Elizabeth Hand - Winterlong

— Your name? the flame screamed. Your name? You know it now! Kali is your name, and Athena; and Morgan and Mayuel; Clytemnestra and Artemis and Hecate!

“No,” I said suddenly. I recalled that strange sound, a noise like waves, like many women chanting. “I am Anat, the consort of my brother Baal. But I am also Wendy Wanders, the lover of Justice Saint-Alaban.

“I am the Magdalene.”

I stared down at him, the bright one broken, my own face stricken and bloodless before me, Raphael Miramar, Aidan Harrow, the Hanged Boy: my beautiful brother in the dark.

And there came to me then a great sound, the sound of singing. And I saw all of them, Emma and Aidan, Gligor and Merle and Anna, Dr. Silverthorn and Toby Rhymer, a white dog with eyes like burning ice and a girl who longed to fly with finches, all of them like lights dancing in the air. With them shrilled the voices of the lazars like wounds bleeding song, all of them crying out to me. Loudest of all was the piercing cry of a boy with fair tangled hair and green eyes, his hands streaming through the darkness like the purest moonlight and his eyes two burning stars. And the song they sang had only one note and one sound and one word, and the word they sang was Death; the song they sang was Supplication to slay him there where he lay with his white throat awaiting the knife, his eyes shut against the blade. And the song they sang went on and on and on, their voices grew higher and louder until the sky whirled with them and the stars began to wink out one by one. And within me I felt my heart wither, and the knife Oleander had tossed me grew heavy and cold in my fist as I raised it above my brother.

As abruptly as it had begun the singing ceased. I heard only a dull hissing from the flame still flickering before me. I stared at the golden blade in my hand, then carefully looked around. Where the flame leaped a fissure had opened, a black pit that descended endlessly into the earth. Unsteadily I got to my feet. I walked to the edge of the pit and stared down into it. Then I dropped the knife.

For a. moment it seemed to hang in the air, blindingly golden, a scythe or perhaps a crescent moon. Then it fell, its light extinguished. With a shriek that deepened to a thundering roar the flame leaped as though it would consume us all, leaped until the sky vanished as though behind a curtain of light. The flame dwindled, and finally disappeared. I blinked, trying to adjust to the darkness, and walked to my stricken brother.

Something moved behind me. I whirled around, and there stood Miss Scarlet, rubbing her arms where the ropes had fallen from them. Only with her bonds it seemed that the dark hair had fallen from her arms and face so that they gleamed like smooth brown glass, and she stepped delicately from a shriveled thing like a filthy robe of fur and walked toward me. And though I knew her face it was changed. Instead of the shrunken features of a wizened monkey I saw now that she was a woman, and suddenly it seemed to me that she had always been a woman. It had been myself that was the blind animal, and my own eyes had never seen before the colors that the world showed to me now, the colors that Miss Scarlet Pan saw as well and laughed to see.

From the ground beneath my brother a faint light glittered, and grew brighter, until the black stones cracked and split like a great fruit. And to my amazement it was not my brother who lay there after all. It was Justice. But Justice as I had never seen him, laughing with joy as he leaped from the frozen earth and reached for me and glad, so glad! to see me. He gathered me to him and then it was myself who was laughing and crying to see him again, not dead but alive, alive! and his hands warm about me and his mouth soft and laughing as he pulled me to him.

As he drew me to him he also reached for Miss Scarlet. He pulled her to him as well, until the three of us stood embraced. It seemed the world had stopped turning except for our mingled tears and laughter and their hands in mine, hands strong and small and strong and large. And suddenly I felt inside me the vibration of my heart thrumming and my breath coming loud and hard in sobs that were not sorrow but a joy I had never known. I don’t know how long we stood there; a long time, I think, because when I opened my eyes once more I blinked at the light: not lantern light but dawn. I drew away from Justice and Miss Scarlet.

At my feet lay Raphael. He was bathed in golden brilliance. I heard a wailing as of some creature falling from the air and looked up. I saw the stars, one by one, coming into sight once more, and the sky folding itself back like the dark underside of a leaf turning to the rain.

I drew my breath and turned to my friends there beside me, Justice and Scarlet Pan. Justice looked at me and smiled. He took my face in his hands and kissed it, and said, “Now you know, Wendy. Now you are truly awake and you can see, it’s not all horror and confusion; even death.”

I kissed his mouth. “Now I know”

He stooped to lift Miss Scarlet and kissed her as well; and then holding her he turned to me and said goodbye.

“But it’s only started,” I cried.

He nodded. His eyes were not sad, but still they held something in them of pity.

“I know,” he said; “but I have to go on, you see. Because I’ve done what I had to do. And besides, I’ve already left.”

He set Miss Scarlet gently back upon the ground and pointed to where my brother lay, his face so pale and his eyes twitching beneath their lids in troubled sleep.

“There is your brother to be made whole,” he said. His arms swept out to encompass the dark pit about us, barren glassy Saint-Alaban’s Hill and the sky pale and still, the lazars still struggling to flee. “A City to be made whole, a world perhaps …”

He took me once more and kissed me, and I wept. But this time there was no bitterness, nothing of vengeance or horror but only sadness to see him go.

“You still have your good Angel there,” he said, smiling as he pointed to Miss Scarlet. “Even though you have grown a conscience of your own.”

He touched me on the forehead and quoted, laughing softly: “‘If you learn to be brave, honest, and unselfish, then you will become a real girl.’”

He bowed to us both, drawing three fingers to his mouth in the Paphian’s beck, then dropped one and then the other until only his index finger remained upon his lips.

“Remember, Wendy: It is all one,” he whispered. “Death and growth and desire and fear. It is all one.” He was gone.

I stood, dazed, and stared at the sky. Above me reared the launcher. As I watched it shuddered, then recoiled as with a tremendous shriek the missile shot from it, speared the clouds and burst into flames of white and red. The launcher shuddered again, then was still. After a moment debris rained down like hail, but I was heedless of it striking me.

The explosion in the heavens faded to black smoke, streamers of gray and white. In the distance the horizon glowed pale pink. The Cathedral’s dark spires pointed heavenward where the last stars gleamed faintly: all but one that flared brightly and then faded to a prick of white like the others upon that black map. Beside me stood Miss Scarlet: not a woman but the same small wizened figure as before, staring at her gnarled hands in disbelief.

“Wendy?” She turned to me pleading. Her eyes fell upon Raphael, the small forms scattered about the pit, and she was quiet. After a moment she said, “It doesn’t matter, really, does it? We’re alive, at least—”

“Yes,” I said. I reached to take her small hand. “But it did happen; something did happen.”

For a moment we stared at each other, and I wept to remember Justice Saint-Alaban.

Then a shout rang through the air. We turned, and saw against the wall something slumped beside a small body covered with a rainbow cloak. The Aviator lay there, dead, his ruined face staring at the dawn. Above him stood Jane Alopex, disbelief turning to joy as she waved her pistol, then with a whoop threw it so that it bounced over the rim of the pit. I smiled despite my sorrow, and looked down.