Black Swan Rising (29 page)

I closed my eyes and brought up my free arm over my face to protect it against the impact. It was worse than I expected, worse than when that Ford Expedition rammed into my mother’s car. It felt as if every part of my body had hit a steel wall at the same time, as though I were being torn apart, not just limb from limb, but atom from atom. And then, just when I thought I’d lose consciousness from the wrenching pain, it
was gone. I felt nothing but the flow of water and weightless buoyancy.

I opened my eyes—or at least I thought I did. I was surrounded by blackness. Was I dead?

No,
a silky sibilant voice whispered.
You’re waterborne.

I tried to find the source of the voice, but it was all around me . . . and by
all around me
I realized that the voice permeated my entire body . . . no, that wasn’t quite it, because I didn’t have a body.

You’re borne on the flow of water. Can you feel it? We’re in the reservoir. From here we can go into the main water tunnel and travel through the city. Dee is sssomewhere in the water system. We must find him.

How?
I asked, thinking the words.
I can’t feel—or see—anything.

You will. It takes a little time to get used to the incorporeal stage. I ssspent centuries in the springs beneath the forest of Brocéliande, percolating in the rock layers far below the earth. Here, before we go into the tunnel, let’ssss evaporate.

Evaporate?
That sounded dangerous. But I could already feel myself growing lighter, rising to the surface. I became aware of light, then I was floating above the shimmering skin of water, merging with the air, dodging dragonflies and watergliders, and then, rising quickly, I was above Central Park. I could see the joggers running around the reservoir and the towers of the Dakota against the skyline. Then we were above the towers, heading for the clouds . . . but then I felt myself grow heavier.

We fell in a light drizzle back to the reservoir and sank down again into a pipe, caught up in a strong current. Although it was dark, I could sense where we were. The compass Noam
Erdmann had implanted in my hand pulsed in every cell so that I could tell we were traveling southwest through the island of Manhattan in a wide tunnel . . . through Water Tunnel #1, I suddenly knew. Not only had the compass stone given me a sense of direction, it gave me a sense of specific location, as if a map of the city were imprinted within my cells. I really was my own GPS! Even though we were deep beneath the bedrock of the city, I knew what streets we were under. When we soared up through the vertical shafts, pushed by the insistent flow of water that had been running downhill from the mountains, and into the water mains, I knew exactly where we were. I knew the apartment numbers we passed as we soared high up into buildings. When we reached the rooftop water tanks, I could identify every landmark within a ten-mile radius. And when we plunged down again through a maze of pipes and back into the main water tunnel, I could have stated our exact longitude and latitude.

We traversed every inch of the city in the time it usually took me to take the subway from the Village to midtown, but nowhere did we catch a glimpse or scent of Dee. Then at the end of the island we veered southeast and plunged into deeper darkness. I heard rushing water and boats moving above us. We were below the bay, heading for Brooklyn. Melusine was quieter while we were under the bay, and I sensed a tension in her that I hadn’t as we coursed through the city. If she had lungs instead of gills, I would have said she was holding her breath. When we made landfall in Brooklyn, she seemed easier even though we had to swim against the current upstream, northeast through Brooklyn and Queens, then northwest toward the Bronx.

At the Hillview Reservoir, Melusine took us on a lap around
the lake. I felt her exulting in the wider expanse of water, freed from the pressure of the tunnels.

Are we going back to the city now?
I asked.

Instead of answering my question she had us plunge into the Delaware Aqueduct and race upstream toward the Kensico Reservoir in Valhalla. Although we were fighting the current, we went faster and faster. Melusine remained stubbornly silent, but I could sense her desire now. I could feel her because as we had traveled together our molecules had crossed and crisscrossed, braiding and unbraiding like long strands of DNA. She yearned to go farther north, up to the mountain springs from which the streams and rivers had sprung. She was a creature of the springs—not the sea—and that was why she had felt uneasy beneath the saltwater bay. She was the goddess of the spring, the sprite of the source. I saw her worshipped at Roman springs and Celtic wells, heard the names she had been worshipped by on the water . . . Sulis, Sequana, Coventina, Egeria, Sinann, Laga. I felt the love she’d had for Raimond de Lusignan and the anguish of betrayal when he turned away from her in disgust. I saw the long years she haunted the Château de Lusignan, her banshee cry serenading the last of her descendants. And, finally, I felt the sadness of exile, a craving to return to her source.

I was so wrapped up (literally) in Melusine’s history that I forgot our mission, forgot that we had to head back to the city. I wanted to travel north into the Catskills and join the fresh springs below the snowcapped peaks. But while my molecules had merged with Melusine’s so that I learned her history, she had been listening to mine as well. She saw everything: my mother’s face, the car crash, the shriek of tearing metal, my father falling apart . . . She raced through my whole life until
she got to the moment that I walked into Dee’s shop, then she paused and lingered. She watched him bending over the silver box, his shadowmen invading my house, the yellow fog that crept into my studio and animated the demon Jaws, and the fog that gave life to the manticore in the Cloisters. I heard her weep at the sight of the dead sylphs and felt her anger rising against Dee. He had infiltrated her waterways like a virus, used her currents to carry death. The anger pulled her up short and sent her back, tugging me along with her. We joined the southward flow down the Delaware Aqueduct, racing the current into the Hillview Reservoir and back into Tunnel #1.

Although we moved fast, Melusine paused at every shaft, sniffing for Dee’s presence. I had the feeling she was homing in on his location, scenting him in the water. I could smell him too, that trace of sulfur I’d detected in the fog four nights ago. We caught a whiff of it near the park and then again below the West Village, but it was faint and fading. Melusine pushed us back into the main tunnel, forcing us on, even though I could sense her repugnance as we headed underneath the East River again. She picked up the pace, eager to cross the salt water quickly. In her haste she dismissed the possibility that Dee was here. There were no shafts leading to the surface here, only a straight run under the river to Brooklyn, no connecting pipes . . . or, at least, there shouldn’t be. About halfway across the river I caught the sulfur scent again, lingering on a metal joint. Melusine scented it too, and wrenched herself to a stop. I could feel how hard it was for her. It was like being in a subway car when it stopped between stations . . . and the lights went out . . . and you smelled smoke . . .

There are no shafts here,
I thought,
how could he be here?

There aren’t ssssupposed to be any shafts, but if Dee got
into the minds of the men who made the tunnels, he could have compelled them to build a shaft. What better place to go unnoticed than deep below the river
. . .
ssssee here?

Since neither of us had bodies, Melusine couldn’t very well point to where she meant, but I felt the force of her attention directing me toward a spot on the tunnel wall. Glowing faintly in the rushing water was a familiar symbol—an eye surrounded by a spiral. It was the same symbol that Oberon had pasted on the columns on either side of the doorway outside St. Vincent’s so that no one would see us.

A spell of misdirection,
Melusine explained.
There’s ssssomething here we’re not ssssupposed to see, but if I sweep it away
. . . A current of water pulsed against the wall. The spiral eye flickered and faded. In its place appeared a metal valve.

I don’t get it,
I said,
why bother to disguise it? No one comes in this tunnel.

The undines swim through here ssssometimes
. . .
and I should patrol all the tunnels regularly, only I’ve avoided this one because it’s under salt water. Sssstupid,
she hissed, angry at herself. I could feel her ticking off the mistakes she’d made in her long, long existence, marrying a mortal chief among them, although I also sensed that she still longed for the mortal man she’d married and borne children to.

You shouldn’t blame yourself. We all make mistakes.

I felt a pulse in the water, a warm current, and then a glimmer of light, as if a school of phosphorescent plankton swarmed around us.

Yesss
,
but this is one I can fix.

The current revolved around the valve, spinning into a fast-moving eddy that churned the surrounding water into a white froth. The wheel began to move, creaking and groaning as if it
hadn’t been opened in many years. Even the steel of the tunnel walls creaked and groaned. I felt a sudden horror at the idea that the tunnel might cave in. What would become of us then? Would we seep into the bedrock or float out to sea? I probed Melusine’s consciousness for an answer, but hit a wall around the question. Clearly she was unwilling to contemplate that outcome, which made me all the more frightened.

At last the wheel stopped spinning. With one final wrenching shriek the valve opened. We were sucked into the vertical shaft, propelled by the water pressure upward, too quickly to consider what we were being sucked into. It looked like the maw of a giant squid as envisioned by Jules Verne—that horrible horny beak edged with razor-sharp teeth. This beak was made of perforated steel sieves that churned the water as it rose. We were spun through a spiral of interlocking doors. First I felt myself lose touch with Melusine’s consciousness . . . then I began to lose touch with my
own
. Bits of my past and present were spewed up like chum—my mother telling me a bedtime story about fairies who guarded me while I slept, Santé’s painting of my mother, Jay laughing on the boardwalk in Brighton Beach, Becky spreading her arms in the wind on top of the Empire State Building . . . they were more than memories. For a fleeting second I was in each moment and then spit out of it. It felt as if a ravenous creature were chewing up my memories and sucking them dry. What would be left when it was done but a hollowed-out shell? I could feel the moments detaching from one another, the way thought becomes more random and disconnected as you’re falling asleep. One by one they floated away . . .

Hold on to them.

The voice cried across the churning water, startling me awake.
How?
I tried to ask, but Melusine’s voice was gone. I
plucked at the moments that were spinning away—my father holding my hand on a rainy day as we walked up the long marble steps to the Metropolitan Museum, Jay sliding an Ella Fitzgerald record out of its worn cardboard sleeve, Becky’s hair flying in the wind . . . I plucked each memory out of the maelstrom and held on to it, focusing all my attention on each face that spun by—my mother, Jay, Becky, my father, Zach Reese, Santé Leone, and even, flickering through the others but coming more often, Will Hughes. These were the pieces that made up who I was. As long as I held on to them, I wouldn’t be lost.

At last the steel maw spit us out into a shallow pool under a steel dome. Citrinous light filtered through an open oculus.

Are you all here?
Melusine asked.

Yes,
I answered, but was I? How could I know? Were bits of me still floating out in the water tunnel now heading for Brooklyn? An image of my molecules watering geraniums in Carroll Gardens and then seeping into the Gowanus Canal was interrupted by a hiss from Melusine.

And what of it? Do you think I haven’t sssloughed off bits of myself over the centuries? You’ll have held on to the important parts. Ssssome you’ll wish you’d been able to get rid of. Now come, we have to go up.

We floated to the surface—where a dirty yellow scum clung to the top skin of water—then evaporated. The air was so humid we rose easily up through the oculus and into a marble space shaped like the inside of a nautilus shell. The inside of a nautilus shell as decorated by Gianni Versace circa 1990s Miami Beach. The floors were covered in heavy Persian rugs, the furniture was carved mahogany, heaped with antiques—Greek amphorae and Roman bronzes—the walls themselves were lined with gold. Hanging on the gold walls were paintings that
I recognized as lost masterpieces: Leonardo da Vinci’s
Leda and the Swan,
Caravaggio’s
Adoration of the Shepherds,
Vermeer’s
Concert,
van Gogh’s
Portrait of Dr. Gachet.
Among all this opulence I noticed a rather unprepossessing late eighteenth-century portrait of a woman in an empire waist dress hanging above a fireplace. Something about her looked familiar. I hovered closer to her, looking into her soft almond-shaped eyes, but I still couldn’t place her.

“She’s a beauty, isn’t she?”

The voice startled me so badly I nearly dissolved into a puddle of condensation on the floor. I’d heard it only once before, and he’d been hiding his power then. Now as I turned my attention to the man seated below me, I could feel every ounce of his power radiating in the air around him, an aura unlike any other I’d seen so far. Its contours were sharp and jagged, like a sunburst. He was wearing the same maroon cardigan, but it didn’t disguise the strength of his build. Sitting in a high wing-backed red chair, he looked coiled to strike. The yellow-nailed fingertips of one hand perched on the arm of the chair like a long-legged spider. In the other hand he held a cigar, which he brought to his lips and drew on. He exhaled a long stream of smoke directly at me. I felt the edges of my molecules crisp and singe. Melusine pulsed in the air beside me.