The Sphere (45 page)

“So the handkerchief is Juliet’s, and the blood is yours!” says Morgan.

“My handkerchief, give me my handkerchief,” whines Ambrosio, stretching his hands out in desperation. “That handkerchief is mine. My master gave it to me.”

“Shut up once and for all!” roars Necrus. “You haven’t been any use to me, either.”

Morgan lowers her hands suddenly and Ambrosio crashes onto the floor.

“My lord, I have always served you well.” The monk drags himself toward Necrus, his teeth covered in blood. “I am your most loyal subject. Don’t abandon me. You promised to rewrite my story, to get rid of my ending—devoured alive by birds of prey, over and over.”

“He can’t rewrite anything,” I say with my jaw clenched. The blood vanishes from the monk’s mouth and a tooth that was knocked out when he fell grows back again.

My faith in myself is gone. I don’t think I can leave the Sphere. My strength has abandoned me so quickly that I have to lean on Beatrice.

“Of course he’ll rewrite my story. He promised me!” Desperation twists Ambrosio’s features into a hideous grimace.

“No, he couldn’t, even if he wanted to,” I say, struggling to look at Necrus. “That’s why you’re here—isn’t that right? Because of your incompetence as an author.”

“How dare you? I could destroy you.”

“What can you do to me? Kill me? You don’t know how to change the way I am. I don’t know how I got into the Sphere, but I’m sure you didn’t plan it. It was something outside your control.” I start to cough. It feels like I’m running out of air; it’s getting harder and harder to breathe. “A human, here... You weren’t expecting that.”

Necrus rushes at me. The wheels of the heavy robot shriek painfully and then stick fast, refusing to turn. One of the tubes pops out of its slot and Necrus starts to roll around on the ground, groaning and gasping as he suffocates. He moves his arms and legs like a dying cockroach. His shape slowly begins to fade.

“He’s going to disappear!” exclaims Morgan.

Ambrosio runs over to reconnect the tube and Necrus starts to breathe again, but remains on the ground.

“You see? You can’t even breathe in the Sphere,” I say, with some difficulty.

Necrus coughs and coughs. He can’t get back up.

“You can’t breathe here, either,” says Ambrosio, his eyes filled with resentment.

“We have to find some way to deactivate this,” I tell my companions, pointing at the huge distiller.

Sherlock and Morgan run over to the machine while I follow slowly, still leaning on Beatrice’s arm. Ambrosio watches us, dumbfounded. His eyes move back and forth between us and Necrus, who’s still lying on the ground. The hundreds of flat characters in the laboratory lean against the walls, nothing but immobile objects.

“I think I’ve found something,” says Morgan, laying her hand on a crank. When she turns it a projected image appears.

“The big crow we saw in the library,” I say, amazed. “That’s how he tried to throw us off the trail.”

The projection is coming from an old reel of film that slaps loudly against the spool once it comes to an end.

“Let’s not waste any more time,” says Sherlock. “We have to disconnect the others.”

Beatrice and I hurry to pull out the tubes and needles that Necrus has attached to the kidnapped Sphereans. Morgan uses a spell to break their chains. Juliet opens her eyes slowly. She’s pale and weak, but she doesn’t seem to have suffered any serious harm. We disconnect Romeo, Anna Karenina, the Little Prince. Beatrice carefully pulls the needles out of Doctor Jekyll while Necrus drags himself across the floor toward his robot. He leans on it and finally manages to pull himself back up to standing. As I help my companions free the kidnapped Sphereans I feel my strength returning, and along with it my faith in my ability to escape this place. I take the tubes out of Mina, whom I recognize by her delicate beauty. I close my eyes and feel like I can see the Count’s smile, thanking me for keeping my promise. When I open my eyes again I see a little boy with blond curls next to Mina. He can’t be more than a year old. His cheeks are artificially rosy, even though he’s unconscious and connected to the distiller. At once a knot forms in my throat. Something more powerful than I am, stronger than my will to live, comes over me. I stand there frozen. There’s something terrifying about him, something sinister that stirs up an ancient fear deep inside me. I can’t bring myself to touch him. My hands tremble as I struggle to bring them close to the tubes piercing the body of the baby boy.

“I see that you have a special fondness for him,” says Necrus with satisfaction, observing my reaction closely. “The little Heir...”

I take a step back and collide with Necrus, then shrink away in horror. I want to move, want to get away from the repugnant creature that made this all happen, but my body won’t obey me. Necrus pins his cow eyes on me, and I can see by the way they glitter how much he’s enjoying my terror. He licks his lips, savoring some kind of exquisite sweet. He watches me, tilting his head, and steps out of the way. A small step, just enough to brush by me as he passes. His hands reach for the tubes coming out of the baby’s plump little body. He’s just a baby, I tell myself over and over, but I can’t quell my panic. Necrus disconnects the tubes one by one, without any hurry, with a sense of ceremony. At no point does he take his eyes off me. I start to sweat. I’m so cold my teeth are chattering. A certainty occurs to me, crushing me like a heavy stone, like the one beneath which Necrus tried to bury me alive. I am utterly certain that I will never get out of this place.

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“H
e’s just a little child—what are you afraid of?” says Necrus, reveling in my pain.

I can barely breathe. I collapse onto the ground, motionless. Once the little boy’s body is free of the tubes and chains, he opens his eyes, blue as sapphires, and looks straight at me. Necrus lifts him down from the operating table and sets him on the ground. The baby stretches out his chubby hands and reaches instinctively for me. I look at his tiny feet and my breath starts to come even faster. My one desire is for him not to move, for those feet not to start walking, please. But they do, they begin to move, and it feels to me like an executioner dragging his axe across the ground. I bring my hands behind me and push against the floor, trying to drag myself away, falling and sitting up again. My sweaty palms can’t move my limp body fast enough. The boy comes toward me. He’s only inches away. His feet, too small to support the weight of his stout little body, tap against the floor, beating out the drumroll that heralds my end. He rocks back and forth with each step and, sickeningly, stretches his hands out to me, reaching for my arms.

“Behold the heir!” Necrus announces, as if he were standing before a huge crowd. “How tenderly he seeks the warmth of our special guest. I knew I had to have this character, though I never imagined he was going to help me like this.”

I’ve reached the wall. There’s nowhere left to go. My companions are watching me, but they don’t understand my reaction at all. I shoot a pleading glance at Morgan, at Beatrice—why won’t they get this child away from me?

“It’s a charming tale, the one about this little fellow—a classic bedtime story,” remarks Necrus with amusement. I shake my head, terrified, unable to speak. “I’m sure you, like so many children, had it read to you every night. I’m sure you, like so many other children, treasure the memory of this MAGNIFICENT TEXT.” Necrus has raised his voice so much that we all have to cover our ears with our hands. “Though now that I think about it, perhaps you don’t remember it well, which would truly be a shame.”

With a snap of his fingers, Necrus activates his flat characters and orders them to take Beatrice to the golden throne. Beatrice looks at me in anguish. She’s begun to feel my pain. Silent tears spring from her eyes as the flat characters hold her down in the armchair.

“The sweetest and most heavenly voice of the Sphere will favor us with her beautiful reading,” Necrus says, taking a heavy book out of a box. “
The Tale of the Heir
,” he announces. “Let the show begin!”

Beatrice looks at me with pity, and refuses to begin reading. Necrus flings the book open on her lap. He turns the first few pages and then stabs his gloved finger over and over again at the start of the story.

“Begin! Read!” he orders, yanking on Beatrice’s hair to bring her head down to the book.

With a broken voice, Beatrice begins to read.

THE TALE OF THE HEIR

Once upon a time there was beautiful faraway kingdom whose land was known for its boundless fertility. From the palace windows one could see an explosion of color from the millions of flowers springing up from every corner of the land. The apple trees covering the distant hills bent double beneath the weight of their abundant fruit, and each spring the species multiplied, and filled the lands with life. Everything in that kingdom was torrential, from the rains to the vast clouds of butterflies that arrived at dawn with the first warmth of the day. The subjects of the great lord lived in contentment and joy, for they had a ruler known for his generosity and kind nature. They needed to work very little to pay the dues he assigned them, since they had only to toss a seed onto the land for it to bless them with its abundance. And so it was that for millions of miles around, there was no other place that flourished so magnificently.

But inside the castle was a point of darkness, a soul languishing beneath the great weight of its misfortune. The queen had spent five years sunk in a deep sorrow that kept her to her bed. Only with great effort did her subjects induce her to eat enough food to keep from dying. The queen’s sole wish was to disappear from this world as soon as she could. Every day a little girl knocked at her door, hoping to see the face of her queen, her mother, every day with the secret wish in her heart to hear just one tender word. And every day the little princess walked down the long, long corridor back to her bedchamber without having heard a single word from her mother. For since the very moment the royal midwife had told the queen that her baby was a girl, she had refused to set eyes on the child, and had detested her.

“A boy! It ought to have been a boy!”

The king’s consoling words did nothing, nor did the encouragement of the royal doctors, who assured her that soon the long-awaited heir would arrive. In that kingdom where everything was overflowing with fertility, the queen watched the days go by, and no new baby came.

Five years had passed. Five long years, during which the king cared for and indulged both the little princess and the queen with great affection. Years during which they tried every sort of remedy to make the queen’s womb grow again. Everyone in the kingdom knew that if no heir came, they would fall under the yoke of some neighboring lord when the king died.

At last the day came when the hurried footsteps of the court doctor could be heard as he ran happily to the king with good news. Fertility had visited the palace once again. The astrologers scrambled to make impossible calculations and decipher whether the longed-for heir was finally on the way. The news spread like wildfire: in a few months the laughter of a baby boy would ring out inside the palace walls.

The little princess watched, disconcerted, as gifts came and went, endless preparations were made, and the sumptuous bedroom that would welcome her little brother was filled with all manner of luxuries and toys. Cast off in a corner, she became a presence that no one noticed, not even the king.

As the months passed her hair tangled into knots, and her dress, which before had brushed against the elegant rugs, barely covered her knees. The little princess had grown, but no one had realized it. She fed herself on fruit from the garden, where she spent hours perched in a tree.

One night, lying on the branch of the willow tree that was her nursemaid now, she heard the queen’s voice speaking to an evil spirit.

“The time is near,” said the spirit. “Do not forget your promise, or the boy will die soon after birth.”

“I carry my promise carved into my heart,” answered the queen.

“I want the girl.”

“I will fulfill the pact.”

It was a kind of spirit that feeds on the blood of children. The queen was to leave the window of the little princess’s bedroom open, so that the spirit could come in.

From that moment the little princess not only lived alone, she lived in terror, unable to close her eyes at night, imagining that the spirit might come at any moment to take her away.

And the heir was finally born. The festivities at the palace were the most lavish in centuries. Everyone in the kingdom was invited to a magnificent banquet, and they danced and drank until dawn to celebrate the arrival of the much-desired child. The little princess’s eyes glimmered like two mirrors from behind the thicket where she watched without being seen or searched for. No one had missed her.

The next day, when everyone in the palace was still fast asleep in the mess left after the party, the bare feet of the little princess scurried on tiptoe down the long corridors. Her shoes had been lying at the bottom of the pond for weeks, since they had grown too small for her, and hurt her feet.

Her dirty, berry-stained hand slowly opened the door to the heir’s bedchamber. The little princess, her breath coming quickly, peeked into the silver cradle. There she found a baby with rosy cheeks and pale blond curls.

“Camelia!” thundered the voice of the nursemaid. She had orders to find the girl, wash her, and make her presentable, for that very night they were to dine together as a big, happy family.

After a long chase the girl was caught and plunged into a bath brimming with bubbles. Three maids had the task of combing out her tangled hair and scrubbing the crust of dirt from her feet. At the end the little princess was gleaming, dressed in the most beautiful gown she could ever have dreamed of. She went, trembling, to the official dining room, where her empty seat awaited her.

After dinner, she put off the moment when she would have to go to bed by asking her father the king thousands of questions, which he answered fondly, having remembered the existence of his dear little princess, and treating her with the gentleness he always used to. The girl asked for one more story and then another, and then yet another, until the royal storyteller was ordered to bed. The inescapable hour had arrived.