“It is not a lie,” I announced. I looked at the book then back to her, “Tell me how.”
Her chest heaved with her every breath and her eyes grew wide. Here, right now, was a soul willing to fulfill her greatest desire. Her most ardent wish that she dared never expect. Someone willing to sacrifice themselves to release her from her bonds. She licked her lips.
Ray strode across the room, “Carmen,” he pleaded.
The Balancer shot her eyes towards him and held out her palm, “Snake,” she breathed. Ray’s back and neck arched suddenly, painfully. He was fighting it but his features transfigured despite his efforts. “Please, Carmen— ” was all he managed before his tongue forked and his lips pulled back and tightened into the wide mouth that reached back to his jaw. Within seconds, he lay coiled amongst the heap of his clothing.
“Pick up the book,” she said.
I leveled my gaze at her. “First— ”
“THERE IS NO FIRST! PICK UP THE BOOK!”
I closed my eyes and waited for her voice to finish its ricochet around the room. “First,” I continued, “I will balance my brother’s page.”
She narrowed her eyes at me, the tilt of her head suggesting she suspected I was trying to trick her. “He is spent,” she declared.
“Then it won’t matter to you, especially when you are about to be released.”
She thought a moment longer, still uncertain about my intentions but the taste of her freedom at her lips was too delicious to ignore. Without another word, she reached out her hand and the book began flipping pages until it came to rest on his.
I stepped up to the book and told the story that was shown to me in the epiphany pool and, at the end, added the singular detail that I hoped would change everything. When I finished, every one of my words held and remained etched across the page. Daniel’s death had been accounted for—I could only hope it wasn’t too late.
“Now,” her voice quavered. “Pick up the book.”
The book was enormous, larger than any I had ever held or seen. I reached for the open cover and closed it on my last words, then lifted the entire thing into my arms.
“Place your left hand on top and repeat these words.”
I shifted the book and cradled it in my right arm while my left hand slid over the worn leather cover.
“I take up this book,” she began.
“I take up this book,”
“And its burden,”
“And its burden,”
“And do surrender my soul,” her voice was so excited, she became breathless. “unto its keeping.”
“And do surrender my soul,” there was no going back. I looked into the eyes of the strange crystal girl before me and realized she is what I would become. Forever. Until someone chose to do what I was doing and take up the burden themselves—and she had been waiting for this moment for a very, very long time.
Her eyes grew wide as her chest heaved with her every labored breath, “Say it,” she hissed.
I drew a breath, “Unto its keeping.”
The Great Balancer’s entire face exploded into an expression of rapturous joy. Her arms raised, palms up, over head while her head tilted back, “Finally,” she sobbed and tears ran from the corners of her eyes. She began lifting off the floor, her legs and feet dangling beneath her while her white hair fanned out around her head like a fierce and flowing mane. Awestruck, I watched as the bright, crystal white of her skin and hair began to drain from her like water.
Her hair was black, her eyes brown, and her skin darkened from paper white into a pinkish beige and I realized, this was what she had looked like in life.
Suddenly, my spine spasmed—I screamed. Unbearable pain radiated like an electric signal though every nerve in my body.
My head jerked back and my mouth fell open, a deep vibration, like the one I had felt on the back of the pup but much, much stronger, began ringing through me. In front of me, the girl fell to the floor into a curled heap just as I was lifted off the ground. My hearing buzzed with an intense hum, like someone had connected my brain to a high powered electricity wire, while wave after wave of agonizing pain washed over me. It racked my soul again and again and again until my mind felt ready to explode.
I didn’t know what was happening, but the longer the pulsing vibration rang though my being, the more I got the sense that it was filling me up. Pushing away old things and adding in new. After awhile, the throbbing pulse slowed and the intensity lessened. When I was finally able to open my eyes again, I could see that I was being lowered back to the floor.
Ray stood before me, in his human form again, his face staring up at mine. Tears streamed from his eyes that were filled with wonder—and something else.
When my feet touched the floor, I reached my hand to him and he fell to his knees.
He was terrified.
My own hand extended out from me like a strange and alien thing. I pulled it back to my face, turned it with fingers spread wide as my eyes tracked the changes that ran past my wrists and all the way up my arms.
My once brown skin had turned a horrifying paper white.
Chapter Twenty-Five
Exquisite and Immaculate Horror
“Ray?” my voice had changed. It seemed to thunder up from a place deep inside me.
He tilted his head up to me and looked at me from the tops of his eyes, “Your grace,” he whispered before quickly lowering his head again.
I stood and stared at him, my breath moving in and out of me with a deep and satisfying rhythm. The pain had stopped but the vibration had continued to strum though me. I could see from my hands that I had physically changed, but I could also feel in my heart that something much more significant had altered as well.
I felt filled up. Filled to overflowing, but with what, I didn’t know.
Why was Ray trembling before me? “I wish there were a mirror so I could see,” I said to myself.
Next to me, a tall mirror with a thick golden frame materialized. Why? From where? “Did I do that?” I asked.
“Yes, your grace,” Ray said but did not raise his head.
Not yet ready to face the image I would find in its reflection, I narrowed my eyes at the glamorous object and turned away. “A chair,” I said.
A simple wooden chair, exactly like the one I had envisioned in my mind, appeared next to the mirror.
“A table,” I said and a wooden table with scrolling legs formed right beside the chair.
“I say it, and it comes?”
“Yes your grace.”
“Stop calling me that.”
“As you wish your…as you wish.”
“Ray, stand up and look at me.”
He stood straight, glanced at me briefly, and returned his eyes to the floor.
“Why won’t you look at me?”
He swallowed, “It is…difficult.”
What was wrong with me? Why wouldn’t he look at me—what had I turned in to? My hands reached for my face, had I become a horrifying monster? Nothing felt out of place. My nose, my mouth, my cheekbones—everything felt the same.
I took a step towards the mirror, raised my eyes to meet the glass, and stared into the icy eyes of an exquisite, immaculate horror.
I didn’t breathe.
I didn’t blink.
I gazed into those crystal colored eyes and tried to fathom the image of my face, my same features, now a white so sharp I looked more severe than a porcelain doll. My hair, once long and dark brown, now stood in a wild, white halo around my head. I raised my ghostly hand, and so did the image before me. I tilted my head, and the figure in the mirror looked questioningly back into my eyes.
“What have I become?” I whispered.
“Divine,” Ray breathed. “You are the Great Balancer now. You now control all the power she once did.” Next to me, Ray pointed to a strange gray mass I hadn’t noticed before lying curled on the floor.
I turned my eyes on it and it writhed beneath my gaze.
“What is it?” I asked.
To answer my question, it lifted its head from the heap. It was the girl, the last balancer, disintegrating before my very eyes. “What will become of her?”
“Whatever you command.”
I looked into Ray’s eyes, then to the almost invisible thin mist beneath the golden key. “Daniel,” I whispered. “Come back.”
At first, nothing happened. Then, slowly, like a smoke swirling on a gentle breeze, the mist shifted and grew denser. I watched and waited while Daniel’s soul moved and coalesced, became more solid with every passing second until finally, his bright little soul stood before me. He looked around himself in wonder until his eyes landed on me.
“That’s not possible,” Ray said in astonishment.
When I turned my head to meet his gaze, he looked from Daniel to me in wonder. “Not even for a balancer. How…how did you do it?”
I raised my arm and pointed to the book. “When I balanced his page, made his account…I made a full account. Went beyond his physical life and even accounted for the death of his soul.”
Ray narrowed his eyes at me, still confused.
“And then I explained how his sister…his sister, the girl who had killed him, sacrificed her own soul so that his could come back.”
Ray walked to the book and stared down at the words still etched on Daniel’s page.
“My whole living life, everyday, I was shown the image of sacrifice. I never understood it, never comprehended the power of it, until we were approaching The Beyond. That’s where my eyes saw, my ears heard…my heart felt. That’s when I knew.”
Ray turned from the book and took a step towards me. “Knew what?” he breathed.
“Knew that I was forgiven…and there might still be a way to make everything right.”
Chapter Twenty-Six
Goodbye
Ray helped Daniel up onto the pup’s back.
From a distance, I watched him and smiled. Up high on the creature’s back, Daniel sat up straight and stared back into my eyes. He did not know me, whether it was because I had changed so much or because it had been so long, I didn’t know, but my presence frightened him, I could feel it, so I kept my distance.
“Goodbye Daniel,” I whispered and raised my hand.
The pup stretched itself tall and Ray moved out of the way as it spread its wings wide and began an awkward run towards the cliff. At the last moment, it flapped its wings just as it sailed over the edge and a second later we watched as it reappeared and began a slow climb into the dark sky above us and headed for The Beyond.
“Goodbye,” I said. “Good luck.”
Ray came and stood beside me and we both watched in silence until the creature became nothing more than a black spot on the horizon.
When Ray turned to head back inside the castle, I reached out suddenly and took hold of his arm.
His whole body froze beneath my touch.
“Who do you think he will become?” I asked.
Ray shook his head gently, “I don’t know. Whomever he chooses to be I suppose.”
I moved closer to him until I was standing in front of him. His eyes held to the ground between us. Slowly, I raised my hand until it touched his chin, a silent request for him to look at me, to please, try and remember who I had been to him.
“I haven’t forgotten.”
“Then why?” I began and stopped. I took a deep breath. “Will you ever feel for me what you did? I could bear spending eternity here if I knew you would be beside me.”
His head shook slowly and I felt my heart sink at the sight of it. “I could never feel what I felt.”
My hand dropped from his face.
He looked at me from the tops of his eyes. “Because it wasn’t enough,” he continued. “When I look at you…” a sob escaped his throat and cut his words. He swallowed hard and tears spilled from his eyes. “When I look at you, it’s like looking into the heart of God. There is so much love radiating off of you…it is so beautiful…it hurts.”
I took his face into my hands and his sobs grew harder. “I need you,” I whispered. “I need you beside me, not beneath me.”
For a moment, he didn’t move as my words made there way into his heart. Then, he nodded his head and stood up straight. When he looked at me, he looked directly into my eyes even though I could see it was a struggle for him. “What should I call you?”
“Call me Carmen. Always Carmen, so I may never forget.”
Chapter Twenty-Seven
Balance
I looked up into the sky and felt the rain on my face. Every drop had the power to heal, to clean, to wash away their burdens—if they let it. I turned my face towards the sheer cliff of suffering and waited to see the reactions, the effect. Waited to see if the Epiphany pool I had placed in the sky above them to rain down on their torment could help them.
Some began to curse louder.
Some wept.
My father, my stepfather, turned his eye up towards the shower and his lips whispered a silent prayer, “Thank you,” before he began to sob. The rain spilled over his face and fingers, large drops spread over his forehead and, mixed with his tears, ran down his cheeks.
It would take a long time, but I could see that, for some of them, for the ones who wanted it, the molecules of rock had started to wash away.
I stepped into his line of sight so that he could see me, his eye fixed on me in fear.
“It’s you,” his voice trembled.
“Yes,” I nodded.
“Just like my dream,” he cried. “You’ve come just like…just like I saw.”
I smiled even though I knew my smile never brought comfort to the souls that saw it. I was a divine and holy terror to them, closer to God than human. I frightened them even though I worked only to help them.
His eye looked away, “What will happen to me now?” he whispered.
“The water, it will help you see. Help you heal…if you let it.”
“Will I ever be free?” he cried.
“It is already happening.”
He wept and I watched for a moment more before I turned and left. He would, one day, travel back to The Beyond with Daniel.
Later, I asked Ray, “Will he ever see him again?”
“If they both choose to, yes.”
I nodded my head at this, the thought brought me comfort.
I had the power to shape The Between the way I saw fit, and so I opened up the underground ocean of the Epiphany Pool into every offense.
“It was once this way,” Ray said, smiling at the changes I continued to make. “It was once a beautiful place where souls came to heal.”
I had made the sky change from its chaos of inky black and gray, to a swirling melt of vibrant blues, violets, pinks, and orange. It now looked like a welcoming dream instead of the broken nightmare it had been. The trees, plants, and shrubs changed from the speckled rust they had been when I first arrived, into a dreamy pastel palette. Flowers actually began to bloom and the pups where no longer the only strange animals to inhabit the world.
Among the whispery white and yellow clouds above our heads and on the paths beneath us, guides and lost souls again filled The Between. They searched for answers to past lives and moved forward into the promises of doing better in the next one. As the epiphany pools flooded into the offenses, suddenly more and more souls were finding their way out and they arrived, one after the other, on the backs of the pups to make their accounts in the book before leaving for The Beyond.
Faints still swam, listless and lost, but as the older ones completed their decline into nothing, less and less formed to take their place.
So much had changed, but there was one more thing—and I didn’t know if even I had the power to change it.
My feet stood at the edge of the swirling pool. For quite some time, the epiphany pool I’d placed in the sky had been raining down on the eternally damned and my step-father was one of the souls nearly freed from his rocky prison.
&nbs
p; There was one more soul who still haunted me—my mother.
Once again, I looked around at the strange landscape surrounding the suicide pool. The barren and rocky desert was deep inside the Rage offense. The large round boulders marking the boundary clearly defined this place as different from the rest of The Between—and yet, still inside of it.
I didn’t know why.
My eyes tracked the fluid and murky faces of the souls swimming in their own despair. Their eyes rolled in their ghostly faces, lost and confused—as if they couldn’t figure out what had happened to them. Their mouths yawned, in a desperate cry.
What has happened to me?
I closed my eyes and considered this offense. This rage turned in. Rage aimed at the self. That was why this pool was here. These people had used angry hands, not against each other like the rest of the souls struggling in their constant angry battles—but against themselves, and their souls were confused by this.
They swam in the salty, torpid waters of their own despair.
I stared into the depths of them and I felt lost myself. Even with all the power now at my disposal, I didn’t know how to reach those souls that dwelled in that deep, dark place. I had no idea how to help them.
“Mama,” I whispered. “Can you hear me?”
For awhile, the faces before me only continued to undulate in their incessant swirl of agony and I didn’t see her’s among them. I began to think that maybe it was too late. Maybe my mother was too far gone to even try to save from this place. The thought clutched at my throat like icy fingers, “Please Mama,” I breathed.
I scanned the waters, hoping for some sign of recognition. Minutes ticked and my finger nails dug deeper and deeper into the palms of my hands, but the pain it caused was the only tangible feeling keeping my fear and sorrow in check.
When I still didn’t see any sign of her, a cry rose up from my throat and I sat, desperate with regret, at the side of the pool.
The Exquisite and Immaculate Grace of Carmen Espinoza Page 17
