Unhonored (22 page)

Jonas took a step back in surprise and confusion. “How? How are you doing this?”

“This is MY Day, Jonas!” Merrick screamed as he stepped purposefully forward.

Jonas stumbled backward, pushing Ellis and Jenny against the bookshelves lining the wall. “But you are forbidden from interfering with the Soldiers or the Shades when they—”

Merrick's hand shot out to Jonas's neck. It clamped around his throat, choking off the soldier's voice mid-sentence.

“How dare you bring
war
into my house!” Merrick raged. He lifted Jonas up from the ground with one arm, his grip tight on the man's larynx. “I, who have done so much for these souls, who led them to a place of safety … a refuge from your idealistic squabbling and conflict … will I permit one heartsick trespasser to bring the war to ME and MY PEOPLE?”

“No, Merrick,” Jenny pleaded. “Stop!”

“I haven't yet gotten started!” Merrick railed.

He tossed Jonas through the air as though he were a doll. The young soldier flew toward the center of the library. He held his arms across his face only moments before he dove head-first into the suspended glass particles in the room. Jonas screamed in agony. The glass particles gave way reluctantly, each one raking across his skin, scouring it raw. By the time Jonas slammed against the opposite wall of books, the backs of his hands were bleeding.

Ellis watched as Merrick rounded the outer perimeter of the rotunda, stalking Jonas where he lay. She glanced toward the door, contemplating how she might slip past Merrick, desperate to somehow find help.

The doorway was gone. A bookshelf stood in its place. The exit had vanished. There was no way out.

“Even the Tween has rules you must obey,” Jonas choked out between his coughs. He struggled to get his feet back under him. “You cannot stop the Soldiers or the Shades!”

“Oh, I haven't
stopped
them,” Merrick sneered. “I've slowed them down is all; slow enough so that everything that happens here will take place between breaths. Time enough for me to banish you to the Umbra!”

“You cannot do it,” Jonas said, even as Merrick gathered up the front of his uniform in his hands and dragged him up off of the stained marble floor. “You have no such power over the angels or the demons in the Tween.”

“Oh, that's quite true,” Merrick said. “But, then, those rules don't actually apply to you, do they?”

Jonas's eyes went wide.

“Leave him alone, Merrick,” Ellis demanded.

“But your guide and rescuer has a little secret, Ellis,” Merrick continued as he picked Jonas up bodily from the floor by the tunic. “You see, the rules don't actually apply to him. Can you guess why?”

“Because.” Ellis drew in her own quick breath. “Because he isn't really that kind of Soldier, is he?”

“He's a sneak and a thief.” Merrick nodded. “He waited by the Gate until he saw his chance and then he stole you from me. Then, when you returned, he couldn't just wait by the Gate again. Oh, no. He had to find a way in—any way in—so that he could steal you like the thief he is all over again.”

A glint of light from one of the glass particles suspended in the air flashed in Ellis's eye … then a second and a third.

“This time I'm sending you to a place from which you can never return,” Merrick snarled.

Overhead, a deep sound resonated through the rotunda. Ellis looked up and saw the Umbra.

At its edges it appeared to be a spinning vortex of purple light upon which it was impossible to focus. In its center it was a chilling absence of existence. It was not just black, for black is something, but rather a totality of not being: a space devoid of not just the senses but of time or experience. Its contemplation alone was terrifying.

“No one escapes the Umbra until I say they can be released,” Merrick sneered. “And I'll
never
permit you to leave.”

“So long as it is your Day,” Alicia corrected.

More of the glass particles flashed in the lamplight of the room. Suddenly, the stone tiles beneath Merrick cracked. Tendrils of vines erupted from beneath Merrick, reaching up with astonishing swiftness, entwining his legs.

“What is this?” Merrick demanded, looking at Ellis. “What have you done?”

The vines continued to grow out from between the shattered tiles, thickening around his legs and reaching up his body toward his arms, still holding Jonas suspended in the air.

“You cannot stop me, Ellis,” Merrick shouted.

“But I'm not!” Ellis cried out. “It's not me!”

“She's right, Merrick,” Alicia said with deadly calm as she stepped around the vines weaving tightly around Merrick. “My help for winning the Day. That was the bargain Mrs. Crow offered me on your behalf. You get Ellis and Jenny, the housekeeper takes Dr. Carmichael away as a trophy to her master and I get to rule the Day. Not even you can break such a bargain, Merrick! It's a founding rule of the Tween; a rule that cannot be broken without sundering the Tween—your precious pretense of existence—with it.”

“Alicia,” Ellis said with caution in her voice. She could see that Jonas was still struggling against Merrick's grip but was quickly weakening. “Keep the Day. Just let us go.”

“Let you go?” Alicia laughed, a maniacal edge in the sound. “Oh, no, my dear Ellis. After all the Games
you
made me play? After an eternity of doing what
you
wanted to do? This is
my
Day.”

“You fool!” Merrick said. “I never made such a bargain!”

“You did!” Alicia shot back. “Mrs. Crow said—”

“Mrs. Crow?” Merrick scoffed. “She
lied
!”

Alicia's form grew transparent. Ellis could see particles of her drifting upward, dustlike pieces of her falling upward toward the Umbra overhead.

“No!” Alicia cried as her body dissolved upward into the nothing. “It's
my
Day!
I'm
the one! It's
me
!”

Her last words as she dissolved were still echoing in the hall when another voice spoke.

“No, it's me,” said Margaret. The forgotten servant was stepping into the center of the floor as the vines also reached outward, wrapping around the pillars at the perimeter of the room and upward into the dome. The vines began to spring into blossoms, rare and beautiful. “It's
me
!”

She was carrying a Book.

It was the Book of
her
Day.

 

22

END OF DREAMS

“Margaret.” Ellis's mouth had suddenly gone dry. “Please, what you're trying to do is … is more difficult than you know.”

“Oh, by all means patronize me, your ladyship!” Margaret laughed in derision. “The great Ellis and her abandoned, lesser half together again to torment their little pet Margaret! Why don't you remind me once more how small and insignificant I am in your grand schemes and elaborate pretense? By all means put me in my place, your ladyship!”

“Argh!” Merrick cried out as the vines tightened around his forearms. He released his grip on Jonas, dropping him onto the broken floor. Jonas stumbled backward over the vines, falling on his back.

“You're in over your head, Margaret,” Merrick said through a predatory grin. The vines wrapped tighter about him, threatening to engulf him.

Her black servant's dress was transforming at the same time as the library. The color shifted into brighter whites and blues, the dress filling out with layers of petticoats.

Margaret's dress was a much older style, Ellis realized.
How long has she been waiting to rule the Day?

“So ordains the great Merrick!” Margaret sneered. “Ruler of all he surveys. Judge and jury if never quite the executioner. You never did want to get your hands dirty, did you, Merrick? You always played the puppeteer, plucking at everyone else's strings so that they could dirty themselves for you. Well, I'm not dancing for you now, Merrick. I'm not…”

Ellis gasped.

Enormous strings, nearly as thick as ropes, extended from both of Margaret's wrists up through the dome of the library. Other similar strings ran from her knees through her dress and from the back of her neck up through the shattered dome as well. They drew taut, lifting Margaret's arms up in front of her as she clutched the Book of her Day between them.

Jonas, struggling to get to his feet, murmured, “Please, I just … I just want to take her home!”

“Ellis is right, Margaret. It always seems so easy when it isn't your Day that you're living.” Merrick stretched his right hand slightly from the tangle of vines still struggling to encase it. “When your dreams are all that you know, it's best not to let your mind wander.”

Merrick flicked his fingers.

The cable strings at Margaret's wrists jumped, jerking her hands upward. Her arms swung in front of her as though she were a life-sized marionette. The Book of her Day nearly fell from her hands as she struggled to retain her hold on it.

Quaking behind Ellis, Jenny whispered urgently in her ear, “What do we do? What can we do?”

Ellis hurriedly took in the library with a more critical eye. The pillars that had formed a colonnade around the rotunda were now almost completely encased in the flowering vines but there were gaps in the garden transformation, places that looked slightly out of focus or incomplete. There was the feeling of an unfinished painting about the room or, she realized, more like an artist was trying to paint on top of a previous work but the original kept bleeding through.

The glint of a glass shard flashed in her eye.

Ellis's eyes went wide.

“Jenny!” There was urgency in her voice. “You've got to hold on to something. Something solid or at least something you believe is solid.”

“The vines? Perhaps I could—”

“No! Not the vines. Something more real.” Ellis looked about them. “One of the bookcases, perhaps, or a pillar if you can get your arms around it, beneath the vines.”

“Why, Ellis? You're frightening me!”

“Because the glass dust is starting to move again,” Ellis said. “Merrick slowed everything down but Margaret's taken over the Day. She's never done that before. She hasn't the experience to keep her Day intact, especially with Merrick in the room!”

“What does that mean?”

“It means that we don't have much time,” Ellis said. “It means the end of dreams. You've got to hold on, now!”

Jenny frantically pushed her arms beneath the vines of the pillar next to her, wincing in pain at the scraping against her skin.

Ellis took a deep breath to steady herself and then stepped out into the rotunda. The glass dust bit at her face but she came to stand still where Margaret could see her.

“Margaret,” Ellis spoke. “Please. You need to let me help you.”

“You?” Margaret glared. “This is
my
Day! Why would I possibly want
your
help?”

The glass dust was moving quickly enough now to be noticeable. Its sting was lessening on Ellis's skin but it was the increasing velocity of its motion that worried her.

“It's because this is your Day that you need my help,” Ellis replied. “What is it that you want, Margaret? What is it that you want to do with your Day?”

Margaret stared back at her. “What do you mean?”

“What do you want to accomplish in your Day?” Ellis pressed. “What is your Day
about
?”

Margaret drew herself up straight. “Justice!”

“Justice?” Ellis took a tentative step forward. The glass dust was shifting around her. She didn't have much time; none of them did. “Justice for what?”

“Justice for every indignity anyone ever visited on me,” Margaret said with satisfaction. “Justice for every other Day since we came to this place. Justice for being unimportant, used and abused in every incarnation of the Day. Now it's
my
turn and I'm going to
fix
all of it.”

“But you can't, Margaret,” Ellis sighed. She could almost feel the wind of the angel's beating wings drifting across her face like a breeze. “None of us can. The past is done. You can't change it.”

“We
can,
” Margaret whined. “It's my
Day.
We can do it all over again and make it right!”

“We'd make the same mistakes we made before,” Ellis said. “I've looked harder for my own past than anyone, Margaret, and we just can't live there. Life isn't found in the past. Life is found in the here and now. What we chose to be before made us into who we are today but we cannot change that, we can only change what we choose to do right now! Let go of the past, Margaret. I can help you … we can help each other…”

“NO!” Margaret shouted. “You will
pay
for what you did to me!
Everyone
will
pay
!”

Merrick flicked the fingers of his free hand once more.

The marionette ropes wrapped round Margaret's hands jerked violently upward. The Book of her Day tumbled out of her hands and bounced across the vines away from her.

In a moment, the vines encasing Merrick withered into dry husks. Merrick exploded out of them, scattering the brown limbs and leaves into the shifting glass about them.

Margaret stepped back. The ropes binding her flashed suddenly into flame, then fell to ash. She cried out from the pain of freeing herself and lunged toward her Book. The vines still running across the floor tripped her and she fell on her Book of the Day.

Slowly at first but then with greater rapidity, the angels and Shades in the room continued their eternal combat. Their motions seemed graceful as though they were somehow in a dance of war. Mrs. Crow stretched out the talons of her hands toward Carmichael and he struggled to evade her.