by Martin Kee
“My mom died when I was born, but my dad got taken to the sin engines,” she said casually. “They pay him a little every time he goes.”
“What does he sell there?”
She gave him another You aren’t from around here look and said, “He sold his soul. Everyone does it in Talon. You could too.”
“His soul, really?” asked John, hardly taking the girl seriously now. “I didn’t think you could even put a price on that. What will he do when it’s gone?”
“It’s never gone-gone, silly,” she said. “It grows back a little, but you can keep going back and selling a little at a time. That’s what the Confessional is for.”
“Did he tell you that?” asked John, feeling a nagging concern prickle up his spine.
“No,” she said. “He doesn’t tell me much of anything right now.”
She thrust out a rag-covered hand and John recoiled in spite of himself at the missing finger. At the center of her palm she held a ring, large enough that John didn’t think it would even fit his thumb.
“Do you want to buy a ring or not?” she said, thrusting her misshapen hand out at them, eggshell eye staring at nothing.
“That’s a big ring,” said John.
“You should see the hand I got it off of,” she said, giggling. Something about that giggle made the mist seem colder.
“If we buy it will you leave us alone?” James asked.
“You bet,” she said, still giggling. “Are you from Lassimir?”
“No,” said James. “Bollingbrook.”
He plopped a coin into her hand and she gawked at it. He took the ring; it was huge and plate-like. A stunted spike jutted out from the center of a miniature shield. John wondered to himself how big a man would have to be to wear a ring that size.
“Why did you ask if we were from Lassimir?” said John.
“Because everyone new is from there lately,” she said. “That ring is from Lassimir. Axel says that all the scum comes from Lassimir. That’s why the river is called the Lassimir now instead of the Rhine River. Because of all the scum that drifts here.”
Charming, thought John.
“Who’s Axel?” John asked, suddenly wishing they had just rented a hotel room for the night.
“He used to be my dad,” she said, a shadow passing over her expression momentarily. “Now he’s just Axel.”
John cleared his throat. “Does Axel still look after you?”
Gil laughed. “I look after him now. Me and Mr. Henry.”
James gave him a concerned look and John looked back at the girl. “We’re looking for someone.”
“I know lots of people,” said Gil. “I know everyone in Talon and more.”
“I doubt you know the person we’re looking for.”
Next to him, James pocketed the ring after giving it a quick consideration.
“Oh, I’ll bet you another coin I do,” she said, grinning.
“We’re looking for a laboratory,” said John.
“You mean the Tinkerer’s Guild?”
He looked at James, who shrugged. “Is that where the sin engine is?” he asked Gil.
“Yeah,” said Gil. “That’s where people go to confessional. Why? Do you wanna sell?”
“No. We’re just looking for someone.”
She giggled. “You guys are funny. I bet you’d get a good price there. Have you done anything bad lately?”
“Bad?”
“Yeah,” she said. “You know… something you feel terrible about?”
“Umm. Sure, I guess. Who hasn’t? Can you take us there?”
She giggled again, holding out her hand. James gave her another coin. “Oh, I can totally take you there,” she said and ran off.
“Hey!” yelled John, but the girl had already vanished into the mist.
James swore, but it wasn’t because of the girl. John spun around to find James frozen, a man at his back. The man stared from a curtain of long, straight, greasy hair and wore a larger version of Gil’s outfit. Judging from the resemblance, John guessed this was Axel.
He looked through John with small, dull eyes, more puppet-like than human. John felt pressure on his back and realized who Axel was looking at. Silent, greedy hands began to rifle through his pockets. Breath that smelled of rotten fish wafted past his nose, making John feel lightheaded.
“I’m a priest,” he said. “I don’t have much, but take what you need.”
James glared at John as Axel rummaged through his pockets, pulling off his satchel and emptying it on the ground. He took the rifle from James and held it awkwardly, upside down so that even folded, the barrel pointed menacingly at him. James held up his hands.
“What I’m going to do,” said the man behind John—he assumed this was Mr. Henry. “Is I’m going to take you to confessional. They’re paying a good price for faceless refugees at the engines these days.”
“We’re not ref—“ John began, but was cut off by the gun barrel drilling into his temple. The metal was much colder than he imagined it would be.
“Sorry Father,” said the man. “You might not have much on ya, but that doesn’t mean you ain’t worth money.” He whispered into John’s ear. “A priest like you, I bet you got all kind of sins to confess. Any little boys on your mind?”
“What?” John shrieked.
Mr. Henry began to back up, taking the priest with him, receding into the mist. James looked at Axel, who had begun keening the way a dog might whine at seeing its master leave. Axel looked back at James, then at the spot in the fog where Mr. Henry and the priest had been.
“You don’t even know how to use that gun do you?” James said to the man.
He stared at James, his mouth moving silently, as if trying to absorb the words. Then he said, with James’s exact inflection: “That gun do you.”
James blinked. The man blinked as well. James took two strides toward Axel and grabbed the gun from him, but Axel refused to let it go, keening with that same dog-whine as he clung to the weapon.
“Just give me my gun,” said James. “I don’t want to hurt you, but I will.”
“Hurt you but I will,” Axel mimicked. Then, as if he understood, his eyes went wide. He yanked the gun away from James, but not before the safety came loose in the struggle. The gun unfolded.
James had the sense to let go, knowing full well what would happen, but Axel wasn’t so lucky. He cried out and fell to the ground as a finger became entangled in the mechanism.
James let out a sigh. “I didn’t think you knew how to use it,” he said, reaching down to help. “Here…”
He flipped the catch and released the man who stared at him wide-eyed, his mouth slack. James studied the man, puzzled. What happened to you? he thought.
“Take me to them,” he said.
The man stood, visibly relieved. He turned and began walking in the same direction the priest and Mr. Henry had gone. James followed.
*
Gil watched Mr. Henry’s plan fall apart from behind a burlap sack that smelled of rotting cabbage. She watched Axel’s hand become mashed in the machinery of the bearded man’s gun. She managed to stifle a scream as she watched, reminded of her own hand, of the frightened man who used to be her father.
But he isn’t your father anymore, she thought. You knew that the moment they returned him to you. He was an empty pitcher, a cipher. She had stayed with him out of sentiment, nothing more.
Her father had been a great man until he had stolen bread that day. The Cleric returned him “good as new” and handed her a script to read. Gil struggled with the words as Axel stood in the corner, staring, not a man anymore, not anything anymore. Eventually she gave up; the words were a mess of lines and dots that made no sense to her anyway. The Cleric had said that when she was old enough she could go to the engines also, if she ever did anything bad. Gil wasn’t about to let them take her too.
Mr. Henry lived next door and had a way with her once-father, making him listen and move with words of authori
ty. He told Gil that if she wanted Axel back, if she wanted to see him move and eat and breathe, she would have to trust him. Now as she watched him lying on the ground, staring like an abandoned child at a world he couldn’t remember, she began to wonder if she never should have trusted Mr. Henry.
Axel was holding his hand now. The bearded man said something; her once-father turned and walked away into the mist. It was just like when Mr. Henry would tell him to do things. She bit her lower lip.
The rings she stole from the dead man jingled in her pocket and Gil took one out. She was still amazed at its size. Clutching it, she stepped out from hiding and prepared to follow them. A voice stopped her in her tracks.
“Gil.”
She looked around but saw nothing, completely alone in shadows and fog. She spun around and peered up. A spot of shadow looked down on her with tiny black eyes. Something shuffled with scratchy claws on stone and then stopped. Gil held her breath.
The shadow moved again. “Nice ring,” it said in a scratchy voice that was more of a croak.
Chapter 30
Dale felt like a man trespassing in other people’s dreams as Melissa led him through caves, over crystal bridges, under the shadows of enormous castles, and across vast pine-laden hillsides. They were connected not so much by doorways but by physical boundaries that bled into one another. Sometimes Melissa would lead him along the border between two different realities, and at one point they walked with one foot in a desert and another in a swamp. There seemed to be no pattern between the worlds, only transition from one landscape to the next.
There were people in some of the worlds, who stopped what they were doing to watch the two travelers as they traipsed through giant chessboards and around Zen rock gardens. A few people scolded Melissa in a language that Dale couldn’t understand.
“What are they saying?” he had asked her at one point.
“They don’t like that I’ve brought you here,” she said, and left it at that.
Dale didn’t want to ask any more. He could feel their disapproving gaze.
The valley where Melissa lived was lined with houses of differing styles and sizes, with people working in a nearby garden. A central path paved in coral-colored stones ran down the center of the tiny village, splitting off and ending at each structure.
She stopped him at the edge of the village where it bordered a grey thicket. “Wait here,” she said before disappearing into a quaint cottage at the far end of the village.
The other residents were dressed in clothing as varied as the houses they lived in. While some worked in the garden, others ran through the nearby meadow, tossing a ball or a kind of flat disc to one another. They only looked at Dale for a moment before ignoring him completely. Dale even waved at a gorgeous woman with brilliant red hair and an orange sun dress, who gave him a polite but wary smile and then looked away.
When Melissa returned, a stout man followed her. He wore a ridiculous orange hat and a vest with tails that dragged just above the grass without touching. The rest of his suit was almost as outlandish—loud brass buttons, a striped vest, pants that appeared to be lederhosen. He carried a cane which was more for show than utility. He marched towards Dale at a brisk pace. Melissa trotted behind him excitedly.
“So this is Dale,” said Walter, giving him an appraising look.
Gray sideburns crept out from under the hat, then exploded down the sides of the man’s pink face. His smile was crooked but charming. He gave Dale a firm handshake.
“So this is Walter,” Dale said, trying to be funny, but feeling too awkward to pull it off.
“Melissa tells me you are joining her little adventure,” Walter said.
“I am?”
“We can’t stay here,” Melissa said. “Well I mean you can’t. I brought you here thinking we could talk, but we’ll have to just keep moving.”
“I don’t understand.”
Walter took his pipe out of his mouth and pointed over Dale’s shoulder. “You’ve got some baggage that would probably upset the residents here. They prefer to keep to themselves and I’m afraid you’ll be causing more of a disruption than they would like.”
Dale didn’t turn his head. He could feel it hovering over his shoulder; fat thorax with many limbs. Long teeth dripped saliva that killed the grass where it fell. Tiny hooks twitched and tickled his shoulder blades, brushing his skin with thick hairs.
“How do I get rid of it?” he asked.
He felt it slither behind his ear, excited, eager for attention. It hugged him from behind with invisible tentacles lined with coarse scales, like a rat’s tail.
“You don’t,” said Walter. “It is as much of you as your arm was when you were alive. The best you can hope for is to embrace it and channel it.”
Dale shuddered. “I don’t know if I can do that.”
“It takes practice… but first things first,” said Walter.
He walked behind Melissa and leaned down behind her. “I love this trick,” she said, smiling at Dale.
As he watched, Walter reached down toward Melissa’s ear as if he were about to pluck a flower from it. Dale expected a coin to appear, but what he didn’t expect to see was an entire pinwheel, a foot in diameter. It bloomed from behind her ear like a flower, luminescent and blue. It pivoted from the end of a pair of vines that twisted around one another. Dale couldn’t see anything attaching the pinwheel to its base. It seemed to hover at the top of the handle.
“I want you to look at this while I talk to you, Dale. As long as you think about this and not what’s standing behind you, you’ll be fine.”
The swirling blue blossom spun faster and faster. It seemed to consume his entire world. All he could do was nod.
“Good,” said Walter. “Now, I am going to give you the nutshell version: Forget everything you were told death would be, because it’s all bullshit. The only Pearly Gates or Devils with Pitchforks are the products of religion. As you can see, everything here is as fluid as your imagination—which I might add is somewhat limited and depressing, but that’s normal for a man your age, with your history. Most adults settle for what’s comfortable and do pretty well for themselves.
“What I am getting at, Dale is that everything you made yourself into, every decision you made before, followed you here. There is no absolution, no confessional and forgiveness. We all have things to work through here. I do, you do, and she does.” He gestured at Melissa.
“If you want to continue being a traitorous coward, that’s up to you. I’m sure there are some enclaves that would be just fine having you around, but I’m not sure you’d like being around them.
“I can see you are carrying around some pretty heavy issues with you. You are going to have to resolve those issues before you will be welcome here or any place like this. Otherwise, I don’t think the residents of our fair village will be too pleased watching you kill all their hard work as you drag around poison in your wake. Gardeners are touchy about that. Nod if you understand.”
Dale nodded. He felt as though he was floating in a sea of color and warmth. He wasn’t even aware of his feet touching the ground.
“Good,” Walter continued. “Now Missy here wants to help you. I’m not sure why, and frankly I don’t really care. I have my own business to attend to. But Missy thinks that she knows a way that you can both take care of your demons—sorry. Issues. ‘Demon’ is my old life talking. Missy thinks you can take care of them and help Skyla as well. Nod again if you got that.”
Dale nodded.
The pinwheel shattered and was gone almost as quickly as it appeared, filling Dale with a sudden, inexplicable sadness. With it gone, he felt heavy again. Walter’s smile was sympathetic.
“Now,” he said, stepping over to a tree stump on the edge of the grass. “It would only be fair of me to allow you to ask a couple of questions.”
Dale’s first impulse was to ask to see the pinwheel again, but he knew that somehow felt like a petty request.
“Are y
ou a doctor?” he asked the man.
“No. Next question.”
“You say you have… issues… demons…”
Walter nodded. “Who doesn’t?”
He began to feel the weight of the—attachment—on his back as soon as the question entered his mind, but he asked anyway. “How do you…”
“Channel it?”
Dale nodded.
“Well, look at this cane, these houses. It’s all made of the same stuff, Dale. It’s all an extension of someone. Nothing comes for free here. Don’t go thinking it’s magic, because it’s not. You give a part of yourself to make it happen.”
“Why is mine… so…”
“Huge? Horrifying? Ugly? Disfigured?” Walter said. “Well, that’s because it’s controlling you. You’ll figure it out.” He stood and patted both Dale and Melissa on the shoulder.
“Alrighty. I think that’s all the time we have for now. You kids run along… and good luck.”
“Good luck with what?” Dale asked.
Walter pulled an envelope from his pocket and handed it to Melissa. “You got another message. I think she’s getting impatient. Woman doesn’t know the meaning of the word ‘soon’.”
“Who’s she?” Dale asked, slightly annoyed at being ignored.
Melissa opened the envelope, glanced at the note and then dashed away, skirting the perimeter of the town, blue dress flowing behind her. She spun around on her heel and waved to Dale.
“Come on,” she yelled.
He started toward her when Walter caught his arm. The man leaned in toward him. “Skyla is very important to all of us. I don’t think you really understand that just yet. There are things on the horizon that threaten even us… you included.”
Dale looked at the man, searching his face. “You know Skyla?”
“I knew her mother. I knew her mother’s sister as well. I also knew Lyle Summers. Don’t think for an instant that you are safe from him.”
“But I’m… we’re—”
Walter gripped his arm even tighter. “Even here Dale. You’re not safe from him even here. Remember that.”