During Michel's story, the sphinx flapped ceaselessly, with no signs of stopping--gigantic scoops of wind coasting lazily above the clouds, buffeting them with scarcely a breeze. The Marchioness--for Michel the Narrator could not help referring to herself in this matter-of-fact third person way, despite the grinding of Akachi's teeth and Lucien's eyes, flitting back and forth between them--elaborately wove the narrative of all she had lived since leaving Ghulmarque. For a blind girl on the sidelines, Michel was surprisingly in the know about many things, having befriended a fount of wisdom, the sphinx, but she was nonetheless startled to hear Suvani was now a dragon.
"We saw her only a few days ago. Since then, she's become a dragon?"
"You saw her? Some kind of rendezvous?"
"You'll make me out to be a traitor next, Akachi."
"To betray someone, you must be loyal first." This sulking tone was common for Akachi,
being so naturally inclined to silence that she preferred to express herself in furious meditation,
at least until Michel coaxed out her curled-up feelings.
"Exactly." Michel was needled by Akachi's insinuation, but pretended to be unruffled, as if it hadn't touched her in the slightest. "I had no reason to care about Alsantia, when my heart was far from here. Not even Ghulmarque--however much I am its Marchioness." Michel knew her smug smile would goad Akachi. She owed her for the slap.
"I don't know, Michel," Akachi said glumly, "She might string up you up for an ornament."
Michel scooted back from Lucien's queasy snort, as she couldn't tell if it was the first grunt of vomit or laughter. "That's not funny, Akachi," he muttered.
"On the contrary," said Michel. "We could all use a joke. Not only has it been a dark haul for all of us, but in the long weeks since we saw each other, not once did we meet friendly beavers having breakfast." Michel knew Akachi would know this allusion, as they had often listened in when Berangere read The Lion, The Witch, and The Wardrobe, to Loren. While not completely true, having been helped by Jgorga, rebel Dwarves, a sphinx, a magic mirror, talking stags, and the Architects and their vehicles, the overall tenor of their Alsantian adventures had been decidedly darker, so that even Michel, who had lived her whole life in darkness, often felt like she was in a dark well without a ray of hope.
"Speaking of friendly beavers, Michel--where is this overgrown beaver taking us?"
"Do you mean the sphinx?"
A lilting, indignant murmur was all they could hear of the sphinx's response, but Michel's ears and mind burned to know the great beast's riddle.
"You said you wanted jokes."
"You should apologize for that one." When Michel snickered, Akachi laughed too, although Lucien's joke was dreadfully bad, for he was brave for trying when his father hadn't made a sound in the last ten minutes. "I wouldn't know exactly where we're going, even though I've likely been there,
having flown a great many places to help Oji gather forces."
"Gather forces? Little Oji?"
"Not so little anymore. He's huge, bigger than the colossal lions at the door of the Draden library."
"You're joking."
"Not anymore."
"How would you know?" While Akachi's bluntness would never have offended her before,
having traded harsh words, Michel now felt more numb than blind, for this Akachi kept crushing her feelings, not giving her a moment's respite.
"You're right. I can't see Oji for myself. But his meows have become booming roars. Moreover, the sphinx doesn't lie, for all she shrouds truth in riddles. When she asked, 'how many ginger kittens has this beast swallowed to swell this heavy shadow,' Oji's laugh might have knocked me down if I hadn't clung to the sphinx's fur. At her next question, 'does lion or shark swim in so much shadow,' Oji's growl shook me head to toe."
"Oji is a black cat now?"
"You aren't listening, Lucien. He's a lot more than a cat now. He's more than a lion."
"He's like the Stranger." This was Lucien's father, Ustragon. As his body shifted and the grass rustled, he groaned, and his voice quavered.
"No!" When her own shout shook Michel head to toe, her spine shivered, as if the shout had a hard time finding a way out.
"Michel!" She had never heard Akachi this angry, not even when she had slapped Michel, and the strong hand clasped hers hard, as if Akachi meant to squeeze the shout all the way out. "Not only is that Lucien's father, but he's wounded!"
"It's all right, Akachi." His voice was tremulous but firm. "Even if she wasn't a Marchioness, we should expect this from one who had met a god. What was he like?"
As she remembered the Stranger's terrifying voice and aura, Michel's breath pinched tight, her heart sat frog quiet, her lips felt numb and wordless, and her hand, held vise hard by Akachi, felt like a distant island.
"It's alright, child," said The Architect. "You can answer me."
"Just don't yell in his face." Lucien sounded more sullen than angry.
"I didn't mean to shout. But you just can't know. Not without feeling his presence for yourself. He's not like Oji at all." Michel shuddered. "And he can't be a god. I can't say what he looks like, but I can tell you he was the absence of everything. Not just the absence of good. Not only the absence of god. The absence of all existence."
"So. Mister Nothingness, then." At Lucien's joking tone, Akachi snickered, and Michel shrank inside herself. Their laughter felt more raw than real. While it wasn't funny at all, Michel understood.
The balance had shifted. Normally, Akachi would offer word or hand to Michel, but now she was clutched like a dead bird, and Akachi reached out to Lucien.
"That's stupid," Akachi giggled. "Nothingness can't walk the earth."
"This isn't earth," said Michel. "It's Alsantia. But even on our world, many say god walked the Earth. If god can take human flesh, what's so ridiculous about nothingness taking human form?"
"Not only an avatar of nonexistence but a dark Eucharist Suvani has already consumed. And what's so different from that," insinuated Ustragon, "and King Oji becoming the embodiment of something else?"
Michel's heart skipped a beat, and she yanked her tingling hand from Akachi and nursed it under her other arm. "Why does this sound more and more like an argument? We Should be talking like old friends. Especially after I rescued you."
"You didn't do anything." Akachi grumbled, as if she had settled into her resentment after her initial burst of angry shock and excited relief at their long-delayed reunion. "The sphinx did the rescuing."
"That's not fair," said Lucien. "Short of their own riddles, I doubt sphinxes care who lives or dies."
Short of their own diet, you mean, Michel thought to herself, reluctant to share that Alsantian sphinxes, like those of Earth myth, were Idiot-arians, whose favorite food consisted of fools confounded by riddles. While happy to have the sphinx's protection, Michel was insecure of the sphinx's friendship. How long would Michel charm the sphinx? Was she a distraction, or an obligation dictated by an enigmatic code of honor? Or was she a pocket snack, a strip of jerky saved for later?
She sighed. Even putting it in such stark terms, she couldn't summon up fear of the sphinx, who had always felt not only beholden to Michel, but friendly, cozy, even snuggly. "I don't presume to know the sphinx. Not yet. But you're unfair too, Lucien."
"I'm taking your side!"
"I know. I meant unfair to the sphinx. She has been very kind to me."
"Was anyone ever kind on any world unless they wanted something?" Michel could hear the scowl in Akachi's voice.
"Now who's blind, Akachi? Jgorga helped a great deal, and the dwarven doctors took a great risk by helping us."
"I still think the sphinx wants something."
"No doubt. She is a sphinx in body and mind." Michel sighed, "But I believe her heart is kind."
"What you see as kindness..." Ustragon's murmur was so faint, Michel might have been the only one to hear. "...is puzzlement. To the sphinx, you are an enigma." His voice fanned higher and stronger as he warmed to his argument. "A paragon among puzzles. How could a blind girl come so far? Not only leaving a world behind, but crossing this vast supercontinent.
"The sphinx helped with that..."
Ustragon blared on, as if spending his last ounce of strength. "And how are you so snug in her fur? It is as if you were born and bred to ride a sphinx."
"You flatter me, Mister Architect." When she mimicked the tone of Lucien's "Mister Nonexistence," they all laughed.
"Fine," said Akachi. "We'll believe Oji is bigger than Draden library's statues, and hope she's a better monster than The Stranger, Suvani, or your pet sphinx."
"Hardly a pet." As Michel crouched against the cold metal aircraft, it seemed to thrill with the mutter of the sphinx. Or was it her imagination? Whether riddle, growl, or the shivering wind, it was drowned out by high altitude and the constant breeze of the sphinx's wings.
"Why are you contradicting everything I say?" grumbled Akachi. "Was the Marchioness promoted all the way to Sphinx? I wouldn't doubt it, as you have all the luck." Her sigh roared into the wind. "Finish your story."
After narrating rumors of what happened in the Ephremian desert, of Oji's shadowcat inheritance and his coronation as King of True Alsantia, Michel was about to bring her narrative to the present day when she was interrupted by Akachi.
"So you were there. You saw Oji crowned king."
Michel fumed inside. Akachi knew very well she couldn't see anything. "Yes and no."
"Why are you hedging?" growled Akachi.
"It's not a crown, but a unicorn hide."
"It is the Alsantians who have inverted the true customs. Instead of seating a crown on a prince's head, kings are made by kneeling on the Noble Pelt." Having delivered this remark, Ustragon hacked and coughed, and Michel heard Lucien scoot and scuffle to his side.
"Is he all right?"
"He needs help, Michel."
"He'll get it, I promise you." Michel lowered her voice to a soothing tone. "He only has to hold on for a little while."
"You don't know what you're asking!" seethed Lucien. "You don't even know where we're going!"
"If I can't draw you a picture, that doesn't mean I don't know the place." Michel began to feel nettled--Akachi had not only withdrawn care and concern, but hardened her heart, then sharpened it to volcanic glass, which didn't mind pointing out the cruel obvious, that Michel was blind. Akachi not only sounded resentful of her blindness, but made it sound like a shortcoming, as if Michel could help being born blind.
"Tell me, Mister Marchioness..." At Akachi's saucy tones, and this third improper use of mister, Lucien chortled, and even Ustragon weakly snickered. "...where are we going?"
"I'm guessing the camp grounds."
"Then you don't know. If not following orders, where is the sphinx flying us?
"You can't order a sphinx to do anything."
"So she's carting us off for dinner?"
"No! I asked her to help you."
"How did you know?"
"Oji said you were in danger--don't ask how he knew. There's more to him now, not just his jaws, paws, and tail, but his voice, mind, and eyes."
"His eyes?"
"The sphinx said it best. 'What truth lies in these shadows, if the world's in his eyes?'"
"That sounds dark," murmured Lucien.
"This is a dark world," said Akachi. "And talking like that is insensitive to Michel, don't you think?" Was Akachi rubbing her nose in it again, or was Akachi coming back to herself, or at least back to the way things were.
"The world is gray tonight," said Ustragon in a dreamy tone. "Nothing dark or light, only wrong or right."
"He doesn't look so good." Lucien's voice was thick with worry.
"He'll be fine, Lucien." While Akachi's tone bit deep and brooked no contradiction, Michel knew her well enough to know Akachi did not believe what she was saying. "Didn't you hear her? We're almost there." Michel had said no such thing, but only 'a little while,' and it had taken nearly two hours to fly to their rescue. While they now flew with the wind, and not into it, and Oji's army marched in their direction, Michel couldn't bring herself to make another promise. She had never heard anything like Ustragon's awful, wheezing rattle. Was this what writers called a 'death rattle?' She didn't know, having no experience of death first hand. Even in Ghulmarque, the Marquessa had kept her innocent.
Even on execution days, she strained to hear whispered rumors of who flew overhead.
When Ustragon rasped short, shallow breaths, Michel's own breaths began to mirror his. Why weren't Akachi and Lucien gasping from fear? For being sighted, they were strangely unaffected, not only by his throes of suffering, but by her own terror, until she felt not like a blind girl, but a ghost.
Just as he transcended his agony by passing out, she had transcended her unseeing nature to become unseen. While she couldn't see their faces, if they were deceived by her composure, they no doubt saw Ustragon's fade as a calm repose, either not hearing or not heeding his rattling wheeze, which to Michel's ears sounded like the tail end of his last lungful of air.
Seeing only surfaces, the sighted were blind to the substance of the world. It wasn't a new realization, but one Michel had harbored lifelong. Even Akachi seemed a different person when not holding her hand. It was like she flew off into the insane void of sightedness, later to return, clutch Michel, and relate what had happened. If Akachi had been her anchor, Michel had been her perch.
It was ironic that now it was much the reverse, with Akachi and Lucien waiting to hear more of Michel's adventures, no matter how they pretended to suffer the silence.
It was Akachi who broke the numbing silence. "Tell us what happened. No, tell us everything. Everything you know."
Everything? That was an awful lot, especially considering the convoluted way she pieced everything together from wise riddles, or the hearsay, rumors, and other whispers she eavesdropped in Oji's army. Akachi would expect everything straight and direct, and that was not how she lived through events. She sighed. If she had to crack a sphinx's riddles and make a patchwork of gossip to get her news, that was not unlike filtering truth from the banal lies casually told by the sighted to the blind. She supposed it was second nature by now. She wouldn't spare any details.
First she told of the falling in of the loyalists. No sooner was Oji crowned, then they stormed from the woods--not only stags, wolves, mice, bears, wildcats, and raccoons, but vast clouds of fairies with dragonfly wings and bristling weapon belts, and stranger creatures that had hid far longer in the fog of myth, not only manticores, griffins, and sphinxes, but wild, mangy unicorns who became less surly and more wild with each passing day, until their long repressed but untameable spirit blasted out-- the single-minded, unclouded vision of mindful unicorns returned to the world, as they spoke for the first time in a millenia.
"Good for them," said Lucien. "That fairy tale always bothered me. You know the one?"
"If you mean how unicorns lost their power of speech, I sat in the same classes you did, and they hammered that one over and over again."
"Like original sin. They were saying we would never be good enough," said Akachi. "No one was. Magic existed in Alsantia, but not goodness. Even unicorns' souls had been blasted with darkness and ignorance, until they were vile through and through. Even if it was a matter of fact, I wish I had never believed that myth. It felt ugly to know it when I didn't even know my own heart."
"It was a cult. They messed with our instincts."
Michel told them of the sullen turncoats who quickly returned to the fold, some whose hearts had wandered, weary of waiting for the true king's return, but also blackhearted beasts who had savored talking flesh, both animal and human, and sunk into a deep, dark wickedness, but shrunk back to honor he who had sat on the Noble Pelt.
"How could they be forgiven!" Michel was taken aback to hear this outraged, bitter outpour from Akachi.
"It's easy for us to say," said Lucien. "It's better to be lucky than good."
"Do you mean us?" Akachi was incredulous. "With our upbringing?"
"Much of what we learned was right, Akachi. We didn't even eat meat. Having talked to stags raccoons, and other talking animals, I don't regret that part of it. The Elderliches denied us much, but if not for them, we might be worse monsters than those beasts."
"Worse than cannibal talking beasts who tasted the blood of other talking animals?" Michel shuddered. "On another world or in another age, we might have been born cannibals, which is what Lucien meant when he said it's better to be lucky than good. If I wasn't born blind, I might have stopped the vulture boy from clawing out Chiyo's eye. The privileged don't have to consider would haves and should haves like we're doing now. Even so, I don't forgive them, however much they swell Oji's army, so that it now darkens the land. Even if Oji's forces are still only a tenth of Suvani's, the ground nonetheless begins to quiver under their paws and hooves. And after these heartless ones bonored Oji, even the silent majority, those beasts who had lived in quiet acceptance of the Alsantian Queen and her horrors, bowed to the Noble Pelt. Even after this huge bolstering of Oji's forces, they were only a third the size of Suvani's army, but as they scurried, loped and trotted across Alsantia, they were swelled by roaming beasts, purehearted humans, and dwarven rebels who had hacked off their beards to distance themselves from their peoples' vain pursuit of Suvani's favor, then Ephremian antelopes, crocodiles, turtles, and cheetahs, a flood of refuges from the Terianan siege...and, most recently, Daikonese animals, who had turned their tails in shame, not from the might of the Stranger and the dragon, but from their tree lords, which had thought adding a few rotten tree rings to their enormous, aged girth was worth bowing to the dragon queen."
"Don't tell Aito how you feel," said Lucien.
"I was happy when they joined our banner," said Michel. "In fact, when you weren't among the Ephremian stragglers, I hoped to find you with the Daikonese." As the army grew and grew, Michel had pieced together their adventures from rumors, and began to think she might never catch up, hearing how they darted from one side of Alsantia to the other. "And now, we're here."
"It was that easy?"
"What do you mean?"
"Weren't there battles along the way?"
"Suvani's armies fell back from us the whole way."
"Why would they do that?"
"From what I gathered, there were few remaining garrisons in the empire. Not only had Vemulus taken most of the army with him, but Suvani hasn't discharged any troops back to Alsantia."
"She left Alsantia defenseless?"
"Some manned the walls and war machines, but not enough to give chase or worry our ranks. And Oji wanted to conserve his beastpower and manpower, not throw them away in vain attacks on city walls. Rather than liberate those whose hearts aren't in the war, he saves his strength for the final battle with Suvani."
"Final battle." Lucien sighed. "Final battle is right. Have you seen the size of that dragon?" He paused. "Sorry."
"No," said Michel. "The sphinx said something about it, but she's very elusive."
"Speaks in riddles, you mean," snorted Akachi.
"Is he still okay?" asked Lucien.
There was scuffing along the aircraft surface.
"He's cooled down a bit," murmured Akachi. "Is that good?"
"I can't hear him anymore." Michel regretted her quiet words almost instantly, when a wail trembled in Lucien's frantic tones.
"He's not breathing?"
"He's fine, Lucien. He's only resting." Akachi's well-measured tones felt a little too even to Michel.
When the Architect moaned, Lucien choked back a sob. The breeze chilled them even more,
then Michel's stomach lurched and the angle of the wind changed, glancing off her temples and cheekbones.
"We're descending, Michel. Does that mean we've arrived?"
While Michel read the book of her senses just like sighted people did, and her guesses were better than most, she had learned she couldn't give others the certainty they craved, not when they assumed seeing is believing, and without seeing there could be no believing. So she had stopped reassuring people. It was never any use. People would believe, or refrain from believing, as they wished, regardless of her assurances. "I don't know."
"Will you introduce us to your friend?" Ustragon quavered weakly.
"Yes. If you have any pull with that monster, tell her to take it easy," said Lucien. "I'm worried about my father."
"Don't worry, Lucien. She's carted a blind girl all over Alsantia without any accident," said Michel.
As they descended, the air warmed, their clothes dampened in cloud vapor, and clammy dew clung to Michel's cheeks and brow, feeling more like fear and grief than a wild fantasy. Flying a sphinx was no roller coaster, but such a titanic shift in altitude that Michel often felt on the verge of dying,
or crossing a more spiritual threshold, as if her jackhammering heart was about to hurtle straight for the afterlife, still pumping. Will all four senses already on the brink, she couldn't imagine having just one more sense overwhelmed by the meteoric plummet of the sphinx.
No doubt Oji would want to talk to Akachi and Lucien, however lukewarm he had been to Michel. She dreaded this second reunion more than the first, knowing she would be even more invisible to the cat prince than he was to her. Oji still spoke to her with great reserve, and Michel wasn't sure why, having never given him any reason to tread softly on Earth or Alsantia. While their respective scales had reversed--him all massive muscles, thick fur, and a luxuriant mane, and her small enough to lie in his crossed paws--he still kept a respectful distance from Michel. Just as he had leaped nimbly away when she had tried petting him as a toddler, gracing her forearms with long painful welts, she had backpedaled from his single attempt to draw near, although she was nowhere near as agile as a half-grown kitten, and had fumbled away, and might have fallen, had she not backed into the comforting warmth of the sphinx.
"What beast lies between two lions?" the sphinx had riddled, her tone honeyed sarcasm, and Michel had felt her cheeks burn. For she was deceiving herself on both ends, not only terrified of the sphinx for all her clingy irreverence, a fearless intimacy born of desperate and powerless necessity,
but deeply wishing to hug the prince who had never been her cat, but not for lack of wanting to cuddle and spoil Oji.
"You could both make it a little easier for me."
When Oji had snorted and turned a cold shoulder--an idiom grounded in fact for one who cast such an enormous shadow--she scarcely blamed him, for the True King had so much to do.
his forces not even half that of Suvani's. While she heard his growling, moody prowl recede from her, she waited there anyway, if not for his answer, then for a resurgence of hope. At that moment, there had been none there she had known, other than the two enchanted beasts, the sphinx and the True King. His honor guard of shadow lions kept such a respectful distance that she only felt their presence by their rumbling, leonine purrs. While she felt the warm breath of the sphinx at her back, as Oji padded away, she couldn't feel the earth beneath her toes. The ground seemed to crumble at her feet as loneliness consumed her. Even when the grumbling sphinx had taken Michel in her paw and settled her on the topknot of her mane, she felt more like a fashion accessory than a friend, and she began to wonder,
if she ever had a friendship, or if she was only a habit, an acquired taste. Not that she wasn't grateful for the sphinx's attentions, The sphinx saw her value even when all her friends abandoned her. Even if it was only an ornamental value, perhaps in time, she would be promoted from ornament to keepsake.
Suddenly she realized her new calling. From a piece of mouse fluff, roving her fur, she had become a mouthpiece--the voice of the sphinx. While the sphinx heard and spoke in riddles,
Having long puzzled the unsighted world, practiced not only at straightening its twisted truths but seeing under skin deep superficialities the sighted took for plain truth--blind to the topographical nightmare of their own curved preconceptions, crooked biases, and convoluted rationalizations,
all snagging the plain, slender thread of truth--by comparison, the sphinx was easily understood.
Her riddles did not cloud the truth, but condensed it to a more memorable form. In fact, to Michel, the 'less is more' of riddles was helpful in parting lies to find the truth. While she had to be wide awake or drowsy to speak in riddles, when she did, the sphinx would laugh, and trade riddle for riddle.
"Will Oji have a word for me now," Michel muttered under her breath.
"Who hears the silence of cats?" The sphinx's chuckle crackled and rumbled like thunder.
The answer was obvious, as Michel had just regretted never having Oji's affections. "How do I take a giant cat on my lap?" While loud purrs can be heard, a cat's quietest purrs are only heard on your lap, sometimes only through the petting hand.
"What soul touches the truth of a cat? What truth touches the soul of a king?" This twofold riddle was maddening, even as the answer quivered on the tip of her tongue.
Petting. Flattery. The answer was self-love. She had to pet Oji. She had to flatter the king.
It sounded easy on the face of it. But how does one flatter a king already confident in his power? His only concern was measuring up to Suvani.
That was where she would start.
Winds shrieked louder and louder, rain pelted and stung, thunder boomed a pounding pulse like the beat of a world-sized drum, and marching boots, galloping steeds, and snarling beasts clashed in a horrendous din, until the dragon's crushing roar drowned out the chaos.
"What's happening!" Michel cried.
"She followed us under the clouds!"
"No. She never saw us." murmured Ustragon. "Our own shadow betrayed us, flickering through the underbellies of the clouds. Dragons have excellent eyesight."
"She's gaining on us!" shouted Akachi.
"But the sphinx is the fastest there is!" Michel said in a faint voice. "She said so."
"She's dragged us for miles," said Lucien. "She's tired. That bite almost got her tail."
"Suvani's toying with us. We're in range of her fiery breath. She's just playing cat and mouse."
"How does a mouse fly?" growled the sphinx, and the hackles on Michel's neck rose, there being no ready answer that sounded pleasant, with not very well, and by falling being the least gory answers that came to mind. Having heard on TV that mice fall for miles without injury, she hoped that was not what the sphinx meant. Fear snarled and clawed inside, but there was no other way. It wasn't like she had any choice in the matter. The sphinx was warning of what would happen next.
"Hold on tight!"
"Why?" Lucien's bewilderment was tinged with horror, and he clutched her hand. She had never held Lucien's hand before. It was a large hand, a strong hand for a boy. A little sweaty inside, she was glad to know, hoping it would mask her own clammy palms. "You can't mean..."
When the walker's steel rang and shivered underfoot, the wind blasted her off her feet, and Michel's belly lurched as her shoulders were dragged and pinned to the thrumming metal. She had to push against the gale as she forcd herself up on her elbows, her forearms numb as stone. It took a moment to realize she still clutched Lucien's hand.
They were falling--the sphinx having flicked them from her talons, just as she had warned Michel. Was she finally leaving Michel to her fate, a mile above Alsantia?
A torrent of scorching air roared to Michel's left, and she drew her hand back with a shock from the scalding metal surface, scooting nearer Lucien.
"She's right on top of us, Michel! Get inside!"
"No!" she shouted back. "'How does a mouse fly!'"
"The sphinx dropped us! Our best chance is inside!
"My son is right!" What started as a bellow faded to a hoary gasp, making Ustragon sound a few seconds from death.
"You're not listening! 'How does a mouse fly!'"
"Grab her, Lucien," said Akachi.
"This is the only way!" Snatching back her hand, and bunching up her courage, then her gown, Michel pushed off from the hot, hissing metal. At the last moment, the steel wrenched and twisted underfoot, as if crumpling under her. When sparks and hot ash stung her milling arms, Michel knew Suvani had set the walker on fire, and the others now rode a smoldering cannonball toward Oji's army.
"Come on!" shouted Lucien.
As Ustragon groaned, Akachi screamed. "What did you do! Stop!" Akachi screeched even louder, then trailed off in the wind. What was that? Had they followed Michel? Had Lucien flung his father from the hurtling wreckage, or had Akachi fought off Lucien?
As Michel plunged, her hair streamed, her gown flapped, and her shoes flopped off who knows where. Barefoot again. She had lost a half-dozen shoes and sandals in Alsantia. Was she wrong to trust the sphinx? Had she guessed a riddle wrong at last? As a wrong answer meant death to a sphinx, she wouldn't need shoes where she was going.
As they plummeted, they smacked into the rising noise of Oji's advancing beasts, their snarls and roars even more deafening than Suvani's army. The Queen's horde had sounded more contained,
more hemmed in by fear and discipline, than the beasts below. Then Michel realized just why they were panicking--not only was a gigantic metal mortarshell plummeting straight for their center, but a fire-breathing dragon was in hot pursuit. Could they see Michel hurtling, or was she just more streaming shrapnel splintering from the crumbling metal?
Now was when the sphinx's sagacity would save them all.
Any time now.
Any day now.
Please. While her eyes had already squeezed shut from the hot, gritty ash cloud billowing around them, if she was sighted, she guessed this was when she should close her eyes.
A burst of wind flung her faster, then braced back into her, blasting her back up. There was an awful, rasping snap, then another wind blast drove her down, then gusted her back up. The third time, her fingers tangled in hot grass for a split second before the hot air blasted her back up.
They were caught between the dragon's enormous wings and the earth, so buffeted by the fearsome turbulence that they would never strike the ground until Suvani wearied of tormenting the negligible bits of fluff snagged in her updrafts and downdrafts, like the mice that fell miles without dying.
This was the sphinx's gamble? Even though she had guessed rightly, and the sphinx would not be picking her bones, she would have a bone to pick with the sphinx, even if she had to crush all her riddles flat.
Lucien's frustration was more eloquent. "Augggh!"
"Just let me fall!" yelled Akachi.
"Time it!" yelled Michel. "Grab something!" While she couldn't see the earth coming, it was slightly cooler than the dragon-heated air. As her face fell nearer the cooler surface, she flailed out to no avail, tearing out a clump of grass, dirt crumbling in her fingers and nails as she rose higher and higher, then tumbled at the forefront of of dragonfire, feeling the flickering flame lick at her gown as she fell back, plummeting faster and faster until the scoop of dragon wings blasted them up. Every time Suvani's wings flexed, Michel felt crushed between clapping winds, the downdraft shoving them down and the updraft piledriving up, punching higher and higher in a rapid flurry of wind-blast that scarcely let them touch ground before they were lifted up.
Michel racked her brain. Think. It seemed hopeless: how could writers and movie-makers think anyone could defeat a winged dragon? Against wings producing enough updraft to lift a dragon, would-be dragonslayers would be buffeted helter-skelter by its wing blasts. No arrow could never find the chink in the dragon's scales in those hurricane blasts. True, luck and death only took an instant. Michel must seize her chance all the quicker, being unable to see it.
Michel didn't need eyes to see that Suvani toyed with them, and wasn't willing to brain them on the ground or scorch them with dragonfire, not when she was having so much fun. Akachi and Lucien were screaming, Ustragon was moaning, and while Michel fluttered in the singed threads of her raggedy gown, Michel herself, even her flailing hair, was unscathed.
The key was the dragonfire. When Suvani belched flame, they fell faster. Either the flame was as much liquid fire as hot gas, or Suvani couldn't scoop as much turbulence while spewing dragonfire.
Michel waited and waited, tumbling mid-air and conserving her strength, for it took over a minute to time the dragon's breath and her tumbling body to line up just right, so that this time, as she seized grass, she yanked herself along the dry patch, tearing up fistfuls of soil and scrabbling onto a tree root,
which she nearly fumbled as the wings slashed and the wind tore her up and up, ripping off the skirt of her gown as she clung numbly to the creaking, cracking tree root.
"Michel!"
She wanted to reach out, but needed both hands to clutch the tree, her forearms already tight and straining, her tendons so painfully taut that her pinkies and forefingers had given way, dangling nervelessly as she clung by two fingers and thumb. When a hand clasped her ankle--a clammy hand, Lucien's hand--the drag was even more intense as the updraft reeled them up and up, until Michel was drawn nearly straight up in the wind, as if doing a handstand. When the downdraft blasted them back down, Lucien crawled over top of her, shaking the bark as he scampered up the tree. \Michel's hands were so tight and tore, that as she climbed up after him, she had to hook each branch with her whole forearm, and this time, when the updraft blasted up, she tucked both forearms towards her chest, straining as she buffeted the trunk and rattled the branches.
"Is that my little mouse?" The dragon's violent, rumbling bass shivered the scorched woodland.
Leaves fluttered around Michel, and nuts or pinecones plopped to the grass as the dragon stomped around the woods. Crunch. A tree crashed, shaking the earth. When Suvani cleared her monstrous throat, producing a horrible, scratching whistle, Michel realized the dragon was not only tsk-tsking them, but attempting to raise her deep draconian bass to a falsetto. "My little blind mouse has returned to me. And brought more mice." Suvani's crackling voice broke as she struggled to maintain a dulcet tone unnatural in such a huge dragon. "Four all told. Which doesn't fit the nursery rhyme, you know. One of you has to go," she growled with malevolent glee. "That only leaves four eyes to put out, if I'm to have my fun."
"No!" shouted Lucien. "Stay away from him." When her branch shook, there was a thump and a crackling of leaves as he raced from the tree. Then he grunted, and the tree shivered.
Far off, Akachi yelled, "Lucien!" Where was she?
"Lucien..." While Ustragon sounded fainter than Akachi, she felt he wasn't far away at all, just nearer death. "Stay back."
"I won't let you have him." Lucien's sob was wracked with pain, frustration, and determination.
"What dragon vomits mercy, and not fire? Can I make it vomit queens?" Hearing the sphinx's sweet, sarcastic tones, Michel's heart soared.
"Have a care, sphinx."
"Are you a queen again?"
"I'm bigger than you now, sphinx. Watch your step."
"Having blown up all the way to dragon, what step can a blowhard take? What is one puff short of explosion?" The sphinx's voice quivered and spiraled. Michel had never heard her like this before. "What shape more murderous can a dragon take? Do dragons flower into Suvanis? Will the monster aspire to be a mouthful?"
"Even as a queen, I'll take you, sphinx. Watch your place."
"What blackhearted snake eats a lion?"
"You'll be the first. It's the only way you could ever outdo me, as I've always been your better, even being the smarter riddle-master."
"If I wait on a windbag, will it exp--?" The rest was snarled when the sphinx's roar met the dragon's bellowing boom, the woods crunched and snapped, and the trunk Michel clutched like a koala bent, bowing so low that Michel was swung around, her back grazing the grass. Hearing the straining and cracking of the taut tree, Michel feared being crushed when the tree snapped, released her knotted fingers with a pained gasp, dropped to the grass, and scooted away, right into a cold body.
Queasily, she reached out a hand, and touched stubbly skin. Her fingertips grazed an ear, then a nose. While the face was alabaster cold, the nose was slightly warm, leaking thin streams of air.
When the tree went, it didn't snap or splinter, but exploded from the soil, roots and all,
showering Michel and Ustragon with earth. She felt the whoosh as the trunk swung overhead, then heard it roll to a crunch against other trees. Had she been standing, she might have had her brains knocked out, or been pulped in two.
"Ustragon? Please." She tugged at his sleeve, then his hand. "You have to get up." She brushed the dirt from his chest. then his face.
"Michel!" She knew that voice. It was amplified, and crackled noisily, like a radio personality. But she knew the voice.
"Aito!" Her holler seemed to double and deepen, shaking with an immediate echo. When Lucien dropped down, taking her clammy hand in his, she realized her yell had been echoed by Lucien.
"Help me with him." Having guided her hands to Ustragon's armpit, Lucien took the other side, When he lifted and groaned, she strained as well, but they managed to drag Ustragon across the blasted ground, which crumbled so much underfoot, it felt more like ashes than soil.
"Where are we going?"
"Just keep going. Don't look back." When he groaned, she realized it was not from bearing his father's weight, but his own faux pas. "Sorry. We're heading for my mother's aircraft."
"Aircraft?" Michel jetted a worried, frustrated sigh. "It's not one of those clanky steampunk junkers, is it?
"What do you think? Wait. They're coming this way."
"Your mother?"
"No, the monsters." When Lucien stopped to draw in a huge intake of breath, she realized he had shouldered most of Ustragon, letting Michel work only to keep him upright, and as the balance tipped, she nearly buckled under the strain, until Lucien again drew himself under the burden, trudging this time up a small incline. As they stumbled uphill, the crunching trees seemed to snap toward their ringing ears, as if the woods themselves and not battling monsters trailed near, and the immense heat of the dragon fogged in, sopping her ruined gown and so steaming Michel's face and hands, that between the vapor and her own sweat, her eyes burned and stung until a few tears seeped into the wetness beading her nose and chin.
"Lucien..."
"Don't ask! Keep going!"
"Where is Akachi?"
"Not now!" He groaned. "I don't know! Keep going! They're right on top of us."
As the slope trembled, already loosened from steam, heat, and the gale of dragon wings, the soil slipped under their feet, worming into Michel's holey boots to cake her toes, and blasted into the air by the sudden snap of Suvani's wings, followed by a resounding pop that made her ears and guts flutter.
Tasting the billowing dirt, Michel hacked and spat, just as other hands relieved them of their burden,
prompting a gasping sigh from Lucien, who fell with a weak clank. Lucien's sigh and clank sounded strange, like they were underwater.
Why were her ears ringing? "Lucien?"
He sounded muffled and faraway, like he was talking into a tin can.
"What?" She couldn't hear herself in her own ears, only in her mouth, which drowned the word to a silent sound, like dew dropping in a cave. Her hands flung to her ears as the ringing become tingling, then an excruciating rattle drowning out everything. Hands took her shoulders and legs and lifted her up, then laid her on soft, supple fabric that might have been snug as a blanket, were it not laid on top of unyielding metal so hot that the heat prickled her back through the coveriing and her sweat and vapor-logged gown.
With less effort than swatting a fly, Suvani had once again wrought Michel's suffering on a whim. While being changed to a mouse was terrifying, the snapping of the monstrous wings and her rattling ears had splintered her mind, as if it was only another tree in the woods. She might feel singled out for persecution had the Alsantian Queen ever called her by name. Perhaps Suvani looked on her with scorn; she didn't know. She had heard she bore a passing resemblance to Isola, another girl tormented by Suvani. She had heard of guilt by association, but guilt by resemblance felt not only unfair, but unreasonable, and so did not fit what her 'mouse's eye view' had pieced together of the queen's personality from inside the queen's purse. Suvani was monstrous, cruel, and whimsical, but far from illogical--if anything, the Queen was hyperlogical, following through on ideas regardless of the consequences for herself or her kingdom. No, more likely Suvani knew more about Michel than Michel knew herself; having had a magic mirror and spies throughout Alsantia, she no doubt knew particulars of Michel's birth and how the far-from-friendly Ghulmarquean dictator had decided to join the others' much more liberal parents in sending a child to Earth.
This blow definitely felt aimed at Michel. If an unintended consequence of the dragon's battle with the sphinx, how could it hurt so much? If her ears rang, burned, and roared, imagining her heroic monster's uneven fight added heartache to her pains, and as she raised herself to her knees, her head swam, her stomach rolled, but her mind was already thrown from this strange-smelling aircraft and halfway down the hill.
"What are you doing? Sit down." Aito's faraway murmur no longer sounded underwater, although it was submerged in concern and care.
She must look a fright, her gown tattered, drenched, and singed.
"Lucien!" Michel's voice sounded like it scratched at a locked door, as if her strength had clawed its way back. "Where's the door?"
"I'm holding it for Akachi." When she felt her way along cold metal toward his faroff voice, it rose to a high pitch, jingling at the steady ringing of her ears "You're not going out there! Even if it was a smart thing to do, we're taking off any moment."
"If not for her, I'd still be a mouse, or dead. Move, Lucien."
"I won't!"
"You'll wait for Akachi, but not the sphinx?"
"I would hope you would want to wait for Akachi! She's your best friend!"
Michel's eyes stung, pricked by new tears. These hot tears burned a wet trail down damp cheeks. Her hands shook and her heart pounded as she grabbed Lucien's arm. "Are you in my way to protect or scold me, Lucien? I still know my friends. Do you?"
"What could you do? That's a dragon, Michel!"
"Exactly what the sphinx is doing--anything I can!"
As her rung ears emerged from their jingling fog, footsteps clanked behind Lucien, who stumbled two steps, nearly flopping on Michel, but when another hand clasped her other arm,
he steadied himself.
"Akachi's here, Adjia!" Lucien called out.
"I see that. Jgorga, the door." The Architect's voice rose to a scathing tone. "The door!"
"I have it." It was Aito. The aircraft door clapped shut.
"I'm sorry, Adjia," grumbled Jgorga.
"How can you sleep! As battling monsters flatten the woods, you take a nap!"
"I was thinking."
"Pfaugh." The Architect spat, and the aircraft lurched, sending, Michel, Lucien, and Akachi into a heap, her arms snagged by theirs, and her forehead smacking another's, Lucien's from the sharp cry.
Then the floor tilted, and they slid, slamming into the wall. When it tilted more, their heap tipped onto the wall, now the floor of the upended aircraft.
"Adjia!" shouted Jgorga. From the creaking and scuffle at the front, Michel could only imagine how the tilted vehicle was affecting its pilots.
"She's got us," gasped Adjia.
"She's snatched us with her tail," said Lucien.
Michel quailed inside, for if the dragon had turned to them, what had happened to the sphinx?
As if reading her mind, Lucien continued, "your friend is putting up a fight, Michel."
"Her friend?" Akachi sounded less indignant than amused.
Michel ignored Akachi. "Tell me!"
"The sphinx has clutched the small of Suvani's back," said Lucien. "However Suvani flails her wings and claws, or turns her head to breathe fiery blasts, she can't get at the sphinx."
Michel's memory was overwhelmed with the vastness of the sphinx, not only how Michel the mouse had roamed her fur, but how Michel the girl had snuggled there, shifting, as the mood struck her, from one snug crevice to another, even in flight, sometimes sleeping between the sphinx's wings, which was not unlike being at the eye of a storm, a zone of calm at the center of her wing beats, and other times finding a niche along her haunches or shoulders. There was so much to the sphinx that it boggled her mind to imagine that huge beast clutching the small of the dragon's back. She had been about to charge headlong into a beast that colossal! The sphinx was braving that behemoth! Having never wrapped her head around the immensity of the sphinx, she struggled to believe that vast creature was like a lapdog to the transformed queen.
They were talking about the fight like spectators, as if they had no skin in the game. Couldn't they see their fate depended on the sphinx winning? Why were they so calm? Couldn't they feel the aircraft wobbling, gripped by the dragon's tail? Michel's stomach swam here and there as they bobbed to and fro.
"Lucien," said Adjia. "You must lead the others. Go now, while you still can, and head for Oji."
"It's a ten foot drop! And what about you? What about Ustragon?"
"We have a chance, if we can get free. As for the drop, it's not as long as a dragon's teeth."
"We'll lower ourselves first." When no one answered, she ground her teeth and blasted a sigh through her nose as she crawled toward the crashing and crunching monster battle, the foul, hot air gusts of Suvani's bloodcurdling growls, the sulfurous stench also curdling Michel well past the brink of nausea, so that queasiness mingled with vertigo as she clutched the rim of the upended door and lowered herself through the pit it had become. While dangling over the unseen drop felt second nature to Michel--for reaching into the void described every day in her dark world--her forearms shook as she prepared herself for the fall, hearing their sharp intakes of unbelieving and scoffing breaths.
"All of you shown up by a blind dictator." Adjia snorted. "I thought Lucien would be first."
"Take it back," hollered Akachi.
Just as her fingers twinged like rubber ready to snap, a hand clasped one wrist, a paw gripped the other, and she dangled there, at arm's length. "Don't stop me! You heard the Architect!"
"You're not thinking," said Lucien.
"Even if you were, escape is far from your mind," agreed Jgorga. "Why hurtle yourself down, when we can lower you another two feet and aim you in the right direction."
"Michel." Akachi's worried tones reminded Michel of her old friend. But not quite. In place of her calm strength was cold fear and anger. "The sphinx can take care of herself."
"And I can't?" Michel brooded. If Akachi was not out of reach, she might have been paid back for the punch, for Michel had never been so angry at her friend. Even after being struck, she had been stunned, incredulous and disbelieving, but not mad, not with most of her in agreement with Akachi.
She knew she had been awful in Ghulmarque, having nodded her head to her mother's cruelty and oppression for the sake of luxury and privilege. But now? Seeing Akachi without a single care for their outmatched champion? Fearing only her own loneliness and loss, and not any harm that should come to Michel?
"Of course you can! Look at you! The first to hurtle yourself into the abyss!"
Michel's cheeks burned, but her frown twisted from anxiety and exertion. "Let me go!"
"That's what we're doing," said Jgorga. "When we let go, get on your feet immediately and run as fast as you can. Faster than you can."
"Let me down next," said Akachi. "I'll go with her."
"Of course," said Lucien.
"Then Lucien and Aito," said Jgorga. "And I'll be right behind you."
"Be careful, Jgorga," said Michel.
"Of course. Why wouldn't I?" Having taking the brunt of everything for far too long, Jgorga buried notes of exhaustion and wounded pride beneath bravado and humor. It was hard enough being a protector, but Jgorga had not only shepherded them with scarcely any thought for himself, but managed to tolerate Conrad, which made Jgorga a hero in her book. Michel's unrequited feelings for petting and cuddling Oji dissolved in a sudden surge of sympathy, as well as an instantly frustrated desire to hug Jgorga. Dangling in their grip, she was unable to embrace him, but she managed what she hoped was a warm smile.
"I'm ready! Let me down!"
"Okay. One." As Lucien counted down, the others' anxious chatter dropped to a hush. "Two. Three."
Steamy air swallowed Michel like a cloud on fire; having flown through clouds sphinx-back,
she had been smacked by air before, air so wet the wetness crept into her gown and hair layer by layer.
This seething dragon vapor was ten times steamier, but a hundred times hotter. When she landed on her feet, she stumbled to her knees, jumped up, and broke into a sprint, one moment soaked, and the next bone dry, as the air she sucked in burned all the way down, meeting the pain springing from her throbbing feet as her skin chaffed and burned, and her guts churned like a storm.
"Michel!" Akachi had caught up. What she said next was blasted to bits by the shattering screech of trumpets.
Michel's question was dissolved by crushing, pounding drums, and the thunderous stomp of marching and hooves. Whose troops charged, roared, and trumpeted? Were they being stampeded or rescued? She screamed again at Akachi, hollering until her lungs hurt, but was powerless to hear herself, as if the world had dissolved into tumultuous noise. Sound, her most reliable sense, had devolved to chaos. Was she going deaf, she agonized in sheer horror, and screamed until her face ached, shrieking non-stop until her hand was caught up, seized in a hot, sharp grip that tore her feet from the ground straight up, skyward.
A sharp grip? A ropy stream of slime slid down her arm, burning as it traced a path. Her shock now stripped away by the harsh blast of ascending wind, her feet kicking hard, and her body twisting,
bringing her weight to bear cruelly on her elbow, burned, jammed, and wedged in two hot columns. The surface she kicked off slithered and curled against her fraying gown, making her skin creep,
and her nose wrinkled at the stench, which flowed like smog. When she struck at the columns,
the heel of her hand slipped on the slick surface. What was that oozing, sticky stuff?
It came to her in a flash. She dangled from the dragon's maw, her forearm snagged in titanic fangs slick with drool, now likely a thousand feet in the air. Suvani had singled her out again for her cruel attentions, even during a battle royale with the sphinx.
"What monster does not hunger for my heart!" Michel screamed. They had devoured her in turn: the Elderliches, the Marquesa, and Suvani, who had played cat and mouse with her until Michel felt shrunk smaller than the remaining shred of her self-respect. Even Akachi had taken a piece of her;
even Oji's icy indifference had left cold prints on her heart.
"There is no beast worthy to taste the heart of a sphinx." Shock after shock slashed home:
hitting first and hardest was the sphinx, deigning to let her words thump hard towards a period, not lilt on the hook of a question mark, as if her human head had, in that moment, mastered her savage half,
and brought herself down to earth; then claws slashed down, so near Michel that fur brushed her pinched forearm, tearing a scream from the dragon's mangled mouth and shattered teeth; a shard of tooth flew into Michel's shoulder, making a large patch of wetness that even a dragon's scalding scream couldn't quite dry, though her gown stuck immediately and painfully to the wound; Michel dropped like a stone, her fluttering gown coming off in streaming shreds as she hurtled toward the crushing chaos of the troops, until she feared the drowning noise more than the ground, for she could feel the crush of noise, but only imagine the ground rushing towards her; the sphinx had called her a sphinx, one of her own, causing a burst of feeling to well up in Michel, who had long had no outlet without Akachi, then was dammed up when Akachi arrived, hands balled up like stones, Michel's embrace rebuffed by a smack in the face. When the sphinx caught her and lowered her gently to the ground, she was already overwhelmed by being taken to the sphinx's heart, and her safety registered only as a fact, not a feeling. She had already been rescued in the most important way. The sphinx was the first friend she had found on her own.
When the sphinx folded Michel in her wings, it muffled the crushing din, so she could hear the sphinx's bittersweet tone. "Steel yourself, young sphinx. You may not like what you find ahead. Humans seldom like finding what they left behind." Michel could care less what the sphinx meant by these cryptic sentences, being thunderstruck by the fact that they were sentences. All those periods! Michel's heart skipped a beat as she caressed the sphinx's soft underbelly fur, finding singed patches,
as well as longer, raggedy and bloody trails drawn by fangs and talons. Had her sphinx broken in battle? Was compassion so unnatural to a sphinx that when she accepted Michel as one of her own,
she had also accepted part of Michel?
The sphinx laughed. "Do not get used to this manner of speaking, little sphinx. I have received an answer." Her voice raised to a reverential tone.
"An answer?"
"One of our mysteries."
"What was the question?"
"Not a question. A riddle." When the sphinx cuffed her on the back of the head, a blow that might have been mild to a sphinx cub sent Michel stumbling, and she windmilled her arms to keep her footing. "And the riddle was for me, not for you."
"Can't you tell me the answer?"
"I don't see why not, seeing that it's right in front of me." The sphinx fell silent, then nudged Michel forward.
"It's right in front of us?" Michel was baffled, and reached out with both hands, but only air passed through her fingers, cool air only tainted with the smoldering stench of dragon.
The sphinx's chuckle died in a growl. "We must be quick. Suvani's batted off, but she'll come once she gathers her wits. And King Oji's talking twits and armored louts won't be much protection,
young sphinx. One dragon is worth nine armies."
"Then the answer's this way?" Ignoring every word, Michel walked where the sphinx had nudged her, downhill, into the roaring, the shouting, and the clash of steel.
"You're the answer, young sphinx," growled the sphinx. "But our help is needed."
"Don't take this the wrong way," said Michel. "But I like you better this way."
"Yes, certainty is very becoming, and also a good look on you. But don't think many questions and many riddles mean many doubts--far from it. It is humans who are double-minded and sphinxes who are steadfast. One must know in order to ask."
"I ask questions when I have no idea."
"That's a laugh. You know to ask the question. That's the most important and fundamental knowledge there is. A question shows you have already planted the seed of the idea. In the question, the idea blooms." As the sphinx stopped, the brouhaha raged below as the army marched near. "Here we are. Be quick, for your friends' sakes." The noise had so thickened around Michel that it sounded like they came in from every direction.
While dragon steam and smoke trailed behind them, the air she faced was cooler, a bracing blast of venting air tingling and tinged with the faint aromas of oil, grease, and metal. Walking with one hand forward, her hand touched cold steel, bent and dimpled, but as she raced ahead, her fingers scraping the cold metal, she found it was still whole. Should the wreck be so cold?
"What happened?"
"What lies behind Suvani, yet far flung these Architects to a perilous here and now?" Her friend was reverting back to her sphinx mind.
"A dragon's tail. Oh no." Having one pest clutched in her tail, she had hurtled them in spite when the larger nuisance fled. "Why didn't you catch it?"
The sphinx scowled. "What beast would care for the young sphinx should I have flown to meet Suvani's missile?" Still on the verge of prose and puzzle, Michel pieced together more of what had happened. Hoping to kill two birds with one stone, Suvani had hurtled the aircraft at the sphinx,
not only meaning to brain the sphinx, but kill the Architects, which would have had a sad, demoralizing effect on Oji and his armies. When the sphinx had dodged, the Architects had crashed here. Either the aircraft was of strong construction, or Adjia had crash landed, but landing in one piece did not necessarily mean the Architects had survived. As Michel's hands found the doorway she dropped through not ten minutes ago, she paused in trepidation and turned to the sphinx.
The sphinx growled. "Unless you would have me crack its shell, it must be you, young sphinx. Shellfish or shell-bird, I am reluctant to add this machine to my diet."
Having gotten a grip on her balled-up fears--fear of falling, fear of being charred to a crisp,
fear of being eaten by a dragon, fear of abandonment by the death or disappointment of her friends, and fear of entering an aircraft which might have become a tomb--Michel's knees had just stopped shaking when the ground shook underfoot. Even though she drew in slow, deep breaths, lacing her fingers at her waist, her legs still shook. Although she felt calm and ready for anything, she couldn't stop shaking. Then stamping hooves rose over her snarling pulse and heartbeat, then roars, snarls, and neighs.
"Come away, my Marchioness. Slowly, if you please." The speaker sounded young,
his voice hard but querulous, raised to a heated pitch as if anticipating a fight. Hadn't he called her Marchioness? Didn't he know she was blind? If he knew her, why expect her to put up a fight?
Then she saw through his false, shaking bravado. This was a strong man unaccustomed to fear.
"She won't hurt you," she said. "Not if you're here to help. Not that she's gentle, but she is my friend."
"While this is my first sphinx, legend calls them the wisest beasts of Alsantia. They lie to their prey, to trick them into their riddling mouths."
"You don't know her." During this pensive exchange, the sphinx was silent. Why wasn't she speaking her mind? While no open book, the sphinx was not one to hold back the riddles burning in her mind. Was she still affected by what she thought of as Michel's transformation? If Michel had been transfigured to an enigmatic, mystical answer, why did she feel the same?
"And you do?" His scornful voice was becoming familiar. "How can you know that befogged, obfuscating beast? For that matter, how can you know anyone? We do as the powers of this world demand. Trust, friendship, and even knowing someone, are all polite fictions."
"Then you don't know me. You don't even care to know."
"The Marchioness of Ghulmarque?" At his cruel, unmistakable laugh, her heart skipped a beat,
and her feet fumbled over each other as she backed into warm, rumbling fur. "You would prefer its riddles to our common history. Oh yes, we share a history, Marchioness."
"Her riddles." Where had she found the strength to raise this scathing tone in the face of this human behemoth, Vemulus, Prince of Alsantia? "So you've resolved your differences?"
"No, I still clutch all my differences. In fact, I claw to myself everything that makes me different. If you mean Suvani, we have an agreement. She's not ready to kill me, and I'm not ready to die." Vemulus sighed. "Don't make me ask again. Come away, little Marchioness."
As the sphinx growled, Michel heard the crunch of crouching muscles, felt the air chill as her deep shade slid over Michel, and was glad to have the sphinx for her shield. "What fool takes a fledgling from under wing?"
"Stand down, beast!" Vemulus shouted imperiously.
"Who will make me?"
"She is no kin of yours."
"Who is she to you? Who are you to her?" When the sphinx's stomach growled and...gurgled...
the hairs on Michel's forearms stood so straight, her goosebumps itched like bug bites. She stifled her urges to scratch, then to cover her ears, dreading to hear whatever followed, but she couldn't help herself--she couldn't miss a single word of the sphinx.
"I care not whether she lives or dies, but she belongs to Queen Suvani."
"Who dares reach under my paw?" The sphinx roared. "What mongrel queen would dare gobble up my young?"
There was a long pause. The horses nickered, whinnied, and stamped the ground, and their riders hissed to each other.
"Ready yourselves," Vemulus said.
Michel buried herself in thick fur, then climbed the rippling muscles, which were so distended from their crouch that she climbed them like stairs.
"Who is ready for what waits for all?"
When the sphinx lunged, Michel's chin smacked down on the sphinx's shoulderblade, her teeth rattled, and her head swam, dizzy from the pain.
"Stand your--auggg!" Vemulus's bloodcurdling shrieks were scarcely human, but the outraged howls of a predator slashed to bloody meat, while the horses whinnied at a high pitch, and seemed more human in their honest fear than their hollering and bellowing riders, some of whim retched in their clattering retreat.
"Will you think me rude if I don't save you some?" The sphinx groaned in delight as she chomped and slurped. "Or have you forgot what it means to be human?"
Michel shrank in her skin. All thought of playing along faded as she tried to grasp a steady thought in her shivering fear: every time she brought the facts in focus, they squirreled around, so that she couldn't quite stay in the moment, but kept scurrying a moment ahead, hoping to outrace the horror.
When the sphinx's words froze her in the moment, the enormity of Vemulus's fate swelled inside until she puked, a thin stream of mostly bile that stung her hands and wet the sphinx's back.
"I'm sorry."
"Who would not be sickened by such pompous food?" The sphinx grumbled. "Why must I suffer a taste for fools?"
Then there was more roaring, snarling, and stomping, as well as the booming tread and trumpeting of elephants.
"What have you done?" It was Oji. Not the kitten's tinny mew, but the deep, rumbling bass of the shadowlion.
"I'm fine," Michel said. "No. I'm not. But I'm alive, thanks to her."
The sphinx purred, an electric trill that shivered through Michel. "What dies that does not get swallowed by the world? What lives that has not crawled from a hole?" When the sphinx snorted,
Michel jumped in her skin. "What lives or dies that does not kick and squall in blood?"
Michel had never breathed so freely and easily. She knew she should be more frightened, having dangled from a dragon's drooling fangs and eavesdropped on the meaty fate of Vemulus. Even a brave man would run from these cryptic questions. But through fear, Michel felt her transfiguration. She had sublimated her terror until its tingle thrilled head to toe. All of her was unknown, a nexus of potentialities and potencies that nested in her small body. The Answer was the root of her being, the truth of her self. And since she had come to Alsantia, only one person had known to ask the right questions and find her true path. "Have I upset you?"
"Why thank me, when you have survived?"
"We all outlive our own designs," said Oji. "As we outgrow our pasts, our purposes flower into the people we have become. Haven't you outgrown this monster, Michel?"
Michel felt like she had been slapped. "She's no monster! She's my friend." Even as she said it, Michel felt herself clinging to the sphinx. Even the sphinx had become confused, preening her like its own cub.
"Will the landless king try to take my young sphinx?" The sphinx sounded more puzzled than distraught as she paced the ground. "Who witnessed the beginning of your reign? Who knows the auspices of your crown?"
"I am grateful, sphinx. You will always have a place with my people."
"What cat takes its pride for a people? What cat does not know what it is?"
"I know my place, sphinx. Do you know yours?"
"What eats a prince and still has room for a king?"
"Oji." Michel calmed her voice as best as she could. "Why pick a fight with my rescuer?"
"Michel, squabbling is what a sphinx does. Don't think me ungrateful, but a sphinx's mind is only more claws, made for tearing, rending, and playing with her food."
"What question does not murder a thought in bearing new wisdom?" As the sphinx purred contented, Michel couldn't help thinking of the beast's gruesome conflation of life and death. Was a sphinx's life only a single question, stretched from life to death? She glimpsed the full circle of the sphinx: her primal purpose to perpetuate the mystery of existence.
Having embraced the enigma, Michel had never felt so free. If Oji did not approve, his mind was but an arrow, cutting a high but narrow path. She set her teeth. "What heart has room for a king's pride," she growled, drawing in a rough and roaring breath that felt full of fire. As she laid her chin on the sphinx--her coat now smelling of sulfur, smoke, and steam, as if more machine than monster--an enormous purr quivered all the way down to her feet. As it quickened her whole body, Michel felt herself blinking, in and out, from girl to sphinx, from answer to question. It was like she had become an enormous eye, its blinking snapping up the fears of this world, then opening to let in the multiverse.
From this bird's eye view, her blindness was just one lie squirming among many. It was too much to see, too many wriggling possibilities.
"What hears the mystery?" asked the sphinx.
"Who am I?" As Michel clung to the fringe where fur and feathers met, dreaming and living mingled. She felt herself lying on the cusp of all worlds.
"What is a sphinx?"
"What is...?" It was like a shadow was drawn across the next word. Something so ineffable that Michel's struggle to name it died in a whisper which swelled to a purr.
"Michel," Oji called. "Come with me. I can see the end of this war."
"Don't go!" It was Akachi. Gone was her disdain and scorn, as her voice shook with forlorn pride.
"Even enchantment dies, Michel." Adjia's voice was soft but stern. "The mystery of the sphinx will consume you." Even in Michel's cloudy mind, relief registered--the Architect had lived. But where was Ustragon? Where were Lucien and Aito?
As the sphinx's wings snapped, whinnying clip-clops and hollering stomps fell away, then the sphinx's back flexed and throbbed, and Michel's drowsy purr died in the dizzy heights.