Black Swan Rising

by Lee Carroll

  I was so wrapped up (literally) in Melusine’s history that I forgot our mission, forgot that we had to head back to the city. I wanted to travel north into the Catskills and join the fresh springs below the snowcapped peaks. But while my molecules had merged with Melusine’s so that I learned her history, she had been listening to mine as well. She saw everything: my mother’s face, the car crash, the shriek of tearing metal, my father falling apart . . . She raced through my whole life until she got to the moment that I walked into Dee’s shop, then she paused and lingered. She watched him bending over the silver box, his shadowmen invading my house, the yellow fog that crept into my studio and animated the demon Jaws, and the fog that gave life to the manticore in the Cloisters. I heard her weep at the sight of the dead sylphs and felt her anger rising against Dee. He had infiltrated her waterways like a virus, used her currents to carry death. The anger pulled her up short and sent her back, tugging me along with her. We joined the southward flow down the Delaware Aqueduct, racing the current into the Hillview Reservoir and back into Tunnel #1.

  Although we moved fast, Melusine paused at every shaft, sniffing for Dee’s presence. I had the feeling she was homing in on his location, scenting him in the water. I could smell him too, that trace of sulfur I’d detected in the fog four nights ago. We caught a whiff of it near the park and then again below the West Village, but it was faint and fading. Melusine pushed us back into the main tunnel, forcing us on, even though I could sense her repugnance as we headed underneath the East River again. She picked up the pace, eager to cross the salt water quickly. In her haste she dismissed the possibility that Dee was here. There were no shafts leading to the surface here, only a straight run under the river to Brooklyn, no connecting pipes . . . or, at least, there shouldn’t be. About halfway across the river I caught the sulfur scent again, lingering on a metal joint. Melusine scented it too, and wrenched herself to a stop. I could feel how hard it was for her. It was like being in a subway car when it stopped between stations . . . and the lights went out . . . and you smelled smoke . . .

  There are no shafts here, I thought, how could he be here?

  There aren’t ssssupposed to be any shafts, but if Dee got into the minds of the men who made the tunnels, he could have compelled them to build a shaft. What better place to go unnoticed than deep below the river . . . ssssee here?

  Since neither of us had bodies, Melusine couldn’t very well point to where she meant, but I felt the force of her attention directing me toward a spot on the tunnel wall. Glowing faintly in the rushing water was a familiar symbol—an eye surrounded by a spiral. It was the same symbol that Oberon had pasted on the columns on either side of the doorway outside St. Vincent’s so that no one would see us.

  A spell of misdirection, Melusine explained. There’s ssssomething here we’re not ssssupposed to see, but if I sweep it away . . . A current of water pulsed against the wall. The spiral eye flickered and faded. In its place appeared a metal valve.

  I don’t get it, I said, why bother to disguise it? No one comes in this tunnel.

  The undines swim through here ssssometimes . . . and I should patrol all the tunnels regularly, only I’ve avoided this one because it’s under salt water. Sssstupid, she hissed, angry at herself. I could feel her ticking off the mistakes she’d made in her long, long existence, marrying a mortal chief among them, although I also sensed that she still longed for the mortal man she’d married and borne children to.

  You shouldn’t blame yourself. We all make mistakes.

  I felt a pulse in the water, a warm current, and then a glimmer of light, as if a school of phosphorescent plankton swarmed around us.

  Yesss, but this is one I can fix.

  The current revolved around the valve, spinning into a fast-moving eddy that churned the surrounding water into a white froth. The wheel began to move, creaking and groaning as if it hadn’t been opened in many years. Even the steel of the tunnel walls creaked and groaned. I felt a sudden horror at the idea that the tunnel might cave in. What would become of us then? Would we seep into the bedrock or float out to sea? I probed Melusine’s consciousness for an answer, but hit a wall around the question. Clearly she was unwilling to contemplate that outcome, which made me all the more frightened.

  At last the wheel stopped spinning. With one final wrenching shriek the valve opened. We were sucked into the vertical shaft, propelled by the water pressure upward, too quickly to consider what we were being sucked into. It looked like the maw of a giant squid as envisioned by Jules Verne—that horrible horny beak edged with razor-sharp teeth. This beak was made of perforated steel sieves that churned the water as it rose. We were spun through a spiral of interlocking doors. First I felt myself lose touch with Melusine’s consciousness . . . then I began to lose touch with my own. Bits of my past and present were spewed up like chum—my mother telling me a bedtime story about fairies who guarded me while I slept, Santé’s painting of my mother, Jay laughing on the boardwalk in Brighton Beach, Becky spreading her arms in the wind on top of the Empire State Building . . . they were more than memories. For a fleeting second I was in each moment and then spit out of it. It felt as if a ravenous creature were chewing up my memories and sucking them dry. What would be left when it was done but a hollowed-out shell? I could feel the moments detaching from one another, the way thought becomes more random and disconnected as you’re falling asleep. One by one they floated away . . .

  Hold on to them.

  The voice cried across the churning water, startling me awake. How? I tried to ask, but Melusine’s voice was gone. I plucked at the moments that were spinning away—my father holding my hand on a rainy day as we walked up the long marble steps to the Metropolitan Museum, Jay sliding an Ella Fitzgerald record out of its worn cardboard sleeve, Becky’s hair flying in the wind . . . I plucked each memory out of the maelstrom and held on to it, focusing all my attention on each face that spun by—my mother, Jay, Becky, my father, Zach Reese, Santé Leone, and even, flickering through the others but coming more often, Will Hughes. These were the pieces that made up who I was. As long as I held on to them, I wouldn’t be lost.

  At last the steel maw spit us out into a shallow pool under a steel dome. Citrinous light filtered through an open oculus.

  Are you all here? Melusine asked.

  Yes, I answered, but was I? How could I know? Were bits of me still floating out in the water tunnel now heading for Brooklyn? An image of my molecules watering geraniums in Carroll Gardens and then seeping into the Gowanus Canal was interrupted by a hiss from Melusine.

  And what of it? Do you think I haven’t sssloughed off bits of myself over the centuries? You’ll have held on to the important parts. Ssssome you’ll wish you’d been able to get rid of. Now come, we have to go up.

  We floated to the surface—where a dirty yellow scum clung to the top skin of water—then evaporated. The air was so humid we rose easily up through the oculus and into a marble space shaped like the inside of a nautilus shell. The inside of a nautilus shell as decorated by Gianni Versace circa 1990s Miami Beach. The floors were covered in heavy Persian rugs, the furniture was carved mahogany, heaped with antiques—Greek amphorae and Roman bronzes—the walls themselves were lined with gold. Hanging on the gold walls were paintings that I recognized as lost masterpieces: Leonardo da Vinci’s Leda and the Swan, Caravaggio’s Adoration of the Shepherds, Vermeer’s Concert, van Gogh’s Portrait of Dr. Gachet. Among all this opulence I noticed a rather unprepossessing late eighteenth-century portrait of a woman in an empire waist dress hanging above a fireplace. Something about her looked familiar. I hovered closer to her, looking into her soft almond-shaped eyes, but I still couldn’t place her.

  “She’s a beauty, isn’t she?”

  The voice startled me so badly I nearly dissolved into a puddle of condensation on the floor. I’d heard it only once before, and he’d been hiding his power then. Now as I turned my attention to the man seated below me, I could feel every ounce of his po
wer radiating in the air around him, an aura unlike any other I’d seen so far. Its contours were sharp and jagged, like a sunburst. He was wearing the same maroon cardigan, but it didn’t disguise the strength of his build. Sitting in a high wing-backed red chair, he looked coiled to strike. The yellow-nailed fingertips of one hand perched on the arm of the chair like a long-legged spider. In the other hand he held a cigar, which he brought to his lips and drew on. He exhaled a long stream of smoke directly at me. I felt the edges of my molecules crisp and singe. Melusine pulsed in the air beside me.

  Sssstay out of my waterwayssss! she hissed. You don’t belong here.

  “Don’t I?” Dee asked, fanning his long fingers out. “I’ve had this little pied-à-terre—or should I say pied-à-mer—for over fifty years and you’ve never noticed me here. Maybe it’s you who don’t belong here, Melusine. Isn’t it a little too . . . salty for your taste?”

  The fog that was Melusine condensed into a long-winged serpent coiled in the air above Dee’s head, its long tongue flicking out from between sharp fangs, its jaws snapping inches from Dee’s face. He regarded her with his cool amber eyes and flicked the ash of his cigar into an ashtray on a table beside his chair. Drawn by the motion, I looked down and caught a gleam of silver. Lying beside the ashtray was the silver box. Dee smiled and rested his hand on top of the box.

  “Is this what you’ve come for Garet James? Did you want another look inside?” His fingers caressed the lid of the box, coaxing the engraved lines into motion. They writhed like a nest of snakes awakened. I felt myself drifting closer, following the path of each line . . . if I could just follow one of them to its conclusion, I would know . . .

  I snapped back. Know what?

  “You would gain dominion over the elements and know the secret of everlasting life,” he said. “And, what might be more important, you’d know how to escape that everlasting life. That’s what your boyfriend wants to know. Do you think he’s helping you for your pretty face alone? He wants the box too. It’s the only way he can be mortal again . . . although I can’t imagine why he’d want that. He’s counting on you to lead him to the box. Why don’t you call him now and see how fast he comes . . . oh, I forgot. You can’t very well do your little fire trick in your current state. Why don’t you materialize?”

  Don’t lisssten to him! Melusine sputtered around me.

  I hadn’t realized that I could materialize on my own. As soon as he put the idea in my head, I felt my cells growing heavier and I longed for the solidity of flesh.

  “I always find the watery element so very cold and damp.” Dee shammed a convulsive shudder. “Wouldn’t you like to sit by the fire and have a glass of brandy?”

  Now that he mentioned it, I was cold. And empty. So empty.

  “You and I have much to talk over, Garet James. You have nothing to fear from me. After all, I could have told my shadows to shoot you when I sent them to your house.”

  You shot my father!

  “No, dear.” Dee clucked his tongue and shook his head like a kindly uncle correcting a favorite niece. “Your father shot himself. A regrettable accident. How was I to know he was afraid of dybbuks?”

  “You sent the manticore to kill me—it killed Edgar Tobert!”

  “Did I? Whose word do you have for that? The vampire’s? Convenient that the manticore’s bite allowed him to drink your blood, wasn’t it?”

  I shook my head—or at least I shook the molecules that had once made up my head. “Will saved me . . .” I stopped, recalling Will’s mouth on my throat, how he’d almost made me one of his last night . . . but then I’d asked for that, begged him to make me like him—

  “Of course you asked him to make you a vampire. Once he’s contaminated your blood, you long for more. He’s gotten you hooked.”

  He’s trying to trick you into materializing so he can destroy you, Melusine sang in my ear. Don’t forget what he did to the ssssylphs.

  “Oh yes, the sylphs. That I freely confess to, but it was self-defense. Have you ever met a sylph, dear? Nasty creatures, like those nasty creatures you saw lurking in the shadows with Oberon and Puck. Why do you think they call Oberon the Prince of Shadows? He’s using you just like the vampire is using you—to get the box for himself and gain control over the human race. Do you think Oberon’s creatures like being relegated to the shadows? Do you think our watery friend here enjoys living in the sewers? They ruled the world once and they’d like to once more. How much room for humans will there be once they do?”

  Is that true? I asked Melusine.

  She didn’t answer. Instead I saw an image of a man in royal robes, a crown upon his head, his features contorted in disgust. He stood in a hall soaked in blood and gore. This is all your fault, he cried. It is your foul blood that runs in his veins.

  It is you humans who have no room for ussss, she said at last.

  “And what wouldn’t you do to revenge the wrongs perpetrated on you and your people, Melusine?”

  She flicked her long tail and hissed. She had grown more corporeal in the last few minutes, anger and bitterness weighing down her cells like an oil slick on a seagull’s wings. Melusine was right—Dee was trying to make both of us materialize by invoking our anger. I was tempted to do so on the off chance I could take the opportunity to destroy Dee. But I didn’t feel I’d been properly trained to launch such an attack yet, especially with him having some access to my immaterial thoughts, which could remove the advantage of surprise.

  We should go. I tried to make it a whisper, a mere trill of water, but Melusine was too far gone to hear anything below a torrent. Not Dee, though.

  “Yes, perhaps you should go, my dear. Your friends need you. I believe there are eleven more voice mails on your phone from your friend Becky. I’m afraid that the argument between her and Jay has gotten rather nasty.” He opened the lid of the silver box. A condensation of mist appeared on the inside of the lid. Dee rubbed his hand over it and a picture emerged of Jay and Becky sitting at my kitchen table—or at least Jay was sitting, his bony shoulders hunched up to his ears, his hair falling over his face. Becky was half in, half out of her chair, crouching on her knees as if ready to spring at Jay, her arms spinning like windmills. No sound accompanied the picture, but I could guess by the way that Jay became smaller and smaller as she shouted what kind of things Becky was saying to him.

  Stop it! I cried. You’re doing this to them! They’ve never argued like this before. Make her stop!

  “Shall I?” Dee asked with a low chuckle. “Perhaps you’re right. You know how fragile your friend is, suicidal even. Shall I make her stop?” He extended his index finger and stroked the image of Becky on the silver screen, with the same motion you’d use to control the touch screen on an iPhone. Immediately Becky sank down in her chair, her arms fell, and her face drained of color. I’d never seen her look so still.

  Dee touched the screen again, just above Becky’s heart, and she opened her mouth, gasping like a fish.

  No! I rushed through the air toward Dee, my cells gaining weight as I moved. I sensed Melusine coming with me, a splatter of water against my solidifying flesh, and then I felt her emerging claws digging into my arms. We were both corporeal again by the time we reached Dee, but he wasn’t. His body dissolved as we landed in his chair . . . and then so did the chair. Where it had been was a gaping hole in the floor that sucked us in. Melusine and I were both squeezed into a pipe with barely enough room to breathe. Melusine struggled to dematerialize, but before she could, we were ejected out of the pipe into ice-cold salt water, flushed out into the East River like a bit of sewage.

  Deliquesce

  I’d been underwater for so long without having to breathe that I hoped I still didn’t have to, but the pressure on my chest soon told me otherwise. I didn’t have long to get to the surface—and I couldn’t even see the surface. I tried to stroke upward, but the only direction I moved in was southwest. The tide was going out, sweeping me out to sea.

  I struggled
against the current fruitlessly for a few moments, but I couldn’t break free. Then I stopped. I remembered my father telling me when I was little and we took trips out to the beaches on Long Island that if I ever got caught in a riptide, not to fight it. Eventually it would bring me back to shore. But was that true in a tidal strait like the East River? And what good would it do me if I drowned before being spewed out somewhere in New Jersey? But there was landfall before New Jersey—Governors Island—and it wasn’t far away. If I could relax and let the current take me there, I might survive.

  I concentrated on making my muscles relax, limb by limb, just as my yoga teacher instructed at the end of class for shavasana . . . corpse pose. The thought that I might literally be a corpse soon made it hard to relax, but I banished the image from my mind and tried to concentrate on releasing each muscle. Imagine you are melting into the ground, my yoga teacher would say, let your feet go, your calves, your thighs . . .

  Something grazed my leg.

  I flinched and flipped over, frantically beating the water with my hands, dreading but needing to see what was behind me.

  A pale silvery shape loomed out of the murk.

  Shark. The word slammed through my nervous system, every primeval fear of the deep awakened. But then as the shape drifted closer, I made out arms and legs and a dead-white face.

  A corpse, I thought, before noticing the gills and claws. It was Melusine. I had thought she had evaporated again, but the salt water must have stunned her and rendered her unconscious. Or dead. There was probably nothing I could do for her . . .

  But I had to try. In the time our molecules had intertwined I’d gained a fondness for the strange creature. Despite her outward show of bitterness—her brittle, chitinous shell—she still mourned for the man who had betrayed her and the children she had been forced to abandon. For centuries she’d haunted the Château of Lusignan just for a glimpse of her children’s children, even if they shrieked in fear when they saw her, until she fled to a new country. I couldn’t just let her die here in the polluted murk of the East River when she’d been born of the purest springs.