If I think to care for my charges, for my child, I must learn to be similarly successful.
“I’ve come to acknowledge the turd.”
He smiles. “It’s about time, Katarina.”
I suffered my father’s disappointment mere days after I was born, although at the time I didn’t know it for what it was, only that I was rejected and alone. As the years passed, his anger and disgust at the useless daughter he couldn’t barter away to further cement his position grew so oppressive, I learned to avoid him whenever possible. My mother’s greed and impatience, shallowness and fear, were my childhood companions.
Then there was Sean, with whom I grew, who loved me, uncomplicated from the first, even as I wept. Still, it’s often difficult to bear the nuances of his every emotion. Filet mignon or rib eye, we’re all imperfect cuts, marbled by fears and insecurities, even the best of men.
As we move deeper into Chester’s, the barrage of chaotic emotions begins to subside, affording me a rare and blessed respite: the volume of the world’s endless sensations has been reduced from a ten to a four. We navigate one glass corridor after the next, and I wonder that he leads me so deep into his club where others are not permitted. After a time, he glides his palm over a smooth glass wall and an elevator appears.
“Where are you taking me?” I ask as the elevator door closes, sealing me in a much too small compartment with a much too large man. I feel like Dante, descending into the inferno, but I have no Roman poet as my guide.
“From this moment on, any questions are mine. Assuming you wish to be concrete, without the price.”
I stare up at him. How can he possibly know that? “You can read minds.”
“Human thoughts are loud. We take what’s offered. Humans offer too much. Of everything.”
“What are you going to do? Teach me to fight?” I glance down at my slender arms. Though strong from gardening, milking, and working our land, I doubt I possess the ability to hurt another human being. I would feel their pain. I don’t invite that.
“Not me.”
He escorts me from the elevator into the most blissfully silent corridor I’ve ever walked. I turn in a slow circle, listening but hearing nothing. This level must be powerfully soundproofed. There’s no faint beat of music, not even white noise, only the perfect absence of sound. “Who, then?”
He guides me down the hall with a hand at the small of my back, opens another door, and we step into a dimly lit, long room with faintly illuminated rectangles that lead to additional rooms beyond.
There are no furnishings here. No table, sofa, rug, or chair. The floors are polished ebony. The walls are ivory. A diffuse glow emanates from the perimeter of high, coffered ceilings with stamped leather insets above Romanesque cove moldings. There are large corbels on two of the walls, as if once treasures were displayed. The room is refined.
The occupant is not.
A man is stretched on the floor, staring up, arms crossed behind his head. Like the rest of Ryodan’s men, he is tall, wide, powerfully muscled, scarred, and not there. He wears black camouflage pants low at his hips, feet bare. His arms are tattooed, his head nearly shaved, his face shadowed dark with stubble. He looks like a rogue military commander from a unit the world never hears about.
“Kasteo will be your instructor.”
I stare at him in disbelief. Jo has told me tales of the Nine, though they’ve been of little use. Kasteo is the one that does not speak. According to Jo, something transpired a long time ago and he hasn’t uttered a word since.
“Is this your idea of a joke? He doesn’t talk!”
“You don’t listen. Match made in heaven.” Ryodan stalks over to Kasteo and looks down at him. “Kasteo will be your instructor,” he says again, but this time it’s an order and a warning to the man on the floor. “The woman feels the pain of the world. You’ll teach her to stop feeling it. Then you will help her learn to control her environment. Finally, you will teach her to fight.”
Kasteo, of course, says nothing. I’m not certain he even heard. He appears in a trance, elsewhere.
Ryodan walks to the door. “You’ll remain with him until I decide you’ve gotten what you came for.” The door closes behind him, and I stand there a moment, staring blankly at it, then at Kasteo.
I rush to the door and place my palm to the wall where Ryodan pressed it, but nothing happens.
I hammer on the door. “Ryodan! I must return to the abbey! Ryodan, let me out!”
The only response is the most enormous silence I’ve ever heard.
“This is not what I meant!”
I hammer until my fists are bruised.
“Ryodan, you can’t do this! My charges need me! There are things you don’t know! I came here to tell you!”
I feel as if I’m in the bowels of the earth, forgotten.
I shout until my throat burns.
The man on the floor never stirs.
I’m unable to count the passage of time in this silent, empty place.
After a length of it, I sink to the floor and lean back against the wall, one hand resting lightly on my belly.
Surely he’ll feed me.
Surely there is a bathroom here somewhere.
Surely he’ll come back so I can convey to him the urgent state of our abbey.
I sit and stare like the unmoving, unblinking man on the floor. After a time, I become aware of the simplicity of the moment. Not only is there no sound on this level, there seems to be a dearth of emotion.
Cautiously, I lower the shields I’ve held since I was five years old, barriers that have shut out the world, and walled me in.
Nothing.
Again, I lower, lower. When I continue to encounter nothing, I take a deep breath, brace myself, and drop them flat.
I gasp.
Still — nothing!
I feel no anger or greed, no lust or fear or pain or need. That’s always the worst for me: the many crushing, painful needs that can never be satisfied. Here, deep below Chester’s, there is absolutely no emotion charging the air, compressing me, forcing me into a defensive posture.
It’s sublime. My heart can breathe.
For the first time in my life, I feel only me.
I didn’t even know what I felt like.
For the first time in my life, I can hear myself think.
15
“I’m just a crack in this castle of glass”
I hear music in my dreams. I heard such exquisite melodies during my teens that one day I decided I was fated to be a brilliant composer, put songs to paper, and share them with the world. I joined the band that very day. I even signed up for extra classes and asked Mom and Dad to hire a tutor to help me learn to read and write sheet music. I plunged into the world of an aspiring musician with enormous enthusiasm, certain of my predestined success.
In less than a month my tutor stalked out of our house and refused to come back, and the high school band director asked me to please do the entire band a favor: quit.
I have no musical talent.
My clarinet sounded like an apoplectic yak. For the brief days I blew the trumpet, a hostile-sounding pig snorted along in jerky fits and starts with the rest of the irritated band. I never knew when a sound was actually going to come out of the horn and it always startled me when it did. My violin unleashed a trio of enraged, tone-deaf banshees, and I couldn’t blow the flute well enough to make any more sound than with my lower lip on a soda bottle. Something about the pucker eluded me. The drums turned my arms into a pretzel-prison from which there was no escape. I would have given the tambourine a try — I really think I might have excelled at the hip-bump — but sadly the instrument wasn’t offered at my school. I think that’s why I love my iPod so much. I have music in my soul and can’t get it out.