by R. E. Vance
“Better to be feared than loved?” Penemue chimed in from his forced perch on the wall. “Or are you going to hit me with some other platitude that powerhungry megalomaniacs like to spout?”
“Actually, it is better to simply be worshipped. Loved, feared, hated, respected—these are emotions that can be manipulated and changed over time. But worship—that is far less malleable. Already I have worshippers of many kinds. Behold—a handful of them stand in this very room. In time my worship base will grow and, with it, so too will my power.”
“Yeah, yeah, yeah …” I said. “Worshippers grow your flock, expand your congregation … you know, most people are content with a few extra ‘likes’ on their Facebook page.”
To this Penemue snickered, grimacing from the strain.
“Strange that you laugh at the notion,” Colel Cab said, pointing at Penemue. “When your only desire is to be loved. The boy … EightBall, is it? His rejection of you weighs so heavily on your heart. It makes you weak. And what of the freak, Sinbad? She is your comrade in arms, a being who, like you were once, is stripped of free will, determined to save a girl that she cannot save. Do you find solace in her own unfeasible quest? Her love has done much for you, don’t you think? I think without her, EightBall’s rejection to your revelation would have ended you.”
“Oh, come on,” I said. “Enough with the armchair psychology bullshit. Next you’re going to say some crap like, ‘You just need to take a swim in Lake You,’ or ‘You’ve built your emotional prison and it’s time to fire the warden.’ Give me a friggin’ break. Either kill us or let us go … do anything but subject us to this psychobabble.”
Colel Cab took my words in stride. If they effected her in any way, she didn’t show it. Instead she hummed before closing two sets of her eyes, her upper most still intently focused on me.
“And as for you, Mr. Matthias … when Mr. Cain brought you here, I thought it a mistake. After all, you were a wild card with which I had no influence or control. But Mr. Cain’s ideal self insisted, believing that your presence offered a certain kind of legitimacy to this place.” She gestured around her. “He felt that Others would accept the need of a prison, if their hero—their human pet who so often risks his life for them—was a part of it. Watching you, I see that Mr. Cain was right. You are an uncompromising force, and yet … despite being so stubborn and angry, there is so much doubt in you.”
She closed her final pair of eyes. “Resilient, determined, capable … and yet so full of doubt. You were planning on leaving, on removing yourself from the …” She paused as she reached deeper into me, pulling my thought from me like one unravelling a ball of yarn. “—constant, daily Other drama. Being pulled every which way by beings more powerful, wiser and determined than you are. Bella. Medusa. Surely, if you weren’t caught up in this event, you would have left. How interesting …”
I looked over at Penemue, who eyed me with confusion. “Don’t be ridiculous,” the angel said. “The human would never leave us. He made an oath. I was there.”
“An oath that he is willing to break,” Colel Cab said.
Oaths are something Others take very seriously. If promises were stocks and bonds, then Others would hold an AAA rating. If one of these formerly divine creatures ever made you a promise, you could pretty much guarantee that they’d do it, or die trying. Promises made by humans, on the other hand, probably didn’t even qualify for “junk” status.
Still, one of the reasons why I earned the respect of so many Others was because I kept my promises. The day I got the keys to the Millennium Hotel, I made a promise, an oath, to help Others. But with everything that’d gone past … I was willing to break it.
“Is this true?” Penemue whispered.
I nodded and Penemue grimaced in physical pain at the thought.
“It’s not like I would have done it,” I said, taking a step toward the angel. Miral lifted her sword, stopping me from getting any closer. “I was just considering it.”
“More than considering it,” Colel Cab said. “Planning it. Preparing for it. Your departure, I fear, was imminent.”
“No, it wasn’t,” I growled. “It was just a luxurious fantasy I indulged in at my lowest.” I never took my eyes from Penemue, but the beaten angel did not meet my gaze. “Come on, Penemue,” I said. “You’ve got to admit I’ve been through the wringer. The hotel, getting beat up on a near daily basis … Bella … Medusa. I’ve done my bit. I have sacrificed, bled and nearly died for you and your kind. I have lost more than I had to give. I deserve peace!” I shouted. “And if not peace, then distance.”
My body shook with rage. I took several deep breaths just to stop myself from attacking everyone in this room and committing suicide via stupidity. I looked at Miral, who stared down at me with disconnected, impassionate eyes—two words that no one could have ever used to describe this angel’s gaze until today. Mr. Cain and Mr. Yew stood perfectly still. I saw Colel Cab watching me, a slight smile of triumph on her lips.
I pulled my sword out of the metal floor with a grunt and a growl, then readied myself for the attack—but before I actually took a step toward Colel Cab, I stopped.
This wasn’t me … to lose control in a life-and-death situation like this. I was trained enough to know that anger was the last emotion you needed at a time like this. You had to think, stay focused. Bid your time and find an opening to exploit. Get the other guy to lose it, let him do something stupid.
The bitch was toying with my emotions, influencing me with her innate ability.
She was manipulating me.
And she was manipulating Penemue … pulling out his own grief and fear. Fear that he would be alone again in a world without any friend on whose shoulder to cry on.
I took several deep breaths and closed my eyes. “Remember the time I pulled you out of that industrial chimney at that abandoned factory?” I said to Penemue. “You were drunk, of course, and wearing a red Santa suit that was black with soot.” I chuckled.
Penemue didn’t say anything, but he did look up.
I continued, “I had to get a blowtorch and a hacksaw. It took me four hours to get you out and when I did you poured out your sack, full of toys you got from only the GoneGods knew where. Do you remember what you said to me?”
Penemue was silent, his face illuminated with tears. I kept talking. “You said that you were trying to bring cheer to the hotel. And when I pointed out that this wasn’t some orphanage or poor-folks home with nine kids, you just stared down at the pile of toys and … and what did you say, Penemue?”
He snorted. “ ‘Pile it over there and they will come.’ ”
“That’s right. ‘Pile it over there and they will come.’ ” I let out a laugh that turned into a chortle. Penemue joined me. Wiping away tears, I said, “Even if I left, I would always come back for you. No matter what chimney you get stuck in, you can always count on me to get you out. That is a promise.”
Penemue nodded his head.
Colel Cab thisked at us, the sound coming out more like the crack of a whip than a mild admonishment. “Small victory between friends. Hardly worth the celebration.” She gave us a dismissive gesture.
That pissed me off. I got up and charged at the puppet-master, but before I could get close to her, a wing stretched out and knocked me to the ground. Miral pointed her sword at me in warning, her face expressing neither malice or joy, comprehension or life. But she protected the monster, nonetheless.
“Come on, Miral,” I said. “This isn’t you. Help me.”
“She won’t,” Colel Cab said. “I have taken away her fear and her doubt, and she is … grateful.”
I turned to the pinned Penemue. “I don’t get it. If Mr. Cain and Mr. Yew manifested a separate version of their ideal selves … or rather, an airbrushed, more perfect copy of themselves … how come Miral is one and the same?”
“Because,” Penemue flashed me a smile, “we angels are the most perfect versions of ourselves.” Even in his weakened st
ate, he was still obnoxious. Then Penemue grimaced in pain. “Tell me, considering how your rescue is going so well … Are you alone?”
“Nah,” I said. “The cavalry is coming.” But I couldn’t pull off the lie. In my heart I knew that I had come on a hunch and, well—sometimes hunches work out, but you aren’t prepared to follow through.
Colel Cab must have felt my doubt, because she smirked at my words. Damn.
If Penemue knew I was full of it, he didn’t make any indication. He just nodded and said, “Tell me … did the boy come to my rescue?”
I shook my head.
Penemue sighed, ending with a groan of pain. “The path to forgiveness is long.”
“And narrow,” I said. “But Sinbad … she’ll be happy to see you.”
Penemue flashed me a wicked smile and dropped two blades from his wrists. “As I will her,” he said. “As I will her.”
Colel Cab stared between us and suddenly clapped her hands. At first, all four pairs clapped together in that slow, rhythmic way that people do when trying to get a crowd to join in. Then the four pairs of palms broke from the synced rhythm and for a moment Colel Cab sounded like her own crowd.
“Very well played, Jean-Luc. Very well played, indeed. But I feel your doubt. I know no one is coming. You are alone … but even alone, you are a formidable foe. Capable of fighting with brawn, mind and emotion. Amazing.
“But in the end, you are only human.”
She lifted a hand and the door behind me opened. Behind the door I heard a woman’s voice singing, “Oh, Jean … come out and play with me …”
“And humans,” Colel Cab said, “are creatures motived by one undeniable impulse.”
“Bring your dollies, three …”
“Desire,” Colel Cab clicked.
Through the open door was not a room worthy of the underground basement, but a tree standing in an open field, a vast sky streaked with orange and red and blue from a setting sun framing it in the background. Even though it was far off in the distance, I could see red, shiny apples hanging from its branches. Without hesitation, I dropped my sword and walked toward the tree.
“Climb up my apple tree …”
Underneath the tree sat a woman.
“Slide down the rain barrel …”
A woman whom I had only seen in pictures.
“Into my cellar door …”
A woman I so desperately wished to meet.
“And we’ll be jolly fri-i-ends …”
“Mom?” I said.
“Forever more.”
Chapter 7
CrystalDreams
I don’t know how many times I had this same dream as a kid … but the last time I had it was just before the gods left. It seems that with their departure, so too did the dreams of my mother go away. I wondered more than once if that was because she got to go with them.
I never asked Penemue if my theory—if you can call the wishful thinking of an orphaned child a “theory”—was right, because there was no answer he could give me that would offer me solace. Either she was trying to reach me from beyond the grave and any chance of us connecting, as it were, was lost when the gods left, or I was just a kid with an overactive imagination.
That, my friends, is what you call a lose–lose.
But now I was walking toward that same apple tree from my dreams, toward a woman who did not disappear the closer I got. A woman who looked up at me as I drew nearer.
I had only ever seen my mother in pictures. Frozen, lifeless stills in which her smile never changed, her eyes always looked the same. A picture is something, but it is far from everything; and your face, even when you are trying to be perfectly still, makes subtle movements of life—an eye twitches, a smile changes from a grin to one of genuine joy with the slight upturn of your lips, your cheeks change hues based on the blush of an embarrassing thought or just because the room got a little warmer. All teeny-tiny changes that we barely register on a conscious level, but they’re there. And they tell us that you’re alive.
My mother’s eyes flickered when she saw me coming. She wore the same expression I was probably wearing—one of utter shock and anticipation and love and dread and fear and a thousand other emotions that all have a thousand nuances that all lead to one thing: joy.
She stood and a single tear fell down her cheek. “You came,” she said.
You came. In the hundred million times I tried to imagine what her voice sounded like, I never came close. How could I? It was sweet and soft, and filled with infinite love—for me. My heart swelled as I felt something that I never felt before. True, unbridled, uncompromising and unconditional love.
You came. Those two simple words almost brought me to my knees. I think they would have, too, had I not been so desperate to get to her. I was so afraid that she was an apparition, that I’d get closer and she’d disappear. I walked on, each step more hurried than the last, and as my feet treaded on grass that was impossibly soft, I got closer and closer still.
She stretched out her arms and embraced me. I hugged her back and cried. “You’re real. You’re real. And you’re here.”
She held me tight, then pushed me back so she could get a good look at my face. Her hands cupped my cheek as her thumbs wiped away tears. “Oh, Jean-Luc, I tried to come to you a thousand times before. I did, but the rules—there are so many, and death is—”
“A one-way door,” I said, echoing old words told to me by a being older than time itself. “I know. But how are you here now?”
“I … I don’t know,” she said. “I just am.” She pulled me in close and kissed my forehead. “I am so sorry I missed your life, my little Jean-Luc. How I wish I could have been there to pick you up when you fell, to clean your scraped knees and sing you lullabies. How I wish I could have been your mother when you needed me. But I had to leave …”
“You tried to stay,” I said. “PopPop told me that you tried to stay.”
“I did. But in the end, my body was not able to heal itself and my soul was forced to move on. I am sorry. So very, very sorry.”
“I know.”
She guided me to sit under the tree. Some apples had fallen. She picked one up and, wiping it on her shirt, she bit into it. “Let me get it started for you,” she said, handing me the apple.
I took it and bit off a piece of its moist flesh.
“You know, I never got to do that for you, either. Start an apple for you … or mash up bananas or drive you to baseball practice or—”
“I didn’t play baseball,” I said. “I didn’t play any sports growing up, actually. I was kind of a loner as a kid.”
She gave me an admonishing look that was somehow also forgiving. A look only mothers can give that I was finally receiving for the first time.
“There is so much I’d like to ask you,” I said. “Things like … what is your favorite color, book, music, what do you like to eat … the stuff that you know when you know someone. I don’t know you at all.”
“You will,” she said, touching my cheek with her impossibly comforting hand. “And for the record: green, Cannery Row, country music when I’m sad, rock ’n’ roll when I’m happy. As for what I like to eat …” She plucked an apple from my hand and took a deep bite into it. “I was never a fussy eater,” she said with a mouthful of juicy apple, and I laughed.
She handed it back and I took it, taking a bite of my own. Then, running her fingers through my hair, she said, “Never mind all that. We’re together now. And we have an eternity to get to know each other.”
Hellelujah … an eternity to get to know each other. That sounded nice. Real nice. It was the escape I was looking for. More, because I was with the one person I’d wanted to meet as soon as I’d understood that the world had mothers. She was the one thing that I never forgave God or the gods or fate or nature or whatever you put your stock into for taking her from me.
“Yes, we are,” I said.
But then I saw something from the corner of my eye: a light th
at pierced the soft hues of sunset. I turned to look at it and saw a golden glow. My mother followed my gaze, but if she saw the light, her expression didn’t change.
“Where would you like to start?” she asked.
Where do we start? The light shone brighter now, its glow all-consuming. I didn’t know where to start, but I knew where it had to end.
In finding those kids.
I shook my head. In the overwhelming sight of her, I had forgotten about the children who were sitting captive somewhere. They, too, were missing their moms and dads. “I’m going to have to go,” I said, regret in my voice. “I have to help the children … and Penemue … and the Others.” With each expression of the people who needed me said aloud, I became more and more conscious of where I was and of the undeniable fact that this wasn’t real.
My mother—and she was my mother, that much I am sure—shook her head. “No, you don’t need to go. You can stay here and dream. Your friends will be OK. The children will be saved. Your promises will be kept.”
“By who?” I asked.
“By you, silly. Can’t you feel him? Or rather, can’t you feel yourself?”
“I don’t know what you’re talking about, Mom.” I got another thrill just saying that word to someone finally: Mom.
“Yes, you do,” my mother said, putting her hand over my heart. I felt two heavy thumps and then my heart went still. No, that’s not quite right … all of me went still. I was breathing, still alive, but every part of me was calm and I understood that being in this place gave me something that I had never had before. A soul at peace.
“Feel yourself,” my mom said. “Feel where you are. Feel who you are.”
I closed my eyes, reached within myself and did as my mother asked. I focused inward and I don’t know how, whether it was instinct or emotion or some ancient knowledge that humans once possessed but had long forgotten, but I did feel myself. And not in a touchy-feely kind of way. I sensed myself. And what I found was that although I sat under this tree in a field at a dusk that I knew would never turn to full night, I also felt myself in another place, too.
