Ascent
or, the Risen and Fallen on the Seventh Floor
by Kirryn Lia Todd
I had a penpal — well, email pal, really, before I went mad. No, tell a lie, it was after I went mad. It was after I moved to the hotel, even. She was a South American girl — Colombian, I think — by the name of Callista. I remembered her even now, because of two things. Firstly, she was beautiful. Truly, classically beautiful. She sent me some self-portraits — she had a waterfall of dark hair, straight and perfectly framing her face, which was perfect; her lips perfectly formed, a rosebud pout, her cheeks high, her eyes wide and darker than her hair. Her eyelashes framed her eyes like black fronds of some delicate fern, made of black lace and grey paper. She made my breath catch, made me reach out with trembling fingers to the screen of my computer. The image would waver beneath my fingertips, liquid crystal under my touch, pixels of perfection. I don’t know if she even knew how pretty she was, she once mentioned she was embarrassed about her skin, but to me, it was as clear as glass.
The second thing was that Callista didn’t write to me the way a normal penpal would. Her letters were pure poetry, sometimes barely more than six lines long, but they’d made the fine hairs on my arms and the back of my neck rise, made a soft sort of dizziness take up shelter in the front of my brain, and released something in me that made me write letters in poetry back to her: whatever phrase came into my mind, describing how I was, what I was thinking, what I was doing. The subject lines of the letters sent were completely random, but strangely beautiful — “sifflet”, “limerance”, “araignee”, “papillae”. I remember those four in particular. And the ending of one tingling letter –
We can allow ourselves love letters for the simple beauty of it, can’t we?
Perhaps I had been a little in love with her. We lost touch around the time I somehow managed to complete the QTAC entrance exam with 29% in mathematics and 96% in English, swirled up in the insanity that came with trying to figure out how to set myself up properly at my chosen university, how to figure out HECS fees and disability programs and study programs, all this on top of studying itself, which eventually toppled me and I was dismissed. One letter that I never replied to, I remember the pink font, not bright or harsh, but as soft as salmon or the tip of my tongue. I think she moved from Riohacha — her city — and emigrated to Scotland, to be with the man she loved, or wanted to live with, I’m not sure which. We were both swallowed by the complications of our separate lives. That was three years ago.
I should have kept writing despite things, but now I was so shy and terrified that she would be angry with me for ignoring her — but I never meant to. Communication, while easier online where I could put my thoughts into words with some semblance of sense (seeing them set out before me where I could read them always helped), just wasn’t my forte. It wasn’t that I disliked anyone, or hated anyone, or didn’t want to talk to them. Often it was just the opposite. It was just that it was such a monumental effort, exhausting, and then when what I wanted to communicate was mistaken or missed or just wasn’t in my words in the first place…
Dance. It was in dance, and then music following closely after, or perhaps hand in hand, that I best expressed myself, rid myself of darkness, embraced light and hoarded it in my heart. But I couldn’t dance all the time — and how people interpreted dance was completely subjective. Music even more so. Even if you couldn’t sing or play an instrument, most people listened to music, felt an emotional connection with it. The only people who didn’t, in my experience, were people who had something very…wrong, dark, oppressive about them. People I couldn’t help disliking.
It wasn’t just a beat that attracted me to a song or a piece of music. It had to have something about it…something…calling, blossoming, speeding along, alive and awake, something that awakened something in me, spoke to me…for me to feel a pull towards it. And when the pull was there, I would suck the songs into me like a hungry vampire, wrap myself all around them like an oyster shell with a pearl, and make them part of myself.
Despite all this, I couldn’t truly share them…
Until Killian. Killian’s songs, I mean.
Perhaps it was because he was sitting right before me when he played, and I could reach out and taste his emotions and feelings. But I wasn’t sure that was the entire answer. It was as if somehow, I had given a part of myself to him which he gave back to me with his songs. His playing of ‘Desert Sky’ had transported me to somewhere else entirely, and then there was the song he played where I lost all control and just threw myself off the cliff and into the wind, and became a song myself…
Somehow, we were connected. We understood each other, as best we could.
How? How in the hell did it even work?! We’d only truly known each other for a handful of days! I wanted to scream at myself, furious at my own idiocy, but then my mind would flitter back to Mephisto — who I was also connected to, somehow. Not in the same way I was connected to Killian, but connected all the same.
And then Killian was connected to Mephisto, in some strange way, with their identical faces…
Killian and I walked back to Nutmeg’s apartment — well, I walked back and he walked to — hand in hand, without much though about it. Something had changed between us. No, wait, not changed. Because nothing had, I don’t think. Nothing was awkward, or strange, or different. Nothing was different at all. But Killian and I…
Killian and I…that was it, wasn’t it? Killian and Elouise. Those words meant to be together. Somehow, some way. That was right. And it was something that had taken a year to get right…and I hadn’t even been here. Perhaps that was for the best, though. Three days of disconnection had just about done me in. How would I have survived twelve months?
Just as Killian raised his hand to knock on Nutmeg’s door, the woman in question opened it. She looked shocked, then her eyes became gentle, softer than I’d ever seen them, almost tearful. This increased her beauty a hundredfold, which I didn’t even think was possible, but there she was…
“Just the people I wanted to see,” she said with a smile.
“Me too?” Killian looked surprised. Nutmeg chuckled.
“Yes, you too, Master Lanois. Actually…” she bit her bottom lip, as if she wasn’t sure whether she should say what she wanted, next. “Actually, run back to your apartment and grab that infernal instrument of yours, will you? I’m in need of a guitarist.”
Killian grinned. “I don’t see any guitarists around here. Someone who makes a hideous racket on said instrument, yes, but…”
“If I’m a dancer, then you’re a guitarist,” I said, firmly. He blinked at me for a few moments, then whistled.
“Touche, Elli. Touche.” He nodded to Nutmeg and I. “Won’t be a moment.”
“What’s going on?” I asked as Nutmeg ushered me into her apartment. “Why do you need Killian to play for you?”
“For us,” she corrected. Mephisto rose from the chaise longue and motioned for me to take his place in it. I blinked wildly at the two of them. “Your demon and I…think we may have discovered where you went for all those months, Elouise.”
I drew in a breath, my heart sent a pulse of giddying heat through my body, sharply.
“But how…how…?”
“Esoteric know-how,” Nutmeg replied. I scowled.
“Him with ‘diabolic magic’, now you with ‘esoteric know-how’. Isn’t it all just code for ‘shut up and stop asking questions, Elouise’?”
“It could be,” Mephisto said, with that infuriating little grin. “But I think it’s more along the lines of ‘explaining would take far too long, Elouise’, personally.”
“It’s just an idea,” Nutmeg said, looking a little stressed. She tucked a lock of her hair behind her ear and shook her head, as if in some internal debate with herself. “It might be so completely off that we’ll both have to go back to the drawing board and I’ll be forced to spend more time with this bloody demon. I’d rather it didn’t, but–”
“I return!” Killian called out cheerily as he entered the apartment, Desert Bastard in tow. “I still think you’re bonkers for wanting to hear me play, but I’m not one to turn down an audience. ‘Specially such a good looking audience, at that.”
“You, sir, would charm the leaves off the trees in the summertime,” Nutmeg laughed, “And bore your poor audience to death with your neverending chatter, at the same time.”
Killian winked at her as he put Desert Bastard across his lap, strumming a few times. “Any requests?”
“Actually, yes. There was a lovely song I heard you playing the morning before…the one that Elouise interrupted by hollering about not getting enough sleep, I think?”
Mephisto leaned down, his hands on my shoulders, and tight. “He can’t see me,” he murmured in my ear. “Nor hear me. He doesn’t need to, yet. All you have to do is…when you feel yourself becoming the song, just let go, let it happen. Can you do that for me? Blink twice for yes.”
I batted my lashes once and then again, as casually as I could. My heart was pounding. What if I couldn’t do it anymore?
“Good girl. Absolutely no harm will come to you, I promise — I’ll be right here. Just be sure to let yourself go entirely.”
I twisted my hands into fists beside my thighs so no one would notice them trembling, and turned my attention back to Nutmeg and Killian.
“It doesn’t?” she was asking, looking somewhat surprised. “That’s very strange. Not even a working title?”
“Well, I never had to, you see,” Killian replied. He was strapping some strange thing around the neck of the guitar, something with a rounded edge that pressed the strings into its neck. I supposed it had to do with the tone, or something of the like. “It just sorta…I never thought in a million years I’d forget pieces of it, so the title could come later. I frequently wrote lyrics and forget ‘em, but lyrics aren’t what’s important.”
“Sometimes they are.” Nutmeg smiled to herself, but didn’t elaborate on that statement. I swallowed.
“Don’t be afraid to let go,” Mephisto whispered to me.
“Ready when you are, Killian,” Nutmeg told him. “Shall I count you in? One, two, three, four–”
The first notes of Killian’s mysterious song without title hit me in the chest like arrows tipped with liquid gold, stuck and began to flow into my veins quicker than adrenalin could. Again, it appeared before me — the cliff, and the wide, endless, beautiful, oh God, it was so beautiful, desert below it. The wind giggled, swirled around me, pulled at my hands and my hair and my dress. Come on, I heard it calling me, calling my name without words. Come on! You belong here! You are! You are! You ARE!
I am.
I let go.
Suddenly, again, I was the wind. I was the sunshine, I was the endless borderland desert, I was the strange, spiky-looking trees that peppered the landscape, I was the hardpan they grew in, I was the rising red rocks and the coyote, lethargic, half-dozing in the shade of said rocks. I was a sunburst, I was an exploding spidery firework, blue star center heart, I was the bluest of blue skies like Killian’s eyes, I was melody and harmony and the humming issuing from Killian’s throat, a rough but lovely sound, I existed everywhere and nowhere and I was complete. I didn’t need anything because right now, I was complete, I was made perfect. I was every sunset and every summer night that glowed like a diamond on fire.
I opened my eyes.
I was not in my body.
My body was lying collapsed in Mephisto’s arms on the chaise, pale and scarcely breathing, my eyes closed. How beautiful Mephisto seemed! The horns parting his night-tinted hair could have been made from polished ruby, they seemed to shine. His skin finer than the most delicate silk, his cheekbones sharp and dangerous, his lips, so sensual, parted as they stared down at me. I swirled downwards and brushed over his lips, a kiss that he felt — his eyes fluttered closed and he raised his head. I could scarcely believe that he was something we called ‘demon’, something that could be villified…there was no villification. Oh, he was lust and sin incarnate, but these things are needed, aren’t they? If I had breath, I would have gasped at his pure beauty, sharper than a blade.
Watching Mephisto and watching my body, a golden butterfly, glittering, shimmering, floating in the air. No, wait, not a butterfly…but Nutmeg. Nutmeg, her eyes like burning sapphires, hair that even Apollo himself would have envied for its colour spilling down her back in soft waves, her skin so pale. I looked again, and noticed something strange…it was as if Nutmeg’s body was pierced with arrows, arrows that seemed to be made of glowing glass, or perhaps crystal, a lighter blue than her eyes, aquamarine, almost. I swirled around them, tried to pull them out of her, but it was no use — they were there permanently. I didn’t understand them. What on Earth did they mean?
And oh…
Beside Nutmeg, a sunset. No, no, a boy. A boy with dark brown hair he hadn’t brushed, with a face identical to a the demon’s across from him, dressed in a ratty t-shirt and black boxer shorts, playing a guitar with an intense look on his face, eyes closed, fingers flying. He was there, but he wasn’t — he had given himself entirely to the music, floating, falling, piercing through heart and soul and mind…and he was more beautiful than Nutmeg and Mephisto put together.
How I loved him, oh…how I loved him so…
I whirled, danced, permeated every fibre of being in the room, rose, fell, intoxicated with my own existence, unable to remember what pain or fear felt like, twisting and turning and slipping through and around sunbeams, playfully brushing through Nutmeg’s hair, brushing along Mephisto’s lips again, and wrapping around Killian so tightly that his heartbeat became mine.
Nutmeg looked up, suddenly, and even though I had no body, she pierced me with a look. I would have stumbled if I’d had feet, if I had been a human being, that look was so strong and pointed.
“All right,” she said to me, her voice very soft. “It’s time to come back, now.”
I didn’t want to, but her eyes told me that I had to. With a sigh, I took ahold of something and fell down, down, down, back into my body, back down–
I opened my eyes.
The room was a blur of opulent red and gold, dappled with sunlight and heavy rose scent. I was sitting up on the chaise…supported by Mephisto. His hands were almost painfully tight on my shoulders, but I felt glad of it, for some reason…
Across from me, Killian opened his own eyes, blinked, then burst into a grin and a torrent of talk.
“Sweet Jesus! How did that happen?! I though for sure that I’d…I’d forgotten the whole bloody thing, I thought it had just left! But I played it! All of it, from beginning to end! And it was pretty damn good, wasn’t it? I knew I was onto something! There’s no lyrics yet, but still! Wow! Just, wow, holy crap, excuse my French! Wow! The song came back! D’you hear it, Elli?!”
“Heard it,” I whispered.
“It’s like magic!” Killian bubbled. I thought he was going to hug the Desert Bastard in his glee.
“And no wonder,” Nutmeg murmured, looking at me with an expression I just couldn’t put a name to. I don’t think she was angry, at least.
“I’ve gotta write it down, this time, all the notes and chords and all that junk. Can’t let it escape me again. But there again, maybe it won’t now I’ve remembered it? Coulda just been stress, or something of that kidney, I think.”
“You’ll never forget it as long as I’m around,” I said, amazed that my voice wasn’t trembling, was in fact perfectly even in tone and volume. Inside my head, it was shrieking.
“Oh?” Killian smiled at me, wrapped in the fire of his joy. “How come?”
“Because, Master Lanois,” Nutmeg said, just as quiet and even as my voice had been.
“‘Cause why?”
Nutmeg crossed the room and put her hand on my shoulder, on top of Mephisto’s.
“Elouise here is your song.”