Throne Read online

  Maya stepped forward, entered the closet. “Where does the path go?” she asked again. The fox smiled at her, and then whiskered in through the small door and out of sight. Maya lowered herself to her knees and looked into the cupboard. A tunnel sided with differently sized white drawers, shelves, doors and yawning spaces receded before her into darkness. A surreal nightmare of storage spaces and compartments, jumbled and skewed and elongated and compacted without rhyme or reason. It only grew increasingly strange and nonsensical the further in she looked.

  She was breathing quickly, she realized, and forced herself to slow down, to breathe in steady gulps. Then, reaching into her purse, she drew forth her massive sun glasses. Put them on, forced herself to scowl, and crawled in right after the fox.

  Carpet grew rough and dirty and eventually gave way to gravel beneath her knees and against her palms. Rough and cold to the touch, leaving a film of dirt against her skin. The tunnel entrance was a bright rectangle behind her but it faded quickly as she crawled on, darkness obscuring the bizarre shelving and white panels about her so that for a moment, Maya was worried she would be trapped in the dark. But then a pair of amber eyes gleamed up ahead, and she laughed nervously with relief and hurried toward them. By the time she had reached the fox, the darkness had receded to a drab gray, and she saw that she was indeed on a narrow path.

  But clearly no longer in the building. Or Manhattan, even. Disoriented, she rose unsteadily to her feet. The fox watched her cautiously, as if gauging the odds of her losing her mind. They were both standing on a ribbon of gray gravel that meandered on ahead, winding its way into a series of low hills. Tree trunks, blighted and bare, stood by the path and what grass there was seemed brittle and dead, bare in great patches and showing the thin dirt beneath. The sky was a nebulous mass, as if low lying clouds were seeking to smother the ground. A thin wind like the moan of a starving child blew past them, and Maya hugged herself against the sudden chill.

  “Where are we?” she asked. Not that it would matter. Not that any answer would make sense, or could make sense. But still. The fox blended in with the gravel path, his thick, lustrous fur bleeding into the gray. He looked up at her, and then gazed at the barren hills, the rotting tree trunks, the oppressive sky.

  “Doesn’t matter, really,” he said, and there was an old sadness in his voice. “It’s a way to get from A to B. Was much nicer, once. But those days are gone. Come along.” He began to trot forward, moving as lightly as a supple scarf in the wind. Maya had to stretch her legs to keep up.

  “No, where are we? Who are you? What’s going on?” No matter how strange or impossible things became, she decided that she would insist on trying to understand what was going on. Would not simply concede her ability to reason, to analyze.

  “Deceptively simple questions, Maya,” said the fox. His voice was pleasant, rich and cultured and, for the moment, without overtones of sarcasm. “I am essentially a fox, and at once much more and less than that. I have been called many things, mostly just Mr. Fox, but I have developed a certain fondness for ‘Guillaume’. An old friend took to calling me that. He’s passed away, but the fondness remains.”

  Maya watched the land about them as they walked along briskly. There seemed to be no life. No threats, no sources of danger. She made sure to keep to the center of the path, however. “You’re the spirit of a fox? A ghost?”

  “Perhaps. I don’t really think about it much. Mostly I’m just Guillaume.” A shrug was implicit in his tone.

  “And why—why did you show up in Mr. Donahue’s apartment? What do you want? Who was that man in green? Why did I lose my voice? What’s happening to me?” The questions came bubbling up, suddenly imperative and overwhelming. She stumbled to a stop. Guillaume trotted forward for a few seconds and then stopped. Looked over his shoulder.

  “Why are you stopping?”

  “Because you probably won’t give me straight answers if I just keep on following you. Where are you taking me?”

  He sat down on the gravel and wrapped his thick tail around his haunches. There was something saturnine about his quick features, his short muzzle, his delicate, leather-black nose. “I don’t know where this path leads,” he said at last. “It’s destination is determined by you. This is as much a road as I am a fox, and, this being the case, it does not obey any such static rule as being consistent or predictable.”

  Maya bit her lip. “How can I be determining where we’re going? I don’t have a clue!”

  Guillaume simply stared at her.

  “Who was that man in green?” That seemed to be the most important question.

  “Again, he has many names, many faces. Tiresome as that may sound, and frustrating as it may be, that’s simply the truth. He’s been known as Jack by many, or classified as a member of the Tuatha Danan. He’s been called Puck. He has other names, older names, but all are as accurate and all are as wrong. He’s trouble, that’s for certain, and he’s selected you as his latest object of interest. Which means you’re in for a very strange time, and none of it will pass any quicker by our standing here.”

  Maya wanted to scream. The more the fox spoke, the less she seemed able to grasp the particulars. It was like attempting to seize smoke.

  Guillaume stood and padded over, and sat down directly before her. Looked up and into her eyes. They were rich, like pools of warm honey lit up from beneath. “Maya, look. I understand your frustration. But you’re asking me questions akin to what is love, or heart break. I can describe them as simply as I can, and still not convey their essence to you. They need to be experienced. No matter what I tell you about Jack, or this land, or myself, you will still not understand. Perhaps you might delude yourself into believing you do, but that would be even more dangerous than ignorance. So please. Pick up your left foot, and step forward. Repeat with your right, and let’s keep going until we reach whatever place is invoked by your heart’s desire.”

  Maya let out a deep breath. She felt so tired she wanted to lie down, use Guillaume as a pillow, and take a deep and pervasive sleep. Tears prickled her eyes again. Why couldn’t this have all happened yesterday morning, before she had begun her restaurant shift? “Fine,” she said. “You know what? I don’t really care. As long as there’s a bed waiting at the end of this, I’ll be happy. The rest we can figure out tomorrow.”

  “That’s the ticket,” said Guillaume, and stood up once more. “Onwards we go. Hup hup hup.”

  They began to stride along once more. Maya felt loose limbed, her skin ashen and heavy, her eyes glazed. She stifled a yawn. The fox sauntered ahead of her, his tail seeming to float along behind. She fixed her eyes on the white tip.

  “Maya,” said Guillaume, but his voice came from her right. Even though he was still striding along before her. They both turned and looked. Another fox was sitting on a bifurcation of the path that had not been there a moment ago. Or had she not noticed it? He was dusky gray and orange tufted and had the same cunning and predatory look as Guillaume. “You’ve stepped off the path. The one on which you stand is glamour. Your eyes are being deceived. Ignore that spirit by your side before it does you ill and join me here on the true path.”

  Guillaume clicked his teeth at his double. “Ignore that. Come on.”

  The other fox rose to his feet. He seemed deliberate, concerned. “Maya. We have no time. Get back on the path. Step over here.”

  Maya looked at the gravel path beneath her shoes. She couldn’t have stepped off it. Could she? Guillaume took several steps forward, and looked over his shoulder at her. “Ignore that thing. It’s just trying to trick you. Come on.” And promptly began to walk forward once more.

  “Maya,” warned the other, but she ignored it. Followed Guillaume, and soon they left it behind. When last she looked, it was but an ashen smudge around the curve of the last hill, still sitting and watching her go.

  Time broke down. She tried to count her steps, but couldn’t focus past thirty. The scenery was unchanging. Hills and crackling d
ead grass. Smothering sky and rotting trees. Walking along, Maya looked to her left and then screamed.

  A massive man was leaping at her. He was huge, broad shouldered, his face streaked with blood, his eyes wild and bulging. Her scream twined with his gurgling roar, his thick fingered hands reaching out for her, his head gleaming wetly where he had been scalped, exposing raw flesh and clumps of hair. Maya stumbled back, arms raised, and felt a nip of sharp pain at her heel.

  Not thinking, she stumbled and fell to one knee, the gravel cutting into her jeans. She looked up, and the bleeding man was gone. Only the thin grass, a hollow bole of a tree close by, the clouds slowly congealing and swirling above their heads. Gone. Reaching up to adjust her sunglasses, she looked down at where Guillaume was staring after where the man had disappeared.

  “Tommy Rawhead,” he said, musing. “I had not expected him to be about. Things are grimmer than I thought if his like are wandering the path. Still, it was a poor trick. Scare you off the path. Almost worked, though. Come on, wake up. Let’s go.”

  No longer did the countryside seem innocuous in its vacuity. Even though the trees looked like old cigars, lonely and footed in their own wretched shadows, they seemed menacing now, as if they hid strange terrors behind them. The hills were but promises of horrors that would come leaping and bounding over their horizons. Maya hugged herself tightly, and tried to look about her in all directions at once. She stumbled once, twice, and then settled for staring at Guillaume’s back once more, studying the intricate and rich fluxion of gray and red fur over his narrow shoulders.

  “How much farther?” asked Maya. “How long have we been walking?” The fox ignored her. Perhaps he considered the questions senseless, or overly imprecise. Was time the same here? There were shadows. Suddenly, desiring to know from which direction the light came, she turned to study the angle of the shadows, and saw to her dismay that they seemed to extend erratically from the base of each tree. She saw two shadows overlap at impossible angles, and fought the urge to cover her eyes. It was too much. She felt dizzy, nauseated. The inside of her mouth felt greasy, as if she’d been eating cold french fries.

  “Maya,” said a voice, a warm and gentle voice, and she let out a cry, turned and there was her mother, her father. They stood, not fast by the edge of the path, but a few paces removed. Mother was wearing her favorite blue dress, detailed in black, and Father was in his old beige suit with the over-wide shoulders. They looked tired, worn out, but their smiles were kind, understanding. Loving.

  Maya stumbled to a stop. Guillaume turned and stared at her. She ignored him. Her mother had aged since she had last seen her, more than she should have. As if she had been through trials that had proven unkind. Her father looked wan, drawn, as if he too had been hard pressed, but in their eyes a warmth yet shone, a love that was home, that was small things only they knew, secrets shared from birth, unconditional affection, the urge to hug and hold on and never let go.

  “Maya,” said Guillaume. His voice was weary.

  Maya pulled off her sunglasses. The world failed to lighten. She didn’t notice, didn’t care. Shoved the bulky glasses into her purse and stepped right up to the edge of the path. “Mãe, pae, ” she called, and held out her hands. “Vem, come on the path with me.”

  “Filha,” said her mother, voice sad. “Why do you invite us to follow that trickster animal? Where is it taking you? Why do you trust it?”

  She turned and looked down at the fox, brilliantly furred and beautifully eyed, callous and wise and indifferent. Her own frustrations came bubbling to the fore.

  “Stay on the path,” said Guillaume. He seemed already to be watching her from a distance. “I warned you when we first took it. Stay on the path, no matter what. You agreed.”

  Maya turned to look at her parents. They took a step back, a slow, reluctant step. “Why do you trust that fox? Because it took you from danger? Why? Why does it help you? Don’t trust it. Nasty fox. Little more than a big rat.”

  At this Guillaume started to his feet and his black lips drew back from fine and lethal teeth. The hackles on his shoulders rose, bristled, and he seemed to swell with rage. “Call me that again, and I will leave the path myself.”

  “Stop it,” Maya said.

  “Vem, filha. We have to go,” said her father, his voice frightened. “We can’t stay here. Vem logo com a gente, Maya. Vamos! ”

  Maya moved to take a step, paused. Looked at the gray coated fox, who had subsided and watched her now. “The third test,” he said, “Is always the hardest.”

  Her parents were backing away. Growing smaller with every step. Maya thought of all the aching loneliness she had felt this past year. The pain and misery, the abandonment and grief. The few dollars she had saved each day to help her find them. How she had missed her mother, her father. How lonely she had been, so achingly, painfully lonely. They were going away again. She was losing them.

  “No!” she cried, and stepped off the path.

  Chapter 7

  Maribel sat alone on the bench in the small secluded park she had come to think of as her own. Snow limned the bare, black branches of the hawthorn tree where it grew in the center of the small square, lay soft like feather down on the bushes that surrounded her, and quilted the four paths that convened in the center from the far corners of the small park, except for the one path she had taken, and on which her footprints were readily visible. The sky above was hammered iron, dolorous and still, and the sounds of the city were clear today, carried by the brittle air with strange clarity.

  But for all the sounds, the park yet remained apart, a separate realm, a pocket of black bark stark against white snow and vivid, evergreen leaves. Stones on the path and the soil were frosted over to gray. The wooden boards of the bench were unyielding to the warmth of her body, and remained cold, but Maribel didn’t mind. Here she could think, or rather, exist and allow thoughts to come to her like dreams to a slumbering figure.

  Kubu. The name was like an object to her, not an abstract appellation but weighty and solid. It made her think of obsidian, of horn, of carved black stone. Kubu. Somewhere below the streets of New York, insinuated in the labyrinthine intestines of the city. Kubu, who had come for her daughter, who had impossibly, against all laws and reason reached into the ICU and taken Sofia from her.

  Maribel sat in silence. Her hands ached from where the psychic had crushed them. She would have to go below ground. Search the tunnels and vents. Search until she found Kubu, confronted it, took her daughter back. The plan was nebulous, vague, and as such seemed fraught with the potential for wasted time.

  A shape walked down the path, pushing a pram. They were everywhere, mothers, pushing their children and babies before them. Like love songs on the radio after a bad breakup, they seemed suddenly ubiquitous to those in pain. Maribel turned her gaze upon the bundle dressed in a pink jumpsuit within. The woman was tall, bent over the pram as she pushed it, speaking to the child in a baby voice. Maribel felt a desperate yearning within her. A physical keening, a need. Sofia, she thought, but kept her eyes on the child. On the pale face, the rubicund cheeks. A desire to step forward and seize the child swept through her like a harsh wind tearing at her sense of self.

  The mother was staring at her. Maribel realized that she had risen to her feet, taken a step forward. Reluctantly she looked away from the baby, and forced herself to smile at the woman. Engage in the social interactions that would set her at ease. The mother, blonde and rosy cheeked like her baby, smiled guardedly and continued to walk, cutting through the small central square and heading down another path. A moment longer and she was gone.

  Maribel sat down. She took a deep breath. The violence of her yearning had shocked her. For a moment, all she had desired was to take the baby in her arms, hold it to her chest, breath in its baby smell, feel the warmth of its soft head against her neck, hold it and croon to it and rock it and never let it go. Protect it, nurture it, love it. Sofia, she keened again, a psychic cry of pure pain, and
felt something within her wrench as if a lug nut had been brutally twisted.

  Something had changed. Shifted. There was a new sense of depth to the park, to the area before her. The sounds of the city receded; didn’t quite fade away altogether, but grew faint. Maribel raised her chin, focused her gaze. The trees before her, beyond the hawthorn, had been thick enough to block out the distant wall, but not so thick as to present the illusion of a forest.

  They did so now.

  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.