Circle of Nine: Circle of Nine Trilogy 1 (40 page)

CHAPTER FIFTY-NINE

A
utumn lingered late in the mountains the year that Maya turned three. Each time I visited the village for supplies there were comments on the whereabouts of winter. Talk like that always created the familiar tension and irritation in the back of my neck. Some people thought the seasons were out of order because of global warming.

‘You know what it is, Ruth?’ I longed to confide to the gossipy blonde who owned the grocery store. ‘It’s not global warming at all. A fool could see it’s more likely that Persephone is unwilling to return to the underground. And hell, who can blame her? I mean, I’ve been there myself and it’s no bowl of cherries. By the way, Ruth, have there been any Solumbi or Azephim angels asking after me? Big, scary creatures with black wings — you’d remember them, I’m sure. Yep, you’ve guessed it, I’m crazier than a march hare, Ruth!’

Instead I would have to endure the humiliation of my shining reporting Ruth’s mind commenting about me as I shopped in silence. ‘What a shame, she really looks the dog’s dinner. It can’t be easy bringing up a child on your own, but she looks about sixty years old! Christ, the poor thing, she didn’t look too bad when she first came to the mountain, but some man let her down, so they say.’

Some man let her down.

I reflected on that as I walked home with Maya skipping happily beside me. A light shower of mountain rain was beginning to fall. If only it had been that simple, I mourned, how I envied everyone who had been heartbroken in love, who had been hurt and deceived by a comfortably human man. It felt to me as if I was cracking with pain. I was the victim, a human Phooka sucking up all the collective pain of suffering on the Blue Planet.

*

The mountain hid many secrets that autumn. Many whispers contained within its chalk walls and its leafy sanctuaries and I heard every whisper clearly. It was my madness: a gift, a blessing.

The local priest who longed for intimacy in a religion that condemned human touch.

The young girl, raped continually by her father.
I will kill him, I will leave here forever.

The artist who had taken blood years before.
It was war, it wasn’t murder
—
but I can’t forget his eyes.

The wife having an affair with the local police chief.
I’m not unattractive, I’m not old. It’s not too late for life.

The married schoolteacher who lusted after the boys that he taught.
One day I will punish him. Over the desk, I’ll show him who’s in control. He’s old enough.

Whispers. Screams. They spoke to me frantically that season, pushing me gently into near insanity. Throughout it all Maya was my saviour, my strength. Her impregnable brown eyes shared my pain, and my memories of a different world. A kinder world, with more colour, more magic. Without these reminders, I was doomed.

Whispers of poisoned waters, minds and soil. Whispers, shameful secrets.

The Dreamers are stirring in their Shell, they are restless. If the cracks in the worlds kept appearing, then the Dreamers could awake. As I was kept awake at nights, staring into the dark. I received all the transmissions. All illusion, I told myself. But I wept tears of blood with my pain.

A dream. In the bedroom a being came from a spider’s web, eyes like green chips of glass, red curling hair and silver lips. Looking down on me as I slept, bending over me, her breath soft and scented with moonlight. Long purple nails stroking my cheek. I turned over, escaped into further sleep.

I had painted every day when I first crossed back to Earth. The Muses helped me to adjust. I worked on hundreds of paintings, leaving most of them unfinished. I hastily recorded fleeting impressions of the colours of Eronth, the Faiaite people and the Azephim. The pus poured out of me but the abscess refused to heal and I filled twenty-seven sketchbooks with drawings and writings on Eronth. One day I decided, I will write a book; for now my impressions sat with my Aunt’s sketchbooks. I wrote copiously about my experiences in Eronth. I now found it difficult to examine too closely the artwork that Johanna had executed from all her crossings. I resented Johanna. She should have warned me somehow, I often thought. She must have had some knowledge that I was going to be used as a vessel to carry this child, that I would be shown a paradise such as Eronth and then not be allowed to return. Effie had died, for Christ’s sake! My friend had been killed, by beings from a nightmare, because my aunt had decided to build a portal between worlds.

It is dangerous to whisper their black names, to bring them more into being. I have to take responsibility.

Not only had Johanna got herself killed, she had killed my best friend, and put me at risk. I felt cheated by her. I had believed that she had left me her house because she shared some bond with me, that she had recognised the gift that we shared.

Let her sing me into dust. Into space. I am afraid for the child.

But that child was never me. Not me. Johanna had never really cared about me. It was always Maya.

The mural on the lounge room wall remained the same. The same blurred figures, the ilkamas, fading over time. The crystal that I had used to open the portal was no longer in the house. I left the mural exactly as it was, afraid that if I changed anything, then I would alter events for the beings that existed in the unseen world behind my wall.

The studio, the work and Maya helped to keep me sane. I had no need of friends, no need or desire for touch or sexual contact. All I craved and hungered for was balance. I recognised that I could easily slip into insanity.

The world was my reflection and I hated the distorted reflection that I saw, where cobwebs of madness hung everywhere. The smell of humankind felt doomed. A terrible scent of death and despair was one of my overriding impressions when I had first returned to Earth. I became afraid to even tread upon the earth, afraid of the consequences of the smallest act. Perhaps angels walked near me, perhaps not. Yet now I knew there could be no light without shadow.

How I feared the nights! I am so old, although I am young, I am wise and yet know nothing. I live but I am dead. They have given me grace, and they have exacted a fearful toll for the privilege. No man or woman can gaze upon the mysteries and remain unscathed. Like Persephone, I too live in the underground. I am doomed to the darkness and to suffer the secrets that must never be told. I worked in the garden, I planted new life, I meditated for many hours attempting to calm the snakes of tension that writhed continually within me. I read. I wrote. I breathed. I waited.

I knew they would come. And they did.

CHAPTER SIXTY

O
ne of my last precious memories of Maya concerns a children’s party we attended. Of course I had to force myself to go. God, how I loathed social occasions and small talk! But it was to be a Faery party and I knew that Maya wanted to go. She longed for me to be like other mothers. The little girls at the party were all friends with one another; they all attended the same daytime kindergarten. The mums were also known to each other, the majority of them had grown up on the mountain, sharing the same schools, the same social clubs, the same gym. I alone was the outsider.

They acted warm and friendly to me, but mind-reading is a curse and I cringed inwardly at the frank and unflattering thoughts the shock of my appearance prompted. My premature ageing was a neverending source of horror to them.

However, it was a small task to endure them when I was feeling so much joy just watching my beautiful daughter dressed in a pink Faery outfit, dancing and laughing in the autumn sunlight with the other children.

Oh, Maya! I was so foolish then! I let myself believe! I let optimism and hope steal into my heart that it might be different for us, that the Dreamers had given us grace and we could live a normal life on Earth. When I close my eyes I can still see you, laughing and twirling with the other children. My laughing, chubby, all-too-human Faery.

Then the dreams began . . .

*

I am walking down stone steps, slightly bored. A blue cow passes me as I enter a room. Inside the room Rosedark is seated. She stares at me blankly.

‘You’ve served your function, Emma,’ she says.

A feeling of betrayal comes over me and I begin to cry. She is so detached, so cold. Bob Dylan is seated at the table and he bursts out laughing.

‘Why did you think it would be any different?’ he sneers, picking up a harmonica and blowing a few notes. Then I am in a small cave. I feel terrified of rats. There is a large bite on my left leg. The cave is illuminated by torchlight. On the walls of the cave are drawn large symbols, similar to pentacles but at the same time quite different. There is a crib in the cave. I am terrified. The sound of a loud breathing fills the cave. The sound of an amplified heartbeat.

‘Look, Bluite!’ a voice commands.

I stare into the crib. Lying inside, covered in a pink baby’s blanket, is a grotesque hybrid, half-stag, half-human. I let out a small scream.

‘She is here, waiting for her sister,’ the voice continues.

I look up and realise where the breathing and voice are coming from. It is the Eom, its huge, black, shiny surface filling the cave. It fills me with urgency.

It is waiting to be charged.

*

I wake sweating, my heart pounding. Still half-asleep, I stagger down the corridor to Maya’s bedroom. I expect to find the bed empty, but to my overwhelming relief she is there. I check her hurriedly. Terrified of what they might have done to her. But she is perfect. Whole. Except for that odd scent that wafts over her. I drop lavender oil onto the sheet to disguise the smell.

I gaze at her in silence for a moment. Checking that she is human. That two tiny antler horns are not growing from her head. I have become Jade, checking me for signs of the shining.

I do not sleep that night. I stay awake and guard my daughter, watching every shadow, hearing every leaf fall, challenging every sound.

*

Now I ignore my Muses and there are whole days when I forget to eat. Maya is my only concern. She has sensed the change in me, she smells the cancerous fear. She is no longer the animated, bossy, opinionated Maya I once knew. She becomes concerned, soft. She is tiptoeing around me. We sleep together, entwined, sharing breath. But Maya does not share my nightmares. I fight sleep, for in the arms of Hypnos I am defenceless, but Hypnos always overtakes me and the nightmares begin.

*

I am back in Eronth. The air is so alive, so pure! The colours of the land are entrancing. I had forgotten how beautiful it was! A snake has shed its skin. I pick it up, wondering, Marvelling at the gold snake-dust that falls on my hands. I come to a field. The earth is shimmering, rippling. Persephone is rising!

It’s not time
, I think in terror! It’s the wrong season! A hand shoots through the earth. Blood fills the paddock. It is Sati! She rises with a scream of triumph as I wake, screaming. It is Maya who calms me down, holds me.

‘It’s all right, Mum. They can’t hurt you.’

So this is the way they will destroy me. Slowly.

*

It is odd, but the last few days I have been sensing Khartyn. Her presence fills the house. I sit staring into space for hours at a time, lost in my memories of the Crone. There are times I feel her breath on my neck. Other times I feel her exasperation as she attempts to convey a message and I cannot hear her words. She has abandoned me. But the ghost of her presence remains.

*

I am in the ocean: vast, green, briny. Fear fills me with wandering, restless fingers as I consider what could lie beneath the cold, impregnable waves. I am convinced I spot a shark fin idly circling me and I can hear the harsh, jeering laughter of the mocking Sea Hags, so often mistaken for seagulls. Terrified, I try to swim to shore, convinced I will be killed before I reach the safety of the harbour. Thankfully, I am mistaken and my feet joyfully embrace the peach sand of the island I have strayed upon. There is little life on this island. Tears stream down my cheeks. A sense of hopelessness overwhelms me. I have returned home — too late. There is nothing left of my people. Indentations in the hot sand indicate where the Great Temple and the Eom once stood. A smell of blood hangs in the air. All the lush vegetation that once flourished so abundantly has vanished. Yet, something remains . . . small animal-like tracks leading to a private sea cave, easy to miss and thickly overgrown with vines.

I hesitate, but feel compelled to enter despite my fears. Large spider webs protect the entrance of the cave. Carelessly, I brush them aside with my hand. I enter the semi-darkness, which is illuminated by hundreds of gleaming white shells of indescribable glory. My eyes adjust to the half-light and I am shocked to see a woman occupying the cave. She is Azephim. Large dark wings are stretched to full span in the defensive stance of the angels. The Azephim is as surprised to see me as I her. By her feet I make out a body. I realise with horror that I have disturbed her feeding. The fresh blood from her kill still stains her lips. Then an even greater horror replaces the fear of disturbing a Dark Angel at her kill. For I recognise the woman and she recognises me. It is Maya.

*

The weather is erratic. Even I, lost in my self-absorption, have noticed it. It is abnormally hot one day, but the next the Winter Goddess breathes upon the land. Flu is rife in the mountains, but I am immune — even the virus fears entering the house of the damned.

*

They take her quietly when I least expect it. (I have always expected it.) I wake early one morning. There have been no nightmares, only a pleasant dream where I swim in a warm ocean with brilliant pink coral beneath me. When I wake from the dream, Maya is gone.

*

After that, of course, life went.

*

It would have been easier for me if they had killed me, let loose their foul Solumbi to feed upon my ageing flesh, but my wants and needs are of no concern to the Azephim. Their only interest has always been Maya. I find it heartbreaking to believe Jessie and I slept through the abduction. She regards me with her wet, accusing eyes for days. Dear loyal Jessie, the silent witness to my agony. My last friend left on Earth, watcher of my slow death.

*

I explore every option inside my crazed mind. For days I sit in a silent, empty shell of a house making endless lists. I forget writing them, then discover them unexpectedly, folded sheets of paper filled with the writing of a shaking, erratic hand.

One. It might have been an abduction.

Two. The Stag Man?

Three. Maya might have run away.

Four. Was she ever really there?

That last thought, that I might have lived with a hallucination, threatens to tip me over into total insanity. Since my experiences in Eronth I have learned to fear what might not be there. The spaces in places surrounding me feel more alive and filled with energy than the solids. Even the wind has a voice. My mood swings are erratic. One minute I am planning my suicide and the next I’m feverishly attempting to plan how I could cross into Eronth. Once there I’d travel through the Wastelands, tackle the Azephim, rip their hearts out of their bodies and reclaim my daughter. But the bridge between the worlds had been closed to me. When I first arrived back from Eronth I had searched the house inside and out, desperate to find the wooden box with the vial that had been my catalyst for the crossing. Of course it, along with the crystal, had vanished, and the house had mocked me with a scene perfectly set for my return. The dishes still on the sink air-drying where I had left them, my gardening gloves still hanging over the pot plant outside. Props, all props. Everything was in its place, except for the box. The last remnants of a shattered mind conceives impossible ideas. I will go to the police, to a counsellor, to a tabloid television show. I will pretend Maya never happened. I’ll get a haircut, and with it a new life. The days move slowly. I go outside, lie on the earth and cry into her. I hope my tears will reach Persephone, I long for my prayers to be answered. (Prayers are always answered.)

*

In the dream Khartyn moves toward me. She is clicking, vibrating. My God, she’s so old. There are shimmering, moth-like wings around her. Where are the wings from?

‘Emma!’ she cries. ‘There’s little time.’

I stare at her, glazed, still shocked by how deep the cragged lines are on her ancient face. Her eyes appear like mirrors, clouded over and about to fall back into her skull. Frail, shimmering. An ancient spider moth.

‘I need to cross,’ I tell her.

My heart feels so heavy and sad, and pain is sprouting tumours within me. Khartyn shakes her head, and in an instant she appears even older.

‘There is no crossing,’ she tells me, her voice the voice of spring, of hell, of light.

‘I need Maya!’ I cry.

Black erupts from my chest cavity. Khartyn holds out her hands. An incredibly large black mass is sucked into her.

‘There was never any crossing,’ she repeats in a voice that belongs to the moon and the stars. ‘We were always here.’

She walks away from me and then looks back. I realise then who she truly is, that she is only another aspect of me. Not just words, I feel it. I feel it in every cell of my body. She is my breath, my dreams, my teeth, tongue and fears. That each part of me contained her, that what I saw as myself, as ‘I’, was part of a hologram. That I am part of all that is, and that each aspect of me existed everywhere, in all times, and every times. That I was not confined spatially, or temporally. That I was everywhere, all the time, always.

It was the last time I was to see the Crone. Benediction.

After this dream I felt stronger, more in control of my destiny. The nightmares ceased. I began to eat. A semblance of a normal routine returned to me. I avoided the local shops and I took the train to the nearest mountain town for supplies, unable to face the questions of where Maya was. I began to care for myself, brush my hair, get dressed, get out of bed of a day. I took up jogging in an attempt to exorcise the demons.

I began to formulate my experience in Eronth into a book. It was a fantasy that the world could read as fiction, but maybe if there was another Crossa out there destined to discover my book they might decipher the symbols and contact me and help me to cross again. I longed to return. I ached for Maya every second of every day, but I began to slowly accept the circumstances for now.

Although my thoughts were often self-destructive I never indulged in self-destructive behaviour such as drinking or taking drugs. I was too afraid of the demons that would emerge if I unlocked the door. Over and over I asked myself,
Did Maya ever really exist?
Although she had seemed real, so did the dreams that shivered through me at nights. Was Maya real, or a figment conjured up from my own mind?

It is dangerous to whisper their black names, to bring them more into being. I have to take responsibility.

The days linked together in a white, endless string of round pearls, slightly distorted, slightly foggy. I refused to answer the ringing telephone. (It never rang.) The messages I received came from the sound of the wind and the rain. The communication of angels. At times in the street I would see angelic beings, walking detached among the world of the dead. Now I no longer heard people’s thoughts, I would see them rapidly materialise in front of me. People’s auras were clearly visible; often the brilliant auric colours were eaten away with desire and attachment and cancers. I avoided children. I would cross the street whenever I saw them. I could not take my heart breaking again. Over the mirrors in the house I draped black cloth — afraid of the image I would see in the glass. My Muses had long departed — the book lay unfinished. Amazingly, throughout this time I still managed to function on a mundane level. I paid my bills, I cleaned the house. But I no longer had hopes of crossing. Khartyn had even taken that away from me.

One day more terrible than the rest Jessie vanished. It still upsets me to write about it. I looked everywhere for her. I called her for days. I even braved the local village, putting notices up in the stores offering a huge reward. My last friend was now lost to me. Perhaps the atmosphere of the house, where I walked hand in hand with despair, had finally driven her out.

I now no longer know or care what the seasons are — the house is so silent and day and night are one. I sleep when I am tired, eat when I am hungry. Hope still lives within me, breathing faintly. I still wake at times, half-expecting to see Maya’s dark curls beside me, returned by divine intervention. But the divine are not listening. The Dreamers are too deeply asleep to care.

The golden owl returns. So large are its wings that it fills the room. Its breath is warm and smells of apples. I no longer know whether I am awake or asleep. I no longer care. The owl’s beak holds my garter, my gift from Artemis, from another life. I take it in wonderment, marvelling at the bloodstains, a small note attached.
Had to remove the leg to retrieve the gift
—
A.