by Michele Lang
I worked off my skirt, trembling now myself with fear as well as embarrassment. It had been a long time since I could not defend myself at all, using my magic or at least my wits.
The professor’s clinical gaze swept over me, and my skin pebbled into gooseflesh. I abruptly felt smaller, weaker, as if his very glance was an anti-magic, canceling me out.
“No brassiere or panties, either, Miss Lazarus. All of it, off.” Olga translated for the professor, blushing furiously, obviously feeling all of the decent shame the man should have felt.
He stepped away into the hallway, and for a fleeting moment I thought the man had seen me as a human being. But he returned a moment later with a rolling metal tray. The top shelf was piled with shiny metal instruments, some kind of gauge with a dial of measurement of some kind, like a speedometer on an automobile.
No, he felt no shame. The professor was eager to begin his groundbreaking research and earn his Lenin Star.
21
By the time he was done with me, I was exhausted and weeping, in too much pain to even be ashamed of what he had done.
The pain was one thing. The tests he conducted were very painful. But worse than that, so much worse, was the enervation, and the sense I no longer belonged to myself. No, he did not torture me. Torture was not what he was after. But by the time he was done for the day I had almost forgotten who I was, and my magic seemed like an absurd figment of my imagination, indeed a sickness and a delusion that the professor was kindly going to excise.
He hadn’t done it yet, though. My magic still lived inside of me, a pulse that radiated painfully from my core. A source of weakness in this place, not strength. Olga took all my clothes away, and gave me an ugly, shapeless hospital gown to wear instead.
“Say your prayers, girl,” she said, a sob trapped in her throat. “Maybe you will be the professor’s first test subject to survive.”
And then she said something in Russian under her breath to herself, not to me, hiccuped, and turned and walked out after the professor. I was again, mercifully, alone.
* * *
I slept. And I dreamed. Not even the dreadful anti-magic machines of the Soviet empire could reach inside my dreams and kill them. Not yet.
I stood in a patchwork of tilled fields. Frost glazed the empty earth. All around me, mists rose from the ground, wraiths of water.
I was cold, alone.
A crow circled my head, cawing his fool head off. I watched him as he flew around and around like a feathered bat.
“Caw!” he cried. “Caw! Caw!”
He was trying to warn me. And the bird looked familiar. But I couldn’t understand him, no matter how frantically he buzzed at my head.
The crow landed in front of me and tilted his head to look up into my eyes.
I knew that expression, that face. “Leo,” I whispered. My faithful little imp—I’d asked him to find Gisele and somehow he’d found me again, hidden away as I was.
“Call! Call!” the crow said.
Trapped inside my dream, I could not decipher Leo’s message. Call? How could I call anyone? I was asleep, locked up inside a mental and physical prison. Based on my past experience, the only thing I could do now was endure. And look for my chance to break free when it came.
“I don’t understand, crow,” I said, still inside my dream. The crow started hopping up and down, beating his wings at the air in frustration.
“Tell Raziel,” I began, and the crow calmed. “Whatever it is that you need to tell me, find Raziel. He will help you. And tell him I am locked away in this prison. He must get me out soon or I will be dead.”
The mists thickened around us. The shadow of Asmodel’s face rose over the fields. A strange buzzing filled the air like a siren blaring over the deserted landscape. Birds flew into the air, flocks of terrified quail and mourning doves.
Hunters’ guns thundered in the air. I heard screaming cries, the crow flew away over the cold dirt—
And I awoke on the cot, my heart pounding. The night was black as ink; my captors had kindly turned off the lights. The cries I heard were real. They sounded far away, unreachable and full of anguish.
I had to get the hell out of this place or I was finished.
* * *
Morning came as it always does, no matter what happens in this enormous, cruel world.
I strained to hear the sounds of birds outside, the sounds of screams, but could hear nothing. I did have a single window, but it was outside my cage, across from the professor’s metal desk. I craned my neck to look up into the sky. It was raining.
Presumably the doctor’s initial tests were done. The professor had taken his sweet time the day before. The surgery was already scheduled, no doubt. I did not have high hopes for a successful outcome, not even from the professor’s point of view.
I expected to die on the table. And then would come the great gamble: could I return to my body even in this sterile place? Technically I could work my spells in the afterworld, far away from Baku, in the second Heaven, but I would have to manifest here, return to my body here using my magic. Or not.
I wished with all my heart that I could send a message to Gisele, to wish her good-bye. And I still worried about Eva, trapped in a maze of illusion, pretending to evil she didn’t possess in order to fight the Nazi regime from within.
They had their battles to fight as I did. Thinking of them, I was no longer alone. I clung to my love for Gisele and Eva, like a protective amulet. And I saw Raziel in my mind’s eye, flying free on Helena’s magic carpet, and I swore to him silently that I would endure this place.
Until I found a way to escape.
22
I never found a way out.
I had believed, with the passionate intensity of a naïf, that the professor did not really know how to kill magic in a soul. I thought he was softening me up, weakening me in order to learn the secret of me.
But alas, it was much worse than I had imagined. He had perfected his butchery in a line of research tracing back to the Russian Revolution of 1917. For the entire length of my life, this colorless little man had devoted his every moment to studying and dissecting the mystery of magic. I had no secrets to keep from him.
The professor did not return the next morning with Olga. No, he came with two enormous, burly men wearing the uniforms of hospital orderlies. They took me out of my cage and frog-marched me down the long, antiseptic-smelling hallway to another floor.
I could not read the Cyrillic lettering over the doorway we reached. But I didn’t need a translator. The bright lights and metal table in the room I entered told me everything I needed to know.
I tried to wrench free of their grip, but I was no match for the orderlies. I even tried a flash of witchfire, but it burned within me, like an electrical fire trapped under my skin.
By the time I had gotten strapped down to the cold metal operating table, my heart was pounding against the cage of my ribs like a prisoner trying to escape. The two goons left, and I was alone with my torturer.
“Why do you struggle?” he asked in broken German under his breath. I knew he wasn’t talking to me—he was too much of a narcissist to even notice whether I heard him or not. “Why do you all struggle? Once I succeed, the sufferings of your people will end.”
His voice sounded far, far away.… The pounding of my heart inside my ears was much louder and more insistent. My back twisted with fear and I considered whether I could possibly commit a kind of astral suicide, pull my soul out of my body altogether, before he killed me with his terrible science.
But no. I had no magic here, it was suppressed by the Soviet anti-magic field.
A door swung open at the far side of the operating suite. My head was fixed in place by a steel band so I could not turn to see.
“Ah, Skorvald, come. The patient is in need of sedation.” He said this in Russian, but such was my panic that I strained to imagine the meaning of his words. I was that desperate to find some minuscule measure of control here. At least the i
llusion of it, if I could not have it.
I saw the surgically gloved hands out of the corner of my eye. The hands tested an enormous syringe filled with a clear fluid—some kind of anesthetic, I figured.
I tried to cry out, but my voice died in my throat. In the midst of my fright I could not remember German anymore, could not speak Russian at all.
“No,” was all I whispered, in Hungarian. But that single word held no power here. My captors didn’t even understand what the word meant.
The needle went into the muscle of my right leg. It hurt—my muscles were cinched tight with fear and the man with the syringe made no effort to warn me in advance.
The numbness spread, from my leg to my heart, then through my whole body. I could no longer talk, no longer move …
No longer breathe…
A clear mask went over my face as I sank down, down, and away from the hell of this place.
From what the professor had deigned to tell me before, and from the hint of Olga’s tearstained farewell, I realized as I fell into the darkness that if I survived this operation it would be a true miracle.
Because not one of the professor’s other magical patients had survived his tender ministrations.
* * *
Again I dreamed. But a dream like I had never had before. It was more vivid than my waking life. Every moment glittered like a jewel, with emotion and meaning. The feelings I had locked away for after the war had come to this hidden place to wait for me to release them.
I knew it was only a dream, even as I dreamed it, that in fact a sadistic scientist dissected my body in the world of the living. But this dream meant more to me than life itself.
I was back in my kitchen in Budapest, all the while knowing it was lost to me forever, that I would never visit it again in my life, if by chance I happened to survive my ordeal. Gisele stirred a pot of something, her back to me, and under her breath in her low, scratchy voice she sang her psalms, all out of key.
I was home: the warm, dusty kitchen, Gisele’s voice, humming as she stirred. The smell of bread and chicken paprikash, and the sound of traffic rising from Dohány Street.
All of it, gone forever.
Gone forever, but here forever, too.
“Gisele?” I said, my voice tiny and uncertain. I wasn’t sure that this scene wouldn’t melt into a nightmare—after all, once we had imprisoned the primordial demon, Asmodel, in this same cozy, homey place.
She turned at the sound of my voice, and I gulped. It was really her, and she hadn’t turned evil or horrifying. But the sight of her frightened me all the same.
She smiled at me, that sweet lopsided smile of hers, and all the feelings I never let out flooded through me.
“It’s you,” I said, tears streaming down my face. “I thought we’d never meet again, my darling. How I love you!”
“Hello, Magduska. I’ve been waiting for you, oh so long it seems. Now I understand why poor Mama always got so impatient. Come, sit.”
I wanted to run to her and hug her, but something in her words warned me away. Instead, feeling vaguely unsettled, I sat at the rickety kitchen table, rested my hands on the fresh, unburned lace tablecloth.
Gisele put the food onto a big, chipped plate. Turos teszta—a humble dish, the kind of thing you make for little Hungarian children. Flat egg noodles, with sour cream, cottage cheese, and lots of sugar on top. Steam rose from the plate and I cleared my throat, pretending that the huge lump in there didn’t exist.
“Come on, eat. You’ll feel so much better,” Gisele said.
I tried to smile, gave up, and instead attacked the dream noodles with a long, pointy fork. It was the most incredible thing I have ever eaten, anywhere. It tasted of home and family and love. Each bite spoke volumes of love. With every swallow, I took in Gisi’s love for me, pouring through my body like a miraculous warming medicine.
I paused and glanced over at her—while I ate, Gisi perched on the wobbly chair next to mine, the one we had just recently tried to repair with twine.
“Where are we?” I asked.
“A safe place,” Gisele replied, a little too quickly. Her little hand reached for mine, and she squeezed my fingers reassuringly.
I wasn’t used to being the comforted one in the family, but I was long past being too fierce to accept her kindness. “I miss you terribly, mouse,” I said. “I am all alone, in a bad place. I don’t think I am going to survive. This might really be good-bye this time.”
“I know. That’s why I came.”
I studied her face, her peaceful, untormented expression, and a terrible foreboding crept through me. “How did you get here? Isn’t making a place like this a rare magic?”
“Oh no, my darling, you, of all people, should know better. Love is the greatest magic there is—you taught me that, silly. And it is very simple, love is. I don’t need magic to conjure up home. Just love.”
I poked the fork at the noodles. “I didn’t know love was such a good cook. Thank you, my darling.”
“You are welcome. I wanted to ease your pain. And help you! You’ve always helped me in my darkest hours, protected me when I couldn’t protect myself. And you’ve gone haring all around the world, got in trouble in the first place, all because I begged you.”
She slipped her fingers out of my grasp and dabbed at the corners of her eyes.
I braced for the waterworks. “I believe your visions,” I replied. “And I swore I’d keep you safe. It was really that simple.”
“You did keep me safe, Magduska! Look at me—the terrible visions are gone, gone! Look at me!”
I looked her full in the face, saw how peaceful and carefree Gisele was. And I couldn’t stop my own tears from falling. “I’m so glad,” I finally managed to say.
“I’m not suffering anymore. Whatever you’ve done, out in the wide world, you stopped my visions for good. Thank you, my darling, thank you!”
“But it may not have made any real difference in the end, my little mouse. Because who cares if the world has changed, if you…” I could not bear to finish the thought. Miracle of miracles, she was the clear-eyed one and I the weepy basket case.
Gisele leaned forward and I saw the weary wisdom in her eyes, so like Raziel’s. “I know what you’re thinking. That I’m dead, that this here is Heaven, and that we’ve lost everything.”
I was too miserable by now even to nod.
“Don’t be fooled. Don’t get confused—it’s easy to get confused. You didn’t seek our Book in order to save me, even if you think you did. Saving me was not the point, wasn’t even possible. You went to stop the visions. And you did. I am at peace, so happy now. You made those visions fade away to nothing. And so I came here to say thank you.”
“And to say good-bye,” I whispered.
I took a long look around at the dusty little room with the hideous yellow flowered curtains. I would have given anything to go back there, live the life I had before.
But this was the last time.
“What happened to you?”
“Never mind, Magduska.”
“Never mind? Never mind! You’ve left this world and tell me to never mind … you know me better than that, mouse.”
She sighed, and a shadow of her old cares flashed across her features. “If you must know … Asmodel sent a demoness to murder me. She told me she couldn’t kill you, so I was the next best. She snuffed me out like a little candle.”
I listened to her calm recitation with growing horror. So Obizuth’s warnings had come to disaster. Waves of longing, of loss, washed over me, and the scene wavered through my sudden tears.
Gisele smiled. “What does it matter in the end, Magduska? Our time here in the kitchen is short. And I have something very important to tell you.”
“Nothing is more important than you, Gisi! I would have died to save you, again and again. I failed you.”
“But that’s the thing, my darling. You didn’t fail. You did save me, that is what I am trying to tell you.”
My mind insisted that I had failed, failed completely, because my Gisele was dead. My heart just grieved, and worried and picked at the details.
“Well, if you’re dead, I must be done, too. No point in trying to survive that madman’s maiming me.”
“No!” Gisele said it low and loud, a true Lazarus witch at last. “No. Stop for a minute and listen to me! My goodness, you’re a stubborn thing.”
I shrugged and glared at the noodles getting cold on the plate. “I can’t help it.”
“Listen to me. You have a choice. I didn’t.”
I looked up sharply, the ancient fury rising up in me like a personal demon. “A crappy choice.”
“Well, I guess it really is. But it’s yours to make.”
I sighed, gave up. “Go ahead, Gisi, tell me what you came to tell me. But don’t be surprised if I don’t do like you want.”
She didn’t bother wrangling with me. Instead she crossed her arms and rested her elbows on the table, in a most unladylike way. “That horrible man is digging in your brain right now. He is in fact killing your magic, killing you. You are dead on the table right this minute.”
In a flash, the dull wooden floorboards shimmered into nothingness and I looked down beneath my feet to my body, lying on the metal operating table, strapped down, the top of my head a gory mess.
Fear turned me numb. I tore my gaze away from my scalp and looked at my sister. “It’s all over, then,” I said.
“Not quite. You can go back and finish what you started for good and all. But your magic as you know it is over.”
“Forget it,” I said, though both of us knew I still wavered. “Without my magic, without you, what is the point of living?”
“You need to answer that question for yourself.”
I sighed and gulped. “I’m in a terrible fix down there.”
“Yes, you are. So are Raziel and Eva.”
For a moment I could see Raziel’s face, so clearly it was as if he had joined us here in this heavenly projection of our Dohány Street kitchen. Raziel had left his wings behind to stand with me. Could I survive without my magic for him?