by Joey W. Hill
Wasn’t that Maddock’s whole point, about why they were doing this? The underlying philosophy he hadn’t yet shared with her, the track that had set up the train that had brought him here?
Whether she knew it or not, she was on far surer footing than he was with his past. Yeah, the grandson and grandmother thing was pretty awful, but one person, alone and pretty constantly under attack, never having had the resources, beyond the voices in her own head, to grapple with being raped, mutated and exiled? A trauma counselor would barely blink over the incident, identifying it as the inevitable result of hypervigilance, overstressed survival instincts and unresolved rage that blurred lines of morality. As he’d already deduced for himself, the amazing thing was how much of herself she had held onto, not how much she’d lost.
She’d acted to protect herself from the others who’d come to harm her. Though she claimed she “could have hidden,” her offensive tactics had been the better strategy. Her reputation as a force to be feared had likely reduced the number of incursions she’d had to face. And if more had come, the chances that one of them would have succeeded where the others failed would have increased exponentially. Selfish or not, he was glad she’d become so good at scaring the shit out of the local populace.
He went to find her, which meant he went to do things that might draw her to him. Hanging out with the goats, planting some of those new seeds in one of her gardens. He twisted a branch into a clothes hanger and left her new dress in her little garden shed, the sheer blue fabric fluttering in the breeze before he latched the door. It was a halter-backed sheath thing with sparkles he thought would look incredible on her. He hoped she would see it sooner rather than later so it would help her smile.
After that, he used his ladder to climb back up the smaller cliff where he’d first tested it. Then he lay back to watch the clouds scudding across the sky.
He wasn’t sure if she’d come to him or not, but eventually she did. He heard her land behind him, but she didn’t come closer, so he suspected she’d taken a seat back there, out of view but not out of range.
They didn’t say anything for a while. She was drawing something from his company. Solace or comfort, he hoped. He remembered a day Lot had taken him out fishing on a boat. They really didn’t do much fishing. JP eventually just laid down in the rocking boat and stared up at the sky while Lot fished and said…nothing. Asked for nothing, but gave a lot in the silence. Acceptance, understanding.
He did that, but in time, he found the words came. Just as they had that day. He’d spoken to Lot about things he’d done that would be far beyond the counselor’s understanding or capabilities to answer. But Lot could. So maybe he could do the same for her.
“Time is going to help you manage it better,” JP told her. “But it will never go away. Something like that, it’s not supposed to.”
He took a breath and sat up, locking his hands around his knees as he stared out at the ocean through the trees. “I told you I did covert ops work. Everything I promised you that I’d never do to you—betray you, lie to you, harm you—that was part of my job description. I never did to any woman what Ukrit did, but the things I did…there isn’t a jury in the world that wouldn’t claim some of what I did was just as bad.
“It was considered ‘okay’ because it was sanctioned, but I think that was because they really didn’t want to think about what went into the results they wanted. They didn’t even want me to lay it out in reports. If I got too detailed, my handler would tear it up and tell me to do it again. Or write it up as a summary with all that dropped out of it. ‘It’s a report, not a confessional, JP. You did the job, let it go. Go get laid.’”
He shook his head. “He was right, but it was also wrong. Those of us who face violent situations, there’s this moment. It’s not always the first kill. It’s something you do to someone else that’s so different from how you ever imagined yourself being or doing, it changes your view of yourself forever. You know you’ll never get that other version back.”
He cleared his throat. “I told you I got into it because I thought I was going to be a big hero, save the world. Well, even if I had saved the world, there’s no way I’d ever look into a mirror and think of myself as a hero, no matter how many other people tried to tell me otherwise.
“So yeah, you’re right. I can’t tell you that it’s all okay, what you’ve done or become. I can only tell you that I look at you and I see someone that makes me feel okay. You’re someone I want to be around, who I think is an incredibly strong person who’s had to deal with a lot of shit no one should, especially not by herself. Some of us never figure out how to recreate ourselves, take what we are and what we’ve become and make it into something we can live with.”
He shifted so she could see his profile, the closest he could get to looking toward her. “You did, my lady. You could have turned me to stone the same way. You could have let that darkness take you completely. You didn’t. You’ve learned the consequences of giving yourself over to it in one of the hardest ways possible. And that’s the difference between someone who’s evil and someone who isn’t. If you bury regret, if you don’t use guilt to find a better version of yourself, you don’t deserve or get anything but pain. But you didn’t do that.”
“I cannot make amends to the dead,” she said uncertainly. She wanted to believe him. In her voice, he heard the poignant plea of a teenager who’d never thought she’d be facing such a dilemma, who wished things could be different. He also heard the mature woman who knew she had to carry on, grapple with it the best way she could.
“If one believes that the dead are beyond cares, are in a world where all is forgiven and they hold onto no fear or anger, then one expects their wish would be that the person who took their lives finds redemption, makes amends and finds their way out of darkness. We think we have to flagellate ourselves with our crimes forever, but I believe a truly penitent soul must do even worse than that.
“We have to live our lives, embrace every gift fully, specifically because we’ve deprived someone else of the chance to do so. That’s why every laugh you experience will carry weight, and moments of joy will come with bittersweet sorrow. But it’s life, and we must live it, because otherwise nothing changes and the darkness wins. It’s punishment and reward both.”
Seeing if she was ready to be touched, he closed his eyes and turned around, reaching out toward her. During the conversation she’d come close enough he could stroke a lock of her hair back from her face. She didn’t move away, though she didn’t lean into his touch either.
“Thank you for the dress,” she said. “It is very pretty. I did not win our match, though.”
“Doesn’t matter. It’s a gift.”
She paused for another of those protracted silences. “I must show you something,” she said at length. “If I am truly to believe why you are here and what you want to give me, I need to know you see every dark corner, John Pierce.”
“I’m good at bringing light, my lady. I don’t fear your darkness.”
She flew him back up to her tower, as he thought of it in his mind. She carried him under the arms, uncomfortable but the most practical way to do it. He could tell picking up his two hundred plus pounds of muscle took some effort, but she managed it impressively, and the flight was much shorter than the climb he’d attempted. She deposited him on level ground and they walked from there. She’d had him don the mask. The one advantage to it was she held his hand to help him navigate the unfamiliar terrain past the boundary of her garden she’d allowed him to see.
At length, she moved behind him. “You can take off the blindfold now, but do not face me. I will walk behind you and explain what you are seeing.”
“All right.” When he removed it, he saw they were on that twisting path that led away from the landscaped area he’d already seen. Whereas the snakes had guarded the passage before, there were none there now, apparently heeding their mistress’s bidding to allow him to pass.
She’d cre
ated a long, cool arbor, a thick lacing of branches that screened out the sun as the forest did at lower elevations. Rocks and broken logs placed along it created places to sit in the shade. He wondered if she sat here often, as there was a peacefulness to it, a sense of sanctuary. As he emerged from the tunnel, a tangle of exotic plants, trees and flowers spread out before him, but not as random as they appeared at first glance. It reminded him of coming upon ruins in South America where the foliage had taken over the broken rock, enhancing the haunting beauty of the odd shapes.
There was stone here, but all of it wasn’t rubble. He was looking at a garden full of people. For a moment, he could imagine he was at a sculpture garden, like he’d seen in New Orleans or Litchfield, South Carolina, thanks to one of his subs who was an art enthusiast.
But these weren’t the creations of an artist up to his or her elbows in sculpting medium. The reason these sculptures looked so lifelike, possessing expressions so poignant their eyes were difficult to meet, was because their life had died captured inside the stone.
These were her creations. Her victims, to her way of thinking. Most of them he knew had come against her, but he was mindful of her words. She would be aware to the exact number how many she believed could have been spared or driven away.
“They look different than I expected them to look.” He’d assumed they’d all have that frozen look of horror she’d described. Instead, it was as if a divine hand had passed over a group of people ambling about a garden and captured them forever in the tranquil poses he saw.
“Yes. The temple of Athena…it is closely guarded knowledge, but part of what priestesses are taught there is spell craft. It was why Klotho’s suggestion to help me in the way she did didn’t come as a surprise. My abilities are far more limited, compared to Klotho. She had true magical ability, whereas I was what she called a kitchen witch, able to follow a recipe.” She made a self-deprecating noise. “But she said I had a special aptitude for that, for figuring out even more about a ‘recipe’ than I was taught.”
Hmm. That was a bit of knowledge that hadn’t made it into anything they’d found out about the temple of Athena. A pretty damn closely guarded secret, indeed.
“So there came a time I experimented with the stone, to see if I could reverse the process. I thought if I could figure it out, I could reverse it quickly enough to save a life…” She paused, and he knew she was thinking of the grandson. “Unfortunately, I never found a way to do that. But I did find I could soften the stone and make it malleable, but not like flesh. More like clay, and the softening was temporary. However, it helped me carry them up here and change how they looked when they died. I tried to make some of them appear…at peace, as if by doing it to their outside I could make it true. Though I suspect it was only to ease my own guilt.”
“It was not a bad thought, my lady. Many people believe how you treat the body in death eases the passage to the afterlife.”
He wandered through them. It was both a sobering and wondrous sight. He saw many young men, likely challenged to come to the island to try and slay “the Gorgon” as a test of manhood. To become a hero. There were also older, seasoned warriors, evidence of organized campaigns against her, possibly financed by a warlord or king hoping to give himself additional political clout.
He paused by two of the young men who appeared to be wrestling, or…he bent closer. It looked like one was lifting the back of the tunic of the other as he started to go down on his knees. She shifted behind him.
“The night before they came after me, these two slipped off into the trees to enjoy one another. I’d never seen two men together like that. So when I brought them up here, I thought they would like remembering that moment.”
“Hmm.” They moved onward. There was only one woman, the elderly grandmother she’d told him about. Medusa had put her and her grandson in a circle of feathery plants and bright flowers. The grandmother was sitting on a rock while her grandson sat at her feet, leaning against her leg, his arm raised and a remarkably animated look upon his face.
“I imagine him telling her about his day, or a girl he favors.”
“That’s nice,” he said sincerely. “So their clothes turn to stone with them?”
“Yes. I’m not sure why. I think it’s because anything in direct contact with them turns to stone, for a certain range. For instance, the ground beneath their feet turns, but the effect stops less than a hand span from them. This soldier over here, you see he was holding a spear, but only part of the shaft turned.”
A foot above and below the soldier’s grip remained polished wood, though it was showing signs of weathering. JP’s gaze slid up to the steel tip. “Have they ever been able to wound you, my lady?”
“Once or twice. That soldier there”—she nodded toward one who looked like a veteran warrior—“flung his spear with strength and accuracy. It went through my waist.”
John reached back. “Show me where.”
She drew close, took his hand and tucked it beneath her belt, fastened loosely enough his fingertips could slide over a scar above her hip bone. “It gave me a fever, but I know herbs to draw out infection. I was very weak for several days, then it healed.”
He shifted his grip to hold onto a handful of the skirt and belt and bring her closer, so her thigh brushed the back of his. “I’m not sorry he’s dead,” he said, his gaze on the soldier’s face.
“I expect they are told the stories you had heard,” she said neutrally. “I was an enemy to be eliminated before I caused unimaginable harm. And when the time came, I was attacking his fellow soldiers. In such situations, the motives become less important than protecting your comrades in arms. Right?”
He couldn’t argue with that, understanding it all too well. Sometimes protecting the person at your side or back became all that made sense anymore.
He remembered when he and Lot had come face-to-face in that firefight. Lot had had no proof that JP was telling the truth about being with the DEA, but he knew JP wanted to protect the kid, and that was all that was needed to make getting him out of there the most important thing to both men.
She sighed. “I walk through this garden and I study their faces. I see fathers and sons, brothers and friends. Husbands. They were more than this; it is sad to me that they ended their lives, ended all that they were to others, doing this.
“Those who were transformed when they were sweating look like slick wet rock, so smooth and glistening.” Her arm extended past his elbow to stroke the forearm of one of the soldiers, then withdrew again.
“As the rock wears down, the expressions change, becoming more muted and mysterious. Eventually they all dissolve and return to dust. Some are taking less time, while others last and last.”
"Have you ever broken one apart? To see what was inside?” He didn’t intend to be macabre or disrespectful, but he was curious, since she’d done her own explorations of the nature of what she’d created.
Her voice moved to his right, lower, as if she'd sunk down on a bench. "Yes, I have broken them apart, but not to do that. I did it to remove them from my island and drop them into the sea. I try not to look too closely when I do it, because the insides are…different colors. Like blood and flesh. It is better if I can hold onto the belief that they are like any other statue, more stone on the inside, instead of anything…else."
“Why did you bring these here? Instead of leaving them all on the beach like the ships or dropping them in the ocean.”
She was silent long enough he wasn’t certain she’d answer. He would have apologized for prying, but he sensed it was best for him to keep pushing, to help her feel that he’d earned the right to ask, whether or not that was true.
“I don’t know,” she said. “For the grandmother and her grandson, it was remorse. I couldn’t disrespect them by putting them into the sea like that. For the others…maybe I was trying to understand them better. Maybe it was a pathetic desire for human company, no matter how inanimate. That likely sounds insane.�
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“We’re social creatures. You may have strong bonds with your snakes and other creatures here, but you grew up interacting with people. You miss their company. It’s normal.”
“I wish I didn’t. I wish I never wanted to be around another human being again. It would be easier.”
“Life isn’t generally designed to be easy. And I’m glad you still have the desire, my lady.” He reached out. “Will you come back over here?”
“For what purpose?” But she came, and when she allowed him to capture her wrist, he drew her hand forward under his arm and banded it around his waist and chest. She was easier about it this time and leaned against him, propping her hip against his buttock. She laid her cheek on his bare back. Two of the snakes slid over his shoulder, one curling around his biceps while the other nuzzled his nape. He quelled his reaction to the ticklish sensation, focusing instead on the feel of her fingers beneath his grip as he stroked them, tracing the claws.
“Some sins feel like they will never be forgiven, my lady. And while we know deep in our souls some sins never should be forgiven, forgiveness is something that cleans not only one heart, but many.” He’d seen that first hand with the subs he’d helped, when he’d given himself enough breathing room to focus on their needs instead of his past garbage.
“Good or bad, everybody’s just trying to figure out what life’s about and how to take care of what matters most to them.” He’d realized the size of that never changed, and that had become a fixed point in his universe. “It boils down to what’s right in front of you and what’s inside you.”
Pressing her forehead against his shoulder blades, she lifted and let it drop against him in a little bump of contact. “You are right in front of me, John Pierce.”
“I was hoping you’d notice that. Will you show me more? Tell me what you know about the people here?”
He deliberately changed the subject before the intimacy became too unnerving for her. She moved back from him without comment, though he hoped he wasn’t imagining her reluctance to break the contact. As she directed him forward through the garden, she explained each statue to him. How that person had come to the island, what she’d been able to glean of their purpose and background from eavesdropping on their position, studying their actions covertly and exploring the vessels on which they’d come. She’d acquired decent deductive reasoning and intel skills from such exercises.
