On its head was a crown. In its hand, tip drooping, scoring the floor, a sword.
Lady Midday.
And here is where things start to shiver; here things blend and bend. Here is where things stick, like a frame of film through a projector’s gate. Here is where things start to catch, and melt, and burn.
Inside the pocket, the whole rest of my memory’s contents peel and whisk away, leaving nothing behind but a pitiless circle of light. Just me and Vasek Sidlo, frozen inside its circumference, with this phantom leaning in overtop, sliding one hand down under his shirt collar and cupping his frail breastbone, that lid beneath which his ancient heart beats.
I am abruptly hyper aware of the danger—my body, a mere meat-bone-blood-shit shell for my frenzied brain; a cage without keys. Sweat pricks my palms, my temples, muddies the small of my back. Pins and needles in my damaged shoulder, both arms clenching so hard the nerve cuts off, twangs like a pained string. My back hunches, furls, longs to grow wings.
Sidlo’s looking up now, eyes narrowed, studying. Then they widen slightly, and—he smiles, the same way he did when I first walked into his room, at the home. As though he recognized me.
So long, so long I’ve waited . . .
. . . to see you, and not again, not really. No.
For the first time, ever.
Giscelia, that was my name, the painful-burning figure hovering above tells me, as Sidlo relaxes against her like a tired child, head pressed to her bony, shrouded bosom. Then Iris, then Mrs. Whitcomb . . . so many names, as poor Vasek says. So many attempts to reach you, after such long silence.
I blink at her, so dry I can almost hear my lids click; wish I could cry, if only for purposes of hydration. Try to summon a suitable response—any response, really—but nothing comes. We are so far beyond all known maps, and I have no stars to guide me—no instinct, no tools. Not even a compass.
I shut my eyes tight against the light as death’s breath meets mine, smelling of rotten flowers.
So very long, the figure repeats. But time grows short, for all of us, and I have to show you something, sister, directly. Since you still refuse to listen.
“I don’t—”
Sssh, hush. Be quiet, that’s all I ask. For once.
Now open your eyes once more, and watch.
I met Her in the field, when I was a child, trembling under my father’s wrath—his God-madness. And that was the beginning of it, as you already know.
“Yes.”
I grew up, possessed by Her image. I met Arthur and married him. Because he loved me, he took me there, to find out what it was I’d been seeing all those years—Dzèngast. “Home.”
“I know, yeah. I found your—”
I let you find it, sister, led you to it. Like She led your friend in the woods. As She would lead you elsewhere, if I did not stand between.
I frowned. “Stand between . . . So everything up till now, everything that’s happened—that wasn’t Lady Midday after all? That was—?”
Yes, sister, me. Hurting you to spare you further hurt. Visiting harm on you and yours, in the service of saving you from harm.
“You killed Jan, that’s what you’re saying.”
Something I’d mourn, if I still could. And yet.
(And yet.)
Now: are you ready to see?
“See . . . what?”
What you did not want to then. What you blinded yourself in order not to see.
Something you’d rather sit in the dark with forever than look at directly. That’d be bad, man. Really bad. I didn’t know if I was capable of looking at something like that, or anything else. If I was—capable, at all. If I ever had been.