The Axeboy's Blues (The Agents Of Book 1)

by Andy Reynolds

  Edith shut her mind off to the emotions and images, afraid she'd start crying again. “Thank you for that, but why are you here? Why are you in my apartment?”

  The emotion it sent her was that of utter compassion – it wanted to make sure that Edith was alright.

  “But I don't even know you... or your clock's owner.”

  The next emotion it sent was that of recognition – it knew her, or knew of her.

  “How do you know who I am?”

  Community was the next emotion. More specifically, claimed the images that came next, the mems' community. It told her how the mems often communicated with one another, and that all of the mems in the neighbor's apartment knew of Edith. Then there was an image of a small section of The Garden District, the neighborhood she lived in, like a map overlaying her vision.

  She shook her head. “There couldn't be that many mems that know of me.” Then she propped herself up on an elbow, and there were more mems scattered about, dozens of them. Most were standing and watching near the edges of the room, like they were waiting to see if she was alright or if she needed any help. She sat up and looked around. Even more mems were behind her on the loveseat, and some were squeezing in under the front door, or climbing into the apartment through the open window (they shimmied down the curtain like the heroes in an adventure novel). And from all of them compassion flowed towards Edith – each one of them cared about her well being. Each one of them wanted to know if she was alright.

  Edith looked down at the wine glass on the table. It was still the life of the old Edith, but there was no feeling of connection to it anymore. She no longer missed that life. She didn't need it or the sense of security it brought. Slowly she rose to her feet, looking around at the mems that surrounded her. “Thank you all. I am alright.” She caught a glance of herself in a mirror across the room. She wiped the last of the tears from her face, and then a breath caught in her throat.

  The woman peering at her from the mirror... just as she felt no connection to her past life, she felt an intense connection to this woman. Edith and the woman in the mirror whispered to each other, “Oh, that's me.” Edith smirked, and the smirk grew quickly into a smile, bringing so much life to the woman in the mirror. She was radiant. And more than that, she was absolutely beautiful. More beautiful than Edith had ever imagined herself being. The sepia streak fell from her loose pony tail, the sepia part of those strands nearly touching her eyebrow. And below her, behind her, were dozens of mems, some still crawling in through the open window.

  Edith stood up straighter and looked down at her hands. She'd never been a pastry chef. This is who she was – who she had always been.

  File 20 :: [Julius Marcos]

  Gray clouds rolled and curled across the sky like smoke or snails or sky-faring ships, blocking the sun from fully reaching the swamps' waters and muddy ground. The swamps' trees reached up from the water like the hands of crones lying in wait to catch unsuspecting birds in their leaf-covered fingers. Julius and Madness Took drifted through the water in their canoe, between the trees, Madness Took rowing every so often and Julius sitting and waiting. Insects of all shapes and sizes flew up to them, inspecting the newcomers before flying off to inform whomever they answered to.

  They had been traveling for a good part of the day and should have been getting close.

  The sky itself grew dark with blackened clouds as they drifted deeper into the swamp, the clouds sending whispered threats into the wind, promises of a massive downpour soon to come, a storm to wipe the slates clean.

  After many hours they came to an island half the size of a city block, thick with twisted trees both living and dead. Madness Took leaped out of the canoe and dragged it up onto the dirt shore, then helped Julius out of it. For such an old, lanky creature the Collector was extremely strong.

  Julius grabbed his crutches and steadied himself. “Wait here for me.”

  Madness Took stamped his staff into the moist dirt. “You will wait for me, Madness Took.”

  Julius nodded and made his way carefully across the bumpy ground laden with tree roots. The island itself was shaped like a horseshoe, so that it had a sort of bay, and it was to this shallow bay that Julius came. Out of the bay's center rose a fragile-looking, disjointed tower several yards above the surface of the still water. The tower itself was constructed of human bone.

  The ends of his crutches plunged into the water and his boot plunged in after them as he waded into the center of the bay. Steadying himself and pinning both crutches to his chest with his arm stub, Julius reached into his shoulder bag, pushing aside the bottle containing the pirate ghost and reaching into a cloth sack. He pulled out a long bone and held it for a moment, letting himself feel his phantom limb flexing its nonexistent fingers. He placed the bone, which months ago had been his arm, towards the top of the bone tower. Then he took out the other bones – the bones that could be salvaged of his hand, leg and foot – and added them to the tower. He could place each bone's moment in time – each life he'd lived was here, stacked up together since his second incarnation had started building this tower with the bones of his first incarnation.

  After he'd placed the last of the finger bones, a blue fire came to life from within the tower. The blue flamed groaned out: “Who calls me?” The language in which it spoke hadn't been uttered by humans for many centuries, except for Julius and the incarnations that came before him.

  Julius answered in the same forgotten language: “Are there so many who call upon you that you have to ask that question?”

  “You've grown weary and arrogant, but don't steal from me my little glories.”

  “I am Julius Marcos, last in a line of incarnations of Bes in the land called Louisiana. And I call upon you, I call upon myself, I call upon Bes to come to me, to aid me, so that I may nourish myself.”

  Then Julius saw the figure standing on the other side of the tower from him, standing in the murky water. The figure's form danced in the blue flame as Julius peered at him through the gaps in the bone tower. Quite a bit shorter than Julius, Bes' form flickered like a flame itself between a muscular dark-skinned man with a golden breast plate and a fur tunic to a bestial lion standing up on its hind legs.

  Julius tightened his grip on the crutch. “How come you never told me I'd be the last incarnation?”

  “We are the same, we are one. How come you didn't tell yourself until now?”

  “Don't fuck with me!”

  “Your anger is going to get you killed before it is your time, and we can't afford that. The land and the people can't afford for you to act upon pathetic, impulsive emotions. The anger in your body is going to eat you up, and your enemies will pick their teeth with your teeth.”

  “Why wouldn't I tell myself? If I had known, I would have organized things differently. I could die any day now, and the Agency isn't ready to go on without me.”

  “You sound like a child – you do not sound like Bes. You do not sound like the protector you have been throughout the centuries. You do not even sound like Julius.”

  Julius took a deep breath, and his chest shook. “I'm tired. I'm so fucking tired.”

  “You will not have to worry about that for very much longer, will you?”

  “How long do I have? Can I at least rebuild the Agents one last time?”

  Bes paced back and forth through the water, the ripples carrying themselves through the gaps in the tower and pushing against Julius' leg and crutches. “We are not going to tell ourselves. Over these lifetimes, you have had a great gift – the gift of knowing you'd come back. The gift of fearlessness. Now you have been given a new gift, a far greater gift – the certainty of death. You've been given an end, an end that will come for you at any moment, just as any other living creature. The reason that this gift is so great is that you once had the illusion of immortality. It was an illusion, because we were never going to keep incarnating forever. Nothing lasts forever, so there is no true immortality within the limits of time.” />
  “How is not being fearless supposed to help me? How is it supposed to help the people?”

  “You were not the last incarnation. When you were nearly killed here in the swamp months ago, you were left unconscious. We conversed together.”

  “I don't remember that.”

  “We both agreed that you should not remember. I told you certain things, and we came to the conclusion that you must be the last incarnation, and that you not be told why. The reason will present itself in time, if all goes well – if you do not succumb to anger and get yourself killed prematurely.” Bes stared at Julius, his cat-eyes shimmering gold in the blue flame. “There are reasons why beings like us incarnate into mortals,” he said. “There are certain abilities that mortals have, certain actions they will take that far surpass anything my kind can or will do.”

  “But I am still you. I am still immortal.”

  “Forget me,” said Bes with his wild eyes and a giant cat's grin. “Forget that you are Bes, and find the other side of yourself. Find Julius! Find the reason that you became him for this life, and not the thousands of others that we could have picked! It is Julius Marcos who holds the key to the future of this city, not me. And certainly not your damned anger.”

  Julius looked down at the ripples made from his submerged foot and crutches. A vast and deep loneliness crept up from within himself, filling all the space inside him like a dense fog. The ripples grew as the ground beneath him began to shake, and he looked up to see the golden eyes floating there, staring at him from beyond the blue flame. Bones began sliding and falling off the tower.

  “Don't do this,” said Julius. “It doesn't have to go this far.”

  Bes spoke through his eternal cat's grin: “It does. You'll be cut off from here on. We have nothing but faith in you. Just as once, ages ago, hundreds of thousands had faith in us.”

  The waters continued lapping against his leg and crutches, and the ground jolted so hard that it sent Julius falling sideways into the water as the bone tower slid to pieces, raining down in front of him, smothering completely the blue flame within.

  Julius pushed his torso out of the water with his one hand, feeling around to find his crutches. He punched the water with his fist and yelled out to all the swamp creatures and tree spirits. He had never felt so alone in his life. He had never felt such fear, his heart pounding against the walls of his chest like it wanted to get out. He had never felt so human. “I am Julius,” he said to himself. And then he yelled it. “I am Julius! And the city, the people, and the land will not fall! I will not let them fall!”

  Many of the trees lowered their branches, bowing to him and acknowledging who he was. Others cowered in fear, having heard the stories of incarnations of Bes ripping trees from the soil and using them to bludgeon opponents. Still others ignored him out of dislike for the Agency and everything it stood for.

  * * *

  Wishing he was physically able to bury the bones of his past lives but having to settle for just spending some time sitting at the edge of the bay with them, Julius eventually hobbled back across the island and up to where Madness Took was patiently waiting and eating a ripe piece of Wonder. The Collector somehow knew not to speak, merely watching as Julius very carefully got into the canoe.

  File 21 :: [Wole]

  The afternoon was stretched out and warm, like clothes long since dry yet still clipped up on the clothesline and wafting lazily to and fro in Spring's gentle wind. Like a tightrope walker Wole meandered through the highest branches of the mighty oak trees of The Garden District. He'd started Uptown and had moved downriver. Next, he would travel along the building tops and streetcar cables and trees of The CBD, then on into The Quarter.

  He picked up chirpers from the branches with movements long since memorized and forgotten, pulling out the appropriate key to wind each of them up with. When he'd begun this job ages ago he would start long before dawn and barely be done before nightfall. Now the job took him the better part of an afternoon. The keys dangled from a black cord hanging from his hip, tied to a belt loop. There were nearly a dozen different keys for the different types of cicadas. It had taken him decades to recognize each type of cicada by sight, and for nearly a century now he'd known each individual by name – he knew their temperament and which trees they liked to hang out in. He knew the families – which bloodlines were the oldest, which families were on good or bad terms with one another. Over the years he had watched friendships bloom and romances ignite, he'd witnessed feuds broil and seen the births of millions.

  A long time ago someone had put the idea in his head of creating a comprehensive family tree of all the different family lines of cicadas, but then Wole had realized that once completed it would take a person half a century just to read it – that is, if they were able to read it. Along with writing the family tree, Wole would have to come up with a way to spell the names of the cicadas, whose writing system consisted of an extremely diverse series of scratches and dots.

  Wole was nearly done winding the cicadas of The Garden District when he spotted something further down the tree he was perched upon. He finished winding the cicada in his hand, then set it down exactly as it had been. It thanked him and he stood up and walked down the nearly vertical branch, at the crux of which was tied a wooden board – it was tied horizontal into a make-shift table, on which was tied a glass of wine wrapped in plastic wrap with a note tied to it. The note was folded in half with his name written on it – though it was misspelled as Woalleh.

  Wole looked around, but the long yard was completely empty. There was a bench underneath the tree, and he remembered the young woman who had been crying. He'd so wanted to speak to her more, but had been running late that day.

  He opened the note:

  Thank you for your kind words-

  they helped me more than you'll ever know.

  I am in your debt, and would love to return

  your kindness by cooking you dinner one night.

  If not, I hope our paths cross in the future.

  Sincerely,

  Edith

  (Sorry if I butchered your name)

  Wole untied and unwrapped the glass of wine and brought it to his nose. The smell reminded him of spices and chocolate. He looked down at the empty bench and thought about how strange people had become over the years. Or perhaps it was him that had become strange, being so cut off from them for so long.

  He sat down on the nearly vertical branch – he was running early, and couldn't remember the last time he'd received a gift from anyone, or the last time he'd let himself take a break to enjoy something so luxurious as a glass of wine.

  He closed his eyes and took a long, slow sip.

  File 22 :: [Edith Downs]

  “Thank you so much for meeting with me, Edith,” said Roman.

  They sat in a darkened corner of The Kerry, a little Irish pub easily overlooked in the midst of The French Quarter. Irish ballads poured through unseen speakers, sloshing around like water on the deck of a boat and splashing up over their shoes and onto the legs of their chairs.

  “I figured there was no harm in meeting with you,” she said. Though she didn't feel like she could be talked into something so adventurous as a bank robbery that particular day, she still wore pants and tennis shoes just in case (because evidently you never know).

  Roman sipped on a glass of Dewars and Edith had a glass of cabernet which tasted exactly like heaven. She'd pulled her hair back into a pony tail, letting some of the black and sepia strands hang down one side of her face, and wore a button-up burgundy shirt.

  “You look very good,” said Roman, though the way he said it seemed more a statement rather than a compliment. “Are you perceiving any side effects?”

  “Not that I can tell. Just the discoloration.”

  “I can probably help you with that. If it doesn't go away naturally.”

  Edith shook her head. “That's alright. I like it.”

  “I don't know you, Edith, but you seem r
enewed – enlivened.”

  “You're not human.” A week ago she'd never be so forward with a stranger unless it had to do with her pastry shop. But a week earlier seemed years away.

  “Not completely. I am roughly fifty percent not-human.”

  “What exactly is going on? I know I haven't gone into another world or anything, but everything feels so different. I've been seeing things that I never saw before – things walking on the sidewalk, next to the humans. Like that giant mosquito in the warehouse who was wearing a vest. But for some reason it doesn't seem so weird that I'm seeing these things.”

  Roman sipped from his scotch and set the glass down. There was nothing particularly wrong with the way he sat, yet he somehow looked like someone who had never sat in a chair before. “The city of New Orleans has, from the normal perspective, peculiar qualities. Certain steps have been taken over the course of its history to assure that the average person is more-or-less protected from and oblivious to these qualities. You could call it a kind of hypnosis, for the sake of simplicity, though it is much more complicated than that. But once a person is introduced to some of the other aspects of the city, their mind overrides the 'hypnotic suggestions' and they tend to perceive more of the things that their mind used to ignore. In reality you've been seeing these things the whole time you've lived here, so it doesn't seem abnormal – because, well, it is not abnormal. Pretending not to see them is abnormal.”