Chapter Twenty-Two #2
“Are you finished?” I ask. I cannot quite believe what I’m saying. For as long as I can remember, Mother has been working on this singular, almost sacred object. It is our little god, this book, and everything we do in the Tower is in service of it. Worship of it.
“Almost,” she says, still with that strange thread of … something running through her voice. “Take a look.”
“I can’t …”
“I know. You don’t have to read it.”
There is a sense of ceremony as I approach the book—almost holiness. I make sure to take slow, careful steps. I lift my hands to touch it with proper reverence, but hesitate. I look back at Mother. She nods encouragingly.
And then my Hair boils from my head in an upwards-surging mass. I have never seen it so wild. I feel it tugging at my scalp every which way as it rises like flames. It startles me so, that I take a too-quick step backwards and trip, landing heavily on my tailbone on the stone flags.
Mother hurries forward with wide, angry strides, petting and stroking the book as if I have injured it in some way.
“What did you do?” she spits.
“Nothing!” I grab wildly at my Hair, which struggles against me like a cat in a bathtub. “I don’t know!”
She takes in a long, hissing breath between her teeth, then goes to her book wheel and spins it until she finds the volume she seeks.
She licks her thumb and finger and flicks through the pages as I fight with my Hair, begging it to calm down.
I try shushing it like a baby, stroking whichever strands I can get hold of, but it will not stop fighting against my hands in a wild panic.
Mother has found the page she sought. She mutters its words under her breath, tracing them with her finger as she speaks, but I can barely hear her at all with the Hair swooshing about my ears.
When she has finished, though, the effect is immediate. The Hair goes limp. It drops out of the air, suddenly heavy, weighing down my shoulders and pooling in my arms, slumped and peaceful as a sleeping child. I cradle it, gazing in disbelief as its red-gold shine tarnishes and dulls.
“What did you do?” I whisper, looking up from where I crouch on the floor. The light hits Mother’s face strangely from this angle, making her look all hollows and bones.
“It’s all right,” she says, with an approximation of a smile.
The smile and attempt at comfort are what unnerve me the most, truthfully.
If she had snapped at me to stop making a fuss and told me she had put my Hair to sleep for being a nuisance, I wouldn’t have been overly surprised.
The unfamiliar softness—or what passes for softness, with Mother—would make the Hair rise on the back of my neck, if it had been able to move.
Mother stretches out her hand to me. “Come.”
I do not move—not yet. “Why?”
“Just come along, Netta.”
That sounds more like her. It is oddly reassuring. I get to my feet slowly, feeling the heft of my Hair pulling me down. I hadn’t realized how weightless it is usually—always floating and drifting a little, even when it appears to be still. Now I feel the full length of it; it is an encumbrance.
Mother leads me back to the book, and I follow obediently. She takes my hands and places them on it, one on either side, palms flat. The paper feels oddly un-paperlike beneath my fingers—warm and yielding.
“What is happening?” I whisper.
“What must,” she says briefly. She starts to read over my shoulder, voice rising and falling.
She slides her hands from my wrists to my forearms, pressing them down, but does not pause in her recital.
I start to feel sleepy; soothed. My eyelids are heavy.
I could be a child again, listening to Mother tell me a fairytale until the events of the story become tangled with my dreams. I could be a babe again, in her arms.
My hands start sinking into the pages.
My hands are sinking into the pages.
I struggle weakly, still feeling the pull of sleep, but Mother holds me firm.
I watch in horror as the skin on my hands seems to melt off my bones and onto the page, pale and liquid as milk.
The thin blue threads of my veins unspool, tangling themselves into the shape of letters and words.
I feel no pain, but my heart seems to have tripled in size, throbbing in my chest, throat, and stomach, and filling my ears with thunder.
I feel my Hair struggling weakly against the spell, moving sluggishly at the very ends.
I feel its desperation, but it cannot help me.
“Mother,” I manage to say.
Mother watches, nothing but professional curiosity on her face, as my hands sink deeper into the book. My fingers are skeletal, now, smooth and waxy as tapered candles. There is still no pain, but far from this being a comfort, it makes me even more frightened.
“Mother!” My voice comes out in a hoarse scream this time.
Am I imagining it, or does something like uncertainty flicker across her impassive face?
We stare at each other, and I will her to remember that I am her daughter, her baby.
She can’t do this to me, surely! But the uncertainty is gone in an instant.
A crash from downstairs and the sound of splintering wood. Mother’s attention falters briefly, and my hands stop their terrible downward slide, leaving me with my wrists buried in the book as if I wear shackles of paper and hide.
“They’re early,” she says as if to herself.
She leaves me there, trapped and weakly struggling, and disappears down the stairs.
Voices: Mother’s and one, maybe two men’s.
They are coming up the ladder. There are indeed two of them, and Mother seems neither concerned nor surprised that they are here.
“Is it ready?” says one. “We were told …”
“Yes, yes,” she snaps. “Give me a moment. I have one more task to complete before you take the book. And I’ll be coming with you. I’m the only one who can wield it. You have my payment?”
“It will be paid to you upon delivery,” rumbles one of the men.
“And you have taken care of all … loose ends?”
“Anyone else who knew the nature of your work has been dealt with.”
“You’re giving it to the Temple?” I whisper. “You hate the Temple.”
“Selling it,” she corrects me. Her lips curl a little. “They need me, and I need them—or, at least, their access to the catacombs—for this to work.”
My whisper has seemingly made the men notice me for the first time, and they exchange glances, clearly as confused as I am by what is happening here. Mother strides across the room. She grasps my elbows and tries to push my arms farther into the book.
I fight against the malaise that threatens to overwhelm me altogether, but unwittingly it helps me—my knees buckle, and I fall to the floor, taking the book with me and knocking Mother down. I put my feet against the pages and push, trying to shove the book away and free my hands.
Mother crawls across the floor to grab me again, and we tussle like two children fighting over a toy, wrestling for control of the book, using the most shameless, unjust tactics—kicking, punching, sticking our fingers in one another’s eyes, pulling one another’s hair.
The men watch us struggle. Mother’s mouth is twisted in a grimace, her teeth gritted, and she takes loud, hissing breaths between them, ugly with determination and rage.
I don’t know what my face looks like, but I’m sure I am just as monstrous as she in that moment, fighting spiteful and dirty for my own survival.
I make one last, immense effort to push through that terrible urge to sleep and manage to wrest my hands from the book, freeing them. Mother grabs for the book, and to her horror and mine, when she tried to grasp it, her hands go right into the pages as mine had before.
“Netta!” she cries.
My heart gives a painful twist. This is Mother I am fighting!
All at once I am a child again, desperate for her love, fearful of her punishments.
We stare at each other, wide-eyed, and I fancy for a moment that she, too, is seeing me as the little girl I once was …
But then her face twists into a snarl as the book swallows her.
I grab for her, but all I catch is the very end of her hair, pulling a few strands free. It makes a sound like mud sucking at your boots when you walk in the rain, and she is gone. I stumble backwards.
She is gone. She is gone.
The book seems larger and more solid—its binding now pale as skin and somehow bloated.
The men had been standing there in shock, watching this, but now they seem to wake up and remember what they have come for.
They lunge forward almost simultaneously and grab for the book.
The taller man gets it first, tucking it under his arm.
The second one grabs me. That terrible fatigue comes over me again, and this time I am unable to resist its pull.