Book of the Just

by Dana Chamblee Carpenter

  “She looks gross,” Luc said.

  His father chuckled. “Yes, but that will heal.”

  “But she would still be sad.”

  “Her heart would be broken.”

  “Can that heal, too?”

  “Sometimes. But it’s much harder.”

  Luc stood on tiptoe to press his face close to Mouse’s. Her eyes were open and vacant. “She has pretty eyes.”

  “Yes, she does.”

  “Is she nice?”

  His father knelt beside him, his arm draped over the small shoulders. “I think you would like her very much.”

  “Is that why you brought her here?”

  “Yes. And she can teach you things I can’t.”

  “Like what?”

  “Human things.”

  “Why would I want to learn those?”

  “Because you are also human.”

  “But you’re not. How am I?”

  “Your mother was human.”

  “I think I remember her. She screamed a lot.” He clasped his hands behind his back and looked over at his father. “Is human a good thing?”

  “It’s neither good nor bad, Luc. It’s just what you are.”

  The boy squinted at dead Mouse. “And she is also human, like me?”

  “Yes. The two of you are very special. There are none other like you.”

  “And she can teach me things?”

  “Yes.”

  “Then I don’t want her to stay dead, Father.”

  “The holes are gone,” Luc said. “It’s been forever.”

  “Yes.”

  “How long is forever, Father?”

  “In this case, about two months.”

  “When will she wake up?”

  “It won’t be much longer.”

  “I want her to play.”

  “You must remember that she will be very sad and maybe very angry, so she may not want to play at first.”

  “Why will she be angry?”

  “She doesn’t like me very much.”

  “Why?”

  “I was a little mean to her the last time we met.”

  The boy wondered what it would be like if his father were mean to him. He shivered a little and didn’t want to think about that anymore. Instead, he said, “She will be sad because her heart is broken like her body was?”

  “That’s right.”

  Luc blew out a sigh. “But you said it takes even longer for a heart to heal than a body,” he whined. “I’m tired of waiting.” He scowled and crossed his arms. “I think you’re wrong. I think she’ll be all better when she meets me.”

  “Why?”

  “Because I want her to be.”

  “I see.”

  “And because I’m pretty. She’s pretty again now, too. Just like you said.”

  “You are pretty.”

  “Were you pretty once, Father?”

  “Yes, I was.”

  Luc studied his father’s disfigured face. “Will I look like you when I grow up?”

  “Look at your sister, Luc.” He pointed to where Mouse still lay in the same position, in the same bloody clothes that now reeked of rot. They had closed her eyes, and the wounds had healed. She looked like she was sleeping. “She’s all grown up. Did you know she’s more than seven hundred years old?”

  Luc leaned toward his sister’s face with wonder-filled eyes. He ran his small hand gently over her cheek. “She’s soft,” he said as he turned and smiled at his father.

  “Yes. And you will be like her. I’m counting on it.” He sighed, full of hope. “A long time ago, I was pretty, too, like you and your sister. And then I . . . I had an accident that scarred me and made me look like this.”

  Worry creased the little forehead. “I might have an accident, too.”

  His father’s face grew grim as he stared at his son while images of what might be eroded his hopes. The whole point of the tedious journey into parenthood had been to give himself the same advantage his adversary had claimed—an ally that could bridge the gap between the divine and human, someone in touch with his own humanity, someone who could use that shared humanity to compel the masses, to command an endless army of converts. What the boy said held some truth. If Luc grew to be just like his father, would not the same weakness, the same limitations, and perhaps the same fate cling to him?

  And then he looked back to his sleeping daughter, and he hung his hopes on her. Mouse would make Luc more than just his father’s son. He ran his fingers softly across her lips. “I think your sister will help us keep you safe,” he answered Luc.

  “I wish she would wake up.”

  “Me, too.”

  “You must eat something, Mouse.”

  It wasn’t the first time her father had visited her since she’d woken, but she had no concept of time here—not when it was day, nor when it was night. Not that it mattered to her, anyway.

  She lay on the floor against the back wall of the circular room. It was all white and empty but for the table in the center. She was curled around her backpack, her face resting against a small, unzipped section at the top. The air inside the bag still smelled like Angelo and their life at the outstation.

  “It has been months, Mouse. He’s gone. Accept it and move on.”

  Mouse slowly pushed herself up. Her knees bulged out from her emaciated legs like burls on a spindly tree. “Get out.” They were the only words she’d spoken. Her body had come back to life, but the rest of her remained dead to the world.

  “You’ve been through this before, after Marchfeld. Should I bring you paper and inks? Set you a task where you can work out your guilt for not calling me soon enough, for not using your power, for letting yet another of your beloveds die?” He was trying to trigger her temper, anything to evoke a reaction from her, anything that might give spark to a renewed life. Nothing he’d tried had worked so far.

  She pulled the backpack closer, lay down on her other side, and curled up around it once more.

  “Get out,” she said.

  “Maybe we should kill her after all,” Luc said.

  “You think so?”

  “She’s been like this forever. If she can’t play, I don’t want her.”

  “You must be patient, Luc.”

  “You said I don’t have to do anything I don’t want to do.”

  “Yes. But sometimes we have to be patient to get what we want.”

  “How much longer?”

  “I don’t know. She won’t listen to me.”

  “I’d make her listen.”

  His father looked down at him from where they stood near the door to Mouse’s chamber. “Do you want to meet her?”

  Luc crossed one leg behind the other and swung his arms side to side. “I’m scared of her, Father.”

  “Why?”

  “She never smiles. She only stares. She looks mean.”

  “She’s not.”

  “She won’t hurt me?”

  “Not ever.” An unfamiliar longing pulled at his chest, but he couldn’t understand it and so smothered it with his expectations. “She will love you.”

  Luc put his foot down and finally said, “Okay, Father. Will you go with me?”

  “I think it’s better if you go alone. She’s mad at me.”

  “Because of when you were mean to her before on that mountain?”

  “Megiddo? Yes, but I think she also blames me for what happened to her friend.”

  “Oh. Was that your fault?”

  “Not really.”

  Luc waited just a moment more, then stepped forward and through the door. He turned and walked around the curve of the wall, his hand skimming its surface as he took oversized steps toward Mouse.

  “Hello!”

  She opened her eyes but didn’t move.

  He came around and crouched in front of her face. “I’m Luc.” He reached out and put his hand on her forehead. “I’m your brother.”

  She met his gaze. His eyes were big and green, like hers. />
  “I want you to play.”

  Mouse sat up, leaning heavily against the wall, her breath fast and shallow from the exertion. Her thin, dehydrated skin stretched taut over her bones as she spoke. “Go away, please, Luc.”

  He sat down criss-cross applesauce in front of her, their knees almost touching.

  “You’re my sister. My sister Mouse. And I want you to get better so you can play with me. I’m bored. Father says you know all sorts of games. He says I would like you. But right now you are scary and gross.” He pinched his nose. “And you smell bad.”

  “I don’t want to play, Luc.”

  “Because you’re sad? Because your friend is gone?”

  Mouse didn’t answer.

  “Father says you’re also mad. Are you more mad or sad?” His voice was too loud for the room.

  Mouse turned her face up to look at the dark silhouette of her father standing just beyond the door. “Mad is easier than sad.”

  “Is it? I’ve been mad once. I didn’t like it. I don’t think I’ve ever been sad. I mostly get what I want.”

  “Lucky boy.”

  “I suppose.” The boy scowled. “You aren’t lucky though.”

  “No.”

  “Father told me about the guns and the helicopters and the blood and the demons that were eating people out in the desert.” His eyes grew wide. “He said you and your friend were all shot up and then you called for him. He came, just like you asked.”

  “Did he?”

  “Yup. He saved you. He picked you up and wrapped you in his cloak and brought you home. But he thinks you’re mad at him, so he won’t come talk to you now.”

  “I don’t want to talk. I just want to be left alone.”

  “Are you mad at him?”

  “Yes.”

  “But you can’t be!”

  “Yes, I can.”

  “No, you can’t! He didn’t do anything to your friend! Father came when you called. He saved you.”

  Luc was getting angry, but Mouse didn’t care. “It happened because of him.” She sounded like a machine.

  “That’s not true! That’s stupid! You should be mad at the people who did it! That’s what I would do. I’d make them sorry for what they did.”

  Mouse leaned her head back against the wall and closed her eyes. Something lurking in the dark abyss of her started to wake. Like a thirsty animal coming to a watering hole, it drank in Luc’s words.

  I’d make them sorry for what they did.

  “What’s your friend’s name?” he asked.

  “Angelo.” Mouse waited for the paralyzing grief to rise again, but the words—make them sorry—filled her up with a new purpose and left no room for anything else.

  “Angelo’s a real name . . . right?”

  “How old are you, Luc?”

  The boy didn’t look like just a boy. He seemed pinched, his shoulders hunched, his face unnaturally serious except for an unnerving spark of curiosity—like he’d be willing to do anything to get the answers he wanted.

  “I don’t know,” he said. “I’ll live forever. What does it matter how old I am?”

  “You’re very smart.”

  “I know.” He sat up taller, smiling. “My father told me I have gifts.”

  Mouse snapped her head up again to look at her father, who had now come into the room. “Yeah? Me, too.”

  “Oh? What can you do?” Luc challenged.

  “You first,” she said.

  “I can hear everything and see everything and I know things and . . . I never forget.” His brow furrowed.

  “Me, too.”

  “It’s like I’m a big empty hole sucking up everything around me. But, Mouse?”

  “Yes?”

  “I don’t understand most of it. Do you?”

  “Not always.” She felt a tiny flicker of pity for the boy but not enough to escape her apathy.

  “I can also make people do things.” He picked at a piece of skin on his thumbnail. “I told my nanny once to—”

  “That’s enough, Luc.” Her father put a plate of food on the stone table in the center of the room. “Your sister needs to eat and get her strength back.”

  “He’s further along with his . . . gifts than I was at his age. Your doing?” she asked her father.

  He shrugged. “He learns quickly.”

  “Father said you could teach me things he can’t,” Luc added.

  “Why should I do anything for you?” Mouse asked.

  Luc sucked in an angry breath, but calmed when he saw that his sister was speaking to their father.

  “I saved you,” their father answered.

  “But not Angelo.”

  “You called me too late.”

  She swallowed. “You killed me at Megiddo,” she said, but with no hint of accusation, no touch of feeling at all. She felt like dead wood.

  “I left you dying. I didn’t kill you,” he replied.

  “First lesson, Luc. Never trust our father.”

  “Why?”

  “He will only ever tell you the part of the truth he wants you to hear.”

  “Why?”

  “He likes the power it gives him. But if you learn to ask just the right questions and listen very hard, you can hear when he’s hiding something.” Mouse let her head drop back against the wall. “Ask him if he knew I would come back to life when he left me at Megiddo.”

  “Father, did you?”

  “I guessed. That’s as good as knowing for us, isn’t it?” He chuckled.

  “Did you hear it, Luc?” Mouse asked.

  “I think so. Can we try again?”

  “Sure. Ask him why he brought me here.”

  “Father, why did you—”

  “Because you needed me. And I’m your father, so I came.”

  “I heard it that time! For sure!” Luc said excitedly.

  “Good boy,” Mouse replied, indifferent. “The trick is to figure out what he’s hiding.”

  Luc threw his arms around Mouse. “I like you! Will you teach me more?”

  She sat limp in the circle of his small arms. “Sure,” she answered and then turned to her father. “But I have something I need to do, and I need our father to teach me a few tricks, as well.”

  “What do you have to do?” Luc asked, already impatient.

  “What you told me I should do—make those people sorry for what they did.” She reached for her father’s outstretched hand. “Will you help me?”

  Her father pulled her up and caught her around the waist when she faltered. “I’ve been waiting seven hundred years for you to ask.”

  CHAPTER TEN

  Why don’t you stay here with Luc and let me go? It would be much easier and faster,” he said, days later, as Mouse tugged a cloak around her shoulders. He had made it for her, tearing a piece from his own black cloak and shaking it once with a snap, like a magician on a stage. A full cloak had grown from the piece of cloth in his hand. It looked just like his, but smaller, tailored precisely to Mouse’s measurements.

  “I told you,” Mouse answered blankly. “I have to do this myself, and I want to do it alone. All I need you to do is teach me your trick.”

  “Fine,” he sighed. “Let’s try again. Picture the place you want to be.”

  Mouse took up the edge of her new cloak and wrapped it around herself, filling her mind with the image of where she wanted to go. She opened her eyes.

  Her father was leaning against the wall, his arms crossed, shaking his head.

  Mouse tossed the cloak back angrily. Anger seemed to be the only emotion she could feel anymore, but it was different than any anger she’d felt before—this was detached, devoid of the other emotions that often polluted her wrath. There was no sorrow or guilt. This anger was pure and ruthless, and she had given herself to it. She dressed in black, which she had decided was the color of rage. Red was too bright. Black ate everything.

  “What place are you thinking of?” her father asked.

  But she did
n’t have to answer. He sighed again. “Going there is fine, but it can’t be about him. This power is driven only by your want. Any other emotion weakens it.”

  He’d been trying to teach her the skill of folding herself in her cloak to travel the dark planes between space and time. It would give her the power to go where she wanted, when she wanted, like her father. Learning this was the first step in her plan.

  “Rest for a moment and then try again,” he said. “And remember, it’s about you, not him.”

  Mouse pulled herself up to the table in the white marble room, her legs dangling in the dark of the hanging cloak. “Why don’t you wear your human face around Luc?” she asked, wanting to change the subject. She did not care to talk about Angelo with her father.

  “I want my son to know me as I am. This—” He motioned to his demonic form, burn scars twisting his skin and muscles, knobs jutting out beneath his shoulder blades where his wings had once been, making him appear hunchbacked. “This is all he’s ever known, so he is not afraid. I’d like at least one of my children to not be afraid of me.”

  “I’m not afraid of you.”

  “You were.”

  “Not anymore.”

  He smiled. “I don’t think you are afraid of anything anymore. Not even of losing that soul you fought so hard to prove you had.”

  She held his gaze placidly. No bait would draw her out. She fingered the bone shard strapped to her thigh and rationed her rage for the vengeance she meant to claim. Nothing else mattered. “Have you noticed how much Luc looks like you?”

  “That’s as it should be, isn’t it? He’s my son.”

  “I don’t mean his features. I mean how he holds himself.” Mouse saw the flicker of wounded temper in her father’s eyes, but she couldn’t summon enough empathy to care. “You’ve said you want him to be normal, to understand his humanity. You want me to teach him how to accept himself as he is, as both human and not.”

  “And?”

  “Have you looked at him?” She pointed toward the hall where Luc sat reading. “He’s freakish. His shoulders are hunched like yours are now. He even moves like you—pinched and twisted.”

  Her father shoved himself away from the table.

  “Your son is more demon than boy,” Mouse continued.

  Anger rolled off him as he took a step toward her, but then he spun back to the door and leaned against the frame, watching Luc for a few minutes. He bowed his head and spoke softly over his shoulder. “Fix it then.”