Black Swan Rising

by Lee Carroll

  I stared at the stars until they seemed to be revolving in great balls of fire. When I squinted, the sky looked like van Gogh’s Starry Night and I remembered what Will Hughes had said about van Gogh falling in love with the colors of the night. Right now I could think of worse fates. I closed my eyes and spread my arms. I felt the wind running through my outspread fingers and through my hair. I could hear the wind’s song again and on it the millions of voices in the city. I was only listening for one voice, though. I had only heard it twice—would I be able to conjure it up now?

  I found I had no problem hearing it in my head. I focused on his voice until it was louder than all the other voices on the wind, and then I said his name aloud, letting the wind take it.

  I waited, feeling foolish . . . and foolhardy. Oberon had warned me against him. He had called him a creature of the dark . . . and he was right. But I could feel his pull on me like a dark tide stirring my blood, his silver gaze the moon that moves the oceans. In his car last night he had asked me if I felt as if I had no choice in my feelings for him, and I hadn’t known how to answer. I still didn’t. Was I calling him now because he had contaminated my blood with his and put me under his power? Was he luring me into the world of the dark where I’d become like him—a vampire? Shouldn’t I feel revulsion at that idea? Shouldn’t I be fleeing from him, not calling his name to the wind?

  No matter, I told myself, it probably wouldn’t work anyway . . .

  A current of air blowing through my hair turned warm . . . caressed my neck . . . and spoke.

  “You called?”

  I swirled around so quickly I lost my balance. His arm was on mine before I saw it move. “I didn’t know if that would work. You really heard me?”

  “Clear as a bell. You must have met Ariel.”

  “Yes. She took me flying. . . . Can you fly? Is that how you got here so fast?”

  He smiled, his eyes flashing silver in the dark. “Not exactly. I can move very fast, though. In fact, in exceptional circumstances my parts—meaning my atoms—can move much faster than I can. But I don’t routinely engage in that sort of motion. In any event, I wasn’t far away.”

  I noticed he was dressed in black jeans and a black trench coat. With his collar up he faded into the night. “Are you stalking me?” I asked, trying to sound reproving.

  “Just keeping an eye on you. You seem to forget that Dee has already tried to murder you.”

  “I haven’t forgotten.” I shuddered at the memory of the manticore and the stalker in the park. “But I think he’s been otherwise engaged.” I told him about the light sylphs. His eyes narrowed at my description of their drained and lifeless bodies. I couldn’t tell if the look was pity or confusion.

  “I don’t understand why Dee would bother with such weak and helpless things,” he said. “They may not have been his real target.”

  “You mean they were just collateral damage? Then who was Dee trying to kill?”

  “Not who, but what. Where’s Oberon taking you tomorrow?”

  “We’re meeting in midtown on Forty-seventh Street.”

  “Ah, the Diamond District . . . that makes sense. Oberon’s taking things slow—”

  “Slow? I jumped off the Empire State Building tonight!”

  “Believe me, Ariel’s a pussycat compared to some of the other elementals you’ll meet. Oberon’s trying to build up your powers slowly so you’ll be prepared for the . . . fiercer guides. It’s what I would do if I could.”

  “And why can’t you?” I said it before I knew that it was what I was thinking. “You gave me my first power—my enhanced sight. And that was from one tiny bite.”

  “Is that how you remember it?” he asked, stroking my neck with the back of his hand. “As one tiny bite?”

  I shivered from head to foot. “Not so tiny,” I said, leaning into his hand. “But it didn’t make me . . . like you.”

  He tilted his head and narrowed his eyes, studying me . . . or preparing to bring his lips to my neck? “Is that what you want?” he asked. “To be like me?” He moved closer and the silver light in his eyes expanded. I could feel it filling the space between us, drawing me closer like static electricity. I felt each hair on my body standing up on end and my blood surging through my veins toward him.

  “Would it be so bad?” I asked. The question seemed to come from someone else, but as soon as I asked it, I saw the logic in it. “I’d be stronger, wouldn’t I? Dee wouldn’t be able to hurt me.”

  He pulled his head back abruptly, a tiny spark of red glowing at the center of each iris. “There are other ways to protect you.” His voice sounded strained. “Less costly ways.”

  “Is it so awful, then, living forever?”

  He sighed. I felt his breath on my throat, but it was cold now, not warm like before. “You’d have to watch everyone you know and love grow old and die before you.”

  “I’ve already seen my mother die. I almost lost my father—and it’s just a matter of time before I do lose him.” I thought I saw him flinch at the coldness in my voice, but it might have been that he was holding himself so rigidly. He had both hands on my arms, but I felt that he wasn’t so much holding me as holding himself at bay. I could feel the tension in his body, like a bowstring drawn back.

  “And what about your friends?” he asked. “Are you so ready to give them up?”

  “They’re better off without me. I’m just putting them in danger as it is . . . but if you don’t want me—”

  “Oh no, Garet. I want you very much. I believe I’ve been waiting for you for four hundred years. But an eternity is a long time to feel regret. I don’t want you to do anything that you don’t want to do.”

  “This is what I want,” I was startled by the certainty in my voice. Where had it come from? Another voice in my head whispered, Hold on, but it was too faint to heed. I stepped forward another inch, closing the space between us. I felt the charge of electricity sizzle against my skin. The red glow filled his eyes entirely now. He smiled . . . and drew back his lips until I could see his fangs. I did feel afraid then, but I couldn’t have moved away if I’d wanted to—and I didn’t want to. At that moment I wanted him to drain me of every drop of human blood, of every human feeling of fear and pain. I wanted to be cold and invincible like him. In one part of my brain I was shocked by the feeling, but in another I felt like I’d always been headed toward this.

  He bent his head to my neck and breathed against my throat. The skin there turned numb under his breath, but the rest of my body seemed to be on fire. I cried out as his teeth broke my skin. He tightened his grip on my arms and pulled me hard against him. He seemed more urgent than the last time, sucking hard at the wound to draw the blood out, and I realized that was because he was being careful before not to take too much blood. He wasn’t being careful now. I could feel myself growing weaker. I leaned my head against his shoulder and looked up at the sky—at the swirling waves of color unfolding from the spinning stars. Now more than ever the sky looked like van Gogh’s Starry Night and I felt myself longing for the stars just as he had.

  “Why should the spots of light in the firmament be less accessible to us than the black spots on the map of France?” van Gogh had written to his brother Theo a year before his death. “Just as we take the train to go to Tarascon or Rouen, we take death to go to a star.”

  Had that been where van Gogh thought he was going when he ended his life? Is that where I was going?

  The stars blurred and swirled and changed colors . . . and, yes, they seemed to be coming closer. One—an orange fireball—seemed to be heading straight for us.

  It exploded right over Will’s shoulder. He reared back so quickly his teeth ripped a small gash in my throat. The pain was instant and sharp in the unanesthetized part of my skin. The cold night air stung. He batted at the flaming ball, but it darted away, then dive-bombed down into his face. Will growled and pulled back his arm to swat it. Remembering how he’d torn the stone manticore limb from limb, I grabb
ed his arm and he snarled at me. I took a step back, one hand on my neck to stanch the flow of blood. Lol fluttered in the air between us, chattering like an angry squirrel. An angry squirrel on fire.

  Will looked from me to the angry fire fey and then, with one last regretful look, took two long strides to the edge of the roof, and vanished. I watched him disappear, wondering what that look had meant. Was he sorry he had snarled at me? Or was he sorry he hadn’t finished me off?

  The Diamond Dairy

  I woke up the next morning to the sound of someone screaming. I was so startled that I was out my door and down the stairs—in the sweatpants and T-shirt I’d slept in—before I realized that the screaming wasn’t out loud. Someone was screaming very loudly inside her own head. The “sound” was coming from the gallery.

  I grabbed a jacket off the coatrack and, remembering last night, a long scarf, which I wrapped around my neck. Then I pushed my feet into a pair of boots left in the hallway and unlocked the door into the gallery, hoping I didn’t look too deranged. It was the first time that I’d gone into the gallery since the burglary, and it wouldn’t do our reputation any good for the proprietor’s daughter to look like an insane bag lady.

  Maia was seated behind the reception desk looking lovely and poised as always. She was wearing a short, chocolaty-brown sweater dress, ornate Mexican silver earrings, and thigh-high suede boots in the same fawn shade as her tights. She was smiling politely at the woman hovering over her desk, but inside her head she was yelling, Shut up! Shut up! Shut up!

  I turned to the woman causing this uproar in Maia’s head. Was she threatening Maia? But the woman hardly looked threatening. She looked, rather, like one of the Long Island matrons to whom I sometimes sold my pendants: expensively coiffed hair brushed the corduroy collar of her quilted Burberry jacket, a Louis Vuitton tote bag—large enough to hold a ten-pound bag of rice—dangled from her arm.

  “Is there something I can do to help?” I asked. “I’m the acting manager of the gallery.”

  The woman eyed my sweatpants suspiciously and crinkled her brow in confusion. She glanced back at Maia, but when Maia didn’t denounce me as an impostor, she sighed. “I was just explaining to your gallerina that there’s a recession going on.”

  The screaming in Maia’s head went up a notch. She hated the term gallerina.

  “Oh really?” I said as if I hadn’t read a newspaper in a year.

  “And, in light of the recession, most businesses are accommodating their clients by . . . well . . . by reducing their prices.”

  “Mrs. Birnbach likes the Dufy watercolor,” Maia said helpfully when I continued to stare at the woman. “But she thinks it’s overpriced for the current market.”

  “I’ve had my eye on it for some time,” Mrs. Birnbach added. “It would look lovely in our condo in Boca. I just wondered if you could do a little better on the price.”

  It wasn’t the first time a client had tried to bargain down a price. Roman usually handled those negotiations—and usually came away ahead. But the idea that this woman with her $800 bag and condo in Boca would use the economic woes of the country to get a deal on a Dufy—a piece of décor to her—made my blood boil.

  I opened my mouth to let loose a withering tirade when I heard something. A little-girlish voice saying, Please don’t yell at me! was coming from inside Mrs. Birnbach’s head. I was so surprised that my mouth hung open for a minute, then I snapped it shut. A jumble of images flooded through my brain: a harried-looking man holding up a bill and yelling, a beautiful teenaged girl pointing to an expensive pocketbook, a younger boy with braces . . . Aaron will go to med school, or maybe law school . . . a whole life teetering on the edge of collapse. Then why was she here trying to buy a Dufy?

  I looked toward the painting in question—a watercolor of a beach scene full of brightly colored umbrellas. Mrs. Birnbach’s gaze followed mine toward the painting. When I turned back to her, I saw in her mind’s eye a beach scene not unlike the one in the painting. It was probably New Jersey or Long Island, but it was as radiant as any beach in the south of France. Children were playing at the edge of the surf, seagulls careened in the bright blue sky, an old man . . . Papa Rosenfeld . . . handed a young girl a gleaming pink seashell. I blinked and the vision evaporated like spray from the surf. Focusing back on Mrs. Birnbach, I noticed that her nail polish was the same shade as the seashell her grandfather had given her.

  I named a price 30 percent below the asking price for the Dufy.

  Maia stared at me. Even Mrs. Birnbach seemed surprised, but she reached for her wallet quickly enough. As I passed her American Express card to Maia, I wondered if I was doing any of us a favor. Her husband was going to be furious with her, Roman was certainly going to wonder why I let the Dufy go for so little, and Maia could justifiably resent my generosity since it obliterated her commission, but for this moment Mrs. Birnbach and I were smiling at each other as if neither of us had a care in the world.

  _______

  Despite my euphoria, I realized I did have to do something equitable for Maia regarding her lost commission. After Mrs. Birnbach left with her Dufy, I told Maia that she would still get a commission based on the original sale price. Her grateful smile put me at ease, and then I went back upstairs to shower and dress for my noon appointment with Oberon. At the door to my father’s apartment I stopped and listened for any sound—audible or mental—from Jay, but there was nothing. He must still have been asleep. I supposed I should have been thankful that I hadn’t started hearing and seeing people’s dreams.

  My apartment was quiet too—no sign of Lol. After she’d chased off Will Hughes last night she’d chattered at me for a few minutes and then flew off, probably to report back to Oberon about my near conversion to vampirism. If she hadn’t interfered, would I already be on my way to becoming a vampire? In the cold light of the morning—a light I’d almost given up—it was hard to believe how close I’d come. I leaned over the bathroom sink and swept my hair off my neck to examine the marks. There were two angry red puncture wounds just above my jugular vein, with a small gash where Will’s teeth had torn my skin when he’d pulled away from me. These marks hadn’t faded as the first ones had—probably because he hadn’t had the time to heal them. The sight of the torn flesh—which I had offered up to him of my own free will—shocked me. Was this really what I wanted? For this man . . . or creature . . . to rip my flesh and drain the life out of me?

  The body is the sanctuary of the soul. Roman’s words came back now reprovingly. I blanched to think what my father would think if he could see these marks—these nearly self-inflicted marks! I might as well have torn my own flesh. If I had let Will Hughes drain me of blood, would I have lost my soul?

  Did Will Hughes have a soul?

  I thought of how I felt when I looked into his eyes, the pull of that silver thread that connected us. What did it connect if not our souls?

  After I’d washed the wounds and applied Neosporin to them, I lifted my eyes from my throat to meet my own gaze in the mirror . . . and gasped at what I saw there. A red flame flickered in the center of each iris, swelled and swayed as I held my breath, and then, as I breathed out, expired. My own eyes stared back at me wide with shock, but for a moment I’d had the strangest feeling that someone else had been looking out through them.

  The address Oberon had given me turned out to be the National Jewelers Exchange in the Diamond District. Were the fey in the jewelry business? I wondered, wandering the floor of the crowded showroom. I’d always thought it was the Hasidim. Whoever was in the business, they were doing well. The place was busy; no sign of a recession here.

  As I walked from booth to booth, though, I noticed something. Although some of the customers were buying—young couples on their lunch breaks picking out engagement rings, office workers selecting Christmas and Hanukkah presents—many more were actually selling. It wasn’t always easy to tell who was who because the sellers often started out by browsing the merchandise, asking to see
a watch or ring, and then, as if as an afterthought, pulling out a pouch from their bag or pocket and asking, casually, if the vendor also bought jewelry. As if the signs WE BUY GOLD AND DIAMONDS weren’t perfectly visible to the naked eye.

  I watched one transaction in which a tired-looking woman in her fifties sold an engagement ring. “From my ex-husband,” she told the vendor, “the schlemiel.”

  “Who needs bad memories?” the dealer replied. He was short and bald but for a fringe of white hair, and had a long white beard. His potbelly strained against a shiny black vest. When he smiled at the woman, a gold tooth glinted in the showroom’s fluorescent lights. “Take yourself on a cruise, bubeleh,” he said, adjusting his loupe over the two-carat diamond. “You’ll meet a new man who’ll buy you a ring twice as big.”

  The woman laughed and years fell away from her face. I hadn’t been focusing on auras today, but I saw hers brighten to a crystal blue under the gentle teasing of the diamond dealer. His aura was pure white. “Maybe I’ll do that,” she said, leaning her elbows on the counter as the jeweler used a caliper to measure the diamond. “What do you think of the Bahamas this time of year?”

  “Too cold,” he said, taking the loupe out of his eye. “Aruba’s better.” He wrote something down on a scrap of paper—a number with a lot of zeros—and slid it across the counter. The woman looked back and forth between the number and the ring for a few minutes, measuring the distance between them as if they were two points on a map. Where she came from and where she’d arrived, maybe. I couldn’t hear any words in her head, just numbers.

  “That seems like a fair price,” she said at last.

  “Of course it’s a fair price, darling! And I’ll tell you what—I’ll throw in a twenty percent discount for when you meet Mr. Right on that cruise and come back here next year for a new ring.”

  The woman smiled and the dealer wrote out a check for her. When she reached for it, he took her hand in his and brought it up to his lips, bowing his head to plant a kiss on her knuckles. His bald scalp gleamed under the fluorescents as brightly as one of his diamonds. Then he pressed the check into her palm, clasping both his hands over hers. “To better times, dearheart.”