Mythworld: Invisible Moon (13 page)

“Not knowing what else to do, I came here, to tell you of these things, and when I realized you were not home, I sat down to wait. And then,” he finished, voice wavering slightly, “I found this.”

Meredith lit a candle, so as to better see what he was talking about. It flickered to life, throwing a warm if smallish glow around the room.

June was sitting in the wicker chair, waiting. In his hands, he held a skull, one of the several sitting adjacent the chair. He looked at Meredith, and she saw his eyes were dry, and his hands were steady. Then, voice even, he spoke again.

“Who?”

He tipped his hands, indicating that he was asking about the skull.

Meredith shrugged, and sat down on the divan a few feet away. “I’m not sure. That one’s got broader ridges along the brow, so it’s probably a boy; and the bits of flesh have all dried off, so I’m guessing it was one of the first few children—Kevin McMillan, most likely.”

June absorbed the response, unblinking.

“You killed them here?”

She nodded. “Yes. There were a few I had to damage a bit in transit, just to keep them quiet, but that was more a courtesy to the parents than anything else.”

June choked. “A courtesy?”

“Yes. You have a son, June—can you tell me that there’s anything worse than losing a child?”

“No.”

“Well, I can. It’s knowing it’s happening while you lose them. No one really believes it, that the oblivion, the not knowing can’t be as bad as it gets, but trust me—it can be much, much worse. That’s what I try to spare the families—the pain of real knowledge.”

“You can’t believe that, Meredith. You can’t, because you don’t know. You don’t have a child.”

“Point taken. But tell me—if Shingo was dying, right this moment, and there was nothing you could do to prevent it, would you really want to see? To be there, watching, as the light goes out of his eyes?”

“Yes.”

That was a bit of a surprise. “Really?”

“Absolutely.”

“Why?”

“Because I want him to know that I loved him, even up to the end. I want him to see that in my eyes.”

“And you want to actually see the pain he would suffer?”

“Yes.”

“But why? Why would you want to go through that?”

“Because that is one of the things a father does, Meredith. You didn’t die, but why do you think Vasily wrote to a child he might never again see, who was the daughter of a woman he would never again love, and the husband who took them both?”

Meredith didn’t really have a counter to that.

“Because,” said June over her silence, “that is what a father does.”

Neither one of them said anything for a few minutes after that. Meredith searched for something, anything to say, to mend the rift that was between them. She understood only a little of what seemed to be upsetting him—perhaps mitigating that in some way would help.

“June, please believe me—I had no idea. If it’d ever occurred to me that the parents of the children I took would suffer so, I’d have killed them first.”

He suddenly bolted upright and for an instant it seemed as if he would hurl the skull across the room. Catching himself, he gently set it down on the carpet, then looked up at her, a mixture of confusion and pleading in his eyes.

“Meredith, I don’t understand … What is it that has made you into … into
this
? What is it that has made you waste so many human lives?”

An immense feeling of relief flooded through her, and she leaned back with a grateful smile. “June, oh dear June—you don’t understand, not at all.”

“Then please explain, Meredith. I cannot bear this.”

She stood and hugged him, tightly. He stiffened, and then hugged her back.

“Of course I’ll explain. Forgive me—I didn’t think how you might respond. To be honest, I hadn’t mentioned this to anyone, what with everything that’s gone on over the last week. I was afraid that it’d be misunderstood, but I never thought you … Oh, June, please, please forgive me.”

“What do you need to tell me, Meredith?”

“June, none of the children were wasted—I used all of them.”

June sat slowly back, removing his arm from around her, and a distant, dead look came into his eyes. “What do you mean you used them?”

“Mostly, they were just for food—but when all of the changes began, I realized that that just wasn’t good enough; not respectful enough. Too much of them—bones, skin, and the like—was just being thrown out. Believe me, I agonized over those first few neighbor kids. If my head had been clearer, I don’t really think I’d’ve thrown out quite so much material.”

“Wh-what do you do with the material you don’t throw out?”

“Why, what I’ve always done, June. I used it to decorate the house.”

Meredith was walking around the room, now, and June merely sat, listening. The room was sufficiently coated in shadow that she couldn’t see his expression, but she felt pretty good to be sharing all of this with someone. Meredith hoped he could feel it, too.

“Of course, I couldn’t really rebuild the fence outside with the bones and skulls, not with all of the other hysteria going on, but I thought that I could at least remodel the interior until the town got back to normal. Then, when I tackle the exterior, I can get Shingo to lend a hand. I hope you don’t mind,” she finished, sweeping one arm to indicate the whole of the house.

“How long have you … Have you been decorating?”

“You mean overall, or just this place?”

June choked out a response—“O-overall.”

“Well, it’s got to be going on a thousand years or so, now—but don’t tell Shingo. He thinks I’m still young—in my hundreds is what I’ll admit to.”

June sat more stiffly now, and he seemed to be more alert. He looked around, then gestured into the room. “The children? The ones you used to … decorate? Are they … are they … here?”

“Yes.”

He looked nervously about, the scattered shadows odd angles and weighted depths taking on a new and fearful meaning.

“May I see them?”

“Sure.”

Meredith lit the oil lamp in the corner and turned the light on the room.

Junichi screamed.

O O O

The entire way over to Soame’s, June didn’t speak a word. With a look, Meredith communicated to Glen and Delna that this was serious, and that he probably needed rest more than anything else. Glen pulled the stainless steel coffeepot out of the coals where it had been simmering, and together, he and Delna took June back to his private rooms.

Exhausted, Meredith collapsed into a seat near the fire and unbundled herself. A movement in the corner alerted her to the fact that she was not alone … it was Mr. Janes, her editor from
The Daily Sun
.

Meredith cautiously approached him, and he looked up when she moved into the light around his table. “Mr. Janes? May I sit?”

He squinted at her for a moment, then a smile creased his features. “Meredith,” he said, “Yes, yes, sit, sit.” He stood and half pulled out a chair for her, which she took.

“How are you feeling?”

“Mmm, well,” he began, “I am Chief. This is what I know. Do not deny it.”

“I don’t. You’re the Chief.”

“Ahh,” he said sadly. “I am not the Chief. I am lost, like that idiot, Van Hassel. You know—VanHasselYouIdiot.”

Meredith suppressed a laugh. “Herald.”

“Yes, the Weird Harold. VanHasselYouIdiot. He knows. He knew. He should be Chief.”

“What do you mean?”

He answered by spreading his hands, indicating the mass of books and papers scattered around the table. It was the assortment of research, the books and articles they had gathered to research Herald’s story—Meredith and Herald’s story—and June’s suspicions about Ragnarok. Apparently, Mr. Janes had found a way to busy himself (without skinning anyone) and had done what a newspaperman does—find the story.

He scanned Meredith’s face as she looked over his pile of readings, and nodded appreciatively. “Yes,” he said, nodding, “you see it, Meredith Strugatski. You see the story. Do not deny it. Do not deny it.”

“I see it, Mr. Janes. Unfortunately, we stopped looking when things got complicated, and now it seems there may not be anything to be done.”

“No!” he said excitedly. “There is time! There is time! This is what the Herald found! There is time, do not deny it!”

“Herald? What is it? What did he find?”

“These,” he said reaching into a small cardboard box Meredith had not seen before, and reverently handing her several sheets of what appeared to be music. There were no titles on them, no markings or words or anything that would otherwise give a hint as to what the music was. Only notes and notations; and unfortunately, Meredith’s musical aptitude was somewhere south of none—she couldn’t see anything to them.

“I’m sorry,” she said, handing the small pile back to him. “I don’t see anything.”

He smiled at that, and a bit of that old editor’s gleam came back into his eyes. He lifted the papers in front of her. “What do you see, Meredith?”

“Music—but I don’t know how to read it.”

He nodded as if that was the answer he’d expected, then shuffled the papers and held them in front of her again. “Now what do you see?”

“I don’t understand …”

He pushed them closer, prodding. “You see them! Do not deny it.”

“What do you think I see? It’s still music, the same as before.”

“Yes!” he exclaimed, triumphant. “This is it! The
music
!”

He continued, explaining. “There are writers greater than ourselves, Meredith. They write the words, and draw the pictures,”––this, pointing up at June’s unfinished work on the underside of the dome—“… And some, make the music. We do not have to make it to hear it—but it can always be heard again. The ending is the beginning …” He shuffled the papers, “ … and the beginning is the ending. They are the same. Do not deny it.”

“I don’t deny it, Mr. Janes. But I don’t understand what it means, either.”

He moved to one of the massive windows and with no small effort drew back the heavy drapes. “Look,” he said, pointing out at the snow, “it is winter now, when all things are ending. The Herald says that the research said it was also winter at the beginning. Perhaps, then,” he concluded, closing the drapes and returning to the table, “this is not an ending, truly, but only a beginning in disguise.”

This was not the raving of a traumatized man, Meredith was certain. There was more to what he was saying, more than ramblings. He was referring to Herald’s research—maybe the editor who was buried in the jumpy man in front of her had pulled something out of the pile that the rest of them hadn’t.

“What did Herald’s research say about the beginning?”

Abruptly, his manner and countenance changed; the unsteady, flighty movements became sure and precise. He placed the cardboard box on the table and expertly thumbed through the contents looking for the information she’d requested. This was his turf, and some part of him still knew what to do.

“Ah,” he said, pulling one of the books from the box. “Here it is.”

He handed her a copy of The
Prose Edda
, which was fat with post-it notes sticking out of all sides, then sat back to let her read.

The markers were mostly scribbled black with references and notes in Herald’s scratchy handwriting, but some were in another hand entirely—not to mention the endless scribblings in the book itself, made in the margins, she assumed, by the previous owner.

Meredith suddenly realized that the other handwriting on the markers was Shingo’s, and that this book and perhaps the contents of the cardboard box must’ve been the discovery Herald mentioned before their excursion into Ontario. She was wondering why a reasonably contemporary paperback edition (in English, no less) of the
Prose Edda
would have caused them to become so excited, when a receipt from an auction sale dropped out from between the pages. It was dated about eight months earlier, and bore the address of an auction house in Vienna. It also bore an embossing on the title page that she recognized by touch before she confirmed it with her eyes.

This book had belonged to Michael Langbein.

Astonished, Meredith looked up at Mr. Janes, who was studying her passively with a curious expression. She traced the outline of the embossed letters, then turned to the page with the most prominent marker and began reading.

As if the book were a foreign film, dubbed in a language that picked and chose its words according to the lip motions of the actors, Mr. Janes stood in front of the flickering firelight and began to narrate; his exposition uncannily mirroring the passages she was reading.

Meredith looked down at the book—with a shudder, she realized the page she turned to bore the very lines Michael had once spoken to her after dreaming of her father … of Vasily:

“At every door

before you enter

look around with care

you never know

what enemies

aren’t waiting for you there.”

These were the words spoken by King Gylfi on entering Valhalla, who then saw three high seats, a man sitting in each …

“…And it happened that the three on high were asked a number of questions: Who is the foremost, or eldest of the gods? Where is he? What power does he have? What great deeds has he done?

“And it was answered: He is called the All-Father, and he lives forever and ever. He rules over the whole of his kingdom and governs all things great and small. He created the heaven and earth and the sky and all that in them is. But his greatest achievement is the making of man and giving him a soul which will live and never die, although his body may decay to dust or burn to ashes.

“Then it was asked, what was the All-Father doing before heaven and earth were made?

“And it was answered that he was at that time dwelling with the frost ogres, in the place of All-Winter.”

As if on cue, a gust of frigid wind spread a rattling of ice and snow across the windows of The Pickle Factory. Mr. Janes paused, then with a timid glance at Meredith, continued.

“Nifleheim, the place of All-Winter, the Abode-Of-Darkness, the Deep Void: from this place flowed the rivers to the place of warmth and heat called Muspell, and where the cool air met the warm fell droplets of water which grew into the likeness of a man, who was given the name Ymir, called by the frost ogres Aurgelmir, and who was the father of all the giants and ogres who followed after.