I cried out in pain and staggered back. Oriax threw back her head and laughed with malicious delight, and I clutched my head as though to squeeze the memories out of my brain.
These were awful violations of human bodies and minds. Such pain. Such terrible sadness and loneliness.
“What are you?” I asked Messenger, my voice ragged.
“I thought he was a dream,” Oriax taunted me.
I gritted my teeth. Tears had started, blurring my vision, glistening, weak, foolish emblems of my weakness. “I don’t have dreams like that. Those things . . . Those things are not in my head!”
Messenger looked solemn, but I thought I saw some hurt there as well. He had revealed something and was hurt by my violent reaction. He looked at me, and I could not match his gaze and lowered my eyes.
“Someday you will see the darkness inside yourself, Mara,” he said in that too-near whisper of his.
“Oh, look, you’ve hurt Messenger’s feelings,” Oriax said. “Shall I comfort you, Messenger?” She moved closer to him. “Shall I, Messenger, my pretty boy?”
“Get away from me,” he said.
And without seeming to move, she was six feet away, laughing and sticking out her tongue. “He’s no fun, our Messenger,” Oriax said to me. “You’ll see. You’ll want him, but you won’t have him. You’ll crave him desperately, oh yes, you will.”
“He’s a demon!” I said, practically spitting the word, as the images of our brief contact still churned vilely in my memory. That word, demon, wasn’t in my thoughts until it came out of my mouth and I realized it was true. Or realized at least that I believed it.
“A demon?” Oriax repeated, disbelieving. “Our Messenger a demon? Don’t be ridiculous. No, no, no. He’s not a demon. I know a few demons, well, what you might call demons, and sadly, our Messenger of Fear is no demon, unless demons mourn for their lost Ariadne.”
“Leave us, Oriax. You’ve had your fun.”
“Mmm, not yet, I haven’t,” she said. “But eventually.”
She was gone, and I was shaking with fear and a deep disturbance that seemed to have a physical effect: I was trembling. Trembling all over, in every part of my body, from my knees to my heart to the muscles of my face, as though each individual cell was shaking.
“I am sorry I touched you, Mara,” Messenger said. “It would have been kinder to let you fall.”
I felt deeply unsettled. The vivid memories of that touch had begun to fade and I was glad of it. The memory of Oriax, too, seemed to lose some of its sharp detail, and for that I was sorry because I had never seen or imagined anyone quite like her. I wanted to hold that image in my mind until I had come to grips with it and decided just how. . . .
Let her go, Oriax.
What did Messenger mean by that? How had she “had” me that she needed to let me go?
I recalled a sense of being released, and of that release filling me however briefly with a sense of loss but also a sense of relief. I had fallen when she released me, but she had never laid a finger on me.
Too much. Too much now crowded my brain. Too many feelings, too many wild emotions, too much fear, and . . . and something that was like fear but also held within it seeds of pleasure. I found that part of me wanted Oriax to come back. Even more of me wanted Messenger to speak to me, to explain, but also just to speak.
You’ll crave him desperately, oh yes, you will.
No, that at least would never be true. I had touched that hot stove and did not need a second reminder that Messenger was not to be touched.
But did I still want him to explain? Did I want him to reveal? Yes. “Why is my memory all fuzzy?” I asked him.
He considered me for a moment and reached some kind of decision. He drew a deep breath, and this simple biological act lessened my fear somewhat, for I had begun to believe my own blurted remark that he was a demon, or if not a demon, then some other nameless supernatural horror.
Did demons breathe in that particularly weary way? Did sadness and loss reveal themselves in demons’ eyes?
I was confused. My feelings were all astray, rifled, and tossed like a room that’s been burglarized. My memory, my emotions, all of it was too much, but I had already fainted once and would not allow myself to do so again. Whatever else this was, it was a test of my strength, my will. I would not be weak.
“Your memory has been disturbed by the transition.”
“Well, I need my memory.”
“Do you?” He tilted his head and looked at me as if my image was evoking something from another time and place. He wasn’t looking at me, Mara; he was looking at something I reminded him of.
“Look, Messenger,” I said, trying to sound determined, “I don’t know what you want of me, but I won’t cooperate unless I know who I am and . . .” I hesitated there, for the next words would perhaps reveal too much of the vulnerability I felt. Then, with a sigh that fluttered in my chest, I finished, “And what I am.”
I swear that then he almost smiled. It was nothing that I could see, but the slight lessening in the rigidity of his features allowed me to think that he was possibly smiling.
“Yes. Memory,” he said.
And then, I remembered.
I SAW WHAT I LOOKED LIKE. I SAW MY FACE. MY body. And with it, memories of earlier stages of my life. Me a year ago. Me three years ago. Me as a little girl taking gymnastics.
My locker combination was 13-36-9.
My grade point average was 4.0.