Black Swan Rising

by Lee Carroll

  “Heh heh, tell them they’ve been pwned!” Ddraik chuckled. Then he touched the tip of his claw to one of the copper lines in the circuit board and the whole network lit up. It spanned the breadth of the vaulted ceiling, ran down the columns, and spread across the floor—a pulsing red web. Images and numbers flashed through the air, too fast for me to identify.

  “Traditionally dragons hoard gold,” Oberon said. “But since the dawn of the information age Ddraik has been hoarding data.”

  “Knowledge is power,” the dragon repeated, “at least most of the time. Every once in a while, like this past autumn, you humans screw up so badly knowledge, and the patterns it reveals, doesn’t work anymore.” He touched his claw tip to the groove again. The network pulsed and flashed even faster, until its information was an intense blue blur. Then it was nothing but blinding white light for a millisecond as if chaos had coalesced into a vision, then it went back to spewing images and numbers, but more weakly now. Almost wanly. Ddraik grinned. “The trend is your friend,” he rumbled. “Until it ends with no warning. But go on,” he said, fixing me with a glowing red eye. “Ask me something.”

  “Where’s Dee?” I asked without a moment’s hesitation.

  Ddraik reached a claw up into the air and intercepted a stream of bright light. A picture shimmered in the air of John Dee seated in a red chair before a fireplace. It was the same setting I had seen him in beneath the river—and, I realized, the same as the TCM set—down to the silver box on the table beside his chair and the portrait of the sad-looking eighteenth-century lady above the fireplace.

  “But this doesn’t tell me where to find him,” I complained.

  “Doesn’t it?” Ddraik asked, cocking his huge head at the image. “I only provide the data. What you do with it is up to you.”

  I stared at the picture of Dee. Although the fire crackled behind him, he was motionless—static. “It’s not a live shot, is it? It’s as if he’s posing.”

  “I think we can look at it as a sort of ‘away message’ he’s left for us,” Oberon said. “But Ddraik’s right. Knowing Dee, he’s left some clue to his real whereabouts in the image.”

  I stared harder at the picture, examining every brick in the fireplace, then moving up to the portrait. The subject regarded me dolefully out of almond-shaped eyes. I felt sure I had met that gaze before, but I couldn’t for the life of me remember where. I noticed, though, that a name was engraved on a brass plate affixed to the frame. MADAME DUFAY it read. Might her identity provide some clue to Dee’s location? I looked in her eyes again and felt a stirring of recognition just as the image faded from the air.

  “Enough!” Ddraik roared. “I don’t give information for free. What have you to offer me?”

  “Me?” I looked back to Oberon and Ignatius, but they had backed away farther into the doorway. “I don’t think I know anything that you’d be interested in.”

  The dragon stretched his neck until the tip of his nose was level with my face. I nearly gagged at the sharp odor of burnt hair on his breath as he sniffed at me, but I didn’t move. “Mmmm . . . I think you might have one or two very tasty memories. If you would allow me to warm them up a little—”

  “Remember, Ddraik, this is a descendant of the Watchtower,” Oberon said. “We need her.”

  “If she’s a true descendant of the Watchtower, she’ll be in no danger. What say you, Garet James? Shall we explore the past together?”

  “Oberon? Is this . . . safe?”

  Ignatius made a sound that might have been a stifled giggle. After a pause too long for my peace of mind Oberon sighed. “The important thing to remember is that the fire reveals the truth—but not all truths.”

  “The fire?” I asked, but the only answer I got was the click of the door latch. I turned, but Oberon and Ignatius were gone. I heard the bolts on the other side of the door sliding home, then heard a gasp and felt something tugging me backward. I whirled around to find Ddraik reared up on his hind legs, his head bent under the high, domed ceiling, his cheeks and belly swollen. The force I’d felt pulling me back was the intake of his breath, which he now released on me.

  The fire hit me so hard it knocked me back against the door. I opened my mouth to scream, but that only sucked the fire inside me. I felt it burn the cilia on my windpipe and scorch the lining of my lungs, and then it was in my blood, racing through my heart like brush fire through dry grass, then striking out through my veins to the tips of my fingers and toes. The pain was horrendous, but it was only when it reached my brain that I started to scream again. It reached into every synapse and exploded them like firecrackers. Each explosion sparked a memory: I was three, on a swing in the park, my mother’s hand firm on my back as she pushed me up to the treetops; I was six, eating an ice pop on our front stoop; twelve and waking up scared from a nightmare and wanting to call for my mother, but knowing I was too old. Random memories flashed by so quickly I had no time to process them. I was sixteen smoking a cigarette at a bar in the East Village; I was seventeen standing on top of the Empire State Building with Becky; twenty-six and begging Will Hughes to drink my blood. The fire circled briefly there and raced on. I was four, waking up in a warm puddle in my bed; I was eight and I’d broken an expensive Lalique vase that my father had given my mother for their anniversary and I hid the pieces so she wouldn’t know about it; I was still eight and lying to my mother about what had happened, watching her face go slack with disappointment; it was last night and I was lying in Will Hughes’s arms on Governors Island. I’m not ashamed of that, a voice—my own?—called out.

  In an unnerving moment of recognition I realized that faint, faraway voice was my present self. The fire had cut me off so thoroughly in the past that I needed to strain desperately to hear my present self, like the faintest of crackling radio signals on a stormy winter night. I was desperate not to let go of that voice, but it only came through on occasion. I clung to it the way Melusine had to her dissolving form, with a fear of the oblivion that lay beyond it.

  The fire only laughed and plunged onward. I could feel it seeking, scouring my brain for something it wanted. I was fourteen and making out with a boy I didn’t really like; twenty and losing my temper with a checker at the ShopRite; sixteen and sitting in the back of a rented car wishing my mother dead—

  The fire circled and pounced.

  No! that faint voice inside my head screamed. I never wanted my mother dead. To my relief the fire left the car and flipped back through my memories of my mother—her hand on my back as I swung at the playground, her face when I won an award at school, her expression when I lied about the vase, her face in the rearview mirror watching me sulk in the backseat.

  Aaaahhh, the fire crooned with a satisfied sigh (I heard its thoughts with the same staticky distance as my own thoughts, but I could tell the difference), back here again. We’re always here, aren’t we?

  It was right. I was in the back of the rented car coming back from Providence, watching the snow fog up the windows, hating my mother . . . and, yes, wishing her dead. I knew I’d do what she wanted in the end or hate myself for not. I loved her too much. I’d never be free as long as she lived.

  That’s not the same as wanting her dead! my present voice called out, barely audible over the slap of the windshield wipers and the hum of the defrost fan.

  “This fog is really thick,” my mother said. “I think I’ll pull off at the next exit.”

  I didn’t answer. I knew my mother would do the safe thing, the right thing—she always did. She always knew what ought to be done. As long as she lived, I’d do what she wanted rather than see her disappointed.

  A red Ford Expedition passed us.

  Tell her to pull over now, my present self screamed, but my sixteen-year-old self only turned up the volume on her Walkman.

  When the Expedition slammed into us, I tried desperately to wrench myself out of the memory—to tell myself it was a memory—but I was pinned in the hurtling carapace of metal as surely as I was
trapped in my sixteen-year-old body; the little bit of extra consciousness that flickered in Ddraik’s cave only made it worse. I knew that the fire would circle this moment until it had burnt a hole in my brain. Already I could feel the conflagration of this memory spreading out, overtaking all other memories, reducing them to ash. What did it matter how much I loved my mother? I had wished her dead and she had died. This was the truth at the core of my being. This is where I’d spend eternity.

  “Garet, can you hear me? Are you okay?”

  It was my mother calling me from the front seat. My sixteen-year-old self was answering that she was okay. My twenty-six-year-old self was shouting that she wasn’t okay. Your mother is going to die and you will spend the rest of your life trapped in this moment! But that voice was drowned out by the screech of the Jaws of Life tearing through the metal. The fireman was pulling me out . . .

  And then I was in the backseat of the car watching the snow fog up the windows, wishing my mother dead, turning up my Walkman, watching the red Ford Expedition pass us . . . I watched it all happen again and again, helpless to change a thing no matter how loud I screamed. The fire cackled happily. It had found the perfect fuel to keep it burning for eternity: my guilt.

  On the tenth . . . or was it the hundredth? . . . time I stopped screaming and merely listened instead, lulled by the cadences of my mother’s voice as she lied and told me that everything would be okay. “Always trust your instincts,” she told me.

  Right, see how well that’s turned out!

  “You’re a rare bird . . . unique . . . think for yourself . . .” But I always missed what she said next in the wail of the sirens. It became, amidst all the horror, a small annoyance. What was she saying? Would I be doomed to relive this experience for the rest of eternity without catching my mother’s last words?

  I started trying to listen harder, but that didn’t work. The sirens were too loud. Perhaps she hadn’t really said anything at all.

  But then I recalled that my older self had gained a skill or two in the last few days. I knew how to find true north and see pictures in a pool of water . . . and I knew how to listen to thoughts. Could I listen to my mother’s thoughts in a memory?

  And if I could, would I like what I heard there?

  Then I recalled what Oberon had said: the fire reveals the truth, but not all truths. Unless I learned something new here, my only truth would be that I was a girl who had killed her mother by wishing her dead. Almost anything had to be better than that.

  The next time around I focused on trying to read my mother’s thoughts . . . and got nothing. I tried the next time, and still got nothing, but on the third time, right after she said, “The fog is really thick. I think I’ll pull off at the next exit,” I heard, clear as a bell, two words in my mother’s head. John Dee.

  John Dee? My mind stuttered on the words. What about John Dee?

  My mother’s eyes flicked up to the rearview mirror and met mine. That hadn’t happened the last time—or the hundred times before.

  Garet? Is that you?

  I could hear the fire roaring in my brain, trying now to drown out her voice in my head. I had to scream over it. Yes! Mom, it’s me—ten years later me—there’s going to be an accident—

  Out of the corner of my eye I saw the red Expedition pass us. I couldn’t look at it, though. I couldn’t look away from my mother’s eyes in the mirror, which were now filling with tears.

  But you survive? she asked. You’re okay?

  Yes, but you won’t. Mom, you have to stop—

  But the Expedition was already ramming into us and we were flipping over, spinning into space. Still, I had changed something this time. If I tried harder next time . . .

  “Garet, can you hear me?” It was my mother’s voice inside my head, not in my memory. “Are you okay?”

  “I’m here, Mom,” my sixteen-year-old self answered. “I’m okay, but I can’t move. Are you okay?”

  She’s not! She’s not! I screamed at myself, but it was my mother who answered; in that pause before she spoke now I clearly heard her say inside my mind, It’s okay, sweetheart, you can’t change the past.

  “Marguerite,” she said aloud, “always trust your instincts.” I love you so much, sweetheart, I am so proud of you, she thought. “You’re a rare bird . . . unique . . . think for yourself . . .”

  I heard the sirens blaring, drowning out her next words, but my eyes were on her face in the rearview mirror, and I could see her lips moving and hear the words she spoke aloud echoed in her thoughts.

  I know you love me. Don’t be afraid, my mother told me.

  “There’s something else I need to tell you,” my mother shouted aloud.

  I wanted to tell you about the Watchtower, she told me now. I shouldn’t have kept it from you, but I saw it kill my mother. I thought that if I pretended it didn’t exist, I would be free of it and then you would be free of it. But it came looking for me again . . .

  The Jaws of Life was tearing apart the car now.

  That’s why I wanted you to go away to college.

  The fireman was pulling me out of the car.

  That’s why I was going to go away. Tell your father I was only leaving to protect him and you . . . tell him . . .

  My sixteen-year-old self was fighting the fireman, but inside I was calm. I only had to wait for the next loop and I would break into my mother’s head sooner. I would make her pull over. I would stop the accident. I would keep her alive. You’ll tell him yourself, I thought as I was pulled out of the car. I love you, Mom. I’m going to save you next time.

  But instead of going back to the car, I was actually getting farther away from it. I turned and saw the car blow up, the whoosh of the explosion eerily echoed by the crackle of the dragon’s flames in my own head. But I could already hear the fire inside me dying down, retreating from my brain, smoldering in my veins. The scene in front of me was fading like an overexposed photograph. I screamed along with my sixteen-year-old self, desperate to stay in the moment. I could go back! I could change this! I fixed my eyes on the flames, willing the dragon’s fire back into my brain, but it was already gone. I could already feel the cold floor of Ddraik’s cave against my skin.

  Just before the scene faded completely, though, I noticed a figure standing behind the fire, on the far side of the median among the EMTs who had arrived to help the owner of the Expedition. His shape wavered in the heat waves from the fire giving him the appearance of a mirage. But he wasn’t a mirage. He was there. He had always been there. John Dee stood beside the fire that had killed my mother and stared through the flames directly at me.

  The Lover’s Eye

  I awoke on the floor of Ddraik’s cave screaming, “Send me back! Send me back!” I flung myself at the dragon, pounding my fists against his scaly hide. For answer he wrapped his tail around my back and held me firmly in his grip.

  “It took great strength to break free of your worst memory, but it shows even greater strength to be willing to go back. You are truly a descendant of the Watchtower, Margaret James. I am proud to have shared your memories.”

  “Then send me back!” I sobbed.

  “That I cannot do. Nor would it make any difference. Your mother was right—you cannot change the past. But you did a rare thing—you sent a message back.”

  “Did she?” I heard Oberon’s voice from behind me. At some point he and Ignatius had come back into the room.

  “Yes, she did. This one’s stronger than you thought,” Ddraik answered, then he said to me, “Your mother died knowing that you survived and grew into a strong woman. No mother could ask for more.” He stroked my face with the surprisingly soft tip of his tail, brushing away my tears. His stroke kindled a flame in the pit of my belly and I realized that Ddraik’s fire had not left my body. It had retreated deep inside where it smoldered—a hearth fire banked against a long winter’s night—for me to draw on if need be.

  I drew on it now, pulling it into the palms of my hands. I pi
ctured Dee as I’d just seen him, standing behind the car fire that had consumed my mother. Of course, I realized, that’s why my mother had thought of Dee when she saw the fog. Dee had sent the fog that pushed the Ford Expedition into our car, killing my mother, and then he had watched me while my mother burned to decide if I was anything to be afraid of. Clearly he’d decided I hadn’t been. I pictured him now inside the fire I summoned into my hands. A huge ball of fire sprung from my palms and grew to fill the room. I heard Oberon and Ignatius scurrying backward, but Ddraik only chuckled.

  “Yes! Much stronger than you thought!”

  I smiled at Ddraik, letting the fireball shrink back to a spark that slipped into my veins. “Thank you,” I said, bowing. Then, turning to Oberon, who was cowering near the door with Ignatius, I said, “Let’s go home. I think I know how to find Dee.”

  On the subway ride back Oberon wanted to know what I’d learned that would help us find Dee, but I told him that I had to show him. That was only half-true. Really, I wanted to talk about something else.

  “Did you know that Dee killed my mother?”

  “What makes you think that?” he asked, glaring at a man whose legs were spread out so wide he was taking up three seats. The man got up and walked to the end of the car.

  “I saw him at the site of the accident.”

  Oberon shook his head, then patted me reassuringly on the shoulder.

  “I was afraid that was where Ddraik would take you. That must have been very painful.” He laid his hand on mine. It felt cool against my overheated skin, soothing. A green glow flowed from his skin to mine. I felt it quenching the fire that still smoldered in my veins.

  I took my hand away. I wasn’t ready to have my anger quenched. “You haven’t answered my question.”

  “I suspected,” he said. “In the days before your mother’s death she came to me and told me that she thought John Dee was in New York. She told me she was going to send you away to school and then leave the country—that there was something she had to do back in France.”