Down she falls and down she falls.
‘Twelve o’clock midnight by my reckoning,’ says the man in the emerald green suit.
He is seated at the entrance of the cave in the barnacle-encrusted chair and on his desk is the sand clock. All his remaining candles are ablaze. Celeste stands before him. She knows all too well where she is – deep under the sea in the cave of dreamers. Quickly she looks up and is relieved to see they are still there. Some she knows by name now. Their eyes are closed, their heads held high, they are lined up in a neat row, hanging from boat hooks, the passengers, the sailors and the captain of the Empress. There among them is her beautiful mother, next to her, her beloved father. She can see the king’s son, the prince. But not Maria and it alarms Celeste that among the sleepers it is Maria alone who she cannot see.
‘Do you think you have won the Reckoning?’ asks the man in the emerald green suit. ‘Do you think you have outwitted me?’
‘I’ve given you the three things,’ says Celeste, and it is only then she realises that she stands before him with nothing, that all along it has been a trick.
She has been unable to bring him anything except her ability to become invisible in a bright light. There is no stage too small for an actor, there is no Hildegard, no Anna, to sing the song of a bird who can’t sing. Why did she never think of this before? In the thousand times she thought about the three things, this had never occurred to her.
‘No – wait,’ says Celeste. ‘That isn’t fair. You’ve not given me a chance.’
Still she looks for Maria. Where is she?
The man in the emerald green suit says, ‘I tried to be generous, I tried to help you. Never mind. Here you are with nothing. Oh dear, oh dear. I imagine that you were too busy wondering which order everything went in that you never considered that it would be impossible for you to bring them all to me. Grown-ups make that mistake. They collect so many things and have large bank accounts and forget that they can only take their old bones with them. Whoops-a-daisy. I win again. Don’t look so sad. You did your best and, as I said, I tried to be generous.’ He rummages for a moment in his barnacle-encrusted desk and takes out the large, leather-bound ledger. ‘This is the part I like – a clean page for a New Year, rather joyous when you think about it.’ He dips his pen in the ink. ‘Maria – now, your name is Maria. Or Maria Celeste, it’s all the same.’
‘No, it isn’t.’
‘Isn’t what?’
‘The same.’
‘Are you talking in riddles?’
Celeste is furious. Never has she felt as angry as she does now at the injustice of this game and at this man for what he has done. Lights beam from her scars, they dance across the walls of the cave, illuminating the faces of the sleepers. Now she sees Maria, her beloved Maria, hidden among the empty clothes that once belonged to the nameless lost passengers. At the entrance to the cave, the malicious eye of the great white bird watches.
‘Yes, yes,’ says the man in the emerald green suit. ‘So you can become invisible in your brightness, I know that, but it doesn’t mean you’ve won the game.’
Celeste is filled with molten rage. ‘I am not playing your stupid game any more. I don’t care if I’ve won or lost. Your game is meaningless – you are meaningless.’
‘That’s a little harsh and also a little wrong,’ says the man in the emerald green suit.
‘I know your name – it doesn’t change,’ says Celeste. ‘There is no mystery to your name: Albatross – Albert Ross.’
To his surprise she strides up to his desk and before he can stop her, she has snatched the sand clock and thrown it down. Celeste isn’t expecting it to land, or to break as it does on the coral floor. With the sound of shattering glass comes a scream that for a moment deafens her: it is the cry of lost and drowned sailors. It shakes the cave.
‘You shouldn’t have done that,’ says the man in the emerald green suit. ‘That was very wicked.’
‘And what about you?’ says Celeste. ‘What about the grief and misery you have caused? What about the children who lost their parents, due to your selfishness? All the possibilities you stole from them. You, who yourself was once a sailor.’
‘Enough,’ says the man in the emerald green suit. ‘Time is not on your side.’
Celeste ignores his threat and still light pours from her. ‘When your ship sank you tried to save a cabin boy – his name was Noah Jepson.’
The cave shudders and she has a feeling that the man in the emerald green suit has become smaller, or that she is bigger. ‘But you couldn’t save Noah, could you? Both of you had been in the water too long and you were only human after all. Until the great bird took out your eyes and, in return for your life, you believed you had given him your soul. No bird could take your soul. It is an excuse, a miserable excuse for your own cruelty. You call this a game. You, who should have had the wisdom to protect your daughter. I’ve watched cats with mice. They are very cruel, and they let the mice think they’ve got away and then they pounce. You are worse than that – you are a monster.’
‘Your light is too bright,’ says the man in the emerald green suit, shading his face. ‘I feel the heat from your scars.’
‘This game,’ says Celeste, ‘means nothing to me. It should mean nothing to you. The great white bird should mean nothing to you. It was Hildegard who should have mattered to you. You should have been at the opera house, watching over her. You should have stopped Sabina Petrova. And now Hildegard is dead.’
The man in the emerald green suit lets out an unearthly wail.
‘No, no – my daughter.’ He puts his hands over his ears as the cave trembles. ‘Enough, enough!’ he cries.
‘It’s never enough for you, is it?’ she says. ‘You are a cowardly man who uses his power to become a sea monster, a bogeyman to give nightmares to sailors. Do your worst. And, by the way, my name is Celeste. Maria is my twin.’
The light beaming from Celeste is now so strong that the man in the emerald green suit begins to dissolve and she feels herself embraced in the wings of the great white bird. All is feathers, floating feathers. There is the sound of rushing water and still her light shines. She can see the surface of the sea above her. She feels anger leave her, she feels salt water heal her scars, she feels at peace. It is a peace as deep as the ocean itself. Time turns on a wave; the tide changes; the clock resets.
It is over. Celeste closes her eyes and waits.
