She just wasn’t herself these days. Or, at least, what seemed to pass as days.
It didn’t help that every time was crazy-time in this purgatory, this non-place in which she’d been stashed. There were no stopwatches or clocks, and if there were, they’d look like something Salvador Dali had been at with a paintbrush.
Millennia passed in mere hours, while seconds oozed by like unhurried eternities. She was a being of the senses, trapped in a place of the mind, and she was surrounded in all ways, at all times, constantly under attack.
By what she wasn’t sure, only that they were hungry, disorganized, and legion. They threw themselves at her, threw themselves into invading her with no more plan and design than a flu virus. They slobbered and gibbered, cavorted and howled, gleeful even as she repelled them or simply let them dash themselves silly against her defenses, only to shake it off and hurl themselves at her again and again.
By the end of the first eternity, she was pretty sure there was a pattern, but she couldn’t see it. She couldn’t see anything. She had only a fuzzy-at-best sense of who she was, what she was, and where she should’ve been.
But she knew that she should have had light and warmth and laughter.
Fortunately for her sanity, she did not remember exactly what any of those things were. She simply knew they were missing and missed. Absent from the Non-Place, where it was always crazy o’clock.
And so she stood alone, an impregnable tower with an eroding sense of self. She was eternally under siege with no memory of why it must be this way, only that this was the way it was.
Always would be.
*
She couldn’t imagine why the things that attacked her wanted in so badly, when all she wanted was out.
The scraps of logic she had been left with cautioned her against anything so rash as letting them in. But the larger part of her that still had hope of an end, of rest, of going back to The Good Place, where light-warmth-laughter lived, had little use for logic.
She poked and pried, till she poked a chink, then a dent, then a small hole in the battlements of her logic and reason. She peered out and was nearly blinded by a stark silver shine, after so long in soothing velvet darkness.
This, at last, was light. But it wasn’t warm and full of laughter and love. It was hard and cold and somehow feral. And, in a contest of wills, she’d be dashed to pieces upon it. Like tarnished moonlight, this light seemed to defy the very things that had come to define “light” for her.
She hastened to seal the wall, seal herself off. Surely an eternity of eternities walled up alone would be better than the primal lunacy that awaited beyond—but then she hesitated . . . there was…Something..
Ah, the Something sighed, and one of her other senses was returned. No, a sense was given to her. A sixth one, and it came bearing rough translations. The slobbering and gibbering that had been her air, her music, her only companion, became a ravenous chorus of the Untamed.
They moved through the cold, silvery, shivering light, beings made of brittle bits of the same illumination. They were all eyes and all teeth. What they saw, they wanted to consume.
They saw her. They always had. And now, she saw them.
The erosion of her self had now spread to the walls that protected her. As fast as she could close the breach, another opened, and another, and another, till she was finally laid bare, shrinking and cringing from beings that had no concept of mercy and light that had no concept of warmth.
Voiceless, she screamed, bodiless she turned, directionless, she fled, relentlessly pursued by the Untamed. As she fled, at her heels flew the Something, The Ah. It did not attack but watched her with something akin to amusement, yet closer still to respect.
Stop. Wait.
This was neither a question nor a command, but the mellow rumble of a curious predator. And she stopped. Waited. Though the Untamed clamored at her, tried to consume her, she stopped. Though bits of her were washing away like a sand castle at high tide and splintered away by jagged silver claws, she waited.
Look, the Something urged, from in front of her now. It was not blocking her way, but blocking them out. It easily captured and held her formerly divided attention. And how could it not? In this place of mad, silver, bright, howling light, this thing was the maddest, the most silver, the brightest. Its howl was the din of a thousand-thousand wolves, loud beyond the point of loudness, a perfect white noise that soothed and reassured. Here was the heart of the Untamed, the Midnight Sun around which lesser satellites merely orbited.
It was ancient and solitary, wild and beautiful.
It didn’t want to consume her, but rather become a part of her.
Close your eyes and listen, the Something hummed.
She closed her eyes, and she listened.
And was seduced.
And was rebuilt.
The eroded edges of her self were shored up, and the fractured bits were gathered and laced together with silver stitchery. The chorus of the Untamed became a part of her, a glue that held her together. The stitching made her both weaker and stronger than she ever had been. What had once been a whirlwind of mad satellites tugging at her with their primeval gravity was now a shield, a spear, an ally and an alloy inextricably bound to her forever.
She opened her eyes and that light, once too-bright and annoyingly alive with the slinking movement and shifting awareness of them, was no longer too intense to be borne. In fact, the light seemed to be emanating from her, from the depths and dark crevices of her self, like phosphorescence expelled from a quasar. Her universe was a combination of stark silver light and sumptuous, restful darkness. It was an inner-verse, not a Purgatory. A way station between what she once was, and what she was on the verge of becoming. The choice she was on the verge of making.
No, the choice she had already made.
Let there be Light? The Something yawned from within her, quiescent and content, for the moment, its words laced with the exact amount of self-conscious irony needed for such a question.
Irony, yeah. I remember that, she thought, with what felt like way too many bared teeth to be a grin.
She had a lot to re-learn and remember, a lot to assimilate and actuate.
But she wouldn’t be doing it alone. Ancient and canny, clever and mercenary, the Something that had become a part of her would be with her every step of the way, guiding her and informing her. Could easily overwhelm her, if it so chose.
Without one of the Tame People, I would be the Untamed Heart set loose in a world that has forgotten the Dark Forest, and the time when we all lived there. I would be the spirit of the Hunter at large in a world of prey, with no mercy to leaven me.
That time, the time of the Predator-King has passed, and the time of the Philosopher-King is at hand. Your place will be to serve the Great Balance between Human and Garoul that exists in yourself and in your people.
And with that, the Something subsided, curious but confident as to what her response would be.
That’s Philosopher-Queen, she reminded it after an infinity of weighing and thought. And though she had never had a lust for power, only a desire for order—for the righting of wrongs, where possible, and the fixing of what had been broken. The pushing back against chaos that separated Humans from beasts. This offer was greatly tempting. And you’re asking an awful lot of me, aren’t you? Who says I’m even fit to be the diplomat to your despot? I’m just a nobody cubicle-jockey. I’ve never led anything or anyone in my life!
That stark light wrapped itself around her. It still wasn’t warm, but it was illuminating, for suddenly, she could see how it could be done. Oh, it wouldn’t be easy. Mistakes would be made—were already being made—and not just by her, but it could be done.
More importantly, it needed to be done, if the Garoul were to survive in the long run. Strange days were coming, stranger than the ones that had ever gone before. And despite the pretense of democracy among the Packs, the intensely feudal system in place hindered both progress and evolution.
The last Dyre had tried but, being a product of that system himself, had been unable to change it, merely lighten its grip on the Packs.
What was called for was a revolution. A new order.
A diplomat, not a despot was needed to guide the North American Garoul, not to mention the spirit of the Untamed, which now resided in a nobody cubicle-jockey, into the new era.
Choosing to live meant choosing to live for the Garoul and as the Garoul.
But there was so much work to be done. So much struggle and strife.
Not that that had ever scared her away from what needed to be done, before. And at least with the Garoul, as the Garoul, her life would have meaning once more. A purpose.
And you’ll never, ever be bored, an amused voice added. It was different, somehow, from the Something, from the Untamed Heart. Her own heart supplied a name for that voice, one that shook it to its very depths.
George.
You’ve already decided, child, George went on. Now speak the words and awaken.
The words? she thought, confused. Then laughed as she realized she knew exactly what words. She suddenly felt freer and more empowered than she ever had in her short, penned-in life. Sure, why not?
Still laughing, she took a deep breath and steeled her entire self for the ride.
“LET THERE BE LIGHT!”
For one eternal moment, the silver light of the Untamed Heart intensified within her and around her. It grew so bright there was, momentarily, just a smidgen of warmth…then the light, all of it, was gone. She was by herself in the dark.
But only for a moment. Then space seemed to rush past her, like flying. Like falling, but that didn’t matter. Nothing mattered, but the sudden stop was an entire world rushing up to meet her and landing squarely on her shoulders. It was the weight of a body, and memories that were suddenly cumbersome after so long without them. It was itching and burning like the heat of a thousand suns, and how had she ever, ever felt that she was cold?
It was agony.
Almost too weak to take her first breath in what felt like forever, she surfaced—
—to bright white light. To her body convulsing and screaming, as if every single cell of her was on fire. She screamed and thrashed and flailed but something stronger than herself held her down.
It hurt.
Everything hurt: the shrill, banshee-sound of her own scream, the feel of someone’s calloused hands clamped on her arms; the scents in the air, so distinct she could have damn near tasted each one separately. And the light. After so long in silver-stitched darkness, the light was the worst of all. She felt it battering her eyelids and burning her skin, eating at her in a way the Untamed never had.
She flailed once more, hard, and threw off whatever was on her, only to find herself scrambling for purchase in something with slippery sides. It was only then she noticed that water, icy and stinging, was pelting her from above.
“FUCK!” a voice roared, pained and angry. Then new agony blossomed on her face, like a flower opening to disclose sweet, blissful darkness.
*
They found Des panting over Ruby’s unconscious body in her bathtub, soaking wet and bleeding from a nasty gash on the back of her head. Ruby lay in a sodden heap in one corner of the shower. Blood leaked slowly from her now slightly crooked nose, which straightened and healed even as they watched.
“Bitch is strong,” Des mumbled, stepping out of the tub, dazed and nearly slipping in a puddle of water. Nathan darted forward and grabbed her by one arm. She steadied herself and shook him off.
“What the fuck, Des?” Jake asked into the stunned silence.
“So say we all, Jacob,” Nathan sighed, his eyes ticking between Des and Ruby.
Des looked them over: father and brother and, a few seconds later, her stepmother, breathing hard with one hand on her rounded stomach. Then Des reached up and gingerly touched her lip, bitten while trying to keep Ruby from braining herself in the bathtub. The blood on her fingers was a red, red spot in Des’s white, white bathroom. The brightest thing in it, aside from the sluggish trickle of red still coming from Ruby’s nose.
Des grinned at her family. “Told you she’d survive,” she said jaggedly. Then: “Ow, fuck.”
Des’s own pain and exhaustion hit her like a freight train. After three-plus days without sleep, spent stepping and fetching for Phil, she could barely keep herself conscious. In fact, she was drifting sideways into a soft, gray place, her cares and worries gone as Nathan hoisted her up in his strong arms. His somehow comforting scent surrounded her.
“Ruby’s Fever has broken,” she heard Phil say from the vicinity of the bathtub, in a surprised, relieved voice. “Moon Above, I think she’s gonna make it.”
Of course she is, Des said, or tried to say. Just then, the world was swallowed by silver-speckled darkness. Then, just darkness.