The Irreversible Reckoning

  ***

  “You’ll be okay?” James asked Brynna as he unlocked Adam’s cell door.

  “With Adam? With my husband? I think I will be just fine, James.”

  “No, not with Adam! Just in general.”

  “I am sure I will be just fine ‘in general,’ as well.” She stood on her tiptoes to kiss him, and I looked away when he wrapped her up in his arms and kissed her back. I was trying to guess the age difference between them, and I surmised that it was at the very least twenty years. James was handsome, to be sure; he was rugged and manly with his goatee and very light beard, and with his tousled yet still styled hair. But he was old, at least forty-five. Amazingly good-looking, but old. She was young, and her body was trim and toned, and she was so beautiful. How had their relationship ever started, and how had it endured for so long?

  I didn’t know what the King looked like, but I was sure that he was not as old as James, at least not physically. Literally, he was thousands of years old, but physically, he was more than likely younger, though certainly not as young as Brynna.

  “Alright.” James kissed her forehead and opened the door for us, “I’ll come back to get you in a little bit.” He kissed her forehead again, “I love you.”

  “I love you.”

  It was still weird to see them say it to each other, when my first impression of them had led me to believe that they hated each other.

  The door opened, and we heard the shower running. The door closed, and I heard the deadbolt lock.

  “Sit over there.” She pointed to the daybed, and even though I resented being ordered around by her, I did not want to be standing because I was feeling quite anxious, and feeling quite anxious made me quite dizzy. And besides, sitting on the daybed in the little nook by the window gave me the perfect vantage point to take in the whole room.

  She opened the door to the bathroom, and a huge outpouring of steam knocked her back a step.

  “Baby, it’s me.” She said, and I heard him exclaim in surprise just before she closed the door.

  The room was rather large, and everything in it was ornate and intricate. The red covering on the bed was sewn through with an elaborate gold design, and the polished mahogany of the bed posts was twisted into spirals in the middle and carved through with detailed swirls up and down the rest of it. The floor was shined hardwood, and the rug covering it was also red with a golden pattern sewn into it with delicate threat. The daybed I was sitting on was directly beside a stained glass window with a mosaic of a white-bearded old man on it; a taunt, I speculated, like they were telling him that he would be there until he was, at least emotionally, very old and frail.

  “What?!” I heard him exclaim, because the shower had turned off.

  “I am as shocked as you are.”

  “You told me nothing of this.” He told her irritably, “You never said that you even suspected…”

  “I did not want to believe it.”

  “She told you her parents were Rachel and Tom DiAngelo?”

  “Yes, but she looked so much like Rachel, I wondered if perhaps they had had another child. Surely, the one I had given her would bear some resemblance to me, and upon looking at this girl, I see that her eyes are very similar to mine, but as you recall, Rachel had blue eyes, as well.”

  “Brynna…” He said, but he did not continue. And yet in response, she said, “I know.”

  I didn’t know. I had no idea what he had started to say but had stopped before he said it. It didn’t matter. I just wanted him to come out so we could get our meeting over with.

  “Can you get me some clothes, please?” He asked her, and I heard her kiss him, or him kiss her, before the door opened. She pulled open drawers, pulling out various items, which she then brought to him. After a minute or two, they both came out of the bathroom, and I saw for the first time the former King of all Purissimus, the man they proclaimed was my birth father.

  He was even older than James! He was older, and taller, towering over her by at least a foot. He was also very handsome, so I could say about her that though she seemed to have an affinity only for men who were old enough to be her father, she certainly did not find ugly ones. But it was his eyes that disarmed me most; they were so green that they almost seemed to glow, in the same way that hers were so blue that they seemed to crackle. His reminded me of sea-glass that my father had brought me from a town built right onto the beach, hers reminded me of a shined sapphire he had brought me from the mines of another far away city.

  For a moment, I wondered why I was not more attractive, having two such stunning birth parents, but then I realized how very insulting that was to my mother and father, who had been beautiful in their own right, and I wanted to cry.

  He sat down on the end of the bed, looking at me, and for some reason, despite the intensity of his gaze, I did not shrink away from it. I was able to look back almost easily. The intensity seemed to be something that he could not control, and in this case, I knew that he was not trying to intimidate me.

  “You did not see this resemblance?” He asked his wife, somewhat incredulously, somewhat crossly.

  “I told you that I did not want to believe it, and it is only the eyes, Adam. Everything else, she looks just like Rachel.”

  “Yes, but the eyes are a glaring clue, Brynna.”

  “What difference does it make now?!” She snapped at him as she withdrew a cigarette from the case that was sitting on his mantle. She walked over to sit beside him, and he gently took the lighter from her hand and lit her cigarette for her.

  “Thank you, Moody McNasty.” She told him, and despite himself, he laughed softly.

  “You are welcome.” He said, and for a moment, they looked at each other, glowing blue meeting glowing green, both fighting the urge to grin. Her face broke into a full beam first, the fullest smile I had ever seen on her face. He laughed again and kissed her.

  “You lose.” He said.

  “I always do.”

  He kissed her again, and turned to look at me.

  “If I were you,” He said, “I would want to know how it occurred.”

  I was silent, because he was right, but I did not want him to know that he was right. Instead of allowing the silence to continue, he kept talking in an even tone.

  “You do not want to believe it, but you do believe it. I can see that in your heart.”

  I crossed my arms over my chest, and Brynna laughed, breaking the solemn mood in the room.

  “For me, they cover their ears. For you, their chests.” She said.

  “Sweetheart,” Adam replied gently, “Let us try to keep the mood…”

  “Somber?” She asked, “Solemn? Why? This is so ridiculous. She loves her parents. She loves Rachel and Tom even though they are gone. So what difference does it make that we are her parents?” She looked at me, “I think it is a disservice to you to tell you how you came to be, when you believe right now that you are the product of a natural biological process that occurred between your mother and father, meaning…”

  “I know what you mean!” I snapped at her, “And yes, that is how I thought that I was born, because how could I ever have predicted that there was anything more to it than that!? I look just like her, like you said!”

  “And is it a disservice to you?” She asked, “To tell you the truth?”

  “No!” I snapped as tears rushed into my eyes, “I want to know.”

  “Even though it will prove that your entire life has been a lie?”

  “Yes. Because despite how you seem to have made lying your hobby…”

  “I don’t recall lying. Oh!” She smiled almost genuinely, “You mean about James. Yes, in that case, I was lying.”

  “You lied about him. You lied about where the people you have killed to protect him and you go. You lied to the Warden.”

  “I assure you that the Lord of War and I have an understanding in which we are almost brutally honest with one another, though surely my relationship with hi
m is none of your business.”

  I hated myself for noticing it, but there was an undeniable air of regality about her. Her back was straight, her legs were crossed, her hand was wrapped under Adam’s arm so that her fingers could link with his, and her long auburn hair was pulled to one side of her head where it draped in beautiful waves down her shoulder. Her intricate sentences were spoken slowly so that whoever was listening would not miss a single word. In that determined slowness of her speech, mixed with that regality, there was an icy condescension that could not be ignored. She was speaking slowly and calculatedly because others around her could not possibly keep up, because they were her intellectual inferiors. All of this not only appeared completely natural (which made me believe that it was), but it appeared comfortable. There was no stiffness, or even primness. There was propriety, but it was relaxed somehow. Perhaps it was because of her confidence. Perhaps she had always been fit to be queen, even before she had come to this world.

  Her stance was mirrored in her partner, in the great King himself. Perhaps it was learned from him, but no, she looked even more natural there than he did. Plus, from what I could gather, their formal relationship had begun after they were imprisoned. She became Queen when he was no longer King. To my people, the Old Spirits, they were nothing. They were spooky stories that some particularly pious parents told their children. But to their people, they would always be the First King and Queen of Purissimus.

  And I was sitting across from them, hearing from their lips that they were my parents. My mother and my father were fakes. Or something. I could not be sure. I remembered how I had always thought how wonderful it would be if I turned out to be a princess. As someone would tell me many years later in casual conversation, that fantasy ran wild on Earth. New parents would pluck a little girl from her mundane life and whisk her away to a life of royalty, where she would be waited on hand and foot by many servants and want for nothing. One day, she would marry a handsome prince. I never could have felt that way, because, for one thing, I had no interest in finding a prince, but more importantly, I loved my parents so much, and would never want them to be replaced with anyone else, even if those other people were royals, which, coincidentally, they had turned out to be. My parents had been perfect, and I had loved them tremendously. I had wanted to be a princess because they wore beautiful clothes and got ponies and birthday cake whenever they wanted, or at least that’s what my dad had always said. But now that I was actually a de facto princess, I wondered how, even with ponies and unlimited birthday cake, I had ever wanted it before.

  “My mom and dad were kind.” I told them, “They were so good.”

  “Yes. They were.” She agreed, “Rachel and I were the very best of friends. When it became apparent that I was going to lose you, and especially when it became apparent that they were going to release her and Tom, I knew that there was no better person in the world to care for you. So we made a trade.”

  “That’s impossible.”

  “Nothing is impossible. Not for me.”

  “So, what did you do? Hmm? I was bleeding out of you, and what? You collected me in a turkey baster and squirted me inside of her?”

  It was so dirty. And so cruel. I cringed after I said it, but she merely smiled.

  “It never got to the bleeding. Well, not in that way, anyway. I will not discuss how I got into the state where my womb was not fit to support your life, but I will tell you that your mother had a husband before Tom. It was the husband she had chosen.”

  “Joe.”

  “Yes. She mentioned him. Did she tell you what happened to him?”

  “No. She would never say.”

  “Then clearly she did not want you to know. Therefore, I won’t tell you, either. She came here with Joe, and they tried to have a baby for many years, but she could not conceive. I had begun to worry; even though it is exceedingly difficult to conceive on this planet, it is not impossible. I was afraid that she was like me. She just could not do it. But after it became apparent that I was going to lose you, I called for her, and I told myself that you could be saved, that you could be put into her. So I put one hand on my belly, and I extracted you. Your life. A tiny, weak light that could still blind anyone who was not meant to look upon it.”

  “This is crazy.”

  It sounded crazy, but it wasn’t crazy. Inherently, deep down in my bones, into my soul, I knew that it was true. That it was possible. That life could be seen in one’s hands as a light, that it could be transferred.

  “It is most certainly not crazy.” Brynna told me before continuing, “After I had extracted you, I touched her belly, and you were given away.”

  “Not willingly.” Adam interjected, “We never would have given you away were it not for Brynna’s injury.”

  “What injury?”

  “We will not discuss it.” She answered, immediately and very curtly.

  “We wanted you more than anything else in the world, Grace. We wanted to give her daughter and my son a sister. We wanted to bring the child we had made together into the world. But there was no possibility. You would have died had she not acted. I told her she was merely grief-stricken, that you had already been lost, but she felt you, and she saved you.”

  “So, should I say ‘thank you?’” I asked snidely.

  “No…” Adam began.

  “That would probably be polite.” She interrupted him, her blue eyes suddenly piercing me even more sharply, “Considering I could have let you die but instead, I found a sufficient substitute. I did not just throw your life-force into the first Old Spirit nurse who came to prod me with needles.”

  “Brynna.” Adam said firmly.

  “I gave you to a trusted friend.” She continued lightly, “To my greatest friend. Perhaps you do not have to say ‘thank you’ but you should lose that snide, ungrateful tone.”

  “Brynna!”

  “You are not my mother.” I snapped at her as tears welled in my eyes at the harshness of her words which, somehow, had been spoken merely in a sharp tone, but not in a completely hostile one. “And you are not my father.”

  “Grace…” He started to say gently.

  “No! I don’t want to hear anymore.”

  “But I have not even gotten to the fact that your father was married before your mother!”

  “Stop it!” I cried, as the tears began to rush down my face.

  “I attended that wedding. Daddy here officiated. And Commander Maxwell was best man. They were madly in love, your dad and his other half. In fact,” I laughed softly, “I can promise you that with his dying breath, Tom said this first spouse’s name and not Rachel’s, and Rachel said Joe’s name and not Tom’s.”

  “Brynna, stop it now.” Adam told her, a little more harshly.

  The tears were falling harder, and I was beginning to sob out loud.

  “Oh, if I did not know it was true that you are mine, I would seriously doubt it now.” She told me with a very strong hint of disgust in her voice, “I never exhibit this weakness, especially not in front of people I barely know. You should be thanking your lucky stars that you are our daughter, because now, no one will grab you in a dark corridor of the ship, hold you against the wall, and…”

  “Brynna, that’s enough!” Adam bellowed, and I thought I heard something rattling in the room, but it was more than likely just my imagination. I had jumped terribly when he had shouted, and so I had imagined that the sound had been powerful enough to rattle the metal objects in the room. When a metal tin fell off of the fireplace mantle, though, I realized that I had not imagined the raw power of his shout.

  She was up, replacing the tin on the mantle, and he walked to her quickly. For a moment, I feared that he would strike her, but instead, he took her face in both hands gently and kissed her.

  “Not now.” She snapped at him, “Do not kiss me now, because I will not look weak in front of her.”

  “She did not mean what she said.”

  “I do not care if she meant it o
r not. If anyone else had said such a thing to me, I would cut her throat.”

  “I know.”

  I was still crying, almost howling with sobs, because though I did not want to believe it, I did believe it. I believed every word, because it was fact. It was reality. There was no fighting it. Still, I listened to them talking quietly, though they thought that I could not hear.

  She murmured something to him, both of her hands grasping his arms. He lowered his head so that his ear was closer to her mouth, and she said it again. He looked down at her legs, which were trembling, and then kissed her lips so gently that she turned to jelly in his arms. Her body sunk into his, and he held her, supporting her small frame against his huge, muscular one.

  “There is none, sweetheart.”

  “No, I am bleeding, I can feel it.”

  “No.” He whispered, kissing her head over and over again, “You are just fine, my love.”

  She nodded, and when I began to calm down, she reluctantly pulled away from him.

  “I am sorry for shouting at you.” He told her, and she kissed him then.

  “It is alright.”

  “You had every right to be angry, but you cannot treat her this way. I know that this is hard, but you must try to be civil.”

  “She is not capable of being civil…” She began, but he cut her off.

  “And you.” He looked at me, and spoke calmly but sternly, “You do not know anything about her but what she has shown you. Everyone plays a role out there, Grace, even you.”

  “I do not play a role …”

  “Have you been keeping what you truly are hidden? Have you suppressed an urge to fight back against some injustice the guards perpetrated against someone out there? Did you bite your tongue when someone said something vulgar to you, or threatened your life?”

  I did not answer, but that was enough of an affirmation.

  “You play the role of the Wallflower, Grace.” Brynna told me, and her voice was even but not gentle. Still, that tone was a vast improvement, so when I spoke back to her, I did so in a tone that matched hers.

  “The Wallflower?”

  “Over our years here, I have relayed to Adam all that occurs outside of this room, and together, we have created the roles of all people who grace these halls with their corruptive presences. You have the Schemers. They think that their prolonged existence is due to some inherent ability, like vast intelligence or sly craftiness. In reality, though, they have no inherent ability nor certifiable skill; they are simply little Froufrou dogs humping the leg of a Rottweiler.”

  “Oh, do not refer to Mary Bachum as a Rottweiler.”

  “It is not just Mary Bachum, sweetheart.”

  “Yes, but it is mainly Mary Bachum.”

  “Mary Bachum is here.” I said, “Why does she work here?”

  They both chuckled softly at some inside joke.

  “What?” I asked, somewhat irritably.

  “Well, she must hide that hideously scarred face somewhere, mustn’t she?” Adam asked.

  “She passes everyone through the front door. Did she proclaim her undying spiritual love for you?” Brynna asked, placing her hands over her heart.

  “Yes!”

  “And what did you say?”

  “Nothing, but I wanted to say a lot.”

  “See? You are a Wallflower.”

  “Well, I had just gotten here, and I was scared, and I didn’t know what she would do if…”

  “There is no dishonor in it.” Adam assured me. “Trust me, it is smart. Being a Wallflower makes you smarter than the Schemers, because though they sniff up Mary Bachum’s bum, pardon my crassness, and whisper in her ear, they are known to be… What is that word you use, my dear?”

  “Snitches.”

  “They are known to be snitches, and… What is that saying again, my dear?”

  “‘Snitches get stitches.’ A silly old Earthean expression of unknown origin.” She replied, “Here, it’s more like ‘snitches get thrown over the railing into the icy ocean waves or shivved in the shower,’ but that is no fun because it doesn’t rhyme.”

  I shuddered slightly and hoped that they did not notice. Though I was having an almost perfectly amicable conversation with them up until that point, the way that they so blithely referred to their murderous exploits made me uneasy, as it would for most people. They had been locked away for twenty-three years, and a part of me thought that perhaps their imprisonment was best for all. Clearly, they had no reservations about taking a life, and obviously, that was indicative of some mental instability not to mention a lack of morality. If they were out in the world, would they kill as they saw fit even if, say, the only offense of their victim was that he had offended their pride?

  “I have never killed anyone for insulting me, Grace, and neither has he.” She said, and I gasped and covered my ears, “Darling, that really does nothing.” I lowered my hands from my ears, crossed my arms over my chest, and hunched my shoulders, taking my stance of self-protection, not against her power, but just against her.

  “Don’t call me ‘darling.’” I murmured.

  “Well, dear, if you will let me continue…”

  “You are antagonizing.” Adam told her blithely, and she sighed heavily and looked at him.

  “Fine.” She looked back at me, “I have never killed anyone for insulting me, and neither has he. We have ripped out a few tongues, but that is part of my role.”

  My expression soured even more, and my shoulders hunched down even further.

  “I don’t quite see how that could ever be necessary.”

  “Well, it is. For people like me,” They looked at each other and smiled knowingly, “The Warrior Queens, and people like him, the Warrior Kings, there was the general rule before we came here, I have been told, that our kind have a short shelf life, but over our twenty years here, we have become the exception to that rule.”

  “How is he able to fulfill that role if he is locked up in here?”

  “Because when a new man sets foot within these walls and asserts his dominance—over the other prisoners, especially the ones who are my people, or if they try to assert dominance over my wife, may the One God help them—that is when I gain the ability to leave this room for one purpose: To enter the Coliseum.”

  I looked between the two of them, at the half smiles on their lips, at the almost dreamy expressions in their eyes as they looked off, picturing it.

  “What the hell is the Coliseum?”