Part 24 (2/2)
”Take your hands off me,” she says, blinking back the last of the dizziness, and when she looks him in the eyes it's easy to see how scared and confused he is, easy to see that he's only going through the motions because these are the words he thinks he should be saying. Something he heard in a movie or a television show, borrowed resolve, second-hand determination, and ”Take your hands off me,” she says again, and he does.
”Do you think you have to kill yourself now, because you couldn't save her? Is that it?”
”I need my clothes, Alex.”
”Then you can b.l.o.o.d.y well find them yourself,” he says and turns to leave, is halfway to the door when he pauses to look at the window again, and Daria looks, too. But the white bird is gone, if it was ever really there.
”I can't do what you did, Dar. Maybe that makes me an a.r.s.ehole, but I can't waste my time trying to help someone who won't even try to help herself,” and then he leaves the room and pulls the door shut behind him, and she's alone with the window and the setting sun and the not-so-distant mountains turning black and purple, stretched out like a barricade beneath the darkening sky.
After the bamboo gates are raised for them, and Spyder leads Niki from the ramparts of bone through narrow, ser-pentine streets, streets filled with shadows and lantern pools and nervous, suspicious whispers, they come, finally, to a tall door the color of b.u.t.terscotch candy. It has a tarnished bra.s.s knocker and a symbol Niki doesn't recognize painted in red. Spyder knocks four times, waits a moment, and then knocks once more.
219.
”So, when will the sun come up again?” Niki asks, cran-ing her neck to glimpse the uneven sliver of night sky exposed above and between the steep walls and steeper rooftops of the closely packed houses. Those whirling, alien stars, writhing points of blue-white fire, and Niki wishes there were anything up there she recognized, anything sane, a dipper or a bear, Polaris or a zodiac lion.
”Later,” Spyder replies and knocks again, and Niki isn't sure if she means that the sun will come up later or that Spyder will answer the question later, but she doesn't ask which.
Her feet hurt almost as much as her bandaged hand, and she just wants a place to lie down, a place to sleep and not have to think about everything that has or hasn't happened since she left the hotel on Steuart Street. Maybe she can figure it all out later, or maybe she'll wake up in the room with Marvin and lie there staring at the ceiling, forgetting this dream and relieved that she never has to see those stars again.
”I need to sleep, and I need to take my meds,” she says, and Spyder turns and glares at her, the gem between her eyes pulsing softly to some silent, secret rhythm.
”You can't take those pills anymore. Not here.”
”I can't just stop like that. I'll get sick. You can't just stop taking Klonopin, Spyder. I might have seizures or convul-sions or something.”
”Not in this place. You don't need that s.h.i.+t here. I should have made you dump it all into the sea.”
And before Niki can argue with her, the b.u.t.terscotch door opens and candlelight spills across the threshold. The old woman clutching the candlestick is very thin, a stooped scarecrow of a woman in shabby gray robes, and she stares out at them from the matted salt-and-pepper hair that frames the angles of her pale face. Her eyes are open so wide that Niki can see the whites all the way around the irises, and she looks scared or surprised or both.
”Weaver,” she whispers, her thin lips drawing the word out, stretching it so it becomes almost another word entirely. ”We feared you were lost. We'd almost given you up for dead. There were signs-”
220.
”There were complications,” Spyder tells her. ”The Dragon is closer than I thought.”
And then the old woman seems to notice Niki for the first time; her eyes grow even wider, and she puts one bony hand over her mouth. ”Is it truly her?” she asks, mumbling between her fingers. ”Is this the Hierophant?”
”Are you going to make us stand out here on the doorstep all night long?” Spyder asks impatiently, but the old woman is still staring at Niki and doesn't answer her.
”By the spokes,” she whispers, and a dank, salt-scented breeze causes the flame of her candle to gutter. ”That I should ever have lived to see such a thing. Better I'd died a child.”
”It's cold out here, Eponine Chattox,” Spyder says.
”We've walked all the way from the Palisades, and we're hungry and need to rest.”
”Yes,” the old woman says, and her hand slips slowly away from her mouth. ”I imagine that you do.”
”You should ask us inside.”
”Should I? I'm not so sure. Perhaps I should strew myrrh and nettle across the groundsill and nail all the windows shut. Perhaps I should recite all the Points of Refuta-tion backwards.”
”Do you think your mistress would approve?”
”I think my mistress has no idea what she's letting into her house,” the old woman named Eponine says, but she steps aside, anyway, and now Niki can see a long, dimly lit hallway beyond the cramped foyer. ”I cannot keep you out,” she says, speaking directly to Niki this time, instead of Spyder.
”Why are you afraid of me?” Niki asks her, and Eponine stares down at the flickering flame of her candle.
”You might as well ask me why the day fears night,” she says. ”Or why the living fear death.”
”Don't listen to her,” Spyder grumbles, taking Niki's good hand as she steps quickly past the old woman.
”Sometimes I think Esme only keeps her around to scare away the peddlers and street preachers.”
221.
Niki looks back, and Eponine Chattox is busy tracing invisible signs in the air with a crooked thumb and index finger. Her lips move silently, and Niki thinks she must be praying.
”She doesn't want me here,” Niki says.
”It's not her house,” Spyder replies and pulls Niki along, past closed doors and a staircase and a noisy contraption of wood and metal that isn't exactly a grandfather clock, past walls hidden behind mustard-colored wallpaper and decorated with paintings of landscapes that seem almost as alien to Niki as the writhing Van Gogh stars.
”Then whose house is it?”
”It belongs to her niece, Esme, the fish augur who opened the pa.s.sage beneath the bridge for you.”
”Oh,” Niki says and starts to ask what a fish augur is, but she's really too tired to care and half suspects that she wouldn't understand, anyhow. As long as there are beds here, or people who don't mind if she takes her boots off and falls asleep on the floor, fish augurs can wait until later.
”Esme is a great enemy of the Dragon,” Spyder says, as the hallway turns left and ends abruptly at a door marked with the same red symbol as the entryway to the house.
”Most of her family was taken by the jackals when she was still just a kid. Without Esme, I never would have found you.”
”Spyder, I'm so tired. Can't we rest now, just for a little while?”
”We can rest after we speak with Esme.”
”Right,” Niki sighs. ”Unless I drop dead from exhaustion first,” and she touches the center of the symbol painted on the door-bright scarlet enamel on the dark, varnished wood. It's like touching ice, she thinks, or Jell-0, because now the door seems to quiver slightly beneath her fingertips, and then Spyder s.n.a.t.c.hes her hand away.
”You have to be very careful what you touch in this house. It's best if you don't touch anything at all.”
”But what does it mean? Is it some kind of magic?”
”It's a warning.”
222.
Niki inspects her fingers, checking to be sure they're all still there and that the door hasn't marked her somehow, hasn't left some incriminating stain or brand on her skin.
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