by IGMS
He felt burning at the top of his head, like prickling sparks all over his skin. Lightning crackled around him, stinging like pins and needles pushing deep. The world went hot. White. It rushed away with a sound like tides.
The world was gone.
A tunnel opened before him, light and long, and he let himself be pulled away.
The world was back.
The world was pain.
Every part of him felt raw, stinging, like his nerves had been scraped with knives. He lay on a slab of ice. When he opened his eyes, the light burned and he closed them again. He tried to cry out; his throat was parched: only breath and no sound when he screamed. The air tasted like iron. He bent one knee and banged it against the glass above him; the impact reverberated up his leg, a club to the bone. Tears escaped his eyes and burned paths toward his hairline.
"Is he okay? What's going on?" The voice was loud, a shock.
"I don't know; he seems disoriented." The second voice sounded uncertain.
"Mr. Drogan?" The first voice. Female. Why was everyone shouting?
"Whisper," he rasped. "Too loud."
"Let's get him out of there," someone else said.
They rolled his body, lifted him, moved him off of the ice -- or was it glass? Every contact stung; he felt handprints all over his body like spots of sunburn. Then he was on sheets, rough and stiff, and the movement of the gurney rattled him so hard he wanted to scream again. When they moved him onto the bed, it hurt so much he passed out.
Voices far off called his name. He knew his name. Warm cotton sheets beneath him, over his stomach, his chest, rough like fine sandpaper. Opened his eyes slowly. The light was harsh and bright. He felt muzzy. His mouth tasted like sand. A distant echo of pain pushed at him. In the back of his mind he thought he must be drugged.
"Mr. Drogan, do you know me?"
The person silhouetted in the light over him was familiar. Louisa -- no, if he was "Mr. Drogan" again, then she was "Dr. Ferrara." He didn't like the renewed formality after what had felt like intimacy, but he understood it. He was thinking that clearly.
"Yes," he said. It was breath, not sound.
"Do you know where you are?"
He did: TransLumina Labs. He nodded. He knew more than that. He remembered everything: Lainie, Sean, all of it. No heaven for him, but he hadn't expected that.
No hell either.
"We've given you something for the pain. Your nerves are firing to get reoriented. We saw this once in one of the chimps."
"Thanks for telling me in advance."
"We had to leave some surprises," she said, a smile in her voice. "How do you feel?"
He thought a moment. He was alive. Lightheaded. Disappointed.
"I'm okay," he said. "It hurts, but not like before."
"Good. There's water here if you need it." She held out a cup with a straw for him. He tipped his head up a bit to sip: cold, sharp, the water slid down his throat and through him like quicksilver. He lay back again, his head too heavy to hold up for long. He closed his eyes. Lainie was there. Sean. But it was hard work to keep his eyes open and away from them.
When he did open his eyes, he caught Dr. Ferrara looking at her watch. She glanced at the wall to his left, where Drogan noticed a large one-way window. He couldn't see through it, but he understood they were being watched. He didn't like that. He didn't like what such observation might mean in the days to come.
But she looked agitated, worried somehow.
"Dr. Ferrara . . .?"
"I'm sorry, Mr. Drogan, I have to go."
She got up and pulled her lab jacket close around her. It seemed too quick somehow. She was uncomfortable, but he didn't have the energy to ask more.
"See you later," he said.
"No. No, you won't."
That was a jolt. Suddenly he felt clearer. His heart beat triple-time.
"What?" he asked.
Dr. Ferrara paused, then sat again, on the edge of her chair as if she wanted to be sure she could bolt if she had to.
"After Villanova, I gave notice. I couldn't be a party to this anymore."
That was the last thing Drogan had expected to hear. Her reason made sense, knowing her as he'd come to do, but he hadn't been prepared for it.
More quietly she said, "I decided, though, that I couldn't go before I knew whether or not you came through."
He wanted to thank her for that. Somehow the words wouldn't come. He realized that he'd expected her to stay with him in this new life.
Idiot. You're her job, nothing more.
He took a deep breath -- get used to it, he told himself, she won't be here for you, she was never here for you -- exhaled and said, "So what comes next?"
"I don't know."
"I won't ever see you again?" Drogan asked before he could stop himself. He felt like a teenager.
"No. Conditions of your agreement and my separation from the company."
He knew it. He just needed to hear her say it. They were both silent for a moment. Dr. Ferrara looked at her hands clenched in her lap. Drogan closed his eyes.
And they were there again: Sean and Lainie. He had a flash of the pain he'd felt at the beginning of the transport. Other memories flooded in. Ferrara had opened a floodgate by telling him she was leaving. He forced his eyes open.
"This isn't what I expected," Drogan said.
"I'm sorry."
"No, no. It's not that. It's . . . I thought I wouldn't . . . know myself." His throat tightened. God, this isn't what I wanted. "That I'd feel like a stranger to me somehow. That some of this would be gone."
"Some of what?"
He had to rest a moment. His mouth was dry again. "The memories. I thought it would be different. I thought I'd be different."
"Technically, you're only about eight hours old."
"I need a minute," he said and turned away. The avalanche of memories crushed his heart. He hadn't planned on grief and regret in this afterlife; he hadn't counted on any afterlife at all. Hell would have been better. His whole body shuddered at the recognition: old memories, no release. "I didn't want this." He clenched his hands and wanted to weep; he had no tears. He'd wanted death. His dry sobs shook the bed.
"Mr. Drogan," Dr. Ferrara said.
He opened his eyes, turned to face her again.
"You died. I was there. I saw it."
"But it's still here! I can't stop it." He balled a fist and hit his head. Two, three times. She stopped him.
"That's good. It means this worked."
"No . . ."
"Look at me." Her sternness surprised him. She'd been in such a rush to leave but now she was present, there for him one last time. She kept her hand on his arm. "You're eight hours old. All you've done is sleep in this bed."
"It's a lie."
"Then live the lie until it becomes the truth. This is a new start. That's what you signed up for. The part of you that died took the rest of it." She opened his fist and put something in it. "He left you this." He lifted his arm to see. His joints felt stiff, new, as he bent his elbow.
His half-dollar gleamed in the too-bright light. His fingers, clumsy with medication, dropped the coin onto his chest.
Louisa picked up the coin and put it back in his hand.
"You told me to keep this for you until after. You hold it now. It's your inheritance," she said. "It's worth having."
He felt the edges of the coin in his hand, thin, blunt, familiar. He wasn't ready for it; he didn't feel worthy of it, not yet.
"Just . . . think about it." Louisa looked at her watch. "I need to go. I've been here too long already." She got up.
Drogan grabbed her hand. She gently tried to extricate herself, but he couldn't let go. Not quite yet.
"Mr. Drogan, please." He recognized that crease between her brows.
"Dr. Ferrara. Louisa . . ."
She pulled her hand one more time, but it wasn't a whole-hearted attempt. He loosened his grip, then. She didn't move.
"Thank
you," he said.
"There's nothing to thank me for, Jake. Really."
He let go. She went to the door and left without looking back.
He looked at the coin again. Maybe time would dull his past the way it had dulled the edges of Independence Hall and the details of Kennedy's hair. Maybe he could live with that.
He squeezed the coin tight in his hand.
The Smell of the Earth
by Joan L. Savage
Artwork by Scott Altmann
* * *
"How much will you wager on your belief?" The wizard tapped her fingernails beside a puddle of spilled ale on the table and leaned so close that the sweetness of her perfume only half hid the acridness of her sweat and the smell of sex. "You Jongleurs say you can affect any heart with music. Will you prove it?"
I tugged on my cloak to cover the hole in my tunic. Why was she talking to me, she in her jewels and furs? She obviously had riches and power enough to buy whatever she wanted. Why speak to me, Jongleur, gypsy, outcast.
"Prove it?" I asked stupidly.
"What will you wager? All men desire something."
In a whole lifetime of loss, how many people have a chance to gain what they long for? Who can discover what he longs for, given a month to think? I had too much ale in me and her warm, full breasts pressed over her arm on the table until they blossomed out the top of her bodice and her eyes trapped me on my bench, demanding an answer.
My mind flitted over the things that all men want. Riches, fame, sex. With her watching me from the depths of those compelling eyes it was hard not to think about the sex, but as well ask a star to come down from the heavens and share my bed. And what good were riches? With my wife and son dead, I had no one to spend them on.
"I want to be known as the greatest Jongleur who ever lived."
I listened to the words coming from my mouth. Was that really what I wanted? Maybe. Maybe that was the only way not to be forgotten in the silent emptiness of a grave. My wife had been so silent, when I laid her in the earth. So still, so cold.
"Done," the wizard said. Her smile sent shivers across my skin. "If you win, I will spread such stories about you that people will say, 'He is the greatest Jongleur.' If you lose?"
What was my deepest fear? Music comes from the heart but it takes hands to free it from silence and I could not bear for her to silence me. I tucked my hands under the table and shuddered at the thought of that loneliness. All the doors that cracked open to let me sneak in and play by the fire for my bread would slam closed. I would have only the cold, empty road, and not even a song to play, for remembrance.
"Done," she said. "If you lose, I will chop off your hands."
For a moment, I could not catch my breath. She stood to go.
"Wait, what wager -- I don't even know -- what's the bet? Why do you need me? Why do this for me?"
She ran one finger through my hair, her nail prickling against my scalp, and heat rushed into my loins. I barely heard her over the blood throbbing in my veins.
She leaned so close that her breath tickled my ear. "The best vengeance is always through another. And some loves must be paid for. You know that. You've paid for your love a thousand times."
A flash of memory. My wife laughing in my arms, smelling of spring, with her fingers tousling my hair. Then she was gone and I had only the terrible, aching emptiness left where once she had filled me. The silence. Yes, I had paid for my love. Every night, with every memory. And I would pay again, and again. A thousand times more, if it would bring her back.
"See the man by the window? Change his heart so he forgives his little peasant wife. A simple thing. A good thing, forgiveness."
Her fingertip traced a river of fire down my neck and I nodded silently. I would do this thing. For memory. For love.
"That is all." She paused. "Within this hour I will come back for your hands, if you fail."
She pointed to where my hands hid under the table, then turned and swayed through the inn's doorway, taking her agonizingly luring scent with her. The other patrons ducked their heads as if afraid to look at her. I looked at the man.
He was plain, with dusty, lanky hair hanging across his face. His hands were brown and worn, with calluses rough from the plough. A pint of ale sat barely touched on the table before him but he did not look at it, or at the other patrons. He stared steadfastly into his lap, at a small rock the size of a knuckle.
I wondered what his wife had done that was so terrible he could not forgive her. I would have forgiven my wife anything. I laid my lute across my lap and plucked the strings with one hand while the other fingered random chords. I had nudged a man's emotions before, but only once. It seemed unfair, somehow, to make someone feel what he did not want to feel, but surely it was a small price to pay for immortality. To be remembered.
I settled into a melody that had been my wife's favourite -- a melancholy dance, full of the seduction of love and the sweetness of yearning. I plucked the melody into the air and touched the man with my Jongleur's gift, my gewaer. He felt pale, like a winter's sunrise that promises more cold without any prospect of spring to warm it. With my gewaer, I gave him the song, for his care and comfort. A piece of my heart in return for a glimpse into his soul.
He met my gift with such a flash of despair I almost stopped playing. Most people showed me flashes of colour or moods when I sang to them. He projected an image into my mind so brightly I almost had to pull my gift away. A girl, maybe sixteen, dancing down a cart track with her skirts hiked up around her knees, leading a pig.
Then the man's voice rumbled in my head, remembering. His voice was deep and as worn as his hands, his tone dull and sorrowful.
"My wife knowed it was my most favourite pig when she sold it to Gerg. Some neighbour. I'd knowed him for forty years. Had knowed, had been a friend. Ariana thought the price so good for the sow that she was a-dancin' when she carried it home to me in her skirts. She so wanted a baby. I wanted another babe, too, a son with my new wife, but since the plough tore my flesh that wasna gonna happen and she thought she'd found another way to give me a babe." Her face dazzled in his mind, her smile frozen then fading to despair when she realised he wasn't happy with her gift. "Gerg's son Tan's a strong man, good seed. But it ain't my babe."
I played a gentle chord, soothing, and projected my thought with it. His wife had done it out of love for him. She had tried to please him.
The man turned the rock in his lap.
"Ariana hadna meant to hurt me. Not knowingly. And it bein' so soon since the weddin', how could she've knowed that sow could open gates and find her way home from anywhere herself? How could she've knowed Gerg would blame me for his trampled corn and ruined garden?" An edge of anger touched his remembrance of Gerg's flushed face and shaking fist.
The hour was slipping away beneath my fingers, and my hands trembled on the lute. All I could touch in him was anger and resentment. How could I push those feelings into forgiveness? Maybe my task was impossible. Sweat beaded on my forehead and trickled into my eyes, stinging, but I dared not break the spell of the song to wipe it away. If I couldn't make him forgive his wife, the wizard woman would silence my music and leave me with no way to touch others, with no path for them to accept me. With no way to cast those I had loved into song. I played a minor chord with a hint of longing in it. He should remember how much he loved his wife.
I remembered how much I loved mine. The scent of her hair, touched by sunshine. Her hand over mine, how rough it was, but how gentle. Gone now, laid in earth. The damp smell of the earth of her grave would always be in my nose. Maybe, when they said of me that I was the greatest Jongleur who ever lived, they would remember her, too, as the greatest woman ever loved. She was so cold and silent when I laid my face against hers, before the earth took her. She deserved to be remembered in song only I hadn't had the heart to write it yet, not so soon, and to be silenced now meant her memory would be lost. I couldn't let that happen. I shifted the music into a song with mor
e urgent longing.
The man poked at his memories, like prodding a sore tooth with his tongue, unable to let it rest.
"I do love my Ariana. She with her tiny hands and gentle heart that makes her run from the farm when it comes time t' slaughter the lambs." He ran a hand across his sweating face, though the room was cool. "I love her more 'n anythin', more than Betric who bore my only boy. Eight years now, since Betric died? Stars bless her, she were strong. She didn't need me. Ariana needs me even more 'n I need her."
He needed her so much he ached with it. The flash of memory of them making love left my pulse pounding again and I almost lost the thread of the song.
The hunger for the feel of her slight body was just as quickly replaced by a cold rush of despair. "What was she thinkin'? How could she've shamed me like this?"
Pictures flashed, dazzling in their clarity. Gerg letting his cows through the man's field, just for spite. "I hit Gerg then -- I'm not proud o' that. Then our boys fought, bein' of an age, and my own boy, oh my Aron, you were too angry for your papa's sake and Tan, he hit my Aron too hard and then there was the rush of blood and the long, long sleep before my boy slipped into death."
That memory brought a rush of grief that forced the music into dark, hushed tones. I had no answer for his emptiness -- it was too close an echo to my own. I began to wonder what my wager might do to this man. Why should I torture another man's soul with remembering? What gain was it for me, this immortality? Soon I would lie beside my wife and what gain, what gain was life or fame against that silence?
I should have left him alone with his unshed tears. His memories flooded me, rubbing against my own, too close, and I wanted to let him be. He deserved that. But where would that leave me, with no hands to shape my memories into remembrances? I thought, what harm could it do for him to remember? The pain must always burn his heart. He must remember, whether I urged him to or not.
The man thumped a hand on the table, startling some of the other patrons who stared at him and edged away. His thoughts went on, unhindered by their notice.
"Silly girl. She shoulda knowed it was my bestest pig, shoulda knowed that ever since she were a tiny piglet she'd come home from wherever I'd tried to sell her. After Aron died I just didna know what to do an' they said lord Gareth was a just man so I went to him. Oh, why did I go? Who will give me justice for my dead boy?"