there was a black swan outside the palace
She was still such a beautiful woman that it seemed an obscenity to dress her even a little like a nun.
Perhaps time really did stop on the Sicilian island where the matriarch Luciana Vega had been staying with the Sisters of Mercy and she simply hadn't aged -- but then again, she had married Augustus so young, so very young, practically a child-bride, and after everything she'd gone through, maybe there was some truth to the idea of being a virgin of god.
Those who knew her well would laugh at the idea, though.
Two stewardesses smoking air-legged outside of the charter airport straightened and paused to watch as the black mirage of a prince, wrought in heat shimmer (black? In summer, has there been a death?) moved like a plume of smoke across the near-empty lot for the entrance. From a distance, the way the pavement smogged and warped in the beating heat made it look as if his feet didn't quite touch the ground.
He had to be one of the family Vega, who so often used this private airstrip -- something about the arrogant cast of the shoulders, maybe, the lazy beauty that became evident the closer he approached. Yet this one was different somehow; foxglove gleam to the golden eye, yes, but it was really the way his look pierced, constricted the chest like a gathering squall the nearer he drew, as if he were some gravitation that sucked all the air from the lungs at proximity, as if the environment seemed to pull, to crumple toward him. Had to be the dizziness, the heat, that made it look like the very gravel and dust rattled on its surfaces, skittered toward him, like the dull air and dry flowers were sounding his rhythm, calling --
"Aden Brande," the man told the security officer at the door. "I'm collecting my aunt."
Yes, the aunt, the poor fragile thing, standing in a small air conditioned room as if lost, flanked by two frocked Sisters who'd come to ensure the poor dear's stability, holding her by the arms while the security officer read the nephew's driver's license. Subtly they stole a grip at their rosary at the way the air changed, like they could hear Hell in the very sound of his name aloud, Aden --
"Marshall--" gasped Luciana breathlessly, like a benediction, or a curse.
Brande. Quick, quick, calculating, those horrible-wonderful citrine eyes, those compelling sulfur chasms that put the heat under those dresses, and then the black ghost was just a pretty rake, a prodigal son, who tipped his head and said only, "It's good to see you, Aunt."
And the Sisters of Mercy (oh, Aunt, couldn't you have chosen a madhouse with a different name?) had no choice but to surrender her, to worry all the while whether all those Good Works they'd done were being thrown into a firepit, because no aunt ought to look at her nephew the way poor, mad Luciana gazed desperately into the face of the young man who, placid as a centurion at victory, led her to his car as if he carried no queen but only a white pawn in a great plasticine war.
There was the face you saw above you
In the fever of a hot black dream
But it was made of paper and glue
And you were hoping for something a little more realistic
You were hoping for the head of the queen.
