MORTAL COILS (71 page)

That
couldn’t be real. More likely a distortion of whatever they really looked like
. . . if they were real at all.

There
was another slip of paper. She turned to the spot.

This
was a story about Vikings in the New World. Line drawings showed heroic battles
and Indians and mermaids—just like her brother to find some daydream fantasy to
escape into.

She
flipped ahead, past star charts and long passages in cuneiform, then paused
when she found an illuminated section. Framed in red-and-gilt filigree a nude
woman stood surrounded by creatures of the forest: bears and wolves, foxes and
squirrels and rabbits, finches and hawks. The woman held out her hands to the
animals, letting them smell her—or it almost looked as if she was blessing
them.

Fiona
had seen this gesture recently, and she struggled to remember where, but no
insights came.

She
translated the Latin text on the reverse page:

   
Lady Nature anoints the animals of the woods, gifts them with claws sharpened,
noses and ears and eyes keen, and the kiss of Winter Sleep.

Fiona
snapped on Eliot’s bedside lamp, and the illuminated manuscript glimmered with
gold and rich colors. Lady Nature’s face was lifelike. It was Aunt Dallas.

Fiona
quickly closed the book. It was one thing to look at a tasteful nude picture.
It was quite another to see your own aunt naked . . . and with perfect features
that made yours seem like, well, what they were: the inadequate features of a
just recently postpubescent fifteen-year-old girl.

Fiona
crossed her arms over her chest, holding the book there, and feeling her cheeks
burn.

It
was just a picture. The artist could have drawn it—embellished it—any way he
had wanted.

She
opened the book again, focusing this time on the words.

There
was a story about Lady Nature and her adventures in the Forest of Shadows. She
helped the animals trick the hunters. She also had several encounters with a
woodsman, fisherman, blacksmith . . . all of whom seemed to fall in love with
her. They also seemed to . . . Fiona reread these passages with great care, not
quite sure she’d ever run across these particular Latin words before.

The
context, however, was clear. Aunt Dallas, at least in the story, was having
sex. Lots of it.

Fiona
flipped to the next page to see where this was going. Another illuminated
picture was here: Dallas and Aunt Lucia danced about a maypole.

In
the margin of the page was a handwritten note in Greek:

      
Seasons cycle, come and go. Clotho, Lachesis, Atropos.

   
Two sisters welcome, one is not. Sister Death is best forgot.55

At
the mention of Sister Death, chill bumps pebbled Fiona’s arms.

Lachesis.
That was close to Lucia.

Clotho?
That wasn’t even close to Dallas, but hadn’t Grandmother introduced her as
“Aunt Claudia” before Dallas had amended that?

What
kind of name was Dallas anyway?

It
struck Fiona how curious this was: here was a picture of two women—her aunts,
so they claimed—put on this page five hundred years ago. Could it be a fake?
This felt like a real medieval book. Smelled like one, too, with that distinct
centuries-of-mold-and-dust odor about it.

But
what if they weren’t her aunts? What if . . .

Fiona
marked her spot in the book with her hand and went to the bathroom, closing and
locking the door behind her.

She
reopened the book to the first illumination of Lady Nature. She propped it up
as best she could and leaned closer to the mirror, placing her face next to it.

It
did look like Aunt Dallas. Exactly like her.

It
also looked like Fiona.

They
both had the same high forehead, the same eyes (although Dallas’s were a little
greener). Her hair had the same waves as Fiona’s had, too; although in the
picture hers looked a million times better and was blond.

Fiona
flipped ahead and compared her own face to Aunt Lucia’s.

They
looked alike as well: the same lips, the same chin, but . . .

She
turned back.

She
looked more like Aunt Dallas . . . Claudia . . . Clotho . . . whatever her real
name was.

The
people in this family seemed to lie about so many things. Was it

55.
The three mythical Fates, youngest to eldest: Clotho, Lachesis, and
Atropos.—Editor

possible
they could’ve lied about being her aunts, too? Not that Fiona had any doubt
they were related, but what if instead of being her aunt, Dallas was something
else?

Fiona
touched the image of Dallas reflected in the mirror.

Her
mother?

Dallas
had certainly had the opportunity to have children if she behaved as she did in
the story. But why tell her and Eliot that their mother was dead if she really
wasn’t? Didn’t she want them? Or was it to keep their identities a secret? Hand
them off to “Grandmother” to raise them away from the family for their own
protection?

And
hadn’t Dallas come back when they had needed her the most? To teach them how to
use the threads to read the future. Wasn’t that the act of a protective mother?

Fiona
had been so stupid to run out when she’d discovered how little time she had
left. She should’ve talked to Dallas. She could have found out so much.

Or
was this all wishful thinking?

Maybe
Dallas was just their aunt, and their mother was really dead.

She
set the book in her lap and touched the illuminated illustration. Longing
stabbed her heart.

Fiona
gently closed the book. It hurt too much to think about this. She supposedly
had less than a day left—according to her threads—and she had one more heroic
trial to get through. She had to think about that first and foremost.

She
took the book to Eliot’s room and slipped it back on the shelf.

She
went out into the hallway and heard pots clattering in the kitchen. Maybe she
should talk to Cee. She always listened to her . . . but how could she
understand what she was going through? She wished Eliot were home.

She
sighed and went back into her room and locked the door.

All
her problems centered on threads: the thread from the chocolates that had
parasitically attached to her; the fact that her thread ended, indicating she
had only a little time left to live; and whatever had she done the other night
in the mirror maze—cutting away a part of herself. That had been another
thread.

Or
had that been a trick of her mind? She had, after all, just taken a nasty blow
to the head.

She
touched her scalp and winced. There was a bump and a scab.

What
if she had only seen these mythical threads because of Dallas’s hypnotic
suggestions or under the influence of a concussion?

There
was one way to find out.

She
wriggled out of her singed and dirty clothes and got into more comfortable
sweatpants and a T-shirt. From her elastic waistband she pulled a thread,
snapped it off, and held it before her.

Fiona
could cut with this thread, but that’s not the frame of mind she needed. She
was supposed to be focused . . . but not completely, like when you stared
cross-eyed at something and it suddenly doubled.

There:
the thread appeared to coil back inside her . . . and end a tiny bit from where
she held it.

It
wasn’t elastic anymore. It was red and pulsed. A drop of blood beaded at the
end. Her life’s blood.

So—unless
she was in a constant state of hallucination or waking dream—this trick with
the threads did actually work.

A
little scared, but excited, too, she ran her forefinger and thumb backward
along the fiber until it crossed tangles and knots that became a weave. As she
touched this, sensations flitted up her arm: the taste of Ringo’s salty
pepperoni, the dust of old books that made her cough, the sharp pine odor of
Cee’s homemade cleaner, and the softness of her washed-a-hundred-times wool
blankets.

This
was the pattern of her for the last fifteen years—sleep, clean, work, and
study—repeated over and over.

She
moved back up to the tangles.

Dark
fibers were woven into her life here: cold and slick, sticky in patches. Evil
was the word that came to mind. There were also threads of pure gold. One was
leather and smelled faintly of motorcycle exhaust. That was Robert.

This
was her life.

But
as she continued forward, to what she assumed was the present, her fingertips
ran over a bump.

She
focused and found the blood-vessel-like tube spiral from that point in her
life—one end going into her body, the other end cleanly cut and hanging limply.

This
was the line she had severed last night.

What
exactly had she done to herself to break free from the chocolate’s influence?

Dizziness
washed over her and she felt as if she were going to be sick again.

She
let go of that severed part.

Maybe
she could find the other end and glue them together.

She
moved back, searching for a loose thread. This took more energy than she
thought it would, as she separated fibers. The farther back she moved, the more
the threads stiffened, as if they had been set in concrete.

She
spotted one silver thread that ran through every part of the weave. She hadn’t
noticed it before because it was so intricately bound . . . so much a part of
her that it blended completely.

But
at the very beginning of her pattern this silver thread became a separate
thing: frayed, tattered, almost broken.

She
gently touched it and found it as resilient as steel wire. It was cold and
clear and pure. This had to be Grandmother’s thread.

Her
focus wavered and she let go.

There
was too much here to sort through.

Whatever
she had cut out of herself last night would have to stay cut for now.

And
what would she do if she even found the other severed end? She didn’t know how
to sew things together—she only knew how to cut.

There
was a knock at her door. Cee’s quivering voice filtered through. “My darling
dove? I have soup for you.”

“That
would be great,” Fiona said, and started to get up.

But
those words never came; they floundered on her lips. Her entire face went numb
. . . and as she got up, the world spun, and her legs turned watery.

The
floor rushed up to meet her.

Her
head hit and bounced and everything settled into a black so deep Fiona was
quite sure she would never again awaken.

SECTION
VI

THE
THIRD HEROIC TRIAL

(and
Transformation of Eliot Post)