“I am Kali,” She says. “Mother of Thuggee, Mother of Deceivers. And you my little lost tiger have seen through me to the greater me. Take my breath and I will show you the secret that only the wisest know, and the gods would deny, but all should fear.”
She blows into his nose and he draws in Her breath. And his heart is afire and his mind is a swirl. And he dies again.
Kali’s face, fierce and horrible, loved by Michael, is gone. She wears now a softer face, but it is more terrible than the other. It shimmers in ten shadows and her black skin is a soft evening blue. In her eyes is the universe. Michael cannot long look into them.
She is Mahakali, Greater Kali. She is not the dealer of death, she is Death. She is not the watcher of time. She is Time. She is not consort to a facet of the wheel. She is all of it. She is Brahman, a thing beyond description, the reality behind the universe, beyond man and gods, forms and thought. She is Brahman. She is Creator. She is Destroyer. She is All.
“Do you perceive the greater wheel?” She asks. “Can you imagine a wheel within a wheel? Can you sense how the wheel on which we stand turns upon another?”
“Will it end?”
“You will,” She says. “And you are part of Me and I am All.”
In Her eyes, he sees a distance beyond time and despairs.
“I am ashes in disguise,” he says.
“My lovely little tiger!” She howls. She is again Kali, Black Mother, necklaced in skulls, a skirt of severed human arms concealing her sex. Bloody and wild. She whirls and dances and the world quakes in justified fear.
The puppeteer speaks directly to him. “What if death does not exist to renew life but life exists to feed death?”
He’s on the rug in front of the ancient shadow-puppet show he’d seen in his fever-addled dream before. Around him sit some of the others, Jessica beside him holding his arm like Lynette used to. Trent up front. Barb and Howard, Ericka and the man who looked like a banker who was never introduced. The orderly from the hospital in Vegas who wheeled him to the curb is near. He waves hello. There are other faces he cannot put names to, but he knows nonetheless. They are the faces of the children of Kali he danced with around the fire, with his nostrils full of smoke and his heart filled with joy. Not everyone sits for the performance. Though all are invited, they are free to decline, and wander off to other corners of the bazaar to behold other distractions and wonders. Such a gathering, such a bazaar as this, is a rare and wonderful treat, so much to see, so much to try, so little time. And the show is not for everyone.
Beyond the bazaar, beyond the caravan, Michael senses tigers watching from the shadows; Tyler and Bryce, the guards around the clearing. He is in two places at two times at once, they all are.
“When Sleeman hanged the tigers they were fully erect!” calls the bawdy puppet master. On the lit screen two shadows sway from a noose, a hangman in a high colonial hat stares dumbstruck at the size of the dangling puppet’s erect member.
The audience laughs.
“And when Sleeman turned his back, the tigers sent his soldiers likewise to Kali—erect for love!”
The hangman is set upon by a group of shadow ruffians, all in fine mustaches. As they pull him down a bulge appears at his crotch. The crowd laughs and hoots.
“My sister said it was because of oxygen deprivation,” says Michael to no one in particular. He remembers seeing it with Lynette. Father and Christopher taking down a man behind a mall. Christopher held his legs. Father held his life in the tension of his bright yellow scarf. The struggling man was no match for their skill and when his fight was gone and in his final moments an erection stretched his pants.
“Is he trying to make a baby?” Michael asked.
“Maybe,” said Lynette. “Makes sense.”
It didn’t to him then, but now it does.
“It’s symbolic,” Michael muses out loud. “It’s saying something.”
Jessica leans into him and says, “How art thou out of breath when thou hast breath To say to me that thou art out of breath.”
“Shakespeare?” he says. He looks at her hard, looks past her face, through her eyes and into her. He forgets her age, her eyes, her hair. He sees only inside. He sees the wheel within her. He sees her.
“I see you!” he exclaims. “How have I not noticed before!”
He throws his arms around his long-lost sister and holds her like a promise.
“Lynette, I’ve missed you so much,” he says. “I almost forgot.”
“We wouldn’t let you do that,” she says sharing the embrace.
Some part of him knows he’s in a dream, understands these are but illusions and echoes from his mind, his hopes and longings made into a play, like the play within a play he’s about to watch. But he doesn’t care. For this moment, reunited with Lynette, he would die. If the drug kills him, and he knows that it is very capable of doing just that, he will go to Kali’s fire happily, singing like the Thuggee of old, penis erect for the Divine Mother, to be put again upon the wheel. Maybe, if he is a good tiger, she will let him come back as one again. As she did for Lynette.
He holds her so long that he misses the start of the play. When he turns back to the stage, it has already started. Two scrims have been set up and the same images move across both as before. It is a play in stereo. A boat is sailing across a treacherous ocean, laden with treasure.
“The boat has sailed,” says the narrator as before. “There is nowhere to run. Death to everyone if any dare step off.”
Sharks circle the boat, nipping at the rudder.
“It is too late!” the audience chants, Michael among them. “Sail on! Sail on!”
The sharks pass away and the image becomes a close-up of the ship’s deck. Men shuffle around looking busy and important. Some of the passengers become tigers moving among the others as before, only their shape altered. Where the other characters are opaque, the tigers are translucent, their stripes glowing from an inner light as if they’re burning with an internal fire.
“The clay could sink in the water,” says the narrator, “Or the tigers could eat them.”
“Eat them! Eat them!”
On the right side screen, there is a difference. One of the tigers bears a mark on his tail. Soon it grows from a smudge to a fluttering flag affixed to the puppet, moved by wires and string. He wanders about the ship and the crew, in and out of the other tigers who don’t notice the signaling tail.
“The tigers are let loose upon the rich merchants.”
“The tigers!” howl the audience.
As before, a battle ensues, tigers on men, blood represented by red streaming silks.
Another difference. On the right, a nearby ship approaches, their attention drawn by the flag on the tiger’s tail. While the tigers feast on the dead and dying, a rain of arrows fall upon them, slaying all the tigers on board. The marked one alone escapes, trailing his flag behind him. He is pursued by the soldiers to a hidden den where they find treasure, tigers, tigresses, and litters of kittens. All are slaughtered.
It was as before but no so. Here there was not the three-eyed masked demons falsely attentive, but men, women, friends. Family. Here human faces lit up and fell with excitement and terror, the emotion of the moment. Colors were brighter—reds, blues, greens. Gold glittered and silver shone. It was a reality clearer than anything Michael had experienced before. He felt he could see through time to the beginning, or to the terrible end. He felt a warm sticky embrace from the air, not unlike Mother’s own caresses.
The show played on as before but sharper. He had the idea that before when he’d seen this, he’d seen an early version of a new play and now, here, was opening night.
On the left screen, the tigers move with fluid grace feasting on meat and piling treasure high with human hands. On the other side, stand stiff and ordered soldiers, clay cast, lifeless and unmoving.
Both screens fade to black.
After a moment, a growing light appears showing a sunrise over iden
tical plains, wooded mountains in the distance, a river flowing in the foreground. On the verdant river bank of the one on the left, a tiger sits flitting its tail contentedly. On the other there is only the ground.
Raucous applause bursts from the audience. They hoot and shout and whistle and throw coins to performers who catch them in their scarves.
Then, in the way of dreams, the scene changes. Michael is not with Lynette as Jessica, but Lynette herself, and Christopher, and Mom and Dad. They are at an outdoor concert. They have a cooler with sodas and snacks. They sit on blankets in an early summer evening and listen to music. His mother runs her fingers through his hair. Lynette stretches out on a blue blanket, her sun dress light and airy as the day. Christopher is watchful as always but shares a joke and a tickle with his little brother. The music plays and Michael watches the dancers near the stage gyrate and twirl.
Young as he is, he knows he was not born into this family. None of them were, not this group of tigers. Theirs is an assemblage of spoils; the stolen and adopted, the forsaken and loved. Most loved of Kali. He feels love then, feels it unite his little family together in purpose and favor. He pities those who are not of his God. They may have their own, but theirs is a god of sheep and he is a tiger.
It is a blessed moment, that concert, that afternoon with his family, one of the happiest moments of his life and the final key to his past. He remembers it all—the travels, the lessons, the hunts and the feasts. The laughter and tears. The petty sibling squabbles and blessed reconciliations, the freedom of the road and the beauty of the night. His mother’s snorting laugh and Lynette’s contagious one. Christopher’s strength and his father’s coolness. His place in the universe.
The sky glows with morning, but the sun is not yet up. The fire has been stoked and hot drink is at hand. The dreamers come awake in ones and twos. Michael is not the first, nor the last. He sees the faces of his fellow travelers and when they catch his eye, he cannot help but smile and they cannot help but smile back. He is home. He is home.
Jessica stirs and rubs her eyes. She shivers and Michael gives her the blanket and stands up to stomp his feet. Tyler is there with coffee.
Trent walks over to them unsteadily. He collapses on their blanket and takes one of the offered cups.
“Michael,” he says. “Did you know your name means “Who is like God?” It’s also the name of an archangel, the leader of heaven’s armies. It’s a cool name.”
“You’re studying the wrong mythology,” he says.
“Just a hobby.”
“Michael,” says Jessica, sitting up. “Tell me about your Lynette.”
He is not surprised she shared his dream. On the faces of those dreamers who sat with him at the puppet play, he sees confusion and worry. Trent is looking at him particularly hard, waiting for him to say something. He looks at them and sees clearly black sooty halos surrounding their bodies, stripes on their faces, and within them, burning embers.
“Let me have your rumal,” Michael says to Tyler.
He hands it to him.
“Beautiful,” he says swinging it around, testing the snap. It is yellow as a sunflower, as bright as the life chakra. “What do you use for weight?”
“Silver half dollars,” Tyler says. “Real silver. I can sell them in an emergency.”
He snaps it as Christopher showed him and tries it again until it comes off the way it should.
“What did you see?” Tyler says. “Jessica, what’s wrong? Trent looks like he’s seen a ghost.”
“The play,” she says.
Michael surveys the clearing and flicks the rumal again, catching it deftly in his other hand, the silver coins delivering it with a jingle. Holy smoke rises from the dreamers likes pennants in the sky, the fires within them stoked and powerful. He feels the heat within him, a fever in his veins, a fire in his heart, and it warms him.
He sees him across the clearing and sets out.
Tyler follows him, Jessica and Trent close after. The dreamers all watch him go, anxious and excited. He walks up to the skinny red-headed Thuggee from Dixie holding his guard post opposite the road.
“How was it brother?” he asks Michael.
Michael looks out beyond him into the trees. “How could you let them get so close,” he says gesturing into the woods.
He turns to follow Michael’s gaze and the rumal snaps fast around his throat.
“What?” says Tyler.
The man, Fletcher, kicks and fights but Michael holds fast. The silk is stronger than steel, his muscles eager for the work, his mind free, and his soul alight.
Michael cannot help himself. He pants and grows lightheaded.
Fletcher tries to dig his fingers under the scarf, but only claws his own throat.
Michael tightens his grasp and hears the crackling of a crushed windpipe beneath the yellow scarf. He takes up the new slack with a roll of his wrist.
Tyler finally commits, and grabs hold of Fletcher’s kicking legs as is the way. Trent grabs one arm, someone he doesn’t know takes the other. Together the four pin him.
In his victim’s struggling spasms Michael feels the dance of Kali and knows She loves him.
When the fight is over and the man is dead, Michael holds him for a moment longer in triumph then drops him to the ground. “The approver,” he says.
“What approver?” says Tyler.
“In the Sacrament Vision,” says Barb. Michael turns to see the crowd behind him. They stand in blankets with cords dangling from their hands.
“The signaling tiger,” says Michael. “The raining arrows.”
“We all saw it,” says Barb.
“What?”
“An approver,” says Ericka. “A marked tiger.”
“How do we know it was him?” says Tyler.
“That FBI agent told me an informant led them to your laser truck in New Mexico. It could only come from your streak Tyler.”
“I’m no approver,” he says.
“No, but you told Fletcher. Agent Hall hinted that the DEA had an informant that brought them to Tahoe. He said it was the guy who gave up the truck. DEA was all over the meth lab thing in Alabama, right? It had to be Fletcher. They found him through his dead sister. They caught him. He turned on us.”
“Did you tell Fletcher about New Mexico?” asks Jessica.
“I may have compared notes with him,” says Tyler. “But… but, he’s one of us. How was I to know?”
“It’s okay,” says Michael. “I handled it.”
“That’s still pretty thin evidence to kill a Tiger,” says Howard.
“Damn son,” says Poulson. “Get some faith.”
“Trent,” says Michael. “What does the name Fletcher mean?”
“It means “maker of arrows.””
“The rain of arrows…” murmurs Barb.
“Kali,” says Michael.
On the dreamers’ faces, astonishment turns to wonder.
“Kali!” Michael yells.
“Kali!” They roar. “Kali!”
And in the trees beyond the clearing, just inside Michael’s perception, he senses the Black Goddess feasting upon two souls that morning: the approver slain by Michael in the old way, and the man Michael is no longer.
Epilogue
Jessica’s hunt is an elaborate production. She’s stationed deceivers from the airport to the harbor. She’s filled two hotels with killers. She’s bought costumes and cars, rented jewelry, faked a website, bribed the right people and had already sent three souls to Kali before Michael sent the tigers after Craig and Hall.
“Donnie-Do’s record label is failing,” she tells him driving back to Tahoe. She’s in a stolen red Ferrari with borrowed license plates, driving it like she’s immune to radar.
“Do the Music,” he says.
“I’m surprised you’ve heard of it.”
“It was in the paper. I recognized him from the airport. One of those things.”
“God loves you Michael,” she says.
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“Go on,” he says.
“Well, last year he was in a similar situation, but not as far out as he is now. The year before that, he’d lost his own fortune and part of daddy’s trying to do the same shit. He’s a terrible promoter. He knows nothing about the music business. So when daddy didn’t come with more money last year, Donnie, a.k.a. Ron Dully, son of Micah Dully, computer security advisor to the Pentagon, visited his pappy’s computer lab and walked out with a memory chip of code. Two phone calls and a trip to Hong Kong later, he had the money to keep going. But like I said, he pissed it away. Now, he’s doing it again. He’s got a new memory stick with him. The buyers are Chinese, the same ones as last time. Last year it was five million, this year it’s at least that much. Cash in a box.”
“How’d you get involved?”
“I met Donnie in LA last year. I’m Laura with him, by the way. Don’t call me Jessica.”
“I won’t.”
“Or Lynette.”
“Okay,” he says, his heart missing a beat in praise of Kali.
“I ran into him again after the laser thing in Vegas. We hooked up. He likes people to fawn over him. I fawned. I got Bryce and Tyler into the entourage. He’s picked up a couple of bodyguards since last year, but otherwise he’s not too bright. He does too much blow and talks too much when he does. He’s also susceptible to suggestion when high. I steered him here because of Randy, the concierge. You met him. He’s got the hotel locked down. The Chinese are cautious and need watching. That’s why so many of us are here. It’s got to be quick, clean and complete.”
“What do you need me to do?”
“We have a yacht. We’ll strike there tonight on the lake. They’ll crack a bottle of champagne, shake hands and complete the deal. We’re servants and entourage. I’ll distract them. You’ll act as yeoman. Strike when it’s time.”
“What does a yeoman do?”
“Stands around on a boat, I guess. Coil rope. Be part of the scenery.”
“Okay,” he says holding the door to keep from sliding into her seat on a tight turn. “Won’t they suspect a double cross? That’s a lot of money.”
What Immortal Hand Page 29