The Demon’s Cantos
Part 24
No one had said a word since seeing the Unmaker so near beyond the portal. Korbius and Faustus sat in somber stillness in the sand in front of the house, and Byron had spent the last forty minutes lost in thought as Tilda wordlessly made pizza. A morose energy pervaded everything.
Tilda placed the last piece of pepperoni onto the sauced and cheesed dough and finally slid the pizza stone into the piping hot oven. With nothing left to distract her, Tilda just stood there looking at the shut oven for another moment and then took a seat at the kitchen island across from Byron. She didn’t make eye contact and the two of them just sat there for several more minutes.
Eventually, Byron came out of his foreboding day dream and his eyes refocused.
“It’s moving faster than you said It would.” Byron said.
Tilda looked down at the light colored stone of the counter-top, her features inscrutable. She nodded slowly.
“Yes.”
Byron took a deep breath and tried to rein in the squall in his chest. Beneath the lip of the island’s surface, Byron ran his right hand back and forth through the motions – thumb to each fingertip and back again, over and over – but to little effect.
“How long do we have?” Byron asked.
“I don’t know,” Tilda shrugged just a little, and her voice was unnervingly steady, “two days, maybe three.”
The words sunk into Byron and his mind fell unwillingly back into dark imaginings. He saw himself caught in the Unmaker’s fire, like one of those ants beneath Nan’s glasses so long ago.
It occurred to Byron that it wasn’t that long ago actually – less than five years. Byron had been twelve. He had a tendency to treat himself like an adult – Nan always said he was precocious, an “old soul” – but actually he was still a teenager, a child. Right then, considering the impending confrontation, Byron felt precisely his age and not a second older.
Byron looked up at Tilda. “What do we do?” he asked, desperation creeping into his voice.
Tilda took a breath in and out through her mouth and pursed her lips as she spoke carefully. “We plan.” Tilda looked out the front window out toward the purple door. “We do have one advantage.”
“Do we?”
Tilda nodded, “the element of surprise.”
Byron found that he was tapping his foot incessantly on the metal rung of the stool he sat on. He kept on doing it as he spoke, uncertain. “We could let It get right up to the portal and then blast It with something. I could even . . .” Byron hesitated, “use It’s own fire against It. . .”
Tilda looked up sharply. “No, don’t ever channel that.”
“But it’s the most powerful . . .” Byron began before Tilda cut him off.
“Never, Byron,” Tilda held his gaze, “those flames don’t just belong to It, they are the Unmaker. They’re a trap and they would only feed It. It would be like pouring gasoline onto a fire.” Tilda shook her head, “anyway, we can’t risk It getting through the portal. Whatever we send through will knock the portal off-line for a full minute out there, a week in here. If that first strike doesn’t kill It – and it almost certainly wouldn’t – then the Unmaker would be able to just wait beside the portal and enter it the moment it comes back on-line, and we cannot let that happen.”
Byron considered for a moment, “wait, why not? That would make sense. We hit It with everything we have right before it enters the portal – then a week passes and if It survives we blast It again as it comes out on our end. Two bites at the apple.”
Tilda shook her head darkly. “No, the Unmaker cannot be allowed through Byron, no matter what.” Tilda swallowed a lump in her throat, “Right now, the Unmaker is stuck in our reality. In our universe It may have nearly limitless power – but It also can’t leave. Nothing is more important than making sure things stay that way.”
“Tilda, this is our lives we’re talking about.”
Tilda’s voice rose in urgency, “This is the entire Multiverse I’m talking about!” Tilda contained herself a bit and continued, “Byron, the Unmaker is like a quarantined virus right now. It might destroy our universe, but if it ever found a way out, all of existence would be at risk of infection, even the place between places.” Tilda closed one hand into a fist on the counter-top. “Both Mary and the other Cantor warned about that. They were ready to destroy the entire island if necessary rather than risk the Unmaker’s escape.” Tilda glowed bright white, “and so am I.”
Byron didn’t really understand, but it was clear Tilda was adamant. “So, what choice do we really have then? We just step through and say hello?”
Tilda rubbed at her hair in frustration, “I don’t know, Byron. Maybe you step out and immediately hit it with a burst of lightning or something.”
Byron blinked, “wait, you step outside. You mean we step outside, right?” Byron let the word hang there for a moment before speaking again, “right?”
Tilda’s glow faded and her blue eyes reappeared from behind the otherworldly white light, abashed and filled with a mixture of shame and remorse. “Byron, I need to stay behind. If you fail, someone needs to destroy this place.”
Somehow the already impossible situation spiraled even further out of control. This whole time Byron had been operating under the assumption that at least they would be meeting the Unmaker as a team – Byron, Tilda, Korbius, and Faustus. Even that notion was small solace, as failure still seemed all but assured. But facing the monster without Tilda’s power glowing beside him struck terror into Byron’s heart.
He found himself beginning to brood. What the hell kind of plan was this? How was he supposed to do the impossible? He was not even seventeen years old with powers he hardly understood – still hardly even believed – and now he was supposed to win a epic battle with a force of nature?
“Where is the other Cantor?” Byron asked, his voice growing angry, “why isn’t . . . he or she or they . . . here? Where are they?”
Tilda paled almost imperceptibly. “I told you, I don’t know where they are.”
“Fine,” Byron was yelling now, and his voice drew Korbius and Faustus’s attention. The two creatures ambled up to the kitchen window and peered in, listening, “but why aren’t they here? Why did they leave?”
Tilda eyed the counter-top anxiously and for a moment she looked to Byron like a guilty child trying to keep a secret. “Byron, it doesn’t matter…”
Something snapped. “It doesn’t matter? How doesn’t it matter Tilda?” Byron stood up, knocking his stool to the ground. “This is my life – what’s left of it.” Hot tears welled in Byron’s eyes as he spoke. “I know it wasn’t much of a life before, but at least I had Nan. Now what do I have?” He gestured toward the window, “a giant octopus, a disgusting spider, and you.”
Byron emphasized the word with hurtful disdain, overcome with impotent fear quickly morphing into unfocused rage. Byron was getting carried away by his emotion , the same way his anxiety sometimes drove him to bouts of neurotic behavior.
Tilda managed a meager reply, “I’m doing my best Byron,”
“Oh, your best.” Byron laughed ruefully and raised two hands, palms up, “who are you even? You’re not a Cantor, they’re missing. You’re not the Preceptor, you got her killed ─”
Tilda recoiled as though she’d been slapped in the face. Byron did not even pause.
“─ You’re a charity case, a random stranger. For all I know Mary never even signed you out of that hospital. For all I know you just escaped. Not that it matters, either way I’m being ‘trained’ by a . . .”
Byron almost blurted out a word so hurtful the shame of it stunned him into silence. It was the same word so many cruel children had used like a cudgel against him throughout years of public school and special education classes. The same word he was accosted with when he could barely decipher the lunch special written in big chalk letters, or as he struggled through a book written for kids five years younger than him.
All the air left the room and Byron was overcome with remorse. Remorse and exhaustion.
“I’m . . .” Byron said, ragged, “Tilda, I’m sorry.”
Tilda stood by stoically, the muscles of her face taut. In the window Korbius slunk away despondently toward the shore.
“So am I,” Tilda whispered, her voice hardly audible over the deafening silence.
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