Then I feel hands round me. Holding my arms down. And Gabriel’s voice, quiet in my ear, telling me, “It’s nearly over. Nearly over.”
And my cramps are easing and the banging and scraping have gone. And my stomach retches one last time and the red veil lifts and I see the stone floor and Gabriel’s shoulder. And I want to cry with relief, with joy at the freedom, at being able to see again. I say, “It’s dawn.”
Gabriel moves off me and helps me to sit up.
“If that’s the gradual, less intense method . . .” And I’m going to make a joke but I can’t because I do feel different. I feel intensely aware of everything. Every movement of my body. The dampness of the air. The floor, the grains of loose dirt on my fingertips. And colors, even in this poor light—the grays of the room and the black and brown of Gabriel’s hair. I look into his eyes and see that they’re fain as they’ve always been but I see something else too. “I can see something in your eyes. I’ve never noticed it before. Hardly there. Twists of gold but far back and distant. Things witches have.”
Gabriel smiles. “Let’s go outside.”
He helps me up and as soon as I step outside I heal and the intensity is beyond anything I’ve felt before. The air feels and tastes so incredible that I’m almost drunk on breathing. I sit on the grass and the animal in me flares up and fills me with adrenaline again but nothing more, just the joy of being free.
Van and Nesbitt approach. Van puts a tray on the ground between Gabriel and me. On it is a long strip of wide, fine leather; a bowl containing the potion; two small cups made of stone; and one other thing—a wooden stake, about thirty centimeters long, which tapers at both ends to sharp points and widens to be as thick as a pencil in the middle.
I don’t know what the stake is for. Van hasn’t mentioned this. I thought we were going to cut our palms and hold the cuts together but I see no knife and I have a bad feeling that this is where the stake comes in.
Van picks up the potion and dribbles it into the two stone cups. She holds them out to us. “Drink.”
We watch each other and together lift the cups and drink. It tastes disgusting and gritty, like drinking mud.
I move my arm to put the cup down and already the tray looks wrong, like it’s too far away and my hand can’t reach it. Nesbitt takes the cup from me.
Van has lifted the wooden spike. She’s holding it lightly between us. “Nathan, hold the palm of your right hand against the spike. Gabriel, your left hand. Focus on the stake.” And I do as she asks and that helps: it’s the only thing that isn’t moving in and out of focus. Then Van says, “Push your hands together.”
And I smile because it seems like a weirdly good idea and I push and see the wooden spike come through the back of my hand. I wait for pain but all I feel is warmth and elation at seeing the blood drip off the pointed end. My hand feels hot in its center and then Gabriel’s hand grasps mine, our fingers overlapping, blood running down our wrists.
Van binds our two hands together with the leather strip. She says, “Don’t heal. I will twist the stake and rethread it at dusk and dawn until Gabriel is back with us.”
I feel like I’m floating out of my body. I watch Gabriel and I lower our arms so that our staked hands rest between us on the ground. The tray has gone.
I have an urge to touch the stake, so I stretch my left hand out to it. My fingertips touch the end that appears out of Gabriel’s hand. I wrap my fingers round it and as I do I feel my body sinking and in an instant I’m panicking. Mud rises up from the ground, bubbling around me, and there is no ground and all I see is mud and all I feel is Gabriel’s hand in my right hand.
The First Stake
I wake, drowsy, fuggy, my body aching. I blink my eyes open. It’s daytime, light and sunny, and the sky above me is a perfect deep blue. I look around and recognize the roof terrace of the apartment in Geneva. Gabriel is with me, holding my hand just like he did when we were about to go through the cut to meet Mercury. Gabriel is on his haunches and he’s looking away, his hair hanging forward, sunglasses on. His left hand is clasping my right.
And somehow I know I have to find the cut, that this is the way out. The way to find Gabriel’s real self. I’m crouched in the corner of the terrace, my back to the sloping tiled roof. The cut is above the drainpipe. I’ve seen Gabriel use it, been with him when he slid his hand through it. Now I’ve got to find it and keep hold of him and see where the cut takes us.
I’m confident I can do it. I know where the cut is. I raise my left hand and slide it into the space above the drainpipe.
Nothing happens.
But perhaps I missed. A little higher, I think. Still nothing happens. So it must be to the left a tad. No! Then to the right. No, again. Then lower. Maybe I’m doing it too fast, being too impatient.
I say to Gabriel, “Where’s the cut?”