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Candy shook the last reverberations of the light from her mind, and followed the boy. As he stepped in front of her, she caught her first glimpse of his lower anatomy. Until now, she had been so caught up by the pitiful expression on his face she hadn’t realized that below the belt, he looked more like a child-sized slug than a boy. His legs were fused into a single, boneless tube of gray-green muscle upon which the upper portion of his body, which was simply that of an ordinary boy, was raised up.
“I know what you’re thinking,” he said without looking back at Candy.
“And what’s that?”
“Can that really be the son she made from the good in her? Because he doesn’t look very good. In fact he looks like a slug.”
“I wasn’t—”
“Yes, you were,” the boy said.
“You’re right, I was.”
“And you’re right. I do look like a slug. I’ve thought a lot about it. In fact it’s really the only thing I think about.”
“And what have you found out, after all that thinking?”
“Not much. Just that Mother never really loved the good in her. She thought it was boring. Worthless.”
“Now, I’m sure—”
“Don’t,” he said, raising his hand to stop her trying to pamper the hurt. “That only makes it worse. My mother’s ashamed of me. That’s the truth, plain and simple. It’s my evil little brother, with his glittering smiles, who gets all the glory. That’s what they call a paradox, isn’t it? I’m made from good, but I’m nothing to her. He’s made of all the evil in her and guess what: she loves him for it. Loves him! So now he’s the good son after all, because of all the love he’s been given. And me, who was made from her compassion and her gentility, was left out in the cold.”
Candy felt a flicker of anxiety run through her. She understood Covenantis’s words all too clearly. She knew the glittering beauty of evil. She’d seen it, and been in some ways attracted by it. Why else had she felt so sympathetic to Carrion?
“Stay here while I light the candles,” Covenantis said.
Candy waited while he moved off into the shadows. It was only when he’d gone that Candy’s thoughts returned to the strange gesture Laguna Munn had made before she had gone from view. And with the memory came other recollections, stirred up by the woman’s gift and Candy realized exactly how many coincidences, instinctual maneuvers, and twists of fate were really pieces of Boa’s magic at work within her.
She remembered it all now with uncanny clarity: she remembered the words that had come unbidden into her throat on the Parroto Parroto—Jassassakya-thüm!—and once spoken, they had had driven off the monstrous Zethek; she remembered instincts, when Mama Izabella had come at her across the grasslands, that had allowed her to relax in the grip of the sentient that might well have drowned her if she’d caused any trouble; and she remembered the way she’d fallen into a pattern of bittersweet exchanges with Carrion, who would have slaughtered her in a heartbeat if he hadn’t sensed something inside her that he knew. No, that he loved.
For the first time, Candy realized just how much of Boa there might be in her. A spasm of panic seized Candy.
“Oh no,” she said. “I don’t think I can do this.”
Of course you can. You’ve come this far, haven’t you?
“Do you think it’ll hurt?”
Hurt? Boa replied. HURT? A cut finger hurts, girl. A cracked rib. But this is the end of a union of souls that has defined you since the day you were born. When the connection between us is severed you’ll lose forever pieces of your mind you thought were yours.
“But they were yours. They were you.”
Yes.
“So why would I want them?”
Because it’ll be an unspeakable agony to lose them. You see, I know what it’s like to be alone in my head. I’m used to it. But you . . . you have no idea of what you have invited down upon yourself.
“I know perfectly well, I think,” Candy said.
Do you? Well, for what it’s worth, I doubt you’ll keep your sanity. How could anyone stay sane when you can no longer recognize the face in the mirror?
“That’s my face!” Candy protested. “A Quackenbush face!”
But the eyes.
“What about the eyes?”
You’ll look at your reflection and the mind you’ll see staring back at you won’t be yours. All the memories of glory that you thought belonged to you, all the beautiful mysteries that you believed you’d discovered for yourself, all the ambitions you hold dear—none of them are yours.
“I don’t believe you. You’re lying now the way you lied to Finnegan and Carrion.”
You keep Finnegan out of this, Boa said.
“Oh, feel a bit guilty do you?”
I said—
“I heard you.”
There were a few moments of extremely strained silence between them. Then Boa said: Let. Me. Out. Of. This—PRISON!
Covenantis appeared and looked at Candy with round, terrified eyes.
“Did you hear that?” he said softly. “A human’s voice, I swear. Tell me it’s not just me.”
“No, Covenantis, you’re perfectly sane. Will you get the conjuration underway please, before she gets murderous?”
“It’s already begun. I’m going into the labyrinth to prepare the site of separation. Follow me there. But first repeat the sacred word nineteen times.”
“Abarataraba?”
“Yes.”
“Does that one count?”
“No!”
Then the last thing he said before disappearing into the maze, leaving Candy to feel as though at the very moment she was making a life-changing decision for herself—a very adult thing to do—he’d reduced her to a kid in the school yard.
She smeared the last six Abarataraba into a single Abarrrarababa, and without alerting Covenantis to the fact that she was done counting and was coming, ready or not, she plunged into the maze, entering as Two-in-One and hopefully exiting as simply two.
Chapter 11 Severance (#ulink_e0040b28-7358-5caf-9a24-231ef147cee4)
CANDY TOOK FOUR CAUTIOUS steps into the darkened trees, each step delivering her into an even profounder darkness. On the fifth step, however, a flying creature appeared at the periphery of her vision. It buzzed like a big insect, and the brightness of its colors—turquoise and scarlet, speckled with flecks of white gold—defied the darkness.
It darted around her head for a while then sped away. Candy took a fifth cautious step, then a sixth. Suddenly the creature reappeared, accompanied by several hundred identical beasts, which surrounded her with so much color and movement that she felt faintly nauseated.
She closed her eyes to seal off the sight, but the chaotic motion of the creatures continued behind her eyelids.
“What’s happening?” she said, raising her voice above the noise of the buzzing cloud. “Covenantis? Are you still there?”
“Patience!” Candy heard the boy say.
He’s frightened, Boa said, a distinct undercurrent of amusement in her words. This isn’t an easy thing to do. If he messes up, he’ll sacrifice your sanity. She let the laughter surface; there was undisguised malice in it. Wouldn’t that be a pity?
“Covenantis,” Candy said. “Stay calm. Take your time.”
“He never was very good at that, were you, brother?” said Jollo B’gog.
“Stay out of here!” Covenantis said. “Mother! Mother!”
“She was the one who said I could come and help,” the Bad Boy replied.
“I don’t believe you,” Candy said, opening her eyes again.
As she did so she saw the Bad Boy run through a wall of the colored creatures, who had assembled ahead of her in an intricate jigsaw of wings, limbs and heads. He yelled as he ran, scattering the assembled creatures. They rose up in front of her, the motion of their wings causing a gust of wind to come at her face, tasting of metal on her tongue.
“Stop that!” Covenantis yelled, his voice shrill with anger.
The Bad Boy just laughed.
“I’ll tell Mama!”
“Mama won’t stop me. Mama loves everything I do.”
“Well, aren’t you lucky?” Covenantis said, unable to entirely disguise his envy.
“Mama says I’m a genius!” the Bad Boy crowed.
“You are, darling, you are,” Laguna Munn said, entering the space as little more than a shadow of herself. “But this isn’t the time or the place to fool around.”
All it took was the sound of Laguna Munn’s voice and the creatures that had been scattered by the Bad Boy’s cavorting came back down on the instant, knitting themselves together—wing to claw to beak to coxcomb to fanning tail—forming a small prison around Candy.
“Better,” Laguna Munn said, her voice all-forgiving. “Pale Child?”
“Yes, Mama?” Covenantis said.
“Have you secured all the locks?”
Oh yes, Boa said. Got to have plenty of locks. I like the sound of that.
“What are the locks for?” Candy said aloud. “What are you keeping out?”
“Nothing’s being kept out—” Covenantis said, stopping only when his mother yelled his name, and dropping the last part of his reply to a whisper. “It’s you she’s keeping in.”
“Covenantis!”
“I’m coming, Mama!”
“Quickly now. I haven’t got much time.”
“I’ve got to go,” the Good Boy said to Candy. “I’ll be right outside.”
He pointed to a narrow slit of a door in between the wings and claws of the big bugs, and for the first time Candy realized that a solid little chamber had formed around her. The walls were draining of color even as she watched, and every last crack or flaw in the knitted forms sealed. What had been a colorful room made of flittering wings was becoming a silent concrete cell.
“Why are you locking me in?” Candy said.
“Conjurations this strong are unstable,” Covenantis said.
“What do you mean?”
“They can go wrong,” he whispered.
“Covenantis!” Laguna Munn shouted.
“Yes, Mama!”
“Stop talking to the girl. You can’t help her.”
“No, Mama!”
“She’ll probably be dead in under a minute.”
“I’m coming, Mama,” Covenantis said. He gave Candy a little shrug, and slipped out through the door, which closed, leaving no trace of its presence, not a crack.
Well . . . Boa said softly. You got us here. Better finish it. If you’ve got what it takes.
“I’ve got what it doesn’t take,” Candy replied, without hesitation.
Oh? And what’s that?
“Don’t be stupid,” Candy said. “You.”
And suddenly, the fear drained from Candy and she turned on the spot, addressing the cold, gray walls.
“I’m ready,” she told them. “Do whatever you have to do. Just get it over with. If you can avoid spilling blood, that’d be great. But if you can’t, you can’t.”
She didn’t have to wait very long for the cell to respond. Six shudders passed through its walls, ceiling and floor, like tides of life moving in its dead matter, resurrecting it. She understood now why she’d been given a peripheral glimpse of what the cell had been in its last incarnation: the flock of winged beings. She saw them haunting the gray walls still. One life inside another.
Was the lesson here that she would have been gray and lifeless as the walls if Boa’s soul had not come into her? Was she being warned that the life she was choosing would be a cell: gray and cold?
She didn’t believe it. And said so.
“I’m more than that,” she told the shimmering gray. “I’m not dead matter.”
Not yet, Boa crowed.
