Muse by Rebecca Lim
Gia gives my elbow a squeeze from behind as we walk under the giant arch. When I look back, she’s nowhere to be seen, but Giovanni’s pretty people are everywhere: counting chairs, consulting lists, consulting together, pointing, shifting name plates, placing a gift bound with signature red ribbon upon each seat. Black-clad technicians, wearing headphones and security cards strung on lanyards, are doing sound, mic and lighting checks all over the building.
The dome is already lit palely blue as Vladimir and I hurry beneath it towards the backstage area, and I shiver, recalling the sound that Luc’s sword made when it struck Nuriel’s, the way the blades crackled when they came together, the way Luc had casually turned the fire of his wrath upon the sleeping innocent. Or maybe I’d done that. I shake my head, unable to get those images of a burning world out of my mind, unable to suppress the terrible feeling that it was somehow all my fault.
Vladimir melts away as soon as I’m seated for hair and make-up.
‘This is it then,’ an Englishwoman I don’t recognise says cheerfully as she grabs my long hair and twists it into a rough topknot. She rubs something abrasive into my face and I have to close my eyes.
‘If only it were,’ I murmur in Irina’s thick accent, wishing They would take me now.
‘Carefully! Carefully,’ Juliana gripes as two people wrestle the golden wings onto my shoulders and tighten the leather straps of the harness. I can’t help the chill that ripples across my skin when they all step back, satisfied.
‘No shoes,’ Tommy interrupts from the side. ‘Ditch the flats, they’re so wrong. I’ve changed my mind. She can carry it off in bare feet. Just like in the banner. Look at her. Perfection.’
I glance at the full-length mirror someone has positioned alongside me and think the heavy shadow ringing my eyes, my unbound, teased up, matted, madwoman hair and glistening, blood-red mouth make me look sick. My eyes skitter away from the reflection of the golden wings that rise from Irina’s narrow shoulders. I can’t bear to look at them for too long; just seeing them makes me dizzy.
‘Half an hour!’ a woman in headphones yells as she moves through the chaos backstage. ‘Half an hour! Positions, people. Places.’
We line up in a snaking line: fourteen flat-chested, freakishly tall women of varying ages in garish make-up and fourteen very different looks, each accessorised with a pair of wings. Some, like mine, are so large that their end feathers trail upon the floor; some are so small and diaphanous they’re barely noticeable. When I look at any of them, I get a sick feeling in my stomach and have to swallow hard.
What are you waiting for? I rail silently at the six who remain. Shift me now, damn you. Why make me participate in this inglorious farce?
‘Break a leg, my beauties!’ Tommy calls out as he moves up the line towards me with Juliana and Giovanni in tow. He runs his eyes across each of us, adjusting a wing span here, a neckline there.
When the three of them reach me, Juliana and Tommy step back behind Giovanni respectfully as he raises my hands, kissing them before releasing them.
‘My dear,’ he says, ‘you and I — we have come a long way, yes? When you look like this, it makes it possible to forget how much is wrong with this world. I thank you — for putting aside your pain, your demons; for putting me first.’
I see his eyes grow shiny with emotion and look down hurriedly, feeling my eyes sting in answer. My pain is always with me, it can never be put aside, it has made me who I am.
And my demons? My own personal demons? They have not yet arrived to drive my soul into another body. And so I wait, going through the motions of Irina’s bizarre, high-octane life while They tarry, doing who knows what?
I raise my head as the classical music they’ve had playing on a loop during the lightshow winds down to its last few bars.
Tommy says, ‘Shake the floor, Irina! Like the giant you are. Bring the house down.’
And I walk out of there, the way K’el told me to. Without looking back.
The pounding techno opening track bursts out of the loudspeakers and the awe-inspiring lightshow universe immediately winks out.
I emerge onto the catwalk as if by black magic, and the spotlights go up, white hot, so it’s impossible to make out the features of the audience members in the darkness beyond the front row.
The entire room seems to give a collective gasp as I stand there motionless for a full minute — the way I’ve been told to — the light striking off the surface of the golden paillettes that cover my gown, like armour deflecting arrow strike. All down the arcade, the giant video screens show images of me from every angle. There must be cameras positioned everywhere. I know I’m dazzling. I may not be able to make out most of the audience immediately, but I can feel every eye on me as I stand, holding my pose, arms loosely at my sides, golden feathers cascading down my back and trailing onto the floor behind my bare feet.
As the track segues into something even louder, faster, fiercer, I look down the bright white line of the catwalk. All that exists, I tell myself, is this present. Don’t think about what could happen. You have no past, and no future. It’s all been erased. Or it’s about to be. And you’ll have to start again, like you always do.
That’s how it has to be from now on. Without the things that have always anchored me, without Luc, without Ryan, it will always and forever be about living in the moment. I feel a surge of pain that almost makes me crumple. Almost.
Just breathe, says my inner demon again, through my anguish. Just walk. Don’t screw it up.
Then I begin to stalk down the runway, my tousled, mussed-up, centre-parted hair flying back behind me and tangling with the beaten-metal feathers of my golden wings. As I walk, the video screen shows a magnified image of my form in side profile, the three of us moving fluidly down the runway at the same pace.
I’m walking so quickly, so surely, that I swiftly cover the distance to the circular platform beneath the overarching dome. I pause there and stare down at the expectant faces that are turned up towards me, my eyes searching for Gia in the front row as I place my hands on my hips and angle my body aggressively to the right and glare the way I remember Irina does, to remind people she’s the main event. My eyes move along the curve of the front-row patrons seated below and I catch sight of Gia’s familiar glossy, China-girl hair, her down bent head as she puts something in the handbag tucked beneath her feet.
Why isn’t she even looking at me? I think, irritated, as she turns to say something to the young man seated beside her.
The world seems to telescope weirdly as I take in his dark eyes that look almost black in the harsh light, the dark shadows beneath them, his pale face, the hectic spots of colour high on his high cheekbones. Gia may be murmuring in his ear, but she can’t hold his attention. When he pushes a familiar lock of dark hair out of his eyes, I think my confident stance falters, and he immediately stretches out one hand to me, as if he’s afraid that I might fall.
I almost bend down and take his hand.
Ryan, I think dazedly. What are you doing here?
I hadn’t thought we’d ever meet again. In any life. I feel a surge of joy that’s immediately subsumed by an intense sorrow.
Not for you, Gabriel had told me. Twice now, I’ve been forced to leave Ryan, against my will. If I’m forced to leave him again — and I know it’s coming; there’s nothing more certain — I don’t know what it would do to him. Or to me.
Gia catches my eye, and grins when she sees all the longing in my gaze, my eyes moving possessively over his face. Surprise, she mouths.
I forget where I am and actually smile at her, in thanks for this small thing of beauty she’s wrought for me.
And that smile lights up Irina’s bored-looking, haughty, high-fashion little face. I know, because I see it reflected back on all the video screens, the smile shining out of her dark eyes. People actually whistle and stamp their feet, shouting their approval.
Some of the cameras pick up Ryan’s face and project us both alon
Ryan looks down, embarrassed, and the cameras catch that, too. People laugh in sympathy, murmuring at his beauty.
Later, Gia mouths, gesturing with her hands. Keep moving.
I suddenly remember where I am and force myself to stand straighter, making subtle adjustments to my stance, the muscles of my face. Glower, smoulder, pout. Check.
It’s almost physically painful to rip my eyes away from Ryan and cross the circular platform towards the front-row patrons seated on the other side, but I promised Gia and Giovanni, Juliana and Tommy, that I could do this, that Irina would meet all her obligations. So that is what I do, even though every bone in my body is telling me to grab that boy and run. Flee. Before They find me and shift me again.
But it’s impossible, what I want. Somewhere in this building is my watcher, K’el. I’ll never be able to flee the gathered elohim. It’s just a silly pipe dream. So somehow I do it: I walk away from Ryan.
I’m right in the middle of Irina’s signature pause, angle, pause, angle manoeuvre when a golden-haired couple sitting just beneath me catch my eye. They’re so handsome together that they seem to cast the people on either side of them into a dull light. Even in the hyper-bright glare, the golden-haired couple seem to gleam faintly to my eyes.
And I recognise the woman as Giovanni’s executive assistant, Gudrun. The tall, handsome man seated beside her, with reflective, rock-star aviator sunglasses on, wind-ruffled hair and the barest hint of golden stubble along his jawline, takes me a second longer to place.
When I do, I feel my blood freeze.
I recognise his clothes before I recognise him, because I hadn’t been expecting to see him here, or maybe ever again. He’s in a sharp, narrow-cut, single-breasted, three-piece navy suit with a thin navy pinstripe running through the weave, a Windsor-knotted tie in iridescent colours like the sheen on a dragonfly’s wings. The whole ensemble only emphasises his snake-hipped, broad-shouldered, long and lean form. He lifts one hand to remove his sunglasses and light glances off the giant faceted sapphire he’s using as a cufflink. As he tucks the glasses into the top pocket of his suit, his pale blue eyes — like broken water, like living ice — burn into mine. And he makes a gun of the fingers of his right hand, the muzzle pointed in my direction, before he laughs and runs the hand through his golden hair.
Luc! I cry, for his ears alone. You’re alive!
Did you expect anything else, my love? he replies in my head, laughter in his warm, rich voice. When you’ve always been the prize?
I don’t know what I’m feeling. Hope? Love? Anger? Confusion?
And I can’t help my gaze from flying from Luc back to Ryan, from Ryan to Luc. Many in the front-row seats on both sides of the catwalk catch my movements, and a small murmur starts up around me that seems to spread out into the crowd like wildfire. People point and stare.
The video cameras pick up both men’s faces for the benefit of those further back in the audience, projecting them onto the banks of video screens — and the room bursts into an open speculation that’s audible above the volume of the music. Though Luc and Ryan couldn’t be more differently dressed, and one is so fair, the other so dark, it’s clear that they could be twins, so physically similar are they.
Gia’s eyes widen in shock as she looks across the circular platform at Luc. The look is mirrored on Gudrun’s face as she studies Ryan’s features with her enormous, sapphire-blue eyes.
Seeing them together like this, in a way I never thought would happen, it’s a shock to me, too, that I so evidently have a ‘type’. That out of all the mortals in this teeming world I could have fallen for, I had to go and find someone who is the spitting image of Luc.
Only a few feet separate Ryan and Gia from Luc and Gudrun. And the antagonism Luc and Ryan are radiating at each other is so strong I can feel it from where I’m standing, caught in the middle. It’s like a poisonous cloud hanging over all of us, so strong I can almost see it.
The tension doesn’t go unnoticed, and camera flashes go off in the press gallery located at the end of the catwalk as photographers strain forward for shots of both men. I can see the headlines now. Luc will show up as a smear of bright, white light, if they’re lucky. If he shows up at all.
‘Irina!’ Gia hisses as the jarring techno track makes way for a smoky jazz standard that has nothing to do with the dress I’m wearing and everything to do with look number two.
I look down at her dazedly.
‘Keep walking,’ she says. ‘Time. Time’s getting away from you. We’ll sort this mess out later. Move.’
Her words send my heart into overdrive and I tear my gaze away from Luc, away from Ryan, and lurch up the catwalk in my dress of molten gold. I stare down the barrel of all the lenses of the world’s fashion press with my haunted, fearful eyes, then sweep back up the catwalk and behind the blank white wall at the catwalk’s end, without pausing.
Juliana grips my sleeves tightly and says fiercely, ‘Tommy’s waiting, go, go. Lila and Kirsten can make up the time — I will send them together. Go.’
I stumble into Tommy’s waiting arms, and feel hands reach out to strip me of my golden armour, because I can’t seem to make myself move any more.
When I emerge onto the catwalk in my second look — the jaunty, black tricorn hat and face veil atop that sinful black dress with the barely there bodice and full skirt lined in shocking pink, those black wings — I look at no one and nothing but the bright white line of the catwalk, clutching the black leather horse whip they’ve placed under one arm like it’s a life belt. I pass beneath the dome and I don’t look around and I don’t stop walking.
They’re both still there, I can feel it. That, and my building terror.
I pause for the delectation of the world’s press, then pivot sharply and head back up the catwalk towards the dome.
All I can think about is Luc’s plan, back before he somehow managed to get a lock on my position in Milan. Luc had said: find the boy, give the Eight the slip, get back to Paradise and wait it out for him.
But Ryan isn’t needed any more, because Luc’s found me. Somehow he got away from Nuriel. Luc’s here.
Ryan’s here, too. And Luc’s seen him.
My kind think people like Ryan are disposable.
Luc has the power to crush Ryan like an insect.
The thought makes me falter, visibly, and I have to pause on the circular platform beneath the twinkling dome.
The moment I do, thunder loud enough to shake the glass and iron roof of the Galleria suddenly booms in the sky above us, drowning out the driving soundtrack. It’s quickly followed by lightning so bright that the glassed-in roof — in the shape of a vast cross — turns an eye-searing white for an instant.
Talk immediately ripples through the well-heeled audience, and continues as I stagger back into the marshalling area.
They don’t know, you see, that the storm that was promised, that storm for the ages, it’s here. It’s finally come.
Just as Luc has.
First fire, then flood. He never does things in small measures.
Juliana squeezes my forearms and says in her thick Italian accent, ‘Magnifico. Now you must think the happy thoughts, the thoughts of the bride, okay? Think of light, of love. It is almost finished.’
Love?
As first the wings then the black dress are taken off me, piece by complicated piece, and hands tug the lacy, fitted white bodice of the bridal gown down over my head, I think: It is almost over.
And when the last of the players arrive, there will be fear and pain, reprisals and death. An accounting.
Orla takes her time coming off the catwalk in her strapless, silver screen-siren dress, and bumps into me deliberately as I stand in the wings clutching a bouquet of gardenia, white rose and lily, a small sparkling tiara set forward on my crown, my long, toffee-coloured hair wrapped into a smooth and complicated topknot.
Orla just ends up hurting herself, because I do not yield. She just glances off me — a moving force hitting an immovable object — and almost loses her balance, coming down out of one shoe again. ‘Bitch!’ she shouts, rubbing her bare shoulder, her usually pale complexion almost as violent a red as her dyed hair. There’s a large bruise already forming upon her skin where we made contact.
She limps away, holding one shoe, and I walk out of the wings with my head held high.
Think light and love. Right.
Then that song bursts forth out of the speakers and I begin to tremble.
The Flower Duet, impossibly lovely, so moving that people immediately begin to clap and whistle when they see me. Some rise to their feet.
I curtsy gracefully — the way I was taught to do, like a dancer — and begin to walk slowly down the runway, holding my bouquet lightly in my clasped and shaking hands, looking straight ahead despite my tension and the weight of the white snowy wings upon my shoulders.
I don’t look at my golden beloved, who has finally run me to ground after all these years.
I don’t look at Ryan, whose life may now be counted in minutes, in mere seconds.
I hear K’el’s voice in my head again, saying: Not for us, that ‘lifelong partnership’ that’s said to unite mortal woman and mortal man in heart, in mind, in body. We are elohim, Mercy.
Not for me, then, the fate of the happy bride.
I suddenly spot something in the back row, to my right. A cloud of light building about the head and neck of a short, paunchy, balding human male. The light seems to grow in density, it begins to coalesce. And K’el seems to step backwards out of the body in which he’d been disguised, the human slumping forward suddenly in his chair, as if he’s asleep.