Woolgathering

by Christina Hambleton

The night that Charon appeared before Adamae Fukamori she was in the close darkness of her London flat surrounded by tattered scraps of music and newspaper, their stark black print gleaming in the light through the window. Their ink had the metallic luster of dried blood. It pooled about the keyboard smashed into the nearest wall, pooled about its mangled grave as though those keys rather than their musician had possessed a soul. And indeed, there was in Adamae's eyes the sunken, feverish depth of one who had reached their limits, had sunk so low that they could fall no farther. Articles applauding her genius were among the newsprint she'd torn, and she was, even now, setting fire to them with the most grim and terrible of miens. She was lucid enough to know she'd regret it in the morning. She was frantic enough not to care. Everything was crumbling around her, and she'd been the one to set the hammer to the foundation, to wrench and scream and pound until the walls that held her in were no more.

  Only now the cornerstones were tumbling down on her head.

  Surveying her trembling limbs, the raven hair scattered wildly over her brow, Charon had to smile. These were the people he loved. Formerly he'd dwelt in the long, eerie pool of her shadow. Now he rose from it as though a wisp of heady smoke, and he leaned over her, his latest curiosity. So devastated, so broken was the girl that she was too absorbed in her own self-destruction to notice him, clear up until he whispered:

  "My my. This isn't like you at all, Miss Fukamori. Or is it Fukamori-san?"

  The woman drew a quick, terrified breath, swinging her trained legs automatically to cripple the intruder. But her foot passed through him, pallid spectre that he was, and she was left panting, sprawled in the ashes of her creations as she gaped for terror. What was he? A hallucination? A dream? Had her sanity fled along with her career, along with her passions?

  She was white with fear. Nevertheless, it wasn't long before she hardened under the bitter summons of her iron will, the very virtue for which she suffered, and she tilted her chin up at him in proud distrust. Only the pounding of her heart betrayed her dread.

  "Who are you?"

  The apparition seemed impressed. His face had a grin of such calm and wisdom as to make her blood run cold.

  "I am the man who can make all your dreams come true."

  "If you're real you're no man."

  Charon chuckled, a silky rumble from his very core, and his grey eyes gleamed from under greyer hair, though his skin was smooth as a child's. "You do not disappoint, even for a woman hailed as genius. But I am a man, of a sort. And I can give you anything you can... imagine." The choice of words seemed to amuse him.

  Fukamori didn't reply, not at first. Instead the stony, narrow eyes flickered, their pupils smoldering. There was an edge to the woman, a deadly one none too keen to be tested that evening. "Leave. Now."

  "Come," Charon sighed, inviting himself to drift over to a leather, modish armchair. "You've had a very rough time of it. Wouldn't you like to take it out on something other than your beloved masterpieces, there?" He gestured to the floor.

  "No."

  "Or... is it something else?" the apparition murmured, appearing not to hear her. "Fire is a curious tool for a purge. Symbolic, really. Could it be with all that's transpired Fukamori-san thinks her pieces too masterful, too deep for this world's ears?"

  "Go!" the woman barked, but there was a quaver buried in the discord of the command. The latest review of her performance shook between her fingers. Fukamori: Genius or Diva?

  "I told you I'm more man than anything," Charon reminded her. "Albeit a curious one— one that has been dead for a very, very long time. I'm not a demon. You cannot banish me."

  "Then tell me what you want!"

  "From you? Nothing."

  Nothing. Just like her audience. Was he here merely to watch, for some idle manner to waste away his existence— never knowing or caring what they— what he heard, so long as it excited feeling?

  "That's not—" she bit her lip, then chose to let her anger flood, anyway. "That's not fair!"

  "You're right; it's not fair, is it?" Charon muttered, bending toward her to rest his elbows on his knees, his perpetual grin sympathetic, though nothing in his expression had moved. "That now, when your work is at its finest, when you've transcended form or style, they would disparage it. That they would punish you for their ignorance, fire you for your skill. Mm-hmm. Not fair at all."

  Something in her glare softened, as with the tenderness of a wound, but she hid it back under dissimulation— her parents had imparted that virtue to her, even if they'd failed with all the others. And that blank stare of hers still demanded that Charon be gone.

  He turned thoughtfully toward the window. "It occurs to me we don't have quite the ambiance for this gravest of occasions." Dark clouds hung complacently over the nighttime sky, the rain pelting down on the rooftops like drumsticks beating one, singular chant at the mortals within.

  Fools, fools, fools...

  Charon nodded at this dreary scene, at the black, rugged skyline, and there was a flash of lightning that sent Fukamori scrabbling away from the glass, her music crackling and rustling beneath her. Before she could collide with the kitchen island, however, she felt icy hands gripping her shoulders. It was Charon, but she couldn't wrench away as he held her fast, transfixed her to the dying refulgence of his ire.

  "This has been a day of tragedy for you, has it not? And I have come to offer you a choice. You had best listen."

  Fukamori shivered, and it was clear his words had finally cut to her guarded heart, to her very bones. He released her, standing, reaching into his long coat.

  "You have lost your job. It is clear that they will take from you, also, the means to produce on the grand style you desire— no, need," he spoke, softly. "They don't want art no one will appreciate. And so, you can spend your existence trying to destroy every last memory of your fading dream, or..." He withdrew a small, ripe plum.

  "Or you could start again, without limit or distraction."

  She eyed the fruit with suspicion— she was terrified of him.

  "I can offer you a world all your own," he told her, and at once that grimace of his wasn't just haunting, but alluring for its life, the fervency of his offer. His thin white fingers bore the plum aloft as though it were his vitreous heart waiting to be shattered. "A world devoid of all save for what you choose to fill it with, where the only terminal for your creations is your own imagination."

  "You're insane," she accused, though judging by her breath her pulse had fluttered erratically at the notion, with a thrill.

  "Would you care to find out for certain?" He wondered, holding the fruit out to her, his profile black against the stark explosion of yet another bolt of lightning. "If none of it is real, then you have nothing to lose, nothing to fear. Consider this plum our covenant." This time his grin did move, widening into a pantomime of Cheshire.

  She realized suddenly that his eyes had no pupils. No windows to his soul because his enigmatic essence was the soul, with no good or evil lurking beneath. She swallowed.

  "No."

  "Don't you trust me?" he questioned, tilting his head to the side in a manner that might have been touching if he were a dog, or even a human being. Instead, it chilled her.

  "No. I don't."

  "Only apples hide poison, Fukamori-san."

  She didn't appear convinced.

  Charon groaned long-sufferingly. "But m'dear, you can't see the world otherwise. Faith is my price, and one may not be ferried to another world without paying the toll. Still, the choice is yours." He shrugged, an indescribably facetious gesture for one as daunting as he. "But if you do decide to join me, it must be before the fruit rots."

  Before she could say anything there was another crack! of lightning, Charon bit nonchalantly into the plum, and he was gone.

  It landed on the smooth wooden floor with a fleshy thud, rolling just so that his teeth marks were bared to her.

  The storm outside hand vanished, her heart was slowing, and the peril
ous auguries tightening the fabric of the air about her slackened. All was turbid once more, stagnant like the life she'd worked so hard to bring to that point, to her long fall from fame, from inspiration, from purpose.

  From sanity, apparently.

  Nevertheless, she stared at the soft, glowing plum. He had broken its skin, and she was filled with its aromatic scent, its pungency an invitation and warning at once. She watched the juice run down its skin like a tear, well from the flesh like blood.

  And suddenly that gift was the difference between life and death.