Maura shivered, trying to breathe. Her arms wouldn't move, she couldn't sit up, couldn't make her tongue work to call out. She was trapped somewhere, bound to something, she was helpless.
She caught the faint scent of smoke and char, shot through with thick, sickening tendrils of cooked flesh. Saw tiny flakes of ash filtering down like snow.
She couldn't help the whimper as it escaped her lips. Gasped as something moved behind her. Shuddered as she felt cold fingers scraping at her temples, scratching her skin back, pulling the flesh of her mouth into a wide, jagged smile, opening her throat to the heavy atmosphere, suffusing her with death.
Daughter of darkness. Daughter of greatness.
She felt the pull of many hands, or perhaps it was one set of hands, inconceivably strong, pulling her down.
She did not know for certain which way was up, but the hands pulled and pulled at her, down and down and down.
A woman whose face was the moon called out to her, suddenly. She hadn't seen the moon before, but here it was, illuminating only her.
Jane.
She reached for the woman who was the moon, whose ink-black hair spilled out and out, creating the night sky, slithering around her arms and legs, wrenching and sliding into her mouth.
Jane. Jane. I love you. Jane, please. Please don't make this the end.
The shimmering tendrils seemed to hear her. To pause before they thrust down her throat to silence her.
Jane, I love you. Jane. Please. Don't hurt me, Jane, please. Forgive me.
The black tendrils shuddered, began to retract. Maura heard a low, ugly laugh, one that could only come from a mouthful of broken teeth. Heard a high, thin giggle.
Jane, please, I'm sorry
The black tendrils seized for a moment at her throat. Began to separate, to flatten, to soothe and caress the white flesh of her neck.
Jane. I'm sorry. I love you. Forgive me
And then something huge, something overpowering. Some massive chord played by the light itself. The sun rising, its long looping yellow strands dipping over the horizon; its fine spirals catching the air itself, bending it, creating vast curling rainbows in their wake, loud as thunder.
The night-black wefts clutching around her throat. Holding her.
Daughter of darkness.
The locks of hair becoming sentient, becoming objects, becoming long, delicate vines. First clawing at her, she thought, panicked, then soothed when she realized the dark bands were stroking at her, were comforting her. Weren't preparing her for darkness, but for light.
Daughter of greatness.
The huge blare across the horizon; ugly at first, atonal, but, when she stilled to listen, not an aggression, but an entirety, overpowering everything; the force of it, the dull roaring blare obscuring everything else; every note played in unison. The herald of a golden dawn in all its furious destruction and monumental rebirth.
The black tendrils that held her down were caressing her now, undulating beneath her. Pushing her forward, she thought, letting her float. She breathed deeply, luxuriously, feeling herself rise and rise.
And that sound. That massive, piercing golden tone. Flooding the landscape. It was all just the flat horizon of ridges and plains. Peaks and valleys. Only a long and traveling line against blank wall, she thought, as the reverberation of that golden sound pressed and pressed and pressed at her; she watched shadows flit and vanish, she watched distances shrink and shrivel until they fit in the palm of her hand, she felt that golden warmth all around her, felt it flooding the shadow of those black caresses but not as an obliterate. Not as a corrective.
As a balm. As a repair. As this thing for the other. To soothe and strengthen the other.
Intimacy is a balm.
The overwhelming pressure of that golden note. The way it drove out the darkness but also pushed and pushed at her.
And yet that one man remained. And yet that man, whose face she could only half-see. Whose face shifted and rippled away from the light, changing itself, making itself blank and blank and blank, but whose voice she felt shivering from her bones, from her darkest and most contained places.
Daughter of darkness.
Daughter of darkness.
Daughter of darkness, he said again and again, silently, a thick silvered mercury smoke rippling from his mouth, its pushing silence obscuring the resonant blast of the sunrise. Daughter of greatness.
He was only a few steps taller as she stood there, surrounded by gold, flooded with it, as he was there, only a few steps taller but inconceivably tall, wreathed in shadow as she was in light. The distance between them so great it was only theoretical. He loomed over her, and loomed, and loomed; his body made of thick silver smoke, heavy, pooling, dripping down over her shoulders, filling in the fine divot of her throat, sliding between her breasts; the heaviness of him, his smooth, his heavy, his wide, flattening presence dripping, dripping, filling, coating, soothing, calming, enveloping.
I could be this, she thought; her mouth, her nose filled with the flat blue fizz of mercury as the air around her lit up with flames, with new flames, each the size of a body, but far away, but smooth, almost picturesque, almost charming. As the flames from each caught and joined with each other, spiraling into a blazing web. What if I am this? What if I am the daughter of this, would that be so terrible? The daughter of death, of the eternal passage. Down and down and down, each step an affirmation. What if I am this?
What if I am this? Daughter of darkness.
What if I am this? Of greatness.
What if I am this?
Maura.
Daughter of darkness.
Maura.
Daughter of greatness.
"Maura."
Wake up, pretty lady, a pair of seagulls called from the foot of her bed, snickering to each other, bubbling out high, thin giggles as they fluttered toward her.
The gulls poked and called and poked at her playfully, as though well-fed but searching for their promised meat. They poked and poked at her smooth skin, long black sticks pulled from their feathers as they poked and searched and then their calls became a swooping song, sweet and calm and back and forth, rocking and rocking and the sun began to fade enough for her to see its face, beautiful, fierce,—
"Maura, darlin', please wake up. You're having a nightmare, please wake up."
Daughter of—
"Maura, sweetheart."
She sat upright, gasping hard, her hand at her throat; sweat beading her brow, the back of her neck. "Jane?" she rasped, her fingers flexing hard across her sternum.
A brief pause, only her harsh, uneven breath to fill it.
"No," Brenda said softly. "It's Brenda."
Maura felt her whole body trembling, felt something sharp and heavy in her limbs, almost painful, but not quite. Cortisol dumping, she thought. A physically uncomfortable hormonal response regulated by the hypothalamus. Nothing conscious. You're all right. You're not in imminent danger. Someone is here with you, feel her hand on your arm.
Still. She couldn't stop shaking. Couldn't control her breath.
"I'm sorry."
Brenda didn't say anything, just circled her arm around Maura's shoulders.
"It was a nightmare," Maura mumbled weakly, offering confirmation of Brenda's earlier supposition.
"It was," Brenda murmured against her temple.
"We're on the boat," Maura said, half a question.
"We are," Brenda replied. "You had a nightmare. It's all right now."
"I was dreaming in time with the rocking," Maura said, though she wasn't sure why. "There were birds."
"You can hear them now," Brenda said nodding toward the deck. "It's morning, it's early. But like they say, the early bird . . ." she drifted off, her face wrinkling into a frown. "Are you all right?"
Maura shook her head slightly, ducking as she sat up on the edge of her bunk.
"Brenda, I haven't told you what happened before."
"Before—"
"Before the part of the story you know," Maura finished, swallowing hard. "Before Seabrook, before Montana, before we met the children at the motel."
Brenda sat silently for a moment as Maura clutched unconsciously at the frame of her bunk, fingers squeezing and releasing rhythmically.
"You haven't," Brenda said softly.
"There was a moment in which—in which I was in great danger," Maura said quickly, forcing the words out.
She paused for a moment. She'd never had particular trouble relating moments from her life before; they'd all simply been things that happened, merely events. Nothing deeply affecting. But this—heavy crosses, thick smoke, a mouthful of broken teeth grinning in the morning sun—this was something she realized she'd never revisited. In the catalogue of horrors that made up part of the volumes of her life, her time at the hands of Granddad's cult had been something she'd pushed deeper than she'd imagined her personal geology would acknowledge.
Yet.
Brenda was sitting next to her now, pressed hip to hip, shoulder to shoulder, Brenda's arm circling her, Brenda's face drawn and serious, her eyes dark and shining.
"There were several moments," Maura said, breaking the silence, "now that I think about it. But there was a particular time when I . . . when I couldn't even hypothetically solve the equation in favor of survival."
Brenda didn't speak, merely nodded. Squeezed her arm to steady her as the ship rolled slightly.
"We were in West Virginia. A small town. We were . . . discovered by some . . ."
"People," Brenda supplied, and Maura slumped with relief at not having to describe them.
"Who took us to meet their leader, a man they called Granddad—though he fit well within the median age of the community—who was possessed of a great deal of natural charisma. This man had created a belief system based on evangelical and apocalyptic Christianity, one that prized faithfulness and spiritual purity above all else. We were brought before this man as prospective initiates and . . . found wanting," she trailed off, suddenly not ready to share the rest. Her own forceful incapacitation. Jane's violent, near-fatal baptism. The way the thin chestnut mare had pressed and huffed against her neck as flames licked up the walls of the barn.
The way Granddad had stared into her eyes. Deeper, somehow, in a way she had no scientific explanation for. Saw something dark in her, something powerful. Saw her. Saw into her.
Daughter of darkness. Daughter of greatness.
"Maura," Brenda was whispering, squeezing along her bicep. "Maura, honey, it's okay."
"Yes," Maura said after a beat, shaking her head, forcing a smile. "Yes, it was a nightmare. I'll be fine in just a bit."
Brenda didn't move away. Shifted nearer. Held her tighter. "You said something about Jane."
"I'm sure I did," Maura replied. "It was a very dangerous time for both of us. But we survived. That."
"It's not that surprising," Brenda said after a beat. "That you'd dream about it."
"Because of the circumstances," Maura said, nodding. "I've been thinking quite a lot about this cult element we're facing, and it's only natural that it would trigger my own memories of similar experiences."
Brenda looked at her, brown furrowing. "You don't have to explain it away, Maura," she whispered. "You can let it hurt for a little while."
Maura sniffled, smiled brightly. "I could," she said, her voice light, "perhaps. At some time. But not now. Which is ironic, considering this would be the moment in which the requisite subconscious pressures would be applied, so it's no wonder I'd be having nightmares about past traumas connected thematically and experientially to our current situation."
Brenda frowned at her.
"I mean," she smiled, "I understand why I had the nightmare. It makes sense, at least according to Jungian interpretation, which is one that I appreciate for its logic and universality, despite my reservations about dream interpretation on the whole."
Brenda's eyebrow lifted.
"It's all right," Maura grinned, kissing Brenda's cocked brow. "It makes sense to me. And I'm all right too, Brenda Leigh. It was just a nightmare."
"You're sure?" Brenda breathed, holding Maura's face in her hands, studying Maura's eyes intently.
"I'm sure, Brenda," Maura smiled, leaning forward and pressing a soft kiss to Brenda's mouth. "Where are we?"
Brenda frowned slightly but dropped her hands to her lap. "We should be there by tonight," she said. "Only about a hundred miles away, and the seas are fine."
"All right," Maura said.
"Captain Kuznetsov says he's started seeing debris from the tsunami," Brenda said, standing and balancing herself on the opposite bunk. "Buoys and forest wreckage and stuff. A lot farther out than we should be seeing it, he says."
"So the story is checking out."
"I never thought it wouldn't," Brenda said softly, her voice faintly bruised. "I never thought you were wrong to want to help."
"I know you didn't," Maura murmured.
"I brought an extra sweater," Brenda said. "So now I have four. And that book you were reading. You could finish it, or maybe someone else—"
Maura smiled, feeling the last of her cortisol-induced anxiety washing away through her lymphatic system, tingling and fading down through her extremities. She reached out to Brenda, wove their fingers together.
"Thank you," she said, smiling brilliantly. "Thank you, Brenda."
"Wasn't nothing," Brenda scoffed, embarrassed. "You were right about how to pack."
"It's not about right or wrong, Brenda," Maura sighed. "Just about mathematics. Geometry. There's a certain volume allowed for—"
"And I allowed it to be filled with more sweaters for the people we find," Brenda cut her off.
"Speaking of," Maura said, pushing herself carefully off the bunk, swiveling her hips to stay upright. "Are we set for emergency triage? I know Monica said it's mostly cuts and bruises, but I'm thinking more about food and—"
"We're all set as a medical ship," Brenda said, reaching for Maura's hand and pressing a firm kiss to her palm. "Miss Marcia and Ellen are on the Lady Tilikum ready to do psych evals and take care of the kids. Everyone else is getting berths ready. That's what they call beds on boats," she added, beaming.
"It is," Maura smiled. "You're a very quick study."
"Gotta be," Brenda shrugged. "People depend on me to know what I'm talking about. Plus," she grinned, "when you're in love with Google you should at least be ready with the basics."
They stood for a moment, half-clasped in the narrow space between berths. The sea rocked them lightly, the pages of Brenda's open book fluttering.
"I don't usually advocate for dog-earing, but you'll lose your page," Maura whispered.
"Oooh," Brenda smirked, "talk dirty to me some more, Doctor."
Maura frowned as Brenda swatted at her. She was just about to demand Brenda make up for her discourtesy when the heavy thud of boots down corrugated metal steps interrupted her.
"Ma'am?" Thomas the cook's voice called, thin and anxious. "I mean, uh, ma'ams?"
"What is it, Thomas?" Brenda called, still obscured by the low light below decks.
"Captain Kuznetsov requests your presence in the wheelhouse," he called, half a request, half a thin, anxious wheeze.
"We'll be right there," Brenda said, tugging at Maura's hand. "I think he's gonna teach me to drive the boat," she said, waggling her eyebrows at Maura.
"Add that to your list of skills," Maura murmured, tickling her fingers up the sides of Brenda's waist.
"Already did, sugar," Brenda breathed against the smooth skin of Maura's throat. "Just watch me."