Chapter 12
Into the Dark
Robin didn't know where she was. It was dark and cold and lonely. Oppressively, chokingly lonely. Was this the eternal darkness Methuselah had warned her of? It couldn't possibly be Amon's soul.
A loud, slow thrum almost like the peal of thunder rumbled across the darkness, and was gone.
"Amon!" she shouted. "Amon, it's me. Please be here."
A second rumbling was the only answering sound, this one slightly softer than the last and not as deep.
The darkness drifted apart like stormclouds. Robin walked on.
Another paired set of distant thunder claps reverberated through the ground.
There was, in front of her, a mirror, a mirror dark like tarnished silver. She walked toward her own reflection, dressed in her black dress with her wild hair pulled up in the double pigtails she usually wore. She reached out to touch the mirror, and her hand went right through it. She walked through it and found herself surrounded by a kaleidoscope of her own images, hundreds of Robins. A hall of mirrors. It was brighter here than where she had come from, and warmer, but it was still lonely.
Another loud thrumming shook the ground, and she realized what it was: a heartbeat, slowed to a fraction of its natural pace. Could that mean time was moving differently here?
As she contemplated the question, she heard another faint sound.
"Robin!"
She turned. The distant call had unmistakably been Amon's voice, but it had been desperate and frightened.
"Amon! I'm here! Help me find you."
With no response, she ran in the direction she thought Amon's voice had come from.
She found herself in what she first thought was a labyrinth, but then she recognized it as the hallway leading out of Harry's. She walked down it slowly, and someone approached, walking in the other direction. A beautiful girl.
Herself. But there was no flicker of recognition.
This was Amon's memory, she realized. His memory of the moment they first saw each other. She was feeling what he felt, hearing his thoughts.
Their eyes lingered on each other as they passed. "Beautiful girl," he thought. There was no possessive impulse, no desire, no inkling of ever seeing her again. "A remarkably beautiful girl," was all he thought, even as her eyes followed him. And then she was out of sight and out of mind. He was preoccupied with concern over the replacement Hunter who would be coming, a Craft user. A replacement for Kate, his last partner. The partner he'd hunted.
She was in Amon's mind, Robin recalled. He was everywhere here, and she couldn't find him by running. Physical force, physical movement, was meaningless here. But what wouldn't be? What kind of power could move the soul?
Poetry. The answer came to her mind. She recalled something she'd read in the Kokinshu, one of the books of poetry Amon had brought her: "It is poetry which, with only a part of its power, moves heaven and earth, pacifies unseen gods and demons, reconciles men and women and calms the hearts of savage warriors."
She thought of the day she'd met Amon. She had gone to Raven's Flat looking for him. He wore black. He always wore black. She wore black, too, but with Amon's black hair it had an overall darker effect. The way he kept to himself, even the way he moved, reminded her of a raven. Some people considered ravens to be birds of ill omen, but Robin had always felt a fondness for them, perhaps exactly because they were so generally unloved.
Perhaps that was why she loved Amon.
She thought of a stanza from the poem "Thirteen Ways of Looking at a Blackbird" by the American poet Wallace Stevens. She spoke it aloud, giving the words to the void.
"Among twenty snowy mountains,
The only moving thing
Was the eye of the blackbird."
The walls and mirrors whirled away, and Robin was surrounded by snowy mountains. The wind whipped up wisps of snow, and the sky above the mountains was the color of loneliness.
The wind carried Amon's voice to her, soft, intimate, like he was talking to himself:
"The cry of the stag
Is so loud in the empty
Mountains that an echo
Answers him as though
It were a doe."
Robin didn't recognize the poem, but knew Amon was talking about himself. He had heard her, but didn't believe she was really there.
A poem from the Wakan Roei Shu came to her.
"The spring mists share back and forth
their colors before our blinds;
the dawn wavelets secretly divide
their sounds to both our pillows."
His response was immediate, quoted from the same book.
"Where is it
That the mists of spring are rising?
Here in the mountains of beautiful Yoshino
the snow continues to fall."
She responded with a poem from the Tale of Genji.
"And were you to move to deepest Yoshino,
I still would find you, through unceasing snow."
Though the gloom did not abate and snow continued to fall, she suddenly knew which way to go, and set off in the direction her heart told her would bring her to Amon.
She heard his voice again.
"In a hut to the south and east of Miyako I dwell;
The place is known as the Hill of the World of Gloom."
And, after searching her memory for a long moment for the most appropriate poem, one that could complete the spell, she said:
"Though cruel the world may be, it is, alas,
A flower no mountains are deep enough to hide."
The snowflakes became pure white pear blossoms, millions of them, falling from dark, twisted trees covering the mountainside.
Amon was there, among the flowers, among the dark trees.
She ran to him. "Amon!" She threw her arms around him.
He didn't return her embrace. He pulled away and just looked at her. He looked confused.
"I found you," Robin breathed.
"Were you looking for me?" he asked.
"Yes, of course."
"I'm looking for someone too," he said, sounding perplexed.
"Who?"
"A woman. Her name is Robin."
She stared at him. Why didn't he recognize her? What did she look like here? "Amon, I'm..." She stopped. She couldn't say it. She couldn't say her own name. "I'm the one you're looking for," she said instead.
"You do seem familiar. Have we met?"
"Yes," she said, but found she still couldn't say her own name, and decided to take a different approach. "Tell me about her, the woman you're looking for."
"She's young, and small, with red-blond hair. Her eyes are green. She's gentle, and graceful. There's something about her that's...irresistible. To know her is to love her."
"Do you love her?" she dared to ask.
"Everyone loves her. She brings out the protective instincts in those around her. She's young, but she has been through so much. More than anyone should be asked to endure."
"Why are you looking for her?"
"I don't know where she is. I don't know what happened to her."
"Do you know where you are?"
He shook his head.
"You're dreaming. You need to wake up. And the way to do that is to use your power."
His head snapped toward her. "My power?"
"There is Orbo invading your body. It absorbs power, and when it gets enough, it breaks up. You need to use your power, use it enough to get rid of the Orbo."
"I'm not a Witch."
"But you are a Hunter," she pointed out.
He stiffened and turned away. "I will not use the power of a Witch."
"Would you rather die? Isn't that woman you're looking for a Witch?"
"She is different."
"Why is she different? Why can she use Witch power but you can't?"
"Because she is pure," he said. "Her heart is pure. I have done so much evil without using power, what would I be with it?"
"You would be the same Amon you are now. And most importantly you would be alive."
"That is not the most important thing."
"Power can be used for good. It can be used to heal, to fix what is broken. I talked to a Witch two days ago who can create water from thin air. When she was younger she traveled the world, going where there were droughts to bring water to poor villages, even though she was afraid it would draw the attention of Hunters to her. Power can be used for good, and I need you to use yours to save your own life. Think of...that woman you're looking for. She needs you. Do you think she could survive without you?"
"Yes," he stated unhesitantly. "She doesn't need me. She's strong. Powerful."
"Aren't you afraid she will become too powerful? That without you she may become addicted to her own power and become an unstoppable Witch?"
"No," he stated.
Robin frowned. What did he mean? "Do you love her?" she asked again.
He looked at the flowers, not at her, when he said, "Yes."
So he did love her. Under less dire circumstances she would have been elated. "Maybe she feels the same way about you."
"She can't," he said in sudden irritation. He looked at her like he just noticed she was there. "Who are you?"
"I am she. I'm the one you are looking for."
"You're lying!" He backed up a few steps, then turned, and ran.
And became a blackbird, a raven that flew up and disappeared into the clouds.
"Amon, no! I just found you; I can't lose you again!"
He was gone, and she was alone again.
Or had he ever been there at all? For Amon to love her was what she most deeply wished. Were her own dreams and desires manifesting here?
Could she find the true Amon? She knew so little about him, would she recognize his true nature?
Cupping her hands around her mouth, she shouted, "Amon!"
The name echoed into the mountains, echoed and re-echoed, full of longing.
The flowers and mountains drifted away, replaced by a dark room with a long table. At the other end of the table sat Zaizen.
Robin felt like screaming, but she couldn't scream or speak.
The table was dark wood, polished to a shine. The reflection she saw in the table was a teenage boy, perhaps sixteen, tall and lanky, with unkempt black hair. He was hunched over in his chair, and yet looked defiant.
She was in another memory, Robin realized.
"Do you know why you're here?" Zaizen asked.
"No clue," the boy replied with a show of nonchalance.
"It took us a while to find you. You're good at keeping yourself out of sight."
The boy said nothing, glaring at him suspiciously.
"The street gangs call you 'Amon'. What's your real name?"
"'Amon' works fine," he said coldly.
Zaizen nodded. "Amon, the supreme god of Ancient Egypt. Quite an exalted name you've chosen for yourself."
Amon shrugged.
"It means 'the hidden one'. What are you hiding from, Amon?"
"You tell me. You're the one who went through the trouble of tracking me down and dragging me in here."
Zaizen smiled with amusement. "You have a point. Do you know what an inquisition is?"
"Yeah. It's a religious trial to decide if someone's a heretic."
"That's one kind. My organization conducts another kind of inquisition, to decide if someone is a Witch."
That got the surly teen to straighten up, his eyes widening. "You know about Witches?"
"Yes. We hunt them, in fact. We were hunting one, a Witch who went by the name Berserker, who used his power to shake down shop owners and even criminals. We were recording him while we worked out our plan of attack, and we caught this."
He pointed a remote at a large screen on the wall. A recording began to play. It showed a short, skinny man holding a chain. He was standing in an alley, facing the young Amon. The two glared at each other for a moment, then Amon said something that made Berserker smirk. Then he rushed at the boy, running faster than any human should have been able to move, and hit him with the chain. Amon tried to duck out of the way, but still got a painful blow. He cowered on the ground. Berserker raised his chain for another strike, but at the same time a spider the size of a car materialized above him. Berserker turned and tried to fend off the monstrous creature, but the chain passed right through it and swung back to hit Berserker instead. The spider-monster vanished in an instant.
At that moment Amon jumped up and clasped his arm around Berserker's neck. The Witch swung his chain backward, hitting Amon as well as himself, but without much force. The teen kept his grip. He squeezed his arm around Berserker's neck, cutting off blood flow to his brain, until he lost consciousness and fell to the street. Amon didn't let go for several seconds, and when he did he flung away the chain, then started viciously kicking the unconscious Witch in the ribs and stomach.
"Did you just want to send a message, or were you trying to kill him?" Zaizen asked.
"Whichever."
"He would have died of internal bleeding if we hadn't picked him up shortly after this. You're lucky he wasn't rushed to the hospital. If he'd recovered, chances are you'd be dead by now."
"Maybe."
"What possessed you to pick a fight with a Witch?"
"He threatened someone I knew," Amon replied.
"A friend?"
"Someone I had obligations to. You wouldn't understand"
"And being a Witch yourself, you understood what you were up against."
Amon jerked to attention. "I'm not a Witch!"
"Then what do you call that power you used to make that spider appear with perfect timing?"
"It's just a trick I can do. It's nothing."
"It's power. That's a genetic trait. People with the potential to develop Witch power are called Seeds. Do you have any family or ancestors with Witch powers that you know of?"
"I have no family."
"You must have come from somewhere. What are your parents names? What is your surname?"
"Amon had no parents. He created himself from nothing."
"So that's why you chose that name."
His silence was an affirmative answer.
"Why do you hate Witches so much?" Zaizen inquired.
"They are heartless creatures disguised as humans. All they do is steal and worry about themselves and hurt people."
"What if we could wipe out Witches, so humans would be free from them forever?"
"Then you should."
"Would you help?"
Amon looked curious, but said nothing.
"Because," Zaizen continued, "with power like yours, if you're not a Witch, then you're a Witch Hunter."
"A Witch Hunter?"
"We would train you, arm you. You would work with other hunters to bring down Witches like Berserker. Are you interested?"
Amon was quiet for a moment, his expression inscrutable. Then he answered, "Yes."
Robin wasn't sure if she retreated from the memory or if it faded away from her. She didn't know if Amon was choosing to share these memories with her or if she was spying on his deepest secrets. But there were things here she had always wanted to know, things she had always hoped Amon would tell her.
"Who are you, Amon?" she wondered.
*Footnote
Sources of poems in order of quotation: Wallace Stevens "Thirteen Ways of Looking at a Blackbird"; Otomo no Yakamochi, Manyoshu 1802, trans. Kenneth Rexroth, from 100 Poems from the Japanese; Tachibana no Naomoto, Wakan Roei Shu 576, trans.J. Thomas Riber & Jonathan Chaves; Anonymous, Wakan Roei Shu 78; Murasaki Shikibu, trans. Edward Seidensticker, Tale of Genji; Kisen, Kokinshu 983, trans. Edward Seidensticker, ibid.; Anonymous, Kokin Rokujo, Zoku Kokka Taikan 35111, trans. Edward Seidensticker, ibid.