Lightbreaker

EPILOGUE

She's catatonic. Has been since she was brought in a few days ago." The nurse shook her head. "Found her in an alley near that warehouse fire. She's non-responsive and. ." She paused, uncomfortable with continuing this discussion with a complete stranger.

"She's dying," I said. "A little bit more every day. And yet there's nothing wrong with her that you can find. . "

The nurse turned from the ICU window. "Do you know her?"

"Yes."

"Who is she? What is your relationship to her?"

I put an index finger on my lip, my middle finger and thumb touching. The nurse's eyes flickered toward my mouth and her expression loosened as she became transfixed by the spell wrapped in my hand. She lost her train of thought and started to turn away as if I had suddenly vanished. "I-" she began.

I shook my head, finger still on my lip. I could See the wreath of her soul. Its subtle rotation synched with a low pulse in my stomach.

Her head moved as well, a sluggish aping of my motion. "We-" she started, feeling for the right word. "We hope she recovers." I nodded and her head moved in time with mine. Her shoulders and head drooped as if she had been struck by a sudden bout of narcolepsy. She blinked twice and then raised her head. Looking through me, she smiled at nothing-a false memory at best-and marched off, returning to her station down the hall.

I entered the ICU and stood next to the bed. I lifted Kat's arm and stroked the back of her hand. Once. Twice. On the third time, her eyelids fluttered, the tiny wings of hummingbirds caressing her face.

She looked at the ceiling for a few minutes, struggling to remember how she had come to this place and finding nothing in her memory. There were holes in her head, segments of her history now gone. The muscles in her face tightened as she became more aware and the slack simplicity of her comatose expression gave way to a knotted anger. There were holes, but what remained was more than enough to remember what had been done to her.

Kat finally realized she wasn't alone. Her expression went through elation and resignation before settling-like water soaking into a piece of worn cloth-into sadness. "Michael," she said, a whisper of wind in hollow reeds. "I See the sons of morning. Is it time?"

Rede. Go back.

I shook my head.

She carefully touched the spot on her forehead where the ibis-hound had tapped her soul. "I am broken," she whispered. "Is this how the void feels? Such emptiness." Her lips tightened. "Such hunger." Her lips moved around the word but she didn't say it.

Qliphoth.

"I have something for you." I lifted her hand from her forehead and pressed my lips to the center of her palm. She smelled like lilacs. Still.

I unfolded the Chorus, and their voices filled my spine and throat. Like an aria rising from my chest, they swarmed up to my mouth where a single voice-a single note-pushed its way to the front of my mouth. I kissed Kat's palm and breathed out the light that had once belonged to her. I closed her fingers around the star in her palm, sealed her hand tight so that it wouldn't escape.

Wait for the light.

She brought her hand to her mouth and kissed her knuckles, feeling the warmth of her soul radiating through her flesh. Her grip loosened and the starlight escaped through the gaps between her fingers. It raced into her eyes, making the welling tears glitter. Racing through the flesh of her skull, the stolen piece of her soul unknotted the twisted skin of the ibis-hound's kiss.

She sighed, a long breath unraveling from the tension that had been bound and wound in her gut. One of the tears launched itself across the curve of her cheek. "What happened?"

"The Hollow Men are gone, and so is the device."

"Gone? Where?"

"I broke them, Kat."

"Goddess, Michael. Why-?" In her eyes, the rest of the question. Pleading me to tell her otherwise, to tell her that I didn't have their blood on my hands.

"It was the only way I knew."

Another tear started across her cheek. "What price have you paid for me?"

"It was a debt owed." I shook my head. "What I gave away I had kept for too long. It didn't belong to me."

She had Seen the glow of the refreshed Chorus on me-the sons of morning-but she didn't know who they were, who they had been. John Nicols was in there, as was the tiny remnant of Bernard du Guyon. The one glittering particle of his spirit that had not been given as sacrament. He would never complete his journey. Not while I lived. There were others as well, voices I did not know. They filled my head with a different song.

Other than Bernard, the new voices were, for a lack of a better word, volunteers.

"Do you remember that phrase attributed to Descartes? Do you remember what he said? 'I think, therefore I am.' "

Her eyebrows pulled together and she sat up, propping her elbows into her pillows. "Yes, I remember it. Cogito ergo sum. What does that have to do with anything?"

"Everything," I said. "Nothing."

She laughed. "Are you pulling my leg? 'Everything' and 'Nothing' are the non-answers of the world."

I put a finger to my lip and snared her laughter in a circle of finger and thumb. "Maybe." She stared, lost in the suggestion hidden within the formed circle. "But what if Descartes' phrase was the Word spoken by God that started Creation?"

When she blinked again, I had vanished. Like a dream. Like an illusion.

Maybe this was the way the world began.

Ergo sum.