Chapter 34
I picture the scalpel slicing my skin and instinctively press my hands tight against my stomach.
“I am so sorry Iris,” Arthur tells me, his eyes filled with sorrow.
I shake my head without speaking and crawl backwards, my hands still pressed against my stomach.
“They gave us no choice,” Arthur defends himself.
When I am at a safe distance I stop for a moment and slowly pull up my shirt to look at a mark I had since my birth, a long thin line running from my pubis all the way up to my breasts.
“What did you do to me?” I manage to whisper.
I feel betrayed, lost, and infinitely lonely.
“Your uncle was holding a knife against your throat. I remember each of his words. ‘Now, if you don’t want her dead you will have to separate Iris from her brother,’ he told me. When I asked what he intended to do with your brother he pointed at an ampoule lying on a table. It contained a dark embryo, floating in a black fluid. Your mother was tied on a chair beside it, and stared at Ludwig with hatred. ‘We should have destroyed you and your creation, Ludwig,’ she said gelidly. Your uncle laughed. ‘We didn’t because we are not criminals, but that was a mistake,’ she continued. ‘But you did kill me, he objected. ‘No, we did not kill you. We trapped the venomous seed you wanted to become your successor in an indeterminate state and didn’t allow it to develop for a second time. We could not afford having a second Ludwig in this world,’ I replied. ‘Is it so, doctor? Well, now you will take Iris’s brother out of her and place it in the same ampoule where the embryo of my future self is now.’ I stood there, frozen with the scalpel in my hand. ‘Now, have a look at that corner,’ Ludwig continued, and I saw the queen, lying in bed, eyes closed. ‘My successor should go back to where it belongs, and you are going to return it to the womb from which you treacherously eradicated it and stole it,’ he told me. I stood there, frozen. ‘Let’s not waste any more time, get started with Iris, doctor’, he urged me. You understand we had no choice?” Arthur pleads.
“And so you took my brother away from me. You did it. Why do you say that we had no choice?’” I ask.
“I saw no way out. I took the scalpel and brought it to my throat, and said I would rather die than do what he wanted me to do,” Arthur tells me.
I want to trust Arthur, but a part of me can’t.
“I was ready to slice my throat when your mother stopped me. ‘Don’t. Give me the scalpel, I’ll do it,’ she said. I couldn’t believe what I was hearing. Ludwig turned pale. ‘I know you want to trick me, but I won’t let you,’ he said with an unsteady voice. She calmly replied that she couldn’t trick him since he was holding a knife on her daughter’s throat. Then she stood up,” Arthur continues.
“But you said she was tied,” I object.
“She was. When I say that she stood up, I mean a part of her did. Her shadow, her soul, I don’t have good enough words to describe what I saw. She left her body behind, tied on the chair. It looked inanimate, the head was tilted, the eyes closed. Her shadow came close to me and said, ‘Give me the scalpel.’ Ludwig stood there, mouth ajar, frozen. I was frozen too, so she took my hand a guided it to cut you open. Then she laid her hands on your open wound, and started to sing a soft, buzzing rhythm, an ancient lullaby. Filaments of smoke began to flow from your body, and the shape of a young man formed – your brother. She took the scalpel from my hands, and heading towards the body she left behind she sliced it open. Your brother looked around with a lost gaze, but when she pointed at the cut on her unconscious body he walked towards it with obedient steps. When he was at a close distance the air blurred around him, and a vortex formed. Then he suddenly disappeared, sucked into your mother’s womb. An instant later the wound on your mother’s body and yours healed, leaving behind a fine line that ran from the pubis to your breasts. Ludwig had been looking at a spot inside your open cut before it closed, standing immobile, his eyes frightened,” Arthur recalls.
“Why frightened?” I want to know.
“Because a part of him too was inside you,” Arthur says.
I drop silent for a moment.
“Is he inside me now?” I ask.
“I think so, but not all of him. Just enough for you to control his life and death, and to remember,” he tells me enigmatically.
“But will I always have to carry him inside me? And what happened to my brother?” I insist.
I feel nauseous.
“I think many of the answers are in the fragments of the space ship I was discovering with you, your brother, Matt and-” Arthur starts, but before he can finish we feel the room move upwards.
“What is happening?” I scream.
“I don’t know!” Arthur screams back, as the walls of the room turn into steel, and shrink, and melt into a new shape, and we find ourselves into an elevator.
A luminous arrow points downwards, but we sense the elevator move up, up, up, its speed increasing till we are propelled upwards at a speed that deafens my ears, blurs my vision, drains the blood from my arms.
I want to call Arthur’s name, but my voice dies away into a sea of black dots.