“You’re right, dear one,” Rikki-Tikki said, and ruffled Syrina’s hair. “We won’t speak of such things. Not when there is such an entertaining movie on television.”
In truth the movie was only subpar, and generally Syrina would pounce upon that sentence with a: “What, are you kidding? What horrid taste you have! Sometimes I wonder if we really have anything in common. The script is amateurish and the acting makes my brain want to burst out of my eyeballs!” But right now she was simply grateful for the distraction, as B-rated as it may be.
“Yes, you are absolutely right. Let us watch this movie about . . . radioactive giant grasshoppers. There really is nothing more in the world that I would rather do at the moment.”
So he tightened his arm around her, and she rested her head upon his shoulder, and they both thought their separate thoughts.
Bryony will live forever, I know it, Syrina thought with a sternness that was endearing and also a bit frightening. She will, she will. There simply can be no other way. Then she vaguely wondered aloud if she should wear her purple high heels with her dress tomorrow or if she should just stick with fire engine red.
Rikki-Tikki’s thoughts were like the sea, wide and deep and constantly shifting. He knew one day death would come for their dear friend, and there was no denying it. It did not do anybody any good. He also knew he wasn’t ready for that time to be quite so soon, and he had a trick or two up his sleeve that could help stop it, at least for now.
“The purple,” Syrina decided, and snuggled closer. Rikki-Tikki nodded his head, and Syrina took that as a positive sign toward her footwear choice. She had told him about all about dresses and shoes before. Use your hips to distribute the weight while walking, for example. Five-inch heels are sexy, but six-inches have just thrown you straight to trashy. Perhaps if Rikki-Tikki had been wholeheartedly engrossed in the conversation, he would have said yes, wear the purple, they all lovely and will convey everything you silently want to say about yourself. But what Rikki-Tikki was really nodding about was his decision: although it wasn’t in his power to save Bryony, he was determined to try.
“It’s getting late. Bryony should really be home by now,” Syrina said. She kissed Rikki-Tikki and took their empty ice cream bowls to the kitchen. She stood at the sink and thought yes, Rikki-Tikki was right about Bryony’s malevolent fate, but she couldn’t let her mind explore the idea of a world without Bryony, because it would be a dim and cheerless world, an exceptionally ugly world, and nobody should be forced to live in such a lackluster place. Syrina was wiping a tear from her eye with the back of a soapy hand when she heard a strange sound from behind her. It was a furtive sound, a menacingly sneaky and surreptitious sound, a terrifyingly recognizable sound that announced, “Hello, I am everything you have ever feared and I have arrived.”
It was the sound of a knife being quietly unsheathed.
CHAPTER SEVENTEEN
A Delicate Guillotine
Bryony sobbed all of the way to the hospital, the note crumpled in her hand. Not Syrina. Not her dear, brave and true friend. It would be too cruel. It would be too much.
She ran through the hospital doors and up to the front desk.
“I am looking for my friend Syrina. Rikki-Tikki said she was here, and I’m so afraid! Is she alive? Is she hurt? Oh, won’t you help me find her?”
The receptionist stared at this otherworldly woman whose soul was mixing with tears and spilling out of her ephemeral eyes. She wanted to grab the girl’s mitten-covered hands and tell her stories about faeries and trolls and great green monsters born from gardens. She wanted to ask her if she thought it would hurt terribly when death came to take her, as it most certainly would. Why, perhaps even this very minute! Time is of the essence! The receptionist opened her mouth to speak.
“Bryony!”
Bryony spun around at the sound of Rikki-Tikki’s voice and grabbed onto his sleeve.
“Is she dead? Did fate steal Syrina away? It was supposed to be me. It was supposed to be me!”
Rikki-Tikki smiled, and the tumultuous storm inside of Bryony’s heart gave way to the clearing sky.
“She’s all right. We’ve been in talking to a detective. Let’s go see her, my girl.”
He put his hand on the top of Bryony’s head and steered her down the hall. Bryony chattered nervously the whole time, speaking with her hands and her voice and, most especially, her heart.
“Oh, you don’t know how frightened I was. I saw your note saying that Syrina was in the hospital, and when I stepped into the kitchen and saw the blood on the walls . . . ” Here her voice gave out, and Rikki-Tikki gave her hair a soft pat before leaning against an open door.
“She’s here, Bryony. See?”
Bryony peeked inside the room. Syrina looked enraged and exhausted and very much alive.
Bryony threw her arms around her friend.
Syrina hugged her back. “You’re okay! Thank goodness! I was so worried when you didn’t come home on time, but now I’m so glad.”
Bryony didn’t realize she was crying again until Rikki-Tikki handed her a tissue. “I thought I had lost you. There was so much blood in the kitchen. Where did he hurt you?”
Syrina’s eyes flashed. “Here. And here,” she said, pointing out two small wounds in her hairline. “And he broke two of my nails. Not to mention here,” she said, and revealed three long scratches on her wrist. “This is where he clawed me when he was trying to get away.”
“When he was trying to . . . I don’t understand. The blood!”
“It was the other guy’s,” Rikki-Tikki said. “I heard Syrina scream and I can’t tell you how that felt, Bryony. Like I was sitting outside watching the moon and it just exploded in front of me. By the time I got there, she already had him backed into the corner.”
“I threw some bowls at him,” Syrina said. “I tried to find our kitchen knives but they must have been in the dishwasher, so I beat on him with a saucepan instead.”
“You beat him pretty ruthlessly,” Rikki-Tikki said. “I had to jump in to protect him. He seemed relieved to see me.”
Bryony blinked at Syrina.
“But why?” she asked. “Why would you do something so dangerous? What if he had hurt you? Surely you understand the risk of just being my friend.” Bryony stood tall, her fury hissed and mewed and wrapped itself brilliantly around her. “This is my burden to bear, not yours. I should never have asked this of you. I will go home and pack my things.” She took Syrina’s perfect dusky hands (save for the two broken and ragged fingernails) in her own. “I love you, and you are utterly exquisite and now you have been marred because of me. I have stayed too long.”
Bryony kissed Syrina’s cheek and turned to the door. It was blocked by Rikki-Tikki.
“Excuse me,” she said to Rikki-Tikki. He just shook his head and crossed his arms over his chest.
“What a silly girl,” Syrina said. She hopped off the table and stood beside Rikki-Tikki. She looked angry, amused, frustrated and frighteningly fierce. She was a radiant warrior, a delicate guillotine. Bryony very nearly wanted to step away from her, but then she remembered it was Syrina, and she felt brave again.
“I would die if you were hurt,” she told Syrina. “I wouldn’t want to live any longer.”
“Bryony, don’t you see the implication of what happened here tonight?”
Bryony didn’t see. She saw that Syrina had walloped the daylights out of an unfortunate criminal who chose the wrong house to break into. She knew deep within herself that he had been wandering down a darkened street in the evening, and had said, “Gee, which home should I plunder this evening? I shall most certainly cause some wild mayhem.” and she knew her apartment shone with a luminosity that made his heart pop with the brilliance of it, and he thought, “There, that’s the place! Oh, the wonders I shall behold and the magnificent havoc I shall wreak.” Only he didn’t really partake in any scintillating misbehavior at all because Syrina swooped upon him with her fiery Saucepan of Ve
ngeance, and Bryony felt quite sorry for our poor would-be murderer for a moment.
Syrina sighed. “The implication is this: that man came into our home in order to hurt you, but he failed.”
“Because I wasn’t home,” Bryony said, and the tears almost started again. “I wasn’t home and so you had to defend yourself against him.”
Rikki-Tikki laughed. “She wasn’t defending herself, Bryony. She was defending you.”
“What?”
Syrina nodded eagerly. “Don’t you see? He came in to hurt you, and neither Rikki-Tikki nor I were going to allow it. That man slithered into our home with a weapon and I grew so angry. How dare he come after you. How dare he enter our home and try to draw the breath from your lips. Fate took a swing at you and what happened? We stood and we fought and we won. He’ll go straight from the hospital to a jail cell, and we will never deal with him again. It is a wonderful thing.” Why, Syrina looked quite drunk on her victory, and Rikki-Tikki smiled so hard that his eyes disappeared, and Bryony’s heart began to lighten and turn its face to the sun and scream, “Yes! Yes, I have survived!”
“We won’t leave you,” Rikki-Tikki said simply, and for a brief second fate choked and quaked and drew back from the power of these two fierce protectors, who stood together in a united front between it and the Star Girl. How was it to get to her? It was much too difficult. After all of its work, plans, and delightful scheming. Everything was nearly lost.
And then fate shook its head and narrowed its eyes, growling deep in its throat as it remembered how crafty and venomous it could be. And when that venom is stoked by wrathful humiliation, well. Well. Careful, Star Girl. Your time has nearly come.
CHAPTER EIGHTEEN
He Kills Again
Fate grumbled and schemed and plotted. Sending an enthusiastic but second rate robber to do a professional killer’s job certainly didn’t seem to work. Now the gloves were off. It was time to call in the big guns.
It is time to check in on our murderer.
What the murderer really wanted, of course, was Bryony. He did not know her name. He did not know anything about her. She could be a young doll-maker named Cassandra or she could be young man-turned-woman who was originally named Maurice, although he did not quite think so, and he had a fairly decent eye for that sort of thing.
But he also wanted to save her, as one saves dessert for a particularly fine reward for a job well done, a job like passing a grueling test at school or surviving this life, and thus he put Bryony away for later.
That did absolutely nothing to dispel the fact he wanted to kill now, and to make it good and satiating. One does not necessarily have to have crème brulee to satiate oneself. Certainly when there is no crème brulee to be had, one can do quite well with marshmallow rice squares made out of the cheap generic store brand cereal. There is no shame in this.
This particular victim was a girl that he saw shopping at a charmingly modest used bookstore that also doubled as a bakery, and she had exquisite calves. They reminded our killer of his days in junior high, where the girls had trim little calves that lengthened each time they had a growth spurt, and he would stretch his gangly legs out under their chairs so he could be as close to them as possible.
I shall call this girl Kathleen, he thought to himself (for Kathleen was the name of a girl that he had a shy fondness for when he was about fourteen). He followed discreetly as she hopped in her car and pulled off in the park to enjoy her scone and book. He hoped that this would be her destination, because he had it on good authority (his) that the women who exited this particular bakery/bookstore tended to be the type who headed outdoors to enjoy their lives, and they did things like knitting in the bright morning sunshine, or running around, laughing, with a red kite, and practicing tai-chi out in one of the many parks. This made him realize two things: 1) Bakery/Bookstores are good for the soul, and 2) they were also a fine place to prey.
“Excuse me,” he said, stopping beside the woman as she read her book. She looked up, wiping bits of scone off from her lips.
“Yes?” she asked him with a barely detectable hint of nervousness.
“I’m sorry to bother you,” he said, “but I happened to notice that you are reading the same book I am hoping to buy for my wife’s birthday. Is it something that you would recommend?” A man walked by lazily, and the murderer’s eyes followed him with studied nonchalance.
The woman, his “Kathleen,” looked faintly surprised. “You want to buy your wife a copy of Why It Is Prudent To Kill the Man That You Marry?”
The killer’s eyebrows raised a fraction before he could control them. “Why, uh . . . yes. Yes, I do. That is precisely the book that I wish to purchase. For my wife.”
“Kathleen” shrugged, and the killer sighed in relief. The woman burst into a long and tedious book report using words like “feminist ideals” and “male oppressive dogs” and by the time they were completely alone and it was time for her to die, the murderer was very, very ready to kill her.
CHAPTER NINETEEN
A Song
Eddie sat with his back against the cloying floral wallpaper in his apartment. He held Jasmine in his hands, and ran his fingers over her strings as he looked through the window. The moon was extravagant tonight. The stars were full of brilliant luster.
His fingers never ceased their movement and with his eyes full of the stars he teased out a song. It was something quite unlike anything else he had written before. It was about death and life and a plant that can heal or kill, respectively. It was a song about making the choice to love when you knew that in the end
. . . you would only have . . .
. . . empty hands.
CHAPTER TWENTY
Be Aware
Syrina wasn’t home when Rikki-Tikki came by, but that was all right. He mostly came to speak to Bryony.
“’Sup, girl,” he said, and hugged her. She had spent the morning paying bills and making Very Important Phone Calls and decided to reward herself for the hard work. She was frosting cupcakes and was careful not to get the frosted knife in Rikki Tikki’s dark hair when she hugged him back.
“Hello, how are things? Would you like a cupcake?”
He would like one, very much, and there was an impromptu cupcake party full of sprinkles and raspberry lemonade and good times and laughter. It was an enjoyable occasion, and funny stories were told, and each had the choice opportunity to see each other as the enchanting and mischievous beings that they had been as small children. But then it was time to get serious.
“They found another body, Bryony. A young woman with all of her limbs broken, stashed behind some trees in the park. She had some sort of book shoved down her throat, is what I’m hearing.”
“Oh, how terrible.”
“It’s coming up on your turn, you know.”
Well. He knew it, and she knew he knew it, but somehow the words still sounded unpleasant hanging in the air like that.
“Is it time for me to leave, Rikki?” she said. He was a big man, and a kind man, but most important of all, he was a wise man that listened to his gut and the wind. He watched things closely while the rest of them ran around in carefree bliss. Bryony trusted he would pick up on the subtle tell-tale signs the rest of them would miss.
He shook his head.
“Nah, it ain’t time. Not to leave permanently, not yet, anyhow, but you need to be aware.” He leaned forward. “I think it is time that you take Eddie home and pay a visit to your daddy. He needs to meet the man you’re in love with, and the man that loves you.”
Bryony smiled. “I don’t know if Eddie knows he loves me yet. We haven’t even gone out.”
Rikki-Tikki rolled his eyes. “Girl, he knows. Doesn’t sit well with him, but he knows.” He looked at her meaningfully. “It’s time for you to get out of here. Not for long, because I know fate can find you there, too, and quite possibly it is even more dangerous there. But, you’ll have Eddie, and you’ll have your daddy, and with the three of yo
u standing arm in arm, I think you would have a mighty fine chance of surviving. Might even give fate a good ole kick in the eye, and I can’t think of nothing better. But here? It’s getting too hot around here right now. If you slow down for a second, I think you’ll realize it.”
Bryony patted his knee. “Thank you. You are a dear friend to me.”
Rikki-Tikki grinned, and Bryony liked that. His teeth were white and happy and when he smiled, somehow the world seemed to be a better place.
“There’s one more thing, kid,” he said.
“What’s that?”
“I think it’s time that the ole Rickster teaches you how to box.”
CHAPTER TWENTY ONE
A Circle of Stars
Bryony didn’t know why, but she was nervous the next time she saw Eddie. Usually she said what needed to be said without any embarrassment whatsoever, because honestly, who had the time to dance around what was really important? If there was something to be said, it should be said. There might not be a tomorrow, or even a later tonight. But something in her stomach flipped around, and when she saw Eddie at the market the next morning, she found herself suddenly not knowing what to say.
“I called the radio station,” he said to her, and grinned. “I’m going down on Tuesday to introduce myself and play a couple of songs. Which ones do you think I should choose?”
She stared at him and her mouth worked, but nothing seemed to come out. Eddie’s smile faded and he looked at her with some concern.
“Bryony? Are you all right?”
Suddenly she wasn’t. She was tired, and scared, and the feeling of somebody’s eyes on the back of her neck became more intense lately. Her daily boxing lessons with Rikki-Tikki made her feel strong and safer for the most part, but as she clenched her fists (careful to keep her thumb on the outside as he had demonstrated) it could not be denied that she was learning to defend herself from someone. Even if it was the palms of Rikki-Tikki’s hands she was hitting, or an imagined foe she was kicking, there was a very real someone out there causing all of this commotion. If she was anywhere else, she would have run by now, picked up and moved to another destination, somewhere creative and new, where death wouldn’t be able to find her. She would have blended in, she told herself, keeping her head low while people around her fell to the earth as their hearts stopped. Only she couldn’t blend, had never been able to. Exquisite disaster perfumed her breath, and every eye always roved until they found her, and there it stuck.
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