Muse (16 page)

I watch as the particles disperse then re-form some distance away — like a swarm of bees coming together. And I see Nuriel again, in her customary form, her giant wings outspread, her hands empty of any weapon. Then she seems to somersault backwards, spiralling down gracefully, deliberately, with the velocity of a speeding arrow, towards the slick, dark surface of the lake far below.

Her feint has caught Luc by surprise, and she’s already pulled herself into a low, tight, skimming trajectory just above the waterline — moving away quickly, faster than a mortal eye could follow — well before he subsumes his own burning weapon in the palm of his hand and turns to follow.

Nuriel streaks past a large estate by the water’s edge — red light reflecting weirdly upon a small guesthouse and private pier on the lake’s edge — well before Luc has even completed his own dive.

Nuriel is picking up speed ahead of us; she’s now only a faint, luminous streak almost lost to sight in the reflected glow of red upon the water. Luc laughs again as he launches himself after her like a bird of prey, vengeance singing in his heart. The two of them are locked in pursuit, tearing over the water, weaving their way through and around islands both inhabited and uninhabited, exploding
through
outbuildings, ferry terminals, church towers, gateways, boundary walls, leaving only incandescence in their wake.

Luc goes after Nuriel without hesitation as she counted upon him doing. She’s leading him somewhere. Somewhere with reinforcements. At least, she’s trying to.

She may not be his equal in strength or ferocity, but when I knew her, there were few fleeter in mind, in spirit, than Nuriel.

And it hits me, that this isn’t a dream.

This is real. It’s happening. Happening right now.

Luc has reached the outskirts of the city. He’s almost here.

For a long time, I just drift. There are periods of dark, interspersed with periods of light, as if I am a rudderless boat on uncharted waters, a ghost ship.

I hear voices — both human and celestial, both real and remembered — and I know that real life is intruding upon memory, and memory upon real life. But that is the nature of my illness: that I must always straddle two worlds — the seen and the unseen. And also two ages, two epochs: the time when I was whole; and everything that came after that time.

But the pull of the light seems … stronger, somehow.

And yet I can’t seem to struggle back up into the light for an age.

The outline of the room I’m in finally starts to regain colour and detail, and I see Gia in her vintage pink and white blossom-covered kimono, curled up in an armchair she’s pulled up right next to my bed, her pyjama-clad knees poking out beneath her wrap. It’s like she’s keeping vigil over me while she taps away on her mobile phone like she always does. The chandelier’s dark, but all the lamps in the room are lit, suffusing the air with a soft, warm light.

My internal clock tells me it’s almost 5 pm. How long have I been … out?

For a moment, I see entire Swiss-Italian border towns on fire, fire pouring down the mountainside like a flood and I go cold with horror.

‘You’ve got to get out of Milan,’ I rasp in Gia’s direction before she even knows I’m awake.

I know I’ve given her a shock, because she jumps, visibly, dropping her phone down the side of her armchair.

‘You’ve got to get away from me,’ I insist, ‘if you want to live.’ My tongue and throat are so parched that they actually hurt.

Gia fishes her phone back up and taps something hurriedly into the screen, then tucks it beneath one knee. ‘That’s exactly what I tell myself all the time,’
she says. ‘That you’re bad for my health, like staring into the sun. Welcome back.’

She gives me the ghost of a smile and I see that her eyes are shadowed and puffy, as if she’s been crying steadily for many hours.
For me?
I didn’t think she liked Irina enough to have tears to spare her.

‘I know I’m not making much sense,’ I croak, ‘but you’ve got to leave. It’s not safe any more around me.’

‘I know,’ she murmurs, shifting in her leather armchair.

I frown. ‘If you know, then why are you still here?’

She doesn’t answer; just uncurls her legs from beneath her and crosses the room to a fussy, bow-fronted, marble-topped armoire with gilt-trimmed legs and gilt handle pulls. She pours some water out of a covered silver jug into a glass tumbler and brings it over to me, carefully setting it down on the bedside table to my left.

‘Want some help sitting up?’ she says.

I shake my head, but just doing that seems to set off carillion bells behind my eyes. I roll over gingerly towards the wall to my right and lie with my back to Gia for a moment, unable to catch my breath, or see, for the terrible pounding inside my skull.

‘I still don’t know how you managed not to kill yourself going off the roof of the car like that,’ she mutters as she sits on the edge of the bed behind me. ‘Everyone thinks you’re certifiable right now. Gianfranco had to call Giovanni Re just before midnight to give him the bad news that his star model just tried to throw herself from a moving car. Everyone’s thinking of pulling the plug on you — Giovanni, even your management.’

Gia’s voice is barely audible. ‘I called Giovanni at noon to give him a progress report. He told me that if you woke, and you still wanted to do it — anchor his show — he’ll have you. If not, he’ll retire the three looks he made especially with you in mind. They’ll be archived, and never again see the light of day. Orla will get her way and close the damned parade in her sparkly silver dress.’

I shut my eyes, unsure how to reply. If I don’t ‘walk’ for Giovanni tomorrow, I’ll be responsible for ruining one of the defining moments of his long and celebrated career. And Irina will go from global icon to global outcast. She’ll probably never work again. But if I do … who knows what will happen?

There are so many variables, all of them beyond my control. The sudden blaze of intense irritation
I feel is enough to send shock waves down Irina’s nerve endings. Immediately, I feel less sluggish, less weighted-down and sedated, more myself. I lean up on my elbows, with a feeling in my throat as if I have swallowed broken glass.

Gia sees me wince and brings the tumbler of water to my lips. I drain it in one go and gesture at her to get more.

She hurries to do so, then says, ‘It’s almost five thirty. We need to make a decision about whether you do the show. You’ve been asleep for almost eighteen hours. While you were … gone,’ she hesitates and tears fill her eyes. ‘Terrible things have happened. All these towns — Domaso, Gravedona, Rezzonico, Menaggio, Tremezzo, Argegno, Laglio, Urio — people are saying they’re all gone. They’ve been swept away …’

She spins clumsily, before feeling around on the end of my bed for something.

‘… by
fire
.’

My eyes widen as Gia puts her hand on the remote control for the in-room television and the screen flares into life.

People wail and shriek and stumble blindly around before us, through smoke, through walls of flame with strange colours at their heart — gold and silver and
the palest, most luminescent blue. Trees burn, retaining walls, stone buildings, vehicles, shops, bus stops, car parks, street signs, infrastructure of every kind, all incinerated by a kind of fire that resists water, chemical retardants, every ingenuity known to man. They burn and burn until they simply burn out, and there’s nothing left but an ash so fine it is borne away on the wind.

We watch in horrified silence as the news services on almost every station, in every major language in the world, show clip after clip caught by ordinary people on the ground who woke in the midst of Armageddon.

When the same clips and hysterical voices start to recur, Gia turns off the television, tightening the sash of her kimono as she walks back to her armchair to retrieve her phone. ‘The fact Giovanni is going ahead with the parade is a highly sensitive issue. Half the world will be waking to the news of the incredible devastation that just fell out of nowhere on one of the most highly developed nations in the world. Oh yeah, and that’s what people are saying — that fire
fell
out of the sky; flames, they’re saying, came
down
through the trees.’

I have to wrap Irina’s thin arms around her bony knees to stop myself falling over. Am I somehow to
blame for unleashing my nightmares, for unleashing
Luc
, upon the physical world? Has he changed so much? Or have I?

Gia’s voice is husky from crying. ‘The dress rehearsal at the Galleria Vittorio Emanuele will start in one hour — we’re already an hour late for hair and make-up,’ she says quietly. ‘It’s a big, big deal, this parade. Giovanni managed to shut down the entire Galleria for more than twenty-four hours. Do you have any idea how hard that is to do?’

I shake my head numbly, still groping for some kind of connection between the Luc I fell in love with, and the force of absolute ruin I witnessed in my dreams.

Gia points her phone at me. ‘Giovanni will need to know if you’re still in. He’s intending to donate all the proceeds from the documentary and the touring retrospective to the victims of the fires. Some will say that Giovanni Re is going on with his self-congratulatory fashion parade as if nothing has happened, but
we
will know that he’s doing it to help, to celebrate life. Most of the models are donating their appearance fees to the rescue and rebuilding efforts. Your fee alone is something in the order of two hundred thousand Euros. Make it count. People
always say that fashion doesn’t matter, that it’s all as disposable and meaningless as candy. But if we can use it to rebuild lives, rebuild concrete things? Then that has to be a good thing, right? A great thing.

‘So I need to know if you’re in,’ she continues, her voice growing stronger, ‘and then we need to get to work on a number of levels. You need to walk like you’ve never walked before. You can’t be seen to be anything other than perfect, savage and indomitable. Now get up.’ Her voice is suddenly harsh. ‘And follow me.’

I trail Gia out of Irina’s bedroom unsteadily, crossing the suite into the room that’s been turned into an impromptu walk-in wardrobe. It’s still a complete bombsite, and I don’t know how Gia is able to locate the exact pair of shoes she’s looking for amongst all the bags and cases.

She holds them up for me to inspect. They look like ordinary stilettos in a shocking red colour, except that the heels have to be eight inches high.

‘That’s it?’ I say. ‘You just want me to walk around in those and I’m good to go?’

‘You were very unconvincing yesterday when you put the black Loubs on,’ Gia says with a frown. ‘I
couldn’t believe what I was seeing. It’s like driving a truck — if you can reverse park one of those babies, driving any kind of car after that is a breeze. Walk in these, and the crazy-tall bondage boots Tommy’s organised for you to wear with the black strapless number, and the heels he’s paired with the bridal gown? Will be a cinch.’

Gia’s face suddenly clouds over. ‘It just occurred to me that you gashed your feet pretty badly last night on broken glass. They looked like raw meat while the doctor was cleaning you up — I was almost sick. You’re probably bleeding into your dressings right now.’ She points the shoes in her hand at me.

I look down to see that my feet are heavily bandaged. I hadn’t registered the fact until now.

Gia sighs. ‘Maybe you
will
have to pull out. You’ll be lucky to manage a pair of kitten heels,
if
you can even walk for any extended period of time. Sit down on this case and let’s look at the damage.’

She hunkers down on the ground, placing the red heels beside her, and carefully unwinds the bandages around one foot. She takes my heel gently in one hand, lifts it and studies the sole, before doing the same with the other foot. She rises, crosses her arms and just looks at me uncertainly, her face paper white.

‘How bad are they?’ I say.

‘See for yourself,’ she replies, and her voice is almost inaudible.

I lift up one foot, then the other: they’re both pink-looking, healthy. There are black stitches up the instep of one foot, but no apparent reason for them to be there. The flesh around the surgeon’s thread has already healed.

‘You didn’t see what I saw last night,’ Gia says shakily. ‘The doctor removed a shard of glass from one of your feet that was at least two inches long.’

She waves one hand wildly in the air. ‘It’s got something to do with
you
, hasn’t it?’

I close my eyes briefly and see fire like liquid death overtaking everything in its path and that feeling of intense horror and shame returns. Did
I
do that? Did Luc?

Gia has my full and sudden attention as she says, ‘They’re all saying you’ve lost it, but I don’t think you’re crazy. You thought you saw someone on the road, and you tried to save him, right? I
saw
you dive past the window. I saw you
land
. You landed on your feet. And I think I’m the only one who caught that. Maybe it’s me that’s going crazy because it wasn’t an accident, was it? You look like Irina, you even sound
like Irina, but I’ve been listening, really listening to you speak, and the things you say? The words you use? You’re someone else altogether. Something else. How is that possible? I want to know.’

She’s right that I’m good with words. I find comfort in them, they hold no fear for me and I will use them like a weapon if I have to. Maybe it’s a skill I’ve developed over time, maybe I’ve always had it. It’s one thing I know I’m good at and I can’t hide it, whoever I may be or become. In the end, I can’t ever be anyone else except myself. It’s both a strength and a weakness. I’ve always been too full of pride, too much of a smart-arse to just play nicely. For many years, maybe it was all I had in each new life I was forced to assume — the ability to talk my way out of a minefield.

Gia flinches only slightly when I raise my eyes to hers. She’s a brave woman. I don’t need to touch her to know that fear and fascination are at war in her right now.

‘Why aren’t you afraid of me?’ I rasp, answering her questions with one of my own. ‘You should be.’

Her eyes are huge in her small face. ‘You just told me to save myself. If you were truly … evil, wouldn’t you have harmed me already?’

‘I’m not evil,’ I murmur. ‘Well, not any more.’

Gia’s eyes widen at my words.

‘You have nothing to fear from me,’ I say quietly. ‘I’m just a creature who needs help and affection and understanding, like everyone else does. I’m trapped, and so is Irina, for her sins. And there are so many things that I want — but what I want more than anything, is to be free. And then things like love and vengeance and truth? I’ll be able to work out for myself again. I’m sick of being acted upon. Of being judged. Of being at the … mercy,’ I feel my mouth twist, ‘of others.’

Gia adds tentatively, ‘You don’t really have a brain disease, do you … Mercy?’

I have to laugh, but when I do, the pounding in my head intensifies unbearably and I have to take quick, shallow breaths to get the pain back under control.

‘In actual fact, I probably do,’ I gasp. ‘I can’t remember things, important things, even simple things, about myself. This thing that’s happened to Irina, it’s happened before, I’ve “been” different people hundreds, maybe thousands, of times. And these “lives”? I think it used to be years between each one, but now the time frames are speeding up, getting shorter and shorter …’

‘
What are you?
’ Gia breathes.

I glare at her and she takes a step back.

‘Why must you people always ask?’ I growl. ‘Why must you always insist that your curiosity be satisfied? Be grateful that I do not wish to snap you in half like a twig.’

It’s just an idle threat on my part, but Gia goes pale. The feeling of fear that hangs about her, like a presence, seems to ratchet up a notch.