Elysium

Chapter 24: God's Language

'Accidents are God's language.'

Where had I heard it? Probably on a lecture. Landorf had cited a contemporary Russian writer, a woman, likely in the original language as used to be his habit. But he translated it into English, which was the Institute's lingua franca on most of the courses. Did Landorf in fact mean accidents as in coincidences, or accidents as in misfortunes? I was never fluent in Russian, so I couldn't check the original.

What an odd thought that was on a moment when Mary Darling was sitting by me, the carriage was shaking under us, and we were looking at one and the same direction: over Apion's red-bricked roofs, over the misty hills beyond them, and even over the Kentian Mountains looming faraway. All the way, we were looking at the clouds gilded by newly risen sun. Those clouds of honey were printed on our retinae, and we still stared. And soon the creamy white domes of the city's Twin Temples stood in front of our gazing eyes.

That's how my thoughts often were: seemingly unsuited for the situation. I appreciated Mary's quality of not constantly trying to find out what I was thinking about at a given moment. She let me have my privacy like I let her keep hers. At the face of Apion's sunrise, she wouldn't have liked me unwind all those endless offshoots that Landorf's lectures had planted in my once so eager mind. It was good she didn't ask. The past was passed, the future was to come. When I was with Mary, it was the moment at hands that was the most important.

Paving stones clopped under the hooves as the horses pulling the carriage passed a stone bridge and arrived in the wide gardens of the temple area. An oasis at the side of the turmoiled streets of Elysium's second-largest city.

"I'm scared", said Mary suddenly. She shivered again like in the night when Roland had read about the truce between the Palatine and Templar Orders of Sangriala.

I didn't say anything; I just pulled her closer to me. The air was tropical, yet we sensed a cool breath in it. The darkly driver, who had picked us from Miss Nella's tavern at the time of the myna's first screech, was evidently one of those who saw nothing, heard nothing, and spoke nothing. Not in front of his passengers, at least.

The Twin Temples of Heket and Apoph stood ever closer to us, where the tributary Djeya, having flowed through the gardens of Apion, united with the mainstream of the Yana River. At the gate of the temple area, there were armed guards, and further away we could see a few white-gowned Templars walking along a path through the garden, towards the main building of one of the two temples. In the rose bushes and fig trees, thrush-sized, black-headed birds released bubbly outcries as they were flushed into undulating flight ahead of the rattling route of our carriage.

In the morning, we weren't any wiser than in the night, but we were more prepared. In the sleepless hours of the night, Mary and I had come to the inevitable conclusion that this was our duty – something for just the two of us. Ripsi, Riddhi, Uliana, Olya, and the other girls – they had been on our responsibility when the Nautilus set out for her last expedition. Our responsibility, not Max and Roland's. Not the Resistance's. I and Mary needed to do this. We were adults. We were teachers.

If we weren't to return, the boys would have a good memory of us, they'd return to their island, take Zoria and Brynhilde along, and the world would be saved. Prince Sen's memory card was in Max's possession, and that was good. Dovakin's mysterious words were in Roland's mind. I knew he would think about them ceaselessly, just like I thought about so many past matters – about Helena, about Mir, about Landorf's lectures. Mary and I were ready for whatever was to come. Or that's what we had decided in the small hours. That was the resolve our faces still reflected as we sat in the carriage and stared at the lightening horizon over the mountains.

"Aren't you scared?" asked Mary. She didn't move from my side. For some reason I thought, at that moment, that she was very English. An old-fashioned Englishwoman – not a foul-mouthed suburban rose of the later times but an old-time English governess, the kind one could find in novels and in historical movies. Mary didn't shiver anymore. It was just the carriage shaking on the cobblestones, and then finally coming to a still.