Book Of Tongues

by Gemma Files

  Ignoring its delicacy, Rook folded Chess close and refused to let go, even when he cursed and kicked and bit — dripped the run-off from Grandma’s legacy into Chess’s mouth along with their kisses ’til the energy he was giving out began to return to him, as Chess’s fierceness rekindled. Eventually, the blaze of him rose to such an intoxicating level that Rook had to rein in hard, pry free of Chess’s grip and leave him sleeping, lest hex-hunger tempt him to push the little pistoleer back over the edge and suck him dry once more . . . permanently, this time.

  When the sun set, the cave stayed warm — an oven-stone cut to just fit two, so long as they lay close. Chess’s skin had firmed to the point of cooling, his sweat no longer smelling of anything but itself. So it came as no grand surprise that when — as though to celebrate his escape from death — Chess curled a bit further into Rook’s chest, slid one hand down the front of Rook’s flies, and commenced digging for treasure.

  At the cusp, however, he suddenly opened his green eyes wide, staring at Rook as though he were a dream conjured to offputting life. Like he’d never thought to see him again outside of sleep, and wasn’t too sure how he felt about finding himself proved wrong, even under such delirious circumstances. And the next morning, while Rook was pissing in the scrub, Chess came wavering out after him, barely able to stand — weak as a newborn colt, but with guns still a-droop from either hand, cocked and ready.

  “You son of a bitch,” he said. “You son of a bitch.”

  Rook tucked himself away, and turned to face the music. “Don’t you slander my Mama just ’cause yours ain’t worth a damn, Chess Pargeter,” he replied.

  “You left me behind, when I told you Goddamn not to. One fuckin’ thing I told you, one. And . . . you went ahead and left me.”

  “But I came back.”

  To which, a breathless moment on, Chess gave only a hoarse cry for answer — and fell, headlong, into Rook’s open arms.

  They found Hosteen back at Splitfoot’s, drinking himself incontinent, perhaps as a crude form of mourning them both. Rook and Chess came in with the hot breath of the desert still on them, and once they recognized exactly who was letting in the flies, the bulk of the barflies leapt back — not just ’cause they remembered all Chess had done the last time he was there, either.

  Hosteen turned at the sound, gaping. “I wanted t’stay!” he yelled out, voice a whole octave higher than usual. “T’look after him, like you said! He wouldn’t let me!”

  Rook: “I know, Kees.”

  “Shot at me, point-blank, wouldn’t let up! ’Til I ran, yeah . . . but that was ’cause I just had to, honest, Rev! He’d’a killed me for sure, else!”

  Chess laughed. “Hell, I already told him all this, you old fool. Ain’t nobody here holds a grudge.”

  Rook pulled a pair of chairs out from around the nearest table, settling himself down in a third. “So there: all’s forgiven,” he concluded. “Now sit, Kees, ’fore you go ass-over-teakettle. ’Cause if you’re really all we got left for a gang, seems we got plannin’ to do.”

  “Need to find us a nice, fat strike, first off,” Chess said. “And if you want to pay me back for leavin’ me all that time in the sun, I’m gonna need new clothes.”

  “Oh, we’ll get them for you, all right — store-bought, tailor-made. You’ll be fine.”

  “Sounds expensive.”

  Rook smiled again, wider — “Anything for you, darlin’.”

  After news of Bewelcome spread, other bad men either flocked to join up, tried to take Rook and his newly resplendent lieutenant on directly, or got the hell out of their way. Rook paid little attention, letting Hosteen handle such affairs. He had Chess, and Chess had him. Familiar now with the feel of power’s thirst for power, from both sides of the circuit, Rook found himself able to control the flow from Chess to him more finely — slow it to a trickle, enough so that Chess seemed well-able to replenish himself, without ever noticing the loss. Grandma’s education had been good for that much, at the very least.

  1865 slid over into ’66 in a haze of loot and murder, the seasons indistinct in the desert dust, and the Smoking Mirror drew ever closer. Vague rumours of pursuit, by army or locals, rarely came to anything much. Whenever the Railway wasted their money to hire Pinkertons, Chess killed them, with or without Rook’s help. Claimed he had a nose for that sort of stink, and that usually proved true.

  So yes, Rook found himself startled when Hosteen brought Ed Morrow by, ’round about Christmas of ’66. He said he’d found the tall man moping at the back of yet another Border-bar, looking for dishonest work. One glance told Rook Morrow was a Pinkerton, almost down to the number on his badge — sent in Bewelcome’s wake, more to gather information and assess the sort of threat could reduce an entire township to Dead Sea salt, than as any sort of inside man placed to save fellow agents from the Wrath of Pargeter. But the funny part was, Chess’s sharp eyes skipped over Morrow, like he’d been wax-coated.

  Another hex’s influence? Intriguing, if so. But Rook knew it didn’t matter, in the final go-’round. Things were much too far along already, for that.

  “Glad to make your acquaintance, Ed,” was all he’d said.

  My oracles tell me you must seek this grim Lady who sends you her dreams at the Place of Dead Roads, Songbird had told him back in ’Frisco, once Morrow was off looking for Chess. Adding: And do not rush to demand of me where that is, Reverend — that business is for you and she alone, to settle between you. But though she may not want exactly what you want, your wishes do coincide; she will certainly take you there, if you only allow her to lead.

  Granted, he hadn’t felt too inclined to believe her, right then — with her still drawing energy from him in crackling bursts, the way a church’s weathervane draws lightning. So he’d quoted on Jericho City and pulled Selina Ah Toy’s down around her, easy as stamping on an anthill . . . but taken the Smoking Mirror with him nonetheless, all the same. ’Cause Christ knew, he’d damn well earned it.

  And then, finally — leaving Chess safely asleep, with Morrow set to watch over him, or get shot as a damn Pink — Rook had left the Two Sisters without a backward glance, moving so quickly his boots barely skimmed the desert floor. Above, the moon shone on, dead as Judas. It was almost full.

  You’ll have to do something about that, little king.

  “I know,” he said, out loud. “Heard you the first time, woman.”

  I know you did . . . husband.

  Funny how even with both hands in his head, Songbird still hadn’t been able to figure how it was no mystery at all to Rook where this Place of Dead Roads might lie. ’Cause — where was the single deadest place he’d ever stood? Only the place he’d killed what little good was left in himself, with Chess’s unknowing help.

  And here it was now, glistening bright beneath a spray of stars, like granulated marble: Bewelcome. Where Rook touched down lightly, skidding a bit, ’til his heels snagged in salt, then flipped open his coat’s front flap, and took out the Smoking Mirror’s uneven black disc.

  He held it up high, balanced in both hands — thumbs and forefingers gripping its outer edges, the rest curved for additional support, a shallow flesh funnel — before angling it to fit neatly overtop the moon itself, like a cold iron skillet-lid.

  A moment later, darkness came scuttling along the desert’s floor to engulf all in its path, from east-west to north-south, the way a photographer’s black cloth reduces the world to nothing but an upside-down reflection trapped inside a box. And the moon’s whole light was dowsed at once, in horrid sympathy.

  We call that an eclipse, he told the Rainbow Lady, arms still extended, already beginning to ache. When it happens naturally, that is.

  Even in this darkness, though, he could see her shake her head — that stiff coronal of hair slicing the air, axe-heavy, like she could make it bleed.

  But — there is nothing natural about such things, little king, in any event. When tizitzimime eat the sun and moon, horror follows: fields
fall fallow, water sickens, unborn children wither. Bats fly up out of an empty cave, spreading disease and death.

  Rook snorted. Sure they do, he thought, mostly to himself. But when she laughed as though he’d made a particularly witty quip, he knew the truth at last: there wasn’t one single thought left inside him, about anything, he could truly call his own.

  It was . . . oddly freeing.

  There, he told her. Done. Now what?

  The words came back on the wind, night-scented, from infinite distances. Saying, only — Watch. And wait.

  He did.

  And finally, from the north-east . . . someone came walking, out of the dark.

  It was a woman, full-grown and full-figured, well-made as a statue. Her fine features were stamped in a mould which might mark her anything from Navaho to Mex, skin copper-sheened, and from the unconscious swing of her hips and the sureness of her light-shod feet, Rook reckoned that — on any other given day — she would have stepped proudly even here, in the midst of this desperate solitude.

  But there was something wrong with her overall, visible from a fair distance off — a wounded gait, with two hectic spots blazing at her cheekbones. Her skirt itself seemed stiff, stained darkly ’round where her belt should lie, while a kerchief had been thrust down her shirt-front to cushion her swollen, leaking breasts. Her dark hair was braided back haphazardly, the part frankly crooked. Both eyes sat in shadows so deep they seemed bruised.

  Childbed fever, maybe. Or something more: cholera, smallpox. Dying anyhow, probably.

  You just keep on tellin’ yourself that, “Rev,” he thought.

  Though she was already looking straight at him, it seemed to take the woman a moment or so to realize he was actually there.

  She cleared her throat, licked sticky lips and asked: “. . . who are you?”

  But Rook just shook his head, by way of an answer; after the fiasco with Grandma, he wouldn’t be makin’ that mistake again. Assuring her instead, as gently as he could — “Doesn’t matter. You come a long way?”

  She half-shook her head, half-shivered, teeth chattering audibly. “Far enough. But I . . .”

  And here a fresh uncertainty clouded her stare, drawing it back down to both outspread hands. They were muddy from palms to wrists, nails choked with dirt, like she’d been digging without a shovel.

  “. . . had a dream,” she told him, finally. “A woman — she told me where to come.”

  I’ll just bet she did, Rook thought, wishing he felt worse over this nameless sacrifice-to-be’s obvious plight, her probable fate. Yet all he could summon, by this point, was a sort of random ethical weariness, too shallow to reach anything that counted.

  You know what to do, husband, the Lady reminded him.

  “I . . . don’t know why I’m here, is all,” said the woman. “You know?”

  Rook bowed his head, and shot her his most trustworthy smile. “Yes, ma’am. I can well understand how frightening that must be, for you. But it’s okay, because . . .”

  . . . I do.

  CHAPTER FOURTEEN

  Up from Mictlan-Xibalba, a crack came extending by slow degrees, like the first small tear in a rolled snake’s egg — splitting, resplitting, fine and flexible as dead woman’s hair. Meeting on its way with the same artesian wellspring Rook had teased forth once before, it washed the earth beneath their feet free of salt to form a mucky circle ’round himself and the woman, roughly twelve feet in diameter, like it’d been measured out with a pair of coffins for compasses.

  Then the crack’s furthest finger opened up a smallish hole right in the off-centre of this depression, through which — while they both watched, with similar fascination — a dark tendril poked and furled, coiling the way kudzu does, pumping with evil juice. A quarterbreath, and it had swelled cock-thick. A half-, and it bloomed big as a big man’s wrist. Three breaths later, a young sapling.

  Bark like unclean fur, leaves quill-sharp, pine-needles from a giant’s Christmas wreath. The tree spread itself out above them, its low-slung limbs hung with vines so heavy they reminded Rook of nothing so much as serpents. But its fruit did shine: satin-silvery, casting light down on the woman’s face as she stared upwards, mouth open, wondering — a thin rain of glitter, spores heavy with sleep, and dreams.

  Open your mouth, little king; she teeters on the brink. We must be careful how we steer her, if the right outcome is to be obtained. Speak only the words I send you.

  No help for it, then. At all.

  “This tree — ” Rook began.

  “Beautiful,” the woman agreed. “What do they call it?” “Yaxche. Tree of Heaven. It’s a . . . calabash, I think. But that ain’t the point.”

  “No.”

  “Point is — you want to die. That’s why you came here, right?”

  She looked down again, as if shamed — at her weeping dress-front, the mess between her thighs turning her hem to rust. Whispered, mouth barely moving: “Yes.”

  “Well, then . . . there you go.”

  He pointed to the tree, which was already letting down a helpful extra length of vine — close-plaited, easy to tie, hard to break. A hangman’s rope.

  “That’s a sin, though,” she said; more of a question than a statement, going strictly by intonation. Like she was hoping he’d try and talk her out of it.

  Wasn’t as though that was a strict impossibility, either, it suddenly struck Rook. Sure, the woman’d come out to Bewelcome on her own, who knew how far. No food or water with her that he could see, which meant — if he was to give in to a foolish impulse of mercy — he’d have to waste most of the latest jolt he’d sucked from Chess on healing her alone. But then he’d be so weak, even if he did get her back to a place half-civilized, the citizens there’d simply shoot him where he stood once the first of them put a name to his notorious face. Scatter his brains, burn his body, atomize him beyond even Lady Rainbow’s recall . . . if she didn’t kill him herself, long before, for breaking faith with their subterranean compact.

  You cannot save her, little king. As you know, in your bones.

  No. And . . . yes.

  We are complicit in this, husband, as in all things else. Is that not the meaning of marriage?

  Not really, not for everybody. But then — I ain’t everybody.

  “What’s your name?” he asked the woman, on further impulse.

  “Adaluz,” she replied, the terminal “zee” a faint “th” lisp — but didn’t ask him his in return, as one might’ve thought only polite. Then again, it probably wasn’t anything she particularly cared to know, right at this very instant.

  “Mexican, huh?” No reply. “Well, leave that by. You cleave still to the Holy Roman Catholic faith, Adaluz?”

  “. . . I did . . .”

  “Yeah, ’course. But that was before God killed your child, right? Or — let you kill it.”

  She took the implication straight to the jaw, slap-hard, with barely a flinch. Just kept her gaze locked fast to that half-born noose, its tail already curling in on itself, forming an unslippable knot for her convenience. Her mouth gave a twist, skewing a drawn purse-string way that rendered her entire pretty face a badly sewn mask.

  Matthew, 2:18, Rook couldn’t stop himself from thinking. In Rama was there a voice heard, lamentation, and weeping, and great mourning, Rachel weeping for her children, and would not be comforted, because they are not.

  “I can’t reach it,” was all sad Miss Ada said, at length, hopelessly. “It’s . . . too high for me.”

  “Well, I can help you with that, ma’am. I mean — I’m surely tall enough to spot you a lift. Ain’t I?”

  A long, wet sniff. Then, with her tear-blurred voice even softer than her words’ slight Spanish tinge could make it — “You’re very kind, señor.”

  “Oh, no such thing, darlin’. No such thing.”

  He went down on one knee in the salt, like he meant to propose, and cupped his hands in a makeshift stirrup. Step up, now, honey, ’fore you change your mind.
Best to strike while the iron’s hot.

  She did.

  And then . . . stood there a second more with one foot up, one foot down, like she couldn’t decide whether she wanted on or off this dirt-bound ride, after all. Listened quiet, while Rook mouthed the “hey, rube!” spiel his Lady dictated, from her sodden, death-stink home. How there was nothin’ to any fine degree wrong with stretching your own neck, if the circumstances warranted. How this tree was a gallows grown for Adaluz alone, to end her pain and see her set up on high for all to gawk at, a new constellation of loss fixed at the very apex of an empty black sky. No need to think it over, since in Rainbow’s suicide paradise her child would be returned to her, whole and grown, to live by her side forever —

  “You’ll never want for anything again, either of you,” he told her, throat dust-dry. “No hunger . . . no fear. Woman who dies of childbirth, God smiles on her, something fierce. Her baby too. You’re a pair of soldiers who went down fightin’, and there’s not much more honourable than that.”

  “No,” she said, eyes tight-shut, head shaking like palsy, like fever. Like the only way she could keep herself from stopping was to turn eyelids and brain inside-out, and slip into voluntary blindness like a hangman’s all-too-welcome hood. “There isn’t, is there?”

  Rook shook his head right back at her, even knowing full well she couldn’t see him do it. It was that, or scream.

  Adaluz reached up, face abruptly slick with tears, La Llorona herself; the tree reached down to meet her halfway, wrapping itself helpfully tight ’neath her chops. And when Rook let his clasp part at last, she didn’t even struggle — just hung there, slack yet straining, ’til her own weight broke that throat-bone Rook knew so well, long after midnight but longer still before dawn.

  ’Til her lips crept back, bruising blue, and her tongue ground bloody between two uneven rows of small white teeth. ’Til a weak little spurt of piss ran down her legs to splatter on the ground, washing the profane circle even wider.