by Jeff Giles
X would have smiled if he weren’t in such pain. Zoe and Ripper had taught him how to let kindness in.
“I hiked closer,” Plum went on. “I kept stumbling. I am not in peak condition, as we’ve discussed. Yes, I know I’m babbling. I’m just so excited that you’re awake. Anyway, everyone on the hill was watching the ceiling and waiting. You’d gone limp. Your hands hung off the altar. It was awful.”
“Sins?” X demanded—or tried to demand. The word came out like a whisper. “Sins.”
Plum was surprised by the question.
“What do you mean, ‘sins’?” he said.
“Have I,” said X. “Sins?”
“My god, you’re crying,” said Plum. “Of course you have no sins! I thought you knew that—you told me yourself that you were born here! I promise you, the ceiling was so white it made us all glow. The light warmed our faces! It was like nothing anyone of us had ever seen. All right? All right.”
X felt Plum’s hand on his shoulder. It hurt to be touched, but again, he allowed the kindness in.
“The Countess was livid,” Plum continued. “You’d promised her great sins. She expected a feast! She pressed the knife to your cheek, but before she could do anything else, she had a seizure of some sort. She tore open the collar of her dress. It turns out that she wears a gold band beneath it. She grabbed the thing like it was choking her—like she wanted to rip it from her neck. It was as if the band itself knew you were innocent, and refused to let her punish you.”
X knew it was not actually the gold band, but the Higher Power that ruled the Lowlands acting through it.
Plum resumed his account.
“The Countess shoved you off the altar,” he said. “You fell like a deadweight and your bones made a loud crack. Sorry—is that too vivid? I raced forward to pick you up. You don’t need to thank me. I failed. You are quite heavy. Shiloh? The soldier? He was still flabbergasted by what you’d done for him, so he tried to help me lift you, but since the Countess had shredded his foot he could barely walk himself. It was actually the knight who carried you here. He’s quite a fan of yours now. I think he’d follow you into battle with what little armor he has left. As for me, I did manage to at least carry your coat.”
When Plum finally finished, he let X rest, though X could sense his worried friend checking on him regularly. X still felt a pain so widespread in his body that it seemed to have replaced his bones. But he felt a contradictory sense of relief now, too: taking souls as a bounty hunter had not blackened his heart. Zoe would say she wasn’t surprised in the least. She’d pretend that she had never questioned that he was, as the Ukrainian had said of Plum, “good at bottom.” But then … Then she would pull him to her and hold him so fiercely that he would know she was secretly relieved, grateful, proud. “I knew all along, you dork,” she’d say. “Of course I knew. But you needed to know.”
It was true. He did.
X stared up at the black dome of the ceiling. He couldn’t remember everything that had happened on the altar. But one memory lingered. It was something the Countess had said. X struggled to call it forth, like someone trying to coax back a dream.
Finally, the memory X had been tugging at came loose.
“Take the foil packet from my coat and give it to me, if you would?” he told Plum.
“Can it wait until you’ve rested?” said Plum. “You’ve had a shock.”
“It cannot,” said X. “I have hold of a thought, and fear losing it.”
He rolled onto his side so Plum could fish the packet out of the coat, which lay beneath him, and asked him to show him the broken bracelet that read Vesuvius.
“You’ve seen the bracelet a thousand times,” said Plum. “There’s nothing different about it now. This absolutely could have waited. You are a very irritating patient.”
X only half-listened.
The Countess’s words echoed in his head: If that damnable feline erupts again, the Countess shall stop its breath. Would that the creature had been named for something mute, like a statue or the wind.
X ran his thumb over the lettering on the bracelet.
“You said Vesuvius was a volcano,” he said. “A legendary one.”
“Yes,” said Plum. “Can I put the bracelet back now, please?”
If that damnable feline erupts again … Would that the creature had been named for something mute …
X looked at Plum, who was staring at him with an unconvincing approximation of sternness.
“I don’t believe this is a bracelet at all,” said X. “I believe it is a collar.”
He didn’t pause for Plum to absorb this, but rather hurried on. He had to get the words out.
“And I believe Vesuvius is a cat.”
twelve
The Countess was still hungry for sins. She barked for Oedipus and Rex, and set off down the hill in search of evil to feed on.
It was harder for X to watch this time, for he knew what to expect—the screams of a soul dragged up through the crowd, the light on the ceiling, the flashing knife, the sickening cheers. He also knew that if he himself had given her an infested soul to feast on, she wouldn’t be searching for another.
Seeing the Countess descend, Plum sat cross-legged and began to meditate. X was jealous that his friend could escape that way, that he could disappear inside himself like a flower closing. X’s own brain was in turmoil. If Vesuvius belonged to the Countess, then the items in the foil had belonged to her, too—and only she could tell X where his mother was imprisoned. His mother had been friends with this woman? The thought of it rattled him. The Countess was as repugnant a soul as X had ever encountered—she was Dervish in a dress.
The souls on the hill dove out of the Countess’s way. To distract himself, X stared down at his silver packet, hoping to see something he had never seen before. But unlike Vesuvius’s collar, the remaining items told him nothing. Every one of them was a door that wouldn’t open.
Frustrated, X put the packet away. He looked up at the empty plateau: the rough-hewn altar, the absurd canopied bed, the wooden box that held Vesuvius. He remembered the mess of scratches he’d noticed on the Countess’s hands. They must have been Vesuvius’s work. How the animal must have hated her!
Just as X was about to look away, Vesuvius began to moan. It was a tentative cry at first, a question almost: Is anyone there? Not five seconds passed before the cat repeated his question more loudly: Is anyone there? Anyone?
It was agonizing to hear, and X saw a great number of souls turn their attention toward the cat. Vesuvius’s cries grew even starker. They seemed to branch out in the air, like they were searching for something, for someone. It struck X as an incredibly lonely sound. X had been damned for no reason at all. Maybe it was foolish or sentimental, but hearing Vesuvius wail, he knew he’d found a creature even more innocent and undeserving of pain than himself. Even Plum, without opening his eyes, murmured, “Poor thing. Poor, poor thing.”
There were noises from below. Someone was creeping up through the crowd. It was the woman in the servant’s dress and the bloodied apron. She was approaching the forbidden borderland beneath the plateau.
X guessed that the woman was from the early 20th century. Her shiny black hair was parted, pulled back into a bun, and covered by a white kerchief. Her apron hung around her neck and flowed past her knees. Her dress was a long, severe black garment that swallowed everything but her hands and feet.
X watched as she stepped into the borderland. He remembered how the Countess had sliced open the backs of the elderly man’s legs just for being pushed into it. He looked down the hill to see where the lord and the boxers were now. They had disappeared over a crest, but there was no telling when they would make their way back. X knew nothing about the servant woman, but now he was terrified for her.
He remembered what she had said to the Countess: “Let me comfort him. He doesn’t belong in a box.”
So that was it. She was coming to console the cat.
The sou
ls on the hill watched, and whispered. But no one alerted the Countess or Oedipus or Rex. X found it touching. The servant had taken it upon herself to tend to the souls after they’d been brutalized on the altar—helped them for no reason other than that she was kind. They were grateful. They would not betray her. X thought of the Ukrainian, and wished he’d stayed long enough to see this display of solidarity.
The servant made it to the plateau, and stole toward the box on the bed. Vesuvius seemed to hear her. His cries changed: Who’s there? Do I know you? X was consumed with a need to know the servant woman’s name. He hated interrupting Plum while he meditated, but he couldn’t help himself. He touched his arm.
“I apologize, but …,” he began.
Plum opened his eyes. He saw the servant, and the color drained out of his face.
“She has tried to get to the cat before,” he said. “She’s never succeeded.”
He scanned the hill for the Countess.
“The lord is down below,” X told him.
“But she’ll be back,” said Plum.
“What is the servant’s name?” said X.
“I’ve always wondered,” said Plum.
“I am sorry I disturbed you,” said X. “I suppose I didn’t want to be alone.”
“It’s perfectly all right,” said Plum. “Have you heard the expression ‘That’s what friends are for’?”
“I have not,” said X.
Plum smiled his gentle smile.
“I guess it isn’t said much around here,” he said.
X and Plum watched the servant creep toward the bed. Vesuvius cried louder in anticipation—I’m in here! I’m in here!—as if he was afraid she’d give up and turn away. The servant checked over her shoulder for the Countess. Everyone on the hill had their eyes fixed on her.
The woman removed the box’s lid, and—before she even had a chance to set it down on the bed—Vesuvius sprang into her arms. The cat was puffy and gray. Even X, who had no experience with cats whatsoever, could see he was handsome. Vesuvius seemed ecstatic not just to be released from his purgatory but to see the woman. He rubbed his face against her cheek, licked her neck, put a paw on her nose. It looked to X like the servant had started crying. She was talking to Vesuvius now. He responded with a high, urgent meow as if he had so many things to tell her.
“She needs to put him back in the box now,” said Plum nervously. “What is she thinking? She needs to put him back.”
Fear hit X’s veins and spread, like a drop of poison.
Before he could speak, the Countess came barreling up the hill.
“The Countess sees thy treachery, false jade!” she shouted at the servant.
She charged ahead so quickly that Oedipus and Rex fell behind. The servant tightened her hold on Vesuvius. It was clear to X she’d never let him go.
When the Countess reached the plateau, every torch on the hill extinguished, the ceiling lit up, and she and the servant were displayed for all to see. There was no cheering or bloodlust, which inflamed the Countess even more. No one wanted to see the woman suffer.
X found himself standing again.
For a second time, he hiked toward the Countess to stop her.
Plum begged him not to interfere. There was no time for an argument, so X just gave his friend a fond look and said, “But I have never met a cat before.”
He climbed, his legs aching. He kept one eye on the ceiling. Oedipus and Rex stood just behind the Countess now, frowning. They seemed to have no stomach for this either.
“Wouldst thou risk body and breath for a creature that does naught but wail?” the Countess asked the servant.
“Apparently,” said the servant.
Her tone reminded X of Zoe.
“Thou shalt regret thy impertinence,” said the Countess. “For YEARS, the Countess has let thee coddle the vermin on this hill. Now we shall see if any will bestir themselves to coddle THEE.”
She instructed the servant to put Vesuvius down unless she longed to see his insides. The servant set the cat on the ground, and shooed him tearfully away. The cat rubbed her leg, refusing to leave her. The woman had to stamp her foot to make him retreat under the bed.
“Vesuvius will always hate you,” the servant told the Countess, “because you stole him from me.”
The Countess yanked the woman’s apron off, and wound it around her throat. The servant’s neck flushed and flailed. Vesuvius howled helplessly.
Now that the servant’s apron had been torn away, X could see that a long row of buttons ran down the front of her dress.
They were bloodstone.
And one of them was missing.
So the servant had been his mother’s friend, not the lord. X found this far easier to understand.
“Release the woman,” he called out as he approached. “She will not satisfy your hunger any more than I did, for what sins could she be concealing? Nothing that would satisfy the likes of you, surely.”
The Countess whirled around. She looked outraged that X had returned, but the anger turned quickly to something like curiosity.
“’Tis true, this one will make but a paltry meal,” she said. “Yet thy interest in the matter intrigues. Dost thou care for this wretch? Perhaps the Countess has discovered a way to wound thee at last!”
She pulled the apron so tight around the servant’s neck that it was like a noose. X forced himself not to react.
The Countess scowled and threw the servant down.
“So this wretch is NOTHING to thee,” she said.
She stomped around the plateau, squeezing her blemish and trying to conjure a new plan for punishing X. Once again, she stopped referring to herself as if she were some exalted third party. Even the “thee”s and “thou”s fell away. X wondered if they too had been an affectation.
“You WILL kneel to me before I am through,” she told X. “You WILL fear me! You say Regent is grander than I? I will disabuse you of that notion!” She gestured at the servant on the ground. “Yet if you do not truly know this trifle of a person, her suffering will not wound you—not so deep as I should like.”
It struck X that he should be grateful that he’d lost so much, for now what could be used against him?
The Countess stopped circling suddenly. She grinned at X, her mouth a crack spreading fast across her face.
She called to Oedipus and Rex.
“Idiots!” she said. “Bring me Plum!”
Plum wept as he was dragged past. X expected his friend to curse him—he had every right. Instead, Plum begged a favor of him.
“Don’t watch my sins on the ceiling,” he said. “Please. I’m so ashamed of what I was. If you care for me at all, you won’t watch.” One of the boxers had pinioned Plum’s hands behind his back, so his tears spilled unchecked down his cheeks. “All right, friend? All right?”
Oedipus and Rex pulled him onward. X lunged at the boxers, but was batted away. He heard someone call his name from the crowd, but could not see who it was.
Plum was laid out on the altar, and the Countess pressed down on his chest. The torches went out, releasing traces of black smoke. The ceiling crackled to life. Thousands of faces turned upward, expectant as flowers.
Plum’s sins began to play. X kept his promise: he didn’t watch. Sounds assaulted his ears, but he dropped deep into himself and heard only an indecipherable mass of noise, like a wave crashing. Again, he heard a voice calling his name.
Eventually, the ceiling went silent. The torches reignited with a whoosh. Plum lay convulsing with tears.
The Countess’s face was wild with ecstasy. She’d been fed by Plum’s sins. Rejuvenated. The streaks of gray had disappeared from her hair, and her skin shone magnificently. Even the pimple was gone. She leaned down, tore Plum’s shirt open—and saw the long, livid scar that ran the full length of his torso.
“Ah, yes, the Countess remembers thee,” she said.
“Whatever you’re going to do, just do it,” cried Plum. “Just do it.”
>
His cries were harrowing. X saw Shiloh weeping in the crowd. He saw the Knight standing forlornly in his half suit of armor, like a dragon that had lost its scales.
“Just do it!” Plum cried again. “Cut me if you’re going to cut me. Just do it!”
Oedipus’s fist shot out and struck Plum hard. X felt rage boil up in him, then realized that what Oedipus had done had been a kindness. He’d knocked Plum unconscious so he wouldn’t feel the pain.
The Countess, comprehending this, too, jabbed Oedipus’s shoulder with the knife.
“Thou art NEXT, traitor,” she told him.
She twisted the blade before pulling it out. Oedipus dropped to one knee, howling.
Electrified, the crowd spilled into the empty borderland. X heard his name called out for a third time. This time he recognized the voice. He hadn’t expected to ever hear it again.
The Ukrainian had returned.
He stood just beneath the plateau, his cherry-red tracksuit bright as a lantern.
X called to him: “Can it really be you?”
“Of course is me,” said the guard. “What kind of question? Who else is so extremely handsome?”
X was taken aback by the bounce in the Ukrainian’s voice. Did he not see that Plum was wailing on the altar?
“I did not believe that you’d actually gone for food,” said X.
The guard smiled slyly.
“Did not go for food, if you want true fact of matter,” he said. “Went for reinforcements!”
He pointed down the slope.
X turned to see Regent fly toward the altar, his robes spread like wings, and pitch the Countess down the hill.
X ran to Plum. His friend was conscious but in shock. His shirt hung open, exposing his belly. X and the Ukrainian helped him down from the altar, and lay him on the Countess’s bed. The servant woman handed Vesuvius to Plum to calm him. Plum hugged the cat to his chest. His breathing steadied, and he found X’s eyes.
“My sins,” he said. “The ceiling. Did you watch?”
