“What did you tell it?” George asked.
“I, uh, I’m not too sure,” said Hjerald, “but what I think I said was ‘Go away, monster—behave.’”
“Man,” said George looking at Vernal, “we gotta write that one down.”
O O O
The snow was still falling, the flakes broad and dry, as the group of mourners made their way back into town. June walked apart from the rest of them, and the Mayor was preoccupied with chasing Mr. Janes around from tree to tree, convinced as he was that the woods were somehow speaking to him.
All things considered, Meredith half expected to hear them speaking, herself.
Some yards ahead, Hjerald waved her up to join him. She quickened her pace and caught up to where he was walking with Eddie and Vernal.
“Hey, guys—wait up.”
“Gee,” said Eddie, “your hair’s sure looking a mess, Meredith, and you look like you’re gaining weight.”
“At least she didn’t pee herself in front of the dragon,” said Vernal.
“Curse these tan pants,” said Eddie. “I’m just sayin’, even if it’s the end of the world, a girl outta make an effort to look good.”
“Shut up, Eddie,” said Vernal.
“Hm,” said Hjerald, “I can see why you get dates so often, Eddie.”
“What?” said Eddie. “I haven’t been on a date since ’91. I … Hey, what’s so funny?”
“Nothing, Eddie. Hjerald, did you want to ask me about something?”
“Sure. And by the way, I guess I hadn’t mentioned—it’s Herald, now—no silent ‘J’.”
“As in angels?”
“Hm. I hadn’t thought about that,” Herald said, his voice dropping to a conspiratorial whisper. “Cool beans. Anyway, have you noticed—and this is nothing against Mrs. Kawaminami, mind you—that a lot of people are dying here, but we’re only giving funerals for a few?”
“Some people are better than others,” interjected Eddie, “that’s why. Didn’t you ever read The Fountainhead?”
“Shut up, Eddie,” said Vernal, dragging him away by his collar. “Sorry, Miss Strugatski.”
“I don’t know, Herald,” Meredith replied. “I guess everything’s been moving so quickly that I hadn’t really thought about it.”
“Well, think about it. We hang that librarian, and …” He squinted into the distance, “… He seems to still be there, mostly; then we go for coffee. Mrs. K dies, and the whole town’s in mourning. Some people get eaten, and it’s gossip at Soame’s; others do, and it’s a tragic loss. I mean, something’s not right, here.”
“Herald,” Meredith asked, turning him to face her dead on, “answer me this honestly—do I seem to be … Changing, to you?”
Herald was quiet, mulling over a response. Finally, he spoke.
“Meredith, I think we’re all changing, every one of us. But I think we’re only changing into what we are, or maybe should’ve been, to begin with. I think what’s happening is that the facades of the world are being stripped away; what we saw last week was only an image. What we’re seeing now is the underlying reality.”
“Where’d you get that idea?”
“From the page of the Prime Edda Michael sent, actually,” said Herald. “I took a closer look at it—do you remember that it seemed to have an odd, greenish tint to it?”
“Sure,” Meredith replied, “but I thought that might be because of the extreme age of the piece—mold, or something.”
“It’s not mold. As far as I can tell, it was probably some kind of chemical, or alcohol—something which the parchment could be soaked in without destroying it.”
“And you think Michael did this?”
“I’m sure of it, because it turns out the sheet is also a palimpsest—a document which was written on, then erased, then written on again. This was done a lot in the days when writing materials were scarce, but in some cases, the original writing was never entirely obliterated—sometimes, the words can still be seen.”
“And you say that this Edda page is such a piece?”
“Yeah. I haven’t been able to do much by way of a translation, but it looks very similar to the Icelandic the Edda was written in, so it’s possibly an even older version than the one which was printed. I’ll work on it more later, but I’m just saying that it’s what got me thinking about appearances, and how things which seem normal on the surface might be hiding the truth of what they really are.”
He stopped, noticing that Meredith was distracted, and also upset. “Reedy? Are you all right?”
“So you don’t think I might be the one who’s responsible for all of those people who’ve gone missing? You don’t think it might all be my fault, and I just can’t remember it?”
“Naw,” he said, hugging her shyly with one arm. “I don’t think anything new is happening, here—have you ever wanted to kill anyone before?”
“Well, no, but …”
“Do you feel any different?”
“Not really, but …”
“There you go. If you’re noticing changes, Reedy, it’s only because those things were already inside you. If you can’t see yourself doing something, then I don’t think it’s likely you ever would. Some people seem to be changing in physical ways,”—he threw a glance over at Glen, swinging through the trees—“… some in their behavior, and some in both. But it’s kind of like hypnosis—you won’t do anything you wouldn’t normally do.”
“So you’re suggesting we’re all just becoming hyper-normal?”
“I’m just saying the masks are being stripped away. Monsters are still monsters—we can just see them now.”
“You’re pretty smart sometimes, you know that Herald?”
“Yeah.”
Meredith stopped, stopping him with her. “Wait—so how does your theory explain that,” she said, pointing at the manticore which had gotten frisky and was chasing the Jennings Band’s trombonist, Jonathan Wilson, down Solomon.
“Dang,” said Herald. “I don’t have the faintest idea how to explain any of that stuff with the cars.”
They watched as the manticore caught Jonathan and ran a sharpened claw down his back, opening the flesh. It then ripped out his spine, which it considered for a second before tossing it over its shoulder and proceeding to feed on the musician’s remains.
“Well,” said Herald, “I guess it’s The Jennings Duo, now.”
O O O
At Soame’s, they were sitting and enjoying Glen Beecroft’s one man performance of an original play called “I Don’t Know What It Is Either, But Here It Comes Again”, when Meredith noticed June standing behind the door to the private residence, which was just barely cracked. He caught her eye, and motioned for her to follow.
Discreetly, she slid out of her seat as Glen was getting to a part in the play having to do with alligators, which had pretty much riveted everyone to their seats, as with each pass he was eyeing people on the front row of chairs like cream puffs. Delna was keeping him in check with tossed biscotti, but Meredith wondered if she wasn’t leaving just as it was about to get interesting.
When she stepped through the Kawaminami’s door, Meredith saw June waiting at the bottom of the library staircase, a single candle lit. Slowly she descended, and then walked across to the broad, dark Edwardian table and chairs where they had nabbed Bristol, his stamp still sitting open next to a pile of books.
“June?” Meredith said, “You wanted to talk?”
He nodded and set the candle, dripping, on the table, and then moved out of the light to a chest near the wall.
Meredith couldn’t quite make out what he was doing; he lifted something, wrapped, from the chest, then turned to face her as he removed the cloth from the object he’d retrieved.
“June? What are you doing? What is that?”
Wordlessly, June stepped from out of the shadows, cradling gently in his hands …
… A sword.
A larger, longer version of the one they’d found with Fuji
ko’s body, the sword overlapped thoughts of Richard Chamberlain which rushed through Meredith’s head; Gaijin-San, the Dutch trader shipwrecked on Japanese soil in the novel SHOGUN, become one with them in culture if not in blood. And there was much blood in SHOGUN, spilled by the very kind of sword June held before her.
Folded more than five hundred times, the metal edge could slice through concrete, raw steel, a tree, for God’s sake; an ancestral sword, the hilt made of gold formed in the shape of a dragon, braided through with red silk, and cased about with onyx of the deepest black. It was stunning in its beauty.
It also bore, along the edge, a slight staining the color of rust …
… Although she was pretty sure it wasn’t rust.
June stepped closer, and, kneeling, proffered the blade to her.
“June? Wh … What do …? I don’t understand …”
“I have betrayed you, Meredith. My life is yours.”
She pulled him to his feet, shaking in fear and disbelief.
What the hell was he talking about? “What the hell are you talking about, Junichi?”
He slumped into one of the Edwardian chairs around the table, his head in his hands. “There is something I should have told you when you first arrived from Vienna. I did mean to tell you, but there always seemed to be something that got in the way, or the circumstances were not quite right, or …”
He shook his head sadly. “Excuses. Just excuses. In truth, it just became easier to pretend there was nothing to tell, and after a time, your father became more and more of a memory, and it became less and less important to keep the vow I made to him.”
“Vow?”
“To tell you what he told me, on the night before he … Before he was killed. To tell you what I promised to tell no one else.”
“What is that, June?”
“Vasily Strugatski was not your father.”
Meredith slumped into one of the chairs across from him, which was not terribly dignified, but was more dignified than having her knees buckle underneath her. He took the look in Meredith’s eyes as permission to continue; to be honest, she had no idea what her eyes were saying—she was just content that she could still focus.
“Vasily came to me one night, when I was alone. Often, he had dined with me and Fuji, and he spent a lot of time with Shingo. But on that night, he came before dinner and asked to speak to me alone.
“We came here, to the library, and he told me a story of two young lovers, kept apart by circumstance …”
Meredith nodded. “Vasily and Elena.”
June looked at her, stricken. “No—Elena and Michael.”
“What?”
“Before the Strugatski family settled in Vienna, before Vasily, your mother was in love with another man—Michael Langbein.”
“But … But, I thought they met after …”
“They met, Meredith, several years before you were born. They met, fell in love, and planned to marry.”
“What stopped them?”
“His family forbade it. They would never allow him to marry a Gypsy—and to keep them apart, he was sent off to school.”
“That’s when he went to Oxford.”
June nodded. “Did you know them well, Michael’s family?”
She shook her head. “They died when I was still a child.”
“Mmm. A greater shame, then, that they had interfered so in their son’s life. Elena and he had pledged to remain faithful through Michael’s ‘exile’, but years apart can dull any love, and Elena never expected to fall in love with another man.”
“My father.”
“That’s right. The letters that her friends could smuggle in from Michael were growing fewer and farther apart—and the gulf between the last was broad enough to allow your father, Vasily, to capture her heart.”
Meredith nodded numbly, listening. “How did Michael come back into Mother’s life?”
“She had been with your father for almost a year, when Michael returned to Vienna, to discover why she no longer answered his letters. He found her where he had last seen her, in the market, and with one glance, they fell in love all over again.
“When your mother returned home that night, Vasily could tell something was amiss. He questioned her, and the whole truth of it came spilling out. She swore to be faithful, that they had only spoken at the market, had not even touched, but Vasily could see that it was something which ran deep inside her, and so, he sought out Michael Langbein.”
“He went looking for him? And he didn’t kill him?”
“That would’ve killed your mother—and large as he was, Vasily was a gentle soul. He merely wanted to speak to the man who once had wanted the woman he had, and perhaps did still.”
June stopped, thinking. After a moment, he met Meredith’s eyes.
“That was when he made the mistake.
“He loved your mother, and bore no ill will towards Michael. And perhaps in their tearful protests that they were no longer in love, he saw the glances and gestures at each other that were deeper than a youthful fling which may be forgotten in time. And so, he told them that he was going to go out drinking, and would not be back until morning.”
“He left them there? Alone?”
“For Elena’s sake, he allowed them the one night together—that one night, and no other. This was his mistake; a choice made of love, but a mistake nonetheless.”
“And Elena—my mother—became pregnant, didn’t she?”
June looked at Meredith, eyes brimming, then nodded gently.
“Is that why he left?”
June nodded again. “It wasn’t for shame, Meredith, and it wasn’t to avoid killing them to avenge the family honor. He left because the child, a daughter—you—was not his own, but Michael’s. He left to allow the family to be together as a family, and in doing so, took all of the shame upon himself, and let Michael have everything that he had desired in his life—a loving wife, a child, a home.”
“All those letters he sent to my mother …”
“He loved her, Meredith. He couldn’t stop loving her, and that’s why he forgave her.”
“But, how could he? How … When it was she who betrayed, not …”
“That is the nature of forgiveness. When you forgive, you take the weight of the sin—and its consequences—upon yourself. This is what your father did; and to make certain that he would never go back on that decision, would never destroy the lives of you and your mother …”
“He left.”
June nodded. “He left.”
“It wasn’t just Mother, though—that bastard Michael did this to him, too.”
“Meredith,” said June, “that ‘bastard’, the man whom you carry so much anger for, the man who raised you, is your real father. He may have cheated with your mother against Vasily, but only that. Vasily was your mother’s husband, not your father. When he left, it was to make room for the man who was.”
That took a few swallows to choke down.
“But, the letters …”
“He still considered Elena his wife, and you his daughter. He did love you, Meredith, and wanted you to know him. Your grandmother never gave Elena the letters to her because Vasily asked her not to.”
“Did they know why he left—the real reason?”
“Your grandfather suspected, but Vasily could not be certain. It was never really discussed in any of the letters—that’s probably why they never spoke of it to you. They did agree with Vasily, though, that it should be your choice whether to show the letters to your mother—perhaps he thought that Elena and Michael would tell you the truth, then. I cannot say.”
“Was he ever … Would he have ever told me, if I had come to see him before he died?”
June nodded and took her hands in his own. “Yes, yes—that’s why he chose to tell me. He wanted to tell you when you were old enough, and choosing parts of your life outside of your parents’ influence. He … He hoped that you would still choose to love him.”
; Meredith blinked back tears, silent.
“He feared that some event or circumstance would prevent you coming together, so he took me into his confidence and made me vow to tell this only to you, should he not be able to. It was a sadly prophetic discussion, for the next morning, he was found dead.”
“Did he give any hint that he knew something might happen?”
June pulled back his hands and shook his head slowly. “Not in so many words, though the expression of fear is clue enough that he at least had his suspicions.”
Dazed, Meredith stood up and walked across the cold room, hugging herself. In the reflection of the dark paneled windows, she could see her hair was almost entirely grey, and her hips broader. Her breasts also seemed more pendulous, and her face thicker, though all of that could have been distortions in the glass. She hoped they were. She wanted to be a pretty bride for the son of this man, whom she loved so much in that moment. Meredith turned back to June.
“I’m glad he told you. I’m glad to know.”
Junichi bowed his head, respectfully, and it was then she remembered why he’d brought her to the library.
“June? What does any of that have to do with you? You kept your word to Vasily, but,” she said, nodding her head at the sword on the table, “why did you offer me your life?”
Hearing this, he lost posture, as if waking from a pleasant daydream to a lecture from the headmistress. “Meredith,” he began, “when your father died, there were no witnesses, and no suspects. There was not even enough evidence to begin an investigation. However, when I looked more closely at his body, I realized that I knew what kind of instrument could sever a head so cleanly.”
Against her will, Meredith shuddered, and forced herself not to look at the sword.
“Although George’s dog led the sheriff to several places in town, including my library, he never took the men to the chest where the sword was usually kept. I looked there, and I found it missing. I never looked again until this morning, when the katana was found at Fujiko’s side.”
“What are you trying to tell me, June?”
“I … I think Fujiko killed him, Meredith. I think she killed your father.”
Mythworld: Invisible Moon Page 11
