If I Should Die

by Amy Plum

  Although this sounded like a private conversation, I was intrigued and had inched closer to listen.

  Jules nodded. “Vincent is saying he wasn’t yet in Paris. Have you been back since then?”

  A shadow crossed Mr. Gold’s face. “Actually, yes, I returned to France a few years later, when your Paris bardia were in a full-scale war against the numa. A few of us Americans came to your aid. I was the only one of my kindred who was not destroyed.”

  “That’s it,” Jules said. “You were one of the Americans living in JB’s house in Neuilly.”

  Mr. Gold nodded, his expression grave.

  “Vincent tells me you and JB have been in a bit of a spat since then. Not that that’s any of our business,” Jules said, instantly looking like he regretted having blurted out Vincent’s words.

  Mr. Gold looked truly troubled now. He thrust one hand into his pocket and rubbed his forehead with the other. “Yes. There were some . . . unfortunate events that occurred—” he said hesitantly, but his words were cut off by a cry from Bran.

  “I’ve got it!” he exclaimed. We all hurried back to where he was hopping excitedly around the thymiaterion, tracing the symbols with his fingers as he chanted something. His huge eyes swept our little group excitedly. “It’s a nursery rhyme that my mother taught me, and that her father had taught her.”

  “Please,” urged Mr. Gold, “proceed.”

  “It goes like this,” Bran said, and then began chanting in a singsongy way:

  Man of clay to man of flesh

  Immortal blood and human breath

  Traces to the spirit bind

  Flames give body ghost and mind.

  “‘Flesh’ and ‘breath’ don’t rhyme,” muttered Jules.

  “It rhymes in ancient Breton,” Bran responded drily. “You see, the pot is clay, there is the blood, the fan stands for breath, and then flames, of course,” he said, and then, pointing to the box, admitted, “but I still don’t know what this is for.”

  “What does the poem mean, exactly?” I asked.

  Bran’s expression went from excited to gloomy in a second flat. “Unfortunately, I have no idea.”

  TWENTY-FIVE

  “‘CLAY TO FLESH,’” I REPEATED, MY THOUGHTS suddenly percolating with a memory that I couldn’t quite place. And then I remembered where I had seen those words. “There was an inscription in Latin under one of the wall paintings in your family’s archive that mentioned argilla and pulpa,” I said to Bran. “It showed this curled up figure lying in what I thought was a tub . . . but now that I’ve seen the thymiaterion, I’m sure that’s what it was! You must know the one I’m talking about,” I urged.

  Bran shook his head. “During my one visit, I stayed long enough to lay my mother to rest and take account of the books and objects there. I didn’t have time to study the paintings.”

  I suddenly remembered the photo I had taken. “I took a picture of it with my phone,” I began eagerly, and then seeing the dark look on Bran’s face, I hesitated. “I’m sorry. But I wasn’t going to show it to anyone else.”

  He considered this but still looked upset.

  “Well, let’s have a look,” said Papy.

  As I fished through my bag, my mood plunged. “It’s in my suitcase back at Mr. Gold’s house,” I said. “In any case, I took a photo of the whole wall. I doubt the inscription would be legible from the distance I got the shot.”

  “Do you remember any other details from the painting?” Mr. Gold asked.

  “Yes,” I said, looking to Bran for his approval.

  “Go ahead, child,” he said, sighing. “I can allow the divulgence of my family’s secrets in an emergency like this.”

  Reassured, I said, “From what I can remember, there was a flame-fingered guérisseur in it, as well as several revenants, and it looked like they were carrying out a magical procedure. There was definitely fire—someone holding a torch. And a revenant had cut his arm and was bleeding into the bowl.”

  “I think I have a couple of funereal urns with the same type of image,” said Mr. Gold, rubbing his chin. “There are so many mystical ceremonies whose meanings were lost with time. The urn in question displays one of several that I’ve always wondered about.” Buzzing with excitement, he led us away from the thymiaterion toward a table holding several dozen stone containers, each the size of a mailbox.

  “These are the ancient Roman version of funeral urns, used to store the deceased’s ashes after a cremation,” he explained. “Here’s one showing what I suspected was a golem, which would fit your description of a curled up figure,” he said, pointing to a container carved with a creepy-looking scene.

  “Golems!” Papy exclaimed. “Kate and I were just talking about golems the other day. That makes complete sense!” he said.

  We gathered closer to inspect the carving. Almost identical to the wall painting in the guérisseur cave, it showed a doll-like figure with no hair or features curled up in a circular bowl, the same size as the bowl of Mr. Gold’s thymiaterion. Next to it, a figure with a fiery halo cut her arm with a knife and let the blood drip upon the doll, where it spread in a puddle around the hunched-up golem. Another woman—this one with no halo—leaned over with her mouth next to the figure’s head. Her lips were puckered in an “O” shape and seemed to be blowing on the golem’s face.

  Beside her, a man held his hands above the creature’s legs. Five flames flickered above his head as well as the end of each fingertip, and above his hands hovered a cloud of fire. A fourth figure with no visible halo stood behind them holding a box in one hand and a flaming torch in the other.

  “It looks like a step-by-step guide on how to give a wandering soul”—I pointed to the fiery cloud—“a body.” My heart was racing so fast I felt like I was going to have a heart attack if I didn’t calm down. We might have actually found our answer!

  I think you might be right, came Vincent’s words. From his breathlessness, he sounded just as excited.

  Bran started bouncing around nervously. “Just looking at that image is awakening something in me. Something primal. I believe we’re on the right track.”

  I glanced at Jules, and saw that his sullen look had been replaced by one of hope. Meeting my gaze, he shuffled over next to me and squeezed my hand. “I thought we were on a wild-goose chase,” he whispered. “Not that I minded, free trip to New York and all. But now I think . . .”—and the way his eyes were lit up with excitement I could finish his sentence for him—this could actually work.

  “‘Man of clay,’” quoted Bran, who was closely inspecting the urn with Papy and Mr. Gold. “I’m thinking this means we must shape a golem like this one out of clay and lay it in the thymiaterion.” He pointed to the bathtub-shaped thing on the relief, and I noticed for the first time that it was lifted up off the ground, perhaps at waist height to the standing figures. The woman breathing on the figure was standing on a box in order to reach.

  “‘Immortal blood’ means a revenant must pour his blood onto the clay man,” Mr. Gold added, pointing to the bleeding bardia.

  “That would be me,” volunteered Jules, squinting doubtfully at the image. “Looks like a hell of a lot of blood there.” He looked around at us. “No problem, of course. Just a comment,” he said defensively.

  “I can do the breathing part,” I said. I had felt pretty useless up to this point, so I jumped at the chance to be involved.

  “And it seems that I will be transferring the aura of Vincent into the clay body,” Bran concluded, looking up from the box to a spot in the air right next to my head. So that’s where he is, I thought with a thrill. He’s been next to me this whole time.

  “I’m guessing the golem must be lit by fire,” commented Mr. Gold. “It comes last in the list of symbols on the thymiaterion, and would explain the torch he’s holding,” he said, indicating the man in the background.

  “We still have the mystery box,” stated Papy, pointing to the other hand of the torch-bearing revenant.

 
; “What could it be?” I mused.

  “Boxes can represent all sorts of things from temptation to empty space to imprisonment,” Papy said, glancing at Mr. Gold, who nodded his agreement.

  “I hate to interrupt all of the deep thinking going on here,” Jules commented, renewed purpose animating his voice, “but Vincent has just reminded me that we’re working within a pretty tight time frame here—which ends whenever our illustrious enemy decides to click her fingers and call his spirit back. Let’s start on the mud sculpture and get this show on the road.”

  “Right,” said Mr. Gold. “It’s lucky the thymiaterion is here in the museum. The restoration studio on the next floor has a supply of clay. Jules can help me bring down some boxes on a hand truck.”

  “But what about the box symbol?” I asked.

  Mr. Gold pulled a heavy set of keys out of his pocket and began searching through them. Finding the one he was looking for, he looked up and met my eyes. “Without a clue as to what the box represents, we’re going to have to take our chances and work without it.”

  “But . . . ,” I began, and then stopped as I heard Vincent’s words: Mon ange, we’re running out of time.

  As our group scattered, I couldn’t help thinking more about the mystery box. Even if we had all the “ingredients,” I wondered if the ritual would really work. We were flying by the seat of our pants here. Using only guesswork, how could we hope to succeed at something this complicated?

  I pushed my doubts aside. This was our only hope. What could it hurt to try?

  It was almost two a.m. before we were finally assembled in a circle around the thymiaterion. Although the collection was pretty well isolated from the rest of the museum, Mr. Gold was worried about lighting something as large as the golem on fire. He had been scuttling around, shutting off all the smoke detectors he could find.

  Papy and Bran had been busy plundering the museum’s reference books while I helped Jules and Mr. Gold with the clay. My grandfather joined us now with a look of frustration. “I could find no lead on the box symbol,” he said regretfully. Taking his appointed place, he picked up the torch Mr. Gold had assembled out of a broom handle tightly wound with kerosene-soaked cloth at one end. Jules struck a match and carefully lit it, and it ignited so violently that both he and Papy staggered back a step in surprise.

  The flaming torch cast long shadows, animating the army of statues stationed around the room. The clay man lay curled up inside the bowl of the incense burner, smooth-skinned and bald-headed.

  Mr. Gold had formed the hands and feet in simple paddle shapes, pointing out that the golem carved on the funereal urn had no fingers or toes. But Jules had a fit when he saw it, and insisted it be as realistic as possible. He said it offended his artistic sensibilities to see his friend represented in such an unflattering manner. He went to town on the whole thing and when he was done it resembled Vincent in a slightly generic fashion. Although the figure was strange-looking, it seemed fragilely human, like a sleeping child. And the thought that Vincent’s spirit might enter it and bring it to life moved me in an almost visceral way. I reached out and brushed its cool, smooth surface with my fingers.

  Bran had taken off his glasses. He said that the kind of sight he needed didn’t require them. Without them he seemed frailer, more human and less cartoonish. He looked like any middle-aged man, although he had managed to keep his pitch-black hair, and his face looked scarily gaunt now that his eyes weren’t magnified. “Are we ready?” he asked, glancing blindly around the room.

  “Vincent, are you ready?” I asked.

  I couldn’t be more ready, my love, he said.

  I nodded to the others.

  “Then, please proceed,” responded Mr. Gold.

  Bran raised his hands over the lip of the chalice and positioned them above the golem’s legs, focusing his gaze on the air above it, where I suspected Vincent was. He stood that way for a minute or so, and then glanced over at Jules. “Go ahead,” he urged.

  “Aren’t you going to say anything?” asked Jules, confused.

  “Like what? An incantation? I’m a healer, not a sorcerer,” huffed Bran.

  “Okay then,” Jules said, sounding nervous. He draped his arm over the side of the chalice and brushed it with the dangerous-looking sculpting knife. Gritting his teeth, he glanced at me.

  I raised my eyebrows.

  “What?” he said defensively. “Okay, I don’t mind getting hurt for someone else, but I’m not used to self-mutilation.”

  “I could step in as your replacement if you’d prefer,” offered Mr. Gold.

  Jules shook his head. “Vince, you owe me big-time for this one,” he said. Then, sucking his breath through his teeth, he cut swiftly and deeply into his forearm. Holding it over the clay figure, he let the blood stream over it while uttering a string of colorful curse words.

  I stepped onto the top rung of the stepladder that was pushed up against the cup. Leaning over, I pursed my lips and blew a breath of air like I was throwing a kiss toward the clay man’s mouth.

  You’re so sexy when you breathe on me, the words came.

  I sputtered. “Stop making me laugh, Vincent, or you’re going to come back to life with no lungs.” If this bizarre ceremony even works, I thought. I tried to force the pessimism out of my head and blew another breath toward Clay Vincent.

  “And now the fire,” said Mr. Gold. Jules and I drew back as Papy stepped forward and touched the flaming torch to the clay.

  “Now is probably not the best time to point out that wet clay doesn’t light,” muttered Jules as the flames sputtered where Papy touched the blood-drenched mass. Then—all of a sudden—the fire took on a life of its own and my grandfather jumped back as the body began to burn.

  “It’s working,” I gasped, my heart racing as I leaned back to avoid the flames.

  “I can see his aura expanding and rising up into the room,” Bran said excitedly. “Now it needs to come down and inhabit the body,” he said, placing his hands as close to the flames as he dared.

  “Come on, Vince, let’s do this thing,” murmured Jules, as he grasped his wound to staunch the flow of blood.

  Kate, I heard.

  “Yes, Vincent?”

  Something’s wrong.

  The fear in his voice made my blood run cold. “What?”

  Something’s happening. It’s like I’m in little particles that are all flying away from each other. It’s wrong. I’m disappearing.

  “STOP!” I yelled. “Something’s going wrong!” I leapt down off the stepladder and grabbed the bucket of water that Mr. Gold had insisted on having handy, in case the fire got out of control. I flung the water over the top of the chalice, and the flames extinguished with a long hissing sound.

  “Vincent!” I yelled. “Are you still there?”

  “What happened?” Bran asked. He looked dazed.

  “Vincent said he was disappearing. That he was spreading out.”

  “Dispersion,” said Mr. Gold. Bran whipped his head around to face the revenant. “Dispersion of wandering souls. The third gift of the flame-fingers. You said you’d never heard of it. Well, I think we just figured out how it worked.”

  TWENTY-SIX

  “WHAT THE HELL IS DISPERSION OF WANDERING souls?” I asked, my voice shrill with panic. I was shaking and felt like I was going to throw up. “What just happened to Vincent?”

  Papy appeared by my side and wrapped his arm around me protectively.

  “There were two ways to treat wandering souls,” I heard Mr. Gold say. “Either re-embody them or disperse them. Not all of us revenants deal well with living forever. In modern times, some even opt for suicide. But guérisseurs in ancient times were said to possess the gift of letting a bardia’s spirit go while it was volant, essentially dispersing it to the universe.”

  “So Vincent’s just been . . . dispersed?” I choked out as tears flooded my eyes. “How do we get him back . . . from the universe or whatever?” I was so paralyzed by fear that I
couldn’t even feel my body. If Papy hadn’t been supporting me, I might just have fallen over.

  No, mon ange. I’m still here, came Vincent’s voice. It was weak and came in through my brain waves as barely a whisper.

  “Oh, thank God. He’s still here,” I announced. My tears flowed unchecked and I sank down to sit on the floor, resting my head on my knees. I felt like I had been picked up, shaken, and dropped to the ground, my shock and relief were so intense.

  Papy fished his handkerchief out of his pocket and leaned over to hand it to me.

  Bran staggered backward and sat down on the ground and Mr. Gold joined him, putting an arm around his shoulder and saying, “It’s okay, Monsieur Tândorn. He’s still here.”

  Jules stooped over to sit on the ground next to me, holding a towel to his arm. Seeing the blood, I forgot about my own distress. “Let me help you,” I offered, and grabbing the first aid kit Mr. Gold had set aside for the purpose, I cleaned and dressed his wound.

  “Well, that was a huge success,” Jules said, taking in big gulps of air. “Not only did I undergo massive blood loss, but I almost had a heart attack.”

  “We’re not giving up,” I said, ignoring the horrifying thought that was endlessly looping in my mind: You were that close to losing Vincent forever. “We just have to figure out what we did wrong. I’ll bet it has to do with the box symbol. We’re missing something.”

  Papy spoke up. “I realize that we are in a terrible rush, and necessarily so. But now that we know how perilous this procedure can be, wouldn’t it be better to break for the night and rethink everything in a calm fashion?”

  Everyone agreed. It scared me that the more time went by, the more likely Violette was to call Vincent back. But plowing ahead without additional information was too dangerous.

  “You okay, bud?” Jules said to the air, and listening, he gave a weak smile. “He says it’s the second time in the last few weeks that he’s been on the brink of permanent destruction. He’s getting used to it.”