Her smiling eyes went back to the road. “I didn’t know, King Henry.”
And I believed her. “No one knew?”
“Your mother passed a few days ago. Apparently, your father has been in grief over the cancer and then this . . . he forgot about you or much of anything but her being dead.”
Cut that bleeding heart again. Drip . . . drip . . . drip. “Oh . . .”
“Your grandmother was the one who thought of you. She found the number of the Institution on the internet and had a conversation with the Lady. This happened yesterday.”
“Oh . . .”
After a time of silence, Ceinwyn Dale had to have her curiosity satisfied. “What would you have done?”
“If you’d known?” I asked.
“Yes.”
I found my eyes on the child-lock. “We would have had ourselves an experiment.”
“Whether you can break an axle?”
“I know I can break an axle.”
She smiled her interesting smile. “Then what?”
“I’d have broken the axle . . . then we’d have seen if you can actually fly.”
That made her smile more. Which goes to show you why I love Ceinwyn Dale like the aunt I never had.
[CLICK]
Emotionally, I was completely fucked up by the time we reached the church where they were having the funeral service. Emotionally more fucked up than usual.
“Do you want me to come in with you or to stay here?” Ceinwyn asked me, showing some real concern for once. Guess I looked that bad.
How’s a sixteen-year-old boy with a dead mother supposed to look? Can’t say I knew back then. Shit like that gets blacklisted by we-want-happy-endings-Hollywood and how else am I supposed to see it? I was still at the age where death seemed like something that happened to other people in a world of black and white. You heard reports of death. You didn’t see it. You especially didn’t feel it.
I felt it, so I looked a little different than usual. A little quieter, little more contained with my foul-mouthed vocabulary, holding back against an eruption of anima of Old Testament proportions and ready to ruin people. I’d learned enough to control anima and the Mancy by then, but still, part of control is being able to let something loose. Damned if a piece of me didn’t want to uncork it all and have an accidental anima discharge to rival all accidental anima discharges. Can a geomancer break the world in half? No . . . we can’t. But we can scar the world’s face if we put some effort into it.
My face ashen, I told Ceinwyn Dale, “I got to do this one alone.”
“No, King Henry,” she corrected me, “You don’t.”
“Getting all touchy-feely on me, Miss Dale?”
“I know the signs of someone hurting and, more importantly: I’ve felt what you’re feeling many more times than you.”
I couldn’t bear keeping those smiling eyes in my sight. “You feel bad she’s dead?”
“I feel bad when any mancer dies of madness, but I’ve also lost my father as a young girl and my mother as a teenager.” She might have smiled, I didn’t risk a peek. “I know it sends the world crashing down and a more dangerous one rises in its place.”
The car door opened before me as a flick of anima unbolted a latch, bleeding off the energy on what seemed inconsequential . . . before I got into that church and sent the building crumbling down, creating a new round of martyrs and saints out of the petitioners. “Tell you what, I’m going to go bury the old world right now, when I come back . . . you can tell me all you want to about the new one. How ‘bout that?”
She didn’t reach out for me. That’s not a Ceinwyn Dale kind of thing to do, instead a Ceinwyn Dale kind of thing to do is to accept the choice I made and see what I made with the next one coming on up. “I’ll be waiting, King Henry, don’t try to run away.”
I stood up outside the car. T-shirt. Jeans. Shoes. Ashen face. Not looking very much a mancer but feeling like one on the inside more than ever. That’s earth for you. Holding it all in, keeping everyone protected, but then—bang. Mountains crash, buildings fall, rivers are dammed and civilizations end. “Where would I run to?” I asked.
“I didn’t say run to,” Ceinwyn Dale correct me again, “I said run away.”
“Right . . . but I got to face this one.”
“I’ll be waiting,” she repeated.
My feet went forward.
[CLICK]
That’s the first and only time I’ve ever set foot in a church. Can’t say it’s a good event to be first experiencing God’s hallowed ground, but Shithole Price was never big on drinking the Jesus Juice. By the time Sunday rolled around, Dad was exhausted from working hard the other six days of the week. So he did like God and rested, usually in front of the couch with football on our television and too much liquor stored in one of those cheap styrofoam iceboxes at his feet. The older I got, the worse Mom got, and the worse the Sunday drinking got.
Friends would talk about church to me, and Sally even tried to get me to come to hers a few times, but I never took the jump. That’s too close for my tastes. Too close to something permanent once you began doing activities together. Given how she ended up a stripper, her preacher couldn’t have been much worth listening to anyway.
Darkness held onto the church, cradling corners and draping from the rafters. I always thought of light on the rare occasions I thought of God, but suddenly I was in his house and my eyes were left to adjust to the dimmed haze. Maybe for funerals they turned the lights down. Seemed practical. Harder to see the body’s rotting face that way. That thought stuck and stopped my feet.
I hung near the doors like a coward, trapped between running away, despite my brave words to Ceinwyn, and going forward. There were probably an even hundred people in the pews, no one noticing me. Old friends of Mom, or work buddies of Dad showing support. All of them were staring forward, heads drooping just a bit or looking off to the side. Not many eyes meet at a funeral. People don’t want to see the question in another’s gaze: what if it was me? Instead they find the ground or even close their eyes.
A preacher spoke. Quoting verses I’d never heard before. Jethro Smith had us read Genesis and Exodus for Languages the year before and that’s the entirety of my biblical knowledge outside of movies and TV shows. It was good stuff, I guess. Good enough to keep me lurking near the doors, unable to go forward, my ears running my body as I listened. My eyes . . . they found the casket. That opened piece of polished wood, Mom’s body being shown to those who claimed they loved her, but not a one had tried to help her. I put myself in the same category.
We all tried to be understanding at first, but eventually we all stopped caring, we forgot her to her problems. Dad tried the hardest to keep her alive. That’s love, I guess. He didn’t do a good job, couldn’t stop what happened for nothing, but he stayed firm with her and that’s more than anyone else did.
He sat in the front row, crying into his shirt. My grandma sat next to him, pretending she couldn’t hear him. Mom’s mom. Dad’s mom died of breast cancer when I was three. Grandpa Price a couple years afterwards. I barely remember them.
I remember Mom’s mom though. She didn’t have a last name attached, she was just Grandma, the only one by the time I got old enough to say it. What a bitch. Surprise, surprise—another shit role-model in King Henry’s life. See . . . Grandma had exacting standards to which my father didn’t fit, which meant Mom had married down below her station. Grandma always saw Mom marrying a doctor or lawyer I think, not marrying some high school football star turned warehouse worker. But he loved her, adored her even, and that was enough for Mom. Maybe she did it just to piss off Grandma . . . wouldn’t surprise me. I have to get the attitude from somewhere and it doesn’t seem to come from Dad.
Grandma still came over for the holidays well into my lifetime, but the minute Mom started getting sick, having her mood swings, I never saw Grandma around but rarely. By the time things got really bad and the ‘Bad Days’ grew . . . never at all. Her own
daughter and she was forgotten. A mistake, a failed creation, something to rot and die unseen, left to its misery.
And there’s Grandma. Sitting in the pew. Right beside Dad. Not crying a tear. Glad it’s finally all over and she can remember what she wanted out of her daughter’s life, not what it had become.
As always . . . anger got me moving. There’s something special about striding down the center of pews with people watching you. That’s probably the secret of weddings. Sure, the dress, the ring, the lifelong commitment, but we all know the vast majority of humanity is shallow enough to want to alter their lives just for a chance to show off in front of their friends and family. I’ve known people who would give up more for less.
About halfway to the casket, realization dawned on those that knew me. King Henry had made it to his Mom’s funeral from wherever he disappeared to for the last years. Heck, maybe his parents had even been telling the truth about the special school and he hadn’t run off like the other two before him. Yeah, assholes, what do you know about my life? What gives you the right to ask yourself questions about it? What gives you the right to think about it at all? Wallow in your own shit, I know you got plenty, I can smell the stink.
The preacher started to wane in his eulogy, distracted, the room quieting to a hush that opened up a void for my footfalls to echo again and again, a tap-tap approaching on the carpet-covered wood floors. I could have found an empty seat. I could have had Dad and Grandma make room. I could have done some very private type stuff, but I didn’t.
I stopped in front of the casket. Dad gave a gasp behind me and knowing Grandma she glared at the back of my head . . . I wasn’t being mindful. Be mindful of others. Be mindful of your elders. Be mindful of your parents.
“Before you even start,” I said to the room, my voice croaky from lack of moisture, “Shut up and give me a minute here.”
Mom looked beautiful. Her dark hair was still lush, her lips were still pouting—like death refused to touch her. It would eventually. But not yet. Corpusmancer, Ceinwyn Dale had guessed, and here was the proof of it. Mancers sense what normal people can’t and now that Mom was gone and her natural protections were down I could feel it all. Mom’s body was filled to the brim with strange anima, enough it unknowingly kept her young all these years, even as it drove her insane. Enough of it that even if I’d taught her what I knew it would have been too late . . . but that thought gave me no relief.
I still felt guilty. All the ‘Bad Days,’ all the ‘Good Days,’ all the times I’d blamed her and cursed her and wished her dead and here was that wish come true after I’d finally hoped for something better. Too fucking late, kiddo. Too late before you were born. Some Recruiter for the Asylum screwed up and missed her back in the 80s and that’s it. Your Mom got fated to end up here. Dead and still so beautiful.
My hand reached out, hovered over her, doing as I’d been taught—what she’d been denied—and feeling the anima saturation inside her. It was so damn much anima . . . twenty-odd years of a mancer’s resting rate of anima building, minus the few accident discharges she probably hadn’t even realized had taken place. Eventually it would turn into necro-anima. Life to death. The decaying side of the world as the rest of her turned to something moldy. Even anima can only keep time at bay for so long. We all rot in the end. Nothing is eternal.
There was a void in the pool, near her lungs. “Oh, Mom . . .” I croaked aloud.
Her first use of anima and it had been used to kill her. To end her pain. She gave herself cancer to end it, I realized with a sob. That hole of anima burned into my mind.
“I’m sorry they didn’t find you . . .” I whispered, “So sorry I couldn’t do anything to help you . . .”
Over my shoulder, Dad kept crying. Big tough guy reduced to tears, his eyes puffy, his face worse than mine. Mom had been his world. He’d stuck by her through everything. I only hoped that one day I could love a woman like that. Knowing my childhood, fuck if I will. No chance. But I’d settle for a fourth of it. That’s a big ass fourth . . .
“She was like me, Dad,” I told him. “It’s not her fault.”
“Like you?” Dad asked, voice muffled in shock.
“The school . . . they never found her . . . so this is what happens,” I explained. “I was hoping I could help her when I got home, but I guess . . . well, I was too late.” Quite a few people, including the preacher and Grandma eyed me like I was the crazy one and maybe that’s what I’d inherited. “There’s nothing either of us could have done. Save maybe understand it, at least . . . so I guess you did right by her. More right than I did.”
Dad’s his face crushed up in grief. “Sit down, boy. We’ll talk after the funeral and you can come home for awhile. Forget that place, okay? If they did this . . . just forget them forever.”
I guess I didn’t expect him to understand it all, so when he didn’t get it . . . well . . . oh well. Maybe one day it would click for him. “I can’t, Dad. I learn or I end up like Mom. After that . . . I got to do something to make this all right. I gotta go. Sorry.”
Dad looked at the casket again. “She wanted you to go, but I didn’t.”
“I know, Dad.”
“Best do what your mom wanted then. She always knew what was right.”
My feet moved. I walked from the casket, away from Mom’s dead body to the sound of my dad’s new chorus of tears.
“See you in five years, Dad,” I said mostly to myself.
I walked past all of them, the journey of heading back up the center of the pews not nearly as fun as it is the other way. I recognized faces, Dad’s boss and co-workers. Sally was there with her mom. I didn’t even give her a second glance. I’d moved so far beyond that by then. This life fit worse than my brand new jeans and t-shirt. It all felt wrong. Too free and too confined at the same time.
[CLICK]
On the way out of the church, in my haste to get through the doors and to Ceinwyn Dale’s car, I ran into a woman who was hanging outside, like she couldn’t decide if she wanted to break the barrier. We both staggered from the impact. She yelped out, stepping back, while my hand lost its hold on the church door, sending it to close on me, a thud of wood on my shoulder.
Around the wood, I saw black hair and a beautiful face and for just a moment some part of my mind not in touch with reality took over and my lips betrayed me to utter, “Mom?”
The woman’s head snapped up, hair falling farther away to reveal a face much younger than I’d ever seen my mother’s, back before she got sick, back to a time I only knew from picture frames and an old high school yearbook which occasional got dug out of a closet. Only this woman had my dad’s nose, much sharper than Mom’s. She frowned at me and I realized my mistake.
A gasp escaped from her pouty lips. “King Henry?” she asked in surprise.
“Susan . . .” I said back, staring at her. I stepped around the door to finally let it close, but my mouth stayed shut for once.
My eldest sister smiled down at me. She’d gotten Dad’s height too. She had to be twenty-two by then, I’m pretty sure. I hadn’t seen or heard from her in four years
“You grew up,” she told me as a greeting.
I could have asked so many questions. But I settled on the present. “What are you doing here?”
Instead of answering right off, she motioned for me to hug her, so I did. One of my lost sisters appearing just like that . . . and the one I liked. Susanna Belle Price. It made my mind turn off more than Mom’s death had. I just kind of . . . became a part of the moment.
“I heard about Mom, but . . . it’s hard to work up the nerve, lil’ bro. Here I’ve been, sitting outside on my butt, not able to go see Dad or you or JoJo.”
I frowned. “JoJo left,” I told her. “Year after you did. No one’s seen her since.”
There we were, two siblings talking about the missing one on the sunny summer day, outside of our mother’s funeral. Susan’s expression went pretty shocked at my news. “She left? What do you
mean she left?”
“Her and Dad got into a fight like always and it was one too many,” I explained, “So JoJo bailed on us.”
“It’s just you and Mom and Dad?”
I grimaced. “Not quite. The parents got me hooked up with this special boarding school a couple years ago, so I’ve been gone too.”
“You left them alone?” she accused, face disapproving.
“And who do you think you are giving me shit for this one?” I yelled back. “You left first, Susan! JoJo bailed! What I did was fucking escape!”
“Right . . . you’re right . . . I just . . . I never thought it would get this bad,” she admitted to soothe my anger.
“This bad alright,” I agreed, my whole body tight, anima bubbling, “and no way to fix it.”
She studied me, up and down again, a frown on her face, probably still thinking how much I’d grown. I’d been twelve and not even five-foot last she saw of me. “So where are you going to, not staying?”
“I said goodbye, that’s all I needed. What about you?”
“I can’t, lil’ bro . . . it’s too weird. Especially with JoJo gone. They’ll blame me for that too.”
“Dad could probably use a visit later if you have the time,” I tried to find some middle ground for her, “Wait until Grandma’s not around.”
“Yeah, I guess.” She hugged me again . . . hard, like she didn’t expect to do it again. It reminded me of the hug I got before she left home. “You’re just going back to school?”
“Yup.”
“I never took you for the type.”
“It’s a bit different than normal school.” We started walking towards the parking lot, getting away from the church. “I was tenth in the class last year.”
“Out of ten?” she joked.
“Out of thirty.”
“My lil’ bro doing good at school. Things sure have changed.” Susan stopped us in front of a SUV newer than Ceinwyn’s car. “This is mine.”
The Foul Mouth and the Fanged Lady Page 20