The rocks above her shifted again, which prompted her to push her chair back a few inches, as if that would do any good. She ought to go upstairs to ask Mom for help, but she couldn’t go there now, where she would have to face her terrible handiwork. Just a few more minutes, she told herself. A few more minutes and then she could vanish back to Rampart City to cower in the sub-subbasement of the Plaine Museum—or the Sanctuary as Louise’s new friend called it.
She scrolled through the index Mom had painstakingly assembled over the years. There wasn’t anything in here about Isis or the Final Reckoning that she didn’t already know from Marlin or what she’d seen with her own eyes. She knew better than anyone other than Aggie or Emma Earl how Isis when at full strength could bend reality to suit her whims, which included the minds of those mortals not strong enough to resist, people like Detective Murdoch or Tim Cooper.
At the end of the list, Renee came to something she had never heard before, not even at Milton: Wild Magic. Renee clicked on the term to find a partial file Mom had started to put together a few years ago but not finished. The file didn’t contain ingredients or chants; instead, it contained what seemed to be interviews. The subjects of these interviews had bizarre names like Malweth and Nek. Most of what they said Renee couldn’t understand because Mom hadn’t been able to translate. Mom had left a note in the file: “Need Emma’s help on this. Bring to her on next trip back. Too dangerous for her on third floor.” Dr. Earl knew dozens of languages and while Renee doubted she knew any of these, Louise’s mother could probably help decode the linguistics.
The reference to the third floor gave Renee pause. She wasn’t nearly as familiar with the archives as Mom, but she’d never heard of a third floor before, only this main floor and the vault. Had Mom hidden something from her? She could easily vanish herself to find out, but didn’t. Not only because she didn’t want to confront the chaos she had caused but also because she didn’t think Mom would be truthful in any case. Mom wouldn’t even let her go into the vault, so why would she let Renee go deeper?
The only way was to go in and find out for herself. Renee stood up and took another deep breath to try to work up some courage. When this failed, she thought of Aggie in the high chair in Dan Dreyfus’s house, Isis’s plaything. Renee’s fists clenched and she marched down the path to the vault.
While not truly psychic, she did have what she thought of as “hunches.” These were what she relied on when she’d taken an exam at Milton or looked for a date for Louise at a bar like the Brass Drum. So far they had been accurate at least ninety-five percent of the time; a couple times she had failed Louise in the matchmaking department because the man in question was so good at lying to himself she hadn’t seen his shortcomings. The moment she saw the “Wild Magic” on the screen, she felt another of those hunches.
The vault door opened easily enough thanks to an open sesame spell. At first she didn’t see anything dangerous, just a path that led down to a bunch of shelves. It wasn’t until she neared the shelves with their crystal-capped pigeonholes that she understood why Mom hadn’t let her come down here.
When she was seven she had volunteered at the animal shelter as part of a school project. The spells in their pigeonholes reminded her of those animals in the way they threw themselves against the crystal caps, trying to break out and reach her. Much as the animals wanted to escape their cages to be free, the spells wanted to break loose so they could be used. Though the spells were only scrolls of paper, they still made an ominous cracking sound as they hurled themselves into the caps.
The effect only became worse the deeper she went down the path. At a couple of spots she saw broken caps and braced for a spell to fling itself at her. When she looked closer, she realized these caps had been broken some time ago, the pieces long since swept away. Those spells would be lost forever, unable to be replaced unless someone found or wrote another copy.
She quickened her pace until she finally reached a dead end. Renee stared at the wall in her path for a moment and thought back to the sub-subbasement of the Sanctuary. Louise’s mother had installed a holographic illusion of a wall to keep anyone who stumbled into the sub-subbasement by mistake out of the Sanctuary. Renee put a hand to the wall and felt solid rock, but another hunch told her there was something beyond this.
She took a step forward.
***
About the last thing Renee expected to find when she stepped into the wall was a jungle on the other side. Mostly she had expected to break her nose on solid rock. At best she thought she’d find another limestone cavern. While not nearly as good of a student as Louise, Renee nonetheless knew that Ireland didn’t have any jungles, especially not underground.
Despite these facts, she couldn’t deny she stood on a path of stomped-down leaves from trees several stories tall that blocked all but a few spots of light. She also couldn’t deny the humidity that clung to her dress or the smell of rotten flesh, probably from an animal left to die by some predator. Renee shivered as she imagined boa constrictors, anacondas, and other snakes that were at least twice as big as her, if not much more. At Milton she had nearly failed her potions training because she refused to touch a live cobra to tease venom from its mouth; she had managed to pass only when she substituted a dead snake when Ms. Belasana wasn’t looking.
She didn’t hear a hiss that might indicate a snake nearby, but she doubted she would be able to hear one over the shrieks of birds and the screeches of what were probably monkeys. At least she hoped they were birds and monkeys and not enormous insects or dinosaurs. Renee turned back to see the wall of the archives gone. Was she trapped here?
She put a hand to her head as she felt a psychic tremor. Though she didn’t actually hear anyone speak, she could feel a woman’s voice whisper, “Come to me, little one.”
“How?” she asked aloud. In response, she saw a path through the jungle, to a clearing in the trees. Renee closed her eyes and trusted the vision to guide her feet to the right place. She felt leaves brush against her and something slimy she didn’t want to contemplate.
She stopped when the vision told her to and then opened her eyes to find herself standing in the clearing she had seen in her mind. Except in her vision she hadn’t seen a woman with the same bronze skin and glossy black hair as Isis. Renee took a step back, but the woman’s voice whispered in her mind, “I am not the one you fear.”
Renee saw this woman had eyes so pale blue they were nearly colorless, not those awful black eyes of Isis. This woman wore just a skimpy dress made out of animal hide and a necklace of snake teeth; she looked like something out of a Tarzan movie. She stood beside a rough cauldron carved from a rock; the cauldron stunk worse than the rotten carcass Renee had first smelled in the jungle. “You’re a witch?” Renee asked out loud. She didn’t have the mental dexterity for telepathic communication.
“Yes. My name is Nek.”
“You’re one of the ones Mom interviewed.”
“Your mother’s mind was far different than yours. Stronger but far less powerful.” The woman motioned to a rock next to the cauldron. Even without psychic communication, Renee knew this was a sign for her to sit down. Nek glared down at Renee. “You are not what you appear. You have the body of a woman but the mind of a child.”
“I know.”
“Why then did you come here? I have no time for teaching children.”
“Mom’s file mentioned something about ‘Wild Magic.’ I thought maybe you would know what that is.”
Renee recoiled when Nek spat at her feet. “Look around, little one. All of this is what you would call ‘Wild Magic.’” In her mind’s eye, Renee saw not only the cauldron, but the entire jungle: the trees, plants, animals, and even the rivers and mountains. “This is magic in its pure form, not the diluted magic tamed by those who call themselves gods, goddesses, witches, and wizards.”
“You mean it’s stronger than Isis’s magic?”
“There is nothing stronger than pure magic.”
“You do nothing, little one. You must feel it. The words, the potions, and the charms are only for show. The real magic comes from out here.”
Renee shook her head. She felt a humid breeze ruffle her hair and a mosquito bite her neck—she hoped it didn’t carry some disease—but she couldn’t feel any magic out here. “I don’t understand.”
“Only when you stop fearing the world will you be able to feel it. That is why no child can use the pure magic. Now, stop wasting my time and go back to suckle at your mother’s breast.”
Renee leaped off the rock. “I am not a baby! I don’t need my mommy and I don’t need you with all your mumbo-jumbo about ‘pure magic.’ I’ll find a way to help Aggie without you.”
Nek smiled. “You are perhaps stronger than I thought, little one.”
“So you’ll help me?”
“You must help yourself. You must let go of your worries about your father, your mother, and your friends.”
Renee didn’t see the knife or claws or whatever Nek used. One moment they stood there and the next Renee’s dress and undergarments were torn in half; the pieces fell to her feet. “Hey! What are you doing? Are you some kind of pervert?”
“You must let go of all these trappings of civilization. You must become pure, like the world. Only then will you hear it call to you.”
Though the air had to be ninety-five degrees with a hundred percent humidity, Renee still felt a chill run through her to be nude in front of a strange woman. A strange woman who wore animal skins and teeth. “You want me to get back to nature, is that it?”
“If you want to feel the pure magic, then yes. You must be as the world, focusing only on your survival. Not distracted by all of these petty concerns.”
“Aggie’s not a petty concern. She’s my father!”
“Most animals never so much as see their fathers. And yet they continue to survive.”
“But I’m not an animal. I’m a person.”
Renee felt a stab of pain in her right arm. When she held it up, she saw blood dripping from what looked like a cat scratch. Probably from her fingernails, Renee thought as she tried to wipe the blood away.
“You bleed like any other animal in this world.”
Renee stared at the blood and then back at Nek. “I think I get it now.”
“Not yet, little one, but you will. Once you have learned to live in the world, then you will understand.” Nek gave her a shove away from the rock and then held up a stick with a pointed stone at the end of it. “Now, go. Become of the world. Then return to this place.”
Renee didn’t want to see what Nek planned to do with the spear; she ran back into the jungle. She passed by where she’d come in—or at least thought she did—but as she had feared, the wall to the archives was gone. She was trapped here, alone and naked with a crazy lady in a jungle full of animals and plants that wouldn’t think twice about killing her.
A monkey howled. Renee ran.
***
The next time she found herself in the clearing, she looked down at Nek, who smiled at her. It took her a moment to realize she held a softball-sized rock in her hand, poised to club Nek’s skull in. “You’ve done well, little one. You’re ready now.”
“Ready?” she asked, but her voice sounded garbled to her ears. She held up the rock as she tried to remember what she planned to do with it. For that matter she tried to remember anything at all. “Who? Who me?”
“You know, little one. Inside you always know.”
She put down the rock at last and then rolled off the other woman. She squatted a short distance away to eye the woman warily as she tried to remember. There was something she had called herself long ago. A name. She squeezed her eyes tight and heard an echo of a voice in her mind. Renee. Renee Sylvia Chiostro. That’s what they had named her.
She could see their faces in her mind now. Akako with her exotic Asian looks and Aggie with her delicate movie star features. They were her parents. She saw another face, a girl with tangled red hair, a sharp nose, and pretty blue eyes. Louise. Her best friend.
Renee opened her eyes and looked down at herself. Her body was thin to the point that bones were visible against the skin, more like a mummified corpse than someone still alive. She felt a knotted mass with bits of leaves matted into her hair. “How long?” she asked, her voice still raspy from disuse.
“Does it matter?”
Renee considered this for a moment. No, in this place time didn’t matter. She might have been in this jungle for weeks, years, or even centuries. There were no watches or clocks to keep track of the time, not even the sunrises and sunsets in most parts. There were only the cycles of her body: activity followed by weariness, sleep and then waking again. And hunger. Always the hunger.
Her entire life had become about the need to sate that hunger. She couldn’t remember anything coherent, just snippets of images, sounds, and smells. She could taste the sour flesh of a snake as its juices ran down her mouth. She could hear the death rattle of a monkey as she clubbed it with a stone. And she could smell the jaguar up in the branches, as it waited to pounce on her.
The jaguar had tried to kill her. It had leaped at her from its perch in the trees. She saw its teeth bared and claws ready to strike. And then she had felt it. Not a fear of death; what she felt was a sort of calm. If the jaguar struck her down, if it tore the flesh from her bones, it didn’t matter. Her carcass would rot away to feed the plants that in turn fed the animals. This was natural, this was right. Let it come, she had thought. Let it come if it must.
But it hadn’t come. The jaguar landed at her feet, its body motionless. She stared at it a moment and poked it with one foot to make sure. Then she bent down to feast; she didn’t consider what had happened a miracle or divine providence. It was simply something that happened.
“After that I came here,” she said. She didn’t know why; she just tramped through the jungle until she found the clearing again. The woman—Nek, she remembered—sat by the cauldron; she’d looked right at Renee but didn’t see her. Renee gathered speed and then pounced like the jaguar. She knocked Nek to the ground and pinned her. She felt around for a weapon until her hand seized upon the rock. “I was going to kill you.”
“Perhaps.”
“I’m a murderer.” Renee held up her skeletal hands that were more like the claws of the jaguar now. How many creatures had she killed with these hands? Her, who had used to beg Aggie not to use traps on the mice in the kitchen because she felt sorry for them. “Those poor, innocent animals.”
“Nothing here is innocent. Everything does what it must to survive.”
“There has to be more, doesn’t there?”
“Why?”
“Well, what’s to stop me from killing Mom or Aggie or anyone else?”
“Are your parents a threat to you? Do you need their flesh to sustain yourself?”
“No.”
“Then why does this bother you?”
“But there has to be a line, doesn’t there?”
“Why?”
“Well—” Renee tried to think of an answer but couldn’t.
“Have you learned nothing from this? You do what is necessary to survive. Nothing more, nothing less. That is how you live of the world.”
Renee thought of the jaguar again. “I killed it, didn’t I?”
“You did what was necessary.”
From what she could remember, she hadn’t done anything. She had merely stood there to wait for it. Unafraid. “That was the pure magic, wasn’t it?”
“Very good, little one.”
“But I didn’t feel anything.”
“No, you felt everything.”
Renee thought again of that moment. As the jaguar came down at her, she’d seen the circle of life play itself out. She had understood she was merely a part of this circle, not even a cog in the big machine. “I understand.”
“Yes, you do. Now you may return home.”
“Home?”
“To your parents. Your friends.”
“Oh. Right.” She ran a hand through her tangled mass of hair and remembered what had brought her to the jungle in the first place: Isis. She was still out there, poised like that jaguar, only her eyes were on much larger prey—the entire world. “Thank you.”
“There is no need to thank me. I only did what must be done. Haven’t you learned anything, little one?”
“Force of habit.”
She turned to head back for the archives, but Nek called for her to stop. The witch held up a necklace similar to hers, only the teeth were much larger—a jaguar’s teeth. “A reminder, so you do not forget what you have learned.”
Renee was about to thank Nek, but then stopped herself. Instead, she simply nodded. To get the necklace around her neck, she had to clear her mass of hair out of the way. Once Nek managed to slip the necklace on, the yellow teeth jangled around Renee’s breasts, which had lost most of their mass in the jungle. She rubbed one of the longest teeth with her finger and saw it in her mind’s eye as it was about to rip into her flesh—
But as in that moment she didn’t feel any fear.
She walked out of the jungle, back to the archives.
Chapter 29
The last time she had used the tub in the archives, Renee had been a baby self-conscious about Mom washing her. This time she merely stood beneath the showerhead to let the water flow over her body. As with most of her memories from her time in the jungle, she could only vaguely remember water running down her body as she squatted in a tree. When this happened or why she couldn’t remember and she knew it didn’t matter.
She hardly glanced at the mirror but paused long enough to see that her hair had turned back to its natural brown and her face had become smooth. She no longer borrowed Glenda’s much-older body; she was herself again. Myself at last, she corrected.
Tales of the Scarlet Knight Collection: The Wrath of Isis Page 98
