The Edge of Everything(52)

"Yes," said X grimly. "He is."

"Take him," said Zoe.

X was startled by her fury. Had he done this to her? While she had been teaching him about kindness, had he been teaching her about rage? He tried to banish this new fear-tried to unthink the thought-but it had taken hold. Its roots were spreading. 

Nonetheless, he nodded.

"Go to Ripper," he said. "Walk to the woods. Do not look back."

Ripper stepped forward. X did not know how she would greet Zoe-he prayed she would not be sarcastic or manic or dance in some outlandish way-nor how Zoe would respond in her present state.

They were tentative at first, but seemed to recognize something in each other. X could not stop studying them. It occurred to him that they were the only two people who had ever held him, had ever praised him, had ever loved him. He could see his entire life-everything that was decent and humane-in their faces. When X was young, he hadn't understood that Ripper cared for him as if he were one of her own lost children. He understood it now. He watched as Zoe's rage began to melt in her presence. He watched as Ripper put an arm around her shoulder, like a great, warm wing.

"I feel as if we are already well acquainted, dear girl," she said. "Perhaps it is because X made me read your letter aloud twenty-five times."

Zoe smiled weakly.

X watched as they crossed the lake, their arms linked, their heads touching gently. He heard Ripper tell Zoe that the lords were on their way.

"But they'll leave us alone once X takes my dad?" said Zoe. "Right?"

"Perhaps they will," said Ripper.

"What if he decides he can't take him?" said Zoe.

"I suspect they will make X watch as they murder you in some colorful way," said Ripper in an incongruously sweet voice. "But perhaps that is too obvious? The lords are a mystery, I confess. One never knows when they will feel the need to be creative."



X turned at last toward his bounty, who was cowering against the shed and gripping the weird piece of metal as if it might protect him. X tried to tell himself that the man meant nothing to him, that his fate was of his own making, that his only name was 16th Soul.

But when he gazed at him, all he saw was Zoe's father.

All he saw were Jonah's eyes.

X pulled the metal out of the man's hands. He flung it across the ice. It skidded to the far edge of the lake before coming to rest in a clump of dead reeds.

"Have you any other toys we should dispose of?" said X.

The father was too frightened to speak. He looked pleadingly at X-and then he ran.

Why did they always run? Every one of them had run! What made them imagine they could get away?

X watched as Zoe's father raced for the shore, stumbling and slipping as he went. It was a pathetic spectacle. He remembered telling Zoe that her father was not evil, just weak. Had she not believed him? Could she really hate such a pitiful person, or was she just reeling from the shock and rage? Would she blame X tomorrow-and forever after-for what she'd told him to do today?

With a flick of his hand, X yanked the man back-it was as if he were on an invisible tether-and dashed him against the wooden shed. He left him suspended there, his feet dangling above the ground. With a few more gestures, he sent ice crawling like murderous ivy toward the man's hands and feet. Zoe's father watched helplessly as it bound him to the shed.

"What do you want from me?" he said miserably. "You can take anything I have. You can take anything you want."

"Yes," said X darkly. "I know."

"So what do you want?" said Zoe's father.

X unbuttoned his coat and let it fall to the ice in a heap.

"Just your soul," he said, "which you have made poor use of."

X cast his eyes around the lake.

"Which of these holes do you choose for your grave?"



       
         
       
        

Zoe's father flailed wildly, but the ice held him fast.

X ignored his exertions-he had seen such desperation many times-and pulled his shirt over his head. The man's sins were so eager to show themselves that X's back was burning.

He had to turn off his mind, had to shut out the man's questions, had to stop looking at his eyes.

X's body knew what to do. He just had to let his body do it.

He dropped his shirt. It mushroomed briefly as it fell.

He turned away from Zoe's father, and stretched out his arms. The muscles in his back and shoulders were aching. The cold air stung his skin.

He summoned up the man's sins. He could feel the terrible images starting to crawl across his back.

Zoe's father let out a sob.

"I know what I did!" he shouted through his tears. "You don't have to show me. I know everything I did!"

X was in such turmoil that the words cut through him. He felt more keenly than ever that-whether or not he was only doing what the lords had commanded, whether or not the punishment was just-he was piercing another human being's heart. Ripper said they were dustmen, but that was a kindly lie. She knew better, and so did he. He was a killer. And worse: he was a torturer.

He lowered his arms before the movie was over.

His back went white.

Behind him, Zoe's father gave a grateful sob. He tried to stop crying but couldn't.

When X turned, the man's chest was heaving and his face was a storm of tears. He looked raw and terrified. A helpless bird.

"Wait, stop, please," he said. "Talk to me for a second. Just for a second, okay? You love my daughter, right? I can see that. I saw the way you hugged her. I saw the way you looked at her. It's the way-it's the way I used to look at her mother."

X refused to listen. This man was nothing to him. He was just the 16th soul.

"Stop your mouth," he told Zoe's father, just as he had once told Stan. "Or I will plug it with my fist."

Zoe's father ignored the threat. He knew this was his last chance to speak.

"But if you love Zoe-why do this?" he said. "Why murder her own father?"

X knew he shouldn't answer, but the words rushed out of him.

"I do it because she asks me to!" he shouted. "I do it because you have hurt her who is dearest to me! I do it because either you or I must be banished to the Lowlands, and I have endured that darkness long enough!" It was as if X were defending the monstrous act not just to Zoe's father, but to himself. He could not stop. "If I do not take your soul, I will never see Zoe again-never feel her touch, never hear her voice, never curl her hair around my fingers. My heart was born in winter, sir, and I will not go back to the cold." 

Zoe's father said nothing.

He had run out of words, as they always did.

But just as X was about to take the 16th soul down from the shed and plunge him into the lake, the 16th soul started screaming Zoe's name.

His voice was startling. It tore the air open.

"Zoe!" he screamed. "Zoe! Please!"

X turned frantically, and saw that Zoe and Ripper were still ascending the hill to the woods. They stopped now. Ripper held Zoe tightly, urging her not to turn.

"Zoe!" her father shouted. "Listen to me! Zoe!"

X leaped at him, and struck him hard across the face.

"I showed you a kindness, damn you!" he said. "I could have forced you to behold all your sins, but I did not! And yet you beg your daughter for sympathy? She will not save you. She is not your daughter anymore!"

"I don't want her to save me," said Zoe's father, and again he began screaming: "Zoe! Zoe! You don't have to look at me, just-just listen. Zoe, I'm sorry! Please, please, please know that I'm sorry. I was a disgrace as a father. As a man. As everything. I disgust myself. I don't deserve to live. And life without you and Jonah and your mom-it's not really living, anyway. I love you, okay? I absolutely freakin' love you. If you don't believe anything else I ever said, please, please, please believe that."

He was breathing so hard now that he had to collect himself before he could say more.

"If me dying helps you somehow, then I'll do it," he shouted with what energy he had left. "I mean, I already died once. It's gotta be easier the second time, right? I know you don't have any reason to believe me, but I think you're awesome, Zoe-and you'll always be my girl."

Zoe's father turned to X now.

"If you want my soul, just take it," he said. "Take it."

X was closing in on him, when, up on the hill, Zoe finally turned toward them. She walked back down to the lake, her steps heavy and trancelike. Ripper could not stop her. Together, they descended and stepped on the dead reeds, which crackled under their feet.

Zoe was not looking at her father, but at X.

Nearby, a cluster of wild turkeys, black and red against the snow, raised their heads to X now, too. Even they seemed to be waiting.

X took the man's slender neck in his hand. Zoe's father gasped, but he did not resist, did not speak, did not look away.

He just stared at X-stared at him with Jonah's eyes.

X began closing his fist around his windpipe.

And then he stopped, not knowing why.

He felt a kind of stirring in his brain-a wind almost, as if someone had cracked a window or pushed open a door.

It was Zoe. She was searching his thoughts.

She'd told him that he was never to search hers. "There will be no mind-melding-or whatever that is!" she'd said. Yet here she was trying to figure out what he was thinking, why he was hesitating.