Ascent
or, the Risen and Fallen on the Seventh Floor
by Kirryn Lia Todd
Killian sat. Nutmeg sat. I sat. Mephisto, still invisible and (thankfully, I was scared I would die if he let me go) still holding me gently, also sat. There were three cups of tea on the table, untouched. Caramel for Killian, with milk and two sugars, naturally.
The silence wasn’t even awkward. More stunned, really.
“Crazy talk,” Killian said, apparently to the coffee table.
“You know it isn’t,” Nutmeg replied. “It all makes sense, doesn’t it? For a good year, you had that song down pat. Then suddenly you forget it, and Elouise wakes up? It makes perfect sense.”
“Bloody doesn’t,” Killian said, shaking his head emphatically. “That ain’t perfect sense. That’s…that’s madness…”
“Sparta,” I mumbled.
“Do you think I’m lying?” Nutmeg asked him, sharply.
“No…no, I don’t, but–”
“Do you think Elouise is lying?”
“No!”
“Then pray tell, oh learned one,” she snapped, “What exactly happened. Come on, give me a logical explanation for it all. You can, can’t you?”
“Nutmeg!” I gasped.
“I’m not backing down and I won’t,” she snarled at me. “Come on, Killian Lanois. Logical explanation. Blow the truth that I just presented to you to bits.”
He looked at her hopelessly. “That kind of stuff…that kind of stuff doesn’t exist…”
“Where I come from, I’ve dealt with ‘that kind of stuff’ more times than you’ve had hot dinners,” Nutmeg snapped. “So? Logical explanation?”
“I don’t bloody have one!”
“Then why won’t you just accept this as the truth?! Dear God, you’re as bad as–”
“All right, all right.” Mephisto shimmered into clearer view, his eyes darkening and his brow furrowed. “We’re not on a chessboard this time, my dear Nutmeg. There’s no reason why the boy can’t be presented with tangible evidence as to the…’otherness’ of things. Assumptions just injure all the parties concerned.”
Nutmeg threw her hands into the air. “So much for keeping out of the way as best you can, demone vecchio! You have to complicate everything, don’t you!”
“If you ask me–”
“Which I did NOT!”
“Which you did not,” Mephisto continued smoothly, “Things would remain complicated at best and at a complete stalemate at worst if I didn’t ‘interfere’. Don’t you agree? The truth need not be so…obscure. Not in the way I work, anyway.”
“Pah! Vaffanculo a Lei!”
I thought Killian’s eyes were about to fall out of his head. I was fairly distressed by that idea, I was extremely fond of his eyes. Mephisto disengaged from his argument with Nutmeg (who seemed to rise at least ten levels in anger when he did) and inclined his head to Killian, very politely.
“I don’t believe we’ve met before. I’m pleased to meet you, Killian. My name is Mephisto.”
“Jesus Christ!” Killian blurted out. Mephisto grinned.
“Not quite, but close enough, I think.”
“Idiot demon!” Nutmeg raged.
“You’re not real. You’re not real, you couldn’t…be real,” Killian gasped. “Am I hallucinating?”
“No.” Mephisto offered his hand to the blue-eyed boy, seriously. Killian reached out, his own hand trembling, and clasped it, his eyes growing even wider.
“It’s warm. Good lord. You’re warm. You are real. You are…”
“Yes,” the demon sighed. “I’m terribly sorry we had to meet under such stressful circumstances, but certain people find it hard to quit the habit of playing games, I find.”
“Up yours!” Nutmeg growled, and against my better judgement, I giggled hysterically, slamming my hands over my mouth. For all her elegance, it seemed the witch had gone slightly native…
Killian gave a shaky half-grin to Mephisto and Nutmeg. “Um…should I…would you like another cup of tea, Nutmeg?”
Nutmeg looked perfectly furious for a few moments, as if she was ready to tear Killian’s head off, but then deflated, flopping down in her chair with a sigh.
“That,” she said to Killian, “Would be lovely. Thank you very much.”
Mephisto sat next to me on the chaise as Killian poured another cup of tea out for Nutmeg, who looked exasperated and exhausted. Immediately I took his hand, probably squeezing too tight for it to be comfortable, but he simply smiled at me and smoothed my hair back from my face.
“It’s all right, baby child. Things will be all right.”
Nutmeg accepted the cup Killian handed to her graciously, and then gave Mephisto a black look over the rim of her teacup. “Don’t promise things you don’t know, demon. We haven’t figured it all out, yet.”
Mephisto remained unruffled. “We’re all clever people. With a little work, I’m sure all of this will become very clear.”
“I…turned poor Elouise into a song,” Killian said, dazedly. “I can’t believe that I…”
“No, no,” Nutmeg shook her head. “It’s nothing you did, dear. It just…it’s very hard to explain. In esoteric terms or in layman’s terms, really. It wasn’t like you tied her down and forced her to become a song.”
“That’s good, at least.” He gave me a wary look, and I smiled weakly.
“It was more like…Elouise was the idea of a song, and she was given form as a song by you. You made her real. This probably sounds like complete nonsense, I know–”
“But there’s a demon sitting across from me,” Killian said, wryly. “I’m getting used to the nonsensical. Pretty quickly, I might add.”
Nutmeg chuckled, and even Mephisto had to smile.
“I don’t get it, though,” I spoke up, shakily. I was feel very vulnerable, close to crazy — the closest I’d been to screaming at the hotel in my four (five) years here. I was also completely exhausted, as if I’d run a ten mile marathon at top speed with a pack of starving wolves at my heels to boot. “Why did…why did I become the idea, seed, thingy…why did I become a song?”
“That’s the crux of it,” Mephisto said, the tiny line appearing between his brows. “We don’t know. And there has to be a reason.”
“How come?” Killian questioned.
“Human souls…well, souls in general, I should say, it isn’t solely — excuse the pun — a human thing…they are not meant to change. Not from one form to another.” Mephisto looked at Nutmeg. “Do you mind if I smoke in here?”
“Go ahead,” Nutmeg sighed. “I’m still smoking myself, so.”
I blinked at her as Mephisto moved his hand elegantly, a cigarette appearing between his fingers, already lit. “But you said you didn’t smoke.”
She smiled a little. “No, I said I didn’t smoke cigarettes.” She pointed to a table beside her bed, where a curious but elegant pipe lay resting upon a wooden stand.
“Is that a pipe?” I asked.
“It’s a kiseru,” she replied. “A Japanese traditional pipe. Honestly, Elouise, if you’re going to give yourself cancer, at least do it elegantly.”
“Why do you smoke a Japanese pipe?” I asked, curious.
Something shuttered behind Nutmeg’s eyes, and her smile vanished.
“I spent some time in Japan…a long time ago.”
“Human souls don’t change?” Killian said, steering the conversation back into what were undoubtedly safer waters. “But people change all the time.”
“Yes, but a song is something fundamentally different from a soul,” Mephisto supplied. “It’s like the difference between, say…hm, the ocean and the sky. These two things are undergoing changes all the time, they are never static…true. But the sky can’t become the ocean, and the ocean can’t become the sky. The world would turn upside down if either of them tried.”
“But Eli changed,” Killian frowned.
“Something…major must have happened to Elouise for her to change into a song,” Nutmeg added. “But…”
“I can’t remember anything,” I sighed. “Right? Twelve months gone.”
“Pretty much,” Nutmeg smiled wryly.
“Wait, wait wait wait just a moment,” Killian waved his hands. “That’s it, right there. Twelve months. Twelve months, right, Eli? That’s how long you were ‘gone’.”
“Yeah, that’s right.”
“I’ve only been here twelve months. My song — Eli — our song? Whichever it is, I started writing it when I still lived in Kanga Point. The beginning of it. How does that…does that invalidate everything?”
“No,” Mephisto said. He sat back, lost in thought. “It does…complicate things. There’s absolutely not doubt that Elouise became the song you were writing.”
“How do you know?” Killian asked, frowning a little.
Mephisto gave him a look that turned him pale and made me shiver.
“I am very, very knowledgeable about human souls and also about music, and its mystical properties.”
“He rules over drinking, smoking, gambling, spending money, intimidation, pop culture, and rock and roll,” I said to Killian, helpfully.
“And massive egos,” Nutmeg muttered under her breath.
“Hm, well…” Killian shook his head, still unsettled. “That leaves us with another mystery -- why? Why amnesia? I mean, I played the song this time, and she remembered…being the song. Unless it was just plain old garden variety amnesia?”
“It…could be possible,” Nutmeg said, doubtfully. “But from what I know about amnesia — and keep in mind I’m not a neurosurgeon, so I could be wrong — amnesia…never really works like it does on the television. It’s not…laser-guided like this. It doesn’t just erase memories from X amount of time. So I don’t think it is. Before you…Elouise still wasn’t…oh, this term is so hokey, but, well, she wasn’t in her body.”
“So, we have two questions,” Mephisto said, leaning forward and resting his fingertips together. “Firstly, why did Elouise turn into a song, and secondly, why did she leave her body in the first place? That’s what we need to find out.”
“No,” Killian said, slowly. He frowned a little. “Three questions. We have three questions. The other two, yes. But…who was in Elouise’s body while she wasn’t?”
Nutmeg and Mephisto just stared at him. I swallowed hard.
“That’s…that’s…”
“She was wandering around here,” Killian said. “Kept to herself. I thought she was just grumpy or something, the times I spoke to her. But that wasn’t her. It really wasn’t.”
“And how can you prove this, Killian?” Nutmeg asked, sweetly poisonous. Killian chewed on his lip thoughtfully, either unaware of the barb she just flung at him, or ignoring it.
“You know what it was that tipped me off the most? She didn’t dance. Whatever was in her body either couldn’t or didn’t want to dance. It could almost pass as her…but…not without the dancing.” He shook his head. “It was someone else. I know that, now.”
“You didn’t tell me you were a dancer,” Mephisto said to me, softly.
I smiled. “I kinda didn’t think I was, until this morning.”
“Oh, indeed? What happened this morning to change your mind?”
I felt a blush creep up over my face, and hurriedly took a sip of my tea, hoping it wasn’t too obvious. “I’ll tell you later.”