Elizabeth Hand - Black Light

“I’m not. And you know I’m not, Lit—you’ve seen too much, you are too much—you could never begin to explain all this, any more than you could begin to understand it.”

I shot him a furious look, but Balthazar did not notice, only went on, his tone patient and somewhat weary, as though addressing a favored child who was behaving badly.

“What has happened is that we have lost the ability to see these things. We no longer perceive the sacred in our world—but it exists, Lit, oh, it does exist! It is as real as this room, as real as this—” He took a handful of papers and shook them at me, tossed them in the air so that they came down around us like so many birds settling for the night. “— More real. We just don’t see it, that’s all. Not because it’s not there, but because we have lost the senses that would enable us to perceive what is all around us. You are familiar with the work of Claude Levi-Strauss?”

“No.”

“A very great man. Not, as many people think, an anthropologist. More of a mapmaker,” said Balthazar, giving me one of his maddeningly secretive smiles; “a cartographer, and a very great aid to us in our work. In his Mythologiques, he wrote of certain sailors, the Bororo of Central Brazil and the Caribs of Guiana, and how they were able to navigate using the stars, just as sailors have for centuries. But the Bororo could see the stars in daylight. When Levi-Strauss asked astronomers about this, they scoffed at him—but of course the stars are there, and the Bororo, among others, really did use them to steer by in daylight. It is we who have lost the acuity that would allow us to see them.

“Look,” he said more gently, and took me by the hand. He led me across the room to the bay window. “Look there, above that mountain—”

He pointed to a distant peak, crowned by gold-leaved trees. “What do you see?”

“Nothing.”

“Keep looking. No, not at the mountain—at the sky. Try to concentrate. There…”

I stared, frowning, tried to see anything but the pulse of blue sky, blurring as my eyes watered. “There’s nothing th—”

I gasped. Something was there. A starburst of white, and then another, smaller flare, and another. A whole group of them, clustered close together in the northeast sky. Like cracks in blue glass, or the refraction of sun on a windshield. But these did not move, even when I did, or disappear when I blinked and shaded my eyes. They remained, burning faintly but steadily above the mountaintop.

“The brightest one is Aldebaran,” said Balthazar. “The eye of Taurus. That is the entire constellation, there—”

I shook my head, and this time the stars did disappear. “They’re gone!” I turned to him in amazement. “How did you do that?”

“I didn’t. You saw them, Lit. You didn’t make them appear, any more than I did. You saw them, that’s all.”

“But how? That’s incredible .” I gazed out at the greeny-gold sweep of mountains, the river like a silver highway, and wondered what other marvels were there, just beyond my sight. “I’ve never seen them before.”

“You didn’t know where to look. You didn’t know to look. And no, not everyone can see them—not unless one is trained to, or has the nascent ability—”

“But how did I see them? I’m not trained, and I—”

I fell silent.

“No, you’re not trained,” said Balthazar. He remained standing, staring at the horizon with his arms crossed. “But you can see; you have talents. That is what the Benandanti are; that is what we do. We find those who are gifted, and train them. Sometimes children are born to our order. There are families that can trace their lineage back over three thousand years. Others want more than anything to be born into it, but are not. They can only serve us, as researchers or couriers, and in other ways. But those who choose to work with us…”

He turned, eyes blazing. “Join us, Lit. Join me. Centuries ago I failed Giulietta, but I won’t fail you, I swear it! Stay with me now and I will help you—I can do great things for you, I can show you the world within the world you know—”

His voice was pleading, desperate. He took me by the shoulders and gazed at me. “I would marry you,” he said in a low voice. “The Conclave could not deny me that; not this time—”

“What?” I gaped at him, then laughed. “Marry you? I can’t marry you! I’m only seventeen—”

“Lit! Please—”

“Let go,” I commanded; then more urgently, “let go —”

He did and I withdrew from him, shoving my hands into my pockets. “I’m not marrying anyone. Not to mention I don’t even know you—”

“Then don’t marry me,” he begged. “Just stay—no, not here, not with me! But with us. You’ll be starting college next year—I can arrange for you to be placed at the University of the Archangels and Saint John the Divine. We can arrange for a scholarship, you’ll be able to—”

“What?” I snorted in disbelief. “Don’t you get it? I can’t do any of this—this Benandanti stuff. It’s crazy! And I’m already going to school—to NYU. Maybe.”

I fell silent, thinking of Jamie Casson; of how even though the sun was shining here, it had been after midnight in Bolerium, and there was a train at four-thirty-five…

“I have to go,” I said curtly. “I—I’m sorry. I’m sorry I bothered you, I’m sorry I came but now I have to—”

I was halfway across the room before I stopped.

Exactly how was I to go? I looked around, dazed. Balthazar shook his head.

“You can’t go back,” he said. “Not to Bolerium. Please, Lit. You don’t really comprehend any of this—how could you? He wants you to return—he needs you, without you there will be no apotheosis. Without you he cannot be reborn—”

I looked at him as though he were nuts. “Jamie?”

“No! Axel Kern—”

“But he is born—I mean, he’s there, he’s not—”

“Not Axel Kern. He is just the avatar; the vessel. It is Dionysos who seeks to be born, and Kern will be discarded as though he were a ruined statue. He needs you, Lit. You’re a lightning rod for him—you and your rage, your energy—that is what gives him power. It has always been like this. The god and his initiates are intimately linked—without them, any sacrifice is merely another death.

“But with them—with the girl who serves as his consort, and slayer—with you, it all begins again.”

I listened, then asked in a low voice, “Is that what happened to Kissy Hardwick?”

“Yes. And to Laura Stone, Kern’s mistress, and to others. Many others. If you go to him, Lit, you will die, just as they did.”

“I don’t believe that.” I didn’t care that he could hear how my voice shook, or see how my entire body was trembling. “I don’t believe any of it. Because if you’re right, and I’m somehow connected to your Giulietta, then I’m different from all of them—”

My hand shot out to point at the books strewn across the table and floor. “Is Kissy Hardwick in there?” I demanded. “Is there a painting of Laura Stone in the Villa of the Mysteries? Is there ?”

For one long moment I stood and waited. Waited for him to tell me, Yes, they’re all in those books, there’s nothing so special about you at all, waited for him to say, Hush, Lit, wake up, wake up…

Balthazar Warnick said nothing. Behind him clouds started to gather above the mountaintop. Far below, the river darkened from silver to lead. Finally I turned, looking for a way out; looking for the way back to Bolerium.