10. Ten Years off the Mountain
Deposing was exhausting. Telling the same thing over and over to different people, trying to make sure you didn't forget and leave something out, or describe something a little differently and have them start over again to make sure it was right. After this last time she had made a break for the coffee machine, where she now stood, drinking the watery brew, and clutching a donut, her pilfered prize from an unguarded neighboring desk. She was dead on her feet, and she hadn't even met with the press yet. Oh joy. It still didn't seem quite real that only a few hours ago a man, someone she had known since childhood, had died… right in front of her eyes! She had seen his life wink out like someone had thrown a switch. And even though he wasn't exactly her favorite person, all right she didn't like him at all, it didn't seem right that that's all there was to it. You're alive; then you're not. It made her shiver just to think of it.
Of course part of Lucia's nervousness at the police station stemmed from the fact that she still had, in her possession, on her person, one of those "pins". After curiosity had compelled her to pull one out of The Skunk's head, she didn't know what to do with it. She couldn't imagine pushing it back in! And she didn't want to be seen, by the rapidly approaching news photographers, holding it behind the murdered Chairman. So she had slipped it up her sleeve, where it still rested. It was a good thing they hadn't made her walk through a metal detector. Though she really didn't know what it was made of. There was something about it though. Something she had read. She was going online to look it up the minute she was out of here. This hopefully would be soon, before the coroner started comparing the number of pins he had with the number of holes in Dewalt's head!
Where was her father? Not only had he not come to the party, he wasn't here now! She missed him terribly. She needed him now. She was so scared. She hadn't felt this frightened since…
Kukuru Mountain. Ten years had passed since she had set foot in that eldritch realm. That had been the first and only time in her life she had thought she was going to die, but as terrifying as that had been (and if she closed her eyes and concentrated, she could still remember what that monstrous dog Mike had smelled like), that was not the feeling conjured up by that orphic name. Sometimes she imagined she had died on that day. Died as a little girl and been reborn as a young woman. She had cried herself to sleep for months afterward from the pain of separation. And even though she never told her father anything other than that she had gotten lost in the woods, either he sensed something more had happened, or someone had told him, and he never again took her to that otherworldly place.
She thought of Michael Voorhees, the grandson of the last Prime Minister but one. Her first kiss at age six and the first guy she ever fooled around with, although given their high public profiles, they had never dared to go "all the way". They would do that after marriage, and Marriage came after University. She remembered how he looked like a blond Adonis, powerfully built and fair, sitting and smiling happily with both their families, at her graduation. He had had the ring in his pocket. She looked into his limpid blue eyes, and knew she could never do that to him, could never trap her friend in a loveless political marriage. She saw tears in his eyes that day. You could see everything in Michael's eyes, they were so transparent and shallow, and not the way eyes should be at all… dark and profound.
The political situation in Padokia had stabilized to the point that her father had no need of the Zaoldyeck Family's particular skills, but she continued to extend them social invitations (always declined) and to send Holiday cards in which she would always, as a matter of course, inquire about the boys and which were always responded to by Mrs. Zaoldyeck's secretary (although they were signed by Mrs. Zaoldyeck), stating that they were all doing very well.
And still sometimes she had these dreams where a black swan would swoop down from the starry sky to carry her on its back flying higher and higher, and faster and faster. She would always wake up before she could find out where she was going.