She didnt know how to react. It brought on a bizarre feeling of helplessness to face such an exaggerated response. What I need help with, she said, is proving that I didnt do this.
Eliza. Eliza. It doesnt matter now. Lets just get you home, and worry about that later.
Her heartbeat started to pound in her ears. It was anger, it was frustration, and it was something else. Free as dandelions, she remembered. Normal as pie. Well, maybe not normal. Maybe not ever, but she would be free. She looked at her mentor, this dignified man of rare reason and intellect who stood to her as a kind of paragon of human enlightenment, and she felt his hypocrisy weighed against her truthher own new knowingand there was no contest. No, she said, and she heard her tone, which had gone soft and slippery with her own shame, slough off all weakness. Lets worry about it now .
I dont think
Oh, you think plenty. But youre wrong. A flick of her hand toward the laptop and all it stood for with its freeze-framed news broadcast. Morgan Toth did this. Look into it. The truth is so far beyond him, I wouldnt expect him to get it. He might be smart, but hes a shallow pond. You , though. Again he tried to interject, and again Eliza silenced him. I expected more from you. Youve got gods strolling the hallways of your mind palace. She put good, fat air quotes around that. And theyre trying not to bump into the what was it? The delegates of Science, so they can keep it cordial in there. Thats how open-minded you are, right? And now youve seen angels, and youve touched chimaera. Chimaera. The word came to her the same way godstars had: a card flipped upside. You know theyre real. And you knowsurely you knowthat, wherever they came from, theyve been here before . All our myths and stories have a real, physical origin. Sphinxes. Demons. Angels.
He was frowning, listening.
But the idea that I could be descended from one? Now thats crazy! Ship Eliza home, get her some help, and for heavens sake, keep her the hell out of my mind palace! She laughed, mirthless. You dont serve my kind in there, isnt that it? Whoever heard of a black angel, anyway? And a woman to boot. This must be so difficult for you , doctor.
He shook his head. He looked pained. Eliza. Thats not it.
Ill tell you what it is, she said, but she held on to it, for a second, wondering if she was really going to do it. Tell it. Here. To these hypocritical, doubting men. She looked from one to the other, from Dr. Chaudharys pained dismay and embarrassment, for her for her delusion, her sad displayto Dr. Amhalis trembling contempt. Not the greatest audience for a revelation, but in the end it didnt matter. Elizas new certainties had grown beyond concealing.
My family, she said, are miserable, vicious, pitiless people, and I will never forgive them for what they did to me, but theyre right. She raised her eyebrows and turned to Dr. Amhali. And yes, I do still have visions, and I hate them. I didnt want to believe any of it. I didnt want to be part of it. I tried to escape from it, but it doesnt matter what I want, because I am . Funny, isnt it? My fate, its my DNA. Back to Dr. Chaudhary. This should keep the delegates of Science and Faith busy arguing in the halls. I am descended from an angel. Its my goddamn genetic destiny.
47
THE BOOK OF ELAZAEL
There was nothing for it, after that. After they perp-walked her through the site, every set of eyes drilling into her, malicious and condemning. After they put her in a car and slammed the door and ordered her returned to Tamnougalt to await her escort home. It was a couple of hours drive, the sere pre-Saharan landscape of the Drâa Valley surrounding her in all directions, and she had nothing to occupy her but her strange coursing exaltation and outrage.
Well, nothing but that and all the things known and buried.
All the many
stirring things. A corner protruding from a floodplainmaybe a cask or maybe a world. All she had to do was blow away the dust. Eliza started laughing. There, in the backseat of the car, laughter poured from her like a new language. Later, when the government agents came to fetch her, the driver would report it, as preamble to explaining what happened after.
When she stopped laughing.
Back in the good old days when shed had nothing to worry about but building a monster army in a giant sandcastle in the wilderness, Karou had periodically driven a rusty truck over rutted earth and long straight roads to reach Agdz, the nearest town where she might, with her hair covered by a hijab, pass unremarked while buying supplies. Bulk bags of couscous, crates and crates of vegetables, chewy, hardscrabble chickens, and a kings treasury of dried dates and apricots.
She looked down on Agdz now, from the sky. Unremarkable. She passed over it, feeling the pull of the others in her wake, and kept going. Their destination lay a little farther on, and was somewhat more remarkable. She spotted the palm grove first, an oasis, the green as surprising as spilled paint on brown ground. And there, within: crumbling mud walls so like the crumbling mud walls theyd just left behind. Another kasbah. Tamnougalt. It had a hotel, Karou remembered, the sort of sprawling out-of-the-way place that would allow for a quiet interlude for their small, strange band, while not so out of the way that they wouldnt find what they needed.