Karen Moning - Shadowfever

For the irrepressible M.

YOU WISH TO KNOW ME?

POSIT YOURSELF AS THE PINPOINT CENTER OF ONE OF YOUR KALEIDOSCOPES, AND GRASP TIME AS THE COLORFUL FRAGMENTS ERUPTING FROM YOU IN A MULTITUDE OF DIMENSIONS THAT CONSTANTLY EXPAND OUTWARD IN AN EVER-WIDENING, EVER-SHIFTING, INFINITE ARRAY. SEE THAT YOU CAN CHOOSE AND EXPAND FROM ANY OF THOSE UNCOUNTABLE DIMENSIONS AND THAT, WITH EACH CHOICE, THOSE DIMENSIONS WIDEN AND SHIFT AGAIN. INFINITY COMPOUNDED EXPONENTIALLY. UNDERSTAND THAT THERE IS NO SUCH THING AS REALITY: THE FALSE GOD YOUR RACE WORSHIPS WITH SUCH BLIND DEVOTION. REALITY IMPLIES A SINGLE POSSIBLE.

YOU ACCUSE ME OF ILLUSION. YOUWITH YOUR ABSURD CONSTRUCT OF LINEAR TIME. YOU FASHION FOR YOURSELF A PRISON OF WATCHES, CLOCKS, AND CALENDARS. YOU RATTLE BARS FORGED OF HOURS AND DAYS, BUT YOUVE PADLOCKED THE DOOR WITH PAST, PRESENT, AND FUTURE.

PUNY MINDS NEED PUNY CAVES.

YOU CANNOT GAZE UPON TIMES TRUE FACE ANY MORE THAN YOU CAN BEHOLD MINE.

TO APPREHEND YOURSELF AS THE CENTER, TO SIMULTANEOUSLY PERCEIVE ALL COMBINATIONS OF ALL POSSIBLES, SHOULD YOU CHOOSE TO MOVE IN ANY DIRECTIONDIRECTION BEING A VERY LIMITED METHOD OF ATTEMPTING TO CONVEY A CONCEPT FOR WHICH YOUR RACE HAS NO WORDTHAT IS WHAT IT IS TO BE ME.

CONVERSATIONS WITH THE SINSAR DUBH

Hope strengthens. Fear kills.

Someone really smart told me that once.

Every time I think Im getting wiser, more in control of my actions, I go slamming into a situation that makes me excruciatingly aware that all Ive succeeded in doing is swapping one set of delusions for a more elaborate, attractive set of delusionsthats me, the Queen of Self-Deception.

I hate myself right now. More than Id ever have thought possible.

I squat on the cliffs edge, screaming, cursing the day I was born, wishing my biological mother had drowned me at birth. Life is too hard, too much to handle. Nobody told me thered be days like these. How could nobody tell me thered be days like these? How could they let me grow up like thathappy and pink and stupid?

The pain I feel is worse than anything the Sinsar Dubh has ever done to me. At least when the Book is crushing me, I know its not my own fault.

This moment?

Mea culpa. Beginning to end, all the way, I own this one, and there will never be any hiding from that fact.

I thought Id lost everything.

How ignorant I was. He warned me. I had so much more to lose!

I want to die.

Its the only way to stop the pain.

Months ago, on a hellishly long night, in a grotto beneath the Burren, I wanted to die, too, but it wasnt the same. Malluc was going to torture me to death, and dying was the only chance I had of denying him that twisted pleasure. My death had been inevitable. I saw little point in drawing it out.

Id been wrong. Id given up hope and nearly died because of it.

I would have diedif not for Jericho Barrons.

Hes the one who taught me those words.

That simple adage is master of every situation, every choice. Each morning we wake up, we get to choose between hope and fear and apply one of those emotions to everything we do. Do we greet the things that come our way with joy? Or suspicion?

Hope strengthens

Not once did I permit myself to feel any hope about the person lying facedown in a pool of blood. Not once did I use it to strengthen our bond. I let the onus of our relationship rest on broader shoulders. Fear. Suspicion. Mistrust drove my every action.

And now its too late to take any of it back.

I stop screaming and begin to laugh. I hear the madness in it.

I dont care.

My spear sticks up, a cruel javelin, mocking me. I remember stealing it.

For a moment, Im back in the dark, rain-slicked Dublin streets, descending into the sewer systems with Barrons, breaking into Rocky OBannions private cache of religious artifacts. Barrons is wearing jeans and a black T-shirt. Muscles ripple in his body as he casts aside the sewer lid with the ease of a man tossing a Frisbee in the park.

Hes disturbingly sexual, to men and women alike, in a way that sets your teeth on edge. With Barrons, you arent sure if youre going to get fucked or turned inside out and left a new, unrecognizable person, adrift with no moorings, on a sea with no bottom and no rules.

I was never immune to him. There were merely degrees of denial.

My respite is too brief. The memory vanishes and I am again confronted with the reality that threatens to shatter my hold on sanity.

Fear kills

Literally.

I cant say it. I cant think it. I cant begin to absorb it.

I hug my knees and rock.

Jericho Barrons is dead.

He lies on his stomach, motionless. He hasnt moved or breathed in the small eternity that Ive been screaming. I cant sense him in his skin. On all other occasions, Ive been able to feel him in my vicinity: electric, larger than life, vastness crammed into a tiny container. Genie in a bottle. Thats Barrons: deadly power, stopper corking it. Barely.

I rock back and forth.

The million-dollar question: What are you, Barrons? His answer, on those rare occasions he gave one, was always the same.

The one that will never let you die.

I believed him. Damn him.

Well, you screwed up, Barrons. Im alone and Im in serious trouble, so get up!

He doesnt move. Theres too much blood. I reach out with my sidhe-seer senses. I sense nothing on the cliffs edge but me.

I scream.

No wonder he told me never to call the number on my cell that he had programmed as IYDIf Youre Dyingunless I really was. After a time I begin to laugh again. Hes not the one who screwed up. I am. Was I played or did I orchestrate this fiasco all by myself?

I thought Barrons was invincible.

I keep waiting for him to move. Roll over. Sit up. Magically heal. Cut me one of those hard looks and say, Get a grip, Ms. Lane. Im the Unseelie King. I cant die.

That was one of my biggest fears, whenever I was indulging in any of a thousand about him: that he was the one whod created the Sinsar Dubh to begin with, dumping all his evil into it, and he wanted it back for some reason but couldnt trap it himself. At one point or another, Id considered everything: Fae, half Fae, werewolf, vampire, ancient cursed being from the dawn of time, perhaps the very thing he and Christian had tried to summon on Halloween at Castle Keltarkey part there being immortal, as in unkillable.

Get up, Barrons! I scream. Move, damn you!

Im afraid to touch him. Afraid if I do, his body will be cooling noticeably. Ill feel the fragility of his flesh, the mortality of Barrons. Fragility, mortality, and Barrons all packed together in the same thought feels about as blasphemous as stalking through the Vatican hammering upside-down crosses on the walls.

I squat ten paces from his body.

I stay back, because if I get close Ill have to roll him over and look in his eyes, and what if theyre empty like Alinas were?

Then Ill know hes gone, like I knew she was gone, too far beyond my reach to ever hear my voice again, to hear me say, Im sorry, Alina, I wish Id called more often; I wish Id heard the truth beneath our vapid sister talk; I wish Id come to Dublin and fought beside you, or raged at you, because you were acting from fear, too, Alina, not hope at all, or you would have trusted me to help you. Or maybe just apologize, Barrons, for being too young to have my priorities refined, like you, because I havent suffered whatever the hell it is you suffered, and then shove you up against a wall and kiss you until you cant breathe, do what I wanted to do the first day I saw you there in your bloody damned bookstore. Disturb