Veles sets a menu in my hands.
“New gods not so bad,” he remarks, still beaming. “Like children, sometimes. Or angry puppies. Both things that Veles has experience with.”
“I thought they would have tried to, you know, kill you or—”
“Here is thing that Veles learned. Thousand of years ago, man was too busy staying alive to understand social topics like wage parity, inequality, xenophobia. Now, there is language for it. There is knowledge. And there are gods to watch over the little ones, gods with voices that cannot be silenced any longer.”
“So they took you in?” I pick out a simple course: egg appam and duck curry, sweet tea to counter any excessive spice.
“Something like that.” His smile, bright, brilliant with a yearning hope, is something I know I’ll always carry with me to dark places.
“I—what about everyone else? Hildra—”
“Modelling now.”
“—and—and the feldgeist?” My voice staggers to a pause as a memory surfaces: the explosion in the soup kitchen. The rusalka and the fox were in there with me.
“Safe,” Veles says, to my surprise. “She and Adriana are two sides of coin, da? They will always find each other, always save each other. Elsa brought her home. They live on farm now outside of London.”
“And the fox?”
The god-turned-waiter spreads his palms. “Who knows? Tricksters don’t die. They only get bored. Any more questions? Or should Veles go get Rupert food?”
“I—” A drizzle springs into life outside. “No. I’m good.”
Veles walks away to fulfill my order, leaves me to contemplate the rain as it tinsels London in silver.
ALSO AN ENDING
THE LAST TIME I see them is in the garden of a elegant café, its wall bedecked with illustrations of Parisian leisure. Flowers tangle in black-steel trellises, starbursts of vivid purple. People ramble over coffee and buttery croissants, curled on plain wooden benches. A golden retriever, snuggled under a table, watches as two tow-headed children race between tables.
I almost miss them in the halcyon bustle, too preoccupied with the dissection of a duck confit. But then the sunlight catches on Persephone’s hair just so and I raise my gaze to lose myself in her smile. She’s still pale, still possessed by that otherworldly pallor, still unhealthily gaunt, but her eyes are alive, and she’s laughing at something someone just said and the sight of it eases the weight of a hurt I didn’t even know I had.
Her companion tilts a glance over her shoulder, lips crooking a wry little smile: Demeter. She daubs clotted cream from her mouth and winks an eye before rising to her feet, sundress falling in ripples of paisley. Persephone remains seated, attention transfixed by the butterfly that had deigned to perch on a raised hand.
A breeze carries an unseasonal warmth across the space, a promise of summer gone but not forgotten. Demeter tucks a curl behind an ear as she draws close. I’m mesmerized by the simple gesture, by the power that washes from her: golden wheat, a lungful of love and the headiness of a good harvest. She sits and I can hardly breathe through the impulse to offer worship. For once, it isn’t a desire coerced, but something purer.
I’m marvelling over the implications when Demeter speaks, voice soft. “So.”
“So.”
“How are you doing?”
“Not bad, all things taken into consideration.” The golden retriever is finally coaxed into entertaining the kids. It gambols around them in circles, accelerating with every orbit. “How are the two of you doing?”
“We’re good. Persephone is talking. Eating. She’s damaged—” Demeter’s lips vanish into a line. The butterfly spreads its wings: iridescent blues and cyans, like stained-glass windows pieced from sapphires. “But it will be alright. We have eternity.”
I pop a slice of fried potato into my mouth. The flavor is perfect: salty, steeped in garlic, soaked in the juices from the duck. “What are you going to do now with all that cosmic power?”
She makes a moue. “That might be slightly too generous a description for what I’ve inherited. But to answer the question: I don’t know. We’ll see. Perhaps, we will begin by seeing how we can make up for what we’ve broken. I have a lot to make up for.”
I nod. “Seems like a good place to start.”
Demeter leans over and touches her lips to my forehead. “Be well, Rupert. I hope you find the peace you need.”
And with that, she sashays out of my life.
SIMILARLY,
ANOTHER ENDING
“WHO ARE THESE women?”
I shrug and jab a finger at random geriatrics, elbows propped on the lip of the counter, legs stretched long. It had been an ordeal, corralling all the old ladies. “That’s Nan. That’s Grandma. That’s Popo, Ah Ma, Grandmother, Granny. I think that’s—”
“Those aren’t names!”
“Those are absolutely things hypothetical grandchildren would call them.”
The orderly gesticulates at my ensemble of pensioners, reduced to sputtering. Around us, a crowd kindles. I grin at him. Poor kid. He looks about nineteen, or a baby-faced twenty-two, gangly and unused to the length of his limbs. No one that should have to navigate such a bizarre encounter. But I have a flight to catch.
“Sir. Sir.” He clears his throat. “I understand your desire to be a good Samaritan. But you can’t just check in twelve old women who you clearly are not related to.”
“Can’t I? You could just pretend they were anonymously donated. Call the newspapers or something. Everyone loves a weird story.”
“Sir, please.”
I push myself away from the counter and wedge a hand in a pocket. The other, I flutter above my head in a grandiose gesture of farewell. “Enjoy the publicity, kid. And be careful of the Russian one. She’s scary.”
AN EPILOGUE
THE MAN STUMBLING through the labyrinth of plastic tables looks like he hasn’t bathed in weeks. His trenchcoat is sodden, armpits discolored by black stains. Not that anyone could blame him. That attire is hardly appropriate for tropical weather. His backpack, large enough to store a whole life, is a menace. Every time he turns, he crashes into another plate, spills another mug of ice-cold Milo. Fried noodles erupt through the air, even as shouting chases him onward.
He gets closer. There is a frightening purpose communicated in his motions, and a clarity in his gaze that unnerves me, despite its drug-soaked intensity. We make eye contact. Instantly, he barrels in my direction, shouldering aside half-hearted endeavors to impede his approach.
I’m on my feet before he hits my table.
“You’re Rupert.” That glow in his eyes; it isn’t meth or madness. If anything, it’s mythological, divine power throbbing through the conduit of his mind. “Right?”
“Depends on who is asking.”
My fingers clench around the hilt of a switchblade. It’s been a good few weeks. The ghouls, abruptly embroiled in a sticky legal case that they had definitely not been expecting to face, are now the subject of criminal investigations. An anonymous source, rumor insists, apparently revealed critical information pertinent to their involvement in certain political debacles. None of this, of course, affected me—except that they’re now too busy to interrogate me about my activities in London.
To make matters sweeter, Fariz, somehow removed from the commotion, actually took the effort to secure me accommodations and plane tickets back home. I wouldn’t call the hostel I’m holed up in ‘luxurious.’ ‘Adequate’ at best, and even that’s a stretch. But there is air-conditioning and an absence of cockroaches, and I do have a room for the foreseeable future. Plus, there’s a Mamak right outside.
Everything has been great, honestly. Except for one thing.
I haven’t seen Ao Qin yet.
But I suspect that’s about to change.
High above, lightning scrawls an ominous agreement between the clouds. I shade my eyes and look for scales in the sky. All said and done, I suppose I just wouldn’t feel right
without at least one life-threatening complication hovering in the firmament.
“My name is Fitz. I think you have to help me save the world.”
The storm furls itself into coils, clouds thunder-lit from within. Customers rouse themselves from their plastic chairs and plunge towards shelter, unwilling to endure the encroaching deluge. I sigh and straighten, rolling the kinks out of my neck, even as I call up a well of power from the base of my belly.
“Only if you can help me kill a dragon first.”
ABOUT THE AUTHOR
Cassandra Khaw writes a lot. Sometimes, she writes press releases and excited emails for Singaporean micropublisher Ysbryd Games. Sometimes, she writes for technology and video games outlets like Eurogamer, Ars Technica, The Verge, and Engadget. Mostly, though, she writes about the intersection between nightmares and truth, drawing inspiration from Southeast Asian mythology and stories from people she has met. She occasionally spends time in a Muay Thai gym punching people and pads.
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