by Dakota Rusk
After Peros had let us out onto the street again, the sheer heat and noise of the city snapped me back to myself. I dutifully shook Olwen’s hand. “Thank you for bringing me home,” I said, trying not to betray too much emotion. “I’m sorry I ever doubted you.”
She smiled serenely. “Forgiven, child. Don’t even think a moment longer on it.”
I looked up the street, at the snarl of traffic. “Can I hail you a taxi?”
“Not necessary,” she said, gathering up her skirt and sleeves and stepping out onto the boulevard. “I will make my own way.”
“But…where?” I asked, suddenly curious. “This isn’t your world; where will you go? What will you do?”
Her smile widened. “Back to that lovely park where we first materialized. I’ll find a quiet, shaded spot and cast the spell that returns me to the university. In a few days I’ll come to escort you back as well…if, indeed, you wish to go back.”
I was about to protest that of course I did, of course I wanted to return to Parallel U. and my friends and my studies; but even as I was forming the words, they stuck in my throat. I wondered what that meant.
“Until that time,” she said, easing her way onto the sidewalk, “I wish you and your family a blessed holiday. Farewell, child.”
And with that, she trundled off in the direction of Philadelphos Park.
When she’d turned the corner, I started off in the opposite direction. Unlike Olwen, But I wasn’t certain where I was headed. I was torn between two competing urges.
The first was to go to the Vestal house and see the sisterhood there, and reacquaint myself with them and their ways. I would, presumably, be joining them someday, and it had been so long since I’d even given them a thought that I owed them both a visit and a renewal of my commitment.
But even though I knew it was the right thing to do, I was reluctant to follow through; over the past few months I’d let my spiritual life wither away. I’d never actually believed in the goddess; she’d been more of a metaphor for me than an actual divine entity. But the fact that I was here now—that I was here because of magic—had the uncomfortable effect of causing me to reappraise my views. Was it possible the goddess was real? And if she was, would she be offended that I’d felt her lack so little this past year? There was a part of me, even now, that had only to conjure Donald’s face, and suddenly the whole idea of living my entire life chastely with a sisterhood of virgins seemed increasingly remote.
Since I couldn’t manage my guilt over having been so faithless a postulant, I decided to risk Vesta’s displeasure a little further—and instead made for my second destination.
I hadn’t seen my lions, Nike and Nikos, since I’d performed with them at the Flavian Amphitheatre in Rome (the place Merri called “the Colosseum”) nearly ten months earlier. And I’d left them very abruptly, then; Eddie Mason had “jumped” me and the others out of there in a hurry, because Darius had sensed that the whole parallel was being squeezed out of existence.
It was hard to believe, even now, that he was wrong; we were all so convinced at the time, and there was other evidence that parallels like mine were being erased from the multiverse. But here I was, back home, with solid ground under my feet and the warmth of my mother’s warm still on my skin. Darius had been wrong. And the witches had been right. Everything was topsy-turvy…nothing made sense.
And I knew nothing would until I saw Nike and Nikos again. I should have inquired after them earlier—asked my mother how they were, gotten some reassurance that they’d made it back from Rome and were safe in the kennel where I boarded them. I knew that animals don’t feel the passage of time the way people do, but even so it concerned me that Nike and Nikos might be pining for me…certainly they might have gotten lazy and fat, in all the months we hadn’t been training together.
I was desperate to see them, and I knew as soon as I did, I’d feel some restoration of my sense of self; of who I was, and what my life meant to me. The feeling of being un-centered that had been plaguing me for weeks would be gone in an instant.
And I needed that. Because I still felt such uncertainty—such confusion. Everything that had happened today was just so disorienting. It was nothing like the vision of home that Olwen had given me weeks before; that one had seemed so simple, so straightforward. My mother, today, had been more formal, less joyful to see me than the vision had led me to expect; and my sisters, while still silly and self-centered, had been much warmer and friendlier. Everything was just a little bit more complicated and difficult to understand. My mother referring to Uriel Sapir as an “old woman,” for example—when in my vision she and he had been almost courtly lovers; she’d even expected him to propose marriage.
It didn’t make any sense. I found myself remembering how, after I’d left Olwen with the vision still strong in my head, I’d decided not to tell Merri about it, because Merri would have insisted it was just a fantasy version of my family that the spell had prodded into being; now I wondered if that was in fact what happened. Maybe Olwen had mixed up some potion that made me dream about a passionate, loving mother and cold, cruel sisters, and a family life that had stopped, frozen in time, because I wasn’t there.
The more I thought about it, the more likely it seemed. The only trouble was…there wasn’t any reason for Olwen to have done that. What would the witches have gained by my having that vivid, totally false vision? Yes, it did throw me off my resistance to them, and allow Jocasta Foxglove to get her hooks into me—for a while, anyway. But it was clear now that the witches hadn’t been lying about being able to cross the Veil. So why would they have needed to resort to trickery to get me on their side? Why, when a simple demonstration—like this one—would have done the job? Why had they waited so long to prove themselves, and why had they done so much unnecessary wheel-spinning in the interim?
My head started to hurt from thinking about it; I wasn’t clever enough to figure it out on my own, and my smarter friends were now far beyond my reach. It would just have to wait till I saw them again.
In the meantime, I’d try to enjoy the holiday as much as possible. And as I crossed the center of town, I felt increasingly merry at the sight of all the Sol Invictus decorations in shop windows and hanging from street lamps. It was never cold in Indium, so the boughs of holly and pinecones and other symbols of the winter season were jarringly out of place; but I’d grown up with that, so I was accustomed to the discrepancy. Of course, the feast of Sol Invictus—the “Unconquered Sun”—was meant to remind people, in the depth of winter, that the sun would soon return and restore life to the world. But honestly, I thought that Indium—that all of Egypt, with our blistering hot air and hard-baked ground—was a better place to celebrate the feast of the Unconquered Sun than any northern territory, because here it never really went away. The Italians apparently agreed, and in recent years they’d revived the ancient feast of Saturnalia to celebrate earlier in the month of December; but in the southern provinces, Sol Invictus was still the great holiday of the season.
Last year, I’d returned for the holiday and everyone had been overjoyed to see me. For the entire week I was the center of attention; everyone wanted to know about Parallel U., about my experiences there, about the people I’d met and how different they were from us. Whatever room I entered, the joy seemed to center around me. Maybe it went to my head; but the casual, almost cool reaction I’d had today from my mother was entirely different—and after not having seen me for ten months! After having had me, essentially, disappear on her in Rome! My sisters, too…they were friendlier than I’d let myself remember; but all their talk was of themselves, their clothes, their crushes, their jealousies. They didn’t ask me a thing about my own life. It was as if everyone’s curiosity about Parallel U. had been used up in my first visit.
At least I knew I’d get a different welcome from Nike and Nikos. We were a team, the three of us, and we’d been too long apart; with them, I’d finally feel the sense of belonging that had eluded me eve
r since I arrived here this morning.
I entered the stable’s office just off the alley behind Kalokairi Street, and there was old Djumi behind the desk, as always—I’d have sworn he hadn’t moved in all the months I’d been away. I thought he, too, would express some surprise or pleasure at seeing me; but when I greeted him, he just looked up blankly—then furrowed his brow and said, “Where’d you come from?”
I didn’t really understand the question, so I sort of half-gestured at the door and said, “Is it all right? That I’m here? I just came to see my cats.”
He raised his eyebrows, as if I’d said something very strange, then said, “Yes, yes! You know where they are, don’t you? Why are you pestering me about it?” And he waved me to go on back.
I was completely baffled by his manner, and I was even more so when I went to Nike and Nikos’s cage and found that they weren’t in it. For a moment my heart stopped, and I feared that they hadn’t made it back from Rome after I’d left them there—but no, Djumi would have said so if that were the case.
I wondered whether the accommodations had, for some reason, been moved around since the last time I was here; but no, it seemed like all the other big cats were in the same crates and cages as always. It was just that mine weren’t in theirs.
I was just about to head back to the front office to ask about this, when I heard a loud, unmistakably feline yawn. I recognized it immediately. It was coming from the outdoor training ground. I stepped outside the kennels…
…And there were Nike and Nikos, lazing happily in the sun.
I didn’t know why they were there—they shouldn’t have been; I should have been angry that they’d been let loose without me there to supervise—but the sight of them lifted my spirits so high, that all I could feel was a flood of the purest, deepest love.
I cried out and ran over to them. They looked up at me, and I expected that they, too, would jump up and meet me halfway, and batter me with their kisses and caresses—Nikos’s tongue covering my whole face, the way it always did when he greeted me.
But they just looked at me with mild curiosity, as though my being there was no big deal. And when I fell onto Nikos and buried my face in his big, furry mane, he only put up with it for a few moments before gently snarling in my face and knocking me aside with his snout.
I sat there, stunned, looking at the both of them—while they looked back at me, utterly calmly, their tails occasionally flicking up and down as if to idly mark the passing seconds.
Merri had told me once about her cat, Inky, and how he would, if Merri ignored him for too long, retaliate by refusing to have anything to do with her when she finally found time to play with him. Maybe my cats were doing the same; they were lions, not tabbies, but the principle might be the same. They might be punishing me with indifference, for having left them alone for so long.
I thought, Well, then, I’ll show them who’s boss, and decided we’d have a training session right then and there. Twenty minutes; I’d go easy on them, to start. Just enough of a workout to restore my authority. But tomorrow, I’d better see more enthusiasm from them.
I went and got my crop from my locker, and was about to return to the training ground; but I thought, as long as I was so close to the office, I’d pop my head in and ask Djumi why my cats were out of their cages, and if that was something he let happen a lot while I was away.
But when I looked in, Djumi wasn’t there. It was a bit surprising; I’d only seen him seated at his usual place a few minutes before—and now that I thought about it, I realized I couldn’t remember a time when I’d ever seen him not in that place.
But I supposed even Djumi had to eat sometimes, or use the latrine. So I shrugged and headed back towards my lions.
As I re-crossed the kennel, the noticed that the other animals—most of whom had been napping in their cages when I’d first arrived—were more alert now; some were on their feet, and a few were pacing nervously. There was a sudden, almost tangible edge of anxiety to the air.
They must be jealous that my cats are getting a workout, I thought. They’ve been cooped up too long.
But even as I told myself this, it didn’t sound very convincing; and I was just trying to file it away with all the other strange things I couldn’t explain about the day, when something changed in the atmosphere—the sense of anxiety spiked through the roof—and I turned just in time to see an arm flashing towards me—
—an arm holding a knife.
I dove to my left to avoid the blade; but too late—it glanced against my upper arm and left a long gash there. But if I hadn’t moved, the knife would have gone right between my shoulder blades.
Ignoring the pain, I dropped onto the floor and rolled away from my attacker, then sprang up to my feet again. By now the animals were in a frenzy—howling, roaring, shrieking in their cages—and the sound was barreling off the tin roof, redoubling the volume so that I could barely hear myself think. My wound stung badly and a quick check found it seeping blood; I was afraid it might start to go numb, and I needed it for the next few minutes if I was going to survive.
I looked up at my attacker. With the open door behind him and the sun streaming through, all I could make out was his silhouette, which was of someone of moderate height in long, flowing robes; and if there was something naggingly familiar about that outline, I didn’t have time to pinpoint it, because in the next moment he leapt at me, hurling his bulk into the air.
Rather than duck to one side and evade him again, I decided to go on the offensive—so I threw myself right at him, with equal velocity. We met in mid-air, and our collision would have rattled my teeth out of my jaw if I hadn’t prepared for it—which I was hoping my adversary hadn’t; if I’d taken him by surprise, he might well be momentarily stunned.
And so he seemed to be—he was limp on the floor now, pulling himself together from under all those robes—but I lost the advantage I had over him when I suddenly recognized those robes, and balked.
That single moment’s hesitation was all Olwen needed;; she looked up from beneath her hood, her eyes ablaze with mayhem. I was so completely astonished to learn it was she who had attacked me here, that I couldn’t think straight—couldn’t pull myself back into strategic mode and figure out my next move.
And that confusion was as good as fatal. Because now she was on her feet again, and with a roar to match the furious noise all the animals were making, she charged at me again—the knife in her hand poised to connect with my naked throat.
Where thinking had failed me, instinct took over; I lashed out with my crop—which I was, amazingly, still holding—and struck her across the face. Her momentum dropped; she stumbled a few paces to the right.
I was on her at once—dropping my crop, freeing both my hands to grab the arm that held the knife and twist—try to get her to drop it—but she’d now wrapped her other arm around my neck, so that it was lodged in the crook; and when she squeezed, I started to choke.
As my breath faltered, my grip on her arm loosened—and I felt such a rush of angry disappointment, that I had let down my guard, let myself trust a witch, and now couldn’t even decently defend myself against a woman twice my age…
Little fireworks exploded in my eyes as the oxygen was cut off from my brain; and I knew at any moment I’d go limp, and she’d waste no time in driving the knife under my rib cage—and then I’d have nothing left to do but lie there and bleed out. Stupid, amateurish mistakes…I deserved to die this way, for being such a fool…
And then, just as I felt everything in me go liquid and dark, something happened; Olwen was pulled off of me—pulled away from me—with such force that I was knocked over by it. As soon as I could rasp in enough breath, I scrabbled up onto my elbows and looked up to see what had happened.
And there were Nike and Nikos, who had come back into the kennel when they’d heard the commotion; and Nikos had grabbed Olwen with his mighty jaws and torn her away from me. He now tossed his head back and forth, shaking
her like a rag doll, until I actually heard her neck snap.
He dropped her; and her body lay on the dirty floor, unmoving.
Nike padded over to me and nudged my face with her nose; she was asking if I was all right. I hugged her around the neck and had a little crying jag—I only allowed it to go on for thirty seconds or so—then I ran my wrist under my sniveling nose, got unsteadily to my feet, and went over to examine Olwen’s body.
Dead, her face was no more revealing than it had been in life; she looked as she always did, as though deeply in her own private thoughts, working her own private motives.
It occurred to me that those private motives had very likely been against me, personally, for many, many weeks. The thought made me shudder.
Still shaking, I put Nike and Nikos back in their cage—with many kisses and thanks for having saved me—then went out to the office, to ask Djumi to call the police. I was amazed he hadn’t come back to the kennel to investigate all the noise, but the least he could do now was help me sort it all out.
But once again I found his chair empty. This was unheard of. Where could he possibly have gone?
Then I felt a cold certainty take hold of me; and I stepped over to the desk and looked behind it.
There was Djumi’s body, curled up almost in a sad parody of the fetal position—a long, red incision across his throat.
It made sense now. Olwen had followed me here, then killed Djumi so she’d be alone with me—uninterrupted and unchallenged by any third party.
I returned to her body, more astounded than ever by how completely she’d fooled me into being her victim, and still without any conceivable clue as to why.
I examined her robe and gown. Among various ordinary personal items, I found the pocket where she kept the cell phone—the one on which she’d taken the video of me with my family to bring back to Parallel U. Well, she’d never deliver it now.
