The Exquisite and Immaculate Grace of Carmen Espinoza

by Rebecca Taylor

  For a long while, there was no response, only the sound of my heart wildly pumping blood and adrenaline from my head to my toes, urging me to run. But run where?

  “Why have you come?” she finally asked.

  I swallowed, forced my voice to rise in my throat. “For my brother,” my eyes met Daniel’s. “To help my brother…to help him leave here.”

  “Leave here?” she questioned, her tone was incredulous. “We do not like them to leave. We like them rung dry,” hysterical laughter rained down on our heads and then stopped. “And this one especially, so much potential energy, and so very close to expiration.” Silence filled the room, like a deep breath of waiting until her voice again cried out, “I WILL BE GREATLY VEXED IF I CAN NOT HAVE HIM!”

  Her words alone terrified me. I stood frozen, too scared to even breath. After all of this, was she not going to allow me to help Daniel?

  “It is the commandment,” Ray said, his head still bowed low. “She has the right to try, on this one day every year, the mortals have the right to…”

  “SNAKE!” she shouted. “YOU DARE LECTURE ME ON THE COMMANDMENTS!”

  Her voice split the delicate nerves deep inside my ears, I covered them while the sounds of her anger echoed through the room like a million shards of broken glass.

  “LOOK AT YOU! YOU CLOAK YOURSELF FOR HER? WHY NOT LET HER SEE YOU AS YOU REALLY ARE?”

  I felt Ray release my hand and when I allowed my eyes to slide sideways to look, I could see why. His arms were recoiling, shrinking, disappearing into the sides of his body. The shape of his head contorted, his face stretched and shifted into the diamond shaped snake I had seen when I met him in the desert. Unable to help myself, I turned towards him and watched the transformation. His legs fused together while all the curves and contours of his human form smoothed themselves into a single graceful line, a sleek, scaled body that held itself upright for half a moment, showing its pale ringed underbelly while Ray struggled to retain this last attribute of his human self, standing erect, until finally he fell forward into the heap of his clothing—the snake that had terrified me in the dessert, seeing him like this now almost made me weep.

  I had almost forgotten that Ray was so unlike me.

  His body undulated and rolled while his head raised from his clothing. His eyes looked and met mine, he was no simple snake. It was still him, still Ray who had mere moments before explained our truth to me—I was still his everything.

  Seeing him this way, forced low against his will by this vengeful girl who wouldn’t even show herself—a bright hot flame of anger flared in my chest. I took a step towards the book.

  Next to me, Daniel gazed up into my eyes. His expression was blank, emotionless, almost like the shell of the bright and beautiful boy that practically beamed in the photo in my pack. I reached for him, cupped my hand over the curve of his small head, his hair felt more like stalks of dry straw than the fine blonde silk I remembered. He didn’t move or even acknowledge in any way that my touch registered with him. A cold dread swam through me and I snatched my hand back—it was like playing at the brink of death, touching a body as it shifted into death. Daniel was closer to becoming a faint than I had realized.

  I focused on the open book before me, on the humped wave of thousands of pages rolling away from the spine.

  It was blank.

  An expanse of glowing white pages, like an open canvas, it was impossible to tell if they generated their own light or merely reflected the light of the room. Without thinking, I ran my hand over the smooth surface, and was surprised. I expected an open book to feel cool to the touch, but these pages were warm, almost hot even, and radiated an energy up into my hands that traveled uncomfortably up my arms and towards my chest until I lifted my hands and broke the connection.

  “What do I do?” I whispered.

  “Speak,” the girl said.

  She was suddenly before me. I raised my head and saw that she was standing where she had not been a second before, across from me, on the other side of the book. Her impossibly blue eyes bore into mine, an unblinking intensity that hinted at the extreme power held captive behind them. My insides practically screamed for me to run away from this strange white haired child as fast as possible because, instinctively, I knew with a certainly I would not have been able to explain—I was no match for this creature before me.

  I forced myself to stand still and shifted my gaze back down to the book. “Speak what?” the words barely left my mouth.

  “You said you have come to save your brother,” her voice was light, like soft chimes in a gentle breeze. “So speak the truth he has been unable to find. Explain his death, the how and why his energy is in transference across The Between. If it balances…he will move on.”

  “And me?” I asked but did not dare to look up. “What happens to me when he moves on?”

  There was a silence, the charged space waiting for her words until she finally answered, “If he should move on, then your guide will have until the end of this day to return you to the gates.”

  This place felt like a great white prison, I needed reassurance and I wanted to hear her say the words out loud. “You’ll let me go? Just like that, once Daniel is free, you’ll let me go as well?”

  “I can not keep that which does not belong to me…as much as I may like to.”

  A sensation pressed at my leg. When I looked down, I saw that Ray was slowly winding his way up and around my shin and calf. I met his eyes, he flicked his tongue.

  “NOW SPEAK!”

  Her anger was like an electric shock wave and my body now trembled uncontrollably. Hot tears threatened to rise up and spill but I was more afraid of what would happen if I didn’t do what she commanded. I swallowed hard and dug my nails hard into my palms, trying to give myself something solid, like physical pain, to focus my thoughts. I opened my mouth even though I was fairly sure I had no breath in me strong enough to carry words.

  I didn’t know where to start.

  What happened to Daniel that day? I closed my eyes and found the image. The memory of my mother, standing at the bottom of our stairs. Her hair was up off her shoulders, rolled onto her large hot curlers, held in place by metal pins that stuck out in every direction. Bright red lips, a white bra against her dark skin, jeans—her face an angry mask. Remembering now was like watching it happen in slow motion. She leaned forward, took a giant step, her arms and fists curled and pumped at her sides, propelled her body across the floor—she charged up the stairs towards us. Towards me and Daniel.

  Even the memory of that day made my heart race in fear.

  I opened my eyes and spoke. “My mother was getting ready to go out.” Before me, on the blank white page, my words began to fill the space. Like dictation, my voice was recorded into words on the page. “She was angry about something we had done and ran up the stairs—”

  Then what? I stared at my words scrolling out across the page and tried to focus my brain back on the day, it was like trying to see a movie playing on a dirty screen in the distance.

  “She…she pushed me to the side, my head hit the wall…she grabbed Daniel.” It felt like grasping at smoke. Now that I was having to describe exactly what happened that day, the images were faint and hard to read, murky water sliding around my brain. “Then…then she killed him,” I whispered. The last of my words formed before me and I stared down at them. Stared at the truth written and bold for the first time since Daniel had died. For the first time in my whole life. The room felt heavy to me, the air like a pressure squeezing my body.

  The Balancer stood silent, her eyes closed, her face serene.

  I looked back at my words in the book. Wondered about their effect—what would happen now? Daniel still stood, unmoving, next to me. How long did we all stand here and what were we waiting for? I wished Ray was in his human form so I could gather some clue from his face. Should I just leave? Unable to stand it any longer, I opened my mouth to interrupt the silence—and stopped.

&nbs
p; In the book, my words were unraveling. Some unseen force pulled the thread of my words, like unraveling stitches, until the whole of my story laid in a thin uneven line right before it disappeared all together.

  Before me, the book again stood blank.

  One corner of The Balancer’s mouth turned up into the faintest of grins.

  “What happened?” I asked. “What’s wrong?”

  She opened her eyes, they were bright, hungry, and focused on me in a way that made me want to run. “Why, it’s you that’s wrong,” her voice, light and high, like a small child explaining a game, did not match her ravenous look. “It would appear,” she gestured with her tiny delicate hand. “That your account is not quite right. You have balanced nothing.” Her eyes still bore hard into mine but her hand floated, like the lightest of feathers on a soft breeze, to the top of Daniel’s head. “So, I’m afraid, unless you have a better story, your brother will be staying here…with me.”

  Daniel’s attention turned from the book to me. His eyes, still expressionless, still only a vague impression of the bright and beautiful boy he once was, gave the faintest glimpse, a tiny flicker. Buried deep inside him, past the years of wandering through a death he did not understand, somewhere there was still Daniel’s spirit inside that graying shell—and he was a little boy reaching for me to lift him up.

  But I had no idea how to get to him now.

  “What can I do?” I whispered.

  As if in response, the great white walls behind The Balancer cracked open and a gust of wind blew my hair wildly around my face before settling into a steady stream, like a storm’s breath blowing through an opened window. Looking back over my shoulder, I could see that the doors we had come through were also opening, opening back up to the brown and gray colored world of The Between.

  Turning back, I stared out the ever widening doorway now before me. This new place, much darker than even The Between we had come through, stood in stark contrast to the bright white room. It was a black frame, and at its center, there stood the strange and terrifying girl who ruled this world.

  Only after both doors stopped moving did she speak. “Now, you choose.” She turned her body sideways and lifted her arms with her palms up until she looked like an old fashioned scale. “Through the doors behind you, is the way you have come, and the way that leads back to the gate and the world of the living. Through the doors before you,” she inclined her head towards the black world. “You might find the answers you seek.”

  “Might?” I asked.

  “Yes. Through those doors, and past several,” she smiled as if she couldn’t help herself, “obstacles, there is a single Epiphany Pool. Whoever gazes upon its waters with a question in their heart, is shown the answer they seek.”

  “The pool will show me what happened to Daniel?”

  “Should you make it there?” she clarified. “Yes, it would do that.”

  “And if I leave?”

  “Then you leave.” She caressed Daniel’s head without looking at him. “But the boy is mine to keep.”

  I thought about the choice, felt the temptation to run through those doors that led back to the gates, back to my life. I looked into Daniel’s eyes. “You said if I make it there, what if I don’t.”

  Her eyes burned brighter, as if the very idea of this possibility brought her untold joy. “Then you will die here…and be mine as well,” she smiled. “BUT CHOOSE NOW!” her voice once again cut the air and made me jump. “For we do not like to toy with possibilities in vain.”

  I hesitated a moment longer, unsure of exactly what I was choosing, only knowing that I could never return to a life only to be haunted by the knowledge that I had given up on Daniel and let him go when he needed me the most.

  And yet, was I throwing my own life, my own soul, away in exchange for only the chance to save his?

  Again, I wished Ray, still wound around my calf, were in his human form and able to give me guidance.

  “I’m going forward,” I said.

  The words had barely left my lips when the door behind me began to swing shut and The Balancer’s self satisfied grin made me suspect I had made a very serious mistake.

  “Goodbye to you then,” she laughed. “Until we meet again…should we meet again that is.”

  I bent down, picked up Ray’s pile of clothing, and began walking towards this new journey. Again, my feet were strangely silent on the hard white floors. Halfway there, a hot gust of air blew in carrying an acrid scent that reminded me of burnt matches. But it was the sound that made me stop. A collective moan, like a thousand voices wailing together, and all of them crying out in agony.

  I looked back at The Balancer with her hand resting possessively on Daniel’s head. She said nothing, only continued her closed mouth smile. It wasn’t until Ray squeezed my leg that I realized I was wasting time and started moving again.

  One step after another, I was moving very slow, dreading every foot that carried me closer into that world, that sound. I crossed the threshold, and the doors began to swing shut behind me, locking me out of the white room, away from Daniel and the way back to the gates.

  Away from the other choice I suddenly wished I had made instead.

  Part Three:

  Chapter Thirteen

  The Edge

  The wind that blew over me was hot, radiant, like standing in front of an open oven door. It swept up and over me, scorching my skin and filling my ears with its chaotic rush of sound. A panic, bright and terrifying, rose up inside me and spread through my veins like a shot of toxins in my blood. Before me, I stared across what looked like the rim of a giant crater. An enormous hole in the earth. A gaping mouth that blew a hot breath up all around me along with those sounds that were making me shiver—human voices, crying in anguish.

  Behind me, I heard the heavy sliding sound of large metal locks bolting the door behind me and my heart beat like a thousand racing horses thundering inside my chest.

  I wanted out.

  I wanted back.

  I wanted to go home.

  I closed my eyes and stood still.

  “Carmen?”

  I opened my eyes, on the ground in front of me, Ray was curled, stark white and naked against the black and rocky dirt. In my panic, I had forgotten about him, the feel of him around my leg—I didn’t even notice him changing back to his human form.

  The smallest wash of relief rose in my throat until tears fell down my face. He looked so beautiful, solid and real, his breath filled his chest and he had two bright eyes that stared back at me—I wasn’t all alone.

  “Ray,” I cried.

  He nodded his head slowly, “Yes.”

  “You’re here,” I blurted.

  “Of course I’m here,” he said. His voice was gentle, careful. “I have always been here.”

  I nodded my head, at the truth of it, the certainty of it. The relief it brought made me cry harder. “I think I love you,” I whispered.

  “You do love me Carmen. You have always loved me, you will always love me. You just forgot about me for a while,” he smiled.

  My lips pressed hard against each other and I nodded quickly—what he said felt right.

  “Carmen?” he asked.

  “Yes?” I cried, still so overwhelmed by the relief of him being here with me.

  “Could you give me my clothes back?”

  I looked down and realized I was still holding his clothes in my arms. I looked back at him and was suddenly, consciously, aware that—Ray is lying here naked— and handed the bundle down to him while looking away. “Sorry.”

  He took the clothes and I turned away. “It’s okay,” he said. “I was just wondering if maybe you preferred me this way?”

  His joking didn’t completely put me at ease, but I felt my neck relax a little. I could hear him moving behind me, the sound of his clothes moving over his body and his shoes shifting against the dirt, then I felt his hands grasp my arms and the force of him pulling me towards him. He lowered his mou
th to my ear and I closed my eyes.

  “Carmen,” he whispered.

  I nodded my head.

  He turned me around and wrapped me in his arms, pressed me tight against his chest. “I want you to know, I will be there. There with you, every step of the way.”

  I nodded my head, not wanting to think just yet about any of those steps. Wishing instead we could stand here forever, me inside his arms, forgetting about large holes that led God knows where.

  “I will be there,” he hesitated. “If I can.”

  I didn’t want to hear this and so I pressed myself even further into him.

  “If I can,” he continued. “But you’re going to have to be strong too,” his voice caught at the end, as if it pained him to have to say such things. “You have to be strong Carmen…because what comes next…”

  I closed my eyes and waited, waited for him to say it even though I already knew what the words would be.

  “It’s the hardest thing you’ll ever have to face.”

  As if on cue, the collective cry rose up again from somewhere deep inside the belly of the crater and my body trembled against his.

  “You can do this,” he said. “You’re stronger than you realize.”

  A sudden thought occurred to me and I pulled away from him and looked into his eyes. “You know,” I said. “You know what happened that day with Daniel. “If you’ve always been with me then you were with me that day.”

  He stared back at me, his expression unreadable.

  “I don’t remember,” I said. “But you do.”

  After a moment, he nodded his head.

  I stepped away from him and his arms fell to his sides. “Why?” I asked.

  “Because I can’t.”

  I narrowed my eyes at him. “What does that mean…can’t.”

  “It means impossible. Forbidden. Couldn’t even if I tried.”

  “But you haven’t tried. You didn’t even tell me you knew.”