chapter twenty-nine
THE FIRST GREAT ACT
SOMETHING IS WITH her, in her, outside her. She’s lying on her side underneath her bed covers. She opens her eyes to see her alarm clock glowing numbers through the dark: midnight. Hidden violin strings sing softly the opening bars of Mozart’s Requiem Mass in D Minor from somewhere, she knows not where. The music pauses. And then voices in chorus vibrate the air all around her, vibrate her. Her hackles rise. Something is here, something menacing, threatening. Slowly she turns onto her back and peeks over the covers. And freezes. Leering back at her from behind the foot of the bed is him. His eyes, obsidian onyx eyes, penetrate the air between them. His head floats around him like murky fog. Then stills. He waits. Like a hunter freezes as he catches sight of the trophy deer, he waits. He waits for her. Terror grips her; her whole body tenses, and her eyes widen unable to stop staring into those eyes. She desperately wants to turn away and dive under the covers.
Suddenly she’s at the foot of the bed, and he’s in her place. She’s peeking up at him from over the foot, and he’s lurking in her place, waiting to catch her, enter her once again. How did he get out? How did he get there?
He smiles wolfishly, his sharp teeth glint like steel daggers pointing down, his breath like sweet sulphur poisons the air.
Her heart thumps against her ribs. The pressure it creates whooshes in her ears, drowning out her thoughts, making her feel like she can’t fully sense him.
He waits, his outer edges wafting lazily, little bits of him floating off like smoke in a breeze. He rises gently, revealing more of himself. His centre is impenetrable, silky, black. She cannot move; only her eyes follow his movements. She cannot breathe; her lips part to suck in more air. The only sound as the two stare and the two wait is her short, panting breaths.
Suddenly she’s livid. She’s had enough, enough of him controlling her life, enough of him souring things for her, enough of him changing her destiny, making her afraid, making her weak, losing her friends, losing her dream, keeping her stuck for forty days, neither moving back into zombie mode nor forward into whatever her future may be. She’s spent forty days meditating and practicing yoga, exercising physically and exercising mentally, reading and writing, listening to songs of cheer and singing songs of joy. She’s spent forty days since that last meeting with Dr. Luce speaking to Artashavanti and then, gathering her courage and her faith, speaking to God. She has lost all sense of purpose, all sense of who she’s meant to be. She has stilled her impatience and gathered her patience to face what, she didn’t know yet feared. She has yearned to write songs, the music struggling to get out, but nothing has happened. If her desire is God’s desire for her, then why has her desire remained so unfulfilled, so dormant, so out of reach she might as well quit? All these things she has thought during these seemingly endless days that have ended now. And she’s livid.
It’s his fault. It’s Akaesman’s fault that her desire, her dream remains so far away. It’s his fault that she has no sense of her purpose, no idea of why she’s here. It’s his fault that she has lost seven years of her life. And. He. Will. No. Longer. Have. A. Say.
She springs up and launches herself across the bed, marvelling yet hardly thinking about how it is she can fly, gravity releasing her so easily from its hold. He bobs up startled. His dagger teeth disappear; his eyes sink into sloe slits. He lunges at her, and they connect over the head of her bed. He’s cold, burning her skin with frost. She doesn’t let go. She bares her teeth at him, “How dare you? How dare you enter my life? How dare you enter me? You will go. Now.” She growls, “I will not have you in my life any longer.”
She pushes him. But he’s strong, and he’s determined. He isn’t the weak spirit that originally invaded her. He’s mined rich veins of energy from her, which he uses against her. His form morphs. He’s molasses-thick squid ink, flowing as freely as fresh ink yet as obscure as the deep grave he secrets underneath him. He wraps himself around her, oozing out sooty hands to sink into her flesh, oozing out one wide flap-like arm to wind around her legs.
But she doesn’t let go. He tries to shrink himself out from under her hands. She holds on. The grievous notes of Mozart’s Requiem build again around her, in her. She grits her teeth to give her strength to push harder and keeps them bared at him, staring right down into his hideous soul. “You will leave,” she enunciates each word clearly. “You will not stay in my life. You will have nothing more to do with me, my life, my home, my cat, my friends. I will not ever see you, smell you, hear you, sense you, or even taste you ever again.” She thrusts at him. “Go!”
He screeches nails-on-chalkboard screams right into her eardrums. She does not let go. He whirls her around, sinks her down into the crack between the mattress and the head board, and smothers her. She clings on. He turns her upside down so that she’s facing up, helpless, but she ascends up, forcing him into the ceiling. He roars and fills himself with air, expanding, expanding till the pent-up pressure gives him power to crush her underneath. But she cannot be crushed. She’s unyielding gentleness, and he simply floats into her but does not become a part of her. He roars his frustration, intensifying his sweet sulphur smell, growing almost to fill the entire room.
Suddenly he’s underneath her. Suddenly he’s small, and she’s above him. “You will go. You will go now,” she says implacably. Gathering power, gathering force, she releases air and voice into his face: “You will go. You will go now. You will never come back. You will never return.”
Her eyes startle open. She’s lying on her side, facing the shuttered window, and he’s standing there. Immortal shadow, malevolent visitant, he looms over her as she lies helpless under the covers. She sits up, flinging off her sheets and blanket.
“Go!” she bellows, raising her arm sharply, her finger a dagger pointing at him, through him, into infinity. “Go now! Do not come back. Do not ever come back! With Artashavanti standing with me, I vanquish you from my life forever. With the hamkar of Srukar, I do not hear you anymore. You. Are. Irrelevant.”
Neon green wind hits the window, lights up the room from outside with a sickly hue, exerting a magnetic force upon him. He streams out the window through the green glowing gaps between the shutter laths, first his back, then his bottom, then what goes for his arms, and finally his angry head, the one that’s swallowed up his eyes and his teeth into coal-black shadow, as the Requiem choir resounds the final Amen to his dying shrieks.
The room is still. The air is still. She listens hard. She searches the room with her eyes, even the deepest corners, for signs of him and that sick light. She stretches her senses out, sniffing for his presence. Nothing. It’s so tranquil. Can he be gone, really gone? It’s hard to believe.
And then beams, like streams of dawning sunlight, penetrate the shutters. They stretch to the walls, even into their cracks, illuminating them, showing her there is nothing there, no shadow, no presence, no Akaesman. He is gone.
The beams coalesce into Artashavanti. She stands there before her, her hair molten silvery-gold, her garment flowing around her, glimmering with starlight. Her arms lift up toward her, encased in sleeves of radiating silver-gold mesh, peace flowing through them, down her fingers, and slowly rising like mist in the morning toward her. She opens her moonlit eyes and looks directly into her own.
You have persisted in your integrity. And you are renewed.
And then she bows low, stars sprinkling from her like snowflakes drifting down, sparkling on the oak floor as she retreats from the room before a coalescing vision of authority and humility, of might and empathy, of strength and weakness. The vision reveals itself and says,
Zarine.
She catches tears in her throat.
Woman of east and west, north and south, persecuted and afflicted, you bloomed anew, and you are loved.
Infinite gold, infinite light, light so bright that it blinds her with its beauty, radiates toward her, around her, enfolding her with unconditional love. It hurts so much.
; Tears of stress spring forth.
She sobs into this amazing love, and the love grows, if that is possible. Forgiving love, she feels; yet no, it’s unconditional love, love so great that there is nothing to forgive, nothing to give mercy for. It’s love simply for who she is, who she was, who she will be. Nothing she can think, say, or do will separate her from that love. Great wells of grief erupt from her to be mopped up by that love.
Slowly, slowly, her shoulders stop heaving, her body unbows, her face unclenches, her eyes emerge from their floods. She looks up and sees this glorious vision that looks back at her, gently smiling. She smiles back. And then the vision phases out of her sight, still with her.
The room is quiet. Her smile remains. She looks at the clock. It’s 5:30 a.m., and she knows, without having to ask herself first as is her wont, that it’s a Thursday. And not any Thursday either, it’s the Winter Solstice. It is only three days till Christmas Eve. She hears a string of dump trucks rumble slowly up her road past her home. The rotating amber light of the trailing snowplow flashes into her room, the plow’s blade thundering against the road as it clears it at 10 kilometres per hour. It must’ve snowed. Fresh snow. White Christmas. She smiles at the thought. She lies back down, and the soft pillows give under her head. She pulls the covers up, enjoys their warmth, their promise of deep sleep, and knows at last that she is safe, that she is free.
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