Broken Angels (35 page)

Darryl did think. Something about the subject of the Creator really got under her skin. He’d heard Robert often refer to the Ground of XynKroma as the Scalp of God, and here Marie-Lydia was making references to God’s Skull. To say Robert was a skeptic and a nonbeliever was putting it mildly, but something about Marie-Lydia’s harsh words…something about them seemed simultaneously dissimilar and familiar to casual discussions he’d had with his Watcher partner. And it wasn’t just her words. Something about
her
made Darryl think of Robert for the first time since his ordeal began. Whatever it was, Darryl didn’t think about it for long; Marie-Lydia had stopped ranting and started talking about him again.

“If you and I are successful in our arts—our beautiful actions— when the Flood occurs, it will have a far different effect than the Errorists intend. And in this new as-yet-indescribable environment, the lost-found babe, born in Xyn, shall be the one with the power, opportunity, and ability to shape it into a new Reality—finally, a universal Paradise, populated by transfigured creatures…under our rightful guardianship, of course.”

Darryl almost felt like chuckling. It wasn’t Marie-Lydia’s words that inspired giddiness, but the stranger changes occurring in the atmosphere and decor around him. He heard increasingly complex melodies and various
musics
flowing through the skull-chamber. Something was happening within him as well.

He wasn’t able to determine for sure just what it was, but it caused random spots about his figure to flare inward from his soul’s surface, several at a time. He felt as if he were being pricked with fiery pins, more than a dozen at any one time, never in the same spot.

While watching and listening to Marie-Lydia, Darryl also noticed VanJill flapping, fluttering, and erratically flying around the room, as if the creature were riding on the currents of one complex melody before suddenly deciding to stop and hop on the currents of a simpler one, then back again. He thought about the pole-pet’s poetry, and Marie-Lydia’s proposal. Taken all together, it wasn’t necessarily complete lunacy.

“In the Flood’s Afterbath, my liberator,” Marie-Lydia said, “we three shall ensure a perfect Creation. The End. The end of History, Art, and God. An unending realm of unending Beauty, physical and emotional; a realm were
no
child will ever again have any reason to live in fear…All we have to do is recover the fictional unborn. Save the Child, for the sake of Reality.”

The surface of Darryl’s soul frizzed. That was one awesome goal.

“You and I,” Marie-Lydia said, “will first begin our own artistic project—revising
Death’s Heart
—by confronting the wayward Errorists on Reality’s surface, wherever we may find them.”

VanJill blew bubbles, several of them at once, each containing only one or two words, as the pole-pet said, “But rather than giving the Errorists a false sense of love or peace, you will correct them, set them on the bright path leading to Xyn, where their souls shall be put to work at the tasks of cultivating our partition of the Ground and building a temple-palace for your Miracle.”

Darryl noticed but wondered little about the metaphors; he was more taken by the fact that, considering the way VanJill usually communicated, the entire sentence was actually coherent to him. Neither the seen words nor the heard words were in any way lined up or presented in order. And they weren’t presented as poetry. But Darryl had received it all as one plain—if quite lengthy—statement, just like he’d understood the pole-pet before it entered its master’s presence.

Darryl soon realized what the transformative process had begun to do for him. Within this atmosphere, within what had been a cold, empty, skull-chamber, he was being enabled to better understand philosophic-poetry, with increasingly little effort. It was his pole-pet’s doing—Sprat, his helpmeet—aided in some way by the enveloping sounds of tunes, melodies, and various types of music. Like Marie-Lydia’s pole-pet, as a denizen of XynKroma, Sprat was conversant with all manners of philosophy and poetry, all the
arts
of thought and communication. Sprat’s being inside of Darryl’s transformed soul explained (or at least made intuitive sense to Darryl) how he was coming to an easier understanding of the meaning underlying VanJill’s hard, gemlike words. Darryl was being
inverted,
coming around to their way of thinking. It wasn’t a bad experience.

“True love is believed to transcend space and time,” Marie-Lydia said. “The temple-palace and its cultivated section of Xyn’s Ground will exist outside of those constructs as well. The temple-palace will be based on an architectural design I’ve learned during my time here. Those Errorists’ souls delivered by you and me will be allowed to reform themselves by laboring to build the temple-palace and tend to the vineyard, a plot of the Ground where we shall make our magick wine to change the dull Creator’s mind.”

This almost made good sense to Darryl, but—

“What about the bodies left behind on Reality’s surface?” he asked. “When delivering souls to Xyn, their and our bodies will be left on the surface in a deep-deep sleep. We’ll eventually wake up to go about our ‘artistic’ business—but what about them? What are we supposed to do with the bodies?”

She smiled in a fashion Darryl had never seen before. “We’ll have allies on the surface who’ll know how to deal with those. Your concern and mine are the souls.” She then took to the air to assist VanJill with its current task.

Darryl stayed on the ground, but he followed her around the room, considering the entire proposal. A lost-found child, a great Artist, a
Miracle,
crying into reality—all levels of Reality—perfection.
A Beautiful Creation
. One finally fit for humankind, a species that has suffered gravely and incessantly since its inception…But there were pieces that didn’t quite fit for him. Marie-Lydia had left something out of her proposal that he felt should’ve been obvious, but he just couldn’t get his mind to settle on it.

While thinking about it all, he also looked around and considered the fact they were now standing inside an elaborately decorated room. What had once been the skull’s eye sockets were now stained-glass windows. The entire scene was plainly set for some sort of ceremony. It almost seemed as if his acceptance of Marie-Lydia’s proposal was a foregone conclusion.

“What if I understand I want no part of this engagement?” he asked. “What if I decide that, now that you’re free from your prison, I should be allowed to go free and live my life as I please?”

“You may,” was Marie-Lydia’s surprising answer. “The choice is yours. And you don’t have to make it now. Let your actions speak for you when you return to Reality’s surface. Faith preceded by words but not backed by actions is
holey
. Empty.

“You’ll take your final test after you leave Xyn. To pass, you’ll send to me the soul of the Errorist who was most responsible for my imprisonment here for so long. Your success will be considered an acceptance of my proposal; your failure, a rejection. If you reject what I’ve offered, then you’ll be free to follow your own pleasure, free to go in peace.”

He wasn’t trapped after all. But Darryl knew he couldn’t go back to living and behaving as he had. There had to be other options.

“If I choose your way,” he asked, “to pass this test, just how would I send someone’s soul to this exact spot?”

VanJill interrupted its actions to respond, using one word per bubble. “Your jeweled brain was transplanted to the area of your heart as you were modified by Sprat. A faithful caretaker of The Beautiful One’s body on Reality’s surface has placed a replica of this jewel on your body. You may direct souls back to the correct section of the Ground with the jewel assisting your will and wishes.”

“And just so you know that I won’t feel bitter or wronged if you don’t accept the offer I’ve given in return for your actions on my behalf,” Marie-Lydia said, “my pole-pet and I will give you and yours a gift just to show our gratitude. Consider it an engagement gift you may keep even if you decide to break it off with me.”

“What kind of gift?”

“It was simply described as ‘Perfect Memory Recollection’ when it was given to me,” Marie-Lydia said. “It’s an extrasensory ability. A truly valuable one. Your pet will best know how to put it to use.”

Of course. Sprat would now be with him always. Just under the soul’s skin when in Xyn, and deep in the subconscious while on Reality’s surface.

“Now then,” Marie-Lydia said, “you’ve heard my proposal. Go and give me your answer.”

Darryl looked behind him toward the stained-glass windows, the now-plugged portals through which he’d entered. He wondered exactly how he should make his exit.

“And remember,” Marie-Lydia said, “you
will
remember, if you want redemption, if you want to be saved, absolved, you need to know exactly what you’re being saved from, what’s being washed away. You won’t be saved by interpreting someone else’s attempts at art. You’ll only be saved by creating your own.”

Darryl felt the jewel at the center of his soul’s chest beginning to throb, and quickly accelerating. His soul felt increasing pressure, from within and without, as if he were expanding and being crushed at the same time. He wanted to cry out in pain, but he no longer had a voice. The only sound he made was when his wings fell off his back and shattered on the floor; the crystal-feathers were reduced to colored dust. It was amid an expanding cloud of multicolored dust that Darryl’s soul began to disintegrate. Its pieces and particles began to get carried away on the fierce breezes that had been contained within him. He was ushered out of the room, out through the tiny cracks in the stained glasses, the imperfectly plugged eye sockets. But Darryl saw much before his consciousness evaporated.

The giant had replaced its skull back onto its shoulders; the lifting and reattachment must’ve caused the skull-chamber’s earlier trembling. The seventy-eight rectangles were now nowhere in sight. There was no more need for armor or guards, but the giant’s body was most likely protected in some way by the grapevines entwined about its entire body. The soon-to-be-brains-or-raisins had turned into imperfect spheres, multicolored egg-shaped objects, each imprinted with the design of a globe—Earths with amethyst seas, emerald continents, and swirling wisps of ruby-red clouds. Bunches and bunches of the egg-shaped alternate-earth objects rested in both of the giant’s hands, so many it seemed inevitable a few would spill and fall to crack open, or maybe to float in the fresh unfrozen water on which the giant’s feet now stood.

The last thing Darryl saw before losing the sight and thought of it all was the face of the giant’s newly replaced head as it acquired patches and pieces of something like skin. Each puzzling piece was a different pigmentation, none of them a hue found in familiar nature. Darryl was gone before he could solve that puzzle, but he was all set on the solution to another.

EIGHTEEN

Robert and Ava had been driving around for a little more than an hour. There were several more to go until dawn. Aside from the Mustang’s headlights and the occasional unbroken streetlights and the unreliable moonlight, there wasn’t much to help brighten their way. But Robert wasn’t really relying on light for their search. He’d put his trust into Ava’s intuition, particularly her sense of recollection.

He’d taken a good look at Vince’s map, and without showing or even mentioning it to her, he’d been driving Ava to the places where Darryl had spotted the “Save the Children” graffiti in Reston, Virginia, and its surrounding areas. He’d hoped the places would provoke Ava’s sense of familiarity. The forth spot did just that.

“I know this place.”

“Here?” Robert asked.

They were driving through Herndon, Virginia, a few miles from the city limits of Reston.

“Yes,” Ava replied in a voice that just rose above a whisper. “That group of trees. On the other side is a house. A pretty big house. Probably something in there worth looking for.”

Robert drove for another half mile then pulled the car over to the side of the road. He shut off the engine. “We’ll go on foot from here.”

He popped the trunk so Ava could retrieve the crystalline bow. He removed the corresq from his jacket’s inner breast pocket, tossed the jacket into the trunk, and secured the vehicle. He then motioned for Ava to move closer.

“We don’t have watches to communicate with,” he whispered, “so we’ll go over the plan now, just so we’re on the same page.” Ava nodded. “This is a wealthy area. People guard their properties ferociously. So from here, we travel through the treetops, camouflaged. We don’t want to trip anything lying out on the ground for trespassers. Once we get to the house, if it is the one we’re looking for, we stay together. No splitting up.”

“Seems like we could do a more effective search by splitting up,” Ava whispered. “Unless you don’t trust me to—”

“Damn it, I trust you!” Robert almost forgot to keep his voice down. “Like I said, we have no way to communicate with each other, no easy way of finding each other quickly if we need to. You said it’s a big house, right? So we stay close.” Robert attached the corresq to his belt buckle. “Let’s go.”