done. They were not heartless. They were two people trapped in their genetic destiny without the knowledge of how to fght free—or even that they needed to fight free—and having now felt the blinding attraction of mated magicks that call to one another, Adora knew precisely how strong that draw was.

  If her parents had felt as she herself had when she’d made love to Kris—been as afflicted with blind obsession—then she had to pity them. And also, to forgive. If they were still alive, she would call or maybe write them a note of apology for all the awful things she’d thought about them lately.

  In fact . . . Adora frowned and began looking around for something to write on. She was much better at organizing her thoughts on paper, and until she wrote them down she’d continue the fruitless rumination. That was the one thing her time with the shrink had taught her.

  As though something had anticipated her need, she found her notebook and a pen on the rock at her feet. A stone rested there, holding them in place.

  How the hell . . . ?

  it must have fallen out of my purse last time I was here, Adora answered.

  You didn’t have a purse.

  My pocket, then.

  Joy snorted but didn’t argue any more.

  Adora sat down and crossed her legs as though preparing for meditation. She wrote for a long while, then she set the pen aside and closed her eyes. Though she had rarely done it before, Adora prayed to Kris’s higher power that wherever her parents were, they were together and at peace, and that they would somehow know—if ever they had been aware—that she wasn’t angry anymore.

  A shadow passed overhead. Adora opened her eyes and looked up quickly from the letter clenched in her hand. She stared into the sky. It was an empty, painful blue. Not a single cloud marred its brilliance.

  Which was how she felt inside. All her resentment was gone and she was empty, waiting for something else to fill her.

  “Are you there?” she whispered, an
d then felt foolish. First a letter to her dead parents, and now she was talking to them.

  There was a soft rumbling behind her, and then Kris appeared. She wasn’t surprised. They were connected now, and he would have known some of what she was feeling.

  Adora turned to smile at him, then blinked in consternation. Kris often did strange things, but she had never seen anything quite so incongruous as a man in an Armani suit carrying what he was carrying.

  “I thought maybe you’d want to send that letter,” he said, offering the small flotilla of daffodil-yellow helium balloons. “I think it needs to be set free so it can do its work.”

  “You think they’ll get it this way?” she asked, touched by the gesture but still feeling foolish.

  “Yes,” Kris said gravely. He promised, “They’ll get your message if that’s what you want.”

  Adora nodded, believing him because she needed to believe him, and then she reached for the balloons. Kris helped her tie the strings around her letter, forming a sort of crooked net for the loose pages.

  “The sky is too empty anyway. It needs some color,” she said.

  Kris nodded, then released the balloons into the air. He and Adora watched until they were just a speck of gold headed eastward over the desert. It was probably psychosomatic, but Adora had to admit that she felt lighter with every minute, as though her sad memories were truly being carried away by the wind.

  “I have some time now,” Kris said. “If you want to talk.”

  Adora decided it really was time, and began telling Kris the details about her past. She held nothing back, as embarrassing and painful as it was to admit all that she had done and felt: Fletcher, the scorching shame, the blinding rage, the souldestroying loneliness that only Joy had broken.

  Kris was silent for a long moment after she finished speaking.

  “My first impulse was to preserve my dignity,” she said, when the silence grew uncomfortable. “You know, hope that you would never find out what a coward I was—and maybe still am.”

  “You’re speaking of that first fire? Aren’t you being a little hard on yourself?” Kris asked. “You were only five, and had absolutely no example set for you. It was only natural that you would defend yourself with your magic. I would hope that given those circumstances you would do it again.”

  “Really?”

  “Really. You needn’t worry about me. I have it under control now—thanks to you.” Kris shook his head. “I’ll make you a deal. You forgive yourself for your various trespasses, and I’ll stop feeling that I was weak for losing my way. We both did the best we could, given the circumstances we were in. The best anyone can do is the best they can do—we can’t ask for more from ourselves or from others.”

  There it was: absolution. And from the one whose understanding mattered.

  You matter, Joy said.

  Yes, but if he can see me and not condemn, then I can do that for myself.

  “Yeah, I’m figuring that out,” she said to Kris. “It’s just hard to tear down the childhood beliefs that wallpaper the brain.”

  “Well, you’re talking to me now. Some of the wallpaper must have come down. The rest will follow when it’s ready.”

  “Joy thought you already knew all this,” Adora admitted. “That’s one reason I decided to come clean. After all, you might be thinking things are worse than they are.”

  “I knew a lot,” Kris agreed with a small smile. He put an arm around her and urged her close. Though there was nothing sexual in his intent, she could still feel the pull rising between them. He added, “It was really loud wallpaper. Even Mugshottz could hear some of it.”

  Adora leaned into his arm and started telling him the rest. Kris remained silent, offering comfort with his arms while the last of her tears fell.

  “It’s autumn, isn’t it?” she asked sometime later. Her voice was raspy from overuse and crying. “It seems that I have somehow managed to sleep the summer away.”

  “Nearly so. The autumnal equinox is but a week away—but you weren’t sleeping. This happened while you were lost on the faerie roads. Some of them are . . . feral. They belong to the goblins now, and are hostile to those of our blood. They couldn’t age you, but they could slow you down enough that the outside time changed.”

  “So, lots of bad things happen down there.”

  “Often,” he agreed.

  “Is that why Chloe can’t go outside? Because she’d be old?”

  “Perhaps. Chloe has many reasons for staying inside.”

  Adora nodded. “Did that mess up your plans— spending all that time looking for me?” she asked.

  “No, but it brought them forward a bit.”

  Adora bolted upright. “It’s been weeks! Ben must be worried sick—and my house and the bills!”

  “All taken care of. You needn’t worry.” He pulled her back. “The Internet is an amazing thing.”

  Adora decided she would take Kris’s advice. She was too tired to worry anymore. “But . . . I just don’t understand how it all works,” she complained. “I just don’t get it. How is something like this even possible?”

  “There are probably scientific or mathematical formulas to explain it,” Kris said, “but I think of it this way: Every memory we have is tied to a certain time and place. Out here, the rock you touched a minute ago is not the rock you see now. There have been microscopic changes. The wind that touches you is not the same wind of a moment before. It couldn’t be, because it would be bumping into itself, constantly crossing its own temporal path.”

  “Er, okay.”

  “And just as this rock and the wind are different, so too are you. You are not the you that you were an hour ago. And that is as it should be in the human world. But inside the mound, the time-place—or time-space—is different. The mound is a crossroads between this world and another. You can run into things that were, things that are and sometimes things that are yet to be. Usually these things happen just with the mind. Like with Farrar. Or like how Nyssa and Abrial have learned to travel into the Yesterdays. Their minds leave but their bodies remain.”

  “And using the faerie roads to travel the length of the Sierra Nevada Mountains in just minutes . . . ?”

  “Well, that is something that happens with the body as well,” Kris said.

  “It sounds like science fiction, you know.”

  “But it’s really a faerie tale,” Kris joked. “Well, as they say, truth is stranger than fiction.”

  Adora nodded. Then she changed the subject before Kris could go on. “I saw Chloe this morning. I forgot to ask her—what did she and Zayn decide to call the baby?” she asked.

  “Shulamite.”

  Kris’s voice was so expressionless that, in spite of her unattractively reddened eyes, Adora looked up at him. “As in King Solomon and the Shulamite Woman?” she asked, startled by the idea. “The woman who married Solomon but then fled him to return to her one true love, a shepherd?”

  “Yes.”

  “I guess Chloe isn’t up on her Bible reading.”

  “Perhaps not. Though it has been said that she lived happily ever after—at least, after fleeing.” Kris was smiling a little.

  “That’s true. And I suppose I like Shulamite better than Clarissa.”

  Kris chuckled. “As do I. I can’t imagine calling a child Clarissa. Not even a human one.”

  A child. His child. Their child. That’s what he meant. The one they would have.

  “What now?” Adora asked, looking away.

  “I have some plans to set in motion, and you have a book to write.”

  “That’s still on?” she asked, surprised and a bit relieved. “You still want that biography?”

  “Oh, yes. And you need to be quick about it. We’ve lost a lot of time.”

  “But if I tell the truth, everyone will think Bishop S. Nicholas is a kooky wackjob. Or else a total fake.”

  “Perhaps. But it amuses me to tell the truth. And it will accomplish other goals by distract
ion. The book is excellent sleight of hand. It will keep my enemies busy while I get on with my real agenda— which I will share with you soon.” She loved his utter confidence.

  “Sleight of hand?” Adora suddenly realized that she should be insulted. She laughed instead. “Is that what this is?”

  “Definitely. While also the truth.”

  “Okay, I’ll get down to work. After all, being a writer is about seeing the possibilities in people and situations. I believe that most of us are—or at least begin—as optimists. I’ll probably come up with something semicoherent.”

  “That’s the spirit. You still look a bit frazzled, though,” Kris said, smoothing back her hair and urging her to look at him again. “You know, it isn’t right to be an Indian giver. You gave your dark truths to me. It wouldn’t be right to try and take their burden back.”

  “You can have them,” she assured him. But she thought to herself: Frazzled? That didn’t begin to cover it. But Adora didn’t complain out loud. After all, Kris was calm and unruffled, and he was the one whose reputation was on the line.

  But how was she to write a summation of Kris’s life and do him justice? A mere statement of outward facts—crazy as they were—wasn’t enough. Yet his interior thoughts and spiritual motivation wouldn’t be readily accessible to the average reader. Hell! She was connected to his brain, and she didn’t understand him completely. In fact, the longer she was with him, the more she realized that she was a footnote to his long existence.

  “Not a footnote—a new chapter,” he corrected. “You’ll find the way, I promise. We fey are adept at balancing acts of all kinds,” he said confidently. Then: “But that isn’t all that’s bothering you, is it?”

  “No. This plan of yours—it’s going to be dangerous, isn’t it? There could be more attempts on your life. On mine too.”

  “Yes,” he admitted. “But they won’t succeed.”

  “You picked a lousy time to fall in love,” Adora said. Then, hearing herself, she blushed. Kris had never said anything about love—not specific, romantic love.

  He seemed unperturbed. “I know. I’m sorry, Adora. I should have said this straight off—I love you. I love you too much for peace of mind, actually. But I can’t love you any less, so . . .” He shrugged. The gesture went oddly with his suit. “Things are as they are. I plan to lie in the bed I made and enjoy it.”