Paradise Damned

by S. M. Reine

  “She’s not worth it,” said the first. “No mortal is worth it.”

  “But this one’s not just any mortal. You heard what Metaraon said.”

  The trunk of the Tree groaned with motion, and the angels fell silent to listen. The branches curled inwards, dragging the woman tight against its bark. Her muscles no longer sang with struggle. Her eyelids would be fluttering with the deep dreams that their Holy Father bestowed upon her.

  The Tree seemed to give one last, low moan, and then went still. It was never truly motionless—the brittle black twigs were always twitching a little now, as though spasming with pain. But core of the Tree was calm. Restful.

  Lifting his injured hand to his mouth again, the first cherubim asked, “Do you think it might get infected?”

  “You’re pathetic.”

  “I thought she was really going to escape again. She got halfway to the gate before we knocked her out.”

  “Have faith, my brother. Nobody escapes the garden twice,” responded the other angel, opening his wings wide to take flight. “Nobody.”

  II

  It was a beautiful morning, and Elise was enjoying it the way that beautiful days are meant to be appreciated: by jogging outside. She wore shorts, a tank top, and no shoes. Her ponytail bounced with every heel strike. An auburn curl had escaped to dangle over her nose, and she blew it out of her face.

  The trail narrowed and the surrounding jungle thickened. The sweet scent of ripe apples filled the air, touched with a hint of cinnamon bark. A river bubbled somewhere nearby, gurgling and whispering beyond the trees. Even though she couldn’t see where it lay, the water left the edges of the trail muddy.

  Motion and Dance emerged from the trees. She experienced a moment of confusion when she realized that the two-story brick building was being consumed by creepers. Weeds jutted through the foundation.

  It should have been near Idlewild Park, the apartments, the Truckee River. Not surrounded by ancient trees and overgrown vines, as if transplanted to the jungle.

  Elise blinked and rubbed her eyes.

  No, that was definitely Motion and Dance. It was totally right for it to be in the trees like this. She had just been confused.

  A man was waiting for her, sitting on the bottom of the stairs that led to the second floor apartment. He stood when she approached, and her heart jumped at the sight of Him. Her stride grew, devouring the remaining length of the trail in seconds.

  “Hey,” she said, unhooking the white picket fence and stepping inside. The rosebushes seemed to lean toward her, scratching at her ankles. “You’re up earlier than usual.” She couldn’t bring herself to look Adam in the eye, but she could feel the anger in His silence.

  Pale hands closed around hers. The grip was painfully tight, and she already knew that she would carry fingerprint bruises like tattoos around her wrists. “Where did you go this time?” Adam asked. “I’ve been worried about you.”

  She opened her mouth to reply, but no response came to her lips.

  Where had Elise gone? She tried to remember, and couldn’t.

  Part of her felt like she had only just slipped out of His bed an hour ago, maybe two, so that she could enjoy the early morning air with a jog. She always jogged in the mornings, didn’t she? But another part of her—one that was dwindling quickly—felt like she had been away much longer than that.

  She faintly recalled the domed roofs of Russian cathedrals, open tundra, cold lakes, high deserts with thin atmosphere, neon lights, sagebrush. Things that she never could have encountered while jogging through the garden.

  Elise shook her head, trying to clear her thoughts. “I was running.” She knew that much was true. She had been running for a very long time.

  “Why?”

  “I like to run,” she said.

  “You scared me. I thought you had left again, just when you got back.”

  “Again?” Elise echoed with a frown. Disjointed memories drifted together, clashing and crashing. They had just been eating breakfast together. Hadn’t they? Adam had brought her favorite meal to her: a piece of toast with strawberry jam, a piece of bacon, black coffee.

  Then how had it become morning again? Why had she been running? Why would she want to leave His side in the first place, even if it were only to exercise?

  A sense of unease crept over her.

  Something is wrong.

  His anger melted to sympathy.

  “You’re so confused,” Adam murmured, stroking a hand down her cheek, as though she were a dog to be petted. “Look at you. You haven’t gotten over the shock of coming back to me at all, have you? Well, it will all begin to fall into place soon. It will all make sense. We will be happy.” The last sentence was said firmly, as if to convince Himself as much as her.

  But Elise was already happy. She was home, at Motion and Dance, with the man that had saved her from… What?

  She pressed her fingers to her temples. The thoughts slipped from her skull as soon as she had them.

  “Everything will come together if you give it time,” He said soothingly.

  Elise shook her head again. “I don’t need time. I’m fine,” she said. “I’m fine.”

  “Yes, you are. Come. Let’s walk.”

  He led her outside the gate. Elise thought about protesting—she had just been running; she didn’t need to go outside again—but when they stepped through the white picket fence, it wasn’t the same jungle that she had been jogging through. Where the dirt path had been moments before, there was a street paved with white cobblestone.

  But the trail soon slipped from her memory, too, until she was certain that the cobblestone had always been there.

  “Where are we going?” Elise asked, entwining her fingers with His.

  “You will see,” He said.

  They walked down the road together, hand in hand. The ground was warm beneath her bare feet.

  The trees soon opened, revealing a city that she had somehow missed while jogging.

  Elise thought that she had never seen anything quite so beautiful before. The city was a place of marble arches and white gazebos. The buildings looked ancient, yet new.

  The jungle canopy was a shimmering ocean of green, heavy with ripe fruit; the perfume of citrus reached her on the breeze. Roofs peeked through the branches like river stones peeking from moss. There was a cliff to her right, and a waterfall misted over the side before being channeled through aqueducts around the Tree on the far end of the valley.

  The Tree itself was big enough to house another city, but even though Elise could almost summon faint memories of windows set into the trunk, she couldn’t make out any detail at that distance.

  The roads between Elise and the Tree were empty. There were no lights inside the gleaming temples, no sound of voices beyond the river’s whisper.

  Nothing lived in this city.

  Her jaw hung open as she stood on top of the hill to look down upon it. Her hands were locked tight on Adam’s arm.

  “You look surprised,” He said. “Have you already forgotten what it’s like here? You weren’t gone that long.”

  She glanced over her shoulder at the road that they had been traveling. Even though they had only seemed to walk for a few seconds, Motion and Dance was so far away. It looked so plain in comparison to the stone structures. It was just a brick box with rickety, wooden stairs on the side and a sign in front.

  “I feel…strange,” Elise said.

  Adam wasn’t listening. He walked down the road, and she felt empty the moment that his arm pulled away. He was the warmth and the sun.

  She hurried to follow. He gave her an indulgent smile that she felt rather than saw. “Where is everyone?” she asked.

  “Who?” Adam asked.

  Elise frowned as she tried to think. “Everyone. The people that live here.”

  “It’s just us,” He said. “Lilith has taken the others, so it’s finally peaceful. The way that we always wanted it to be.”

  Once He r
eminded her of that, she knew it to be truth. Lilith had taken the other inhabitants. Elise and Adam were alone. It was good, it was right—not lonely. How could she have been so confused? Why did she keep getting the details wrong?

  “That’s right. It’s perfect,” she agreed.

  The trees grew close to the path as they headed down. Elise captured a leaf between her forefinger and thumb. The texture surprised her. Although it looked plump and green, it broke off in her hand as though it were dead.

  Out of the corners of her eyes, she glimpsed the skeletons of bare trees and scorched earth.

  But when she turned her head to look at it, she saw a much more exotic world: vines the diameter of her arm, dangling from mossy branches. Bushes heavy with blackberries, raspberries, and fruit. She saw cobblestone under her toes, not dried soil. She couldn’t get a clear view of the destroyed garden, no matter how hard she tried.

  The dissonance of her senses washed over her with the hot sting of shock.

  Elise pressed a hand to her temple. Her thoughts struggled to organize themselves.

  She had been at Motion and Dance earlier, but not with Adam. She had dressed in front of the floor-to-ceiling mirrors of the dance hall and gathered her swords to join someone upstairs.

  Who had been there? She couldn’t remember his face or name now, but she knew that he had been planning to cook breakfast. They were together, finally together, and then…she had stepped outside the wards.

  Adam lifted her hand to kiss it. His lips tickled the knuckles of her hand. Her bare hand. After wearing gloves for so long, it felt like a violation. “Come, we’re meeting a visiting friend. Try to smile for him—he’ll be happy to see that we’re happy, and I want your passage through the door to be a happy occasion.”

  He drew Elise onward, entering an open building. The roof was suspended above them by a ring of white pillars. The floor was a sprawling mosaic. There were benches around the edges, and a raised dais at the center—almost like a priest’s pulpit, or a stage.

  There was a door on the opposite side of the temple. It was a rather ordinary door, like the kind leading into the bedroom at Motion and Dance. It was white, divided into four rectangular panels, and had a gold doorknob. But there was no wall to the right or left—just open air, through which she could see the rest of the gleaming white city.

  Elise’s temples throbbed harder.

  Why have a door when she could simply step around it? Where was this temple in relation to Motion and Dance? When had Reno become so beautiful?

  The questions faded from memory before she could ask Adam.

  It was only then that Elise realized that another man was waiting for them, facing the plain door with his hands folded behind his back. Elise could just make out the hazy outline of wings over his shoulders, but it must have been her imagination; as soon as she blinked, they were gone.

  Happiness radiated from Adam at the sight of the person waiting for them. “My son! You made it!”

  “Of course,” the other man replied without turning. He was studying the door as if it were the most interesting thing in the world. “I couldn’t miss this occasion. I’m eager to see your bride pass through.”

  “As am I, my friend.” Adam urged Elise forward with a hand pressed to her lower back. “That door is waiting for you. Go through. It’s long past time.”

  Dread churned in her stomach.

  She stalled. Dug her heels in.

  “Why can’t I just walk around it?” she asked.

  Adam turned an imploring look to His other companion. “Help me explain it to her. She’s so confused.”

  The angel finally turned. “Go through the door, Elise.”

  As soon as Elise saw the “friend’s” face, the illusion came crashing down around her.

  It was Metaraon.

  Elise’s mind was flooded with a torrent of memories. The temple, the trees, the door, the smell of citrus—it all wavered around her, as if she was looking at a reflection in water, and a stone had been dropped into the image.

  She was still in the garden, still trapped. She had somehow been sucked into His delusions, when she had thought that she escaped.

  Elise reacted on instinct, shoving Adam away from her. Touching Him with her bare hands made them burn.

  “No!”

  A sense of shock radiated from Adam, as if He had never been touched in violence before. “What’s wrong, my beloved?”

  Elise’s skin suddenly burned again. The hair falling around her shoulders was glossy and black, not the auburn curls that she used to have. Her skin was demon-pale. She wore slave leather, not shorts. And she definitely wasn’t home.

  “I think I’ve upset your wife,” Metaraon said. The light humor in his voice filled Elise with rage. It was so condescending, so goddamn patronizing, as if she had just done something cute.

  “Forget about him,” Adam said gently. “Just go through the door.”

  The ordinary door that led to nowhere?

  “Not a chance in Hell,” she said.

  Elise spun, trying to see through the illusion to reality. It made her forehead ache.

  The temple peeled away around her. The street wavered. The entire world stuttered between different visions: the ethereal city, a dense jungle, a dying garden, the master bedroom of Motion and Dance. The jumbled, swirling images made her nauseous.

  Through it all, Elise glimpsed the gate that she had tried to escape through before. It loomed just outside the temple, crackling with white light.

  She broke free of Adam and Metaraon, lunging toward the gate.

  The instant that she took the first step, she could see the garden as it truly was. She could feel the cherubim wheeling through the air, still circling, still watching for her. And she could feel His fury building as she tried to run.

  “Elise!” He shouted, and it pierced straight to her heart. He sounded so disappointed.

  “I’ll get her,” Metaraon said. His voice boomed through Elise’s mind.

  She crossed the road in three steps and flung herself into the gate again.

  Elise emerged from the other side of the gate and hit the ground running.

  Her boots connected with grass, and she threw herself into motion without waiting to see if the interdimensional shift would make her sick. She didn’t even stop to see where she had arrived—Metaraon and the cherubim wouldn’t be far behind her, which meant that He wouldn’t be far behind, either.

  There was no time to do anything but run.

  Arms pumping at her sides, she flew through the dark jungle. Branches scraped at her arms and face. Elise swatted them aside without stopping.

  There was grass beneath her feet. It crunched lightly with each step, as if with the fullness of spring. It wasn’t the tundra outside Oymyakon, where Elise had expected to emerge. It was much too warm here, at least seventy degrees. She sweated inside the slave leather corset.

  There were no stars, no sun, and no moon to reflect the sun’s light. She tried to let her flesh unravel and vanish into the sanctity of the darkness. It should have been easy. Indeed, it had been harder for her to hold her shape since being reborn in Yatam’s likeness. But even though the night was all but solid against her body, she couldn’t seem to let herself go.

  She slowed, staring into the night with confusion. There was no sense of angels behind her anymore.

  Elise stretched out her senses for any sign of her pursuers, and felt nothing.

  She was alone.

  If she hadn’t reappeared in Oymyakon, then where was she? And why couldn’t she unleash the darkness?

  She spanned her fingers over the trunk of the nearest tree. It was a young, slender tree, barely twice her height.

  Puckered buds dotted the branches. Elise plucked one free, shredding the leaves to find the petals underneath. They were white, with delicate red stamen: an apple blossom. It was indistinguishable from any kind of apple tree she might have found on the North American continent, so it didn’t tell he
r much about where the gate had dropped her off. She flicked the blossom to the ground.

  Now that she was back on Earth, Elise should have been able to feel James, just like she should have showed up in Oymyakon. Neither of these had happened. What the hell had gone wrong?

  The sound of rustling reached her ears.

  Elise dropped to a crouch and slunk through the trees.

  A light appeared, limning the leaves in front of her with a hazy green glow. It was warm on her skin, but not painful, so it wasn’t sunlight. It also wasn’t the gray void outside the garden.

  As she got closer to the light, time seemed to slow. It took forever for her hand to reach forward, press down on the branch, and move it out of her way.

  Piece by piece, a wide expanse of grass appeared. In the center of the clearing stood a tiny sapling. It was barely more than a waist-high sprout, with creepers climbing its pale white trunk. The sapling was the source of the light she had seen. It had its own internal glow, as if filled with swirling fireflies.

  She was shocked to realize that it was growing as she watched, fresh leaves spreading in the night air and roots slithering deeper into dirt.

  Even as Elise moved more slowly, the tree moved in accelerated time, as if fast-forwarded.

  And there was a man standing beside it.

  It made Elise’s eyes ache and her skin crawl to look upon him. He had wide shoulders, and the muscular lines of his back curved down to narrow hips, a round posterior, strong thighs.

  The brush of hair covering his legs was tawny brown. His feet were as bare as the rest of him, and dirty, as though he had been walking through this lightless forest for weeks without clothing or shelter. His skin was a warm shade of brown, darker than hers, and made darker still by exposure to a sun that seemed to have gone missing. Dark brown hair fell over his shoulders, shielding the curve of his face from her.

  But Elise didn’t need to see the man’s face. She had seen that back before, and she recognized the muscular slope of His shoulders. And she knew the hands best of all. They had reached out to her in a thousand dreams, stretching forward to take her hand, drawing her back into the nightmare that she had barely survived as a teenager.