by Rebecca Lim
Uri looks down on us … with pity? Compassion?
We burn, burn, and our mouth is stretched wide to scream, to bring the walls of this house down, when I see, I see —
— two great human armies doing battle on a desert plain; beings like Uri among them, above them, on the ramparts of the beleaguered city, doing nothing 176
save watch as hundreds go down, armoured and on horseback, on foot. Called to their deaths by blaring horn and sackbut; a tide of red, human blood sinking into the unforgiving sand as the watchers do nothing.
Uri, suspended, like a star, above the dome of a great stone mosque, the walls of a sprawling pink desert fort at sunset, the keep of a floating palace haunted by music and the scent of jasmine, the peak of the tallest mountain in the world, the bell tower of a city overrun by plague and death. Uri, falling from the sky yet landing lightly upon the surface of the earth. Uri, passing like a spirit through the bodies of a magnitude without leaving any sensation of his passage. Uri, in a thousand improbable places, yet bending the laws of nature with ease.
Then the years peel back — or do they run forwards?
— as cities are raised then sacked, then raised again.
Always the new upon the old — or the old upon the new
— until pattern, memory, coherence all waver and blur with the rapid passage of time. As I watch through his eyes, the sun and moon streak across the sky continually as fires, famines, wars destroy cities. Civilisations —
both celebrated and forgotten — begin to snake out across the surface of the world as vines are wont to do, buildings grow more opulent, more complex, ever 177
taller, like plants reaching towards the sun. We traverse continents, seas, forests, mountains, vast ice floes —
experience all of this together, strangely conjoined —
as seasons change, and all that is around us alters then decays then alters again. Always and everywhere, the faces of millions — of every creed, colour, age, station
— wither and become as dust, and among them walk the shining ones, ever watchful yet held apart. Unseen by any save their own kind. Rarely moved to intervene.
Time bends, sound, light, distance, perspective, and all around me the shifting world and everything in it.
Until, for an instant, I see, I see —
— Uri and seven brethren arrayed against me —
all beautiful, all terrible, their instruments of power raised high — and behind them, a glorious multitude in white, the great universe wheeling and turning about us.
Planets, stars, suns, moons, the greater and lesser bodies fly by; comets, black holes, supernovae, strange fissures in time and space twist and curl overhead like a painted, yet living, ever-changing dome.
Home.
The word catches in me.
I know this is a true memory, one of my earliest, for beside me I sense Luc — my heart leaping — another 178
shining multitude arrayed at our backs, the two of us the epicentre of something vast, a conflagration waiting to happen, an ache in time, a breath suspended.
Then I see him, my beloved — like a lion, like a sun god when he walks — as if I am reliving the moment, as if the moment is now. And before I can turn to him, speak, lay my hands upon him in fearful gratitude for the miracle of such restoration — how long have I waited for this? How long? — I hear him say, ‘Then, as an act of faith — of goodwill —shall we call it — take that which is most precious to me.’ His tone is final, without emotion, a death knell. ‘I permit it.’
And then I feel searing pain in my left hand, the original pain, the wound that begot all wounds, all misfortunes, thereafter, and then the world goes white and blank.
And I am rendered deaf, dumb and blind. For all purposes, dead to that shining multitude, removed from them in an instant, cut off forever, as if a limb amputated, never to return.
And I am lost again, as I am suddenly hurled out of contact with the being, Uri, who is clearly shaken.
‘ Exaudi nos, Domine,’ he whispers as he looks at the place where our two hands were joined, as if a new 179
scar might have formed there. It could have been days or mere seconds that we touched.
‘You of all people should know how it works, Uri,’
I reply. ‘The Lord only helps those who help themselves, remember?’ As I say the words, I discover that I am finally able to sit upright. I hug Carmen’s bony knees gingerly as I look up into Uri’s beautiful countenance, startle a crooked smile from him.
‘ That, my friend, is where we differ in philosophical outlook,’ he says, a touch ruefully. ‘A shift has indeed occurred, it would seem. Disturbingly, my informant does not prove false.’
Time is short in every sense, so while I am able, while the creature’s mood nears benevolence (as much as one such as he is able to feel benevolence), I say raggedly,
‘Then help me this time? I need to find her. I need you to intervene. Just this once. For me. Such a small thing, brother.’
I struggle to keep my tone even, still wondering why, so many times, he and his brethren watched while all around them were lost or destroyed, transfigured forever.
And still they stood by and did nothing when they had the power in them to do anything … everything.
Uri pauses perceptibly and I watch the light bleed 180
from him in little drifts, in errant curls of pure energy.
When he finally answers, his voice is gentle. ‘It has already been decided. You know this as well as I do.
Everything now and to be has a past cause that may be known or deduced and from which all consequence flows. We are the masters of natural law through which all events may be viewed and given meaning. Further are we above all beasts and all men, the first caste, the foremost. Therefore, intervention is pointless. The girl is already lost and gone. She is nothing. Forget her.’
The answering fury I feel is swift and unexpected.
‘Surely, we are not the only ones with liberty!’ I cry. ‘ They exercise free will every day, every second of their lives. The world is chaos, as are all who live in it.
Nothing is fixed from moment to moment. I have seen it. Lived it! How can you deny it?’
Uri’s face is impassive. ‘Consider your current state. Does she demonstrate any such freedom of will?
Everything she does is a direct consequence of your actions.’
For a moment I am speechless. It’s a good point.
When tested, it does not seem to yield.
‘But she is constrained,’ I rasp out finally.
‘Because we willed it,’ he replies calmly. ‘We have 181
always and ever been the masters of their fate, and our own. With one only having higher authority over us all.
Free will is an illusion. You would do well to remember it, if nothing else. Perhaps he is right. Perhaps you have altered beyond all recognition.’
I am almost begging. ‘But she is likely still alive, brother.’
As I say the word again, brother, Uri’s eyes narrow and soften momentarily.
‘If you will not free me,’ I sigh, ‘at least do this one thing I ask of you.’
His expression is unreadable once more as he shakes his head, his long, brown hair falling freely about his shoulders. Every strand straight, even and perfectly the same. ‘I cannot do it. Do not ask it of me.’ Is there sadness in his words? Pity?
‘Will not, more likely.’ Frustration roughens my tone. ‘What are you?’
When he replies, his bell-like voice holds a note of challenge. ‘No. The question is, what are you?’
We glare at each other fiercely, both freezing as we hear someone ascend the staircase outside Lauren’s room. Heavy footsteps head down the hallway before pausing and retracing their way to her door. There is a 182
soft tapping.
‘Carmen?’ It is Stewart Daley’s voice, weariness in it.
‘Is everything all right? May I come in?’
I see
the handle turn a fraction, clockwise.
‘I’m fine!’ I squeak out, loud enough for the man outside to hear. ‘It’s nothing. Just a bad dream. Sorry I disturbed you.’
Did he often stand there, like that, when his daughter was home and asleep in her bed?
For a long, poised moment, he does not move away, only the door between him and my shining interlocutor.
Even as Mr Daley sighs, ‘Well, good night then,’ and begins to move away down the hall, Uri says softly, ‘Luc wants you for his own. He cannot be trusted. Do not allow past feeling to interfere with your judgment. Do not fall to him or all will be lost. You may not know it, will not necessarily thank us, but it has always been for you, always.’
Before I can reach out and hold him to me for another fleeting instant, before I can tell him I want to be found by Luc, now more than ever, Uri’s outline wavers and splinters into infinitesimal motes of light that wink out and are gone. And I am hit again by a wave of loneliness so vast that it feels for a second as if I am the one who 183
has broken apart and cannot be put back together.
I send fury, despair, grief shooting straight into the night sky, like a beacon.
Let someone hear it! I scream silently. Exaudi me, Domine.
I realise anew the value of what I might have lost, and it is legion.
Who am I? whispers that inner voice that is never silent. What am I capable of?
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Chapter 18
Despite what Ryan told me the night before, I am determined to lay hands on Gerard Masson at this morning’s rehearsal and sift through his innermost thoughts. If he is as blameless as the lamb, something in me will recognise it. I know now that guilt will rise to the surface like oil on the water, like blood. I just need to look for it.
My encounter with the being called Uri last night confirms it. There is an inexplicable power in me that will not be denied, not even by something, someone, not of this world.
The meaning of his warning, however, continues to elude me. Random aspects of his words return to trouble me as I drag Carmen’s glittery pink hairbrush 185
haphazardly through the tangles in her hair, shrug my way into her doll-sized clothes.
What has always been for me?
And why?
And what did Luc’s act of goodwill serve to prove?
Permit?
I chase the answers down the unreliable pathways of Carmen’s brain even though I know they are not there; they are buried somewhere within me, the ghost-in-the-machine.
When I recall again that moment of blank, white pain, I feel a terrible numbness, the echoes of some deeper grief whose cause I cannot yet bring to the surface.
And though I cannot cry tears — was not formed to do so, corrects that small voice inside — I find tears on Carmen’s face as I apply cherry-pink lip gloss carefully to the tiny bow of her mouth, dust the bronzing powder I found at the bottom of her carryall across the bridge of her small, fine nose.
Tears for me, cried by a stranger.
By the time I head down to breakfast, Ryan has already left the house on some wilful errand known only to himself. I find myself missing him already. Beneath the 186
calm surface that Carmen presents to the world, I beat myself up about it. People in your situation, my inner voice informs me dryly, should not form attachments.
It’s a given.
You think I don’t know that?
Could have fooled me.
Smart ass.
As I rise from the table after Carmen’s usual meagre breakfast — her body a machine requiring very little fuel
— Mr Daley surprises me by offering me a lift to school.
Louisa Daley’s dark eyes settle on mine for a long moment before she says, ‘Have a good day,’ in a neutral voice, turning away from her husband.
‘We’ve hardly looked after you,’ Mr Daley says apologetically, as he holds open the front door, beckons me out ahead of him. ‘And here’s almost a week gone.
It’s the least I can do.’
What did he hear last night when he was poised outside Lauren’s bedroom door? I am immediately all caution.
‘Well, that’s very kind.’ I put shyness in my voice, hanging my head a little. ‘But after you, Mr Daley. The dogs, you know.’
‘Ah, yes,’ he replies, looking at me quizzically for a 187
fraction too long.
So like Ryan, I can see the son’s future mapped out in the older man’s face. Let there be no more suffering in it, I think. And it’s almost a prayer.
Mr Daley disposes of the baying hounds in the usual manner, and installs me in the front passenger seat, both of us absurdly careful not to touch each other. I suppose I will have to reach out to him again at some point, to be absolutely certain. But I’ll tackle the little music teacher first. The echoes of Mr Daley’s mental anguish are still too fresh in my mind for comfort, and I trust Ryan.
Perhaps too much. Trust has been so long absent from my weird limbo existence that even acknowledging the fact is like a leap of faith.
Stewart Daley makes inconsequential small talk as we drive across town to school. I make the appropriate noises in return. Tell him politely how much I am enjoying my stay in his bucolic town, lying like the professional that I am, the leaf-shaped air freshener swinging like a pendulum between us.
As he drops me off just outside Paradise High’s main gate, he says approvingly, ‘It seems you’ve made a good impression on my wayward son, young lady. Ryan’s even talking about heading back to school in the spring 188
and I like to think you’ve had something to do with that.
Maybe he’s finally giving up on this … nonsense of his.’
I turn, on the point of swinging my legs out of the car. ‘It isn’t nonsense, Mr Daley,’ I reply seriously.
I almost touch him, think better of it, withdraw Carmen’s small hand, take a firmer grip on the daypack between my feet. Later, maybe. I’m no coward. But it’s like what Pavlov did to that poor dog, you know? Once burned.
I add reassuringly, ‘You have to believe she’s still out there, that she’ll come home. I do.’
Immediately, his open, friendly expression shuts down, his eyes go blank. He looks away as he says dully, ‘That way lies madness, you know? It’s what our therapist told us. If you don’t accept she’s dead, you don’t heal. We have to “seal off” the incident. I have to believe he knows what he’s doing.’
I watch as, to the accompaniment of shouted expletives and blaring horns, Stewart Daley, executes a ragged U-turn across two lanes of oncoming school-bound traffic, before burning back in the direction of Main Street.
Gerard Masson stops me before I’m about to sit down 189
on the fringes of the soprano section. Around us, people are still taking their chairs all over the room.
‘Good morning, Carmen!’ he says brightly, one chubby hand on my sleeve.
I pause, staring hard at him. He’s a toucher, and it’s instinctive, my dislike of being touched, like learned behaviour. Plus, he stinks of … alcohol? His skin exudes an overpowering odour, like the inside of a wine cask.
Can no one else smell it? I almost wrench my arm away, then I remember.
Should I do it now? Reach into his head right here and take what knowledge I need from his mind?
‘Good morning, Mr Masson,’ Tiffany interrupts loudly, her best sweetness-and-light game face on. As usual, she hasn’t missed a trick. She’s like a tabloid reporter camped outside my gates, always on my case. ‘Is there something you wanted to tell us before the rehearsal starts?’ she adds. ‘Something we — the sopranos — need to work on?’
She looks around at us, bats her tinted eyelashes, queen of all she freakin’ surveys.
Wretched Tiffany and her big, carrying voice. Every soprano’s suddenly focused on the fact that Mr Masson’s still holding onto me, and I can’t go into some kind of 190
off-the-wall trance with Tiffany’s eyes —
not to mention all the rest — boring into me like … well, lasers.
Despite the slight tremor in Gerard Masson’s fingers, his voice is controlled. ‘Well, no, Tiffany. The sopranos are doing just fine. Nothing the general rehearsal can’t fix. I just wanted to corner young Carmen here to offer her a special solo in the upcoming concert. She’s quite the revelation! Really come out of her, ah ha, shell.’ As he speaks, his fingers dig into my sleeve momentarily.
‘I thought something still in the ecclesiastical mould, Carmen,’ he says, and I’d like to step back, but I’ve got nowhere to go, ‘but a little lighter, to leaven the vigorousness of the Mahler. Perhaps something by John Rutter? Or a Willcocks arrangement?’
Who? I have to remind myself sharply to shut Carmen’s mouth.
He beams at me, and I hope Carmen’s face is registering enthusiasm, though, in truth, I have neither the time nor any interest in committing more music to memory. Carmen, the real Carmen, would probably be feeling euphoria right about now. Followed in rapid order — and I’d put good money on it — by crippling self-doubt.
There’s no let-up from Tiffany. She comes right back 191
with, ‘Carmen and I often perform duets at St Joseph’s.
We have plenty prepared. Would you believe one of them’s actually a Rutter composition — you’d know it, I’m sure, Mr Masson — Angels’ Carol. It would be perfect to round out the program —’
‘In fact,’ I cut in quickly, ‘why not let Tiffany do the solo? She’s had loads more experience. She’d be a natural for a killer finale, right, Tiff?’
I feel a sudden twinge of discomfort— like a stitch in my side — see Delia and Marisol lock eyes in disbelief.
Tiffany’s expression dissolves, unflatteringly, into shock.
‘Why, thank you for your kind offer, Tiffany,’ Gerard Masson returns quickly, still standing way too close for comfort, ‘but I have a number of specific works in mind that I think would really bring out Carmen’s particular gifts. I thought we might open with you, my dear,’ he says, returning his full attention to me eagerly. ‘Give the audience something uplifting to begin the evening with before we, ah ha, hit them with everything we’ve got, so to speak. Can you stay behind after tonight’s rehearsal and we’ll get down to brass tacks? There’ll be a few extra rehearsals involved as well — all one on one with me, of course, there’s no time to waste — but you seem a quick study, it should pose no extra difficulty for you, I’m sure.
