"What does that mean?"
"It gets too crowded. Too many people who die and get stuck as trees. They need to make room, so some of those wretched souls just get destroyed. For them it's as if they never existed."
She's wrong, he thought. She had to be. "How do you know this?"
She looked down. "The ravens told me. Just before you woke up."
That's why, he thought. Why it was so important that he remember the name. A parliament speaks. And now Jack had to make El speak to him, because he couldn't bear to put it together himself. So he asked her, "What does it mean? Why am I dreaming this?"
As she spoke he realized this too was what a dream hunter did. Tell people the things they don't want to hear. Elaynora said "Jack, it's your daughter. You have to get her out. Once the culling starts . . ." Her voice trailed off and she looked away.
"How?" he said. "How do I do it? Look at me." She turned her head back and he could see she was crying. Fuck that, he thought. "Did you ask them? The ravens? Did you ask the fucking parliament what I can do?"
She whispered, "It doesn't work that way. I can't ask what the dream doesn't tell me. Jack, I'm sorry."
"How much time do I have?"
"I don't know."
"Why don't you know? Couldn't they at least tell you that?"
"It's jus—just soon. Weeks. Maybe even days."
Jack pulled on his boots and stood up. He was almost out the door when he stopped and looked back. "El—" He took a breath. "Thank you."
The next day Jack Shade stole a truffle from a shop in Greenwich Village. There was no fooling around this time, no temporary Dupe to cover his embarrassment. He waited outside "Marie Chocolaterie" on West 10th Street until 9:10, when Marie (or whatever her name was) opened the door, then he stepped inside, pointed his knife at her throat, and told the terrified woman that he wanted one, and only one, dark chocolate truffle, wrapped in a gift box, don't bother with the sticker on top. When she'd given it to him he stowed his knife then walked over to Sixth Avenue, where he raised his arm for a cab, and told the Nigerian cabbie to take him to the Empire Parking Garage on 54th Street.
Jack nodded to the Latina woman sitting in the pay booth, then walked past a couple of young white guys hanging around waiting for a car to show up, or someone with a ticket. The garage looked and operated pretty much the same as at least a hundred other small operations in mid-town. In fact, another was just a block down on the other side of the street. If anyone at Empire, employees, customers, or even the owner, had any idea that this place was different, that it was, in fact, one of New York's prime non-Linear locations, they didn't show it. One of the young drivers started to say that customers couldn't go get their own cars, but Jack waved a hand as he passed, and the young man looked confused a second, then went back to talking to his friend, who didn't seem to notice anything at all.
Jack pushed open the gray "Employees Only" door to the stairway, then took the steps two at a time to the second floor. And there he was, the Doorman, in his steel chair next to the anonymous red metal door, the only New York gateway to the Forest Of Souls. Barney looked the same as always, in his blue "Empire Garage" uniform, his white hair neat and short, his face a map of delicate lines. He smiled slightly, nodded. "Hello, Jack," he said.
"Hi, Barney." Jack held out the neatly packed stolen truffle. "I brought you something." Barney glanced at the little box with a mixture of desire and regret, but he didn't move. "Come on," Jack said. "Take it. I need to go inside."
"Oh, Jack" Barney said, with a sad shake of his head. "You know I can't do that."
"Why the hell not? This is the price, right? A goddamn stolen truffle?"
"Oh sure. And believe me, there's nothing I'd like more than to take your kind gift and send you on your way."
"Then do it."
"It's not the price, it's the mission. You know that, Jack. You think I don't want you to rescue that sweet daughter of yours?"
"You know about her?"
Barney rolled his eyes. "Of course I know. I'm the Doorman."
"Then you know I've got to get her out. Now."
"What I know, Jack, is that your own damn stupidity put her there, and you can't just stroll in and take her home."
Jack couldn't decide whether to get down on his knees and beg, or slam Barney's head against the wall. Instead, he just said "Barney, there's going to be a culling. The Forest has gotten too fucking crowded or something."
"Yeah," Barney said softly, "I know."
"Goddamnit, then you know my Genie might not survive. You've got to let me inside."
Barney's voice rose as he crossed his arms. "And what do you think that will do? Even if you find her, you seriously believe the Forest will let you just take her hand and waltz out of there?"
"I have to at least try."
"No! You've got it all wrong." Barney sat up straight and pointed a finger at him. "Listen to me, John Shade. Your problem has always been that you act without knowing. That's what got you and your daughter in this mess in the first place. You have to know before you can help her."
"Then tell me."
"I'm not the one. I'm just the Doorman, for God's sake."
Jack was about to yell something when he stopped. Of course, he thought. Barney was just a Gate Keeper. If what Jack needed was knowledge, then he had to find the one person who could give it to him. The Knowledge Elemental. The Know-it-all. The Nude Owl.
Over the next couple of days, with that constant sense that any moment might be Genie's last, Jack and Carolien tried to find that most elusive of Elementals. While Carolien searched the Travelers' Archives, including the recently digitalized seventh century Mongolian accounts, sometimes called the Golden Age of Travelers (a Mongolian was the first to come up with fake money to bribe the Border Guards), Jack went through all his contacts, in this world and any others. Nothing. No one had seen the Owl or knew anyone who had. He tried Mr. Kim but the shop was closed, with a cartoon on the door of a smiling rat and the words, "Gong Hay Fat Choy! Happy Rat Year!"
He went to Suleiman International and offered to indenture himself for seven years in exchange for one wish from Archie. He didn't get past the receptionist. He swallowed some snake blood to understand the birds, but none of them could tell him anything. He even tried to see the Old Man of the Woods, but all he managed was to locate Frank Pope, who told him, "I don't know where that fucker is, and I don't care."
Finally, Jack did the thing he should have tried first. He called Margaret. And now he knew where to find the Owl, at least in a couple of days, and he had to hope that wouldn't be too late. And hope indeed that if someone did indeed plan to murder the Know-it-all Jack could somehow stop them.
But Jack didn't even know that someone could kill a Prime Elemental. Some of the modern ones, like the Selfie Elemental, you could more or less take apart (except the Deconstruction Elemental, which the French Traveler/philosopher Michel Foucault was said to have brought into—or out of—existence). But Knowledge was basic. Carolien told Jack of a Traveler monk who tried to imprison (not kill, just imprison) the Darkness Elemental, and all he did was bring the Darkness's sister, Light, who surrounded the monk with so much brilliance he simply disappeared. "Yeah," Jack said, "it's like the old saying, the Big Kids stick together." Maybe the Ignorance Elemental could protect his little sister.
Late morning on February 9th, Jack gave up looking for answers, though Carolien said she would keep searching and call him if she found anything new. Jack armed himself as best he could without knowing the threat, then got his black Altima for the drive up to Poughkeepsie. He would get there early but he wanted to avoid the rush hour traffic out of the city. He drove up the West Side Highway, and as it turned into the Henry Hudson Parkway he raised a hand towards Inwood Park, and the grave of Peter Midnight.
The night before, Jack had dreamed of his daughter. He'd
been sleeping fitfully ever since Elaynora had told him about the Culling, scared that any dream might reveal he was too late. But in this dream Elaynora was standing in a quiet grove of trees. She spoke to him, without sound, but for once he could read her lips clearly. "I love you, Daddy." He'd woken up with a gasp of relief. She was still alive. But for how long? He told himself that the messages had come to him—the dreams, El's hunting, the Queen calling him—because he had the chance to save her. The first step, however, was to save the Nude Owl.
The Hudson Walkway lay on top of an old unused railroad bridge that ran from Poughkeepsie to the small town of Highland on the west side of the river. The bridge had stood unused for decades until the State had covered the rails and wooden slats with a wide concrete surface and put up brightly painted railings with occasional signs and photos that detailed the river's history. Or at least the history that Non-Travelers could understand.
Jack and Elaynora had gone there once, as tourists, back when they were lovers. El's niece, via her half-sister Sarah, was being held in a safe house in the town of Red Hook, about twenty miles north of Poughkeepsie. El never actually visited her niece—she really had nothing to do with Sarah, or what Carolien once called "the world's most dysfunctional family." But El's mother the Queen of Eyes, often went to Red Hook to visit her grand-daughter, and sometimes she and El would meet afterwards. Jack was never present at those meetings, but he knew how hard they were on Elaynora, so he'd done his best to help her.
On the day they'd visited the Walkway, Jack had dropped her off near the Red Hook house, then came back for her an hour later. Her face was wet and she was shaking. Jack knew better than to ask about it, so instead he took her to lunch at the Silk City Diner, then drove down to Poughkeepsie, and the walk across the Hudson. They'd had fun that day—El had even played with someone's Labradoodle puppy—but it was a sunny afternoon in May, and now, well now it was a cold night in February, and Jack had gone there to save the life of an Elemental in the desperate hope that she could tell him how to break into the Forest of Souls and bring out his daughter.
The Walkway was closed in the evening, but for Jack that just meant less interference. At 7:30 he left the Altima in the empty lot on Parker Avenue, then walked up the path to the Walkway entrance. There was a locked fence that was easy enough to climb over, and a pair of surveillance cameras Jack could glam so they would never register him. He remembered how surprised he'd been when Anatolie had told him you could cast a glamour over electronic devices. Until then he'd assumed a glamour was a kind of instant hypnosis, a mental parlor trick. But if you could glam a machine . . . He smiled slightly as he remembered how unnerved he'd been when his teacher had said, in that mild voice he had not yet learned to fear, "The real question, Jack, is whether a machine can cast a glamour over you."
A nearly full Moon shone down on the concrete walkway, and beyond it, the large slabs of ice floating in the Hudson. January had been unusually warm, but as soon as February hit, the temperature had dropped to only a degree or two above freezing at mid-day, and down near zero at night. There was no wind, at least. Jack had on a long gray coat over his Travel tunic, with all its pockets, a black woolen hat, and thin woolen gloves with silk thermal liners.
The gloves allowed easy access to his knife, but also his bone flute, a roll of spell tape, his black feather from Midnight's grave, and various other tricks. Would it be enough? Would he be enough? If someone had the power to kill a Prime Elemental, could Jack Shade stop it? He had to, he told himself, and then immediately wondered if he should have borrowed Benny Pope's Gun of the Morning.
Jack had stationed himself about a third of the way from the Poughkeepsie entrance, but the Walkway was over a mile long, and there was no way he could see the whole length. So earlier that day, as soon as he'd arrived in Poughkeepsie, he'd set up surveillance stones every thirty-three steps. The small quartz pebbles would pick up any movement or sounds and relay them back to a larger stone in Jack' s coat pocket.
At 7:49 the quartz warned Jack of someone coming, and an instant later a police car drove up the Walkway from the Highland side. Cop=gun, Jack thought. Would a cop somehow kill the Nude Owl? She looked like a vagrant, and could say things that sounded pretty crazy. Or maybe she'd tell the cop some secret about himself that he couldn't bear to hear. Then, as the car pulled up alongside Jack he thought how maybe it was his murder Margarita Mariq had warned about. With all the dangers Travelers faced, racist cops seemed pretty low down the list. But still.
The car bore the words New York Park and Bridge Authority. Good, Jack thought. Probably less gun happy than a trooper or a local badge. The driver rolled down his window rather than get out, another good sign. "Sir," he said, "the Walkway is closed."
"Yes, of course," Jack said, and let his voice slide into Basic Persuasion. "I'm actually here as part of a meteorological study. We're stationing people on all the bridges along the Hudson for first-hand observations."
The Park Ranger looked doubtful. "I don't think I've heard of that," he said.
"No, you wouldn't. It's just a pilot study."
"Do you have any ID?"
"Yes, of course. It's in my inside coat pocket." Jack moved his hand slowly and produced a fake ID he'd prepared, and charged with belief, before he left the city.
"Well, okay," the ranger said, and handed Jack his paper. "Good luck, Dr. Simpson." Jack never used his real name for fake ID. You could inadvertently trap yourself in a made-up world. So tonight he was "Lucas Simpson, Ph.D." The ranger smiled at him. "I don't envy you standing out here in this cold."
Jack laughed. "Well, we'll see how long I last. Right now I envy you being able to go somewhere for a hot cup of coffee."
The ranger blinked a couple of times, then he grinned. "You know," he said, "that sounds like a great idea." He rolled up his window and drove off. "Dr. Simpson" let out a breath and checked his watch. 7:56.
Two minutes later the quartz pinged him again. Very slight this time. A pair of crows landed on the concrete surface about ten feet in front of him. A little odd, Jack thought, since there were no scraps of food that he could see. But he was certainly no expert on crows. A few seconds later another five crows showed up, and when he looked at the sky he saw a swarm of them, a black cloud about to descend on the Walkway. Jack braced himself for an attack. But they ignored him and instead formed a thick column, about three feet wide and six feet high. Jack tried to look around them, frightened he'd somehow miss the Nude Owl.
No, he thought suddenly. Not a "cloud," or a "swarm." Murder. The collective noun for an assembly of crows was "murder." That's what the Queen had meant. To find the Know-It-All look for the murder of crows.
"Owl?" he called out. "I'm here. Show yourself."
The crows parted, and there she stood, in all her homeless, street crazy splendor. She wore a long and filthy overcoat over a sweatsuit and Green rubber boots that appeared stuffed with several layers of socks. Her matted hair was pushed under one of those Russian Army hats with fur earflaps. Thick mittens covered her hands.
The soft androgynous voice said "Hello, Jack. I'm told you wanted to see me."
Jack wanted to ask who told things to a Knowledge Elemental but his curiosity would have to wait. "There's going to be a culling in the Forest of Souls."
"Yes, I know."
"Then I'm sure you also know I've got to get inside and bring out my daughter. Barney—the Doorman—"
"I know who Barney is."
Jesus, Jack thought, how do you talk to a fucking Know-It-All? He said "Yeah, well, I gave him the damn truffle, or tried to. He wouldn't take it. Said he can't let me in."
Underneath the street grime, the Owl's mouth twisted in a quick smile. "Barney has always been a man of integrity."
Barney's not a man, Jack wanted to say, but instead just said, "I need to know how to get inside. I tried the Archives, I tried Mr. Kim, no one can tell
me anything. Please."
Her voice even softer than usual, the Owl said "You're wrong, Jack."
"What?"
"You don't need to go inside the Forest. You just need to bring her out."
"What? You mean there's a way to do it from here?"
"Oh, Jack, if everyone tells you cannot do something, then surely you need to find someone who can."
"Who? Tell me. Please, Owl, there's no time."
"Try to think, Jack. If your child is separated from you by a boundary that cannot be crossed, then what do you need?"
"Someone who can cross any boundary."
"No! Someone for whom a boundary is not a wall but a crack. Every barrier a door." Behind the Know-it-all the crows began to move. At first they just swirled in the air, but then they started to close towards the Owl.
Jack said "No, no, you can't leave. Send them away!" But the crows were starting to obscure her. Jack charged at them, waving his arms. They squawked and flew at his face, but he ignored them. He tried to reach inside the murder, grab the Owl and pull her out, but his hands just slid free of the layers of clothing. "Tell me who it is!" he cried. "Tell me!"
"Follow the waters, Jack."
"What waters?"
"Follow the waters."
"That's not enough. I need to know—" But it was too late. The crows swirled around her, and when they lifted into the sky there was no one there.
Jack stared down at the slabs of ice in the Hudson. " Follow the waters," he whispered.
2.
Jack called Carolien as he was leaving the walkway. He told her about the crows, the Owl, the idea of someone for whom a boundary is a crack, and "Follow the waters."
"It's a fucking riddle," he said. "all that trouble, just for a riddle."
"No!" Carolien said, in her firm Dutch voice. "A direction. The Know-It-All has given you a command. To find this person you are to follow the waters. You are at a river, yes?"
"Yes."
The Fissure King Page 31