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| Chapter 72. Mask and Mirror | |
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n the flickering lantern light, Maeve knelt before the golden statue of Lyssa at the heart of the Temple of the Sacred Twins. A fog of incense drifted on the sultry summer air --musky sandalwood and the pine forest sharpness of frankincense. High Priestess Vivane was beside her intoning a chant that would grant them divine guidance. It was odd looking upon her old home so many years after its destruction. She closed her eyes and savored the warmth of the priestess’ voice. How she missed Vivane. When Maeve greeted the morning with song, it was Vivane who burned the incense to purify the air. It was she who strewed flower petals in her path when Maeve took her first step from bed. “I’ve missed you,” she murmured behind the mask, knowing this time she dreamed and her brightest days were behind her. There would never be another pair of sacred twins. Her voice would never again be joined in song by Radha. “You gaze upon me now, I have not left you,” Vivane said in her gentle way. There was nothing she could say to refute Vivane’s words. What good would it do to tell her of the fire that would rain from the sky? This was a dream, after all. It was wishful thinking to believe anything she said or did now would make a difference and so she gazed up at the great statue and let her senses revel in the beauty of that place. “Radha dreamed of the Searing,” Vivane said after a while, “We discounted it of course. Her visions were weak. Sometimes we thought perhaps your roles had been reversed and that it was you who should dream while she enjoyed worldly pleasures.” Maeve studied the woman for a moment, bewildered by what she was hearing. Why was she dreaming this now of all times? “Did you believe her?” Vivane shifted uncomfortably where she knelt, her hands clenched on her lap. The sapphire ring of her station gleamed darkly, a star of doom against a field of midnight velvet. “Yes, I believed her.” Maeve’s jaws ached as she clenched her teeth, simultaneously horrified and overcome with the desire to know the truth. “Why did you do nothing?” Maeve demanded. “All I had were the words of a hysterical girl whose nightmares were of fire raining from the sky. Who would have listened? I prayed for guidance and my heart told me to stay here at the feet of my Goddess. I am sorry I failed you.” Maeve could not hold back her tears. She imagined what it must have been like for her sister dreaming of the horror to come and being powerless to stop it. Vivane placed a hand on her shoulder, offering what little comfort she could. “I wish sometimes that I had died with everyone else,” Maeve wept, “Why was I spared when so many perished? I should not have survived. Everything I did was a farce. I was never a goddess, I was a stupid girl in a costume.” “Do you really believe that?” Vivane asked, her pale eyes sad and confused, “You do not think you were preserved for a greater purpose?” “By that reasoning, thousands of innocent people died for that greater purpose as well,” Maeve snarled, “I would not serve gods who put so little value on life. Spare me your platitudes.” Vivane said nothing for a time, but did not withdraw her touch. “I do not know the mind of the gods, but nothing you did was a farce. The Goddess dwelt in you, and she is there still when you cry out to her.” “Stop it!” Maeve cried, “These are lies, simple childish lies! You would not promise a starving child food you did not have, why do you offer me false comfort?” Vivane looked old beyond her time, her visage lined with unutterable grief. “The Goddess cannot appear to you while you insist upon looking away.” “And what would she say to me?” Maeve wept, “What can she possibly say to me that will change my mind?” Vivane lifted her hand and brushed the tears from Maeve’s cheek. “She would say that she wishes she could have saved everyone, that there are forces in the world that even now seek to destroy her children. She would tell you that the bond of love that ties you to Mog Ruith is the key, but you must use it wisely.” Maeve awakened with a cry, her nocturnal struggles having caused her to fall off of her bed. For a moment she lay panting and confused in a pool of shadow-hatched moonlight. Her skin was clammy with a feverish sweat as she sat up and stared at the small chamber that was now her home. The hand mirror sitting atop the blanket chest gleamed, drawing her eye to it. Slowly she reached out until the coolness of metal kissed her palm. Kneeling, she laid the mirror face up on the floor and gazed down into it. At first the reflection resolved into the sad shadowy landscape of her face, ghost pale in the moonlight. Then, inspired by some distant memory of a temple rite, she began to chant slowly: “Mask and mirror, Cup and wand, Lyssa hear me Please respond. Twin daughters Of chaos born, One to laugh, One to mourn. Give me vision, My mind be free, Reveal the truth, I plead with thee.” She felt foolish uttering the simple words, allowing her confusion and desperation to try something so feeble, and yet the polished silver gleamed like the waters of a still pond. Unable to move, she watched as the moonlight flared and faded, resolving into another face, a face that was not her own. “Mog?” she nearly sobbed, shocked and overwhelmed to see him. He gazed back at her, equally stunned as sleep faded to be replaced by confusion. “Maeve?” he croaked. She nearly lost the thin thread of the spell in her spasm of shock and joy. At the last moment she seized upon their bond and clasped him, knowing their time was short. “You must not worry about me, Mog. You need to escape, I’m safe.” “No,” he moaned, “I can’t leave you behind.” “Akemi cannot reach me here. Promise me you will go to safety.” “I cannot escape from her,” Mog sighed, “Not while she lives. Where are you? Are you unharmed?” His fear and anguish burned within her, his dream state only amplifying his sense of helplessness and confusion. “I am fine, my love. I will meet you back home. We will be together again and I will shower you with kisses. Go home, Mog. Akemi will not come for you.” The moonlight flashed on the mirror once more and when she gazed down into it she saw only her own face and could no longer feel the gentle flutter of her beloved’s mind against the edges of her consciousness. For many long moments she could only sit there, stunned by what she had done. She stood up slowly and flattened her palms at her side, raising her face toward the window and the pale orb of the moon drifting through a veil of lavender cloud above the western horizon. Dawn was approaching and it was twilight, the moment when the boundaries between worlds were thinnest. Slowly she opened herself to her goddess, silently calling to Lyssa that she might embody her once more. So many years had passed since she had performed this rite. Long ago she would have stood among the priests and priestesses as they draped lavish robes over her shoulders and strewed flowers at her feet. In that precious moment she felt a great upwelling of peace, an expansive sensation as if her body were several times its normal size. “Guide my hand, O Goddess of the Shadowed Path. Let your rage be known.” Slowly she was drawn to the chest of clothes, the few possessions Akemi had sent along with her to this distant place. As if in a dream she drew aside the lid and pushed back the folds of the gown Akemi had fashioned for her. Barely visible in the violet shadows, she saw the weeping mask and drew it out into the open, clasping it in trembling hands as she remembered the first time Akemi had forced her to wear it. Whatever force had entered her was not yet done. She was compelled to move toward the low table where Arda had left a small bowl of hard-rinded fruit and a block of cheese. Maeve’s fingers curled around the smooth antler handle of the obsidian knife resting innocently beside the offering. Obsidian, Maeve thought wistfully, soul mirror stone so appropriate for such tasks. She hesitated, wondering how a simple paring knife had become a potent magician’s blade. “Focus. Surrender,” she whispered and once more she drifted above the strange omnipotent presence, watching as her hands placed the mask on the table, as her fist tightened over the knife handle and drew upward only to thrust down harshly. A gout of blood washed over her hand, sticky and hot. She released the dagger and stared down at the mask as the blade stood up in the empty blackness of the mask’s weeping eye. She stepped away from the table, clutching her right hand in horror as a scream rang out and was suddenly silenced. Heart pounding in her breast, her back collided with the wall. Unable to take her eyes away from strange tableau of the impaled mask she watched as blood washed darkly over its silvery visage and splattered slowly, heavily on the worn wooden planks of the floor. Trembling, she forced herself to look at her hand. The blood must have come from her hand, she must have cut herself, but as the first gray light of dawn poured in through the windows, she saw that there was not a trace of blood upon her. She gasped and looked once more at the table, seeing only a dull old paring knife standing up through the eye hole of the hated mask. The mask, the knife and the mirror all seemed perfectly mundane in the sallow light of the new day. Her sweat-soaked shift clung to her flesh and a sudden surge of nausea curled up from her belly. Feverishly she reached for the chamber pot mere moments before she began vomiting. When she had hacked her last, she crawled back into her bed, so weak and miserable she did not know any more if the tears she cried were for her plight or for the shattered illusion of power. |
