Chapter 40: Night: Kendra and the Gunslinger Girl | Now (Scenes 1-4)

Night: Kendra and the Gunslinger Girl

Now (Scenes 1-4)

Yea, by thy hand the Love-god rends apart
All gathering clouds of Night’s ambiguous art;
Flings them far down, and sets thine eyes above;
And simply, as some gage of flower or glove,
Stakes with a smile the world against thy heart.

—Dante Gabriel Rossetti,
The House of Life: A Sonnet-Sequence,
Sonnet XXVII: “Heart's Compass”

1

Since Nico’s narration was a rambling mess, Kendra added her own observations to straighten out the details. With their combined efforts, this was the gist of their adventure:

Nico and Kendra remained several yards from Katherine’s dream mansion, staying behind the hedgerows to keep out of sight of the procession of masqueraders heading up the steps to the patio entrance and into the double doors like a parade of ghosts. Even from yards away, they kept their footfalls light over the turf, with Nico peaking through the foliage at the masqueraders, and Kendra leading the way through the garden path in the adjacent grounds facing a separate patio area of the mansion, where the spice of woodbines and acacias and the musk of larkspurs and jessamines and violets and red and white roses wafted in abundance and stung at their eyes.

Yet through it all, Nico kept feeling the presence of her sister Mara tugging at her heart beats, wondering if she had been here before without knowing why she felt that way. She had no way of knowing that it was Katherine’s doppelgänger, Cooley, who led both sisters through the woods and into this English garden to Cooley’s version of Katherine’s dream mansion. And she had no way of knowing that Katherine’s heart would shudder on the breaking of her mirrors just after midnight, like the rose doomed to shed its petals on the snow of a looming snowstorm,

And the soul of the rose went into my blood,
As the music clash'd in the hall;
And long by the garden lake I stood,
For I heard your rivulet fall
From the lake to the meadow and on to the wood,
Our wood, that is dearer than all;

She had no way of anticipating things, either. She had no way of anticipating a God’s-eye-view of Madison Hearn’s location at a three-way intersection of two hallways. She had no way of anticipating a mysterious ‘bambina’ girl firing her guns at Madison, nor anticipating Celia Hearn zipping in and rescuing Madison just before the bullets tore into her. For all Nico knew, she had no way of knowing or anticipating any of these things, yet the visions kept crowding through her mind, showing her the true state of things and her position therein.

So Nico fainted and collapsed to the ground, while in her mind she fell through the dark infinitude of slow-wave sleep and found herself in a cavernous place that shimmered from the light of an underground pond, wherein Mara and Nico used to explore its depths in their more innocent childhood dreams. In those dreams, Nico was always the brave one, leading Mara by the hand, feeling the warmth of her palm against hers, and wading into the watery depths. In Waking life, Mara was more active and assertive and Nico more passive, but in their dreams, their roles were reversed.

So when Nico stirred and opened her eyes, she found Mara in slow-wave sleep beside her, her hand clasped in Mara’s.

Nico got up and loomed over Mara, who was breathing through her mouth and crying from closed eyelids. Nico’s stomach churned at the sight, wondering what she was thinking and fearing what she was feeling, so she wiped the tears from Mara’s face, leaned over and planted a kiss on her lips.

At that moment, Mara woke up screaming Nico's name, her name echoing and reverberating along the underground, while Nico wrapped her arms around her sister’s waist, but her arms passed through.

“I’m here, Mara,” Nico said, grasping onto her shoulders, but her hands passed through. “Please stop crying, I’m begging you!”

Yet even her words fell on deaf ears, Mara unable to hear her.

Mara cried and sniffled, but when she got up to go, her foot bumped the kodachi. Mara bent down to get it, then collapsed to her knees in front of her sister, her face scrunched in an agony of grief and guilt, as more tears trailed down her cheeks.

And Nico knew that she cried over the death of her beloved sister and that innocent girl who tried to help her, so she said, “Mara, please. I’m here!”

Yet in her plight, she picked herself up and ran through the tunnels, running aimlessly from the shadow of her guilt and grief-stricken conscience, running and running and running into the dark night of her soul.

Nico got up to follow, but the shimmering light flashed through the cavern, emanating from the pond beside her feet. Nico turned to look and found her mother there in the pond.

“Mom!” Nico said, and waded into the pool to meet her there, but her mother turned to go, and Nico followed. “Mom, wait!”

Yet Nico couldn’t reach her mother the deeper Nico waded through the pond, taking a breath and diving into the pond, reaching out for her mother’s light edging into the depths, edging out of sight like a fading dream, till her lungs burned and her mouth erupted in a flurry of bubbles.

Amid the stir of bubbles, she thought she felt Mara’s arms grasping onto her waist, comforting her the way she had tried to comfort Mara, becoming one with her sister in body and mind. And at the subtle imprint of her sister onto herself, Nico felt the crying wreck of her sister’s self clogging up her nose and running down her clammy face. For in that emotional connection, Mara’s face was Nico’s, and Mara’s tears were Nico’s, yet Mara’s voice was someone else’s, someone different, someone calling out to Nico to—

2

“Wake up! Come on, come on, wake up!” Kendra said, grasping Nico’s bloodstained shirt in tight fists and letting tears trail her cheeks and fall over Nico’s face, glimpsing the residual image of a dead Colbie flitting through her thoughts when she closed her eyes. “Come on, come on, come on! Wake up, damn you!”

When Nico opened her eyes, she said, “Are you crying?”

“I’m not!” And Kendra looked away and wiped the tears from her eyes, dissipating the image of Colbie from her mind.

Yet a look of recognition flitted across Nico’s face, so she reached out to wipe away Kendra’s tears.

But Kendra grasped her hand and stood up, then pulled Nico to her feet and said, “It’s fine, okay? I’m fine.” She then wiped away the remaining tears and said, “Come on, let’s go,” and she stalked off towards the side patio of Katherine’s dream mansion.

Yet Nico said, “I found Mara.”

Kendra halted and turned, then doubled back. “You what?”

“I found her,” Nico said, and Nico led Kendra through the garden in the opposite direction of the side patio, where the dining room and kitchen rumbled with the clatter of prepared dishes and the bustle of footfalls and voices for an upcoming celebration somewhere in the building.

“Where?” Kendra said.

Nico stayed silent.

“Where?”

Nico said, “I’m not sure.”

“But you said you found her!”

“I haven’t been to this place before, geez,” Nico said, “but I think I have a way to get to her. I hope.”

“What do you mean by that?” Kendra said, wondering if Nico had any idea where her sister was, after everything Amelia did for them. “Are you telling me . . . Hey, where are you going?” And she followed on Nico’s heels, running into the woods where . . .

From the meadow your walks have left so sweet
That whenever a March-wind sighs
He sets the jewel-print of your feet
In violets blue as your eyes,
To the woody hollows in which we meet
And the valleys of Paradise.

Nico ran through the labyrinth of woods with the speed of the dead, and Kendra struggled to keep up, keeping her just within her sights several paces ahead of her. “Nico, wait up! . . . Nico, come on . . . Give me a break here!”

She kept running and running till her legs burned, slowing down and losing sight of her. Just when she thought she had lost her, Nico yelled, “Over here!”

So Kendra paced the rest of the way, following the source of Nico’s voice back to the lake where Amelia had led them to minutes before, slowing down until she found Nico at the water’s edge.

“Jesus, you run fast,” Kendra said, huffing and puffing, doubling over and grasping her knees to catch her breath. She added, approaching her, “Why are we back here?”

“I have an idea,” Nico said, then turned to face Kendra, grabbing her arms and kissing her.

Kendra pulled away. “You keep kissing me—what the hell?”

“That is my cue,” Nico said.

“Cue for what?”

“For you to do anything you see fit,” she said, “but only after I’ve found my sister. Till then, lay low and sneak into the mansion, if you can. Find out as much as you can.”

Her words put a smile on Kendra’s face. “Really, a black bag job? I never thought you’d be into that.”

“Whatever you wanna call it,” she said, “just keep doing it until my cue, okay?”

“What are you gonna do?”

“Just watch me, and you’ll see,” Nico said, then put her finger to Kendra’s lips and smiled.

Kendra pinked a bit, but nodded her head.

So Nico descended down the embankment of the lake and walked on the water several paces from the water margin, then turned around and waved at Kendra. Then a seal of red roses inscribed her on the water, manifesting psychic waves from the epicenter that was Nico. An enormous red rose materialized on the water below Nico’s feet, opening its luxuriant petals like a platform before closing over her and sinking through the surface into God knows where.

For a time, Kendra lingered by the water’s edge.

“I hope you know what you’re doing,” she said under her breath, and headed back through the woods and into the garden, where acacias and larkspurs and violet and roses wafted their scents in thick layers.

Kendra noticed the various aromas, wondering if these flowers were trying to tell her something, as though the garden itself were reaching out to her, wherein . . .

The slender acacia would not shake
One long milk-bloom on the tree;
The white lake-blossom fell into the lake,
As the pimpernel dozed on the lea;
But the rose was awake all night for your sake,
Knowing your promise to me;
The lilies and roses were all awake,
They sigh'd for the dawn and thee.

Then Kendra covered her eyes, blinking back tears as the pungent waft of many flowers stung her eyes, wiping her tears away. She opened her eyes. Of all the flowers in the garden, the lilies and roses seemed to glow beneath the moonlight overhead, dotting a patchwork path in the garden hedgerows ahead. She blinked and opened her eyes, then followed along the hedgerows wherever she saw lilies and roses, thinking of roses and lilies.

For she remembered the funeral of her father, her real father who had died on the line of duty when she was fourteen years old. She remembered following the procession of officers marching down Helgon Rail Avenue from the Larking Metropolitan Police Department through Woodley downtown towards Arcadia Park and into Arcadia Cemetery, where Officer Roy Dolan eulogized his fallen partner and comrade in arms.

She remembered her own eulogy for her father, saying words she could no longer remember, crying tears she could no longer cry if she could help it, and ending her words with a stanza of Alfred Tennyson’s Maud. In it, she combined the memory of her father with the memory of her mother, who had died when she was but a toddler.

She had no memory of her mother, yet her father’s ghost still swam before her eyes, leading her down the garden path towards a clearing in the hedgerows.

In that clearing stood a man in a white suit, leaning against a cane planted by his side.

“Who are you?” Kendra said.

“A fellow sufferer, like yourself,” he said, “and a great admirer of all things beautiful and transient in this world.

“‘Queen rose of the rosebud garden of girls,
Come hither, the dances are done,
In gloss of satin and glimmer of pearls,
Queen lily and rose in one;
Shine out, little head, sunning over with curls,
To the flowers, and be their sun.’”

Kendra manifested a semiautomatic pistol in her hand and aimed it at her visitor and said, “Who are you, really?”

“A scion of a noble bloodline,” the man said, raising both hands and showing his palms, leaving his cane standing up from the ground. “I didn’t come here for a fight, I assure you.”

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But Kendra wasn’t buying it. “I’ll say it again,” she said, pulling back the slide and aiming with both hands, her finger on the trigger. “Who the fuck are you?”

“Assume nothing, darling,” he said, “for everyone is under opposition control,” and he snapped his fingers.

A psychic force flooded through Kendra’s body, taking control of her arms and hands, edging the barrel of the gun away from the man and pushing it closer to Kendra’s face. She gritted her teeth and strained her arms, struggling to keep her wrists and arms straight, yet the force was too strong for her. Her arms folded, the gun edging closer to her face, till the barrel was pointed bare inches from her chin, and she was grimacing and squeezing her eyes shut against the inevitable, and her mind was racing through countless images of her friends and her father and her mother and Roy Dolan and Randal Larking—

When the image of Nico flashed through her mind, Kendra felt her presence flowing through her body and lingering on her lips. Kendra’s strength renewed, and she managed to push the tip of the barrel away from her chin, away from her face.

“What’s this?” the man said.

With Nico’s help, Kendra regained control of herself and wrestled her gun from Rancaster’s control, holding it low to the ground and repositioning her grip in both hands, winded but undeterred. When she regained her breath, she trained her eyes on her foe and said under her breath, “Nico, is that you?”

Yeah, Nico said in Kendra’s mind. Geez, that was close! Try not to get yourself killed, okay? I have my hands full as it is.

“Easy for you to say,” Kendra said, backing away from her foe, but still keeping her eyes on him. “Who the fuck is this guy?”

Aaron Rancaster, Nico said. He did the same thing to me and Mara, the bastard. I know I’m asking a lot from you, but kick his ass for me, okay?

“I’ll try,” Kendra said.

“Who are you talking to?” Rancaster said, and approached Kendra as she backed away into the garden.

“That’s none of your business.”

“Let me guess. Was it Nico Cairns?” Rancaster said, stretching his hand before himself and manifesting his cane, grasping the handle and holding his stance before Kendra. “Am I right? Am I right? Am I fucking right?”

Kendra cursed and kept backing up along the garden lawn, but halted when she noticed his stance mirroring her own. He was waiting for her to make the first move.

“Any day now, darling,” he said.

Kendra cursed again and tried to steady her nerves and breathing, planting her stance on the balls of her feet, and praying that her footwork wasn’t too rusty. She took a deep breath and breathed out, counting towards the third breath.

One . . . Two . . .

3

Too many visions flooded through Nico’s mind for her to keep up. She had not anticipated being in this very hallway of mirrors, standing where Madison had been moments before in her vision. And whatever she was expecting next, she had not anticipated Rancaster being in two places at once: in the garden with Kendra outside, and in the hallway accompanying this ‘bambina’ girl when he rounded the corner and spotted Nico and grinned.

“Ah, you again,” he said. “Ready for another round, darling?”

“Fuck you,” Nico said, and ran into the intersecting hallway and into an invisible barrier, knocking herself on her butt. She picked herself up and wiped the blood from her nose, then raised her hand to the glass barrier. “God, damn it, not again.”

Then she felt her feet levitating from the ground, and an invisible force yanked her back down the hallway and around the corner and down to where Rancaster and the ‘bambina’ girl were standing. She was still struggling and cursing at Rancaster, so she got slammed against the wall, and her head smacked against it, knocking her out. She stayed there for a time and thought she saw Mara Cairns asleep on a four-poster bed in some doorless boudoir, furnished with a chair, a cabinet, a writing desk, and a vanity table with a special body-length mirror.

At first, she wanted to speak her name, but no words came out of her mouth. She tried a few more times to speak her name, but got the same result. So she approached her bedside, instead, carrying a black rose in her hand, and noticed her sister holding a red rose over her chest. She leaned over her bedside and loomed over her face, tears welling up in her eyes at the sight of her and falling on her cheek and lips. So in lieu of words, she expressed her presence through her actions by planting a kiss on her sister’s lips, a sister to a sister, a rose to a rose, two lips to two lips whereon . . .

There has fallen a splendid tear
From the passion-flower at the gate.
She is coming, my dove, my dear;
She is coming, my life, my fate; . . .

It was a kiss that would stir Nico’s sister out of the slow-wave sleep of unconsciousness and awaken her in a little time when Celia and her sisters and Nico’s double would gather their wits in the boudoir, but Nico was unaware of that at the moment. All she wanted to do was place her black rose next in her sister’s hand, yet before she did that, a snap of fingers brought her back down the unconscious tunnel of slow-wave sleep and back into the hallway with Rancaster and that ‘bambina’ girl.

“Ah, you’re awake,” Rancaster said. “You know, as annoying as you’ve been since last night, I must thank you for giving me and my bambina here a good showing,” and he indicated a replay of her actions in the boudoir with her sleeping sister. He then turned to the ‘bambina’ and added, “You should learn from your peers, bambina, for they can show you things you cannot glean from reading books.”

At which, the ‘bambina’ averted her gaze and gritted her teeth and said, “What’s the meaning of this, Father?”

“It means,” he said, “that I’ll find her for you.”

“You can’t!” Nico yelled.

“Oh, but I can, darling. And I will, and when I do,” he added, turning back to the ‘bambina,’ “you will have your chance to shine in your debut. I promise you that! But before that happens,” and here he snapped his fingers, and a table thudded onto the carpet, and two semiautomatic pistols plopped onto the table, “let’s continue where we left off, shall we?”

Nico looked at the table and saw the same guns that the ‘bambina’ had used in the square at the old Rancaster district, and it was déjà vu all over again for her.

“Don’t fret, darling,” Rancaster said. “It won’t be as one-sided as last time. I’m a fair man, and a small alteration will prove it. These guns hold eleven rounds, ten in the magazine and one in the barrel, eleven bullets in each.”

The invisible hold let go of Nico, and she stumbled back to her feet, doubled over with hands on her knees, trying to catch her breath.

When she regained herself, Rancaster beckoned Nico to the table, which she did, and said, “While I’m away finding Mara Cairns, you two will play a little game of cat and mouse. Pick up your guns, both of you.”

The ‘bambina’ picked hers up, but Nico wavered.

“Come on, darling,” he said, “pick it up.”

Nico hesitated, then picked it up and felt the heft of it in her hand and said, “How do I use it?”

“Oh, it’s not rocket science, darling. It’s double-action, so it reloads automatically every time it fires a round. All you have to do is aim and pull the trigger,” he said. “But you only have eleven rounds, so I wouldn’t go willy-nilly with it if I were you. Now,” he added, checking his watch, “the rules of cat and mouse are simple. The cat’s ‘bambina,’ and the mouse is you, darling. As such, you have a thirty-second head start, starting . . . now.”

But Nico just stood there, incredulous.

“I mean, now, darling,” he said. “Time’s a-ticking!”

Nico cursed and bolted down the hallway, rounded the corner and bolted down another hallway, passing an array of mirrors and doors on both sides, running and running, thinking of Rancaster being in two places at once, thinking of the ‘bambina’ girl’s complicity, thinking of Mara in the bedroom, and thinking of Kendra . . .

4

In the garden, Kendra didn’t so much as breathe when the image of her friend flashed through her mind again, making her say under her breath, “Nico!”

And before she knew it, before she had time to blink, Rancaster rushed at her in a blur, drawing his blade and catching her gun in mid-draw, then followed through on his arc and sent Kendra crashing into the side of a hedgerow, snapping branches in a flutter of leaves.

For a moment, Kendra tried to focus the blurry shapes around her into something resembling eyesight, then looked at her opponent standing there in the middle of the lawn, his sword fully drawn and gripped in an expert grip. She wasn’t even able to pull the trigger, and that’s when she realized it.

“You hesitated, darling,” Rancaster said, “just like your father.”

Kendra cursed and gritted her teeth and glared at the bastard and picked herself from the tangle of twigs and leaves, revealing a tear along a seam on her back that showed part of her bra strap. She cursed yet again and said, “How do you know about him?”

“I was there at his funeral,” he said, commanding the center of the garden like a knight of the field, “and I heard your eulogy for him. It was an interesting selection you chose, the lover’s soliloquy from Tennyson’s Maud. How romantic!

“The red rose cries, ‘She is near, she is near;’
And the white rose weeps, ‘She is late;’
The larkspur listens, ‘I hear, I hear;’
And the lily whispers, ‘I wait.’”

And on that last word, Kendra lost her hesitation, raising her gun and firing off three rounds, yet the bullets passed through Rancaster as if he were a ghost. “What the fuck?”

“Having fun, darling?” he said, grinning a shit-eating grin. “You’re more trigger-happy than your father.”

“Don’t mention him, fuck face,” she yelled, and fired off more rounds till she emptied her magazine clip, but none of the bullets had any effect on him beyond the mere shimmering of his form under the moonlit sky.

So he repeated the same attack, rushing at her and catching her gun on his blade in mid-strike and parrying it from Kendra’s grasp, then brogue-kicked her through the hedgerow and into another part of the garden, where she curled up on her side and spat up blood and gritted her teeth against the pain in her chest. She took the brunt of it against her ribcage like the shock of a defibrillator or the blockage of a heart attack stopping up her coronary artery, and she grimaced against the spasm, riding it out in a squint of tears till she could breathe again.

Yet the respite was short-lived.

For Rancaster was once again shadowing her, and when Kendra looked up at her assailant, she noticed the blade of his sword-cane on her neck, denting the skin on its edge.

“You never got a chance to see your father’s face when they buried him, did you?” he said. “There’s a reason why his funeral was a closed-casket one. Look upon me and know the face of your father’s judge and executioner, for I took his head clean off the moment he hesitated to take his first shot.”

And at his words, a trance of something like recognition or epiphany misted over her face, as though she were seeing something invisible to waking eyes, someone she recognized but just couldn’t hold her image in detail in another part of the garden. Then a cut seared at the base of her neck, and she winced and lost the vision and saw the face of her father’s murderer looming over her.

She raised her hand to her neck and saw blood on her fingers.

“That cut is your only warning,” Rancaster said, then backed away and sheathed his blade. “All you have to do is get out of here, and I’ll forget this ever happened, and you’ll have nothing to fear from me.”

“Are you sure?” Kendra said, picking herself up in a grimace of pain and keeping her eyes on her father’s killer. “How do I know you won’t kill me when I turn my back?”

“I’m a man of my word, darling,” he said. “I say what I mean, and I mean what I say. Now hop to it—before I change my mind.”

She squeezed her hand into a fist, but she had no choice in the matter. Her chest ached from the impact of his foot against her ribs, leaving her winded and wheezing, and she wouldn’t be surprised if she woke up with bruised ribs in the morning, but she promised herself that this was not a surrender—it was only a tactical retreat.

So she swallowed her pride and retreated back through the garden pathway she took with Nico, when she felt the tingle of human touch over her hand (“What the . . . ?”). Ere Kendra pulled away or said anything else, she was pulled along into the wooded labyrinth and forced to keep up with the phantom speed of an invisible apparition, till she found a clearing up ahead and slowed down toward the water’s edge.

It was the same lake where Nico had taken her to.

“Nico, is that you?” Kendra said.

Indeed, once Kendra regained full control of herself, she got a closer look. This apparition had Nico’s face and her bloody clothes, but Kendra noticed a stern aspect in her eyes that differed from Nico’s.

“No,” she said. “I’m Mara Cairns.”

Tsuzuku

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