The Strangely Beautiful Tale of Miss Percy Parker

by Leanna Renee Hieber

  “What am I?” she murmured, “And what am I sent to do here?”

  Ancient words of a tongue she had never spoken yet always knew were suddenly on her lips, a stream of blessings and curses all at once. She stumbled as if pushed into the white, empty chapel of Athens, but there everything seemed as it always did: the plain altar was draped in white cloth, the stained-glass angels stood silent sentry. But a sound grew in the silence, originating at the altar—a tearing sound—and her blood chilled.

  A dark, gaping maw of a door began as a small square and grew before her, obliterating the sight of the altar for its dense blackness and wisps of dancing blue flame—so much like the vision she’d drawn in Alexi’s classroom! Terrible sounds could be heard emanating from inside. Percy turned to the feather. It bobbed, impatient, swelled and suddenly burst apart, leaving only smoke. There was a cry from beyond the portal threshold.

  “Alexi!” Percy realized.

  The sound of his strained, faltering voice caused her to run forward, heedless of what might await her below, and she threw herself into the void.

  The Guard tried to murmur curses, benedictions and prayers, but they couldn’t connect to wield their collective power. They, despite experiment and the best of intentions, had failed. Through their mortal weakness, that chink in the armor of their every incarnation, a wound birthed anarchy. Malevolent spirits poured through the seal, wailing and cackling, anxious to terrorize the populace of the world’s fulcrum city, to tip the balance from sanity to chaos and shatter divisions between journeys of the human spirit. All the while, an ancient foe, that chimerical hellhound, shifted his canine forms and waited, stoking his ravenous appetite.

  “Why resist?” Lucille cried. “We don’t have to fight anymore. All debts will clear and we’ll begin anew. This was, at first, supposed to be about her, since Master lost his damnable bride again. Sending his faithful dog, I encouraged the beast to search out whores, expecting to find his errant girl in good company. Pity there were so many to choose from.”

  “Demon, what on earth—?” Alexi broke free of the serpent around his neck and leaped to his feet, diving forward to clamp his hands around Lucille’s delicate throat.

  Unhurried, she placed a finger on his forehead and he was again on his knees, as if his blood were suddenly turned to lead. “All politics, love and antique fables. But none of that old news matters. Now that we’re together and there’s something more than an ancient, pitiful love affair at stake, now that you’ll join me—”

  “Never!” Alexi cried.

  “Truly?” Lucy pouted softly, her snakes undulating. “You’re such a lovely man. I’d hate to lose a mind like yours.”

  “I knew you were never one of us, demon witch,” Alexi spat.

  Lucy sighed. Insects poured suddenly from every crack in the walls of the sacred space. Screams were issued from the faltering company who could draw breath, for arachnids, roaches and beetles crawled indiscriminately over marble floor, petticoats, arms and legs.

  “Tell whomever you serve that we do The Grand Work, not that of the devil!” Alexi cried.

  “Don’t you remember anything?” Lucy bellowed in a harpylike shriek. “There is no ‘devil.’ There is no ‘hell.’ There is only Unrest. There is no down, only sideways; the transparent beside the opaque, and a thin wall to separate them. I’m so damn sick of fallacies!”

  Josephine and Jane had slipped into unconsciousness, were held up solely by their serpentine tethers; the rest were fading. Alexi supposed oblivion was best, for spiders crawled over them in a most wretched manner. “Whatever suffices for hell—wherever there be suffering and horror—go there, where you belong!” He lashed out with his last bit of strength.

  “And I was trying to be so kind,” Lucy murmured as insects scurried up her skirts.

  The entire room around them burst into true and harmful flame, not the blue fire of their Work, but an inferno that would ignite and burn their bodies. Michael and Rebecca tried to clasp hands, to wake the others into prayer and power, but all effort was futile. Spirits bent on harassing the living kept entering their world, floating through the fire, jaws wide with insatiable hunger. The world would be overrun; there would never again be peace.

  Lucy’s snakes were poised to strike, mouths wide and ready, fangs dripping. The encircling blaze was closing in. “What a pity your lover never did find you this life around!” she giggled. “Maybe it was that unfortunate Miss Parker, after all. I wish she were here; I’d have liked to show her this final scene, this end to your nauseating epic drama once and for all. I did think once I brought you to your knees she’d come running. Ah well. She’s a coward, I suppose.”

  She took a moment to stare around at the foundering companions, shook her head and shrugged. “Well, mortal arbiters between life and death, foolish romantics—sorry, remnants of a charred, dead god and his friends—your ends have come! It’s time for you to cross the river!”

  “NO.”

  The female voice boomed behind them, and an amazing, blinding white form burst into view at the threshold of the altar door. After her bare white feet stepped into the space, the portal snapped shut with a thunderclap.

  Eyes blazing like stars, hair wild and raging, snowy arms outstretched and glistening with light as her thin white gown whipped in the wind of her own power, Persephone Parker descended through fire and entered the circle where Lucy stood staring, struck dumb and quizzical. The spiders scattered and the dog squealed, tucking incorporeal tails between its legs. The inferno vanished.

  Lifting a hand, every muscle in her compact form taut with energy, Percy spoke, and her words cast a marvelous echo. “Demon, you’ll not destroy my world!”

  The serpents retracted, and The Guard fell to the floor, free. Lucille scowled.

  Alexi stared up in desperate wonder as his beloved stood before him, the answer to his prayers, radiant from within. His friends began to rouse and stared on in awe.

  Percy looked around at the spirits madly careening about the space. She frowned then admonished, “Go home.” Her upraised hand closed into a fist. The pin between worlds roared, stone on stone, as it ground against the floor. Commanded, it lifted, shuddering and shedding debris as it began to twist back into place.

  Everything reacted. The spirits shrieked, but their disquieting noises were audible only to Percy, who winced yet remained stalwart. As if pulled backward by strings, the horde was drawn one by one back into the black hole. Clawing and screaming, angry spectres were sucked again into the netherworld, blinking out, unable to shake London loose as they wished. And once the errant spirits were reclaimed, the tunnel closed with a resounding Shhhh; the fulcrum upon which the entire Balance hung slid back into place with a final stony and metallic crunch. The earth shuddered and settled, once again sealed.

  A strange sound erupted from Percy’s throat, an ancient, beautiful command that surprised her as she sang it. Obeying, a new door opened. A vertical, rectangular portal swung into place directly behind Lucy, opening to a dark and indeterminate realm, where dim figures waited in the vast shadows beyond, patiently in formation.

  “Oh,” Elijah murmured sheepishly. “That door!”

  Up from the base of the opening came a finger bone, then another. Skeletal hands began clawing at the edges of this threshold, scrabbling and clicking upon one another as they sought purchase.

  Lucy turned and pursed her lips. “How dare you? Who do you think you are?”

  “Who do you say that I am?” Percy asked in a murmur that made everything tremble.

  Michael stirred. “You are the one whose coming was foretold,” he murmured. Percy turned to him, her face shining with love.

  Lucy crossed her arms. “So it is you after all. A fine mess you’ve gotten us all into. What the hell do you expect to do now?” she demanded, her crown of snakes slithering and hissing.

  Percy laughed, her inner light brightening like a fresh ray of sun. “To settle the score!” she cried, her confident word
s pouring forth; a mysterious vintage.

  Suddenly, her head was thrown back. Percy’s body arched. Her mouth fell open and a painful, feminine gasp flew from her pale lips as a shaft of blinding blue-white light impaled her body in a humming cylinder. The column of incandescence, floor to ceiling, pierced Percy’s body at the sternum and held her just above the floor, arched in agony and radiance; an illuminated butterfly transfixed by a pin.

  After a moment, Percy recovered herself. Throwing a vanquishing arm out toward her adversary, she cried a brief command in that ancient tongue she was speaking for the first time, her voice containing an echo older than itself.

  Lucy pouted. “I was hoping it wouldn’t come to—”

  A wave of light and power exploded from Percy’s form in a deafening gust of blue flame and angelic chords, and it sent Lucy sprawling back toward the portal, which pulled her like a magnet. The insects and arachnids Lucy summoned were sucked in as well, carried like tiny leaves in a gale. The hellhound followed, its many heads howling in defeat and punishment.

  At the threshold of the portal, loosing a wretched squeal, the thing known as Lucy began to harden. Her skin greyed and froze like stone. Fissures appeared. Her face cracked and split. An arm broke away. Her body disintegrated, falling in a heap of hissing dust that was drawn ash by ash into the deep nothing. The skeletal fingers around the sides of the portal clutched at her particles, emitting a millennial rattling until each speck was consumed by their scrabbling hands. Everything disappeared inside, and only the open portal remained.

  Percy floated toward the door, where she alone could dimly make out figures reaching for her. Light hummed around and within her body. Her arms hovered at her sides, and her thin gown clung to her flesh like gauze. Eyes fixed on this entryway to a foreign world, in a body not entirely her own, she drifted nearer the portal’s edge, unsure where she was meant to go.

  “Alexi,” she whimpered, “take me away from this unbelievable scene. I want to be with you…” She forced her head down to gaze at him, pleading.

  “Percy,” he choked out, scrambling to his feet, tears streaming down his face. He whirled to face his companions. “Now, do you see?”

  Stunned, he and the rest of The Guard watched Percy, wrapped in light, drift closer to this new and unknown door. They could hear water lapping within.

  Alexi’s senses returned. “Persephone, you mustn’t enter! None of our kind have ever been able to cross such a threshold and return with their wits! Please, come away—”

  “Alexi, help me,” she cried in return, reaching out a shaking hand.

  He rushed forward, knowing through and through that his future was her, no matter what the future might be.

  The moment he touched her fingers he cried out, pulled immediately up and into the light. Their eyes now level, Alexi and Percy floated in close proximity. They put their arms around each other with a sigh from their souls. Their arms could not clutch each other close enough.

  The moment they sealed their embrace, the portal shut, leaving their sacred space at last closed. A tether of light began winding like ivy from inside Percy’s pounding heart and into Alexi’s.

  “Darling…” He pressed his head against her bosom, directly into the shaft of brightest light. Percy’s arms slid around his neck, and she pressed her trembling lips to his head.

  The others scrambled to their feet. Taking hands hastily, still choking and shaking, The Guard began to murmur a gentle incantation of praise and thanksgiving. The wind that was already present in the room turned sweet, a musical caress.

  There came a whimper from Percy’s throat, fever overtaking her once more. What burst from within, she didn’t know or understand how to control. Her body still felt on fire, and her fever poured forth in light. She wanted to close her eyes and sleep for years.

  A cataclysm had occurred after all, justifying the madness that had led her to this moment, the horsemen on the horizon and the cracked sky. Now, the sound of dogs barking was gone. The foul air, too. The flashing visions were gone, and all the demons. But her consciousness was slipping. Percy’s mortal weakness was giving way beneath the strain. More than mere humanity coursed through her veins, but in the end, her veins were human and had limits.

  The room itself trembled with Percy as her breath hitched and rattled. She squirmed in the binding light, still held transfixed, hovering off the floor. Alexi’s body, once suspended with her, began to sink again to the ground.

  “Alexi, accept me,” Percy begged, her plea a strange counterpoint to her aura of power. Their eyes were locked, dark and light.

  “Accept you as what, my love—what are you?” he asked.

  “A mortal girl who needs you…and, I pray, whom you need, too,” she choked out.

  “Percy—”

  “I’ve no strength, Alexi. I used it all in coming here. Whatever is inside me is tearing me apart,” Percy gasped, her blood feeling thin and insufficient. “I don’t know what’s happening…” Her words were labored, a wheeze in her lungs. “All I know is that I was drawn here, wherever this is, for a purpose you surely know far better than I. Thus, I give what remains of me to you, Alexi, whom I love with my whole heart. Whatever you need of my soul, it is entirely yours and always has been—Ah!”

  Pain claimed her body in a brief seizure. The shaft of light collapsed suddenly, as did Percy, crumpling into Alexi’s arms, a limp heap of white limbs and fabric.

  “Oh, God,” Alexi cried as he sank with her to the floor.

  And suddenly there was commotion. Jane attempted to focus her rattled heart enough to manifest a healing aura. Michael had closed his eyes, and with recovering cheer was attempting to quiet the frenetic nerves of his fellows. Josephine placed her locket that contained a tiny portrait of their magical, angelic icon around Percy’s moist neck.

  Elijah crept forward. “We were looking for her door. How terribly confusing! Well, I suppose we’ve found her now, haven’t we? I daresay I liked her door a good deal more than that first one…” He would, perhaps, have continued to ramble had Jane not rapped him soundly on the skull.

  “Thank heavens she found us,” Rebecca murmured, and moved to the center of the room, where Alexi’s black-clad form nestled Percy’s fragile white mass. “Oh, Alexi!” She placed a hand upon his shoulder.

  “Hush!” Alexi shirked away from her hand, cradling his beloved. His forehead against hers, he murmured, gently rocking her. “Don’t leave me. After all this, you mustn’t leave me.”

  “Alexi,” Rebecca called. He looked up, and she glimpsed the mad light in his eyes.

  “She’s barely alive, Rebecca!” Spittle flew from his lips, strands of wild black hair stuck to his damp brow. “If she dies there will be no one to save us; we’ll have failed Prophecy twice! That gorgon will have won in the end, the sepulcher will be thrown open entirely and our world will be overtaken!”

  Rebecca retreated fearfully into the shadows.

  Shaking Percy, Alexi began to cry out something in the beautiful tongue bequeathed only to The Guard, and the rest began to chant furiously with him, invoking ancient prayers of healing and rebirth. Their unparalleled sound grew into a heavenly crescendo, and then there was rapturous silence as they awaited the effect.

  Percy lay lifeless and unaffected in Alexi’s arms.

  He grasped her face, calling her name. Nothing.

  “Forgive me, Persephone, I do love you! My love never faltered, though I failed you…” He madly clutched her to him.

  The warm wind of their prayers turned a bitter cold, and the ground began to tremble. Dread filled the room like water into a sinking ship. Rebecca whimpered his name, but Alexi paid no heed. Thunder roared and the stained-glass window above cracked. The group began to scream as the stone that had revealed itself as a guardian pin in their chapel began to wrest again from its moorings.

  As their faith and sanity began to slip away, their fragile hope again dashed, Alexi could only whisper to his lifeless beloved, cradling her
, murmuring praise and desperate regrets into her ear. His tears drenched those cheeks he repeatedly kissed. “This is the end after all,” he said. “You tried to save us, but my failure doomed us all.”

  Tiny shards of glass began to fall from above. There was a violent thunder of horses’ hooves. After centuries, it would be his leadership, his incarnation that failed the world.

  “Percy, please save us,” he whispered. “It’s your fate. My love, please be strong for me against this terrible darkness…”

  Suddenly he remembered his grandmother, what she’d said to him and to Percy. If there was ever a darkness that needed his fire…

  In a burst of furious desperation, Alexi closed his eyes, using the last of his energies to turn the whole chapel into a small sun of cerulean flame. It poured out of his hands as he caressed Percy. It danced in sapphire waves over her alabaster body, entwining her limbs and licking at her cool skin as if kissing her toward consciousness.

  Suddenly, enormous wings, cloudy visions of feather and flame, shot from Alexi’s back and unfurled with a surge of blinding illumination. The rest of The Guard stumbled back. His black robes whipped about him. The wings were made of blue light, barely tangible shapes of mist and sundered divinity; these same wings had burst forth as an omen in the academy above, and they were now his proclamation of power, demanding that his lover come home to his arms.

  Helpless tears of wonder poured down the cheeks of The Guard as their leader’s glorious phantom wings wrapped his beloved in a cocoon of resurrection.

  “From the Flame of the Phoenix, a Feather fell and Muses followed,” Rebecca murmured, huddled beyond the circle, her face ashen and her throat bruised purple.

  “My God, the old tale indeed,” Michael sobbed, and he rushed to her side, lifting her to her feet and grasping her hands.

  Limbs the colour of moonlight shuddered. A strong will and gentle heart stirred back toward the mortal life Percy wanted more than anything, and invincible love prodded her to consciousness as she became aware of the musical wind and dancing aurora lights around and within her. She’d fought too hard to allow this frail body to abandon fate. She’d not permit the wheel of the world’s fate to turn to darkness, but would rouse to the lover who woke her with fire.