Our Mother the Mountain

41. The Bench and the Owl

Chapter Text

Before Ethan left them there, battling their demons, Donna slipped her hand over Ethan's forearm and pulled. He paused, turning back, meeting her intense brown eyes. She looked worriedly toward Joe and Sal, who were loading up with the arsenal of weapons Karl had given to Ethan months earlier.

"It's not about power," she whispered in a more throaty voice than usual. He peered at her expectantly, assuming she was going to explain. Instead she shrugged, "It's about fear." With that, her inky head of hair turned away from him and she entered Dorothy's room.

He forced himself to look down the stairwell, where the baby had already ascended past the first landing, and then he hurried away from the group with a scowl.

Ethan assumed Donna meant firepower. It wasn't about firepower . Right? Ethan hurried through the hallway with only the handgun Karl had left him so long ago. As the sounds of the dragging limbs and mumbling gibberish of the large baby turned, moving behind him, Ethan realized he was not afraid anymore. He also remembered that Miranda wasn't an enemy of flesh and blood-not yet.

Why wasn't he afraid, though? That was puzzling, given the horrifying thing that limped toward him as he tried in vain to move silently toward the other wing of the manor. He was secure in a way he hadn't been last winter. Or in Dulvey. Or before that, even.

Monsters were deeply unpleasant to deal with, but most of his fear came from far before any monster encounter. His fear was in childhood, then in his marriage. His approach to fatherhood had been displaced anxiety, avoidance of his own fear.

That he wasn't good enough. Or worth the truth.

He supposed it was ironic that every concealment was meant to protect him.

And it wasn't just Ethan who had different fears than monsters, he realized; it was all of them. Everyone's demons took the shape of something more complex than a boring Halloween prop. They were personal. They were tailored monsters. All circling, hinting at family–nothing hurt more than family.

Miranda had lost herself to her fear, he considered. Miranda lost her daughter and never coped with it. She remained in denial, right up until she'd stolen Rosemary from him.

He passed by moonlit doorways. The power was still out and the storm still blew around the manor, but his eyes-now equipped with a tapetum, thanks to the Black God-picked every spare particle of moonlight that filtered down through the windows. His right hand, which held the 1911 in a high ready position, slowly sank down to his side. The pistol's barrel pointed at the floor after several moments.

Miranda sure thought all of this was about power-not firepower, just...power. But maybe that was her true fear. Not having enough power. Or of someone else having it at all. She'd forced an entire village to bend to her will to secure her power. Donna, who by many measures, had the power of others' minds if she wanted to, was kept locked away and stunted by Miranda. So it went for Alcina and Karl, as well, hadn't it? Karl had said as much when he was ranting to Ethan. Took me. Took us. To be her children. Locked us away in the village.

He was at the end of the hall. One blond eyebrow rose; he was still considering Donna's words. Miranda was also afraid of Rosemary-Karl told him that too, on their first meeting. Why? But he already knew. Miranda's ceremony with Rose imbued the child with all of her power. His own words came to mind then. He'd said them months ago, to Eva.

"Miranda was supposedly intimidated by Rose. I'm going to find out the reason why, and use it against her. Me. Not you, not Heisenberg, definitely not Rosemary."