Part 47 (2/2)

I gripped her shoulders. I had begun sweating again. ”Marissa,” I said hoa.r.s.ely. ”He was flying.”

Her eyes brightened and she leaned toward me, kissed me hard on the lips. ”Then it's happened! The time is here.”

”Time,” I echoed her stupidly. ”Time for what?”

”For the change,” she said as if talking to a slow-witted child.

”Yes,” I said. ”I suspected as much. That's why I've brought you into the labyrinth. We're safe here.”

Her brows furrowed. ”Safe? Safe from what?”

”From Morodor,” I said desperately. ”He can't touch you here. Now he cannot change you. You'll stay like this forever. You'll never have to look like him.”

For the first time, I saw fright in her eyes. ”I don't understand.” She s.h.i.+vered. ”Didn't he tell you?”

”Tell me what?” I hung on to her. ”I ran out of there as soon as I saw him-”

”Oh no!” she cried. ”It's all destroyed now. All destroyed!” She put her face in her hands, weeping bitterly.

”Marissa,” I said softly, holding her close. ”Please don't cry. I can't bear it. I've saved you. Why are you crying?”

She shook me off and stared wide-eyed at me. Even tear-streaked she was exquisitely beautiful. It did not matter that she was filled with pain. No emotion could alter those features. Not even, it seemed, time itself. Only Morodor, her haunted brother.

”He was supposed to tell you. To prepare you,” she said between sobs. ”Now it has all gone wrong.”

”Marissa,” I said, stroking her, ”don't you know I love you? I've said it and I meant it. Nothing can change that. As soon as we get out of here, we'll-”

”Tell me, how deep is your love for me?” She was abruptly icily calm.

”How deep can any emotion be? I don't think it can be measured.”

”Do not be so certain of that,” she whispered, ”until you've heard me out.” She put her hands up before her body, steepling them as if they were a church's spire. ”It is not Morodor who will work the change. It is you.”

”Me?”

”And it has already begun.”

My head was whirling and I put the flat of my hand against the ground as if to balance myself. ”What are you saying?”

”The change comes only when we are in love and that love is returned. When we find a mate. The emotion and its reflection releases some chemical catalyst hidden deep inside our DNA helices which has remained dormant until triggered.”

Her fingers twined and untwined anxiously. ”This is not a... state that can be borne alone; it is far too lonely. So this is how it is handled. An imperative of nature.”

”No!” I cried. ”No no no! What you're telling me is impossible. It's madness!”

”It is life, and life only.”

”Your life! Not mine!”

I stood up, stumbled, but I could not escape the gaze of her lambent eyes. I stared at her in mounting horror. ”Liar!” I cried. ”Where is Morodor's mate if this is true?”

”Away,” she said calmly. ”Feeding.”

”My G.o.d!” I whirled away. ”My G.o.d!” And slammed into the p.r.i.c.kly wall of a hedge.

”Can love hold so much terror for you?” she asked. ”You have a responsibility. To yourself as well as to me. Isn't that what love is?”

But I could no longer think clearly. I only knew that I must get away from them both.

The change has already begun, she had said. I did not think that I wanted to see the fruits of that terrible metamorphosis. Not after having known her and loved her like this, all air and sunlight.

Two sides of the coin. Wasn't that what I had said to Morodor? How he must have laughed at that. Yes. Two sides. But of the same coin.

”Don't you see?” I heard her voice but could no longer see her. ”You have nothing to fear. It is your destiny- our destiny, together.”

Howling, I clawed my way from her, staggering, tripping as I ran through the labyrinth. My only coherent thought was to somehow get to the sea and then to hurl myself into its rocking embrace.

To swim. To swim. And if I were lucky I would at last be thrown up onto the soft sand of some beach far, far away.

But the night had come alive with shadows drenched in my own terror. And, like a mirror, they threw up to me the ugly writhing apparitions from the very bottom of my soul, thrusting them rudely into the light for me to view.

And above me the sound of...

Wings.

Even through the horrendous tattoo of the storm I can make out that sound. It's the same sound that reached down into my heavy slumber that night in Fuego del Aire and wrenched me awake. I did not know it then but I know it now.

But I know many things now that I did not then. I have had time to think. To think and to write. Sometimes they are one and the same. Like tonight.

Coming to terms. I have never been able to do that. I have never wanted to do that. My writing kept me fluid, moving in and out as the spirit took me. New York today, Capri the next. The world was my oyster.

But what of me?

The sound is louder now: that high keening whistle like the wind through the pines. It buzzes through my brain like a downed bottle of vintage champagne. I feel lightheaded but more than that. Light-bodied. Because I know.

I know.

There is nothing but excitement inside me now. All the fear and the horror I felt in the labyrinth leached away from me. I have had six months to contemplate my destiny. Morodor was right: For each one, it is different. The doorway metamorphoses to suit the nature of the individual.

For me it is love. I denied that when Marissa confronted me with the process of her transmogrification. Such beauty! How could I lose that? I thought. It took me all of this time to understand that it was not her I feared losing but myself. Marissa will always be Marissa.

But what of me? Change is what we fear above all else and I am no different.

Was no different. I have already forgotten the golden creature of Fuego del Aire: she haunts my dreams still but I remember only her inner self. It is somehow like death, this acceptance of life. Perhaps this is where the legends began.

All around me the city sleeps on, safe and secure, wrapped in the arms of the myths of its own creation. Shhh! Don't bother to disturb it. No one would listen anyway.

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