Throne (10 page)

Black branches lined with snow formed a lattice work that obscured distant trees that were clearly mighty, towering oaks that had no place in the city. It was as if the other half of the park had always been but a painted theatrical backdrop, a two-dimensional curtain which had now fallen to reveal the vast wood that had stood behind it all along.

Maribel’s breath hung suspended in the air before her. She was breathing in slight gasps, hollow whispers of breath. The sound of vehicles was impossibly distant. The forest before her receded as far as her eyes could see, faded away into a blur of white on black, and then she saw that something, somebody, was approaching her from its depths.

A man, tall and stoop shouldered, naked and goat headed. Great narrow horns rose up and swept back, segmented and maroon, darker than his skin which was gray tinged with brown. A thick mane of black hair fell about his shoulders, grew from the underline of his jawbone, reached down to his sternum from his pointed chin. Thick hair grew from his navel into an obscuring forest over his crotch, lay thick and wiry over his thighs. His arms were long, lean, and there was a terrible, tender grace to the manner in which he approached, slowly and delicately pushing aside branches as if partially not to scare her, partially because that was simply how he made his way through the world.

Maribel rose to her feet once more. She felt like a great tuning fork that had been struck a blow and that now vibrated soundlessly in the crystal air. She held her purse before her with both hands and fought to master her repulsion, fear, and awe.

The goat man pushed aside the last branch with one lean, gray arm, and came to a stop on the other side of the hawthorn tree. If the forest beyond was its natural realm, than the hawthorn stood right on the border between its world and her own. Its eyes, she saw, were milky white, large and unblinking with but the faintest hint of vertical gray pupils.

“Hello, Maribel Martel,” it said, and she couldn’t help but shudder. There was something unutterably carnal about its nakedness, its gentle gaze, the great shock of hair that seethed between its legs. Repulsion stirred along with something else inside her.

“What are you?” she asked, and was surprised at how clear and still her voice seemed to be.

“I am a phooka,” it said with a voice like suede leather, a voice laden with old wisdom and quiet power. “A herald of your coming, though you are not yet aware of your own imminence.”

The phooka was tall, taller than herself, at least six feet, but the great segmented horns rose up another three and swept back another two. It was as if it carried an august crown above its head, without which it would have appeared base, bestial, foolish. But its twin horns instead imbued it with a gravity that caused its voice to sound in the chill air like the calm, sonorous tone of a bell calling a town to prayer.

A thousand questions were drowned by the only one that mattered. “Do you know Kubu?” she asked.

“I can open the ways that will lead you to it,” replied the phooka. “I can part the barriers and ford the distances. If you wish it.”

Maribel found her gaze held by the milky white orbs. The faintest intimations of gray pupils that gazed unflinchingly into her own eyes. “Yes,” she said at long last, an exhalation, a sigh. “Yes, that’s what I want.”

The phooka bowed its head, a slow gesture that caused its great horns to swing through the air. Then, with an air of finality, it reached out with one darkly creased palm to the hawthorn as it rounded its base, and placed its feet on Maribel’s side of the park. Its feet were large, human, and Maribel felt a twinge of surprise, wholly bizarre given the nature of the apparition before her; but the part of her that had drunk deep of myths as a child had fully expected the phooka to have the legs of a goat, to step on delicate hooves. Instead, it walked with feet made rough by hard usage, nails dark and thick and splintered.

“I can open the doors, but cannot show you the path,” said the phooka. It was standing but a yard away from her, towering over her, looking down its goat’s muzzle at where she stood. She saw that the long hairs that fell from its chin and the length of its jaw, that rode up its cheeks to just below the pronounced lower ridge of its ocular cavity and then swarmed up around its large goatish ears were so dark as to appear black, but were in reality a mixture of bitter chocolate browns, run through with the occasional white hair or burnished copper thread. This close, it smelled of dirt and musk, the odor thin and attenuated by the cold air.

“You can’t show me the path,” repeated Maribel. She felt lightheaded. No matter how much she stared, the phooka refused to disappear, to blink away and leave her alone in a park with her shattered sanity. “What do you mean?”

“I can make your approach possible,” it said, “But another will have to guide your steps.”

“Ms. Silestra,” said Maribel. The phooka bowed its head, the wide mouth that curved up alongside both sides of its muzzle like the cut of a slit throat pulling into a smile. “She could show me. She found it once already. She could take me there.”

The phooka stood silent, watching her, and then gestured with its arm for her to lead the way. There was something mocking about the way it did so, but how was she to read the face of a goat? Maribel took a step back, and for a moment everything hung in the balance. Then she turned and strode down the path toward the gate and out onto Hudson Avenue. She looked back but once; the phooka followed, and the forest from which it had come was gone.

Ms. Silestra’s shop was closed. The glowing palm was dark, and the curtains drawn, the place quiet. Maribel paused, bit her lower lip. It made sense after yesterday’s ordeal that she would take the day off. But somehow Maribel had failed to foresee it. She turned and looked to the phooka, who stood across the street, watching her over the heads of the other pedestrians.

It had followed her, but not closely. Drifting through the crowd some ten yards behind, it had been like an attendant ghost, a haunting presence whose pale eyes were always on her when she turned to check on it. Nobody else seemed to notice it walking amongst them. It ignored the cars that roared by, crossing the streets without gazing to its sides. Maribel’s eyes had widened as traffic had rushed past it, each car missing the phooka by a hair’s breadth as it strode across the lanes. As if the cars were the apparitions, and not he.

Looking now, she resisted the urge to shrug, to indicate that she was at a loss. Would it understand such human gestures? Before she could act, however, the phooka raised one fist, and then uncurled the fingers in a rippling motion. Maribel heard the distinct report of the lock to Ms. Silestra’s shop popping open. The phooka lowered its hand, and said nothing.

Reaching out, she opened the door, and peered inside. The entry lounge was as she had last seen it, but in shadow now, the lamps turned off. All was neat, and a faint odor of incense still hung in the air. Moving forward, Maribel let the door swing closed behind her. It snicked shut. She moved to the window, opened the curtain, looked out across the street. The phooka was gone.

Frowning, Maribel crossed the waiting room and moved to the hall that led down past the kitchen to the consultation room. Everything was silent, but somehow it didn’t have the feeling of abandonment that an empty house manifests. Maribel tapped her fingers on the door frame, and then stepped into the hallway. The first door was a linen closet, stuffed full of books, towels, blankets and snow globes. The second door opened to a set of stairs the color of espresso that had lightened to cream at the edges and led up. The faintest sound of music wafted down.

“Ms. Silestra?” Maribel called, “Isobel?”

“What?” called down a voice, startled. Maribel heard the thump of somebody standing up quickly on the ceiling above her head. “Maribel?”

“Yes, it’s me, Maribel Martel,” she yelled back, surprised at being so quickly recognized. The sound of feet stepping quickly across the floor, and then Ms. Silestra was at the top of the stairs, staring down at her. She was dressed in a thick blue bathrobe, her hair spiky with water, her eyes hard and wide.

“What are you doing in my house?”

“The door was open. I called out, but you didn’t answer.”

Ms. Silestra—Isobel—frowned down at her and then crossed her arms over her chest. She didn’t seem convinced. “The door was open? If you say so. Are you alright?”

“Yes, I mean, I don’t know. I’m sorry, this very forward of me. I should have called ahead, but—my thoughts are still jumbled up from yesterday. Do you mind if I talk to you for a moment? I don’t want you to do a reading for me, but just, well, talk.”

Isobel stared down at her, jaw hard. Finally, something in her gaze softened, and she reached up to rub briskly at her wet hair, sending a fine, almost invisible spray of water into the air. “Fine, all right. I’ve been meaning to check up on you anyway. Could you get some tea going? Mine’s gone cold. I’ll be right down as soon as I dress.”

“Thank you, Isobel,” said Maribel, and felt a rush of gratitude and warmth towards the woman. She realized then just how unnerved the phooka had made her, and how welcome tea and company would be. Isobel gave her a lopsided smile, and disappeared from view.

Entering the kitchen, Maribel set the kettle to boil, fished out some tea bags, rinsed out a couple of mugs and found herself humming as she did so. Movement, action. She was doing something, going in some direction, no matter how mad or improbable or insane such movement might seem. She was working toward her goal.
Sofia
. She stood still, relishing the feeling, and then whipped around as something tall and gaunt and dark stepped past the door, long legs carrying it out of view just as quickly as it had appeared. Heart hammering, she stuck her head out the door, but there was nothing outside.
The phooka
, she told herself.
Just the phooka. Relax
. But she didn’t hum again.

Isobel joined her in the entrance room, where Maribel had set the two mugs to steam by themselves on the coffee table. She was waiting for the psychic on one of the couches, her legs tucked up under her, one elbow on the arm of the couch, chin propped on her hand as she gazed out into the middle of the room and there lost her focus. Isobel descended the stairs on her heels, jarring her way bonelessly to the bottom till she spilled out into the room and stood, looking at Maribel. She had pulled on an overlarge black sweater, leather patches on the elbows and over the shoulders, along with a faded pair of jeans.

“So,” she said, walking over to sit heavily on the couch. “How are you? How are you holding up?”

Maribel frowned, not wanting to examine herself, look too closely at what was going on in her mind, her heart. “I don’t know. Not well?” She trailed off, unsure of how to continue.

“I’m sorry, that was a dumb question.” Isobel hiked her feet up onto the couch, knees coming up beneath her chin, and looked moodily at where Maribel sat. “But ever since you left I’ve been haunted by what you’re going through.” A fine line appeared between Isobel’s brows. “I think you’re incredibly brave and strong to keep going like this, to keep fighting. I would have curled up and not left my room for a year.”

Maribel stirred uneasily in her seat, not wanting to follow this line of thought, to probe those areas of her soul. Instead she nodded and pushed on, returning to her original intention. “Thank you. I came to see you because I really need your help.”

“Hmm,” said Isobel, reaching out for her mug. The temperature in the room was chill, and Isobel clearly relished the heat baking off the mug. “My help. And you don’t want another reading. Maribel, if you need a friend, if you’re looking for somebody to talk to, then I’m happy to listen—“

“No,” said Maribel, cutting her off. Isobel raised an eyebrow and Maribel rushed in to apologize, “I mean, thank you, but that’s not why I’m here. I don’t—I don’t need a friend, or anything for myself. I need your help with Sofia. With this Kubu.”

“Kubu,” said Isobel, and then looked down into her tea. “I wish I hadn’t plucked that name out of the dark. It’s an evil name, evil in a way I can’t explain. In a way that doesn’t even make sense any more today, in our modern world.” She actually shivered, and held her warm mug closer. Looked up. “Maribel, we’ve just met and I already care for you, feel a connection with you—something strong ever since our reading—but I don’t know if I can help you in that way. I don’t know if I would even want to if I could.”

Maribel sat up a little straighter. Need brought out her strength, “I know this isn’t your problem. She isn’t your baby girl. But she’s all I have in the world, I’m all she has, and I can’t leave her down there alone. She’s down there
right now
, this very moment, and I have to get to her, I have to.” Tears had sprung into her eyes, and she rubbed them away impatiently. “So please. I’ll pay you whatever you want. Just take me to the place where you sensed Kubu.”

Her words hung in the air. Isobel stared at her, and then set the mug down. “Take you to Kubu.”

“Yes,” said Maribel, suddenly frightened that the woman would say no. “Please.”

Isobel shook her head slowly, “Go down into those tunnels. Just you and me to find that thing. Maribel, you don’t know what you’re asking.”

“Yes I do,” snapped Maribel, “Or, more accurately, it doesn’t matter what I’m asking because I need to do this. No matter what it takes. I am going. I want your help. I need your help. But if you don’t go I will still try it alone.” She realized she was sitting on the edge of her seat, glaring at the psychic, who was matching her gaze with a soft and compassionate look that unsettled her.

Isobel took a deep breath. For a long moment the two women simply looked at each other, and then Isobel took up her mug once more. “Ever since our reading, my… my ‘senses’ if you will, my psychic awareness has been awake in a manner I’ve never experienced before. It’s as if I was a lock and you were the key, and your visit opened something inside me, and I…” She trailed off, looked down into her tea. “I haven’t been able to stop thinking about you. Or dreaming about… that
thing
down below us. What you’re going through seems more real, more urgent, than anything else. I was scared that you had already gone below by yourself, and the thought of that, of my still being up here, safe and sound while you tried by yourself to face that thing…” Isobel looked up, eyes bright now with her own tears, “Of course I’ll help you, in any way I can.”