She stopped just like that, in midthought.
I laughed. Not because it was funny but because it had the ring of truth and I had not often heard truth spoken so bluntly and so utterly without self-justification.
I turned my laughing face to Messenger, who was watching me, waiting for my reaction. Judging me, I thought.
“If this is a dream, why aren’t we at my school?” I asked him. “I should dream about places I know. This place probably isn’t real.”
He must have heard the uncertainty in my voice. I did.
“Okay, that’s enough,” I said sharply. “I want answers. I want to know what this is.” The panic came quick and strong, all at once, catching me by surprise. “This is real, isn’t it? This is real. Oh, God, this is real. This is real!”
“Bravo! Well done. She’s not nearly as thick as you were, Messenger.” A female voice. Not Kayla. Not Samantha, who was all the way down the hall now and entering a classroom.
Kayla’s little group broke up as the bell rang with startling urgency, and just like it was at my school when the bell rang, the hallway emptied out fast, the last stragglers rushing away with backpacks swinging.
The girl who had spoken, well, maybe she was a girl physically and chronologically but surely not psychologically. No girl could have carried herself this way. A woman, then. A young woman to look at but with no hint of youthful innocence.
She was as pale as Messenger and, like him, dressed in black. But this girl/woman had a great deal less clothing in total. She wore a thing that was a cross between a bustier and a leather jacket. Cutouts revealed her shoulders, the neckline plunged to her breastbone, and the whole garment was cut to a severe point in front, forming a V that hid her navel but left the sides of her waist and her lower back bare. She wore black tights that seemed more liquid than fabric, and swirled with black-on-black patterns that shifted and changed. Her boots went to her knees and were notably strange for suggesting that her feet were unnaturally small.
That detail bothered me, held my attention for a moment, as I could not see how she could stand on such tiny feet, particularly given the height of the heels.
If Kayla was the blond sun, this . . . this person . . . was midnight. Her eyes were black and large as if the pupils had expanded to consume all the iris. She had extravagant lashes and black hair, but it was her lips that drew my fascinated gaze. They were green. Not tinged with green, not a sickly green, but a flamboyant, defiant green. The green of jade. They matched a pendant around her neck that was an ornate object of jade and onyx, green and black, suggesting a face, a lewd, leering face.
There were other touches of green and black—earrings, a snake-pattern bracelet around her left wrist, fasteners down the front of her boots. And a ring on her left hand whose intricate design I could not make out.
Had Kayla seen this creature striding down the halls of her school, she would have curled into a little ball, for while Kayla was beautiful, and I liked to believe that I was at least pretty, this female creature had the beauty of cold, distant stars and silvery moonlight.
She was hypnotizing. Merely by existing, she redefined my ideas of beauty, for this was not mere physical perfection, this was seduction, this was the primordial, essential, eternal avatar of female sensuality walking nonchalantly down the empty hallway of a suburban high school.
She made me feel shrunken and small and ugly.
Her name was . . .
“Oriax,” Messenger said.
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“MESSENGER,” ORIAX SAID. SHE SPOKE WITH A voice full of silk, secrets, and slithering snakes. Like Messenger’s, her voice was too near, too intimate, but it thrilled me. I whimpered. I couldn’t help it. I had forgotten my panic, forgotten for the moment that I should not be in this place at all, that I had lost my memory, that I feared I was dead. All of that was submerged the moment I saw her. I wanted to worship her. I wanted to listen to any word that she cared to speak. I wanted to be her, to be a tiny fraction of her.
Oriax.
“Well, hello there . . . ,” she said to me, and then after a longish pause, added, “You.”
I grunted. Like a farm animal. I could not make a more complex sound.
“She’s not bad-looking, really, eh, Messenger? Daniel has done well for you. He must be feeling sorry for you, poor, pining, lovelorn Messenger.”
Part of me was hearing her words, but a larger part of me was asking why Messenger hadn’t already thrown himself at her feet. Messenger was a beautiful boy, but this . . . Oriax . . .
“Let her go, Oriax.”
Oriax winked at me. “He wants me to let you go.” She moved close to me, so close I could feel the heat of her body, so close I could smell a perfume that . . . and then, she walked around behind me and I was paralyzed with something that was both fear and desperate, unfamiliar desire.
I felt her hair brush the nape of my neck. I felt her breath on my skin. Her lips brushed the side of my neck, and my eyes rolled up in my head, and the blood left my limbs and my knees gave way.
“Susceptible little thing, isn’t she?” Oriax said.
Messenger caught me as I fell. He put a hand under my back, and another hand reached for my shoulder but missed and instead slid over the fabric of my shirt to touch my arm.
For only a second his skin and mine made contact.
And then I knew why I was not to touch Messenger, for in the few seconds of contact, flesh to flesh, I was assaulted by images I can barely bring myself to describe, for to describe them is to make the horrible real.
First, I saw a boy, maybe fifteen years old, stabbed though the belly with a sword.
Then a girl, perhaps fourteen, being lowered on the end of a chain, screaming into a vat of foul, seething liquid.
A boy, a big kid who looked older than he probably was, with both hands and both feet gone, trying to run on stumps from a pack of wild dogs.
There were other images, less lurid, but I couldn’t begin to comprehend them while dealing with these visions of helplessness and agony and utter, shrieking terror.
I cried out in pain and staggered back. Oriax threw back her head and laughed with malicious delight, and I clutched my head as though to squeeze the memories out of my brain.
These were awful violations of human bodies and minds. Such pain. Such terrible sadness and loneliness.
“What are you?” I asked Messenger, my voice ragged.
“I thought he was a dream,” Oriax taunted me.
I gritted my teeth. Tears had started, blurring my vision, glistening, weak, foolish emblems of my weakness. “I don’t have dreams like that. Those things . . . Those things are not in my head!”
Messenger looked solemn, but I thought I saw some hurt there as well. He had revealed something and was hurt by my violent reaction. He looked at me, and I could not match his gaze and lowered my eyes.
“Someday you will see the darkness inside yourself, Mara,” he said in that too-near whisper of his.
“Oh, look, you’ve hurt Messenger’s feelings,” Oriax said. “Shall I comfort you, Messenger?” She moved closer to him. “Shall I, Messenger, my pretty boy?”
“Get away from me,” he said.
And without seeming to move, she was six feet away, laughing and sticking out her tongue. “He’s no fun, our Messenger,” Oriax said to me. “You’ll see. You’ll want him, but you won’t have him. You’ll crave him desperately, oh yes, you will.”
“He’s a demon!” I said, practically spitting the word, as the images of our brief contact still churned vilely in my memory. That word, demon, wasn’t in my thoughts until it came out of my mouth and I realized it was true. Or realized at least that I believed it.
“A demon?” Oriax repeated, disbelieving. “Our Messenger a demon? Don’t be ridiculous. No, no, no. He’s not a demon. I know a few demons, well,
what you might call demons, and sadly, our Messenger of Fear is no demon, unless demons mourn for their lost Ariadne.”
“Leave us, Oriax. You’ve had your fun.”
“Mmm, not yet, I haven’t,” she said. “But eventually.”
She was gone, and I was shaking with fear and a deep disturbance that seemed to have a physical effect: I was trembling. Trembling all over, in every part of my body, from my knees to my heart to the muscles of my face, as though each individual cell was shaking.
“I am sorry I touched you, Mara,” Messenger said. “It would have been kinder to let you fall.”
I felt deeply unsettled. The vivid memories of that touch had begun to fade and I was glad of it. The memory of Oriax, too, seemed to lose some of its sharp detail, and for that I was sorry because I had never seen or imagined anyone quite like her. I wanted to hold that image in my mind until I had come to grips with it and decided just how. . . .
Let her go, Oriax.
What did Messenger mean by that? How had she “had” me that she needed to let me go?
I recalled a sense of being released, and of that release filling me however briefly with a sense of loss but also a sense of relief. I had fallen when she released me, but she had never laid a finger on me.
Too much. Too much now crowded my brain. Too many feelings, too many wild emotions, too much fear, and . . . and something that was like fear but also held within it seeds of pleasure. I found that part of me wanted Oriax to come back. Even more of me wanted Messenger to speak to me, to explain, but also just to speak.
You’ll crave him desperately, oh yes, you will.
No, that at least would never be true. I had touched that hot stove and did not need a second reminder that Messenger was not to be touched.
But did I still want him to explain? Did I want him to reveal? Yes. “Why is my memory all fuzzy?” I asked him.
He considered me for a moment and reached some kind of decision. He drew a deep breath, and this simple biological act lessened my fear somewhat, for I had begun to believe my own blurted remark that he was a demon, or if not a demon, then some other nameless supernatural horror.
Did demons breathe in that particularly weary way? Did sadness and loss reveal themselves in demons’ eyes?
I was confused. My feelings were all astray, rifled, and tossed like a room that’s been burglarized. My memory, my emotions, all of it was too much, but I had already fainted once and would not allow myself to do so again. Whatever else this was, it was a test of my strength, my will. I would not be weak.
“Your memory has been disturbed by the transition.”
“Well, I need my memory.”
“Do you?” He tilted his head and looked at me as if my image was evoking something from another time and place. He wasn’t looking at me, Mara; he was looking at something I reminded him of.
“Look, Messenger,” I said, trying to sound determined, “I don’t know what you want of me, but I won’t cooperate unless I know who I am and . . .” I hesitated there, for the next words would perhaps reveal too much of the vulnerability I felt. Then, with a sigh that fluttered in my chest, I finished, “And what I am.”
I swear that then he almost smiled. It was nothing that I could see, but the slight lessening in the rigidity of his features allowed me to think that he was possibly smiling.
“Yes. Memory,” he said.
And then, I remembered.
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I SAW WHAT I LOOKED LIKE. I SAW MY FACE. MY body. And with it, memories of earlier stages of my life. Me a year ago. Me three years ago. Me as a little girl taking gymnastics.
My locker combination was 13-36-9.
My grade point average was 4.0.
I was five feet, five inches tall and hoped against all odds to grow taller.
I weighed 121 pounds.
I knew my social security number.
I knew my student ID number.
I knew my driver’s license number, which surprised me because I didn’t think I’d ever memorized that.
It was as if every number I’d ever known was coming bubbling up into my brain. My home was at number 72. My birthday was July 26. My phone number . . .
“That’s not what matters,” I said.
“I thought you wanted to see your memories,” Messenger said.
“Those aren’t the memories. Those aren’t what I need. Did you do that to me? Can you turn my memory on and off?”
He surprised me by giving me a direct answer. “Yes.”
“That’s not fair!” The words were out of my mouth before I’d even begun to think about them.
“Fair.” He said the word with something like reverence. Like the word had deep significance to him. “I’m sorry you find me unfair, but I think you are mistaken. You don’t yet understand, and whether it is fair or not in your judgment, I will hold your memories. I will hold them back.”
“What? Who says? I mean, what?”
“It’s part of the deal you made,” Messenger said.
I froze.
“What?”
He did not repeat himself. So I did.
“What? What do you mean, it’s the deal I made?”
“You must trust me, Mara.”
“Trust you? I don’t even know your name. I don’t even know what you are. I don’t know where we are or why. Trust you?”
“Yes, Mara. You must trust me.”
I stared at him, and this time I did not lower my eyes but met his gaze. “What is this about?” I asked.
He could have easily sidestepped such a poorly phrased question. But he did not. Instead he chose to answer, emphasis always on “chose” because though I didn’t yet know it, I was entirely in his power. At that moment, and for a long while after as well, I belonged to Messenger. I was his to control.
“This,” he said without the least drama or emphasis, “is about true and false. Right and wrong. Good and evil. And justice, Mara. This is about justice. And balance. And . . .” He nodded as if to himself rather than to me. “. . . and redemption.”
I said nothing. What is there to be said after such a speech?
He seemed vaguely amused that he had silenced me. And he took the opportunity to point a finger and invite my gaze to turn in the direction he indicated.
“It is also, at this moment, about Samantha Early.”
And there she was, Samantha Early, no longer at school but at her laptop computer in a Starbucks. She was chewing on her upper lip, concentrating, typing in stops and starts. Pause, then a sudden flurry. Pause, then a sudden flurry.
“What is she writing?” I asked.
“She’d already written it when she died,” Messenger said. “As to what she wrote, go and look.”
We were outside the Starbucks, looking in through the window. I went for the door, reached for it with my hand, and found that it seemed to slip away. I thought at first I had just missed, but a second attempt had the same result. On a third attempt I watched carefully and moved my hand slowly. I expected to see my hand pass in a ghostly way through the solid object. And what does it reveal about my state of mind that I expected that?
But rather than my insubstantial hand passing through a solid object, it was the door handle that moved. It was there, and then, seconds before my fingers would have touched it, it was gone. And the instant I withdrew my hand, it was back.
“You cannot alter what you see around you,” Messenger instructed. “You may see all but touch nothing. What you see is all past, and the past may not be changed.”
“How do I see what she’s writing if I can’t open the stupid door?” I said. I was annoyed by the door, irrationally annoyed. It was strange to be irritated by something so small in these wanderings with a strange boy through an impossible universe. But maybe it was easier or safer to be bothered by things that seemed familiar.
>
The deal I made.
Did I even want to know how I had come to make a deal with Messenger? And why had he said that we may not touch? Why may and not can? That word choice hinted at rules, and rules come from a person or institution.
“I need time,” I said. “I need to . . . to rest.” If I could just sit down somewhere, digest, put things together. Think.
“It’s a lot to understand,” Messenger allowed. “But the understanding will only come by living it.”
“Or you could explain it,” I snapped.
“Do you want to know what Samantha Early is writing?”
I have a fatal weakness: I am the cat curiosity killed. “Yes, of course I want to know. The girl is going to kill herself. Maybe her writing will tell us why.”
“Then see,” Messenger said.
It was a challenge. Or a test. He wanted to know whether I could find a way into the coffee shop.
The thing I “may” not do was to change anything around me. I could not touch, could not change. I had a thought then and wondered if it made sense. I could ask Messenger, but I sensed that this would disappoint him, and absurdly, I did not want to disappoint him.
We had become teacher and student, and I have always been a good, if not perfect, student. It’s one of the things I dislike about myself, that willingness to please. Sometimes I dislike it so much that I pick fights with people just to show that I will not be their slave. But this was not the time, and Messenger was not the person. He held my memories. He had power over me. If I were ever to get back to my own reality, escape this . . . this whatever it was. . . then it would be through Messenger.
It occurred to me then that I had a project due. My science project, which was . . . I couldn’t recall what it was, but that single fugitive memory, that anxiety, had crept through whatever blocked my memory and reminded me that I did truly have a need to get back.
My God, was that really my only reason for needing to get back to my life?
I took a deep breath and walked straight toward the Starbucks’ brick-and-plate-glass storefront. I steeled myself for impact and closed my eyes in a flinch.
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