“McManus,” Farrell said. A shadow the size of a pig slid between his legs, then circled back, nuzzling him. He said, “McManus, when he came to the house with a gun. I remember what you did. I saw you.”
Sia’s surprised laughter sounded like Micah Willows’ breathing. “That was no miracle, that was only fear. It is the easiest thing in the world to make human beings afraid—none of us could ever resist it. They do all the work for you, and then they call you a god. But no one can make the universe afraid.” A second mask, her favorite, from New Guinea, began to clatter its tusks and sharks’ teeth together; she waved it silent, and it spat at her contemptuously.
“Forgive me,” she said to Farrell and Julie. “I should never have let you in, never have pretended that I could do anything for your friend. That was vanity, not pity, and I am very sorry for it. Go now. I think you still can.”
The pig-shadow had been joined by others, larger, with too many legs. They pressed close around Farrell, pushing against him like Briseis, thick as blankets, smelling like dog food. Far away, on the other side of the shadows, he could hear Julie saying, “Joe, help me get Micah on his feet. We are getting out of here.”
“No,” he said, as loudly as he could. “He was calling for her, he knew she was the only one who could help him. You love him—” His mouth tasted as rancid as the shadows. “You want him to be like this forever? Even in Avicenna, they’ll put him away and give him stuff to keep him quiet, and he’ll die. She has to try again, that’s all.”
“You don’t understand.” Sia was shaking her head violently, her hair scattering the last remnants of starlight that clung there. “You don’t understand. I cheated you because I was afraid, because I knew I would fail, and I know what it means to fail at a miracle. My strength is no more than a wish of what it was, but I did not dare to use even half of it just now, I did not dare. Take him and go, go quickly.”
Julie had bent over Micah Willows, working her hands under his shoulders. She straightened slowly, regarding Sia with resentful respect. She said in a low voice, “Because the universe snaps back.”
“Exactly as hard as you bend it.” Sia gestured around her at the swarming shadows and the hanging masks, all but one of which were clacking and whining hungrily, lunging toward her on their hooks. “This is nothing, because I tried nothing. If I put forth all the strength I have, it would still not be enough to free Mansa Kankan Musa from this time, but the rebound, if you like, the rebound could shake all of us into the middle of next week.” Her smile parted the darkness like a sudden sail. “You would not like the middle of next week. I have spent some time there.”
Micah Willows sat up, crying softly, “Al-Haji Umar! Al-Haji Umar, I am here! Okoro, Bakary, Yoro Keita, here I am waiting in this place, come and find me!” Julie crouched beside him, holding him as he slumped back, but he struggled weakly in her arms, giggling and muttering, “The hand that touches Mansa Musa.” She looked silently up at Sia. The shadows made their faces dim and small; but even so, Farrell saw the long glance that passed between them, deeper than complicity, more candid than easy sisterhood, almost shy.
Julie said, “Please, will you try again? I’ll help you.”
“You help me?” Sia’s answer came so briskly and decisively that Farrell believed forever that she had had it ready before Micah Willows ever knocked on her door. “Child, no one can help me, no one except Briseis, and she can only do what she can do, You are incredibly stupid and selfish—and very brave—and you should go home now, this minute. For some things there is no help, you just go home.”
Julie’s voice trembled slightly when she replied, but her words were quick and clear. “You said that most people have at least a little magic. Mine comes from my grandmother, if I have any. She was born on an island called Hachijojima and she never learned English, but I spoke Japanese with her when I was small. I didn’t know it was Japanese, it was just the way Grandma and I talked. I remember she used to drive my parents crazy, because she’d tell me really scary stories about the different kinds of ghosts—shirei and muen-botoke and the hungry ghosts, the gaki. And ikiryo, they’re the worst, they’re the spirits of the living, and you can send them out to kill people if you’re wicked enough. I loved the ikiryo stories. They gave me such great nightmares.”
Sia was nodding, a drowsy old woman before a guttering fir. “And the goddesses—Marishiten, Sengen of Fujiyama. Did she tell you about Sengen, your grandmother?”
“Ko-no-hana-saku-ya-hime,” Julie chanted softly. “She said it meant that Sengen was radiant, like the flowers of the trees. And Yuki-Onna, the Lady of the Snow. I thought she was wonderful, even if she was Death.” She paused, but Sia said nothing, and Julie took a deep breath and added, “And Kannon. Especially Kannon.”
“Kuan-Yin,” Sia murmured. “Avalokitesvara. Elevenfaced, horse-headed, thousand-handed, Kannon the Merciful.”
“Yes,” Julie said. Briseis plopped her heavy head on Farrell’s knee, and he petted her, taking a sad, spiteful comfort in her need of him. Julie said, “I don’t remember this at all, any of it, but somehow my grandmother consecrated me to Kannon. A little private ceremony, just the two of us. My father walked in on it, and I guess he hit the roof. I don’t know. I couldn’t have been more than five or six.”
The black flames had gone out almost completely; the only light in the shadow-choked room seemed to emanate from the angry masks and, strangely, from Micah Willows’ wracked and scarred face. Julie went on, “All I’m sure about is that I didn’t get to be with Grandma so much after that age. I lost all my Japanese pretty fast; and I lost Grandma too. She died when I was eight. She’s buried on Hachijojima.”
Two shadows nipped Farrell’s ankles at once with icy little teeth that left no marks. He flailed them away, but others were moving in, shapelessly aggressive as Julie’s Japanese ghosts. Sia asked “Did you ever wonder why she did that, joining you and Kannon?”
“I don’t know. Maybe she was hoping I’d be a Buddhist nun.”
Sia was shaking her head again before Julie had finished. “Your grandmother was very wise. She had no idea what gift to give you for your life in this country that was already snatching you away from her, but she knew that human beings everywhere need mercy most of all.” She turned to look down at Micah Willows for a long moment, then said something almost inaudible to him in Arabic. Farrell had no doubt that she was repeating her last few words, mercy most of all.
“Well,” she said. In one remarkable movement she stood up, clapped her hands to drive the shadows back, snapped, “Oh, just be quiet!” to the masks—who paid her no attention whatsoever—and turned solemnly around three times, like Briseis bedding down. Farrell and Julie gaped, and she laughed at them.
“No magic, no miracle,” she said. “Only an old person trying to get her doddering self balanced properly. What we are going to do now is absolutely insane and insanely dangerous, and I think we should all get our feet well under us.”
Julie said, “Joe, you’d better go. You don’t have to be here.”
“Piss off, Jewel,” he answered, hurt and furious. His voice silenced the masks briefly, and Julie touched him and said, “I’m sorry.”
“Understand me,” the old woman said, and her own hoarse voice was suddenly so terrible that the room cleared of shadows instantly and Farrell glimpsed the distant, blessed outlines of chairs and chess pieces. Sia said, “I am not doing this for either of you, or even really for him—them—nor out of vanity, as I told you before. I am doing this out of shame, because I knew what had happened the moment it happened, and I did nothing. I did not dare to leave my house. I could have called him here to me, but I feared being destroyed if I tried and failed to free him. So I have done nothing at all for two years, until tonight.”