The Girl Who Would Be King(154)
“I don’t think the world’s that smart,” I say.
“You sure you’re willing to risk it? What’s the harm in just leaving things the way they are? The way they’re supposed to be?”
“So, you’re just going to let me keep on killing and doing what I want to do?” This gets her and there’s a long pause before she answers.
“No, I guess I can’t do that.”
“Well, okay then. Unless you’re ready to let me walk away and go about my business, which so far totals killing thousands of ‘innocents’ as you like to call them, I suggest you put up your fucking dukes and all that.” I stare her down and she looks away. She looks pretty sad and contemplative. It’s a minute before she answers me.
“Okay then,” she says and she raises her hands like a boxer. It’s finally on. We’re finally going to duke it out like we were meant to.
Naturally, I throw the first punch.
°
Her first punch is good and catches me across the jaw. My head rolls back and my jaw slips out of place, but before she can hit me again, I catch her hand and force her backward, pushing my jaw back in place and using a tiny bit of my energy to repair it. She resists my weight and swings again, knocking me onto my back twenty feet away on the dusty desert floor. She comes closer and I sweep her legs out from under her. We’re both scrambling to get up.
I don’t want to do this with her, but she won’t be reasoned with. She’s like a wild animal that’s learned to kill and won’t ever stop. And she’s in pain too, I know that much from being in her head. Her mind is a dark place that I can’t and don’t want to understand. But the one thing I have come to understand is that it’s not entirely her fault. She’s made horrible choices, but the same way I’m driven by something beyond me, so is she. But what she’s driven by is mean in a limitless way I don’t think I’ll ever really understand. It’s some kind of cosmic joke and we’re only pawns. Selfishly I’m afraid of what happens if I really kill her. What do I become? The world is most definitely out of balance if I kill her and so what does that mean? If I really believe that the world wants balance, then maybe I won’t be able to kill her. I don’t know. I don’t know what will happen. Maybe the whole world will unravel on itself, but I don’t have a choice, she’s given us no choice, and so I come at her and give back as good as she gave to me.
When I punch her, there’s a crack of thunder and flash of lightning across the whole sky and instead of her jaw just coming out of joint, it shatters. I’m surprised that I’m able to break hers when she hasn’t been able to break mine. The stone and the symbol should pretty well even us up.
And then it hits me why I’m stronger than she is.
I’m pregnant.
As soon as I think it, I know it’s true. I’m stronger, faster, and more resilient than I’ve ever been before, and Lola’s having trouble keeping up, and it must be because I’m pregnant.
Some part of me cries out NO.
That I’m too young, that it’s not what I want, not yet at least. That it’s too much too fast. That it should be my decision and mine alone, not the decision of some ancient power that’s possessing me.
But other parts of me feel almost at home in the destiny of it all, that it makes sense, that in a way I should have seen it coming. The larger pictures for all of us, not just me and my little life and the way I want it to be, but Lola and me, and this larger idea we seem to be a part of. The words from my mother’s letter echo in my head: “It doesn’t always come when it’s convenient or when you think it should. It’s a strange kind of destiny that we don’t seem to have any say about, but it brought you to me and for that I can never be too frustrated by it.” And she’s right, that’s exactly how I feel. Like all my nerves and fear about throwing myself into having a real life, everything has led up to this moment, everything has put me on this path, so that I would be right where I needed to be here and now. As if something is pulling my strings from behind a curtain. It’s maddening, but it seems so perfectly laid out now that I see the resolution, that it’s hard to truly be angry about it.
All the emotions I’ve experienced in my life wash over me in this one wave, leaving me drenched in miracles and prophecy.
And now I have an even bigger reason to defeat Lola – not just to defend the world from her and to save myself – but to protect my child. To ensure my child lives. I can’t worry about the repercussions are of killing. I don’t have a choice; she’ll never stop coming for me, for us. I wish she would just stop fighting me long enough for us to think things through, to talk it out, but she’s like pure, wild instinct and she’s coming at me again with her still-broken jaw before I can even form words.