Authors: Colin Harvey
Gabriel shook his head, mouth set. “I love her. She loves me,” he insisted. “We'll be together."
"But it won't
be
Rosie!” O'Malley shouted. “When people return as zombies, they change. Whether it's psychological or something else changes them we don't know—"
"Rosie won't change,” Gabriel insisted. “You're lying."
"The longer a body's left before reanimation, the greater the personality change, even when the body's been in stasis,” O'Malley insisted. “It won't be our Rosina anymore; it'll be someone else."
"It'll be my Rosie,” Gabe said flatly.
O'Malley realised he was wasting his time. Gabriel was beyond reason. “Give me the other spells,” he urged, taking them from Gabriel. He left without looking at the thing that had been his daughter. She no longer existed. “Come outside for a moment,” he said, thinking of the message and a final revenge. If Gabriel were there during its first waking moments the creature would bond to him. If it woke alone, it would have no one.
Perhaps less revenge than a benediction,
he thought.
"I'm leaving,” he said. “Something's cropped up. I must go. I'll take these.” He patted the spells. “See to it no harm comes to my family, d'ye hear?"
Gabriel nodded absently. His eyes fixed on the doorway. O'Malley stood in front of him, forcing the younger man to look at him. “Someone's playing games with us,” he said. “Who put you up to this?” But Gabriel turned away, refusing to look at him. “Do you know anything about a threat?” Gabriel shook his head. “I want you to take care of the others, as well as Rosie. Take good care of them, or I'll do for you. I mean it,” he said sternly. “If anything happens to any of those three, I'll come after you. You'll wish you'd never been born."
Gabriel nodded, eyes still fixed on the doorway.
The light was harsher than she remembered. She heard a rasping sound, unbearably loud, and the sound of a thudding drum that she gradually realised was her own heart. The rasping was her breathing. The room was unbearably warm, close and stifling.
When it became a little less bewildering, she clambered gingerly from the box. The room was familiar yet strange at the same time.
She walked through the house into the street. A man watched her intently, frozen still, yet quivering with excitement. She could sense his tension and recoiled from it.
This close, she could see his expression. Joy so overwhelming, so intoxicating, it was almost painful. Then he took her in his arms, and she felt his heart fluttering in his chest, beating against her.
He pulled away, responding to the stiff unyielding way she stood motionless. “Rosie,” he said. “It's me. Gabriel."
"I know.” Her voice lacked any emotion whatsoever. “Why did you bring me back?” she asked. “You should have left me where I was. I was at peace. Now—” She couldn't find words. To feel like a grub amongst warmth and stickiness and moisture. She had known the Long Black. The crucible of death had tempered her personality, forged it anew in ways incomprehensible to the living.
He looked shocked. “It's me, Rosie,” he repeated. Her memory told her that for him it was all that mattered. He was her Gabriel and she his Rosina. “We'll be together now. We can have a May wedding, just as you always wanted.” He took her hand and led her into the square. “We'll take a walk in the moonlight, like we used to."
They walked for awhile. He kissed her again. She didn't struggle. Didn't respond either, just stood as responsive as a block of wood, and he stopped, puzzled. “You're just having trouble getting reoriented,” he insisted.
She let him lead her by the hand. She didn't have anywhere else to go, so she might as well.
"You must be tired,” he said. “You can stay at my place tonight. You remember? It's out on the edge where it's quiet, and you can get used to the world again."
She tried to smile, but it wasn't quite right. Her face was stiff, immobile, her eyes as cold as a November day.
He set up a bed in his lounge. “I'll sleep here, while you sleep in my bed,” he said. “It wouldn't be right to sleep together tonight. Plenty of time for that when we're married."
O'Malley was packing when the second message came. He'd been in two minds, unsure the first message wasn't a prank. The runes were unclear, his crystal ball clouded enough to make him think the warning, whoever it was from, was genuine. It seemed the spells had stirred up a whirlwind of danger. Time to go travelling for awhile. He'd come back in the fall, maybe.
Gabriel slept right through the day, catching up on all the sleep he'd missed the last few nights, and awoke to early evening dusk.
She stood, looking out of the window. She could have been a statue. “You want something to eat?” he asked.
She said, “If you're eating."
He busied himself in the kitchen, whistling cheerfully. Dinner took a while to prepare, and it was getting dark by the time they ate.
She ate silently, but efficiently.
"Shall we go for a walk?” he asked, still cheerful, though it was becoming an effort. He hoped she'd be her old self soon, then cursed himself for a miserable wretch. After what she'd been through, he was worried because she was quiet!
They walked around the edge of town in the moonlight.
They climbed a hill and looked out toward the wilderness. Over to the side, to the right, was a meadow. The field was white in the moonlight. She could see all around her, the field was so open, she could have been in the centre of a great lake of grass.
He put his arms round her. “It's okay,” he said. “I understand. However long it takes, I'll be here for you.” He drew her to him, and again she didn't resist but didn't respond either. He kissed the side of her neck and buried his face there.
She looked out over his head buried in her shoulder. Had her face been more expressive, her eyes might have widened slightly, given away in some way that they weren't alone. If he'd been looking.
A black shape approached from the town, skirting the edge of the field, amorphous at this distance yet somehow menacing. It grew steadily larger. Now it had a head, shoulders, arms that swayed to its walk. The moon found where its arms belonged and gave it a face, of sorts. Small yet, still a safe distance away. The moon gave it tiny pinprick eyes, a tiny nose, a tiny mouth. The aura of menace grew by the moment.
Death incarnate walked upright like a man, inhuman yet manshaped. Closer, she could see the pinprick eyes burning, the nose became a snout, the mouth contained a lolling tongue. She knew death intimately, and something about it suggested it had an equally intimate knowledge. She felt a strange sort of kinship to it. She said nothing, so Gabriel never heard its approach. It glided silently toward them.
As the shape drew closer and closer, growing gigantic, Gabriel leaned back slightly and gazed into her eyes. “I love you Rosie,” he whispered. He stiffened, a chiaroscuro sketch in the moonlight, and half turned away from her, a look of puzzlement on his face, blood trickling down the side of his mouth.
She let go, and he toppled back into the creature's arms. It caught and held him before withdrawing its blade from his back.
Rosina and her kind didn't feel anything so gross as emotions. Measured against those of the quick, theirs were as summer breezes compared to tropical storms. As she released the body of someone her world had once revolved around, her strongest feeling was relief from the rowdy bag of bones and blood and the boiling maelstrom of emotions it contained.
She looked up at the dark mass looming over her. “You killed it.” Her voice held no reproach. It was a statement of fact.
—The penalty for handling my client's spells is death.—The slate scrolled in blood red letters.—I should kill you, but I cannot kill what is already dead.—
"Would you kill me again?” For the first time, her voice held the barest whisper of emotion, of hope. “Could you kill me again?"
—If I could, I would, under the terms of the contract. But you can't be killed, short of total destruction. I don't have the means for that.—
"I wish you could.” Her voice was wistful. “I never asked to be resurrected."
—No one asks any more than the quick ask to be born. It is simply your fate. Are you the property of another?—
"No."
—You should be grateful. At least you are free.—With that, the creature turned, carrying Gabriel's body, and loped away across the moonlit sea of grass.
"Grateful,” she said in her machine-cold voice.
The spellhound carried the young man's limp body as if it were no more than a light sack. It was sure Jocasta would be unhappy, but it could endure her displeasure.
It put down the body and looked up at the ornate roof. One of the statues took flight from the roof. It soared, swooping around and around. The spellhound toyed with the idea of shooting it down. For some reason, perhaps no more than a whim, it chose not to do so.
At last the swooping figure set down in the square, no more than an arm's width from the spellhound.
The spellhound sniffed deeply and pronounced its verdict.—You've handled my client's spells. For that your life is forfeit.—It stopped. The humming figure ignored the spellhound, instead reached down and switched on a small device he'd taken from his carry bag.
From it a man's voice spoke: “Hello, whoever, whatever you are. I've waited a long time for this. My whole life has led to this. The locals call me Meph, but that isn't my name. That was the name of the alien who gave me this drug: Mephistopheles. Who says aliens have no sense of humour? I thought being able to see the future would help get me to the stars. I had the wings added—I should have known better. If they had called me anything, the people here should have called me Icarus. Though it was The Bubble that did this to me, not the sun.
"Poor Gabriel thought I wanted a spell, but you're what I wanted—to bring you here."
—?—
"People always behave as if the future can be changed. It can't, any more than we can change the past. Maybe some species can, but it's beyond us. It took me forever, all the time these mud-brains thought I was a harmless loony, to realise that.
"I wanted you to have this device. Don't sample me—the drug will screw up your systems, you'll be more badly affected than I am. We're not geared to remember in both directions, any more than we can have two conversations simultaneously.
"I may be only a little player in whatever drama you're acting out, but even we crowd members have our stories, if anyone will listen. Remember me by this. It's all we want, isn't it, any of us really? It's why we have kids, rule the world, do anything, to be remembered. It's our small immortality."
Meph opened his arms wide and lifted his eyes to the stars, offering his throat to the spellhound. “So take me now; don't feel pity. It's been an interesting life."
The spellhound unsheathed its claws, slashed once, and before the man had crumpled to the ground, picked up his recorder and collected Gabriel's corpse.
Every night, where a shadowy figure used to wait in vain for his girl, someone else now stands in front of her father's shop. Her feet turn in at angles, and one leg is so badly misshapen, it would hurt any normal woman to stand there, so still and small. She looks forward with as much impatience as she can feel for the day when her body disintegrates. Waits for death, the way she used to wait for
him
when she was alive. Feet planted apart as she stands in the golden-lit square, she waits, if necessary, for all eternity. She has nowhere else to go, nothing else to wait for.
The summer sun blazed above the courtyard, heating the ceramic tiles until they were too hot to touch. Coconut palms, pines and lemon eucalyptus waved languidly. Hillocks of ryegrass separated them at their base, all of which conspired to hide the courtyard walls from casual glances. Duff sat further back in the shadows, sipping a drink, but Sinhalese lay stretched out with a small game on a board by her side, on the margin between the shade of the courtyard walls and full sun, soaking up the ultraviolet rays like a lizard warming her blood and bones.
Sinhalese stretched languorously. “Mmm, it's so much nicer here than at Frehk. Why can't we live here all the time?"
"You know why, poppet.” Duff sighed. “The City of Light is for play; Frehk is for work. Besides, if you lived here all the time, the novelty would wear off. Half the reason you enjoy it so much is that you don't spend all your time here."
She pouted. “S'pose so.” She brightened. “We should have a party. Bring some of the plebs from Frehk to amuse us."
"Mmm.” He didn't sound as if he were completely sure if it was a good idea. “Perhaps we will."
The rumble of distant engines shook the ground, and flowerpots fell from the courtyard walls to smash on the stones.
The paving slabs in the courtyard lifted slightly, then scattered upwards and outwards in hundreds, thousands of pieces.
"A sneak attack!” Sinhalese said, more excited than scared.
"Thought they'd evade the wards.” Duff breathed deeply, then paused. “Let's see what they want. The sending will have drained it anyway."
From the ground erupted a whirlwind of smoke. It solidified into a great four-armed creature, vaguely manshaped but twice the height of a normal man. Spikes and crests of bone seemed to run along every limb. The compound eyes were midnight black.
It looked around, and its gaze settled. “Duff."
"Spare me your posturing,” Duff said. “What do you want?"
"My master wants a reckoning.” Its voice sounded much like the slabs had when they burst apart. “He calls for you to settle your bill."
"And who's your master?” Duff said, voice level. “He can't afford much if a Levid's all he can run to."
The creature didn't reply but gazed at Duff, then leapt, blades extending from the heels of each hand. They slashed at Duff, who leapt back, then narrowed his eyes.