The Tattooed Heart (Messenger of Fear 2)

Ariadne gave me a grateful glance. She whispered gratitude in my ear, in French and English, and in the incoherent language of sobs.

“Messenger,” Daniel said, sounding suddenly formal. “Your last duty was to prepare your apprentice to take over your role. It is clear that she is well prepared, strong enough and good enough, to do what she must. And thus, my very good friend, in Isthil’s name, I free you.”

Ariadne reached for Messenger, but instinctively he drew back.

Daniel went to Messenger, stood very close to him, and in a gesture that sent my mind to memories of my own father, put his hand on the back of Messenger’s neck and drew his head forward until their heads touched.

They stood like that for a few minutes, Messenger moved beyond any possibility of speech.

Then Daniel pushed him away, and with his left hand took Messenger’s left hand. Reverently he slid off the ring of the Shrieking Face. But he did not remove the ring of Isthil.

Then, still holding Messenger’s hand in his, he took Ariadne’s hand and said, “Messenger, you have faithfully fulfilled your duty to Isthil and to the Heptarchy, and to the balance. Well done, my friend. Well done.”

Daniel clapped his hands briskly, looked a bit askance at me, and said, “This part may be a bit embarrassing.”

Suddenly Messenger’s long black coat with its skull buttons was gone. And then the gray shirt. And then Messenger stood naked in the English sun, his body a nightmare in ink.

Then, one by one, the tattoos disappeared. There were dozens. Hundreds. An account book of pain and misery, the scars of a long battle with evil. They faded . . . faded . . . and were gone. Until only the tattoo over Messenger’s heart remained to fade slowly away.

Now Messenger stood clothed in stylish but somewhat dated garb, a wool suit and a narrow tie, the outfit I’d seen him wear so long ago in chronological years but so recent to me. He was handsome, that boy, very good-looking, but now it was a merely human beauty. Maybe that took some of the sting out of it for me. I don’t think Ariadne saw any change at all. After all, she had known him first as a boy, and only briefly as a boy transformed by service to Isthil.

And then, grinning a huge sunny smile, Daniel brought Ariadne’s hand together with Messenger’s and said, “My friend and faithful servant: you are to be touched.”

Tentatively, disbelieving, ready to pull back, Messenger’s hand and Ariadne’s touched.

How am I to explain that moment? I felt so terribly bereft. I felt the weight of decades of loneliness to come. I felt a loss that nearly equaled what I had felt on losing my father. And yet my heart was so full of joy for him, for them. For life itself. I had been weeping, and now I wept some more, but at the same time I completely forgot myself and grabbed Daniel’s hand.

Oh, and was that ever a moment. The time I had accidentally touched Messenger had been a torrent of pain that still haunted my mind with images I must someday find a way to exorcise. But Daniel’s touch was like opening a door on paradise.

I stared at him in astonishment and saw a creature like yet very unlike the low-key Daniel. He was light itself, gold and silver, sunlight and moonlight, and I saw within him multitudes, multitudes of those who, like Trent, and now, like Ariadne, had come through evil, through regret, through guilt and pain, to redemption, and acceptance, and joy.

Daniel held my hand for a while, letting me bask in that light, then with a wry smile he disengaged and was once more a young man in a hoodie, young and as old as time.

He looked at me very seriously and said, “We do terrible things to preserve the balance. We do it not just to ensure existence, but because existence can be very . . . nice.”

I laughed. “That was way past nice.”

He nodded. “Yes. Can be,” he said, nodding and smiling rather smugly. “Let us leave them. They have decisions to make. And I believe they want to kiss.”

“But I—”

“You will see him again. One more time.” Then, catching my eye, he said, “One more time.”

23

I WAS WRUNG OUT. I WAS EXHAUSTED. I HAD DONE and seen and felt too much.

I fell facedown on my bed and slept before dreams could catch up to me. I don’t know how long I slept, but when I awoke it was with clear eyes and a sad heart.

He was in the kitchen. He had made coffee. And as I emerged I heard the sound of the toaster lever being pressed down. He was making me a toaster strudel.

A good-looking boy dressed in jeans and a white shirt and a leather jacket. He looked almost shy as he said, “Hello, Mara.”

“Messenger.”

He shook his head ruefully. “No longer.”

I noticed then that he had an accent. He’d never had one before, but now the r’s were down in his throat.