Elizabeth Hand - Waking the Moon

I broke in furiously. “You couldn’t? Why couldn’t you? Why? Where’s your Benandanti magic now? Why don’t you just stick Angelica through another door, Balthazar? Why don’t you just go after her with a fucking gun?”

I lurched forward and grabbed Balthazar by the collar, no longer caring what happened to me. “What, all of a sudden you need my help? All of a sudden you need my permission to kill someone? You didn’t bother asking when you killed Oliver—”

“We didn’t kill Oliver!” Balthazar cried. “He—”

“You drove him to it! You had him locked up in that place, you knew he wasn’t strong enough, you knew it! I thought you were supposed to help him, I thought you all had some special plan for him—”

“We had no plan, Katherine,” Robert Dvorkin said softly. “All we ever knew of Oliver and Angelica was that they were Chosen. For some reason, they were Chosen. It’s only now that we realize that Dylan must have been the reason—”

I shook my head. “Dylan?”

“He must be—else why would Angelica and Oliver have conceived him? He is the last great sacrifice Angelica must make, in order for her epiphany to be complete. Then she will truly be Othiym—”

“Then it will be as before,” whispered Balthazar. “Have you forgotten, Sweeney?”

I flinched as Annie grabbed my arm. “What’s he talking about, Sweeney?”

“Have you forgotten?” Balthazar took a step back and flung his hands upward. “Then remember now !”

Before us the room was rent apart. Where Balthazar and Robert had stood, there was utter darkness. From the wasteland came a freezing wind, its roar so deafening that I could not hear Annie’s screams, only see her face contorted into mute horror. My sweat-soaked clothes grew stiff with rime as I grabbed her and pulled her to me, then crouched so as not to be borne into the abyss.

A terrible voice rang out. Balthazar’s voice.

“Behold Her now!”

The darkness was sucked away, whirling into some vast fiery vortex whose center was an immense eye. An eye that was open yet at the same time without sensibility, like that of a stone idol. As the darkness coiled into that huge orb I could see that it was but part of a face, a face so horribly and inconceivably vast that I fell to my knees in awe and terror.

“Behold Othiym!”

It was Her—the same monstrous figure I had seen that night with Angelica so long ago. The sleeping goddess, the Woman in the Moon: Othiym Lunarsa. She wore upon her breast the lunula, but it was no longer a slender crescent of silver but the moon, the real moon. She was more beautiful and terrible than I could ever have imagined, her mouth parted like a dreaming child’s—but it was Angelica’s mouth, just as those dreaming eyes were Angelica’s eyes, as the hair that was the very fabric of the night country was Angelica’s hair…

With a shout of horror I drew my arm up over my face. Because that deathly wind, the wind that sucked all sound and color and life into the void—that wind was her breath. All life was being drawn into her, into the shining crescent that lay upon her white skin. It was so brilliant that I could not bear to look upon it, so bright that it would surely set aflame all who gazed upon it, all who dared to walk beneath it—

“Sweeney!”

Like a gong Balthazar’s voice echoed across the wasteland. I lifted my head. As suddenly as it had appeared the night country was gone. I was kneeling on the slate floor of the carriage house, shuddering with cold. Beside me Annie moaned, then with a cry started to her feet.

“Sweeney—he’s going to kill us!” She grabbed me, her eyes wild. “Come on —”

Before us stood Balthazar and Robert Dvorkin. Their hands hung limply at their sides and their eyes were wasted-looking. As I looked at them, Balthazar raised one hand and held it out to me.

“It is my fault,” he said, his voice so low I could scarcely hear him. “I thought Angelica was too young when the lunula came to her. I thought she could never be anything more than what Magda was—smart, ambitious, cunning. I thought—I thought she was just a girl. Just a woman…

“Even after that night at the Orphic Lodge—I never dreamed how powerful she might become. I never dreamed she would turn so completely from her father, from all of us—”

He looked at Annie. “From all of you,” he said. “From her friends. And from her own son.”

He fell silent. I thought I could hear my heart beating inside me, and in the stillness Annie’s heart as well, and Balthazar’s, and Robert’s. I looked away from Balthazar and stared at the floor, trying to find some pattern there in the slate tile. Trying to find an answer; something to believe in.

“Sweeney.” I raised my head and Balthazar was there, his hand still held out to me. “You are our last hope.”

“You are Dylan’s only hope,” murmured Robert.

Annie yanked my wrist. “No, Sweeney, this is insane —”

With an effort I shook her from me. “No,” I whispered. “Wait—”

The room was utterly still, save for the exhausted buzzing of a fly against the window. I could feel their eyes upon me—Balthazar’s brilliant yet restrained gaze; Annie’s fury and confusion; Dr. Dvorkin’s pleading. I took a deep breath. Then I took Balthazar’s hand.

“I will help you,” I said in a low voice. “Not because I think you’re any better than Angelica. I don’t. You murdered Magda Kurtz and Oliver Crawford and god knows how many others. You stood by and did nothing while Angelica slaughtered my friends. You let her take Dylan, and—”

My voice began to shake. “—and you tossed me aside, like I was nothing ! Like I had no place in your beautiful perfect world, your perfect Divine! Because I wasn’t one of your golden children, one of your goddamn scholars. One of your fucking chosen ones.”

I tried to yank away from Balthazar, but he tightened his grip with one hand.

“No,” he said. “You’re wrong. All these years, here—”

He indicated the walls and ceiling of the carriage house, the garden outside. “All this time, Sweeney: you have been under our protection.”

A chill ran through me. “No—”

“Yes.” Beside him Robert Dvorkin nodded. “We have been taking care of you, Sweeney—”

“No—”

“Watching out for you. Protecting you…”

The blood was thrumming in my ears but I could only shake my head, saying no, no, no as he went on.

“All those years ago at the Divine, Sweeney—we were wrong. Or, at least, we were only partly right. We knew that Angelica and Oliver were part of the equation; later, we knew that Othiym was as well.

“But we did not understand that there might be someone who would love Angelica and Oliver both. Someone who would not just come between them, but who might, somehow, serve to bring them together again.”

I groaned. “No …”

“And Dylan—We did not know that he was going to be born, that he would grow, perhaps, to become the real, the true Chosen One—

“We did not foresee that, Sweeney. And we did not foresee you.”

Silence. My legs buckled, but Balthazar pulled me to him, his hands surprisingly strong.

“Do you understand now?” he asked, his voice desperate. “Do you see, Sweeney? The pattern was there all along! It wasn’t just Angelica and Oliver—it was you and Angelica and Oliver— you were there, all along—”

“But what can I do?” I cried. I could feel Annie next to me, her cold hands tight on one arm, Balthazar’s on the other.