Waking the Moon

by Elizabeth Hand

  “There’s also the matter of missed classes—I haven’t seen you in my class for over a month, and there have been complaints from your other teachers as well.

  “I think,” he said, putting a hand on my shoulder and starting to steer me toward the door, “I think that it will be best for all concerned if you are removed from the University immediately. We could have you arrested, you know: it wouldn’t be at all difficult to obtain a search warrant. But at the Divine we prefer to deal with these things in our own way. You have had an unfortunate influence on some very promising students, Miss Cassidy. Enough is enough.” He pushed me into the hall.

  “You bastard. Where the hell are you taking her?” I looked over my shoulder to see Annie staring after me in a rage.

  Balthazar Warnick shook his head. “I’m sorry, Annie. It’s not just that she broke school policy. Drug possession is against the law—”

  “The law! This has nothing to do with the law, and you know it, you—”

  Professor Warnick pulled the door shut behind us.

  “Are you going to expel her, too?” I demanded. “Are you going to expel everyone who’s here tonight?”

  “Not unless they interfere.” Balthazar Warnick tugged at a greying forelock. He was breathing heavily, and his face was flushed. “Katherine Cassidy. Come with me, please.”

  His hand shot into his trouser pocket and withdrew an old-fashioned key ring.

  “Where are we going?”

  He said nothing, only kept his hand on my shoulder and guided me down the corridor, up a small flight of stairs and through a narrow hall, up another stairway and finally into a wide passage carpeted with thick oriental rugs woven in somber hues of black and crimson. We were in a part of the Orphic Lodge I’d never seen. The sounds of urgent voices died. I could hear nothing but our echoing footsteps and the falsely cheerful jangle of Professor Warnick’s keys.

  “This way, if you will.”

  Professor Warnick dropped his hand and walked briskly down the hall. I walked beside him, resigned to whatever horror was in store for me. It seemed futile to try to run. And in truth, at that moment I was more afraid of being alone than of anything else. There was something about the passage that reminded me of that darkly ornate upstairs corridor at Garvey House: the same queer aura of readiness and neglect, the same brooding strangeness that was not assuaged by the gleaming brass fixtures and resiny smell of cedar. The passage was lined with doors, but unlike those in other parts of the lodge, they were all closed.

  And now we were nearing the end of the corridor. There was a heavy oaken door with a brass handle, a little brass plaque that read Please Knock.

  “Here,” murmured Professor Warnick.

  I stopped and shook my head. “No. I mean, no. I’m not going in there.”

  Professor Warnick slid a key into the lock, turned it, and listened for the clicking of hidden tumblers.

  “I didn’t do anything,” I pleaded. “I mean, everyone keeps some pot in their rooms, you can’t just—”

  “This isn’t about your drugs,” he said, grasping the doorknob. “It’s—”

  “No!” I cried; but at that moment the door creaked open.

  “—it’s just my study,” said Professor Warnick gently, raising an eyebrow. “Please, come inside.”

  I went inside.

  It was a large room, very dark until Balthazar switched on a tall floor lamp. A fringed maroon paisley throw had been tossed over the shade, and its rosy glow did a lot to make the place look less threatening, more like an eccentric scholar’s homely lair. Bookshelves lined the walls, full of flaking leather volumes and curling manuscripts, sheaves of computer printouts and encyclopedias and something that looked very much like papyrus.

  “I won’t keep you very long, Katherine. Have a seat.”

  I remained standing. Balthazar had crossed to the far wall, a wall taken up by an enormous bay window with many small, mullioned panes. On the window’s wide sill there was a small brightly colored model of the solar system. Balthazar stared at it thoughtfully. The orbs representing the planets were enameled in bright, almost violent, colors—scarlet, cyan, Tyrian purple—and embellished with odd symbols and curlicues. The sun was sheathed in gold with a network of black wires across its surface. After a moment he picked up the orrery and stared at it, brow furrowed.

  “It is changing,” he murmured.

  Balthazar raised the model to his face and poked one of the glowing beads with a finger—the ball that was enameled emerald green and blue, the orb that was third from the sun. It turned languidly, a marble in slow motion. With a sigh Balthazar pinched it between his thumb and forefinger.

  “Worlds within worlds,” he began, and stopped.

  In his hand the planets in their shining orbits trembled. A thin sound filled the air. The hair on the back of my neck prickled. A sound like shattering crystal; a sound I had heard before.

  Balthazar’s eyes widened and he raised the orrery, as he had done with the sistrum all those weeks before. In the air before him the globes began to spin: slowly at first, but more and more quickly, until it seemed he was beset by a cloud of bees. Tendrils of grey smoke rose from their blurred circuits. Balthazar’s ruddy face grew pale.

  “No,” he whispered, then grimaced in pain. He swore and snatched his hands from the model, as though it burned his fingers; but instead of falling the orrery remained in the air before him. With a crackling sound, flames erupted from the dizzying vortex. Professor Warnick fell back against the window.

  “No!—”

  There was a roar, a sound as though somewhere miles beneath us the earth was collapsing. The floor lamp swayed perilously back and forth before it crashed to the floor, plunging the room into darkness—save where the orrery burned in the empty air. Its brightness terrified me: as though waves of liquid flame poured forth from some depthless fiery sea. Yet the flaming globe gave off no heat. And while the roar continued it was muted now, a pervasive vibration that made my bones and blood hum.

  “Get back, Katherine!”

  The orrery candled into a single glowing mass, not the warm gold of any fire I have ever seen but a blinding silvery white, with a black core. It pulsed like a swimming medusa, and then suddenly, soundlessly, its dark heart exploded outward. I was staring at a spherical void, a black hole crowned by a fiery white corona. At its center glowed a bloody-looking crescent. Dark liquid streamed from it onto the floor.

  “Professor Warnick!” I cried. I could barely see him behind the luminous apparition, but I lunged across the room, knocking aside a chair as I tried to reach him. “Professor Warnick, can you hear me?”

  “Stay back—don’t come near—”

  His voice sounded faint and thin; it might have been the sound of branches scraping at the window. Behind the dazzling crescent he was all but invisible, enveloped by the black heart of that flaming mass.

  “Get away—” His voice echoed faintly. “—warn them—!”

  An anguished shout came from behind the glowing sigil, then a scraping sound, a sort of gnawing. My boots grew unbearably hot, as though I’d been kicking at live coals. Balthazar’s voice grew fainter still, and more desperate, as frantically I tried to get closer to the pulsing spectral orb. But it was futile: like trying to force my way through a wall of flame.

  By now I had all but lost sight of him. The gnawing sound gave way to avid lapping. To my horror I realized that the luminous sphere was moving. This was no illusion of darkness and radiance: the spectral moon was devouring him. Bit by bit Balthazar Warnick was being eaten away by the utter blackness, a man in eclipse; and all the while sparks and dazzling rays of white and silver-blue shot from the half-moon above him. For an instant I was paralyzed. Then I dived at him through the moon’s penumbra.

  Silence. The fluid lapping sound faded. I could see nothing feel nothing but cold, a cold so penetrating the breath froze in my throat. I choked, unable to breathe or move or cry out, and crashed to the floor.

 
; The rug beneath me was soaked through with warm liquid. I stumbled back to my feet, straining to see something in the clouded darkness. I drew my hands in front of me; I could barely discern that they were stained black. I could smell something hot and bitter-rich, and realized that I was soaked with blood. Desperately I looked around for Balthazar.

  He was there, a few feet away, shielding his eyes from the terrible radiance that surrounded us. He looked tiny and wizened, and unbelievably ancient. Like one of those mummified cadavers dragged from the bottom of a peat bog, his skin turned to friable leather, his hair a few damp strands across his skull. His hands were drawn before his face and his mouth was open as though he were screaming in agony, but he made no sound.

  Around us that awful light billowed and pulsed. On the nap of the worn rug in front of me I could see the tiny star-bright image of the moon, its body black and swollen, capped by a shining crescent like the indentation left by a fingernail. Like one of those images you make of the solar eclipse, using a piece of cardboard with a pinhole in it. I took a deep breath, my throat still raw with cold, and reached for Balthazar, then, with all my strength, crushed the image of the moon beneath my boot.

  A shriek pierced the air—a woman’s voice. At that moment my arms closed around Balthazar. Beneath his heavy sweater his bones were like bundled twigs. The shriek grew into a roar. But worst of all, worst of any of the things I could have imagined, there came a cry so faint it was scarce a sound at all—

  “Sweeney—”

  “Angelica!” I gasped.

  She was there. Dazzling flames flowed from her, and upon her breast the moon shone like a beacon—only it was not the moon but the lunula, brighter than any moon, brighter than the sun. Her face was like the face I had seen that night upon the Mound, terrible and beautiful, her hair a streaming darkness as she reached for me, her sweet voice begging me to come to her. And I would have gone, would have embraced her as eagerly and heedlessly as I had done before, had not Balthazar Warnick pulled me away.

  “Sweeney, no!”

  For an instant we strained against each other: me striving to flee into Angelica’s arms, Balthazar holding me back.

  “Swee—ney!”

  She wailed my name as though her heart would break, and I felt my own heart torn inside me. I lunged forward, trying to shake Balthazar from me.

  “Come to me!” cried Angelica, her voice piercing me with sorrow and longing as her fingers grasped at mine. “Swee—ney—”

  She was aflame, the tendrils of her hair whipped about me but I didn’t care, didn’t care about anything save that this was Angelica and at last I would be hers. I felt myself tumbling forward, falling into her arms, into her open mouth, and suddenly my boot skidded across the floor. It was enough for me to lose my balance, enough for my hand to slip from hers so that Balthazar could drag me away.

  “Close your eyes!” he shouted. “Don’t look at her, come this way—now!”

  I shut my eyes and turned. Balthazar clutched me as we staggered through the darkness. From behind us came a sound that made my entire body shudder, a horrible freezing cry.

  “Sweeney, nooo—”

  Her voice cut off. I pulled away from Balthazar, shaded my eyes; but whatever had been there was gone. I was on the floor, Balthazar sprawled beside me. In front of the window, the oriental carpeting was bunched up in a blackened heap. I could smell the coppery hot stench of blood. Against the edge of the ruined carpet, a small twisted mass of wires smoldered.

  “The orrery,” said Balthazar. He got to his feet and stumbled to the window. I stayed where I was, feeling as though I’d been beaten black-and-blue. My clothes were stiff with blood, my arms scored with raw red lines, as though someone had gone at me with a razor. I thought of the lunula’s glistening edge raised above Hasel, and felt sick.

  “She destroyed it.” Balthazar nudged the smoking clump of wires with his foot. His tone was more awestruck than angry, but when I looked at him I was shocked to see his face wet with tears. He pulled his bloodstained sweater over his head and wrapped it around his hand. Then he bent over the charred ruin and picked it up, holding it at arm’s length.

  “See what your friend has done,” he whispered. “As above, so below.”

  All the shining globes had melted and congealed into a single corroded mass. At one side there was a crescent-shaped hole, like a gaping mouth.

  “It is a warning—an unnecessary one—that She has the lunula now; without it She would never have dared attack me here. But it is not whole.”

  His finger probed warily at the opening, and I shuddered, absurdly afraid that the smoking moon would bite him. “And that might be what saves us—perhaps, perhaps…”

  He stepped to a corner of the window and opened a casement. Leaning out into the night he flung the ruined orrery in the direction of the river, far below. I held my breath, waiting to hear a faint splash or crash upon the rocks. Balthazar seemed to be listening, too; but there was nothing but the sound of wind tugging at the trees. He waited a moment, then with a grimace pitched his sweater out as well.

  “There,” he said as to himself. He turned back into the room, wiping his hands on his trousers. When he saw me watching him he started, as though he had forgotten I was there.

  I stood, my legs still weak. “Is it—is it over? Is she—is Angelica dead?”

  “Dead?” Balthazar’s voice hardened. “Dead? She has never been more alive—not for centuries, not for over two thousand years—”

  “We knew that She would return, and so we watched for Her—in all the old familiar places, as the song goes.” He laughed sharply, a fox’s bark. “But I did not drink She would be so bold as to come here. And so I have spent a lifetime waiting for Her—many lifetimes—and it all comes down to this—a meddling child’s foolishness—

  “No, Katherine, Angelica isn’t dead. But she isn’t Angelica anymore, either.” His eyes were livid with fury and disdain. “Your friend has been chosen for a very important task, but the work demands some alterations—”

  “What did you do to her?” I whispered. “You bastard, what did you do to Oliver and Angelica?”

  “What did I do to them?” Balthazar’s face darkened. “What did I do?”

  “Tell me!”

  “I did nothing, you stupid girl! Angelica has been claimed—by She who has a dozen names in every tongue, by the one we call Othiym—

  “For aeons She has been waiting—for the lunula to be found; for the right woman to be born; for the moment when Her talisman and Her chosen daughter would be brought together. And for all those aeons we too have watched, and waited, and searched. We have prepared, as well, in each generation making certain that there would be one young man who might be strong and beautiful enough to win Her, to seduce Her and so weaken Her—and for nothing! Because in the end we have been betrayed. Betrayed by Magda Kurtz, whom I loved as my own—”

  He looked away from me. “—as my own daughter. Betrayed by the daughter of one of our most trusted members, and by Oliver’s weakness, and your own meddling in things you cannot possibly understand.”

  His hand tightened into a fist as he snarled, “I might have had the lunula, Katherine. I would have had it, there in Garvey House, had you not pulled your friend Angelica from my hands. Just as you pulled me from Her hands a few minutes

  The vulpine snarl cooled to an icy smile. He stepped delicately across the floor, once more composed and elegant, and glanced over his shoulder at me.

  “Come here, Katherine.”

  I stayed where I was, tensed and shaking. “No.”

  He stopped and drew himself to his full height. If I had been standing beside him, he would have come barely to my chin. But his face was so ravaged, his eyes so brilliant, that I might have been staring into the terrible visage of some ancient sphinx, might have been looking upon the dark Goddess Herself.

  “Come here.”

  There was a threat to the words, but more than that, a command; a Power. Even
as I willed myself to run, I found that I was walking toward Balthazar Warnick, until I stood beside him at the far end of the room.

  “I know everything there is to know about you, Katherine Cassidy,” he said softly. “And that is very little: because to us you are a little thing. Do you understand that? A little, little thing—”

  His white teeth glittered as he pinched together his thumb and forefinger to show how insignificant I was, how small and stupid and clumsy, but not useless, oh no! Not that—

  “But somehow—” His face tilted to look up into mine, his eyes bleak. “Somehow you have come between those two Chosen Ones—”

  The disdain in his voice melted, and while there was no warmth to his words they were no longer hateful. “—and somehow, somehow you saved me, when She would have devoured me.”

  He turned to look at the ruined carpet beneath the window, the blackened place where the orrery had been consumed. “And I don’t understand it.” He gazed at me and I shifted uneasily.

  “Me neither,” I said.

  “I know.” Balthazar gave a low laugh. “That is why I am going to show you something. Something that might help you to—”

  He walked away from me and gestured meaningfully. “—better understand us.”

  He stopped. Set into the paneled wall was a door. A very old door, fashioned of pale wood and surmounted by an ornate lintel where a motto had been painted in now-faded letters.

  OMNIA BONA BONIS

  I stared at it in horror, remembering Magda Kurtz, the hellish landscape where she had been thrust by the same man who now held me captive.

  “What does that mean?”

  “It doesn’t matter.”

  “Where—where does it go?”

  From a pocket in his stained trousers he withdrew an old-fashioned skeleton key the length of my hand. He stared at it, his eyes slitted, then turned and slid it into the door.

  “Go?” he echoed. A raging wind ripped the word from him, as before us the door swung open. “It goes where I will it to go—”

  Streamers of mist rushed past me into the room. I began shivering uncontrollably, and scarcely felt it when Balthazar put one hand upon my shoulder and with the other pointed at the doorway.