The Everborn - Nicholas Grabowsky [117]
Of anyone else in the room there was no sign. There was, however, a discarded and familiar pile of garments, the Queen’s evening attire, immediately beside the newborn; before the bed, a second set of abandoned robes.
Blinded by a primal panic, the sentries raised their weapons to the child...
...and extinguished its life as suddenly as it lived.
***
After a persistent search within the bed chambers and a vast canvas without, neither the Queen nor the stranger could be found, not a solitary trace, nor would they ever be.
But for a succession of years to come, those who dwelt within the area of that land would tell tales of wispy shrieks of the Queen’s ghost, which became eerily audible the first few moments before each new daybreak, cries of ill attempt to deliver her infant son from death.
One day, after the shrieks grew more faint and more distant, they silenced altogether.
Eventually, the tales silenced as well...
...to be spoken only among those who know what happened afterwards....
33.
The Black Widow Messiah
-1968-
This was the unspoken Promised Land of once-in-a-lifetime events, and no matter that it wasn’t exactly promised, it was more or less prophesied, and as far as Salvatia was concerned, prophesied was the ferment in the wine of promises. And no human being with an average lifespan of ninety years or so would ever know the magnitude of a once-in-a-lifetime event for a being whose lifespan was more than six times as long to date.
As far as Salvatia was concerned, she was quite certain of this.
For there was recently born a set of Everborn twins.
And, like the prophecy was told to her, they were going to bring salvation to the one who would bring salvation to all other Magdalene that would come to her.
Not entirely because of both of them, but because of one of them. The soulless one.
The one referred to over the centuries as a Dreg.
In this case, the one who would be known as Simon.
It was known to all involved, Magdalene and Watchmaid and Watcher alike, that when a set of Everborn twins is born, only one can harbor the soul that has been reborn, although the lives were --as fate would have it-- split into two.
And Dregs were a very special and rare breed, indeed.
They could do things for a Magdalene, yes, and by far for any Magdalene that knew well enough to search for one, and find him...
...to be, as they say, at the right place and at the right time.
***
A white Plymouth Belvedere rested solitary and vacant within the parking lot of the Dr. Jonas E. Salk elementary school. It was blanketed by a coat of weather-worn dirt, which was emphasized by the remains of a finger-scrolled WASH ME upon the rear window, all letters but the WA ME portion wiped away by a single dirty-filmed swipe.
It was eight forty-five in the p.m., and the sun had retired from the pre-evening sky an hour or so ago and for the first time since the time was sprung an hour forward the night before.
A misty torrent of air floated down from the school’s hallway rooftop and settled upon the Plymouth’s hood, lightly denting its metal. This was a first, the first time in a long time the Magdalene had any effect upon the physical world, even if it was that one simple dent. It felt good. It felt great. It felt brand new all over again, as if she’d never crossed the threshold into the physical realm before; it had been a long, long time since she had. The feeling was euphoric, to be able to do that again.
It only meant one thing: it meant she was in close proximity to a Dreg.
The closer she came to one, the easier it would be to manipulate the world of the living, to touch something physical once more.
She was a Magdalene.
She wasn’t a Watchmaid, let alone a human being anymore. And she wasn’t the ghost of her former human self, she had never exactly died, but as a Magdalene she could never have contact with the physical world but for maybe --given chance-- a whisper or a rhapsody in the wind to be heard faintly in the early morning breeze.
To the physical