by Sean Stewart
Almost any photograph. This one, here.
My little sister Sarah.
* * *
Maybe Fate singled out Aunt Sophie less than she thought. Maybe, to a parent, every child is a child lost.
In time.
* * *
As Dante and Jet finished burying the body, Sarah was in the kitchen, trying her new act out on her mother. Above all things, Gwen Ratkay loved a good joke. The plan was to get her involved in constructing the routine; then, at an opportune moment, Sarah would sidle around to asking about Aunt Sophie's Past.
It wasn't much of a plan, Sarah conceded, but improvisation was her life.
Her mother sat at the battle-scarred kitchen table drinking coffee from the mug Sarah had given her last Christmas, an ink-black lacquered beauty with one simple design, a branch from a cherry tree, breaking into pale pink blossom. It was barely seven on a Saturday morning, but Gwen was already neatly turned out in a sensible blue skirt and plain white blouse. A kerchief of Thai silk, dyed turquoise-blue and jade-green, livened up her sober outfit, as laughter brought the life into her steady, practical face.
What Sarah loved most about her mother was that she laughed; freely and superbly from her own steady confidence. Sarah worshipped that. Her own laughter seemed to her so angry, so fearful and insecure, like the yap of a hyena. Sarah had a favorite piece of jewelry, a cameo her grandmother had given her a month before she died. It was very simple, an elegant woman's profile on a plain black background. Sarah wore it as a charm. She knew her father would disapprove if he knew, but she needed it; she wanted so desperately to call up such a woman from inside herself: poised and superb, graceful and witty and kind.
"So, magic: what a concept, hunh? Can you imagine what the world would be like if magic hadn't started running back into it after World War Two? Ever stop to think about it?" Sarah asked, goggling out at an imaginary crowd.
Mother's lip trembled. With Sarah's round face wavering and her small mouth working, she looked uncommonly like a tuna trying to do calculus.
"I mean, take Star Wars. Without the Jungian explosion, it doesn't even get made, right? Let alone win an Oscar. I mean, think about it: without all that archetypal confronting-the-darkness-and-feeling-the-magic stuff, what we have here is basically Gidget Goes to the Death Star. Can you imagine anyone financing this in, say, a Freudian world? I mean, you'd have to throw in all kinds of stuff about Luke trying to kill his own father and marry his sister and... stuff."
Sarah paused, round face becoming thoughtful. "Okay—bad example. But, um... What if we were all Marxists, God help us? Then your blockbuster classic would have to be about a small group of comrades banding together to bring down, the Imperialist..." The same slow frown settled on her face. "...the Imperialist overlords."
Sarah goggled again, and was rewarded with a chuckle from her audience. Mother sipped from her coffee, grinning.
Sarah held up her hands defensively. "Okay! Okay, but still... Personal Development. That's what magic was going to be about, you know. Personal Development. Gonna free up a lot of repressed psychic energies. The McCarthy hearings were the last attempt to deny magic, and when they collapsed, we would all have to face our own internal enigmas:
"Two, four, six, eight:
Time to individuate!
Ego! Psyche! An-i-mus!"
Pause. "Welcome to the end of the Millennium, folks." Sarah held up a page of her script. "I hold in my hand a survey done by Dr. Milton Chesterfield—no, really!—eminent sociologist at Purdue University. And do you know what Dr. Chesterfield's research has revealed? The best-paid profession for angels, the one with the greatest upward mobility is—prostitution!
"Prostitution! Apparently it's all the rage in expensive circles to hire a companion who really knows what you want." The puzzled frown settled over Sarah's features again. One eyebrow crept slowly upwards in dawning alarm. "...Frankly, I find this hard to believe. I don't know about the rest of you girls, but when I'm having sex, the last thing I want is for him to know what's on my mind."
Mother chortled in mid-sip, blowing inadvertent bubbles in her coffee.
"I mean, how many passionate moments can survive a sudden, 'But I don't have a beard. And who the hell is Raoul?'
"Not to mention, fellows, that whether you're really a fabulous lover is something only your girlfriend and her twenty closest intimates know for sure. You do not want the truth here, trust me."
Sarah rolled her eyes and shook her head chidingly at her imaginary audience. "My brother actually had the nerve to ask me once why women fake orgasm. Can you imagine? What a stupid question! Come on, girls: Why do women fake orgasm?" Nodding. "Because men fake foreplay! ...What a stupid question."
Mother choked on her coffee, snorting with laughter, then glanced guiltily toward the parlor, where Father sat reading the morning paper.
Sarah grinned. "Okay! Okay, so my brother doesn't like this answer. He's a Ladies' Man. Seriously, he's a beacon of hope to women everywhere: a funny, intelligent guy who will have sex with any woman over sixteen—thin, fat, incontinent or insane."
(Oops. Sarah gulped. Oh, well: Mother probably knew all this stuff already.)
"Seriously, my brother loves women's bodies. Almost any woman's body. Now, this is not a family trait. Personally, I hate my body so much, it's started to hate me back." Sarah stuttered for a moment, stricken by her mother's frown. Ashamed. Ashamed and angry, she thought savagely. How well she knew that particular combination. "Anyway, my brother is more forgiving. Like a lawnmower is forgiving, you know? Anything in its path...
"He has the best pickup line in the universe. Seriously. He ambles up to the object of his desires—we'll call her 'the kill'—makes eye contact in a lazy, playful, balding kind of way, and says, 'Make a pass at me.' "
Sarah closed her eyes and sucked the air between her teeth. "Lethal, hunh?"
Mother laughed, but a look that Sarah knew well glinted in her eyes, as if she were studying an unsatisfactory report card. "Does he really say that?"
"Oh yes."
"Does it work?"
Sarah nodded solemnly.
Mother shivered. "I feel like Frankenstein."
"That explains why I so often feel like Igor." Sarah resumed her stage stance. "Seriously, though, my brother is an angel himself— No, really. He says it's not like what people think at all. No mind-reading or anything."
Sarah paused. "This I am prepared to believe. All night long he's dreaming about roulette: 'Thirty-one black! Thirty-one black!' he dreams.
"The next day he drags me off to the casino. 'Sis,' he says, 'I got a sure thing on thirty-one black. I had this dream where I felt this intense, tingling, numb sort of feeling, and the ball kept rolling onto thirty-one black. It's a dead cinch.'
"'Oh yeah?' I say. 'What's that got to do with me?' He wets his lips. 'Uh, I dreamt you gave me a hundred bucks to make the bet,' he says.
"And what the hell, he was right: everything came out like he predicted. We went in, put down the hundred dollars, lost it, and then, while we were standing there in numbed, tingling shock watching my rent go down the tubes, Whammo! The very next spin the wheel comes up thirty-one black....
"Seriously, can you believe the money the Pentagon used to put into angel research? I mean, talk about a waste of tax dollars. Angels don't even blow up when you drop 'em out a plane—they just hit with a wet thud. I pushed my brother out of a tree once: I know."
Oops. "Just a joke," Sarah gulped.
Her mother eyed her narrowly. "Un-hunh."
Sarah swallowed. Improvising, she reminded herself, was her life. "So they spend about seven point four jillion dollars trying to use angels to predict the movements of enemy submarines and shit. What do they get?" Intoning spookily: " 'My mother's cat, screaming at the heart of midnight, and a fish jerking in its jaws.'—I mean, some things never change, right? You can just imagine this same conversation in Ancient Greece:
"(First General, Hysterically) '
Forget the wooden walls crap! An army of Spartans is gonna crawl right up my ass unless I get some straight answers now!'
"(Oracle, Blind and Gibbering) 'The chariots of Apollo burn, but are not consumed! The waves of destiny—'
"(First General) 'Ah, screw it. Stuff the old bag in the catapult and toss her over the walls. Who knows—maybe she'll explode when she hits the ground.'
"Thank you, you've been great!"
Sarah flopped down at the kitchen table.
"Four and a half minutes," Mother said, squinting through bifocals at the second hand on her watch.
Sarah groaned. "Oh God. I need another minute and a half of material. I'm going to die. Take me now, Lord."
"Ancient Athens goes down big on the club circuit, eh?"
Sarah slumped over the table, her cheek propped on one hand. "Yeah, I know. Cursed by growing up with Dad, I guess. I take it you don't think the Peloponnesian Wars will get big yuks from my drunken admirers."
Mother tilted her head to one side. "I might be inclined to wait for the mini-series."
"With Your Shields Or On Them," Sarah suggested. "Brought to you by Trojan Condoms. When you think 'forcible abduction,' think Trojan!"
"Eh? What's that?" Father called from the parlor.
"Nothing, Dad. Just taking the name of Thucydides in vain."
" 'Great is the glory of the woman who occasions the least talk among men,' " Father retorted, " 'whether of praise or of blame.' "
"When we were first married," Mother said dryly, "it was 'Silence gives the proper grace to women.' "
"Greeks: Ugh. God knows what those lovable old sodomites meant, but they sure did sound good."
Catching her mother in a snigger of complicity, Sarah thought, Well, now's as good a time as any other. A nervous shakiness rushed through her. Stage fright and lack of sleep, she told herself. Nothing she couldn't handle.
Here goes. "So. Aunt Sophie not feeling well this morning? She's usually up by now."
"I'm not sure," Mother said carefully. "I haven't seen her."
"There was some kind of a fuss yesterday, wasn't there? The screaming tipped me off; I'm subtle that way. Why the hysterics over Dante's ring?"
Mother put her coffee cup down on the kitchen table. "I believe it may have looked like a different one," she said. "One your aunt gave someone a long time ago."
"Her husband?" Sarah asked casually.
Mother frowned. "...Yes."
"What was his name?"
"Pendleton," Mother admitted. "Percy Pendleton. The Third."
"So what happened to him? Why don't you guys ever talk about him?"
For a moment Sarah feared she had gone too far, but finally Mother shook her head and said, "It was a long, long time ago, and it didn't end well. It's not something we like to think about." She paused, as if judging what to say, or how much. "He disappeared about the time Dante was born. Your father thinks he committed suicide, but it's more likely he just ran off. I trust you know your aunt well enough to imagine her feelings in either case. It must have been a shock to her, to see Dante pull something out of the river that looked so much like Pendleton's wedding ring."
"A square ring?" Sarah protested. "That isn't too much of a coincidence? Or maybe there was a square ring fad they never taught me about in school."
For once Mother seemed to lose a little of her poise. "It can't be the same ring, Sarah. That was thirty years ago."
Whoa now—no point in spooking Mom before we get to the good stuff, Sarah reminded herself. She shrugged and nodded, pretending to agree. "Did Aunt Sophie ever think about having kids?"
Mother carefully added honey to her tea. "Yes," she said at last. "Yes, they thought about it."
Did more than that, Sarah thought. But what did she expect her mother to say: Your aunt gave birth to a monster? Your aunt gave birth to a lovely boy, but he was stolen and Jet was left in his place? It was a miracle they had kept Jet at all, Sarah realized. Knowing her aunt, she was surprised Sophie hadn't strangled him, or dropped him in the river.
Sarah shuddered, shook her head, and forced herself to get back to business. So who saved him, who saved little Jet? Was it her mother, moved by some compassionate impulse for the foundling? Or was it Father, who would keep Jet in the house for the same reasons he kept a skull on his desk?
To have your baby, your precious baby lost, and get a... thing, in its place. How horrible. How horrible.
"Sweetie?" Mother said, alarmed. "You're crying."
Sarah shook her head. "My eyes are just watering," she said unconvincingly. Lack of sleep was making her spinny, damn it. She was starting to let herself think about things she didn't think about. Ever.
She felt her mother's hand close over her own. "It's okay, sweetie. You'll have yours."
"I'm twenty-eight and fat, Mom. I haven't gotten a single call on my ad in Millionaire's Weekly, and the Beijing White Brides catalogue returned my picture with a form letter."
Mercifully the phone rang, giving Sarah an excuse to get out of the conversation before she said something that would hurt both of them even more.
She jumped to get it. "...Oh, my God—really? Of course. As soon as he gets in. And he should... Okay. Yeah— Yeah. Okay... Okay, thanks for calling."
Slowly she put down the phone and looked at her mother. "That was Dante's friend Laura," she said, absently wiping her eyes with the back of one hand. "He's supposed to call the cops; someone broke into his apartment last night."
* * *
It took Dante almost half an hour to fill the grave. Jet offered to help, but Dante shook his head and did it himself, shoveling the dirt back, tamping it down, covering it with dead leaves and ferns. Ashes to ashes, dust to dirt.
Seven more days, he thought.
Six and a half.
When he was finished, he said, "So what will you do when I'm gone?"
Jet shrugged. "I don't know. We'll be okay."
"Ha! Sarah may be fine, but you? Give me a break. I could blow you out like a birthday candle." Dante stowed the shovels back in the boat, next to his rod and reel. The magic lure still dangled on the end of his line, hooked carefully to the first eyelet.
Odd. He hadn't remembered bringing that stuff.
Dante glanced over at the willow, contemplating the strips where Aunt Sophie had sliced away its bark. They gleamed like the welts of a penitent.
Jet said, "You remember... when Sarah ran away? Her sophomore year. A loathsome bastard with a headband. Lawrence."
"Father mentioned it. God, where was I? Why didn't I come pound the shit out of him and warn him away from my sister like a big brother should?"
"At the time you were pursuing a life of torrid frivolity," Jet said dryly. "You had just escaped from University."
"You sound like a disapproving butler."
"I heard—I happened to overhear her once, talking to Mother," Jet said uncomfortably.
"You are a little spy, aren't you?"
Jet shrugged. "I didn't get that much, but it was clear that—something happened, just before she ditched him. I'm not sure what. But whatever it was, it hasn't gone away, Dante. She's still hurting."
Dante nodded thoughtfully. "What ever happened to Lawrence, anyway? I don't remember him bothering her after that."
"I killed him."
Dante blinked. "You're joking, right?"
"Of course," Jet said with a small, careful smile.
* * *
Jet gestured at the boat. "After you, sir?"
"Mm—I b'lieve not, my good man." Dante lifted his fishing tackle from the boat. "Take the rowboat back and clean it up for me, there's a good fellow. I feel a sudden urge to drop a line into the river."
Jet looked at him curiously. "Got a tip about a good spot?"
Dante began ambling along the shore. "I think I'll try up here beneath the fort. I fancy there might be something skulking in the willow pool."
Slowly Jet nodded. "Earn your wings, Clarence. Earn your wings."
He could feel the white wings of magic opening around him.
But angeling was what the times seemed to demand. And besides, Dante thought mordantly, even if he went crazy, it would only be for a few more days.
His leather jacket was damp, its gorgeous stencils smeared with mud and crumbles of dead leaves. His fingers were getting stiff with the cold, and he wished he'd brought a pair of gloves.
He took his rod and reel and found himself a spot under the old willow, sitting on a great black root, thick as his waist, that boiled out of the ground at its base. The river had eaten the ground below it; sitting on the root, Dante swung his feet, watching his loafers just skim the water.
It was a dark morning. The sun toiled behind sullen masses of dark gray cloud. A thin mist still hung upon the river; here and there it thickened into cloudy ghosts that drifted sadly by him, like mourners in a funeral procession. Autumn's fire had swept down the valley, leaving the trees on the north shore bare. On the south side, shadowed from the sun, the maple trees still burned in time, each leaf a week-long twist of flame. Occasionally a crack would open in the clouds overhead, and a shaft of sunlight, glancing down, would kindle the maple leaves, or reveal a strange and sudden beauty in a length of whiskey-colored river.
It had been a long time since Dante had tasted sleep; his whole body ached for it. How voracious the stupid body is, he thought. Less than a week to live (please, please, at least six more days!), horror and wonder on every side, and all the body can think about is sleep. And breakfast. Less than five hours had passed since he had opened a slit in his own dead belly and already his mind was starting to daydream about bacon and toast and hot coffee. Coffee! Loaded with milk and sugar, warm between his fingers...
Dante brought himself back with a jerk. What a bastard underhand trick, he thought savagely, looking down at his body. I'm still as smart as I ever was. Smarter! Sharp as a tack. Well-read. Funny. Good conversation. But everything I am sits here condemned, fastened to a dying animal.