Strongest Conjuration

by Skyler White

  I brushed my teeth, but nothing helped. We were too close to Phil-gets-naked day for me to be comfortable with anything resembling blood or books. I needed to check my Garden for bad ladybugs.

  I propped my back against the headboard, and let the root-beer tickle of my Garden’s sense triggers pull me into a landscape as greedy as suburbia, and as bleak.

  Standing again, ankle-deep in desolate mud that stretched strange and far away, I said, “July first, 2011, Phil, Las Vegas,” and everything not a part of the memory Phil had seeded on that day and in that place drained away, leaving alpine trees and snow. I stepped into the chilly landscape and knew what Phil had recorded of the ritual in which he had spiked the stub of Celeste—his lover across four hundred years—into me,and I had not become her.

  I had been toggling all week between this seed, and mine of the same event. Phil had recorded his right after he’d finished the ritual, while I was asleep. He didn’t know yet what Celeste had done, and it was a simple, informational memory. I let it surround me, but nothing had changed, gotten lost or weaponized, and the mountains melted back to mud.

  Relieved, I stood at the center of my empty Garden—all my great-aunt Cece had left me. I didn’t like it, but I was grateful to be an Incrementalist—even an incomplete one. It didn’t make me angry, just a little panicky about all the open space and endless muck, and fiercely protective of Phil.

  It wasn’t his fault it had gone wrong.

  It wasn’t his fault, but it was why we were cracking cover. The Incrementalists could soon be a memory for anyone able to spot the seed and willing to graze it.

  It wasn’t his fault, but he was the one getting naked.

  On a whim I said, “Phil, September twenty-fourth, 2013, Tucson.”

  Nothing happened. Of course not. We can’t see the future. We only imagine it the way we imagine the Garden.

  I bent and pressed my palm to the ground to watch the unfiltered muck well between my fingers. Against the uniform brown, my brown skin’s smattering of browner freckles just looked messy. I pushed my hand deeper, remembering kindergarten palm-print turkeys in finger paint and pasted feathers. I wanted to leave an imprint, to make my mark, to prove I had been there—that I had been at all. I wanted to make my Garden mine.

  “Mine,” I whispered. The mud sucked at my palm.

  Then it gave way.

  I caught myself with my other hand to keep from falling in up to my shoulder. For a disorienting second, I thought my Garden had run to quicksand, but only the mud beneath my hand had moved at all. I extracted my arm and peered down into the digit-laced hole.

  I pinched up a wad of mud. “Pebble,” I said, and waited, and dropped it, and waited. The pebble fell, making no sound, down and down. A dangerous, indulgent thrill slid up the nape of my neck as I listened, and never heard it land.

  I opened my eyes, grabbed a blanket, and ran for the back porch.

  5. A House Is Not

  Susi galloped to greet me, and I hitch-stepped to keep from tripping over him or my trailing bedding.

  “You’ve been grazing.” Phil unfolded from his chair to hug me, and I burrowed my icy nose into his neck. “Sit down,” he said. “I’ll tuck your feet in.”

  I took the empty chair between him and Ramon, and grinned at them both. Their new forty-dollar bottle had fewer than ten bucks of whiskey left, but I felt drunker than either of them looked.

  Ramon drained his glass and poured for us both. “You’re peppy for someone just back from the Garden.”

  I took a sip of the whiskey and slid it back to Phil. I told them everything: I’d dreamed about get-naked day, and that our gamble gotten lost or turned into something dangerous; I’d grazed to reassure myself, and made a palmprint in my mud, and it had gone deep and stayed that way. Phil’s eyebrows rose in polite surprise, but Ramon scarcely tipped his head.

  “I wanted to make a bigger hole and jump down it, but I was afraid I’d break my leg.” I was mostly joking, but the pebble drop had both thrilled and frightened me.

  Phil and Ramon said nothing.

  “This is what I’ve been looking for,” I explained. “It has to be a clue about how the Garden works!”

  Maybe they were drunk.

  A graceful curl slipped over Ramon’s shoulder to feather just over his breast. “It doesn’t have to be anything,” he said.

  “No, you don’t understand,” I insisted. “I graze seeds as landscapes I step inside. What if I could have walked into that handprint?”

  “You’d have remembered big hands?” Ramon blinked his baby-doll lashes.

  “Ray hasn’t done much drinking since the spike,” Phil noted.

  “You do know what they say about big hands!” Ramon giggled.

  “Big gloves?” Phil would enjoy teasing the morning’s sober Ramon with tonight’s flirtatious one.

  “Seriously,” I implored. “What if, instead of Who, What, and When, I could filter the Garden symbolically?”

  “Everything we do in the Garden, we do symbolically.” Phil’s words were weary, but not slurred.

  “What if we could graze that way?”

  “I doubt we could,” Ramon said. “This may well be a quirk of your subtractive metaphor. What was it? ‘Take all the egg out of a baked cake,’” he quoted my directions to the first memory I’d seeded. “Oskar was livid.” He giggled again, and drained his glass. “But that’s how it usually is with shamans. Jimmy’s castle makes grazing faster for him. Matsu’s garden makes Garden patterns easier for him to spot.”

  “And this would make Ren what?” Phil asked. “A symbol shaman? We don’t have those.”

  “We haven’t had those,” Ramon corrected.

  “Grazing by symbol would be more anomalous than spiking in general, more than even mine in particular. Who knows what that kind of an edge case might show us? I think I’ll give it a shot,” I said. “I’ll make a symbol, and step into it the way I walk into a landscape to graze. Maybe nothing will happen. Maybe I’ll get the entire symbol’s worth of information.”

  “A symbol’s worth would be a lot to remember,” Ramon said.

  “Phil remembers more all the time.”

  “But he remembers cumulatively, little bits over long periods.”

  “Incrementally,” Phil said.

  I grinned at him, but he wasn’t joking.

  So there I sat, the only Incrementalist who didn’t remember JFK, in love with the only one who remembered Christ. It didn’t dampen my love for Phil, but it didn’t simplify things any. “Well?” I asked, standing up. “No harm in trying, right?”

  I didn’t like feeling I needed his permission.

  Phil met my eyes, then let his gaze linger on the wrap of his bathrobe over my body. “You’re good with symbol.” He smiled, using his Ren-voice to tease me. “You’d think an Incrementalist would go slower, do some research, maybe wait till morning, but no?”

  “No.” I winked and shrugged. “I’m kind of a screwy Incrementalist.”

  “You’re not.” He stood up and curled me into him. “You couldn’t be better. Not even a little bit.”

  I went inside, Susi trotting next to me. I don’t like grazing in front of people, but Phil had seemed a little worried about my plan, so I settled on the sofa in the living room, and let Susi hop up next to me. I closed my eyes and hovered in the nervous racket of my blood and breathing. It’d be worth having the Celeste-shaped hole in my memory if it made me a shaman at something. Being able to filter our collective memory without reference to the original seeder’s analogy would be hugely useful to everyone.

  I sniffed for the saltmarsh burn. Root beer bubbled over my tongue, and my blank gray sky and bland brown ground lay at my feet like gifted teens, maddeningly inert, infinite possibility overburdened into immobility. Phil was right. I’d been spending too much time here. I cleared my throat, grabbed a fistful of the goop, and named it “stick,” stickily. I used it to draw a handprint—four fingers and a thumb —in the mud around
my feet, encircling myself with the outline. I closed my eyes, but was too curious or scared to keep them shut.

  “Mine,” I whispered. Nothing happened. My Garden swallowed my line.

  I drew an inverted triangle of dots and encircled it. “Face,” I said, but the mouth and eyeholes filled in with mud, and I tossed the useless stick away. It flew into splatters before hitting the ground—fear falling into frustration.

  I loved Phil deeper even than the mud went, but guilt was something he’d swallowed whole, and I wanted him to spit.

  It would be so cool to be a shaman.

  I made another stick, and drew another face in the wet salt marsh mud. I hadn’t named my hand print “hand.”

  I drew a circle around my feet, and another one beside me. I made a mouth and, grateful for yoga, drew an arm-reaching big circle to encompass it all. I took a deep breath, and exhaled. I could do this. I could make mud pies out of mud, and give Phil something juicier than guilt to chew on.

  “Me,” I said, and my Garden dropped away. All the way.

  6. All The Way

  I am not cold in the nightdark, and I am not dreaming. There are many of me, and one is bleeding.

  I am frightened.

  Bleeding causes dying, not every time. She hurts, and I hurt where she is bleeding.

  “Stop,” I say.”

  “Stop.” She shows her teeth. I show mine, but she won’t play.

  We are cooking meat. I am angry, and I am hungry. We eat. I take meat to her, but she is dead.

  I cry.

  “Go on to bed, Ray. She’ll wake up when she’s done.”

  “She should eat something. It’s been hours.”

  “I know.”

  “She’s spending too much time in the Garden, Phil.”

  “She’s going back to work next week. She wants to make the most of her time off. Go to bed, I’ll just … Ren? Wake up, love. Have some tea.”

  I opened my eyes, and ate reheated pasta while Phil showed Ramon where to find extra towels and blankets.

  It was almost daylight when we went to bed.

  “Learn anything?” Phil wrapped around me.

  “When you’re tired, do you ever read the same sentence over and over and not remember it?”

  “Sure.”

  “I’m thinking the same thought over and over, and can’t remember it.”

  “You’ve been spending too much time in the Garden.”

  “One lonely thought left, no one to tell itself to, running circles.”

  “What happened with the handprint?”

  “I don’t remember.” I heard fear in my voice, but I couldn’t feel it. “Maybe I left my mind in my memory?”

  Phil grunted in sleepy understanding. “The Garden is created in imagination, but it’s maintained in attention. You’re still thinking about it is all.”

  “I don’t think I’m thinking.” I closed my eyes inside the comfort of his arms. “I feel weird,” I said. “Like I’m not at home in my head.”

  She is dead and we carry her inside and hide her. We carry fire, and they cause cavedark to run overfeet like water, overcave like deer.

  “Look!” he says at a shape on the cavestone. I whimper. Not her face, but her faceshape overstone.

  I grind ash overcave to cause her faceshape to stay, and not run. I like it, but I cry.

  “Stop,” he says, and shows his teeth. I show mine, and we play.

  7. Fires Burning

  “Good morning, Phil. Coffee?”

  “Mph. Where’s Ren?”

  “On the sofa grazing, since before I got up.”

  “Did you make tea?”

  “Oh right, I forgot Ren doesn’t drink coffee. I’ll put the water back on.”

  “Mg.”

  “Phil, I heard from Oskar this morning. He’d like you to fly out to San Francisco and talk to John. As you said about my death, there’s enough going on without surprising ourselves, and Oskar’s worried about him.”

  “You live in California, you go.”

  “Oskar thinks you’re the right person for this.”

  “Oskar’s just pissed at me.”

  “Oskar thinks you’ve been sitting on the sidelines too long.”

  “Oskar is a pain in the ass.”

  “Yes.”

  “Maybe next week, when Ren goes back to work.”

  “Oskar—”

  “Oskar can wait.”

  “That’s not his best game.”

  “It’s our game. It’s the only … Is the water hot?”

  “Almost. I was going to make eggs. Phil—”

  “I’m staying, Ray. Fuck.”

  “Here, give it to me.”

  “Fine. The teabags are in the green canister.”

  “How many eggs for you?”

  “Two, please. I’m going to take Ren her tea.”

  My fingers curled around the steaming mug. “Thanks,” I said.

  “I thought you were grazing.” Phil’s voice was warm as fur.

  “Good morning, Ren!” Ramon popped into the living room brandishing a spatula. “Want eggs?”

  “Sarah was a morning person?” My voice was ragged.

  The dimple beneath Phil’s mustache belied the gravity of his accusation. “And a cheerleader.”

  “How did you—?” Ramon stood frozen. “That information wasn’t in the file. I checked.”

  “‘Sitting on the sidelines?’ ‘Not Oskar’s best game?’ Any benign explanation for a sudden use of sports lingo would have been in Catherine’s notes.”

  “Don’t.” The deadly edge in Ramon’s voice pierced my mental distance enough to bring me fully present. “Do not ever mention this to Vivian.”

  Phil shrugged. “You go see John for me, and I’ll never say a word to anyone.”⁠

  Neither man moved, and only an Incrementalist would have recognized the silence as the duel it was.

  “Ramon,” I said. “Check your eggs.”

  His eyes flicked to me and back to Phil, testing my comment as wingman’s tactic or sexual reference. Then he smelled them.

  “Damn!” He wheeled for the pan. The tension broke; but the eggs were ruined.

  8. On the Range

  Phil shooed Ramon from the kitchen and took over at the stove.

  “I’m glad to see you back with us.” Ramon came into the living room, settling in an uncomfortable wooden chair rather than share the sofa with me. No matter how female his cheerleader’s body looked in yoga pants and slippers, Ramon was still Ramon. “I didn’t see anything about your experiment on the forums this morning,” he observed, which put Phil on alert again. I heard it in his spatula. I can get a little defensive about how irregularly I check the forum. Ramon was needling me, but it didn’t sting.

  “Yeah,” I said. “I’ll seed it.”

  “Seed what?” Phil asked.

  “I’m pretty sure I went all the way back to my Primary.”

  “What? Just straight back?” Ramon asked.

  I nodded, sipping my tea. “All the way home.”

  “Without having to go through any sort of system for naming points along the way?”

  “Yeah.” I stood up and stretched. “With a symbol.”

  “Interesting, a shortcut through the nested dolls of personality and memory.” Ramon pushed hair away from his face with a blunt, graceless shove. “How was it? That far back, even our brains were structured differently.”

  “Yeah.” I carried my mug into the kitchen and refilled my cup, which emptied the pot.

  “How do you feel?” Phil smiled at me over his shoulder. “Last night …”

  “I feel better. Just tired, I think.” I dumped out the filter and grounds, started a new pot, and stood, taking small sips, noticing Phil notice Ramon’s new body, and watching Ramon notice Phil watching.

  “Ren.” Phil was white and frightened. “You’re drinking coffee.”

  9. Where Thou Art

  Even before the cold tile under my feet and the warmth
of Phil’s temple pressed against mine had faded, we were in his Garden. He caught my wrist in his hand, and pulled me through his front gate like Lot’s wife, or Eurydice, determinedly not looking back. We took a sharp right into grassy hills dotted with windmills, their vast, sail-shrouded arms pointing in circles—my Garden, represented in Phil’s. He stopped and turned to me, eyes closed, praying the Fibonacci sequence. I stood still as a pillar of salt.

  He opened his eyes and squinted at something near my left cheek. He scanned the space I occupied. He couldn’t see me. He folded me against his body, and the stillness of his chest said he was back to zero-plus-one-is-one. I glanced at my shoulder, smushed under my chin by the strength of his arms, and saw through it to the grass.

  I pulled away to check the rest of me, and we were back in the kitchen, its counters cluttered with two abandoned breakfasts’ worth of pans. I wasn’t transparent anymore, but my heart banged big and noisy in my chest, and my stomach shriveled tight.

  “Ray!” Phil shouted.

  Ray stuck his head and bare shoulders out from the guest bathroom. “I truly loathe mascara,” he said.

  I could see why.

  “Ren’s shading.”

  “I’ll be right there.” Ramon closed the door.

  I trailed Phil into the living room. “What’s shading?”

  “You should know that!” Phil almost shook me. “Celeste stole her memories from you—fine. But you should have Betsy’s and Rachel’s before that.”

  “Shading—” Ramon had put his sweatshirt back on, but back-to-front and inside out. “Shading happens sometimes when Incrementalistsaredying, and already half in stub. They can appear almost transparent in any Garden but their own.” Ramon steered me to the sofa, and put me next to Phil. The lashes of his left eye made a single globby horn. “They may grow distanced from themselves, uncertain of their identity”—his voice hardened—“unclear about their memories.”