Spywar abounds on this rubbish internet cafe PC: I shall be brief. Many thanks to the lovely, delightful, wonderful people who commened last time round. Thank you Kichiko, yukatalamia, Enigmatic Piscean, Lethe, timeless, chocolatetree, enchantednight84 and Elentiriel.

I adore hearing what you think - I can hack criticism, so fire away, and anything you have to say is very much welcome!

Lyrics come from Tom McRae's You Only Disappear.

Hope you enjoy!
Ki

Ripples Part Fourteen

I can live with my regrets
Just to raise a smile, just to raise my head
But a stranger god can be so cruel;
But a holy fool is still a fool

Those days were bliss when Phi thought about them later; between and elsewhere days, full of potential and blushing heat. Her mind idled out by the lake, full of starry skies and him. Such times should perhaps have been ominous, swollen with gloom, but she had lived her life in the shadow of prophecy, and so – free – she thrived upon the uncertainty.

But like all things, it ended.

The moment she heard her father calling that Riose had come to see her, she knew. It twisted in her heart like a knot of barbed wire as she went downstairs; her peace was gone, one way or another.

Riose knew it too. It was the way he held himself, very tall and straight, as if he were a prison guard come to escort her to the electric chair.

Hopefully, that was a long way from the truth.

~*~

There had to be a way. If there was one thing Zeke was sure of, it was that: there was some way to keep Phi from the pod and Avy. He had been born in a world where the impossible was commonplace – why shouldn’t he make it so again?

He had searched the vow Avy made him swear, seeking some loophole. Simple as it was, he could find none. And then it occurred to him that perhaps he did not need one – he needed only to endure the pain long enough.

The day then, found him labouring over a piece of paper in the only place where he ever found anything close to privacy. Aurora’s headstone gleamed almost white in the slanting sun; he was far more focused on the words that formed slowly.

This is the truth. For years I watched you, not knowing who you were. You were a voice in darkness, the most beautiful thing in my world. Finding you, I did not think the reality could ever live up to the dream. I was wrong. And I have li-

His hand cramped – he gasped, and forced himself to form the ‘e’...

The pen skidded across the page and he was clutching his arm, which felt as if his bones splintering in his skin. Wait for it to pass, wait and try again...

But it didn’t pass. The more he willed the pain to stop, the stronger it grew until he was snarling against it, until he knew that it was hopeless, that it would never stop-

And just as abruptly, it was gone. He was left panting for breath, and bemused.

Cautious now, he picked up the pen with nothing more than a twinge in his fingers, then began again.

~*~

As they passed her mother’s door, ajar as always, she spotted them. “Is that you, Riose Orage? Are you going to say hello to an old woman?”

He stepped in with a little grin. If he was shocked at her mother’s decline, he didn’t show it all – instead, he went over to kiss her cheek. “You’re not old, Mrs Thetis. You can’t be, you’re younger than my mom, and she cuts off my allowance every time I hint she’s getting decrepit.”

The rustiness of her mother’s laugh was painful to hear. “How is Kim?”

“She’s got a new man.” Riose sounded slightly grumpy. “She keeps trying to tell me all about him.”

“Not interested, eh?” she said fondly. “Well, I would be, so tell her to give me a call! Now we don't have the bridge nights anymore, I miss all the news. And mind you behave yourself in Delphine’s room,” her mother added with a flare of parental protectiveness.

“Mo-om,” she groaned. Still, it was progress. Three years ago the boys hadn’t even been allowed in the house because they weren’t pod and therefore weren’t trustworthy.

“I always do,” Riose reassured her. “Finn’s the one who misbehaves.”

Marie Thetis raised her eyes heavenwards. “Yes, I recall my curtains vanishing in a ball of fire that would have made Jerry Lee Lewis ecstatic. Go on with you then, and don’t forget to tell your mother!”

She sounded oddly wistful.

How lonely she must be, thought Phi with new, painful understanding. The pod only visited when they wanted their future read, and they always treated her with reverence, almost…almost as if they were afraid of her - as if she was already a martyr to their cause.

“Why don’t you have a bridge night here?” she suggested. “Dad could bring up the picnic table, and you could invite Mrs Orage and Mr Farrier round.”

Her mother’s face lit up. “Do you think they’d come?”

“Of course they would,” she said fiercely, swallowing down a lump in her throat. “They’d love to see you.”

“Definitely,” Riose added. “I know my mom still keeps Thursday nights free, just in case.”

The sweet, hopeful smile on her mother’s face wiped away some of the lines that pain had left. “Then we’d better find something for her to do, hadn’t we?”

Phi found herself blinking away hot, unexpected tears as they left her mother planning the great bridge party.

When they got into her room, Riose took one look, pushed the door to and then wrapped her up in a gentle hug until she felt less shaky.

“I didn’t think about it,” she confessed into his shoulder. “I didn’t realize how alone she is.”

“I didn’t either. I know my mom’s wanted to come and see her, but she wasn’t sure if she should.”

If she had, wondered Phi, would they be in this state? Or would have her mother have talked about the marriage with the Farriers and Mrs Orage, and Mrs Slone? She didn't know, but she thought that they would have fought her corner.

“So,” she said, pulling herself together, “you’d better tell me why you’re here.”

“You know.”

“They’ve set a date.”

She saw that his bottom lip was ragged, as if he’d gnawed it. “This afternoon. Three hours, Phi. Listen, I can’t go in with you, I can’t tell you what to say, but I know them all. You can’t go in emotional or you’ll make yourself just another victim to them. Be organized. Make your case. You have to be calm and logical - and bold.”

“Bold?”

He half-smiled, but he was tense as a tightrope. “Not many people dare to be. My sister will like you for it and the Grieving Fury will respect you for it.”

“And the Demon Fury?” The name tasted odd, fairytale-foreign on her tongue.

He hesitated. “He won’t like you or respect you for it. But he might let you live. Show him a trace of fear though, and he’ll crack you right open and exploit every secret you thought you had. He’s always been cruel, but for some reason, he’s become worse in the last few years. Fear is just a goad to him.”

“He let you leave.”

“No. He let me leave on condition, so I haven’t really left at all. I owe him a death.” His eyes were haunted and vulnerable. “And I don’t know who, but I’m afraid I can guess. I’ve made a terrible mistake, Phi.”

“What could you possibly have done?” she said uncertainly.

She would never forget the look on his face because it was a mirror of her mother’s when she spoke of her past, and the choice she so regretted. Although his voice was quiet, it was full of dread.

“I learned to love. He won’t excuse that.”

~*~

Sweat poured off Zeke as he struggled to write. The pen shook miserably, the letters barely readable. Each was more malformed than the last.

And then he saw a reddish splotch on the paper. He stared. Another. The unmistakable scent of blood.

He turned his hand, disbelieving. Blisters were bursting on his hand in their dozens, and suddenly he couldn’t hold the pen – even the air hurt his skin, everything hurt from his fingertips to his shoulder, - it wouldn’t stop, it wouldn’t go away and for the first time in his life, Zeke knew the pain of fire.

Awful, all-consuming, it spread over his back, and he arched away from the ground, barely lucid, before he blacked out.

When he came round, aching and grim with the knowledge that he would have to find some other way, nothing remained but a small, shiny mark on the ball of his thumb. He stared at it, this reminder of what he had learned: even he, who was fire, could be burned.

~*~

Calm. Logical. Organised.

It was good advice, she had no doubt, and though apprehension underlay all her thoughts, she felt surprisingly calm and clear-headed. At last her life was back in her own hands: she would be judged on the merit of words, and passed or failed.

Like an exam or a class paper. And then she knew what to do.

Notepad, pens, reason. She wrote the question: why should the Furies help me to break blood-oath and to avoid my marriage?

It was no different from any other question she’d ever been set. She could have been comparing Shakespeare to Jonson, picking holes in the European Declaration of Human Rights, arguing for war or against nuclear power.

Just as if it were an essay and she forming an argument, she began to make notes, to write, to order her thoughts, and then to siphon the emotion from them. She clarified, she edited, she took her own heart and shaped it into oratory and saw in it a truth that was just as powerful and passionate stripped of its emotion as it had been when clad in her anger and her self-pity and all her outrage.

It kept her busy. It kept her together. She needed both.

~*~

“This is no joke,” Don answered the wolf who’d spoken up with such unabashed cynicism. “It needs to be done.”

He gauged their responses. Most were thoughtful; some were eager. One or two were anxious – those, he noted carefully. He could afford no wavering.

“By us,” Susie sneered. “So we take the blame for it.”

“Who will blame you?” he asked levelly. “The one is entirely natural, and the other…a tragedy, of course, but half of them expect it already and the other half will be won round. It is necessary.”

“Killing the pod leader?” This was a new speaker, one of the nervous ones. Don marked him carefully – thin, blond, guarded. “Why? You’re betrothed to the daughter, aren’t you? If you get her, the pod’s yours.”

“The pod is mine when Daniel Thetis dies,” Don corrected. “Which is likely to be at a ripe old age. The last leader was ninety-three. I don’t intend to wait fifty years to get my hands on the pod.”

“All right, but why not the seer?” the boy asked. “She’s just as powerful.”

“And she’s half-dead already. It won’t take much to push her to the end – a few more readings, and I can convince enough people to ask for those.”

“The pod’s never been without a seer.” That was one of the older ones. “Never. Why’s that going to change?”

Don mentally counted to ten. “Because the first vision every seer has is their heir. When Marie Thetis was born Helga Arryn was all over her like a rash. That woman grew up knowing the instant that Helga died all the power would pass to her. But Marie Thetis has seen no one. She is the last.”

“Who’s to say she’s telling the truth?” demanded Susie.

“No one in the pod has shown any signs of a seer,” he said with exaggerated patience. “No extraordinary hunches. No dreams. No amazing coincidences, no unbelievable luck. They all rely on Marie Thetis to tell them the future. It’s time they relied on someone else. Me.”

“And you’d make us reliant on you too,” remarked the quiet boy. Seth. Sam. Something or other.

“I’d make you great,” he said. “I’d make you more than scavengers hiding in the trees. There was a time when you were respected as we were – when we were close enough to be one people. Think of it: the best of the pack and the best of the pod, one race.”

He did not speak the rest of it. A certain amount of culling would be inevitable. There were too many headstrong characters among the Pack; too many who would not be biddable. He wanted their ferocity, but he wanted them...trained. Brought to heel, if you would.

“What do we gain?”

He raised his eyebrows politely. “Isn’t it obvious? Power. The riches of the pod. Respectability. Friendship.” He smiled. “Marriage to a mermaid, if you’re lucky.”

There was some laughter at that. Several of them had eyes for the pod girls, and Don had rapidly decided those he would match with the Pack to breed his new warriors. Eventually, he supposed, he would set aside Phi and find himself some worthy wolf. Among the scruffy vagrants before him, there were a few whose wildness concealed beauty.

“So you’d just sweep aside decades of hate, is that it?” drawled the old one, whose skepticism was becoming irritating. “All for a little power?”

Don met his eyes. “No,” he said, his voice strong. “For a lot of power.”

When the old one laughed, he knew he had them.

~*~

Waiting was the worst part. When the doorbell rang, Phi was out of the house and calling goodbyes to her parents in a flash, her stomach a Gordian knot of panic.

She had expected silence from Riose: instead he couldn’t seem to stop talking. All his knowledge of the three Furies poured out him with a sort of desperation, as if by sharing it he might save her from them.

“...and whatever you do, don’t challenge Therese about love or feelings and definitely don’t tell her she lacks them. She’ll either laugh at you, or she’ll do her best to harm you. She would have only laughed once, but something happened – a boy, and I think perhaps she loved him, or she hated him, or she just wanted him so much that it hurt. It changed her forever, whatever it was. She won’t talk about it. And she can’t bear to be reminded in any way. Avoid love, Phi. It means so little to them.”

He rattled to a stop, and when she glanced at his face, his eyes were stormy, distraught. He strode along as if he expected the ground to split open under his feet.

And so much to him, she thought with pity. Oh, he had learned to love, hadn’t he?

This was not the cool, mature boy she knew; he was jangling and edgy, as if all this emotion buzzed like electricity in his heart.

“It’ll be all right,” she said, not knowing if it was true.

“Today maybe,” he answered grimly. “But tomorrow? The day after? As long as I’m theirs, they’ll use me to get to you all.”

The woods formed narrow shaded tunnels that curved like a madman’s sickle smile, on and on and on. They walked the very edge of the Ghost Roads until they turned a corner to a small house which slid forth from the thickets and trees as if it were a secret in itself.

It had an air of decrepitude; paint peeled on the window frames, broken tiles were matched by gaps in the roof like blackened teeth. Creepers gripped the walls in a stranglehold, but there was one sign of life: an obscenely large ginger cat nestled on the rusted car, one eye on them and the other shut, giving it the look of a particularly hairy pirate.

She didn’t need Riose to tell her that this was it. His face was full of tightly held back grief, as if he was already saying his farewells to her.

“I’ll see you later,” she told him deliberately.

He only turned away, shoulders hunched.

The front door was open. You’re no threat to us, it seemed to say. Come in, if you dare.

Feeling like Goldilocks, she did.

Silence hung about the house like a spider, occupying even the brightest corners. The sheer ordinariness of the place made it all more surreal; it smelled of fresh paint and coffee, and the varnished boards squeaked under her feet as she went down the wide hallway to the door there.

She hesitated, then knocked.

“Come in, little fish,” said a woman’s voice, low and throaty.

Last chance to run.

Feeling as if she stood on the verge of madness and revelation, Phi steeled herself, and stepped over the threshold.

~*~

The lounge was large, and a shaft of sunlight danced into her eyes from a mirror. Only by walking into the very center of the room – and them – could she avoid being blinded.

There was no mistaking the woman who reclined along the length of the green couch as if she were a Roman goddess. Her features had the same distinctive stamp as Riose’s, but although her shining lips held a smile, it had no sincerity.

Phi did not hesitate. She dared not.

“You must be Therese,” she said with assumed confidence. “Riose warned me about you.”

Her laugh was all smoke and daggers. “I’d be disappointed if he didn’t. And what did he say, little fish?”

That you knew love once, and it changed you.

“That you’d play devil’s advocate because it suited you.”

“Then who plays the devil?” she said with a sly, serrated smile.

Phi couldn’t stop her eyes sliding to the man sat on the floor, so very conspicuous. She didn’t need an introduction to know he was Bane Malefici: the mere fact of his presence gave it away, but his beauty marked him as surely as scars.

When she was young, Riose had told tales of him – tales whispered in dark rooms and quiet places, of a man who loved death with such savagery and such ferocity that he shattered his own heart trying to hold it.

The sharp, prominent bones of his face might have been the broken pieces; all angles and arresting shadows to Therese’s plush curves, contradicted only by a generous mouth. His eyes were calculating and impersonal and quite, quite disturbing.

“Are you volunteering me for the job?” he said. His voice gave her a jolt. It was smooth and low, a whipped-cream voice with an arsenic dusting. “Very presumptuous.”

“Very perceptive,” corrected the third person, turning away from the window to settle onto a chair. Phi recognised Chatoya Irkil with disbelief. “You’re certainly in the market for souls.”

How could this woman, who had seemed so very ordinary in the Chill, be the infamous Grieving Fury? How could Cougar Redfern have looked at her with such starving fascination?

“This soul, yes,” Bane Malefici acknowledged, dragging Phi’s attention back to him. “But what are you prepared to sell it for, Delphine?”

Gathering herself, she achieved something like composure. “What I need. A broken blood-oath.”

“And why should we help you, little fish?” Therese asked, eyes shrewd.

The afternoon of preparation came back, and suddenly it was all there before her, clear and sharp and logical.

Later, she could not remember the exact words she used; she only knew that she was calm as she spoke of past, of future, of pod politics and family ties.

She laid her reasons before the Furies like bones, solid in the afternoon light. All her fear was crushed inside her chest, unseen, and somehow she met their eyes and she answered their comments and their questions with little more than a stammer.

They were all unreadable in their way; Therese’s smile, impenetrable, meaningless, flashed like a knife, whether in silence or sudden, incisive comments. If Bane Malefici seemed to be barely listening, the deft questions he hurled at her soon shattered that illusion. And as for Chatoya Irkil…this was not the woman she had met at The Chill; she wore only polite attention, and a warmth in her eyes that was as distant as it was constant.

She came then to the last, her feet a mass of ache from where she had stood so long, her throat sandpaper. “There is only one other reason they want Don and me to marry – to legitimise him as my father’s heir.”

“A common practice among your people,” commented Therese with icy accuracy. “Why should you be the exception to the rule?”

Phi shifted from blue eyes to green eyes to black eyes, and she saw with sudden clarity that they were not so much older than herself. Each had risen through the Furies with meteoric swiftness, each was legend in their own right.

And she knew then what she needed to say – the words were fire on her lips, blistering, right.

“A true leader needs no legitimacy. They don’t need anyone to speak on their behalf, to tell the world that they should be chosen – they are their own evidence, in their words and their actions and even their thoughts. If Don needs me to gain the support of the pod, then he shouldn’t lead us. If he wants the pod, then he must win them as my father did – with respect.”

“Very true,” Bane Malefici remarked, and it seemed there was a note of triumph in his voice, though who it was directed at, she could not say.

“And what of your mother’s visions?” said Chatoya, thoughtful. It was the first time she had made any comment. “As you said earlier, she has kept your pod safe. Why shouldn’t she do the same for you?”

“Because I don’t want to be safe. I want to be free.”

“Do you think you can outrun your destiny?” the witch persisted.

“No. But there’s a difference between fate and the future. There are countless futures – as many futures as there are choices, it’s just that in each future there are some choices you’ll face time and again. Those are your destiny – the constants, my mother calls them, the certain uncertainties. She just picks what she thinks is the best.”

She swallowed. And she gave up a piece of her life each time she does it, until she had given away so much of herself that there was nothing left. She chose for them all, their private, lonely, wretched goddess.

“And sometimes...” she told them, the truth heavy in her heart. “Sometimes she is wrong.”

~*~

Below the arches of the cave, Avy is restless. Her dream seems within her grasp at last, and yet she is suspicious. She had so many dreams once, and time decayed them before her eyes as it has decayed her body. All that she has lost taunts her: her beauty, her love, her status, her faith, her admirers. When she thinks of all that will be restored to her, she is almost frightened.

She has been monstrous so long, she can barely begin to imagine how it feel to be herself again.

She cannot free Zeke, of course. She has known that since the start, but as long as her curse binds him, he will not betray her. When the time comes, she will find some cold, dark abyss where his spark will dwindle, where no one will notice him trapped in the grip of eternal winter. It is not quite a kindness, but it is close.

In her eyes, the past whirls on in dizzy splendour. The future mirrors it: this in-between time will never have been.

She waits. She hungers. She hopes.

~*~

“So your part is done, little fish,” said Therese, and for the first time there was no amusement in her voice. “The rest is down to us. No one has ever dared come before all three of us and ask for our help in breaking blood-oath. If nothing else, you have written part of our history today.”

“I’d rather write my future,” Phi said frankly, all her poise trembling on the edge of hysteria. She felt drained, empty. Had it been enough? Oh, please...

The ripe, dark mouth curled like a petal. “Few get such freedom. What do you say, Bane?”

Phi quailed under Bane Malefici’s gaze: it was piercing and slow and drank her in as if she were blood in his mouth. All of Riose’s warnings flooded back – she recalled him saying he might let you live as if that were the best she could hope for. And she was clinging to her control, she was-

“Yes.”

The word stopped her still. She stared at him, but events were already rolling past.

“And I say yes,” Therese said firmly, and her large, liquid eyes gleamed with something close to glee. “Chatoya?”

Phi felt delirious – the future swung open like a gate, she could be free, she could be-

“No.”

It was like a physical blow. Her legs sagged – she stumbled, but caught herself to stare into those moss-soft eyes that she had seen much closer, that had been so kindly, so compassionate…

“But why?” she whispered.

Her face was drawn. “It was not an easy decision, Phi-”

“Delphine,” she said through numb lips as all her hope came toppling down like dominoes. Don’t pretend we’re friends. Don’t pretend that your decision has no consequences for me. “My name is Delphine Thetis. Though I don’t suppose I’ll keep it much longer.”

The witch did not flinch. “-but I don’t need to explain it to you. Just…just trust that I’ve done what I think is for the best.”

“Trust you,” she repeated – anger came crashing through the disbelief, a hot wild rush. “Do you know what Don Ivan is? Do you have the faintest idea what he’s capable of?”

“As it happens, yes.”

“And you’ll hand me to him, knowing what he is? How is that for the best? Best for who, exactly?”

“For everyone.”

“I didn’t come here for everyone,” she said, her voice fraying, scratching the air like a trapped animal. Her last way out was gone – there was nothing left but the future and the past knitting like a wound, with her cowering amidst blood and mud and bone, where Don Ivan had left her. “I came for me.”

Chatoya gazed at her, and Phi saw the Grieving Fury for the first time: sorrow glowed in her, brought strange and wild beauty in her gentle, heartbroken eyes. She wore her hair like mourning finery, black, shining, stark. “I’m sorry. That wasn‘t enough.”

“And what would be?” she whispered.

Silence was her only answer. It was, of course, not enough.

This is all I can say:
I have lost my way.

You only…
You only…
Disappear

~*~