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“Okay, we’re sorry,” Liam said finally. “Really. Okay? I panicked. You don’t understand.”
“My apprentice will understand,” Messenger said, “And thus, so will I.”
Liam and Emma both looked at me. It was only after they had stared expectantly for a few seconds that I realized Messenger was talking about me.
“Apprentice?” It came out squeaky, that single word. I almost laughed. I wanted to laugh. Because, after all, this was really just some kind of dream or hallucination or . . . or something.
What it was not, what it could not be, was me as Messenger’s apprentice. The very idea was like a steel cage being erected around me, like I was watching the bars being put in place, confining, defining, controlling.
I felt like prisoners must feel facing the judge who pronounces their sentence.
“No,” I said. I shook my head violently. “No,” I said again.
Messenger’s face wore a look I had suspected it might be capable of, but had not truly seen until this moment. His expression was one of compassion. He was not glorying in my fear; he pitied me. He understood what he had just told me. He understood what I was feeling. He could see the panic rising in me like the mercury in a boiling thermometer.
“No, no, no,” I said.
And that’s when I saw through the mist. The mist did not part—it did not cease encircling us—but it became less opaque so that I saw a tableau. I saw two people. One was Messenger. The other was me.
And I heard my own voice distorted by wracking sobs of what I believe was remorse, though I had no memory of it. Sobbing. Holding myself with my arms across my chest. My head was bowed. My face was distorted by emotion present and emotion past. I had, I felt, been sad for a long time.
In this tableau Messenger never spoke—he just stood there before me, wearing the same expression of compassion he had revealed only moments before. I was the one speaking, though words so distorted by anguish would have been hard for a person unfamiliar with me to make out. But I could hear and understand them clearly. They were words that sealed my fate. Words that trapped me without hope of escape.
“Yes,” I sobbed. “Yes, yes, I will. I will. I will do it. I have to do it. I will atone.”
“If you choose this fate, you must speak these words: You will be my teacher.”
My sobbing self spoke them. “You will be my teacher.”
Messenger said, “I will be your student.”
And my anguished self repeated them and wiped tears away. “I will be your student.”
“And when I am judged ready, I will faithfully execute my office.”
“And . . . and . . .” The me I saw, that living memory, strained to recall the exact words. “I will . . . I mean, when I am judged ready, I will faithfully execute my office.”
“I will be the Messenger of Fear.”
The tableau faded from view. I looked at Messenger and it was as if he looked through me, saw all the way down into my soul and knew things about me that I refused to acknowledge but that he understood.
I looked at his coat with its skull buttons. I looked at the terrible ring, the distorted, screaming face. Most of all, I recalled the moment when I had touched him and had been flooded with images so unsettling, so disturbing, that even the pale memory freezes my blood. I guessed, or perhaps at some point in my forgotten past he had told me, but in any event I understood then, understood that there was no escape, that I had no choice in the matter, not any longer. My fate was settled.
And the words came from my own mouth now, not from the image from memory but still as if spoken in a dream.
“I will be the Messenger of Fear.”
8
NONE OF THIS LAST HAD BEEN SEEN OR HEARD BY Liam and Emma. No time had elapsed for them since Messenger had said, “My apprentice will understand, and thus, so will I.”
The two frightened kids waited for me as though I was to question them.
“My apprentice will lay her palm against your cheek, and if you do not resist, it will be quick and not unpleasant.”
Would I? I supposed I must. But what I wanted to do was yell at Messenger to give me everything, not to just dole out bits and pieces of myself in whatever amount was necessary to manipulate me. To tell me everything, about himself, about this impossible reality, if reality it was.
I was trapped, yes, but that did not compel me to be docile. Even a very good trap often has an escape route.
