Muse by Rebecca Lim
I stamp my own feet in my towering, alien heels. It feels as if my legs are dying from the soles upwards.
Gia shoots me a warning look. ‘Don’t get involved!’ she hisses.
Vladimir insists loudly, ‘No, no, I’m handling it.’
What he isn’t handling is the dirty laundry, and I can feel the worker’s mounting distress. It hangs about her like a detectable odour, like a cloud, as she scrabbles desperately at our feet. I wonder how it is that people like Irina and Gia could become so divorced from ordinary life. I catch everyone by surprise when I dump Irina’s oversized croc-skin holdall against Jürgen’s knife-pleated trouser leg and crouch down, reaching for the nearest towel.
Jürgen kicks the handbag out of his way with unnecessary force and a gold-plated mobile phone falls out with a sharp clatter onto the ancient, stone-flagged floor.
‘Irina, nyet!’ Vladimir roars over my head.
The laundry worker lets out a wail and rips dirty towels out of my hands as fast as I can pick them up.
‘That’s a two hundred thousand dollar, one-of-a-kind bag,’ Gia says to Jürgen mildly as she bends down and gathers up Irina’s things. ‘But of course you’d know that.’
Workers begin darting over from everywhere to help the woman and me repack the laundry bag. Though I pretend not to notice, I feel their hands brush mine deliberately, feel their eyes raking my face. Everyone wants you, everyone loves you. It’s making me feel kind of queasy, all the attention.
Gia helps me to my feet and the people around me fall back reluctantly. ‘Don’t even get me started on your But I must have eeet little phone that you haven’t even learnt how to use properly yet, which is now probably broken thanks to Tyrannodon here …’ She hooks Irina’s bag back onto my shoulder, nodding at the crowd.
‘You’re attention-seeking again in some bizarre way I can’t fathom,’ she says. ‘I’ve never seen you lift a finger to help anyone if there wasn’t something in it for you. But now that you’ve picked up the germs of hundreds of past hotel guests, can we go?’
Vladimir claps his hands dismissively and the crowd scatters. He extends a spotless handkerchief in my direction and I wipe my hands with it. He takes it from me with his thumb and index finger and drops it disdainfully on the floor beside him. We continue through the room, to a doorway on the other side that leads to an internal staircase, away from that sea of expectant, devouring eyes. As we move up the stairwell, it’s suddenly eerily quiet and our footsteps echo on the uneven stone stairs, worn down from centuries of use. We walk up in single file, past two landings, not a single, living soul around, until we reach a pair of heavy steel doors. Vladimir pushes down hard on the panic bar running along the inside of the door on the right, meeting with unexpected resistance. He turns and exchanges a look with Jürgen over our heads. Together, both men put their shoulders to the door and force it open, hissing with the effort.
We stagger out onto Via Victor Hugo, into the teeth of a building gale. Even as I watch, black clouds hurtle across the sky, covering the sun. A long shadow seems to blanket the wide thoroughfare we are standing on, sweeping down its face, across the exteriors of all the graceful buildings crowded on either side, like a river of darkness. In the distance, through the man-made stone canyon, I catch a glimpse of the Piazza del Duomo — the Duomo Square — the Christmas tree and the softly gleaming cathedral rising at its far end like a mirage.
We’re quite some distance from the recessed circular drive of the hotel’s official entrance. According to plan, there are three glossy black luxury sedans with dark tinted windows illegally parked against the kerb, engines idling, each sporting a silver hood ornament in the shape of a delicate winged lady in flight. The cars are longer and wider than normal, with two rear doors instead of one, and they seem to be riding a little low to the ground, as if they might be armoured.
I wonder again how one lone skinny female could merit all this protection, be the centre of so much attention. I don’t know how Irina can stand living like this. It’s beginning to give me the creeps, the way everyone stares and whispers and desires.
Standing beside the first car is a heavy-set older guy in a tailored navy overcoat, who can only be Angelo. A younger coat-wearing giant, with a head of short, tight dark curls, who must be Carlo, is holding open one of the back doors to the third car. The eyes of both men light up when they see me, but then they dart anxious looks at the leaden ominous sky.
‘Is about time!’ Angelo calls out, looking back at me longingly.
‘Subito!’ Carlo snaps, though he, too, cannot look away from me for long.
The fierce gusting wind tears at the ends of my hair so that it ripples out behind me like a bright banner. All the fancy awnings and shutters along the street snap and creak, as the wind buffets them. The sky is an unnatural colour — steel grey with a hint of yellow in it — and the arctic conditions are enough to stop Gia in her tracks so that I almost collide with her back. With an oath, she knots her fancy scarves tightly around the lower half of her face before zipping her leather jacket right up under her neck. Vladimir and Jürgen scowl as they hunch their heavy shoulders against the bitter conditions and pull on matching pairs of black leather gloves, scanning opposite ends of the street continuously.
Vladimir moves forward and opens the back passenger side door to the second car, gesturing urgently for me to get inside as the wind throws grit in all our faces and threatens to snatch the stylish cloche hat right off my head and over the rooftops. Still, I hesitate, unwilling to be dragged back inside, back into Irina’s claustrophobic, over-protected, hothouse little life. I close my eyes and tilt my head back as if I could drink in the approaching tempest, transcend it.
‘What are you doing? Get moving!’ Gia yells through her veil of scarves as she stumbles in the direction of the third car. ‘See you at Giovanni’s. Just be prepared.’
‘Wait!’ I scream, raising my black-gloved hand in her direction.
Gia stops, looking back at me quizzically, and I shriek ‘Ryan!’ into the teeth of the wind. It’s not a question.
Gia hesitates as Carlo plucks at her arm. She throws his hand off and pivots on one heel, back in my direction. Carlo snarls in guttural Italian, but remains where he is, watching me, because that’s what he’s supposed to do, and what he can’t help doing.
Gia leans in towards me as I yell, ‘Bring him to me. As soon as you can.’
In reply, she shouts: ‘Mercy is alive and badly needs your help — have I got it?’
I nod vigorously and she gives me a thumbs-up, then shoves me in the direction of the second limo before stumbling back towards the third car and climbing into the back seat. Jürgen gets in beside her and Carlo swings into the seat facing theirs. The two rear doors slam shut in unison and I can no longer see them all behind the car’s blank, dark windows, though I can still feel their eyes on me.
Angelo’s waiting impatiently for Vladimir to get into the first limo, but the older man continues to watch me narrowly. There’s impatience in his voice when he suddenly bellows, ‘Býstro, Irina! Býstro!’ Hurry, he’s saying. Hurry. But there’s still that reluctance in me to re-enter Irina’s heavily regimented existence.
And something’s telling me to look around. It’s like an itch, like a small and nagging cut dragging at my attention. Something; but nothing I can really place.
The entire length of Via Victor Hugo is weirdly deserted. The old buildings lining both sides of the street have taken on a cold and sinister cast. They seem to loom inwards in the failing light, as if we have stepped into a painting by Dali, or Magritte.
I see that while I was talking to Gia, a cumulonimbus cloud of terrifying proportions has filled the sky immediately above us. Its ragged, billowing shape seems as wide as it is tall, and it’s outlined in a strange and brilliant corona, as if it has swallowed the sun. There’s distant lightning flickering at its heart that maybe only I can see. The strange mass seems to frame the graceful triangular Palladian ro
‘Irina!’ Vladimir shouts, but his voice seems remote and inconsequential, as if heard in a dream.
I can almost smell the approaching storm. There’s heavy rain on the way, a massive front that will hit the old city like a bomb, and I know with certainty that it will last for hours and obscure everything in its path. That cloud, it’s just the beginning of something terrible. A storm for the ages. They’ll talk about it for years to come.
I rip my eyes away from the sky and take a small grudging step towards Vladimir. But then I see something. A gleaming blur moving in an illogical fashion. Like a mobile patch of sunlight. Light where there shouldn’t be any light. I turn my head towards it, though when I try to follow it with my eyes, I don’t see it any more. Perhaps the surface gleam of slickly shining paving stones, or the electric light spilling out of the interiors of cafés and storefronts, is playing tricks on my senses.
Or maybe, remarks my inner demon, it does not wish to be seen. Not this time.
I frown.
Appare! I think. Show yourself.
And that’s when I feel it, faint but insistent. Like an energy at once hot and cold, hair-raising, like a hum, like vinegar in my bones. I know that feeling, have felt it before. Know its source. And it’s coming closer.
I scan my surroundings intently, see nothing. Though I can still feel it, almost hear the grating zing, zing of its movements. It’s far weaker, far fainter, than when I first encountered it on a city street in Australia a lifetime ago. It’s the same entity, I’m sure of it. And the malakh is following me, for some reason only it knows.
Quid est nomen tuum? I think. Tell me your name.
‘Irina!’ Vladimir repeats. He steps forward and places one hand under my elbow, ushering me insistently towards the open car door so that I have no choice but to follow, though I continue searching the air, the sky, for that familiar, errant gleam.
Inside the car, Felipe’s mouth is smiling as he beckons me forward, but his eyes are cold with annoyance. ‘Senorita,’ he calls, leaning through the gap between the front seats with his smiling mouth and cold eyes. ‘Por favor, Senorita.’
The icy wind tears at my hair, at my clothes, as if insisting that I stay. And I want to stay outside on this steel-grey thoroughfare, under this steel-grey sky, with the temperature falling fast towards freezing. The cold has never bothered me. But I don’t see how I can, because there’s no freedom for Irina from these people who’ve been instructed never to let her out of their sight. I feel a stab of pity for her — even though she’s a bitch-slapping mess-in-a-dress. What else can you expect if you cage a wild animal?
Vladimir applies subtle pressure to the bones and nerves of my elbow. I’m leaning forward, placing one foot on the running board of the limo when I catch a glimpse of something else. It’s up on that roof across the way, the one outlined in glory. And though it feels as if Vladimir is crushing the bones of my arm to pieces, I dig in my impossible heels, and lift my head to look at it.
The moment I do, the faint, achy sensation — that hum I can feel way down in my bones — it all abruptly ceases. And time itself, the flesh-rending wind, the whole world around me — they all stand still. Because it’s not a light I’m seeing, up on that roof. Not a transient gleam. It’s a man’s shape. Broad-shouldered, long-limbed, perfectly proportioned, like something out of a classical painting, a living statue. He’s appeared so silently it’s as if he stepped out of that radiant cloud. There’s a corona all around him.
Even from where I’m standing, way down on the ground, I see that he has tawny, wide-set eyes — like the eyes of a young lion — and olive skin, long, dark gold hair. He’s wearing ordinary-looking street clothes: a long-sleeved grey and white plaid shirt over a white tee-shirt and blue jeans; a pair of battered, dark red Converse on his feet. There’s even a black satchel on his broad back, a beaten-up leather belt around his waist. But I know they’re all fake. Just props. He may look like a pitch-perfect human being in his late teens or early twenties, but he’s not human.
This guy in the ordinary clothes is standing on the stone pinnacle of a roof that’s about sixty feet off the ground. And he’s more beautiful than anything in creation has a right to be. He’s bound by light. It seems to come off his skin in shimmering waves of pure energy, as if he’s made of it. The gathering darkness can’t hide what he is.
He’s an archangel.
Te gnovi, I address the being upon the roof silently, as the malakh had once addressed me. I know you.
And I do. Forgotten all these years, but recalled in the beholding, as if scales have suddenly fallen from my eyes. He’s one of the archangels who rally to Michael’s bright presence. A lieutenant, if you like, loyal unto death. He’d stood with that shining multitude arrayed against me, against Luc, all those years ago, for reasons I can no longer remember, but want so badly to recall.
K’el. As I remember his name, something seems to ignite in me. The two worlds — one ‘real’ yet fallible, one unseen and infallible — converge once again in a single, watchful figure upon a distant roofline. Seeing him causes me an almost physical pain. I feel a wave of longing so intense that it’s like a kind of sickness. For home.
Where the great universe wheels and turns, and turns about. Where planets, stars, suns, moons, the greater and lesser bodies, fly by; comets, black holes, supernovae, strange fissures in time and space, twist and curl overhead like a painted, yet living, ever-changing dome.
I should be wary, I should be angry. K’el is in some way implicated in this, my banishment. But there’s something like giddiness, like glee, in my expression as I say his name again. I savour the sound, the feel and weight, of the word. It is an indictment of my peculiar … condition that I could have forgotten someone I once knew so well.
But there’s no answering joy in his face as he steps off the roof — sixty feet, at least, above the surface of the earth — and drifts weightlessly towards the ground, until he is standing across the street from me, disdain in his golden eyes.
You are betrayed, he says directly into my mind. And his voice is as chill and unwelcoming as the arctic wind that plagued Via Victor Hugo only moments ago. He comes for you and you must cleave to us, cleave to the Eight, else evil be given free reign and the war begin in earnest.
I step away from Irina’s limousine, away from the frozen figures of Vladimir and Angelo poised on the street like life-sized, plastic action figures, away from Felipe’s motionless form, still twisted towards me inside the vehicle, anger touching his aquiline features. Away, for a moment, from the trappings of Irina’s cosseted life.
I cross the street towards K’el, arms outstretched, as if I, too, am floating. Or sleepwalking.
I wonder whether he will let me touch him. The need to place my hands upon one who is my kin, my brethren, one who knew me as I was, who recognises me inside this stranger’s body, is so physical that I’m shaking with it.
I step up from the street’s irregular surface onto the footpath and it’s as if I hit an unseen wall of force. It’s immovable. When I push forward, seeking to pierce that seamless web of energy that surrounds him, there’s a crackle of intense blue-white light at the point where I make contact with his invisible armour, his deliberate shell. For an instant, there’s the sensation that I’m touching eternity, absolute power. And I must step back, or else Irina’s tender human skin will begin to burn.
I can go no further — he will let me get no closer — and the surge of disappointment I feel is like a spurt of acid in my heart.
We look upon each other, one foot of space all that separates us. It may as well be the width of a galaxy. He will not let me touch him, though his eyes seem strangely intent, almost hungry, as he looks upon my face.
‘No time for sentimentality, Mercy.
Luc knows where I am? He’s coming here?
I stumble, almost fall, at the implication.
Immediately, the force-field that K’el has placed between us vanishes and he grips my wrist with his cool, steadying fingers. The gesture is telling: in some way, he must still remember me the way I was, he must still care.
I look down at his glowing hand upon Irina’s skin. And it’s like marble or alabaster, without flaw, smooth as fired glass or porcelain. Unlined on any surface. Uncorrupted and incorruptible. Though he’s touching me, I get no sense of what’s in his mind because his guard is up. He does not wish me to know.
As tall as Irina is, K’el is taller, constructed like a figure out of myth, looming over me, almost blocking out what remains of the weird half-light. I feel dwarfed and strangely frail in his glowing presence where once we were … equals.
And I cry, ‘Not one of you — not Uriel, not Gabriel, not even Luc — has ever told me why. Why can’t I be “claimed”? Why can’t I go home, when it’s what I want more than anything in this world? What has this elaborate plan — involving so much time, so many of “us” — all been for? I don’t understand, K’el. I don’t understand what came between us all to cause this rift. Weren’t we friends once, you and I?’
K’el gazes at me with his liquid gold, burning eyes, and I see something at war within him. He wants to tell me; but something — some stricture, some pronouncement, some fatal consequence — prevents him. And he’s struggling with it.
But my bewilderment, my absolute sorrow, is genuine, and his gaze softens, though his hand upon me remains like iron. ‘Once friends, yes, though in time I almost came to … hate you and was glad when you … left us.’