Lyn Benedict - Sins & Shadows

The bed beckoned; she slid into his warm spot and nearly moaned at how good it felt, the smooth cotton, the lazy heat lingering, and his scent, sandalwood and lime, steeped in it. Sleep dragged her down like a sinkhole opening beneath her.

“It’s about time,” a woman said. “Stubborn creature.”

Blue skies arched above Sylvie, a blue so pure and deep that the heavens looked hot to the touch, and shot through with veins of gold fire. Lapis lazuli, she thought, but freed from cold stone; lapis lazuli, alive.

Her eyes watered; she blinked but couldn’t check the tears. She raised her arms before her to block it out and nearly fell from her seat when it proved to be backless.

“Too much, hmm?”

The world shifted. The sky fell in and darkened, turned teak netted with fishermen’s floats in worn and pitted glass. Sylvie’s stone cup of a chair turned to leather and grew a back and arms. The walls shifted from white marble to plaster, and Sylvie smiled. She knew this place, the Mucky Duck, a vacation restaurant she used to go with her family, when she was still young enough to giggle over the waiter’s bottles of string ketchup that they pretended to squirt on customers.

“A dream. This is all a dream. But you’re not,” she said to the voice. Familiar voice. It hadn’t been a wrong number after all. And Erinya had said that Kevin was smart, that he’d find a way to contact her. Guess this was it.

“Quick,” the woman said, making her appearance. A tiny woman wearing something out of Sylvie’s onetime art-history book approached. A toga, Sylvie thought, the woman’s arms bared from fingertip to shoulder bone, showing multiple semicircular scars. No, chiton. But as soon as she identified it, the fabric changed, adjusting itself to the setting. The woman, now sundressed and sandaled, sank onto a stool next to her. “I’m Mnemosyne. Kevin Dunne sent me.”

SYLVIE SAID, “DOESN’T HE GET AROUND,” BUT HER ATTENTION WAS gone. Outside the plate-glass windows, beyond the scrubby parking lot, two girls played on the narrow shell-strewn beach, one all gawky legs and windblown hair, racing into her teens, the other a toddler, chasing after her sister so fast that she fell. The older girl turned, dusted the child off, and comforted her with a hug and a smile.

“Things change,” Mnemosyne said, and waved her hand irritably. The window closed over, turned into another netted wall. “You cannot go back. That is the nature of history, that it is in the past. All that can be done is study it, to see the seeds that were planted and anticipate the growth coming.”

“Shut up,” Sylvie said. “I’ve had a long day, and this might be a dream, but I bet it’s not helping my sleep deficit.”

Ignoring her, Mnemosyne continued, “I do not usually involve myself in these matters, but I owe Dunne a great debt.”

“Yeah?” Sylvie said. “Save your life did he? Like a god’s life is worth it. You’ve all lived your share and more.” Sylvie bit her lip and made a note to herself: Dreamworld equaled no rein on her mouth.

“He did,” Mnemosyne said, still placid, which, perversely, Sylvie found more irritating than a relief. “Do you know how we are created, what we are?”

“Power, flesh shell, broken or unmade, big puff of stealable stuff, got the gist.” Sylvie squinted into the dark corners of the empty restaurant and sighed. She was hungry. She was in a restaurant. Didn’t seem right. A waiter loomed out of nowhere, green duck on his white shirt, and asked for her order.

Mnemosyne squeaked and made the moment sweeter. Guess she hadn’t expected the dream to be more Sylvie’s than hers. But just because she set the stage didn’t mean Sylvie couldn’t control it.

The waiter turned around, her food instantly ready; Sylvie sank her teeth gratefully into the French dip, but it tasted nothing of food and everything of memory. Of sandy days, of salty air, of skin gone sticky with seawater, and the ever-present scent of coconut oil and rubber flip-flops. It exploded in her mind like a little bomb, and she set the sandwich down, near tears. Innocence tasted strange on her palate now. Inedible.

“I apologize,” Mnemosyne said. “History lives around me. It is my task to keep it, to record it, to watch it. I am the Muse of history, and I see all.” The bare skin of her arms rippled, and what Sylvie had taken for dozens of tiny scars blinked open into eyes. In each of them, in the heart of the pupils, Sylvie saw bits of her past.

“Stop it,” Sylvie said. Mnemosyne turned her palms up, showing two moments that Sylvie could only identify as Before and After, Then and Now. In Mnemosyne’s right palm, Sylvie saw herself striding across campus, determined, head held high, and anger in her eyes. Portrait of Girl with a Cause.

In the left palm, Sylvie saw a woman with a gun, eyes blacked by shadows and rage, but a curling smile on her mouth. The face of a murderer. L’enfant du meurtrier.

Do you like what you see when you look in the mirror?

“Stop it,” Sylvie repeated, and Mnemosyne closed her hands. Sylvie felt heat in her own palms and realized she’d brought the gun into her dreams, had it pointed at the Muse. “Dunne sent you. Let’s leave the psych tests and parlor tricks behind and get down to business. I’ve found out who’s behind this. Lilith, the Lilith. If he wants to lend a hand, maybe prove his ability to find anyone he’s laid eyes on, he could drop by.”

“Dunne’s busy,” Mnemosyne said.

“I’ve reached a dead end,” Sylvie said. “I need his help. If you’re all about history, you know I don’t say that often or easily.” Her hand tightened on the table edge; a crack ran from side to side, widening. Sylvie tucked her hands in her lap, like a chastened child. Her dream. Her temper.

“Dunne is trusting you to do what he cannot, while he defends your world and himself. Dunne is not a loved god.”

“No one loves a cop,” Sylvie said. Some of her temper faded. History, huh. Mnemosyne might be able to give her some of the answers that eluded her, questions about Dunne.

“Especially not petty-minded greater gods,” Mnemosyne said. “Whose wives were turned inside out and drained to fuel Dunne. Zeus hates him, and he has never been the most rational of gods. When Dunne first came to power, Zeus had to be coaxed into accepting him, and he laid in a caveat: As it was love that allowed Dunne’s ascension, it was love that kept him there. Should love ever leave Dunne, then he was fair game to be destroyed, the power reclaimed, Hera restored.”

“And now his love’s left him, not by choice, but gone all the same,” Sylvie said. “I don’t suppose Zeus had a hand in arranging that with Lilith.”

“No,” Mnemosyne said. “Zeus would rather concentrate on their rivalry than admit any threat could be poised by a human. It’s shortsighted. If Lilith gains power because Dunne is weakened fighting Zeus, the results will be wars across the multiple heavens.”

“Better than on earth,” Sylvie said. “Look, I’m doing my job. Don’t expect me to care or cry for gods. I like Dunne—sort of—but it’s the man he was, the glimpse I get of that, that I like. Not his opinionated justice-freak god act. And I’m hunting Bran because he’s an innocent, and I’m hunting Lilith because I—”

Beneath her hand, the crack in the table widened, and scales rose to touch her fingers, the faint flicker of a tongue. “Fuck!” She threw herself back and watched the snake slip free, a beautiful, deadly swath of red, gold, and black that poured itself over the edge of the table and vanished.

“Do you see that?” she cried.

“It’s a curse come searching,” Mnemosyne said. “You do make enemies, don’t you?” She reached down and collected the serpent. The coral snake coiled and thrashed in her grip. The eyes along her arm opened to better look at it.