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“That is fair enough,” she pushed on before I could express my full thought. “Still, you view this being as the definitive rule-maker. The final source as to what is right and wrong.” She slid her hand down my arm. “What if there were no God? Who would be left to make the decisions then?” She shifted in her seat, looking away from me and following a pack of giggling children running down the path before us.
“Really?” I asked when she fell silent. “You’ve come all this way to discuss moral relativism?”
She turned back to me with a satisfied smile on her lips. “I’ve lived a long time, centuries on the timeline of the dimension where I was imprisoned, and even a century in your own sense of time.” Her eyes narrowed. “Never, never have I seen a single shred of evidence that God exists. I’ve witnessed, even interacted, with beings, ones with powers beyond the human comprehension, who have called themselves ‘gods,’ but no, never has the great ineffable shown even its shadow. But I tell you this only as a kindness.” Her eyes fell to my waist. “You should feel proud. Your tiny one, he is putting up a valiant fight. Still, it is a fight he cannot win. There is a world of reality forming around him that says he does not, cannot, exist.”
My arms fell protectively around him. Gudrun clicked her tongue, and shook her head sadly. “A lesser witch, a weaker fetus, it would have been settled days ago. And you, yes you, would already be well on your way to forgetting him as well as his father.”
“I could never forget either of them.” Horror fed into anger.
“I assure you, you could.” She let the words hang there between us, as if she were waiting for them to sink in. “And you will. When did you feel him move last?” She narrowed in on my protruding stomach. “Now, honestly, don’t you feel that your womb is contracting, growing smaller?” She reached out, almost ready to touch me, then seemed to think better of it and pulled back. “I’m sure the fetus’s growth has halted, even if devolution has not as yet set in.” Her eyes drifted back up to my face. “Oh, you poor girl, you’ve gone absolutely gray.” She reached out and took my hand in hers. She held it as if we had been lifelong and the most intimate of friends. I didn’t feel the repulsion I would have expected at the contact. “The reality of your situation is finally dawning on you, is it not? You’re losing everything. Your life is spinning out of control, but you could change all that.”
She released my hand. She wrapped her arm around my shoulders, then pulled me into her bosom. She stroked my hair. “Aren’t you tired, Mercy? Aren’t you tired of all the lies and betrayals? Those who should have dedicated their lives to protecting you, nurturing you, they have deceived and endangered you. Your fellow anchors plot against you even as we speak. I cannot do anything about them, yet, but I have seen to it the worst of your enemies has been punished. Emily has been removed.”
“You killed and dismembered Emily to complete your spell.” I tried to struggle from her grasp, but found I couldn’t, not because her strength held me, but because suddenly I could not bear to break away from the comfort I was feeling in her arms. I knew it was like welcoming the embrace of a boa constrictor, but I couldn’t even work up a good enough damn to give to fight her off. “Only I don’t understand what the spell had to do with your breaking free.”
“Shhh . . . Shhh . . .” she said as I weakened in her arms. She was charming me. I sensed it, but the charm sedated my ability to care. “I could have taken anyone to seal the spell, but I wanted to make a statement. I killed her and sundered Emily’s body limb from limb as a punishment to her and as a warning to those who would betray you, Mercy. The world has waited for you”—her voice betrayed a simmering anger—“I have waited for you for so long. The woman who bore you, she risked your destruction so she could claim the glory that is only yours to claim.”
It ought to have horrified me, but somehow it seemed fitting Emily should be made an example of.
“You are special, Mercy, even among witches. There is a well of power right at your fingertips, if only you would reach out for it. The magic is waiting for you, aching for you to use it. Think about it. All you need to do is claim your birthright, and the world will fall at your feet before you. Your little one, what have you named him?”
“Colin,” I responded, with only the slightest warning from my subconscious. I had given his name to her, might I have given her control over him as well in doing so?
“Colin,” she said as the fear washed away. “You could preserve his life, watch as he grows into manhood. If you claim your rightful power, acknowledge that power gives you the right to determine what is right and wrong. You, not some imaginary God. Stop and feel it within yourself. Isn’t that what you want to believe? That somehow there is a great father in the sky looking out for you? Believe me, even if it were true, your God lets down millions of people each day. They age. They grow sick. They watch their loved ones die. I am not offering you platitudes and dreams. I am not some dry and effete priest asking you to have faith in an absentee God. No”—she was getting caught up in her own words—“I am trying to show you that you can be a god yourself. We are the only gods here, you and I.” Her enthusiasm tugged at my will and weakened my conscience. She released me and nodded toward a toddler riding by on a pink tricycle, followed closely behind by her father.
He watched over his daughter as if she were his entire world. I should have felt joy at the sight; instead I felt the darkest shade of envy gnawing at my gut. Gudrun’s voice sang in my ear. “Is it ‘right’ this ordinary child should live and your own special, magical infant should not? If there were a God, a divine will, what type of monster must he be to allow such a miscarriage”—her inflection made her sound as if she’d just realized an unintentional pun—“of justice? No, I think it much more likely there is no supreme will, no grand scheme, only the survival of those who will do what it takes to survive.” She watched as the small girl turned back on her trike to circle her father. “What if you could trade that child’s life to save Colin’s?”
The suggestion sickened me. “That is a monstrous—”
“Well, of course, she is an adorable little one, isn’t she? We wouldn’t want to harm her.” Her eyes scanned the area before us, and she pointed at another child. This one was older and had moved into the awkward phase where external beauty was both a memory and a hope for the future. He was picking on a smaller child, shoving him and making him cry. “How about that one?”
“It would be wrong. I don’t have the right.”
“Of course you have the right. If you have the strength, you have the right. With the kind of power you have at your access, there is no such thing as being wrong. There is only the choice to survive or leave the world to those who will.” She raised an eyebrow. “Or perhaps you love your antiquated moralistic ideals more than you love little Colin?”
“No, you are twisting things, trying to confuse me.” I knew the spell she had placed on me made me more compliant. More susceptible. It had something to do with the opal, perhaps even carried to me in the dust I had breathed in. The damnedest thing about her enchantment was it left me incapable of caring that she had enchanted me. I felt like I was bobbing up and down in the sea. On the brink of drowning, but still indifferent to that fact.
“Child, I am trying to open your eyes. I am trying to give you the strength you need to throw off the shackles that bind you. I am trying to save your son. I had hoped you would appreciate that.” She looked away from me and down the path leading to the swan-and-merman-encircled fountain. “What if saving Colin didn’t require the sacrifice of a child? That man there—” She pointed at a homeless man, weaving as he made his way to a bench. He had a bottle wrapped in brown paper, and alternated between singing out of key and swearing at anyone who looked his way. I sensed he was very lucky not to have noticed Gudrun noticing him. “That one, why should he have such a strong hold on this reality when our Colin is being erased? Look at him, what about him? If we could trade his miserable existence to buy even another single day for our Colin, why wouldn’t we?”
I looked at the sad fellow. He held his bottle tightly as if he feared one of the passersby would covet it as much as he prized its contents. He swung around to argue with someone who wasn’t there. Looking through my witch eyes, I discerned there was no spirit, no invisible assailant threatening him. He fought a projection of his own alcohol-soaked brain. Would he be missed? Would his death leave a void in the fabric of this world? Wouldn’t it be so easy to reach out and draw the life force from him and offer it . . . ?
The heinousness of the crime I’d begun to contemplate woke me from Gudrun’s spell. The story of Eve and the serpent flashed through my mind. With how many greater sins had she been tempted before giving in to that seemingly innocent bite? “Oh my God,” I said in a gasp. “No. It’s his life. I am not a killer.”
Gudrun breathed deeply, as if she were trying to keep her cool as I tested her patience. She didn’t try to interrupt me.
“No. God or no God, the way you think is wrong. It’s true, I’m desperate to save my child, but I will find another way.” I flung myself from the bench, nearly toppling over as I did. I backed away from her. “The world you describe. I wouldn’t want to bring Colin into that world.”
“You are dooming your child to nonexistence. It may be that the only honorable outcome of that bum’s life would be to stand as sacrifice to protect something greater.” She waved her hand in the man’s direction, and he arose and made his stumbling way out of the park. “I believe I comprehend your difficulty.” Gudrun looked at me, her head tilted to the side, her eyes lowered. She was the picture of sympathetic understanding. “When one person is killed, it is murder. When a group of people are killed, it is slaughter. You find these things unimaginable, but believe me, Mercy, when a hundred thousand die, it becomes a matter of statistics. Once the count grows high enough, one’s mind loses its ability to consider the individuals behind that count. The emotions dull, and the conscience stops wheedling.” She paused. “When you’ve reached that point, you yourself become a god.”
“I don’t want to be a ‘god.’?”
“Not even if for every death, you could buy another day of life for your little boy?”
I responded before any further temptation could penetrate my weakened defenses. “No, not even then,” I said, knowing what I said was right even if it felt oddly like I was betraying Colin. “I’m leaving. Don’t try to stop—”
“What about those the line destroyed? You have heard firsthand the effect it had on the world of the Fae, and you only know of their fate because enough of them survived to tell the tale. What about the others whose worlds were ended by the creation of the line?”
“There were others?” Again I felt responsible. Guilt washed over me.
