The Glass Word

by Kai Meyer

  “Because … because then you can be there for Junipa. She’s your friend, isn’t she?”

  She smiled and bumped her nose against his. “Nice try.” Then she kissed him lightly on the lips, just very quickly, and pulled away from him.

  “What he says is right, Merle,” the Queen said dejectedly. “I could cross over into him and—”

  No, thought Merle, turning around to Vermithrax. “It’s time to go.”

  The lion’s huge obsidian eyes were glistening. “I will obey you. To the end. But you should know that this is not my wish.”

  “You don’t have to obey me, Vermithrax. I’m just some girl. You do agree to it, don’t you? You know that I’m right.” Vermithrax, too, had once been ready to sacrifice himself for his people. If anyone at all could understand her, he could.

  He lowered his head sadly and said nothing. Merle climbed onto his back and stretched to catch a look over the edge into the chasm. She watched the Son of the Mother walk slowly up to the statue. He neared Sekhmet’s laid-out body and scratched his claws more powerfully. Under the water surface the mirror floor had shattered to stars of silver glass.

  Merle looked around at the others one last time as the lion went up to the edge and unfolded his wings.

  Junipa was staring up at her, weeping. She looked as if any moment she was going to run to stop Vermithrax. Merle smiled at her friend and gently shook her head. “No,” she whispered.

  Eft struggled to straighten up in the grasp of the two boys, disregarding her broken leg. That she, who’d been born without legs, should be put out of action by an injured leg was perhaps the most cruel twist of fate.

  The boys, too, were looking sadly at Merle. Dario had his jaws tightly clenched, as if he were grinding iron with his teeth. Tiziano blinked and fought unsuccessfully against a single tear that ran down his cheek.

  Lalapeya appeared strangely blurred, as if her body were caught in the transformation between human and sphinx. She did not take her eyes off her daughter, and for the first time Merle really felt that Lalapeya was no longer a stranger, no distant hand inside the water mirror. She was her mother. She had finally found her.

  Vermithrax reached the edge of the balcony. His wings rose and fell twice in succession, as if he had to try first to see if they would obey him.

  “It is time,” said the Queen in alarm. “He is about to destroy my body.”

  Vermithrax’s front paws left the floor.

  Behind them someone screamed Merle’s name.

  On the bottom, the Son of the Mother noticed the movement out of the corner of his dark eyes. He turned around and caught sight of the obsidian lion on the edge. A primeval bellow broke from his throat, making the mirrored walls tremble and the water on the floor churn.

  Serafin sprinted behind Vermithrax. Just as the lion was about to rise into the air, Serafin also pushed off, landed with both palms on Vermithrax’s rear end, and was somehow able to grab hold of his fur and pull himself up. Suddenly he sat swaying behind her. “I’m coming along! No matter where—I’m coming along!”

  The Son of the Mother screamed even more loudly as Vermithrax dove steeply at him, despite the second rider on his back. It was too late for him to turn around now that the beast had become aware of them. They could only bring it to an end as quickly as possible. Somehow.

  “You’re crazy!” Merle yelled over her shoulder while they sped downward in a nosedive.

  “That’s why we suit each other, isn’t it?” Serafin yelled in her ear. He could hardly make himself heard over the rushing air and the roaring of the masses of water. The world sank into noise and attack and flickering silver.

  Vermithrax raced toward the Son of the Mother’s mighty skull. Compared to it he was as small as an insect and yet an impressive sight, bathed in the lava glow of the Stone Light and roaring with determination and explosive energy.

  High over them the others crowded to the edge of the balcony and looked down into the abyss. Their faces had taken on the color of the ice that was melting around them. It no longer mattered if the Son of the Mother caught sight of them. Whatever might happen, they no longer had any influence over the events.

  The gigantic sphinx took a step back from his mother’s statue, turned completely around, and stretched his open jaws toward Vermithrax. His screeching made the heart of the Iron Eye quake; the high mirror temple shook to its foundations. The water on the floor boiled and surged like a witch’s cauldron. The monster’s movements were astonishingly fast, considering his size, and it was clear that he would become even more dangerous when he finally regained his old dexterity. He had lain for millennia in the depths of the lagoon; at the height of his powers he would probably have killed Vermithrax with one blow.

  The obsidian lion avoided the many-fingered claws and raced toward one of the walls until Merle could recognize herself and Serafin in the mirror. They grew larger and larger and finally whistled past, a garish spot of color, as Vermithrax swerved sharply in front of the wall and flew back again. The sphinx bellowed and raged. He tried to swat them out of the air like an annoying mosquito, but time after time he grabbed emptiness. Vermithrax’s flying maneuvers took Merle’s and Serafin’s breath away, but they enabled him to outfox the Son of the Mother.

  The deeper they flew, the more dangerous it became. Here the beast not only tried to catch them with his fingers but also with his powerful lion paws. Once Vermithrax was left no choice but to fly between his towering legs. They escaped the monster’s long claws by only a hair’s breadth. The Son of the Mother struck and kicked at them, fountains of water sprayed up and splashed around them, and the beast’s angry screaming hurt their ears.

  Vermithrax re-emerged on the other side of his body, near enough to the stone image of Sekhmet to be able to fly down in its shadow and, on the back side of the statue, find safety for himself and his riders from their adversary’s overgrown paws and sickle-sharp claws.

  “Let me get down,” Merle cried into Vermithrax’s ear. “I’ll manage it on foot just as well. You draw him away.”

  Vermithrax obeyed and sank to the ground in the protection of the statue. Merle slid from his back into the meltwater, and Serafin jumped down behind her. The swirling floods were horribly cold and reached up to their knees. For a moment the chill took their breath away.

  There was no time for a farewell—already shattering blows were striking the mighty statue. The Son of the Mother had finally lost any respect and on the other side was doing his best to make the statue fall. Merle wondered if perhaps he guessed what they were up to.

  “Of course,” said the Flowing Queen. “He can feel me, just as I do him. But he has not been back in the world of the living long enough. His feelings confuse him. He still cannot control them. Yet he feels the danger. And soon he will be his old self again. Do not let yourself be deceived by the spectacle he has just created. He is no simple-minded colossus, quite the contrary. His intelligence is sharp. When he stops behaving like a newborn, he will become really dangerous.”

  Vermithrax winked sadly at Merle one last time. Then he shot around the side of the statue and flew toward the Son of the Mother in quick zigzags, even more daringly now, ready to sacrifice himself so that Merle could reach her goal unhindered.

  She looked around and saw the altar on which Sekhmet’s petrified body lay, about thirty yards away, by the side of the statue. There they would be unprotected and open to the attacks of the Son of the Mother. But if their plan worked, Vermithrax’s utterly mad maneuvers would distract him from Sekhmet as well as from her.

  Serafin waded through the water beside her as they sneaked along the statue’s stone feet. “Please, Merle—let me do it.”

  She didn’t look at him. “Do you think I came this far in order to turn it over to someone else all of a sudden?”

  He held her back by the shoulder, and against her will she stopped, after a last look at Vermithrax, who was skillfully luring the Son of the Mother in another direction. “T
his isn’t worth it,” he said darkly. “All of this … it doesn’t pay to die for this.”

  “Let it be,” she replied, shaking her head. “We have no more time for that.”

  Serafin looked up at Vermithrax and the sphinx colossus. She saw what was going on inside him. His powerlessness was written in his face. She knew exactly how that felt.

  “Ask the Queen,” Serafin tried one last time. “She can’t want you to die. Tell her she can have me in your place.”

  “It would be possible,” said the Queen hesitantly.

  “No!” Merle made a motion with her hand as if she wanted to wave off any further argument. “That’s enough. Stop it, both of you.”

  She tore herself loose and now ran as fast as she could, through the water to the stone Sekhmet. Serafin followed her again. Both no longer paid any attention to the fact that the Son of the Mother had only to turn around to discover them. They were betting everything on one card.

  Merle reached the altar and leaped up the few steps. Again she was astonished at how delicate Sekhmet’s body was, a simple lioness, with scarcely any resemblance to the demonic goddess that the builders of the statue had made of her. She wondered who had been allowed to enter this temple and regard the true Sekhmet. Certainly only a narrow circle of initiates, chosen priests of the sphinxes, the most powerful of their magicians.

  What must I do? she asked in her thoughts.

  “Touch her.” The Queen hesitated a moment. “I’ll attend to everything else.”

  Merle closed her eyes and laid her palm between the stone ears of the lion goddess. But at the same moment Serafin seized her lower arm, and for a second she believed he was going to stop her, if necessary with force—but he did not do that.

  Instead he pulled her around, took her in his arms, and kissed her.

  Merle did not resist. She had never kissed a boy, not like that, and when she opened her lips and their tongues touched, it was as if she were someplace else with him, in a place that was perhaps as dangerous as this one was, only less final, less cold. In a place where hope could take the place of despair.

  She opened her eyes and saw that he was looking at her. She returned the look, looked deep inside him.

  And recognized the truth.

  “No!” she cried and pushed him away, confused, shocked. Incapable of believing what had just happened.

  Queen? she shouted in her thoughts. Sekhmet?

  She received no answer.

  Serafin smiled sadly as he bowed his head and took her place beside the altar.

  “No!” she cried once more. “That can’t—you didn’t do that!”

  “He is a brave boy,” said the Flowing Queen with Serafin’s voice. With his mouth, with his lips. “I will not let you die, Merle. His offer was very courageous. And in the end the decision was mine alone.”

  Serafin placed his hand between the ears of the petrified body.

  Merle leaped at him, intending to tear him away, but Serafin only shook his head. “No,” he whispered.

  “But … but you …” Her words faded. He had kissed her and given the Flowing Queen the opportunity to move into his body. He had really done it!

  She felt her knees buckling. She sank down hard on the highest altar step, only an inch above the water.

  “The change has weakened you,” said the Queen and Serafin together. “You will sleep for a while. You must rest now.”

  She wanted to pull herself up again, to rush to Serafin again, to beg him not to do it. But her body no longer belonged to her, as if along with the Queen had also gone the strength that had kept Merle on her feet for days at a time, almost without sleep and food. Now exhaustion came over her like an insidious illness. It left Merle no trace of a chance.

  Reality slid away from her, shifted, blurred. Her voice failed, her limbs could no longer bear her weight.

  She saw Serafin standing before the altar with eyes closed.

  Saw Vermithrax circling around the head of the raging Son of the Mother like a lightning bug.

  Saw her friends up on the parapet, small as knitting needle heads, a chain of dark shadow beads.

  Serafin swam before her eyes. All her surroundings dissolved. And then suddenly she saw his face before her, very pale, his eyes closed.

  Her spirit cried out, in infinite pain and grief, but no sound crossed her lips.

  A gray phantom whisked away above her, the feather-light spring of a predatory cat of gray stone. Water splashed. Waves struck against her cheeks.

  Sekhmet, she thought.

  Serafin.

  The end of the world inside her, perhaps also around her.

  The Son of the Mother. Sekhmet. And over and over again, Serafin.

  She must sleep. Only sleep. This battle was no longer hers.

  Hands seized her, growing out of the silver mirror of the water surface. Thin girls’ hands, followed by others. Figures everywhere in the water.

  Serafin lived no more. She knew it. Wanted it not to be true. Knew it nevertheless.

  The screams of the Son of the Mother everywhere around her.

  “Merle,” whispered Junipa, and pulled her into the mirror world.

  Darkness. Then silver.

  No more screams.

  “Merle.” Still Junipa’s whisper.

  Merle tried to speak, to ask something, but her lips only trembled, her voice faded to a croak.

  “Yes,” said Junipa gently, “it’s over.”

  SNOWMELT

  SOMEONE HAD LIFTED HER ONTO VERMITHRAX’S BACK. Someone was sitting behind her and holding her firmly. Serafin? No, not he. It must be Eft. With her broken leg, she couldn’t walk.

  Junipa was guiding them through the mirror world. She went ahead, followed by Vermithrax, who held the two riders on his back with his folded wings. His heart was racing, he was panting with exhaustion. Merle had the feeling he was limping, but she herself was too weak to say for certain. She looked wearily over her shoulder. Behind the lion walked Lalapeya in her sphinx form. Dario, Tiziano, and Aristide brought up the rear.

  Something lay across Lalapeya’s back, a long bundle. Merle couldn’t quite make it out. Everything was hazy, and she felt as if she were in a dream. What she never would have thought possible had happened: She missed the alien voice inside her, someone who gave her courage or argued with her; who lectured her and gave her the feeling that her mind and her body were not exhausted. Someone who questioned her, kept her alert, who always and constantly challenged her.

  But now she had only herself.

  Not even Serafin.

  At that moment she knew what Lalapeya bore on her back. It was no bundle.

  A body. Serafin’s corpse.

  She thought of his last kiss.

  Only much later did Merle realize that their path through the silvery labyrinth of the mirror world was a flight. Those who could walk were hurrying—in front of them all, Junipa, who gained in strength and determination in this place, at last free from the Stone Light again.

  As if she were in a trance, Merle thought back to that day she and Junipa had entered the mirror world for the first time. Arcimboldo had opened the door for them so that they could capture the annoying phantoms in his mirrors. Junipa had been uncertain, afraid. There was no sense of that now. She moved along the secret mirror paths as if she belonged here, as if she’d never known anything else.

  Around them, again and again, individual mirrors went dark, like windows in the night. The glass in some shattered, and a cold, dark suction pulled at those hurrying past. In some passages it was as if a black shadow were eating up the walls, as one mirror after another turned dark. Some exploded as Vermithrax ran by them. Tiny shards poured over the comrades like star splinters.

  The longer they were under way, however, the more rarely the mirrors burst. The memory of the dark chasms faded, and soon there were no more signs of the annihilation that lay behind them. All around them shone pure silver, flickering in the light of the places and the worlds that
lay beyond them. Junipa slowed, and the entire group with her.

  Merle tried to pull herself upright, but she sank forward into Vermithrax’s mane again. From behind she felt Eft’s hand on her waist, holding her firmly. Merle heard voices: Junipa, Vermithrax, Eft. But she understood nothing of what they said. In the beginning they’d still sounded frantic, excited, almost panicked. Now their words were quieter, then fewer, until finally all lay in deep silence.

  Merle tried to look around once more, to Serafin, but Eft would not allow her to. Or was it only her own lack of strength that held her back?

  She felt that her mind was fading away again, that the pictures were becoming fuzzy again, the sounds of their steps duller and farther away. When someone spoke to her, she didn’t understand what was said.

  Was that a good thing?

  She didn’t even know an answer to that.

  They buried Serafin where desert had once been.

  Now the broad fields of sand were drinking the melt-water, the dunes dissolved into mud, and the yellow-brown ravines became streambeds. How long would that go on? Nobody knew. It was clear that the desert would change. As would the entire country.

  Egypt would become fruitful, Lalapeya maintained. For those who had resisted the Pharaoh and survived his reign of terror, this was the chance for a new beginning.

  Serafin’s grave lay on a rock projection, where the sand and water had bonded to firm bog. When the sun shone again and evaporated the dampness, he would be as secure here as if glass had been poured around him. The rock overlooked the desert, many miles wide in all four directions. From here one looked up and out at the blue-green ribbon of the Nile, which was still the source of all life in Egypt, and someone, perhaps Lalapeya, said it would be good that Serafin began his last journey from this place.

  Merle hardly listened, although many words were spoken on this day when they took leave of Serafin. Each who had witnessed his sacrifice said something; even Captain Calvino, who’d barely known Serafin, gave a short speech. The submarine lay at the Nile bank, securely moored in front of a palm grove, or what the frost had left of it.