Our Lady of the Various Sorrows

by Victoria Raschke

  She filled him in on the bound sparrow and what Goran thought it had meant and then babbled on about the bloody heart in Faron’s apartment.

  “Jo, I need to go. Are you going to be okay? Should I call Gregor or Vesna?”

  “I’ll be fine.” She followed him to the door and walked out barefoot onto the cold flags of the landing with him. She hugged him to say goodbye and inhaled the scent of him. More leather and mown grass. And he was so warm compared to her freezing feet.

  He disentangled himself from her. “Jo, this isn’t what you want.”

  She nodded and turned her head at the noise on the wooden steps. Leo stood at the top of the stairs, his face a blank mask.

  “It’s not what you think.”

  ——

  Faron jumped at the knock on the door. It had to be a neighbor; anyone else would’ve had to get buzzed in downstairs.

  Ivanka was sleeping, and he didn’t want to wake her. He was pretty sure it was the first sleep she’d had since what they were euphemistically referring to as “the message.”

  He peered through the peephole at the back of his father’s head and opened the door.

  “Was the door open downstairs?”

  “No.”

  “If I refuse to invite you, can you still walk into my flat?” He was going to ask him in, but he was curious.

  “Yes, but I try not to be more rude than necessary.”

  Faron stepped aside and motioned him in. He watched as his father removed his pristine ankle boots and lined them up along the wall next to Ivanka’s battered Chucks. How was he not covered in slush?

  “I don’t have much to offer. A beer, maybe, and I think there’s half a bottle of wine.” Faron walked into the kitchen and opened the fridge, staring at the sparse inventory.

  “A beer, I think. Thank you.”

  Faron split the beer between two short glasses and set them on the table at the banquette by the window. He slid in facing the door, and Dušan sat opposite.

  “I see Gustaf cleansed your flat.”

  “Goran actually.” Faron no longer believed Gustaf had his or his mother’s best interest at heart. It was difficult to trust someone with so many secrets.

  “He’s not evil. Gustaf, I mean. He is perhaps misguided. He thinks he is being protective when he keeps things to himself.”

  Faron shrugged. His father had secrets, too. More than he thought he wanted to know, and yet he’d let him in and trusted him in some small way because his mother seemed to. “Why are you here?”

  “Unlike Gustaf, I think it is better if you know the truth.”

  “The truth?”

  “You have a decision to make.”

  “I know you enjoy drawing this stuff out, but I’d like it better if you just told me what you came here to say. I’m not a child; I don’t need a story.”

  “You aren’t a child, but you are achingly young.” His father’s eyes changed again, but not to the black mirrors they had become at the coffee shop. They instead looked as if he was gazing at something incredibly far away, maybe even long ago. He snapped back to the present.

  Faron waited for his father to continue.

  Dušan sighed. He hadn’t come to deliver happy news, that was certain. “It is best to simply say the thing. Faron, you can raise the dead.”

  “I know.”

  “No, you know you can reanimate a mouse or a housefly. You have the power to raise a human who has died and whose spirit has not crossed into the next world.”

  “I told you. I tried with Ivanka’s mother, and nothing happened.” Maybe his father was old enough to be forgetful.

  “Her spirit had moved beyond this place.”

  “She went to heaven?” That felt unlikely, even wrong.

  “No, she did not. Heaven is not as you imagine. Her soul, or whatever you choose to call it, is no longer on this plane.”

  Faron finished his beer. “I guess that seems fair.”

  “Fair.” Dušan laughed on a single exhale. “That is neither here nor there. The important information for you is once you raise a person from the dead, you have made a choice.”

  Faron lowered his gaze at his father. Did he dignify his obvious statement with a comment?

  Dušan continued, unperturbed by Faron’s facial expression. “You will have made the choice to become the white god.”

  “Excuse me? That sounds pretty essentialist.” Faron leaned back against the wall. His father had early-onset dementia and a mean streak of bigotry running through him. Great.

  “Sometimes white is the color of a thing. It is a name, an adopted one. The old name has been lost in time. He was, and you may be, the god of abundance and life. But also of victory in war, preserving lives while I escort those shed.”

  “While you what? Who are you?”

  “Črnobog. The black god.”

  “You’re the devil?”

  Dušan sighed heavily. “That is what the medieval Christians would like you to think. To borrow a bit from Eastern philosophy and the yin and yang, you cannot have light without darkness.” He picked up his empty glass and set it back down. “The role of the white god has been empty for some time. I believe it is your job, if you want it.” Dušan looked at Faron. His eyes had gone dark again, but this time they were hollows filled with stars, like looking up into the night sky in the wilderness. It was terrifying and beautiful, and Faron could not look away.

  “What if I choose not to take the gig?”

  Dušan blinked, and his eyes were again green and amber-flecked. “Then nothing. You have a fancy parlor trick that will probably get you into trouble at some point.”

  “It can’t be that simple.”

  “Jo raised a smart man.” His father looked at him with something like admiration. It was unnerving. “I believe you will have to choose under duress. You will have to choose whether someone lives or dies.”

  It was Faron’s turn to take a deep, weary breath. “I assume this will be someone I care about.”

  “Fate is often a cruel mistress.”

  Faron thought of Ivanka and finding her balled up on the kitchen floor. Was it better to keep her close or send her far away from whatever taint his family carried?

  “This is not a curse. We are what we are. We are a part of the natural order of things–”

  “Would it have been the natural order of things if you hadn’t knocked up my mother?” The words tasted bitter in his mouth.

  “Your mother is not unique among the long bloodlines of Voices, but she is a rare thing. Who knows what would have become of you? And does it matter? There is no way to undo the past; even I do not have that ability.”

  “Chronos outranks you?” There was less bitterness and more resignation.

  “You could say that, though Chronos is probably more of an archetype than a god.” Dušan cocked his head as if he were thinking about it.

  “You don’t know?”

  “Omniscience does not come with the black god role. Or the white one, as far as I know.”

  “That’s something, I guess. Knowing everything would be terrible.”

  “Yes. Yes, it would be.”

  Chapter 19

  Leo looked from Jo’s guilty face to the man’s confused one.

  “I should go.” The man ran his hand down Jo’s arm and squeezed her fingers before brushing by Leo and disappearing behind him down into the dark stairwell.

  “I didn’t expect you.” She smoothed her rumpled shirt and skirt with her hands. “Would you like to come in?”

  Did he want to go into her flat? Did he want to be alone with her after she’d been with another man? His jealousy disgusted him. She had done nothing out of character and had promised him nothing more than her presence.

  He took a deep breath and looked her in the eyes. “Yes. I wo
uld like to come in.” Was she drunk? Why else would she be outside with nothing on her feet?

  “I can make you some coffee or tea?” She kept pushing her hair back behind her ears, her hands shaking noticeably.

  “No, thank you.” Had something happened? Was this man one of her conquests from the gallery in Metelkova that Vesna had mentioned? Had he hurt her? But there were flowers, flowers he took with him. Had Jo given the man flowers? The air in the apartment was cloying and smelled strongly of lilies. He loathed the scent and had always hated that every church was filled with them on Easter; it made him dread his own High Holy Day.

  “Your aura, it’s angry.” She looked like she would fall but instead plopped unceremoniously on the white-draped futon and looked up at him, her blue eyes swimming.

  “You can see auras?” That was new. And troubling, for a number of reasons.

  “Sometimes.” She shook her head like a puppy trying to shake off water.

  “Jo, are you well?”

  “The flowers. Snippy…” Her head fell back and she lost consciousness.

  She had been drugged. He scooped her up in his arms with the intent of putting her to bed and calling Vesna to take care of her friend. He and Jo could sort out whatever needed to be sorted between them later.

  She woke enough to put her arms around his neck. “Matjaž wanted–”

  “Shh. You don’t need to explain anything to me.” He did want her to explain everything, but not now. Not like this.

  He was standing next to the bed with her still in his arms. Her eyes opened and bored into his face. “No. I didn’t tell him about you. I didn’t. But it was why, because of you.”

  Now he was confused. “That was Matjaž? Helena’s brother? And you didn’t tell him about me because what?”

  She slid out of his arms like water and stood in front of him in the cramped bit of space between her bed and the window sill. She was still bleary-eyed and unsteady, but she had become animated with purpose. “Because …” She put her hands on either side of his face and pulled him down to her.

  Her hands and lips were cold but the kiss was warm and hungry. It took everything he had to pull away. She looked surprised at his withdrawal, and hurt.

  “Not like this. You’re drunk.”

  “Or hexed. Again. Snippy must really hate me.” She laughed and wavered on her feet.

  “Please sit down before you fall.”

  She sat, hard, on the edge of the bed. “Why does everything have to be so complicated?” When she looked up at him, the surprise and hurt had been replaced with a deep sadness. It was raw and naked and not an emotion she would have revealed if she were in control of her faculties.

  He settled next to her on the bed. She leaned against his arm; he was too tall for her to lean her head on his shoulder. “I don’t know that everything is complicated, Jo. Sometimes I think it’s just me, or just you, who is complicated.” He wanted to comfort her, but he didn’t know how without stoking the fire that was too close to the surface in both of them.

  She shook her head against his arm. “Nope. It’s everything and everyone. Well maybe not Vesna. She has Igor, and they are happy — though he doesn’t know about the family-business business or what a freak show her friends are.” She laughed. “Okay. It really is everyone.”

  “I think you need to get some sleep.”

  “Hmm. That’s what Matjaž said.”

  The name stung. Leo was going to have to get over himself. “Can I call Vesna? Someone else?”

  “Why, silly? You’re here.”

  He was, and maybe that was all that mattered. Rok, Dušan, Matjaž, Milo, even Helena would always have a piece of Jo’s heart, but that didn’t mean he didn’t have a piece of it, too.

  “It’s not pie, you know. I am capable of caring for more than one person. That I care for Rok, shirker that he is, doesn’t mean I have less … caring for you. There’s enough Jo pie for everyone.” She snorted. “I didn’t mean it like that.”

  “Can you read my mind?”

  “Of course not, you were just thinking really loudly.”

  With Jo asleep and tucked into bed, without any further revelations, he closed the door behind him and locked it with her key. He would have to leave it with Vesna, which meant talking to his niece — the one person he couldn’t hide anything from. Though if Jo could see auras and read minds, even that wasn’t true.

  ——

  Matjaž pulled the flowers apart and threw them into the water. Jamming the heavy, cream-colored ribbon into his pocket, he watched the crushed petals and stems float down the river away from him, away from Jo.

  He’d spent the better part of his existence doing everything he could to distance himself from his family’s origins and from his mother’s interference in his life. Part of him was nostalgic for the woman she had been before his father was killed, but he knew her happiness had been established on the corpse of a Portal, of someone like Jo.

  Had Helena known from the beginning what Jo was? Had his mother? He hated to think his sister, whom he’d loved and tried to pry away from their mother’s influence, had been as manipulative as Avgusta. Jo’s sober retelling, without incredulity, of what she had learned in the past few days, even hours, saddened him. She had been betrayed by so many people she cared for. He had almost become one of those. He had become one of those if his suspicions about his “lost” evening were correct. His sister had used him to deliver his mother’s sinister message to Jo’s son.

  Without thinking, he found himself halfway to Avgusta’s apartment. Most of the snow had disappeared, which had left the streets dirty and icy in patches. He avoided the larger puddles and looked more carefully where he walked so he didn’t wind up on his ass.

  He stood on the pavement looking up at the block of flats where his mother lived. They were modern and expensive. He’d done everything he could to make her physically comfortable, but nothing he’d ever said had penetrated her sense of entitlement and the world’s perceived betrayal of her. Speaking to her now wouldn’t make any difference either, but he no longer cared for her comfort. This had to stop. She could not meddle in his life, or Jo’s, any longer.

  He rapped hard against the door and heard no answer nor any sound from within. He dug his keys out of his pocket and opened the door with the copy he’d had since the remodel. If she was out, he would wait for her, however long it took.

  The lights were on in the gleaming kitchen. His mother’s sense of order in her surroundings was at odds with the chaos he believed lived in her head. The march of perfectly stacked plates and sparkling countertops was marred by the stench of lilies that hung like smog in the flat. The door to Avgusta’s workroom was closed, but flickering light bled from underneath it. He crossed the flat in a few determined strides.

  His mother had always harped on them not to open the door to her room without knocking and even then to wait to be admitted. He turned the knob and threw the door open, banging it against the wall. His mother spun in her chair to face him, her expression dark with anger but quickly fading to something that looked surprisingly like guilt.

  His sister, or a projection of her, shimmered in the air above a bowl of black water. Her sunken face registered only surprise.

  “Matjaž.” It was his sister’s voice, but hollowed out and distant. “It’s good to see you.”

  “I wish I could say the same.” He looked from her to Avgusta. Family: what a bitter word that could be.

  “It’s … it’s not what you think.” His mother’s stammer was unexpected.

  “That’s the second time I’ve heard someone use that phrase tonight. I’m sure it’s untrue this time.” He pulled the ribbon from his pocket and threw it at his mother. “This stops. Now.”

  Helena’s image crackled and faded in and out like a picture on a badly tuned television set. “Mother. What did you do?” />
  Avgusta’s eyes narrowed. “I attempted to do what you could not.”

  “You failed before you even set out to bend Jo’s will. She can’t have any more children.” He spat the words out.

  His mother spun again to face Helena. “Did you know this?”

  “Women usually don’t worry too much about knocking each other up, Mother.” Helena rolled her eyes.

  “Shut up! I do not need to hear about your perversions.” Disgust came off his mother in waves. It wasn’t his sister’s bisexuality that disturbed her, it was that neither he nor his sister gave a shit about her grand schemes.

  “You aren’t innocent in all this.” Matjaž turned his anger on his sister’s image. “You dragged Jo and Faron into this mess.”

  “I’m less complicit than you’d like to think.” Helena crossed her arms and practically pouted at him.

  “Oh? You were getting it on with Jo and her kid. You’ve been trying to throw her at me for months. How is that not complicit in her bullshit?” He pointed at Avgusta.

  “One: I liked Jo and Faron. They were fun. And two: I didn’t know about all the Voice and Portal stuff until after I was dead and our dear mother wouldn’t let me leave.” She leveled her dark gaze at Avgusta.

  “And me?” He didn’t believe her exactly, but if the spirit Helena was anything like the living Helena had been, she didn’t tell obvious lies; she preferred to leave things out.

  “You two have the hots for each other, and Jo is determined to spend the rest of her life alone or seducing a string of nobodies rather than entangle some innocent in her ‘messed-up little life.’” She looked at him with genuine sisterly affection; it reminded him of how much he had lost. “I figured you were already pretty close to being as ‘messed up’ as she is, and it would be good for both of you.”

  “And possessing me? That was you, wasn’t it?”

  Helena at least had the grace to look sheepish. “I should’ve asked, but it was an emergency.”

  “Leaving a bloody cow heart in Faron’s apartment was an emergency?”

  Avgusta looked from Matjaž to Helena, very confused. “Cow heart? What nonsense are you talking about?”