* * *
Ranitamasi wouldn’t let them leave without feeding them. The laws of hospitality still applied, even if the laws of physics didn’t. Shaila accepted her chaa with no complaints and even breathed in the aroma appreciatively. She had never noticed that it smelled less bitter than coffee. Her loyalty was being tested. Despite the strong ginger that attacked the back of her throat, the tea was soothing. Was that the effect of the magic? She would have to compare with a normal cup of chaa as a control.
Later, she thought, glancing at Divya next to her. For now, she appreciated her magic tea.
“Can I have some par vadi biscuits?” she asked. Ranitamasi went to the kitchen and returned with a tray full of them. Shaila had expected her to snap her fingers and make the biscuits appear, but she didn’t know how it all worked.
She dipped a biscuit into her chaa, holding it in long enough to soak in some flavor and pulling it out before it became a soggy mess floating in her cup. She took a bite, thinking of Oreos and milk, even though this combination tasted entirely different.
Shaila ate the rest of the biscuit plain, and as she chewed, she realized she was the anti-biscuit. The par vadi biscuit sounded special, but it wasn’t. She didn’t sound special, but she was. It didn’t matter that she had no apparent role in the coming conflict: so few people knew there even was a coming conflict. She was always going to be a part of it, and now she could give herself a role.
“Suck it, biscuit,” she muttered unintelligibly, her mouth full.
“What did you say?” asked Divya.
“I told the biscuit to suck it,” said Shaila.
“I wish I were fighting biscuits instead of demons.” Divya smiled at Shaila, a wide, genuine smile this time. “But you can be my sidekick.”
Shaila smiled back. “And you can be my lab assistant.”
She took a gulp of her chaa, and the ginger burned. She burst out laughing.
Her ginger. It had been there all along.
The Book of May
C. S. E. Cooney and Carlos Hernandez
From: Morgan W. Jamwant
To: Harry Najinsky
Date: January 22, 2015 12:58:59 p.m. est
Subject: Death Is the Tree
Eliazar,
Dude. I wanna be a tree when I die. Make them put me into one of those urn-y things. The biodegradable ones with the seed inside. Go look it up. I swear to God. Gawd. Gerd. Gods. All of em.
I wanted to be oak, ’cause of what you wrote a hundred billion years ago in our high school yearbook. “To Morgan, an Oak amidst the Spruce.” But I didn’t see oak on the website. Maybe I should go sugar maple instead. I’d be so fabulous in October.
Can you take this seriously? I mean, not too seriously but a little seriously? I’m kind of on a time crunch here, they tell me.
M. W. J.
* * *
From: Harry Najinsky
To: Morgan W. Jamwant
Date: January 22, 2015 6:07:21 p.m. est
Subject: Re: Death Is the Tree
Hey May,
You know you’re the only one who still calls me Eliazar? And it’s not like I don’t hang out with all our old D&D buddies. It’s just that all we play these days are Eurogames, and you don’t give yourself cool, vaguely medieval names in Eurogames. Mostly you do math. I guess all that resource management makes them feel adult or productive or something. To me it feels like a job. I miss D&D.
So I googled it. Eco-urn? It doesn’t sound like you. It sounds like earthy-crunchy ooey-gooey overpriced bourgeois bullshit. I mean, it’s not like we have a choice. We’re all recycled eventually. Do you think Nature gives a shit about how we’re packaged when we die? She’ll eat us any way we come prepared.
But okay, you said take you seriously. So you want to be an oak? I can see that. I see your hair, and I can imagine it defying gravity and tendrilling up toward the sky. I’m imagining each lock crusting over, becoming strike-a-match rough, radiating like a bark-brown crown around your head. Then come the leaves, not slowly like boring normal trees, but in one verdant, fireworks-ical explosion. You’d spontaneously generate a heavy load of acorns, and the squirrels would be so pleased that they’d learn to speak, just so they could sing choir songs of gratitude.
How’s that? I was never as good at that shit as you. You were always the roleplayer. I was the rules lawyer. It’s why we made such a good team. Well, and you knew the Raise Dead spell, and could bring me back to life every time I miscalculated.
I wish I hadn’t said Raise Dead. It’s just too painful to contemplate a world where a spell like that could exist. That’s the real reason we don’t play D&D anymore. Fantasy is hopeful. Fantasy hurts.
You’re not a sugar maple. I forbid you from being a maple! Maple trees are all sweet and Canadian and self-sacrificing. “Yes, take my blood, human, and pour it all over your flapjacks. I bleed to make your breakfast slightly more enjoyable.” Fuck that. Come back as hemlock or something. The way the world’s treated you, you should poison the shit out of anything that messes with you next time around.
—Eliazar (Harry)
* * *
From: Morgan W. Jamwant
To: Harry Najinsky
Date: January 24, 2015 10:41:36 a.m. est
Subject: Who the fuck’s a name, anyway?
I never liked Harry. I mean … Harry! Harry was this old guy who used to come into the costume shop. He lived out of his car and smelled like it and had no one but me to talk to. There I was, puffed up on superprivilege and sorry for him and trapped behind a counter. There was Harry on the other side looking oh, so sad. Aside from that, Harry is so primordial, so hirsute, something you’d have to shave. Not to mention Rowling.
Egad, I can smell him now. I’m tempted to get Tyrell in here to check under my bed for skulkers, except I know the old-man miasma’s not real. Yesterday it was citrus …
Never mind.
Eliazar is cool. Eliazar can swim a mighty underworld river in full armor and pwn all the Orcs. It’s not that I don’t like YOU, Harry, although when you’re Harry you always sound slightly more worn than when you’re Eliazar, whom even the Dungeons Cannot Defeat. I think the dungeons have defeated me, Harry. Eliazar. Harry. You can be Harry today if you want.
You call me May after my favorite month, my parents called me Morgan after their favorite rum, and if I want to call myself a sugar maple, I can damn well be a fucking sugar maple.
Sorry. My head hurts today. Whatever. Whatever, head.
Re: Hemlock. I could dig a hemlock. Like that Neoclassical monologue I used to do from Shadwell’s Lancashire Witches: “Henbane, Hemlock, Moonwort too, / Wild Fig-Tree, that o’er Tombs does grow …”
I know next to nothing about Eurogames. I have forgotten most of what I used to know about D&D. It was the pretending I liked. The pretending out loud. The words that made us disappear, then reappear in another world, this time with spontaneous superpowers and monsters you could see to fight them. I wish I had a Morning Star and my monster here before me. It’d be a Siege Crab, I think.
In theory, I want to go down fighting. In practice, this slow fading is maybe more merciful. And I must say, synesthesia has its own unique brand of charm. And In-Home Hospice > Hospital, that’s for damn sure.
Blah blah blah time for nap reset, and GO!
M. W. J.
P. S. Funny you should imagine me with hair “tendrilling” into sky-hungry branches. I still imagine me with hair, too. Sort of like having 140,000 ghost limbs.
* * *
From: Harry Najinsky
To: Morgan W. Jamwant
Date: January 24, 2015 7:24:07 p.m. est
Subject: Re: Who the fuck’s a name, anyway?
I know I sound tired. But that’s only compared to you. I mean, Manic Pixie Dream Girls call you for perkiness tips! No one, anywh
ere, ever, is less tired than you. Even now.
So I almost don’t want to say this. The last thing I want to remind you of right now is memory loss. But healthy people forget things all the time. The smelly guy’s name wasn’t Harry. You started calling him Harry to bug me! His name was Gunnar. And he wasn’t a bad guy. He just got stupid around you because he thought you were pretty. When you weren’t around he was cool. We talked classic rock and extreme survival. He only lived out of his car because he thought it was stupid to pay for a hotel. Last I heard, he moved back to Wisconsin to take care of his folks. I always liked the name Gunnar.
You asked who (sic) the fuck are names. I have a theory. Names are mechanized robo-suits.
Hear me out! I’ve heard people say names are masks and names are costumes and a rose by any other name can kiss my ass.
But names don’t just paint over nouns. Names come with fuel cells and lasers and flying robot-fists. You jump into a name the same way you jump into a mech: you turn on the power and grab the controls and all of a sudden you can K.O. all the kaiju in Tokyo.
And after writing that, I don’t think you’re an oak, either. Too monosyllabic. I think we need more options. There’s a good tree farm/bookstore 20 minutes by car. The woman who runs the place is one of the smartest people I’ve ever met. Did you ever go to Tasseography? Books, trees, and hot-brewed tea. The owner’s Lourdes Belen. If she doesn’t already know the perfect tree for you to become, I bet she knows the book that can tell us.
—Eliazar the Slightly-Less-Worn-Sounding-I-Hope
* * *
From: Morgan W. Jamwant
To: Harry Najinsky
Date: January 25, 2015 2:35:23 p.m. est
Subject: The State of My Brain Is WORD GAMES
Harriazar,
You say Lourdes, I say:
LOURDES –> Madonna –> DaVinci –> Woman with Weasel –> Weasel from Newsies the Musical –> Young Christian Bale –> Batman –> Nolan Movies –> Dark Doomy Downward Spiral of Main Protagonist –> Brain Tumor –> Pain Meds –> Morphine –> Jolie Holland lyrics.
Let me tell you all about that time I sang “Give Me That Old Fashioned Morphine” to one of my nice nurses and made her giggle. She mistook Jolie Holland for Judy Garland, and suddenly we go from Doom to Rainbows in the veriest flicker.
See? I spread my brain before you. Tread softly, because you tread on my brain …
Jolie Holland –> Judy Garland –> “Over the Rainbow” –> “Look to the Rainbow” –> Leprechauns –> Green, “verde, que te quiero verde” –> Trees –> What Tree Should I Be? What Tree Will Make a Grave of Me?
Look, we’re back to graves again. At least we took the Bifröst to get here, baby. Definitely sparkly. Speaking of sparkly, I ever tell you how sometimes I see lights? Frequently, actually. It’s the whole going-blind thing. Not like “I SAW THE LIGHT!” but little lights. They come zooming right at me like I’m walking the double yellow line on a dark country road and every asshole rushing home from work has his brights on.
You say “perkiness tips” and all I got is “perky tits,” man. I didn’t have those even when I was fifteen and handsome as a Renoir. I admit I’m shallow; I always wanted to play the Manic Pixie Dream Girl, but she’s an ingenue, and I’ve been a character actor since age four. You know who I played in my junior high production of The Diary of Anne Frank? Mr. Frank. They sponged on dirt-brown greasepaint for my beard and strapped my 8th-grade boobs with an Ace bandage.
What did I pop open my laptop to say? I had a purpose. Hm. Rereading your previous emaiiiiiiil——ah! Yes.
A. His name was Gunnar? Goddamn it, I thought it was Harry. I get dizzy thinking his name was Gunnar. Stupid trick, brain. Harry, really, did I really call him Harry to annoy you? Jeebus, I was cruel in my twenties. Probably jealous. I hated when you talked rock with people. I could never join in. I’m useless after the 60s, and even my 60s repertoire (thanks to the hippies I called parents) is mostly folk stuff and Broadway. Never cool enough for rock music, never sexy enough, never angry enough.
Maybe I’m angry enough now. Take me to a rock concert, Eliazar the Defiler. Take me to tapas. Take me away from here.
B. In other words, yes, please, YES, I would be very pleased to attend Tasseography Books and Trees and Tea with Thee. When can we go? Now? What about now? Come now. Now, now, now. Doooo eeeeet. I may not be here tomorrow.
C. WAS THAT MEAN? It was, wasn’t it? Maybe I haven’t lost it after all. Good. You always liked when I was a little cruel. But quietly. Like our secret. For your ears only.
M. W. J.
* * *
From: Harry Najinsky
To: Morgan W. Jamwant
Date: January 26, 2015 6:50:17 p.m. est
Subject: Re: The State of My Brain Is WORD GAMES
It’s okay, May. Let your mind do its thing. You go fast, and I’ll go slow. You do the living. I’ll do the remembering.
Today we went to Tasseography to find out what tree you should be. It’d been a long time since I’d been, and I was worried that it wouldn’t be wheelchair-accessible. But you told me to, and I quote, “stop being such a prairie dog.” Which made no sense to me until I thought about it—prairie dogs spend all day standing just outside their little holes in the ground looking for any excuse to get spooked and hide. They’ve developed a sophisticated language of chirps and whistles just to tell each other all the things they should be scared of in the world.
It’s not much of a life. I shouldn’t be such a prairie dog. So we went and I pushed your wheelchair, and we trundled and trampled and popped wheelies and plowed over anything that got in our way.
And it was so nice to see Lourdes Belen again. She hasn’t changed since we were teenagers: 300 pounds of smarts and laughter and pure love. She didn’t remember me, but she remembered you. She said she was always jealous of your big hands: better for gardening than her stunted little fingers, she said. Then we all started singing “Blister in the Sun” together, and it was weird how well we remembered the lyrics. But I guess that’s what they say. Music is the last thing to go.
You rolled around by yourself for awhile. You said you wanted “the silent company of flora.” I was watching you, because the worst thing in the world is your seizures, and I was ready to super-jump to you if you had one. But you were fine just then, meandering through the potted young saplings, sniffing and musing like a happy animal.
You were so beautiful I almost broke down. I wouldn’t tell you this, but if I’m going to be your memory, I have to record everything, even the things I’d normally hide. I said aloud, “I hate the world.” I meant it.
Lourdes was still with me. She put a hand on my shoulder and said, “A lot of people are going to tell you let go of that rage, or you’ll never be happy. But rage isn’t a balloon you can release and let fly away. It’d be easier to let go of your lungs.”
“Then what should I do?” I asked her.
“You should buy a carnivorous plant,” she said.
And she introduced me to a species of carnivorous plant called the Cape Sundew. It’s a sprawling, spidery plant with purple flowers and red hairs sticking out of its Krazy Straw branches. Each of those million hairs has a drop of “mucilage” (said Lourdes) hanging from it. When a bug lands on the branch, it gets stuck in the mucilage, and the branch curls around it. That’s called “thigmotropism” (another magic word from Lourdes).
Lourdes told me to touch a branch with my little finger. When I did, the plant slowly started to wrap itself around it. It took a minute or so. I was reminded of the way babies will latch onto your pinkie. When I finally pulled my finger away it was sticky and buzzing with feeling, simultaneously numb and alive.
That’s when I told Lourdes everything. Our lives since high school. How I messed things up between us, how you forgave me and rescued our friendship. Your illness. This stupid useless plan to find the right tree for you to becom
e. “I don’t want Morgan to be a tree!” I yelled, and instantly wished I hadn’t because I didn’t want you to hear me. Quietly to Lourdes I whispered, “I want her to live.”
Lourdes frowned, maybe for the first time in her life. She said to me, “Wait here.” She came back some minutes later with a packet of seeds. Vintage, from 1899, with a gorgeous Victorian illustration of an elder tree on the front. “Dragon elder,” she said, and her smile was back. “For Morgan.”
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