Vicki Pettersson - The Scent of Shadows

Greta’s words were fingers pushing against the shadows in my mind, into soft, pulpy places I had never known existed. Or at least, never acknowledged. A few words floated in these deep morasses of thought— raped, vengeance, Tulpa— alligator heads lifting above the brackish surface before sinking again beneath my subconscious, and no matter how hard Greta tried she could not raise them again.

She had better luck sweeping aside the thinly veiled curtains of my Light side; where, from behind the safety of my lids, I could stare directly into the blaze of an imagined sun. Golden light singed the edge of brain tissue, and the neon of the city I was born in set my blood buzzing, heating the crimson liquid to a lively pulsing glow.

While Greta probed, I lived in the center of this glowing womb; warm and cleansed, safe and guarded. Peace bloomed in my heart, and I sank, deeper still, into a state of contented relaxation. The secrets living inside me began to whisper to her. Whisper, as they’d been whispered to me long ago. Greta whispered back.

“I’m going to ask you some questions and you’ll answer me with the first thing that comes to mind, all right?” At my sleepy sound of assent, she continued. “We’ll start out easy. Do you know your name?”

“They call me Olivia.”

There was such a prolonged silence after that, the nascent heat began to ebb.

“It’s not your true name?”

“No.”

“Who are you, then?”

“Secret. Can’t tell.” A sigh heaved out of my body, hollowing it. “I no longer know.”

“And…who’s Olivia?”

“Dead. She’s dead. It’s a dead girl’s name.” A whimper escaped me, inhuman, but for the sorrow that laced it. “I’m so sorry, Olivia.”

“It’s okay. Just stay with me now, listen to my voice.” She kept talking until my breathing had returned to normal. “What would you like to be called?” she finally asked. “What should I call you?”

“I have to be Olivia in order to survive. No one can know differently.”

“Does Warren know?”

“Of course. He made me. So did Micah.”

A tapping, like a considering click, fingernails against wood. “All right. Olivia. You have a duty to do. Do you know what that is?”

“Return balance to the Zodiac.”

“Return it? Or…” She left the question open.

“Not return it. Unbalance it. Hunt them down. Obliterate the enemy, destroy them all. Use my gifts to do it, but I don’t know how.”

She ignored the rising question in my last remark. “And who is the enemy?”

“Ajax. A man named Joaquin. The Tulpa. There are others. I’ve smelled them, but I don’t know them. And…”

“And?”

“The enemy is inside of me also.”

“No, Olivia, it doesn’t—”

“Yes, Greta. It does.” My voice deepened, like an instrument someone else was strumming. I stirred, jerking my head side to side. “I must destroy the Shadow within and without.”

“Shh. Let’s take a step back now. Listen to my voice, and follow the words. Are you with me?” She paused for my sleepy nod. “Good. Now, think. What experience will most help you in unbalancing the Shadow? What will allow you the vengeance you spoke to me about? What will help you restore the agents of Light to the Zodiac?”

“Krav Maga,” I answered without hesitation. “The skills I learned after Joaquin destroyed me the first time.”

Again, that press of questioning silence, before she went on. “And what was that like?”

I shivered, the memory sweeping through me. “Cold. So cold after, when the scorpions crawled over me, but didn’t sting. They knew I was dead. They scuttled away, legs mired in my blood.” I shivered again, then stilled. “But she found me and warmed me. She gave her own power and gifts over to me. So I would survive it. And avenge it.”

“Who, Olivia?”

“My mother.” I smiled. And I remembered. One day, when the time comes, you’ll understand I didn’t leave. I fled . “Ah, I see now. I understand.”

“Focus, Olivia. Listen to my voice,” Greta commanded. “What gifts did she give you? What will allow you to battle the Shadow side?”

I didn’t answer. Instead, I saw my mother’s face floating directly above me, her hair falling like golden-red curtains over her cheeks, eyes burning with hot, furious tears.

“Olivia?” Greta questioned.

My mother’s mouth moved, three words fired like shots over the bow. I love you .

“Olivia!” Greta again, panicked now.

“Love,” I answered simply, realizing I’d carried it with me all this time. “She gave me complete and unconditional love.”

And the dam gave way. The memories I’d blocked so successfully for so long flooded my brain, the rush of them deafening in my ears, and I was borne on their tide back in time. Back to the hospital again; to the machines, tubes, painkillers, and stitches. Back with the bruises and the swelling, the torn fingernails and the rope burns still buried in my neck. Back to birth of my second life cycle. Back, I thought, when I was sixteen years old.

I turned my head and she was there, next to me. Not just hair and haunted eyes, but the whole of my mother; body and essence, skin and aura. I stared, drinking in her features; the freckles standing out defiantly on a button nose, the pressing of delicate bones beneath too-pale skin, a scar I’d always meant to ask her about. She swept shiny fingertips across my face and gently smoothed back my hair.

“Sleep,” she said, and somewhere in the back of my mind I knew my mouth had moved, the command and voice issuing from my throat, my memory. I settled deeper into myself, obeying her.

“Olivia?” Greta’s voice was far off and wary, no longer authoritative or sure. She was right to be alarmed. My mother’s voice had taken over.

“I’m going to show you who I am, who you are,” I said in my mother’s voice, as she had once said to me, “who you will be someday.”

She leaned over me, hair swinging delicately over my bloodless cheeks, blue eyes boring into mine. “Because you will survive this. It has been foretold. You will fulfill the first sign of the Zodiac. You will rise again as our Kairos.”

Then she put her soft lips to my chapped ones, and resuscitated my soul. Desert sage—blooms sagging, but stalks strong, as though wet with a summer monsoon—infiltrated my senses. The juice from a fig cacti, which kept knowledgeable predators alive in the desert, trickled down my throat, coating my belly. I breathed in a homey spice, like cinnamon but stronger, and it numbed my skin from the inside out so that every muscle in my body simultaneously relaxed.

Then there was the exotic and redolent scent of the womb where I’d once lived. It smelled like night-blooming flowers, and the wind across the bright side of the moon. I recognized it immediately, and inhaled deeply. She gave me more. As all great mothers do, she gave me all. “See? You can taste the Light in another person. Now store this power deep inside of you. Because he’ll come for you again.”

“Olivia!”

Greta’s voice had my mother looking up. She frowned, annoyed at the invisible interruption, before rising and heading toward the door. She looked back at me only once, one hand braced on the door frame, a petite and powerful figure eyeing me with fierce love and resigned determination. “Watch Olivia. She’ll show you how to survive.”

And she was gone. Again.

“Tell me your true identity,” Greta demanded, entering the hospital room through the portal she’d opened in my mind. Her outline snapped with power, like sparklers bursting to life along her skin, but I merely looked at her, words tumbling like dice through my mind. Goddess, bitch, whore, mother, daughter, sister, friend …