The Glass Word (26 page)

Serafin waded through the water beside her as they sneaked along the statue's stone feet. “Please, Merle—let me do it.”

She didn't look at him. “Do you think I came this far in order to turn it over to someone else all of a sudden?”

He held her back by the shoulder, and against her will she stopped, after a last look at Vermithrax, who was skillfully luring the Son of the Mother in another direction. “This isn't worth it,” he said darkly. “All of this … it doesn't pay to die for this.”

“Let it be,” she replied, shaking her head. “We have no more time for that.”

Serafin looked up at Vermithrax and the sphinx colossus. She saw what was going on inside him. His powerlessness was written in his face. She knew exactly how that felt.

“Ask the Queen,” Serafin tried one last time. “She can't want you to die. Tell her she can have me in your place.”

“It would be possible,”
said the Queen hesitantly.

“No!” Merle made a motion with her hand as if she wanted to wave off any further argument. “That's enough. Stop it, both of you.”

She tore herself loose and now ran as fast as she could, through the water to the stone Sekhmet. Serafin followed her again. Both no longer paid any attention to the fact that the Son of the Mother had only to turn around to discover them. They were betting everything on one card.

Merle reached the altar and leaped up the few steps. Again she was astonished at how delicate Sekhmet's body was, a simple lioness, with scarcely any resemblance to the demonic goddess that the builders of the statue had made of her. She wondered who had been allowed to enter this temple and regard the true Sekhmet. Certainly only a narrow circle of initiates, chosen priests of the sphinxes, the most powerful of their magicians.

What must I do? she asked in her thoughts.

“Touch her.”
The Queen hesitated a moment.
“I'll attend to everything else.”

Merle closed her eyes and laid her palm between the stone ears of the lion goddess. But at the same moment
Serafin seized her lower arm, and for a second she believed he was going to stop her, if necessary with force—but he did not do that.

Instead he pulled her around, took her in his arms, and kissed her.

Merle did not resist. She had never kissed a boy, not like that, and when she opened her lips and their tongues touched, it was as if she were someplace else with him, in a place that was perhaps as dangerous as this one was, only less final, less cold. In a place where hope could take the place of despair.

She opened her eyes and saw that he was looking at her. She returned the look, looked deep inside him.

And recognized the truth.

“No!” she cried and pushed him away, confused, shocked. Incapable of believing what had just happened.

Queen? she shouted in her thoughts. Sekhmet?

She received no answer.

Serafin smiled sadly as he bowed his head and took her place beside the altar.

“No!” she cried once more. “That can't—you didn't do that!”

“He is a brave boy,” said the Flowing Queen with Serafin's voice. With
his
mouth, with
his
lips. “I will not let you die, Merle. His offer was very courageous. And in the end the decision was mine alone.”

Serafin placed his hand between the ears of the petrified body.

Merle leaped at him, intending to tear him away, but Serafin only shook his head. “No,” he whispered.

“But … but you …” Her words faded. He had kissed her and given the Flowing Queen the opportunity to move into his body. He had really done it!

She felt her knees buckling. She sank down hard on the highest altar step, only an inch above the water.

“The change has weakened you,” said the Queen and Serafin together. “You will sleep for a while. You must rest now.”

She wanted to pull herself up again, to rush to Serafin again, to beg him not to do it. But her body no longer belonged to her, as if along with the Queen had also gone the strength that had kept Merle on her feet for days at a time, almost without sleep and food. Now exhaustion came over her like an insidious illness. It left Merle no trace of a chance.

Reality slid away from her, shifted, blurred. Her voice failed, her limbs could no longer bear her weight.

She saw Serafin standing before the altar with eyes closed.

Saw Vermithrax circling around the head of the raging Son of the Mother like a lightning bug.

Saw her friends up on the parapet, small as knitting needle heads, a chain of dark shadow beads.

Serafin swam before her eyes. All her surroundings dissolved. And then suddenly she saw his face before her, very pale, his eyes closed.

Her spirit cried out, in infinite pain and grief, but no sound crossed her lips.

A gray phantom whisked away above her, the feather-light spring of a predatory cat of gray stone. Water splashed. Waves struck against her cheeks.

Sekhmet, she thought.

Serafin.

The end of the world inside her, perhaps also around her.

The Son of the Mother. Sekhmet. And over and over again, Serafin.

She must sleep. Only sleep. This battle was no longer hers.

Hands seized her, growing out of the silver mirror of the water surface. Thin girls' hands, followed by others. Figures everywhere in the water.

Serafin lived no more. She knew it. Wanted it not to be true. Knew it nevertheless.

The screams of the Son of the Mother everywhere around her.

“Merle,” whispered Junipa, and pulled her into the mirror world.

Darkness. Then silver.

No more screams.

“Merle.” Still Junipa's whisper.

Merle tried to speak, to ask something, but her lips only trembled, her voice faded to a croak.

“Yes,” said Junipa gently, “it's over.”

S
NOWMELT

S
OMEONE HAD LIFTED HER ONTO
V
ERMITHRAX'S BACK.
Someone was sitting behind her and holding her firmly. Serafin? No, not he. It must be Eft. With her broken leg, she couldn't walk.

Junipa was guiding them through the mirror world. She went ahead, followed by Vermithrax, who held the two riders on his back with his folded wings. His heart was racing, he was panting with exhaustion. Merle had the feeling he was limping, but she herself was too weak to say for certain. She looked wearily over her shoulder. Behind the lion walked Lalapeya in her sphinx form.
Dario, Tiziano, and Aristide brought up the rear.

Something lay across Lalapeya's back, a long bundle. Merle couldn't quite make it out. Everything was hazy, and she felt as if she were in a dream. What she never would have thought possible had happened: She missed the alien voice inside her, someone who gave her courage or argued with her; who lectured her and gave her the feeling that her mind and her body were not exhausted. Someone who questioned her, kept her alert, who always and constantly challenged her.

But now she had only herself.

Not even Serafin.

At that moment she knew what Lalapeya bore on her back. It was no bundle.

A body. Serafin's corpse.

She thought of his last kiss.

Only much later did Merle realize that their path through the silvery labyrinth of the mirror world was a flight. Those who could walk were hurrying—in front of them all, Junipa, who gained in strength and determination in this place, at last free from the Stone Light again.

As if she were in a trance, Merle thought back to that day she and Junipa had entered the mirror world for the first time. Arcimboldo had opened the door for them so that they could capture the annoying phantoms in his mirrors. Junipa had been uncertain, afraid. There was no sense of that
now. She moved along the secret mirror paths as if she belonged here, as if she'd never known anything else.

Around them, again and again, individual mirrors went dark, like windows in the night. The glass in some shattered, and a cold, dark suction pulled at those hurrying past. In some passages it was as if a black shadow were eating up the walls, as one mirror after another turned dark. Some exploded as Vermithrax ran by them. Tiny shards poured over the comrades like star splinters.

The longer they were under way, however, the more rarely the mirrors burst. The memory of the dark chasms faded, and soon there were no more signs of the annihilation that lay behind them. All around them shone pure silver, flickering in the light of the places and the worlds that lay beyond them. Junipa slowed, and the entire group with her.

Merle tried to pull herself upright, but she sank forward into Vermithrax's mane again. From behind she felt Eft's hand on her waist, holding her firmly. Merle heard voices: Junipa, Vermithrax, Eft. But she understood nothing of what they said. In the beginning they'd still sounded frantic, excited, almost panicked. Now their words were quieter, then fewer, until finally all lay in deep silence.

Merle tried to look around once more, to Serafin, but Eft would not allow her to. Or was it only her own lack of strength that held her back?

She felt that her mind was fading away again, that the pictures were becoming fuzzy again, the sounds of their
steps duller and farther away. When someone spoke to her, she didn't understand what was said.

Was that a good thing?

She didn't even know an answer to that.

They buried Serafin where desert had once been.

Now the broad fields of sand were drinking the melt-water, the dunes dissolved into mud, and the yellow-brown ravines became streambeds. How long would that go on? Nobody knew. It was clear that the desert would change. As would the entire country.

Egypt would become fruitful, Lalapeya maintained. For those who had resisted the Pharaoh and survived his reign of terror, this was the chance for a new beginning.

Serafin's grave lay on a rock projection, where the sand and water had bonded to firm bog. When the sun shone again and evaporated the dampness, he would be as secure here as if glass had been poured around him. The rock overlooked the desert, many miles wide in all four directions. From here one looked up and out at the blue-green ribbon of the Nile, which was still the source of all life in Egypt, and someone, perhaps Lalapeya, said it would be good that Serafin began his last journey from this place.

Merle hardly listened, although many words were spoken on this day when they took leave of Serafin. Each who had witnessed his sacrifice said something; even Captain Calvino, who'd barely known Serafin, gave a short speech.
The submarine lay at the Nile bank, securely moored in front of a palm grove, or what the frost had left of it.

Merle was the last who walked to the grave, a pit that Vermithrax had dug out of the mud with his claws. She went down on her haunches and looked for a long time at the cloth in which they'd wrapped Serafin. Utterly quiet, utterly stunned, she had taken her leave, or tried to at least.

But the true leave-taking would last months, years perhaps, she knew that.

Shortly afterward she followed the others to the boat.

Merle had thought she wouldn't have the desire to come back once more later, alone, in the evening, after the grave was filled with sand and earth, but then she did it anyway.

She came alone. She hadn't even told Junipa what she had in mind, although her friend of course guessed. Probably they all knew.

“Hello, Merle,” said Sekhmet, the Flowing Queen, perhaps the last of the old gods. She was waiting for Merle at the grave, a dark silhouette on four feet, very slender, very lithe. Almost unreal, had there not been the scent of wild animal wafting from the rock.

“I knew you would come here,” said Merle. “Sooner or later.”

The lion goddess nodded her furry head. Merle had trouble bringing the brown cat's eyes into harmony with that voice she'd heard inside for so long. But finally she
managed to do it, and then she thought that really, they went quite well together. The same teasing, even contentious expression. But also eyes full of friendship and sympathy.

“There's no happy ending, is there?” Merle asked sadly.

“There never is. Only in fairy tales, but not even there particularly often. And if there is one, then it is usually made up.” No question, it was the Flowing Queen speaking, no matter from what body and under what name.

“What happened?” asked Merle. “After you were yourself again, I mean.”

“Did the others not tell you?”

Merle shook her head. “Junipa brought everyone through the mirrors to safety. You and your son … you were still fighting.”

A breeze wafted over the nighttime desert and stirred the goddess's fur. Merle hadn't noticed the difference in the moonlight—everything here was gray, icy gray—but now she saw that Sekhmet's body was no longer of stone. Serafin's vital power had made her again what she had once been: an uncommonly slender, almost delicate lioness of flesh and blood and fur. She didn't look at all like a goddess. But perhaps that made her just that much more godly.