Page 30 of Midnight in the Garden of Okay and Meh
Tears burned behind my eyes, but I blinked them away. I was the Sovereign, and a Sovereign never cried.
At least not in front of the man who was breaking her heart.
“We have no future together,” I said on a whisper, taking the opportunity to admire his face one last time. “I can’t keep living like this.”
He said nothing for a few moments, then nodded, and released my chin before turning to the window. I wanted to cry out a protest but gritted my teeth against the words. “You are right, of course. I want more than anything for you to live in happiness and love, so it is only right that you forget me, and fill your life with others who you love.”
The wounds struck me like silver-tipped barbs. “Even if it means taking a lover with whom I can spend my life?”
His shoulders jerked, but he didn’t turn around to face me. “If that is what would make you happy, then yes.”
My sorrow burned hot, and turned into a fury unlike anything I remember feeling. “So you’re not willing to fight for us? For what we have? You truly are not the man I thought you were. You’re weak, and a coward, and I swear to all the gods and goddesses that I will forget you as soon as possible.”
“Live in peace,” was all he said, his head bowed as he put a hand against the wall as if to brace himself.
I blinked back even more hot, burning tears and stormed off to return to my own domain, where people behaved in a manner that made sense.
“I will forget him,” I growled to myself as I entered the brand-new portal in Bali we’d built to access the Court. “He’s nothing to me. Just a very handsome, insanely annoying man, and I refuse to have him in my life any longer.”
I sobbed for a week straight.
TEN
May
“I’ve never seen the Beyond like this,” Mabel said, her expression one of stark disbelief as she followed Jim into the dusty garden. “It’s like it’s been blighted somehow.”
“Blight is a very good word for this,” Gabriel said as we examined the surroundings. “The Beyond is supposed to be a haven, a slightly altered version of the mortal world where immortal beings can reside in peace. This is no haven.”
“It most certainly isn’t,” Mabel said, then tugged at a necklace of extremely fine silver. At the end was a small crescent-shaped medallion with a milky stone on one tip. Mabel lifted the moon and seemed to study it before looking up and to the right. “I believe the spirit you are seeking is this way.”
We all followed her, the excitement of helping Jim meet his mother—even if it was for an ulterior motive—waning as we saw what havoc had been wreaked upon the shadow world. “It’s almost as if it’s dead,” I whispered to Gabriel when I scrambled over a bit of fallen masonry. The buildings here—while representing similar ones in the real world—were in profound stages of decay, with some of them having tumbled down into dusty, empty streets. “It’s so quiet, too.”
“Please tell me this isn’t normal, ’cause otherwise I don’t want to go here when it’s time for me to diminish,” Jim said. Even it was unusually subdued, as if the place was depressing its spirits. It certainly did mine.
“Do demons normally diminish?” I couldn’t help but ask.
“Naw, but I’m demon extra plus with whiter whites and brighter colors. Wow. This place really sucks. Is that imp dead?”
“Yup,” Mabel said as she skirted a small gray blob. “OK, I think we’re coming up on your mother’s spirit. Let’s see if she’s in this building.”
We had stopped in front of what reminded me of a Spanish colonial wharf, minus color, water, and any living beings. Mabel consulted her pendant again, then turned and walked to the small cottage half-hidden behind the wharf building. As we moved out from the cover of the building, I noticed a faintly rhythmic sound that I had assumed was the wind rattling a shutter or something of that ilk, but the sight that met us was just about the last thing I expected to see.
A woman stood in what was probably once a quite pretty garden, but instead of rounded bushes dotted with flowers and greenery, mounds of dusty gray powder hid everything but vague shapes. A stand made of wood and bales of hay stood nestled up against a side fence, with a vaguely human-shaped blob hanging from a crossbeam. It was obviously made of some sort of sacking and most likely filled with straw. But it was the woman who had us all stopping as if by agreement.
“Wow,” Jim said, its eyes big. “Is that my mom? She’s ... she’s ...”
“Seriously badass,” I said, watching as the woman danced around the sack figure, a massive, bright silver sword in both hands as she hacked at the target. She appeared to be taller than me, with a solid—but very graceful—figure. Her long black hair whipped around her as she swung the sword. Braids entwined with pale blue ribbons hung alongside her face, reminding me of depictions of war braids.
“She’s got armor on,” Jim said, its voice filled with wonder and some emotion I had a hard time identifying. Yearning, I thought, but I wasn’t certain. “Full metal armor. Where’s my phone? I gotta get some video of this to show Ash. She’s going to crap over the fact that my mom is a warrior.”
“Definitely a warrior,” I agreed as the woman stopped fighting, wiping one hand across her forehead before noticing us outside her fence. I dropped my voice so just Gabriel could hear. “Do you think she’s dangerous?”
“To us?” He was silent for a few seconds, watching as Parisi—as I assumed it was—strode toward us. A swath of blue was spread across her eyes. “I don’t believe so. Is that woad?”
“That’s just what I was wondering. ... Er ... hello!”
Gabriel and I moved forward when Parisi, speaking in a language I didn’t recognize at all, marched up to the gate and waggled her sword at us.
