The other evidence for my theory is how surprised he looked for half a second when he realized he was still alive. The way his eyebrows popped up (when did I put the droplets out again?), the way his eyes flicked back and forth, like he was looking for the hidden cameras.
“Oh—” he started, blinking. “Well, okay. That’s great.”
“I’ll do it,” I said, again. More for my benefit than his, I think.
He cleared his throat. Shook his head, slightly. “Thank you, Erika. This—this means…”
Neville trailed off. His fingers tapped on the desk as he searched for the right words. “This means a lot to me. And—and it means a lot to the world. I think we can pull this off if we play our cards right.”
I started to speak, realized I was just going to say “I’ll do it” again and cut myself off after the first syllable. Pursing my lips and looking down.
Slowly, it coalesced. It occurred to me that the moment was past. Now I was on the other side of the one thing my life was leading to and now I had no idea what to do.
I really, truly, did not think I would get this far.
Neville spoke softly. I wasn’t sure he believed it, either. “Let’s tell Matthew.”
“Together?”
“I see no reason not to,” he replied. “We’ll be doing a lot of things together and I’d like his assistance in the logistics now that Talia’s gone.”
I breathed, slowly. It was over. Now was the future. We had things to attend to. This was my moment to breathe—after this I would get precious few, I knew.
“I don’t want to be too public,” I managed. “In—in a spotlight. I don’t want that.”
“You won’t be,” Neville replied. “I can’t imagine a situation in which you’d have to speak publicly without me. You’re my daughter. There’s no need.”
Those three words rang through my hollow skull.
Had it been that long since I’d heard that? In a neutral tone like it didn’t matter—how long? When was the last time Hal said it? When was the last time he said it and meant it? I couldn’t recall because I had no reason to try and remember—I’d long since abandoned any notion of him as my rightful father, flesh as it was, and by then (and now, still, all this time later) all of his words that I could remember meant about as much as dust.
But that—right then—
It looped forever in my head. It still loops. I haven’t forgotten.
I don’t think I ever will.
Tears welled in my eyes. He was warm—the droplets I clutched around him gave that to me—so tightly wrapped around his face like a mask—and while I am sure he felt it and knew it was there he didn’t say anything about it. He just let them be there—let me scan him for everything I could find, scrabbling across his face for every last trace of emotion.
I didn’t know what I was looking for. The thing, whatever it was, isn’t something written on an expression. I wanted a thought. I wanted to put the droplets in his head and feel his mind.
That, though, will elude me forever. The price of a key, I suppose.
I wanted to know that he meant it. And as he rose silently from his chair and came around the desk, the droplet-mask he wore with no complaints—no, with pride!—drifted towards me, crouched low to be level with mine.
Near me then he whispered, “May I?”
Ribs clenched tight around my heart, breath in short gasps—I forced everything to be level and still because I could not possibly—
I nodded with a short twitch and his arms gently looped around me. Pulled me into him, away from the chair.
“Erika—” he said, softly. “There’s a better world for us around the corner. We’re almost there. Hang on a little longer, okay?”
He embraced me tighter, and I wrapped my arms around him just the same, and I let it go.
000
When the moment had passed and both of us could speak clearly again, he laid out his basic intentions: there wasn’t much of a rush for this. Neville said he’d rather spend this time peacefully than dive headlong into tearing the world apart.
A month or two, maybe, he said, but the actual time frame isn’t important. When the time as right, he’d pick a nice day, and we’d go out and I’d do something big and flashy with the lake in Central Park.
Or somewhere else. He shrugged. The actual location of the event wasn’t particularly important. He’d circulate flyers a few days in advance to draw a crowd and then I’d let loose on it.
One day (maybe less, he said—he had too much respect for Loybol to believe that she wouldn’t at least try and assassinate him on twenty four hours’ notice, and with stakes that high he believed fully that she could actually get it done. Likely it would involve her handful of telepaths (Esther, maybe a few others) to track him down, and then she would just take care of business herself. Cities were a playground for sufficiently powerful earth-keys. It would probably involve collapsing an entire building, with hundreds of casualties, but again—given the stakes it’d be worth it.
It was possible that she’d give a passive approval, Neville had also mentioned, but unlikely given her participation in the war. He had to assume that any goodwill between them had burned by this time.
Enough time to draft some statements but not enough time to do anything, he said.
“I will protect you,” he had said. On the subject of our inevitable international celebrity. Upon the reveal of magic at Central Park we would probably never get a full nights’ sleep again. But he promised—solemn as the stars—that he would not let anything happen to me.
Until then, though, we had life to live.
000
And so we went up to Matthew to inform him of the future.
Even though it had been less than an hour since I was last at the apartment I couldn’t help but regard the door in a different light, as though it was a different place. I didn’t think I’d ever be back there again, let alone with Matthew, let alone with a living, breathing Neville. And with my mind finally swirling back down to something vaguely resembling normal I sent some droplets under the door before Neville knocked, just so I could feel Matthew jump out of his skin.
And sure enough—he did. The knock came and Matthew was so startled he dropped his book.
For a good ten seconds, he didn’t move. Sat perfectly paralyzed. I half-expected him to dive into my head again—or at least try, given what he had to be assuming about the knock—but he didn’t. Instead, slowly, he rose from the easy chair and drifted lifelessly toward the door.
It occurred to me about one second before he opened the door that Matthew must have run the odds about getting the jump on me right then. If I was there, alone because I killed Neville in his office and simply came upstairs to take care of unfinished business, it made sense to go at me right then. Take advantage of what he probably assumed was a tactical mistake.
I don’t really know what he was thinking, but he didn’t do it. Maybe he figured that if I was close enough to knock on the door, I was close enough to put droplets around him, and therefore close enough to put an icicle through his skull if he twitched the wrong way.
Either way, he didn’t try. He opened the door, defeated without a fight.
And even if he expected what was on the other side, he didn’t show it. His eyes flicked between me and Neville like he’d never seen either of us before in his life.
“Oh—” he said. “Um. Welcome back. Sir.”
He took a deep breath. I thought he was going to launch into something, but he didn’t.
“Hello,” Neville said, cheery. Cheery!
“I’m going to—can I speak freely?”
“Always.”
“Okay,” Matthew said, closing his eyes. Another deep breath. “What the ever-loving fuck were you thinking?”
“I don’t play games,” Neville said, serious again. “And I’m tired of pretenses. The life we live is unsustainable. It’s time.”
“Now?”
“Not now.” He flapped his hand a little. “Later. Next month or so. Before it gets too cold, for sure. But we could also do it when the first snowfall his. That, actually, might be best.”
He looked down at me. “That’s not my part, though. The art is hers.”
I swallowed. I guess I’d missed that part.
“I cannot fucking believe that this worked. Christ. I—I’m sorry. I shouldn’t be so upset.”
“You have every right to be upset,” Neville said. “I kept this from you for far too long. I drove Talia away because I kept this from you all. I’d be lying if I said this was my full plan from the beginning, but this thought—well, once it was brought to me, I realized that even if I didn’t know it when I put this in motion, this must have been my final design. Does that make sense?”
“No,” Matthew said. “Absolutely fucking not.”
“I saved Erika because I realized I had to,” Neville said. “I didn’t really know why. I thought I did, but—I don’t know. I don’t really believe in God, but I do believe in a divine purpose. There are things each person is meant to do. This is ours. Nobody has ever been better positioned for this than we are. It might be the only chance we get to end this charade in peace.”
“Peace,” Matthew said, empty. “It ends with a snowman in Central Park. Is that it?”
Neville shrugged. “More or less.”
“Loybol’s going to put your head on a spike.”
“She won’t have enough time.”
“Do you think that’ll stop her?” Matthew said, cold. “I’ve seen what she does to people who wrong her.”
Ensure your favorite authors get the support they deserve. Read this novel on Royal Road.
“She’s not being wronged. I think she’ll understand. Frankly, with the opportunities she’s had…” He glanced down at me. “I think she’ll just be upset she didn’t think of this sooner.”
“What about Prochazka? He’s still alive.”
“He will concede.”
“Bell and Cygnus?”
“Aren’t in the city anymore,” he said.
I paled. “What?”
“They’re gone,” Neville said. “None of our people have seen or heard from them in two weeks.”
“That doesn’t mean they’re not hiding,” Matthew said. “Sir, you can’t just hand-wave all this shit away. We’re not actually done yet.”
“It will be done once we do the demonstration,” he said. “It can’t be put back again, Matthew. Once the other parties see the peaceful demonstration, they’ll back down. We all know what it takes. None of us had the strength until now.”
His tone never changed. It was final. This was it, then—that was the end.
A victory for Neville. Prochazka loses.
A victory, somehow, for me.
I still find it hard to feel that way about this. Even though I know it was what was best for the world, and what was best for me—I still couldn’t help but feel a little sideways pang like I was betraying the man who saved my life, even though I’m not entirely sure he actually saved anything at all.
Matthew turned his attention to me. “And you’re just…okay with this?”
I nodded. Took a breath. Sounded as strong as I could. “I’ve always known the math was bad, Matthew. I—I tried to tell Cygnus and he didn’t believe me. I knew we couldn’t get away with this forever. And…and this plan, it…it gives me a home. It means I don’t have to keep doing…this,” I waved vaguely at the place around us, as if that had any actual meaning. “When Prochazka saved me, he—he just pointed me at stuff. And let me be broken towards it. I didn’t understand what I was doing because I didn’t understand anything. And as I started to realize, it was too late. I was already stuck with it. I didn’t know enough to ask for help, but…”
I swallowed and kept my voice steady. “I’ve made too many mistakes to keep digging myself deeper. I know better now.”
“You know not to let yourself be manipulated anymore,” Matthew said, toneless.
I nodded. “Yeah.”
Again his eyes went between Neville and me. I expected another retort—some other hole in the plan that Neville would wave away—but instead Matthew just shrugged and said, “Okay. Whatever.”
“Can I count on you?” Neville asked.
“I already did this bit of self-searching,” Matthew said. “I don’t need to do it again.”
There was a pause. He twitched.
In one moment all possible worlds flashed through my head and I could only stop it from overwhelming me with a breath. I thought I knew what was coming.
But it did not come. Nothing changed.
“It doesn’t matter what I think,” Matthew said, slowly. “I swore allegiance.”
Neville smiled. “Thank you.”
000
Later, when we went out for pastries, Neville floated the idea of me moving in with him at some point. It didn’t need to be now, he said, but it should probably be before we set the world on fire. It would help if we could naturally act like the father/daughter duo the world was expecting to see.
I wasn’t quite ready for that yet, but I didn’t have to be. We had some time, it could wait.
That summed up the extent of the “plan” that Neville was willing to discuss. Instead of further logistics, he asked me what I’d like to do.
The question didn’t register with me. I was halfway into a donut when he said it. “What?”
He shrugged. “Do you want to go somewhere? I know you mentioned you might want to finish some schooling at some point—I know some people who’d be willing to help.”
“I—I don’t know,” I said. “This is all happening really fast.”
“We can also do nothing,” Neville said. “We’ve got that luxury now. We can just do nothing today, if you’d like.”
I could not remember the last time I’d been allowed to simply do nothing. It must have been in Red Creek—since then there’d always been something that had to be done. Something that couldn’t wait another day. I had at some point assumed that this was how all people lived and that there was actually no such thing as “nothing to do”—to do nothing was to waste time, to squander something, and therefore it was illegal in Prochazka’s eyes and therefore again my own.
What was left to do if nothing could be done? I could sit on my hands and everything would just—wait for me.
It would all still be there tomorrow.
“I think I’d like to do nothing,” I said.
“Sure,” Neville said. “Let’s just go for a walk, then.”
So we did that.
000
We turned corners at random. Entered stores at random. Occasionally Neville needed to give me a quick note about what was actually in the store (“these clothes won’t fit you—the smaller things are over there” or “that’s just a restaurant”), but he was always discreet about it. Once in a while I would slide back into my old habits of trying to keep track of everything at once, and I’d stumble as the force of it engulfed me—but every time I made that little stop-stumble, Neville would stop walking, immediately, and wait for me to catch my breath.
He waited! For me!
Prochazka would never!
We spent the whole day like that. Wandering. Seeing. He took me anywhere, to see anything. It didn’t matter what the thing was. It didn’t matter how long it took to get there.
We went. We did. No questions or timetables. This would not be on the final exam.
It was allowed to simply exist. I was allowed to exist.
I was.
And the winds blew high around the monoliths and the breaths from the passerby floated in little red swirls in front of their warm lips and the lights and sounds from the buildings came to rest at my feet as birds, as feathers, not as javelins—the buildings, they used to bend inward, peering over me as spy-cameras on inquisitive streetlamps but now they stood as straight and tall as their architects intended: oaks to line the path as Neville and I strode down the avenue with our secret presents in tow: our place, our time, and no intrusive thought of a passerby could shake our conviction in the future we’d set in motion: all of this was going to end, yes, it would end bloodily, yes, that’s true, that’s unavoidable—but it would end and then something would begin—yes!—something new and fresh, something alive: unfathomable from down here when we could only see the ladder, but our imaginations ran ahead of us and we could see, craning our necks backward beyond what the spine would allow, peering up along the ladder, eyes following it up to heaven—up there, up there, that was where we were headed, that was where we belonged, in a future world untouched by human hands, sculpted by inhuman hands, designed by godly hands, beyond what mortals could understand: there was a place for us where nobody needed to hide, it was up there—a place where we could go as we pleased and show who we were—it was up there—a time when these self-imposed divisions would become dust—up there—and on that yet unplaced day we’d go down to the park and run that final show and everyone in the entire world would see how the other half lives.
Yes—there would be blood, there would always be blood, it goes without saying, change is always and eternally, backwards and forwards into infinity, in blood. Our blood, no. But we have written in blood enough.
In the air there was the gentle smell of the sea. There were not many places in the city where that was true. That smell was an undercurrent—beneath the cooking oil and exhaust and concrete there was a little beating heart like the waves themselves, the smell of the sea, which would be here when everything else is gone, when the cooking oil is dried up and the exhaust drifts away and the concrete is ground into dust by wind, by water, by the toil of time.
The smell of the sea would remain.
After the blood, we would remain.
000
That evening, we returned home to his office. I guessed that this was part of it now—his study, where I was free to arrive and leave as I chose.
A room in the house.
When we came into the atrium, he looked around at the paintings. Didn’t linger on anything for more than a moment, except for maybe the empty receptionist’s desk. I didn’t know if Jerome was supposed to be there or not. I didn’t know what time it was.
Wordlessly he went to the door and opened it, and we sat in the same places we were when this began—either side of a desk that no longer spanned the ocean. His eyes were fixed on me and I did my best to return the favor, even though I’d long since lost the ability to consistently do it well.
I didn’t need to see his eyes to know the look he gave me. I remembered it from TV. From Yoru and Ava. It held no pretense. The look did not ask. It did not require. It saw—it cataloged—it knew but it did not suppose.
It just was.
Selfish as he’d said this was I knew it was right. I needed this in the same way he needed it. Someone to crouch low and offer a hand and a quiet word to soothe the storm. I couldn’t even possibly begin to know where to look for such a thing and neither could he. Those around him didn’t see a person; they saw a force, a hurricane, who went as he pleased and destroyed any and all. There was no need to know more. The sum of his parts was a hurricane; the correct response to the hurricane was to flee; the end.
There was no more understanding to be had. There was nothing left to know.
And now—for me—now that I have nothing left to know, now that peace was upon me for the first time in my life—
Neville took the centerpiece of his pendant in his hands and looked at it, briefly. I’d only given the pendant a passing thought before, but it occurred to me then that it must have been some important artifact to him—a parent’s necklace or something along those lines. Looking at it then, maybe he felt like he had finally done some good in his life.
Something to make his parents proud again.
Then he let go of the pendant and regarded me. He asked, “How does it feel?”
“How does what feel?” I replied, quiet.
“How does it feel to be free?” he said.
000
Time numbs the evil I have done. The bad scabs over. I think everybody is like this, from what I can tell. In the moment the anxiety and the pain is all we know but in hindsight we remember it as a word, a tag on the feeling, but not the feeling itself.
When I look back on my late days at the Radiant, I don’t remember the sadness as much. I don’t remember being numb. I know I was, and I can recall it as a feeling I had, but the sensation doesn’t come when I call it. I have to actively work at it, force myself to feel something that doesn’t match the present. Unless, of course, the state of mind I’m in happens to match the feeling I had—and then I am teleported there, instantly, with no recourse.
When I recall this time, it’s not like that. I feel peace. I see it. It’s warm. It comforts me.
I think about it all the time when I’m low. I need to in order to keep myself centered. My natural state isn’t like this—it takes work to be someone worthy of feeling that way.
But as the memories are re-written with recollections as memories do (fleeting as they are, even the strongest ones morph with repetition) the effect grows weaker.
I know I felt Neville’s look as loving then—I know I felt him look at me the way a father looks at his child—but the more I think of it when times are hard the more the warmth fades. Every time I come back to harvest, there’s less warmth to be had.
I suspect, eventually, it will run out. I will have no more goodwill to strip from this time of my life, and it will flatten into a simple sequence like all the other things, with a little tag across the top that reminds me: “you were happy then.”
It can be done. That was my takeaway. It is possible to be healed.
Even when dark times are upon me (now, it seems, more often than ever, even though my current situation is by far better than where I was at fifteen) I need this moment to remind me: I can be loved. It takes time, but I can be loved.
I have to work at it, because so many parts of me are so rotted, but it can be done.
I can be loved. It can be done.
The mantra, when I need it most, sustains me.
000
I don’t like to talk about my current situation. It’s such that the people who know what I’m up to know how I feel, and the people that don’t are better off without that knowledge.
It doesn’t help anyone to complain, so I don’t. All things considered, it could be a lot worse. I don’t really need to do very much anymore. Things are generally under control.
It’s only because of this relative peace that I finally have the time to look back on these things that happened to me with any kind of a critical eye. Joining the Radiant, the war we fought, the machinations I was drawn into—now that these things are well glazed-over by time, I can finally lean in with a magnifying glass and try to see if there’s anywhere I could have done things differently.
Truthfully, I’m still not sure. I don’t think there’s much I could have done with the knowledge I had in the moment. If I woke up on the morning of my twelfth birthday with everything I know now at twenty-five—well, first, I’d probably kill myself immediately and save the trouble; but barring that (because I know I wouldn’t be able to), I’m not sure.
Do I reject Prochazka? I don’t think I could. In retrospect I realize that Prochazka probably didn’t know what he wanted to do with me when he decided to go out and look. He must have just gotten extremely lucky with the timing. Recruitment was the easiest way to keep me off the street and in a position where he could make sure I didn’t do anything to blow the lid off the charade too soon, and if he could have me do something productive for him while I was there, that was just icing. The fact that I took to the work well was extremely lucky, too.
I wonder if he was hoping I wouldn’t. That I was just disgruntled and sad as twelve-year-olds are and there was no deeper evil there.
I could go down the list, but it doesn’t really matter. I think I end up in the same place either way. Someone was always going to need me for something. No matter what direction the world decided to topple in, I was always going to be kept aside for a special occasion.
There’s just too much potential there to waste.
I suppose, then, if I had to change anything—if there was one thing I’d do differently in all of this—it would have to be here, right at the end, when there was only one thing left to do.
I’d have to have put it in motion earlier, but the difference in time doesn’t particularly matter. All I would have needed to do was mention it and Neville would have made it happen. I just needed to bring it to his attention.
In his haste to make things right, it’s the only thing he glossed over. All things perfect except for this. And maybe Matthew’s objections weren’t good enough; maybe he needed me to say it, too. Maybe that would have made it real.
Knowing what I know now about the way things end after all of this, I can say it with full confidence, even though it hurts to think this way, and I know I could never say it to their faces; even though there is no way either of them could possibly know, short of reading it in the ripples of my brain, wringing the words from my neck like I’d seen her do. I had resisted it, passively, but only because I’d never been put on the spot for it. I don’t even know what I would have said if I was; I didn’t know where they were. I didn’t know what their plans were.
But my explicit support would have made them double their efforts, I’m sure. In my time with Neville in New York I had forgotten. She would be there at the end of time. More than me, she was an entity beyond reality. Any and all who stood in her way would wither. There was nothing that could possibly stand against her—except me. I was the only being in the entire world strong enough to try.
It was the only thing that stood between me and love forever.
I needed to betray her.