The King of Crows

  “No.” Memphis’s voice was a croak. His lips quivered. Tears coursed down his cheeks. “No.”

  “He deserves a grave, Memphis,” Henry said, joining them.

  “No, no, no!” Memphis’s eyes narrowed. “I’m not letting him die. I’m gonna heal him. I can do it. I know I can.”

  His mother had told him that this, above all things, was forbidden. You can’t bring back what’s gone, she’d warned. He would see about that. Memphis laid his hands on top of Isaiah’s cold, stiff body. Jericho made to stop him, but Memphis was too quick. He pressed his palms to Isaiah’s still chest, right above the no-longer-beating heart. He opened himself up, willing the healing magic to come down. His fingers twitched and smoked. He would do it. Nobody could stop him.

  “You give me back my brother. Give me back my brother!” Memphis gathered Isaiah in his arms, hugging him close. A roar filled his ears. The earth around him swept up into columns of dust. Lightning shot from the sky and electrified the top of Devils Tower, and then leaped down the side of the butte, where it reached into Memphis’s body. Memphis felt as if he were being pulled into that electrified sky, through the clouds, and drawn into darkness.

  It was suddenly quiet and still. Memphis no longer held Isaiah. He was surrounded by a circle of the dead. They didn’t advance. It was almost as if they were asleep standing up, eyes open, seeing nothing. Behind them was an endless forest of dead trees and walls made of skulls. An ossuary fit for a King of Crows.

  “Will you make a bargain with me at last?” the King said. Lightning strobed across his face. He was shadow and light.

  “Give me back my brother,” Memphis said.

  In his right hand, the man in the hat held the crow, silencing it, silencing Memphis’s mother. She was warning him, Memphis knew. He didn’t care. He would do whatever it took to have his brother back.

  The King of Crows tilted his head in his strange, jerking fashion. “What will you give me for him?”

  “What do you want?”

  “Your healing power. All of it.”

  The ash trees were diseased. The bark peeled down like loose skin, exposing the mangy, pustule-ridden sapwood underneath. Mushrooms popped up from the ground. A worm nibbled at one, then curled up and convulsed, helpless. There were no stars above, only a fat, jaundiced moon and strands of wispy clouds. The place felt airless and fetid and lost.

  “If I give you this power, you’ll give me back Isaiah?”

  “You have my word. Look into my coat. What do you see?”

  Memphis saw the true history of the nation. Blood and blood and blood. Blood shed and bloodlines revered. He saw the Cherokee marched out of Georgia until they dropped. He saw the pioneers lost on the Oregon Trail, eating one another down to the bones to survive. He saw the white-wigged men of ideas signing declarations, then going home to whip their slaves. The history reached down Memphis’s throat. He wanted to speak but found he couldn’t. The force of all that history at once curdled his voice. The insect-like hum of the dead filled his ears. A war cry mingled with the noise of an approaching swarm. All that history trying to be screamed at once.

  “No one really wants to see, hmm? No one wants to know. Better to create a story we like to tell ourselves about ourselves. For we are the mythmakers.”

  Memphis felt as if he were falling into the coat’s vast lining, into the morass of all those stories. He was being overwhelmed by facts and myth intertwined, a tangle of slippery roots that had no beginning and no end. He felt he might drown in it. He tried to tear at the threads, but they would simply shift and become some other narrative over which he could not gain control. He grabbed for a loose thread and gasped at the bloody cut it left in the skin of his palm. Finally, he threw himself against the lining. Like an enormous gut, the coat began to devour Memphis. He was being swallowed up and absorbed into the coat’s history. The chorus of the dead grew louder. Memphis felt as if he were being buried alive inside the King of Crows’s blinding coat.

  “Where is my brother? You promised to give me my brother!” Memphis yelled. “Stop! Can you please just stop?”

  In a snap, the noise was gone. And so was the King of Crows. Memphis was on his knees, alone, in the land of the dead. Skeletal trees arched toward one another, forming a long corridor. Pale fog spilled out between their haggard limbs. Memphis pulled himself up and staggered over. Something was coming. He was afraid but he did not run. The figure moved closer. Closer still. And then tears streamed down Memphis’s cheeks.

  Isaiah smiled at his brother. “Hey, Memphis.”

  Imprisoned in the chair connected to Jake Marlowe’s Golden Eye, Miriam Lubovitch squirmed and moaned. “No…” If Marlowe and his thugs hadn’t put her through so much already, she’d have been able to contain what she knew. But they’d weakened her with so much exposure to the machine. Already, she could feel the Eye’s radiation twisting the cells in her body, shortening her life.

  “Turn it on again!” Jake Marlowe said. “Where are they, Miriam? Tell us where they are and this ends.”

  “It will end,” Miriam whispered. “But not the way you think.”

  As the current coursed through her damaged cells, Miriam felt her connection to Memphis and to her son and to all the Diviners. “D-Devils T-T-Tower,” she croaked.

  Jake turned down the dials and whipped off his goggles. “Ready my plane.”

  Sam’s voice reached Memphis from far, far away. Memphis opened his eyes. He was on his hands and knees on the ground, vomiting into the spindly grass. Grave dirt and a tiny splat of blood came up in his bile, along with two wriggly baby frogs, each no bigger than a fingernail. With a startled shout, he rubbed feverishly at his mouth with the back of his hand, leaving a bloody smear on his knuckles. His stomach clenched again, but he swallowed against the urge to vomit. The tang of blood sharpened the usual softness of his mouth. The point of his tongue pressed against a loose lower tooth that wiggled in its swollen socket. His hands. Cuts appeared on his arms, as if he’d been clawed by an angry beast. He felt as if he’d been gone for several generations, as if he’d swallowed down the history of the nation all at once. But they were here in the fabled west of Wyoming, with the night of fixed stars a hard shell above them. The others were gathered in a line, staring at him. Theta edged nearer. Her voice was a faraway train of sound rushing closer: “Memphis, what did you DO?”

  Memphis’s head ached something powerful. And his hands… they no longer seemed like his hands. They were cold and wrong, somehow.

  “Memphis?” Theta again. She sounded frightened, as if he were the monster, and not this rotten world.

  His friends crept forward. He could tell they were newly afraid of him, too, now that he’d done this. Now that he’d shown what a man could be pushed to do. Memphis looked down at the ground. His brother’s body was gone.

  Memphis laughed. “He’s coming back.”

  “What’s he talking about?” Sam whispered to the others.

  “Memphis, oh, Memphis,” Theta said, holding him.

  Memphis took Theta’s face in his cold hands. “Did you hear that?”

  “Hear what?” Evie asked, wary.

  Memphis staggered to his feet and took a step into the brush. “He’s here.”

  “What is he talking about?” Ling asked.

  Memphis waved his arms. Out in the grass, near where the bison had roamed, Isaiah glowed like a promise. He smiled at Memphis and waved back. Memphis smiled, too. His mouth still tasted of blood. When he blinked, he saw the terrible history inside the coat. He wanted to claw his eyes out to make it stop, but every time he blinked, there it was. It had crawled inside him. He’d never be rid of it now. No matter, because there was his brother. There was Isaiah. Returned to him, for a price.

  “Isaiah,” Memphis said, scratching at his arms. They erupted in long red streaks. “He’s here. He came back. I told you I’d do it.”

  Memphis kept his eyes trained on the field. He could hear the thumping of Isaiah’s hea
rt inside his head. “You’re gonna be fine now. I promise. Let’s get back to the truck. It’s cold. Don’t want you to be cold.”

  “Do you see anything?” Sam asked the others. They shook their heads.

  “Gonna be right as rain soon enough,” Memphis said to the air.

  Theta shook her head. “No. No, this isn’t right.”

  Memphis snatched a horse blanket from the back of the truck and wrapped it around nothing. The blanket fell to the earth, but Memphis didn’t seem to notice.

  “I don’t know who that is, Memphis, but it isn’t your brother,” Jericho said, not without gentleness.

  “Talking nonsense. ’Course it’s him! He’s come back. Hey. Hey, Ice Man.”

  “Memphis.” Theta now. Warning. Afraid.

  Doubters. Unbelievers. His brother had been dead and was returned to him, just like that resurrection thousands of years ago. But why wasn’t he talking? Isaiah used to talk a mile a minute. He was tired, was all. He needed to get his feet under him.

  “It’s all right, Little Man. You’re back. You’re here. I won’t let anything hurt you, I promise,” Memphis said, looking over at the brother only he could see. Isaiah glowed faintly. A fly landed on Isaiah’s lips and Memphis brushed it away. “Shoo!”

  “Where did Isaiah’s body go?” Henry asked quietly.

  “Pal, I don’t know. I don’t know anything about what’s happening right now,” Sam said under his breath.

  “Memphis, what happened in the land of the dead?” Ling asked, because she was beginning to understand something she did not want to know.

  Tears blurred Memphis’s vision. He felt cold. Why did he feel so cold and yet feverish at the same time? His teeth chattered as he spoke: “I m-made a b-bargain.”

  “What kind of bargain?” Ling asked.

  “I c-couldn’t let my b-brother d-die.”

  “What kind of bargain, Memphis?” Ling pressed.

  “My h-healing power f-for Isaiah,” Memphis said.

  “Oh, that’s just terrific. That’s swell,” Sam said, angry.

  Theta glared. “Stop it, Sam.”

  “What are we supposed to do now? How are we supposed to heal the breach without a healer?”

  “He just lost his brother!” Theta shouted, and a little fire erupted at the ends of her fingers. She blew it out.

  “I’ll be f-fine. I just… n-need to r-rest is all,” Memphis said, falling to his knees. It was hard to walk. He looked over at Isaiah, who smiled again. He still wasn’t talking, but in time, he would. They’d talk about everything well into the evening, the way they used to do back at Aunt Octavia’s house.

  Theta put the blanket across Memphis’s shoulders and helped him stand again. He was shivering and his lips were pale. “Hey, Shrimpy. You ’member that time after church when the Elks had a parade, came down Lenox Avenue in their sashes, and Papa Charles was out in front carrying the banner? Mr. Reggie gave you a root beer float for free, wouldn’t even take your nickel,” Memphis said to the air. “Yeah. And we bought penny candy after church, too.”

  Evie wanted to cry but she was too horrified. There were no tears for what was happening to them. It was beyond crying. Losing Isaiah had been heartbreaking. Now they were losing Memphis, too. He was getting weaker. She could see it. Sweat beaded along his upper lip and forehead. His eyes were bloodshot.

  “What does he see?” Henry asked.

  “The King of Crows played a trick on him,” Theta said through gritted teeth. Her hands were warm all the time now. She would burn everything down if she could. She might still. “Just like he did Miss Addie.”

  “You cold? Don’t worry. I’ll share my blanket,” Memphis said. He lifted one edge to let an imaginary Isaiah in next to him.

  The night sky with its beautiful stars was an affront. Nothing should ever shine on such a night. There were whip-poor-wills calling into the darkness, reminding Evie that even the night had layers. The ghosts watched from the prairie edges. She could see them out there, winking in the dark. When the wind whipped up, it carried their whispers: This is the history, they said. Blood.

  “Jericho,” Evie said.

  “I see.”

  “Do you think they’ll come after us?” Evie asked. “How’re we going to protect ourselves?”

  “Something’s coming from the other way,” Theta said, pointing into the dark distance, which was alive with the incandescent eyes of some rumbling monster. Instinctually, the Diviners moved closer to one another.

  “If it comes to it, we can use our powers,” Sam said, reaching for Evie’s hand. She, in turn, reached for Henry’s.

  “Memphis is in no shape for it,” Theta warned.

  “It’s okay, Little Man. It’s okay,” Memphis said to an imaginary Isaiah.

  The glow grew wider, more distinct. Headlights. Lots of them. A convoy of military trucks and, out front, a brown sedan. The Shadow Men had arrived.

  Mr. Adams and Mr. Jefferson exited the car. Jefferson buttoned his gray suit jacket. “Time to go, chickadees. You have a date with destiny.”

  The trucks rumbled over an arbitrary state line into the Utah desert. Memphis dreamed. Or at least he thought he did. He could no longer be sure what was dream and what was real. Sometimes he was in the back of a canvas-paneled truck with his friends. Sometimes he was alone, and there would be Isaiah, smiling that same smile, unchanged. Other times, though, the King of Crows would be sitting across from Memphis. Saying nothing. Just a smug expression that would’ve rankled Memphis if he didn’t feel quite so sick. The King of Crows held up an hourglass with all the sand in the bottom. Quickly, he flipped it over, and the sand began pouring in a slow stream into the empty glass bell. When Memphis stared at it, he saw that on each grain of sand was the image of a town. Memphis could hear screaming as the towns squeezed through the narrow strait and became smoke drifting down into a steadily growing pile of ash. In these moments, he thought he saw the squawking mouths of so many birds coming alive on the King’s coat. This made him uneasy. His body strained with the urge to fight. But just as quickly, the King of Crows would open his strange coat, and Memphis would be mesmerized by the horrors and delights within.

  The truck carried the Diviners to an airfield. The thwacking whirr of an airplane’s propellers drowned out any chance of the Diviners speaking to one another, but who could speak anyway? Jake Marlowe walked across the landing strip flanked by a pair of generals.

  “Welcome aboard, Diviners,” he said. “Let’s go make history.”

  DEATH VALLEY

  Jericho had never been on an airplane before. The roar of the engines was loud, but the view was spectacular.

  “Everything is so small,” he said, gazing down at the twinkling lights of America below.

  “Where are you taking us?” Sam demanded.

  “Death Valley,” Marlowe responded.

  “I think I played that club once,” Henry said, glaring at Marlowe. “No one tips.”

  “What’s wrong with Memphis?” Marlowe asked.

  In his seat, a shivering Memphis stared out the window, occasionally murmuring to Isaiah. Theta sat beside him, keeping watch. Evie could see the pale red glow of Theta’s palms as she kept them near Memphis to warm him.

  “He’s sick. So we shouldn’t do this,” Evie said.

  “What’s the matter with him?”

  “Grief,” Evie said.

  Marlowe hung his head for a moment. “The loss of Isaiah is unfortunate. But we’ll still be able to carry on without him. The serum and the modifications I’ve made to the Eye should see to that,” he said.

  “You’re a real son-of-a-bitch,” Sam said.

  “I’m not the one who killed Isaiah Campbell.”

  “You’re part of the reason he’s dead,” Henry said.

  “He’s not dead. He’s not. Just… lost…” Memphis murmured.

  Evie glared at Marlowe. “I thought we were Public Enemy Number One. How will you explain our participation in this little eve
nt?”

  “Once we’ve conducted the experiment and stabilized our connection to the land of the dead, you’ll be fully exonerated. We’ll change the story to suit. Why, there’ll be a ticker tape parade for our new heroes.”

  Evie snorted at that.

  “Americans have short memories,” Marlowe said. “Revolutionaries become Founding Fathers. Outlaws become legends. It’s who we are.”

  “You don’t think we’ll survive anyway,” Ling said. “There’s a lot of radiation coming off your machine.”

  “All perfectly safe, I assure you,” Marlowe said.

  “What’s to keep us from just destroying the Eye once you strap us in?” Jericho asked.

  Marlowe smiled. “I thought about that, believe me. There’s iron in each of your helmets to recalibrate your poles. You won’t be able to use your powers to affect it.”

  “Each of our…?” Jericho’s eyes widened. “You really are a monster.”

  Marlowe glowered. “All great men are denigrated by people who don’t understand them in their time. By people who fear greatness.”

  Theta blew a Bronx cheer, startling Marlowe. Her heat moved through her with nowhere to go. The iron in the handcuffs kept her power on an invisible leash. “When have you been denigrated?” she said. “Looks to me like you’ve been given everything you ever wanted, pal.” She wanted to light up Marlowe, and all the men like him, and watch them burn.

  “I’ve had to make terrible sacrifices for progress,” Marlowe answered.

  Henry clucked sympathetically. “I, too, hate it when my tea gets cold while I’m plotting destruction. Such a sacrifice.”

  Marlowe stared at Henry. “How would you like it if the whole world knew about you and those degenerate clubs you haunt in Greenwich Village?”

  “How would you like it if I used you for kindling?” Theta shot back.

  “Your village didn’t like it much,” Mr. Jefferson interjected with a snort.