Had Balthus realized what had happened? That closing her mind to him had opened it to other magical controllers? Surely he had not known it at first but only later, had used it to infiltrate the Falcon’s camp, to discover his plans in order to catch him?
“Your compatriots,” she said, “including any magickers with them, are dead. You are here in Balthus’s castle, and will be wrung of information as a sponge is of water. Will you yield it up easily or will you force him to twist you hard?”
She watched him as he considered her words. She thought that it would be hard to kill him, but she’d do it nonetheless. She had killed pretty men before, and seen many of them used to coaxing their way from women die as quick and efficiently as the ugliest man.
Sometimes they were a little more theatrical about it all. He seemed like he would be the theatrical sort.
She touched the silver chain. She had refused jewelry for so long. It was something that made you a target, or gave enemies a chance to grab at it. And here it had happened, just as she had always feared. Her worst enemy had been in her head, and it was not herself.
She thought, though, that if she could have freed him, she might have. He was that pretty. It would have made her happy, to know that he lived somewhere, that he knew it was by her mercy. If only that was possible.
Footsteps, coming down the stairs. Who?
The Falcon twisted at the air with his hand. She felt the chain constrict around her throat, puppet fingers slipping into her brain.
“It seems my necromancer’s magic lingers after all, after all,” he said. “I suspected you could not resist coming close enough that I could control you, even without his assistance. What shall I have you do? Kill your master seems the most obvious step, doesn’t it?”
“Perhaps,” Balthus said from where he stood on the stairwell.
Aife was pulled upward, her limbs someone else’s, a loathsome intimacy that made bile burn in her throat. The guards were on their knees, choking, hands at their throats, trying to pry away invisible cords. She was thrust towards the door, trying to keep her arms out to maintain balance.
Balthus raised his hand, palm towards her. The green blotch had grown like a bracelet around his wrist. A blob of silvery liquid covered the center of his hand like the moon, pulling her forward, a mystical tide washing through her, making her heavy, restoring her to herself. She shuddered, shaking off the last of the netting over her senses.
“You are not one-sixteenth as clever as you think you are, puppy,” Balthus said.
“Enough to rid you of your most powerful tool!” the Falcon exclaimed. She twisted away as he flung something at her that dispersed in the air, a handful of motes. She felt it settling on her back and shoulders, saw red sparkling dust riding the breeze, falling on her gray skin and setting it smoldering wherever it landed.
Where was water, anywhere close at hand? The privy pot in the cell was dry. The guards were recovering, as she had, and so she discarded the thought of quenching anything in their blood.
Fire blazed along her skin, burning deep, too deep to extinguish. She staggered towards the door, where Balthus stood. His face was stricken. She saw herself, a fiery angel, reflected in his pupils, saw the thick velvet of the cloak gone lacy with flame. She opened her mouth to appeal to him and felt it fill with flaming dust, go hiss-flickering out, the heat stealing any chance at words.
Fire, and more fire, and then final darkness.
Only to awake, agonized. Balthus’s face above her yet again.
Was that all it would ever be, from now on?
She was bone now. Bone and some sort of spectral, invisible flesh that netted her limbs into order and gave her the power of sight. She moved her fingers and they clacked and clicked against the planes of her face as she tried to touch whatever held her together.
Opposite her a standing mirror, green-lit, presenting her rippled and obscured as though drowning. Her skull, wavering in the reflection, capped with a tiara—a golden hawk, wings stretched out to cup the bone.
Wolf was there past the mirror, pressed against the wall of the chamber. Watching her with loyalty. Whatever she became, he would follow. It was reassurance. She would always be a leader, no matter what.
Truly a monster now. She would have to give up some of her illusions: the pretense of meals and cosmetics and clothing. What good would armor be, except to hang on her as though she was some sort of display rack?
“I have made you a present, my dearest,” Balthus said. His fingers stroked her skull, bumped along her teeth. He released her and stepped aside.
Undead, skin already graying. Ah, the fine dark hair, the silver strands like penmarks in reverse. The once-piercing eyes now blue and cloudy marbles.
Marbles full of hate and spite and helpless malice. Hers forevermore, her handsome toy, given her by her master, perhaps to torment, perhaps from love and an impulse to please. Would she ever know his motives, would she ever understand if she was puppet or lover, source of amusement or font of something else?
Endless days stretched before her, in which she would never find the answer.
Present
Nicole Kornher-Stace
Now the infection hits the news and Gabriela’s mom babysits Jack while Gabriela and her dad go to Wal-Mart for supplies. When it isn’t the end of the world, her parents are very local-food, free-range, hundred-mile-diet types, but today the Wal-Mart’s the only place left open and even Gabriela’s mom makes that concession, though she won’t set foot inside herself. As Gabriela’s dad drives the four miles out of suburbia into town, Gabriela watches the boards go up in people’s windows, the padlocks go on doors, the cases of soup cans disappear inside. (Leaving, her dad had grabbed the reusable shopping bags, laughed a little derisive laugh at himself, said Fuck it, and left them in the hall.)
On the way back, the pickup bed and also her lap and footwell full of shopping bags—cans of chili and chickpeas, boxes of cereal, jars upon jars of peanut butter, diapers, multivitamins, cases of ramen, granola, half a dozen can openers—she has a brief panic that they’d get home and the infection would have reached their house already, she’d find her mom gone empty-eyed and gore-mouthed, find Jack lurching instead of toddling. But her dad pulls into the driveway and it’s just like when she was a kid, helping him with groceries every Saturday after cartoons, her mom coming out onto the doorstep to help relay stuff to the kitchen, like a fire brigade with pails of water to a burning house. Except now there’s Jack perched on her hip, there’s a kitchen knife stuck in her belt, and while they rush the bags inside they’re watching their neighbors over their shoulders, and their neighbors, rushing bags into their own houses, are watching Gabriela and her parents over theirs.
Now she wakes up, stretches, says good morning to Jack waking up beside her, and something kicks her in the gut: she remembers what day it is. It’s the first day of the future, and the sun comes through the cracks between the two-by-fours across her window, shines down on her futon and Jack’s racecar pajamas and the new huge red backpack resting against a bookcase. Her parents each have a backpack just like it upstairs. They packed them together last night. Each one is full of energy bars and Gatorade, a first-aid kit, a flashlight, a pocketknife, pepper spray. Hers also has pull-up diapers and fruit snacks for Jack. Jack has a little backpack himself, and in it he has board books, Matchbox cars, more fruit snacks. Each bag except Jack’s has two full bottles of Advil and one of dirt-cheap vodka, in case the time comes and they can’t bring themselves to use the knives.