Victoria's Fall

The interior consisted of one large chamber that led to further, smaller chambers, all at least partially blocked with debris. The walls of the large chamber were not totally intact and tree limbs and vines intruded into this temple. There was a dais or sacrificial block at the far end of the black pool.

"You return to your master, Victoria," echoed a male voice, in the regional dialect. "Why have you returned when you know it will mean your death?"

We were wading through water that came up to our waists. "Show yourself, Set!" Victoria called out. "Or are you afraid of a mere, mortal woman?"

Once we reached the approximate center of the temple the voice called out, "look behind you, woman."

She raised an eyebrow at me and we both turned and saw the head of an incredibly large snake in the entryway. The snake's scales were midnight black and its head was almost the size of my chest. Slit eyes watched us curiously as the serpent's tongue flitted out again and again.

"What is it, Michael?"

"A monster out of myth," I replied.

"And you are not alone," echoed the voice through the temple. "You bring a protector, but he is shielded from my sight. Clever girl, you've given him the necklace. My pet can see him fine, though. Is he immune to my power, like you have now become?"

I walked past Victoria, heading toward the stone altar. She grabbed my arm but did not have the strength to stop me. I heard her splashes as she followed me.

A man stepped into our view from one of the rooms beyond the altar. His skin was reddish brown and he wore a white skirt, gilded with gold and silver. His head was bald and his eyes were outlined with black. He looked Egyptian, but certainly not modern Egyptian.

"You won't shoot me, will you Victoria?"

She raised her rifle to her shoulder and her finger tensed on the trigger. She stood frozen like that, while the man's smile grew larger.

"You've learned nothing about yourself, child. You don't have it in you to murder, no matter how evil the target. And you know I am evil by your reckoning. I see in your mind that you remember every disgusting thing I made you do before I cast you free in the jungle to live like an animal. Your friend, there, could kill me. I see it in his mind. His desire to grab your gun and fire bullet after bullet into me burns like the noonday sun."

Victoria turned to me and offered me the gun. "Take this and kill him, Michael."

I took the gun, placed the stock against my shoulder and...

"Do not move," said Set. "My orders take precedence over the orders of any other, Victoria, or had you forgotten that? Don't you remember how Shakra whipped you to get you to confide how you came to be the perfect slave? You would not tell him because I ordered you not to tell anyone."

There was a splash behind me. Victoria glanced back and her eyes opened wide. She pulled the gun from my grasp, hurting my fingers, and waded backwards to the altar.

Set stepped into the water, walking past the almost submerged altar. "So you see, dear Victoria, I must let my pet devour you. You serve no purpose now, as I cannot enslave you. You are pretty enough, I suppose, but the idea of mating with a lesser being makes me nauseous. The snake is very hungry and most of its prey are smaller than you. His jaws will have to stretch a little to take you all in, but I am interested to see exactly how long you survive. Will you suffocate before reaching his stomach, where his digestive juices burn away at your skin?"

The snake confidently swam past me in a gentle zigzag. The thickest part of its body was wider than my shoulders. Victoria had come up against the altar and had climbed atop it, but the flat slab was only a hand's breadth above the water's surface.

She fired a couple of bullets at the leviathan. The first missed, but the second hit. The creature did not seem to notice the bullet.

Set had walked around the altar, where he could watch Victoria's face as she was attacked by the snake. "Oh, come now. You must realize that your puny gun offers you no protection against such a creature. I've grown some of them this big to ensure that men cannot kill them with their guns."

Victoria looked at Set and then back to the snake. She looked at her rifle as if seeing it for the first time. She changed her grip so that she now held it as if it were a club. The snake's head rose into the air before her. Its tongue slowly projected from the beast's closed mouth, the two ends waving up and down very close to Victoria's face.

She drew her makeshift club back and swung at the creature's head with all her strength. There was a crack and the snake drew back, as if in surprise. Its mouth opened at her and it hissed in anger.

"Oh, God, Michael! Please help me!" she cried in terror.

"He isn't going anywhere, mortal woman." Set laughed, enjoying the peril that Victoria now faced with no hope of succour.

But he was wrong. My legs moved. As the snake manoeuvred around the altar, seeking to find a side where Victoria could not defend herself as well, the sound of its splashes concealed my own as I waded forward. Or perhaps the necklace kept my movements invisible to this evil faerie creature.

Victoria swung the club again, but she missed as the serpent now understood the exact threat the club posed, however small. Its maw opened wide and its coils writhed in excitement of its anticipated feast on warm, mammalian flesh.

My hands went around Set's throat. I squeezed with all of my strength. I wasn't moving on my own volition. I was merely following Victoria's orders, but I summoned every genetic link to my father in the hopes that it would make me the killer I needed to be to destroy both Set and his pet.

Set's fingers clawed at my own, but pain was nothing to me. The snake froze in mid lunge and slowly turned to the battle I was engaged in. It darted over the altar, ignoring the strike from Victoria, and swam towards Set and I. I lifted Set by his neck, with the muscles of my back and shoulders straining in an agony of misuse. I lifted him clear of the water as his snake swam toward me as fast as it could.

"Oh, my God!" screamed Victoria, but what had summoned the words from her mouth I did not know.

The snake was almost upon me, its head rose just above the water's surface and its mouth opened, revealing rows of white daggers and a pink, muscular jaw and throat. Before it could tear into me with those teeth, I dropped Set directly into his pet's jaws and pushed him down its throat, head first.

A reflex caused the snake to clamp its jaw shut. Blood spurted where needle-like teeth burst through skin and flesh. My own arms were trapped in its vise-like grip. Set struggled, striking at the creature's head with his arms and flailing his legs.

Suddenly, Set jerked deeper into the creature's throat. The snake opened its mouth a little to adjust its jaws to swallow him whole. I tore out my arms, ripping a long gash in one. The serpent's head reared back and jerked. Set's body was invisible. Only his kicking legs could still be seen.

Two more gun shots rang out in the temple. Victoria was still standing atop the altar and firing at the snake. I headed over to her as fast as I could through the thrashing water.

As I climbed up beside her I heard her say, "here it comes!"

I grabbed the rifle from her and faced the beast. I fired one shot and the snake's right eye exploded. Blood and a jelly-like substance flew from its head as it dived under the water. I searched the water's surface for any sign of the serpent, but its thrashings had caused the once-still water to slosh from wall to wall in this ruin. A quick glimpse of scales receding from the altar caused me to fire the gun once more, but I did not hit the creature.

I looked about the temple and spied a hole that was both large enough for us to climb out and easily accessible to us. Grabbing Victoria's wrist I leapt from the altar. She had been unprepared to enter the water again and slipped below the surface. I lifted her by her wrist and she gave me a look of astonishment. Then, I pulled her in the direction of our escape from the ruin of the temple.

Behind us, I heard the creature hiss in fury and I glanced back to see it well across the chamber but swimming to us as fast as it could. I pushed Victoria up the bottom of the debris pile and scrambled after her. We slipped on the slick rocks, but made good time up toward the opening where sunlight shone in.

Victoria squeezed through, dislodging a few small stones, and then held her hand out to me. She grabbed the muzzle of the gun, while I gripped the stock, and she pulled on it as I squeezed through the opening after her. She had turned to the right and was standing on a projecting stone that was fully as large as the first black monolith I had seen. I could hear the snake slithering up the debris pile close behind me and I quickly turned to my left. I relinquished the rifle to Victoria while my feet tried to find purchase on the narrow ledge to the left of our escape hole.

The serpent's tongue darted out the opening, seeming to feel around for us. Victoria looked around helplessly.

"Up!" I commanded, as I spied projecting rocks and holes in the wall, which she could easily use to climb away from the thing that hunted us. I was closer to the opening and would look like a more tempting target. My sacrifice would buy her time to escape, but I knew the longer I made it hunt for me the greater her chance of surviving.

I had no way to climb up or down and I could only inch my way along, my balance maintained by the narrow ledge below me and whatever cracks and crevices I could find for my fingers. The snake's head poked out of the hole slowly and its single good eye focussed on me, the slit iris narrowing.

I felt desperately for finger and toe-holds as I scuttled away from the opening. The snake succeeded in pushing more of its neck out, but it was not quite enough length to actually reach around and grab me with its mouth.

Then I saw a fist-sized stone bounce off the beast's head. I looked up and saw Victoria had climbed directly above the creature and had the rifle stuck into some cranny. She was attempting to push the rifle up, to lever a large boulder out from the crumbling wall and onto the snake.

Something hard struck my back and I groaned in pain. The serpent had the distance, now it merely had to open its maw, turn its head sideways and it would pluck me off the wall. I stretched out my right hand and foot searching for some escape.

Then the wall shuddered and Victoria shouted in joy. A crack ran down the wall beside me, spurting dust. I turned my face up to Victoria and saw the massive boulder she had been working on slowly peel from the wall and slide down onto the snake's neck, squeezing off the serpent's head.

The wall shuddered again.

"Oh, shit!" screamed Victoria.

The stones were breaking up all around her and she fell, following the path of the large stone that she had used to kill the serpent. I reached out for her, willingly surrendering my own safe hold upon the wall. Our fingers touched as she fell past me.

"I love..." was the last thing I heard her say, before she was hidden from my view by lifeless stone and the dust of millennia old mortar.

Then the wall I was still somehow on undulated, throwing me out into open air. I collided with a tree as a thunderous roar filled my ears. I fell onto a large branch and the wind was knocked from me. The tree shuddered from an impact and I was thrown from the branch. I was struck by two more branches, before I finally splashed into a muddy puddle.

I slowly pushed myself up from the mud, relatively unhurt. I was still compelled to help Victoria. With the thick sediment sucking at me, I made my way to the base of a tree and pulled myself free. Then, I staggered into the dust cloud, waving my arms in a futile attempt to clear the air.

Banging my knee painfully on a sharp rock, I listed for any sound she might be making to attract my attention. There was nothing but silence and the odd clatter of yet another dislodged stone. I climbed the rock and then another and another. Nearly the entire temple had come down. Where Victoria, or her body, was in this devastation I could not even guess. But I had to try.

As night fell, I continued to shift aside what rocks I could and called Victoria's name about once every minute. She had compelled me to help her and I would do so until I died.

Fireflies came out and hovered above the debris in scores, then hundreds, then perhaps thousands. Then they dropped and infiltrated every nook and cranny. The debris pile was black again. I continued digging.

A couple of minutes later I thought I heard a voice. I froze and listened. It was a woman's voice! It was Victoria's voice! But I had no idea where she was. The fireflies had returned to the surface of the rock pile and had collected in a tight ball, allowing me to see clearly. I took a few steps, but she had stopped talking. I called out her name, but no response came to my eager ears.

I shifted another rock, when I realized the fireflies were not moving from their glowing ball. I stared at them and saw that every few seconds some fireflies went down into a crack between the stones or flew up from the same crack to rejoin their fellows.

I remembered that night I had first seen the faeries. There had been glowing sprites then, much like these tiny will o'the wisps. I scrambled over the rocks and stones, clumsily falling a couple of times. The fireflies did not move from their position as I approached. I stuck my fingers into the crevice and strained to lift the smaller of the two stones. My back burned, but the stone lifted and I toppled it down the pile.

In the hollow beneath that stone was another gap between two larger stones. From that gap protruded a delicate, dust-covered, white hand. I stretched out my own hand and felt her fingers and palm. They were warm and soft and her fingers curled into my hand as if seeking shelter.

"Victoria!" I yelled down the gap. My only response was a faint and unintelligible murmur.

I began to work on the surrounding stones. They were too large for me to shift by hand, so I climbed down the debris pile and found a sturdy branch to use as a lever. With this I was able to shift the boulders away, although the pain from all of this effort from the muscles in my back, legs and arms was excruciating.

I pushed her hand down the gap and propped up one of the stones concealing her directly. I stuck my head in and examined the situation. Victoria had been trapped in a large pocket when the temple collapsed around her. She had been badly battered and she was bruised and bloody and her other arm and one of her legs were both fractured with the bone poking through her delicate skin, but she was alive.

A voice above me caught my attention. I lifted my head from the opening and heard someone call first Victoria's name and then mine. I shouted out in response. The fireflies burst into brilliancy, temporarily blinding me. But I could hear the shouts of men and a few women as they clambered up the pile of stones to where I sat, waving my arms.

Puckrin leapt nimbly over the stones and stopped immediately in front of me. He looked me over carefully, as I tried to tell him to help me get Victoria out of the pit.

"Sleep!" he commanded.

XXVIII

My mind was ablaze and I screamed silently. This was far worse than any physical pain I had ever experienced. It was worse than any beating my father had given me. I felt shaken to my soul to the point where I was almost lost forever. If I had any physical sensations at all I would have thrown up from the pain.

Then I remembered a philosophy class I had taken in Moscow. Rene Descartes had hypothesized that for all we knew we could be brains in jars, simply fed all the sensations that we thought composed reality. Fear gripped me as I thought that might be my fate, as my five senses seemed dormant.

"You're doing well and getting better," whispered a high-pitched female voice I thought I recognized. "Keep fighting for your sanity, Michael."

That gave me an anchor. Someone cared about me and was trying to help, even if I didn't know who she was. Victoria's face sprang into my mind. Where was she? Was she alive? Had she been trying to tell me that she loved me as she fell? What else could she have been trying to say? I had to survive to ask her.

"He's pulling through! He'll recover!" cried out the feminine voice.

XXIX

Mrs. Santa Claus sat beside my bed, absently playing with her titian hair as she read a novel by H. Rider Haggard. I didn't remember being asleep, but I must have just woken up. I recalled my life, everything that had led me to here and now. There appeared to be no gaps in my recollection, but how could I be sure? It saddened me that Victoria wasn't waiting for me to recover. We had been through so much together.

"You..." I rasped.

Holly was startled and dropped her book. She reached to the night table, picked up a glass of water and offered it to me. I drank to soothe my throat, but oddly enough I didn't feel thirsty.

"How long have I been unconscious, Mrs Claus?"

"I told you before to call me Holly. You've more than earned the right, Michael. We knocked you out for the sleigh ride home and that was eight days ago. You've woken up three times before, but you were barely coherent. How are you feeling?" she asked with visible concern.

"Not too bad, actually. I take it my mind was rebuilt just as Victoria's had been?"

"Yeah, Breeleigh and the others put quite a bit of work into you."

"When can I get up, Holly?"

"Tomorrow. Do you need anything?"

"Just to talk to Victoria." A frown crossed Holly's pale face. "Victoria is all right, isn't she?"

"Oh, she's fully recovered from her injuries. She...well, she's just getting ready to leave. She feels that she failed you, that somehow she did something that you found, or would find, repugnant. She's very troubled." Holly stared at me intently as she spoke.

"You can't let her leave, Holly!" I exclaimed, pushing myself up so I was sitting.

She put her hands on my shoulders and gently pushed me back. "She isn't going anywhere for at least another day, Michael. I've made Doug promise me to come up with some excuse not to take her from the North Pole until I say otherwise. Why are you so concerned about her, Michael? Do you love her?"

I took a deep breath and let it out slowly. "Yes. And she's upset that she was ordering me about while I was under Set's influence. She fell into the same trap I did, but she managed to right her wrongs. I can't blame her for what she did, even for ordering me to rescue her from Set."

"That's about what I thought. She's refused to see you and all I can get out of her is that you won't want to see her, either. But that's bull, plain and simple. She loves you, too, you know."

"I thought as much. She tried to tell me that when the temple collapsed around us and we both thought we would die."

Holly chuckled. "So, now I'm going to hoist her by her own petard."

"What?"

She gave me a wicked smile. "Innocent little me? Why I'm going to do to her exactly what she did to me and I hope for both your sake's that it turns out as well." She tapped her chin in thought. "Of course, I'll never convince her to wear that red ribbon dress of mine, not that she would even fit into it..." She looked back at me. "This might be too personal a question, Michael, but are you up to a making love to Vicky in the next little while?"

I know my eyes opened wide in surprise. "Uhm...is everyone here so frank about sex?"

"We're a family. And it is a very happy family, aside from one or two sourpusses. But, no, I'm being overly inquisitive. It's for a good reason, though." She watched me eagerly.