Luminous

by Dawn Metcalf

  She wanted to be generous and let him go, but she was crying and afraid.

  “V, please, fight it. Stay!”

  He raised a misty hand to her face. He couldn’t touch her. She couldn’t feel him. The shampoo smell hung wet in the room.

  “Help me fight it,” he said, trying to find purchase in her hair. “Help me stay.”

  “How? V!” She tried grabbing his hand and holding his knuckles to her face. If she closed her eyes hard enough, she could feel them there.

  “Stay with me!” she begged, selfish and scared. “I can’t do this!” Not against Tender! Not alone!

  V was growing more tenuous by the moment, particles of him blowing away as if under a steady breath.

  “I feel it coming,” he said. “I’m sorry.” He meant it. She was crying. His gentle eyes sparked dark once more. “They’re calling me . . . and I’m ready to try.” V spoke from far away, a distance that was growing deeper.

  “You can do this,” he said. “You can do anything. Remember: you don’t need me—you don’t need anyone.”

  // But I needed you. // Brave Angel. // I’m not afraid anymore. //

  “Thank you for believing me.” He smiled again, that portrait smile.

  “Don’t give up,” Consuela pleaded through tears. “I have to save you.”

  “You did save me, Bones,” he said softly. “And I was supposed to save you.”

  She looked at his eyes and every panic softened. He was here. He was with her. He’d saved her from death. He’d given her this. And time. And a chance. And him.

  Consuela whispered, “You did.”

  Giovanni smiled like the sun.

  “If there’s any way, I will find you again,” he said. “I promise.”

  He gathered himself with effort, tried one last time. His hand passed through her face as he reached.

  “Consuela.”

  . . .

  Gone.

  She groped at the space that twinkled with shorn stars, the dwindling, last moments of V.

  Now she was alone. The shock of it washed over her. She’d wake up soon.

  An echo of electric hums thrummed through the room.

  // I will find you again. //

  BONES walked into the basement room. She was unsurprised to find the door unlocked, she was unsurprised to find the fax hanging useless above the door, and equally unsurprised to find the room exactly as she had left it, save for a few returned cardboard boxes and Sissy slumped in her father’s chair.

  Sissy’s honey-brown hair shrouded her face, her creamy skin still beautiful, her fingernails immaculately filed—one hand had been attached sickeningly backward and bent into a crude gesture, the middle finger raised. Her body caved around the gaping hole in her torso, which had hammered her into the leather chair back. The seat and the floor were soaked in her blood; her pretty shoes dangled in the puddle and the weight of the chair sank its wheels into wet carpet. Consuela knew that it would never change back.

  The Watcher had been pinned like a butterfly and, just as casually, discarded and left as a message. For her.

  Consuela turned away. Sissy was gone. There was no one here to tell anything anymore.

  She touched the shelves briefly, the chair, the books, the hidden Scotch. Sissy’d never gotten the shower she’d asked for, not really, just a cold, hard slap to sober her up.

  That one, lonely thing made Consuela sadder still.

  The rest of her burned as black as her palm.

  She snatched the roll of paper off its tacks, tearing the pulp and dried blood to shreds, sprinkling them like snow on the sleepover floor. Consuela pushed behind the ruined thing in the chair and pecked the keyboard keys with her finger bones so that they’d stay.

  Cecily Amelia Gardner, she typed. I will remember you.

  teNDeR snarled in frustration. How hard could this be? He could always find Wish anywhere, anytime, without even trying, and now, so near the end of things, the little bugger eluded him. Annoying little flea speck.

  He swept the sky from black into a hallucinatory gray complete with streams of gold and purple like watercolor paintbrushes washed in warm milk. He testily poked at Maddy’s remains at the base of the den. Nested in leaves, her bare body was a bloated rag doll on the ground. Naked and plump, she was unmarred except for her gouged-out eye; her face was turned discreetly to the earth and tiny brown insects peppered her belly.

  He jiggled her breast with the toe of his boot. It sloshed loosely.

  Girls are gross.

  Tender squinted into the sunlight, casting his eyes like a fly-fisher’s line; he caught the flurry of black ants, a red squirrel, a chipmunk, and one or two monarchs clapping lazily on the trees. No white animals. Wish hadn’t been here.

  Tender vowed that he’d make things exponentially more painful for every minute he’d have to spend hunting Wish down.

  He had laid the trap. Now he just needed the bait.

  CONSUeLa let her feet carry her into the folds of the Flow, following the instinct that led her to the real world and beyond, to Sissy’s door, to Maddy’s den, to V’s portal of glass. It was true, if she let herself, she could feel them all inside her—outside her—following the trail like Sissy’s cell-phone signal. Once she’d made the connection, she couldn’t lose it. But it was tough to concentrate on such raw nerves.

  But a skeleton didn’t have nerves. She was a solid, silvery apparition of vengeance and bone.

  Bones.

  She hardened with every step that took her closer to Wish.

  SHe exploded into the fenced-in forest line. Her quarry crouched behind the crab-apple tree.

  “Wish!” she shouted.

  “Shh!” he hissed back. That surprised her. Not that he was fearful—but that he wasn’t scared of her. He was clearly scared of something else. Consuela was incidental.

  “I found a spider in my room,” she said.

  Wish ignored her. “Where’s V?”

  “He’s gone,” she said.

  Wish nodded, his cheek pressed close to the bark.

  “Good,” he said.

  “Good?!” Consuela couldn’t believe what she was hearing.

  “You can’t trust him,” Wish explained. “T’s got him by the balls.”

  “What?”

  Wish tapped his fingers on the tree. “Don’t know how he does it, but I’ve seen it happen more than once. Like a puppeteer with an invisible hand up V’s hole. Doesn’t look easy, and V moves like a tank, but T would do just about anything to get you now . . .” He hadn’t needed to include himself on that short list. “So I stopped him.”

  “Who? Tender?”

  “Shh! No,” Wish said. “V.”

  She rubbed a hand over her face. Her fingers scraped against her sockets.

  “Wish, you’re not making any sense,” she said, coming closer.

  “He could use V to get to you.” Wish spelled it out as if to a child. “So I blocked all the mirrors and left him a wish of ‘fare well’ in your room.” He snorted a little as he said it. “Should keep V out, for a while, anyway. Sorry about the paint job. It’s the only thing I got that can cross. Or block.”

  Consuela gaped, impressed, disbelieving.

  “V was helping me!” she insisted. “He was trying to help you, too! We were all trying to stop Tender . . .”

  “Shut the fuck up, for Pete’s sake!” Wish spat in panic. “Don’t say his name! He can hear the shape of it in the Flow.” He shook his greasy brown cowlicks. “V could only help if he stayed in control, but the minute that changed, you’d be dead.” He scanned the open soccer field. “Burned to a crisp.”

  “Like Joseph Crow?” she said. Wish nodded, tight.

  “I couldn’t stop him,” he said softly. “Either one of’em. Never could. Just got the hell out of the way,” he said with a sorry smile and tapped a button that read, SCREW THE WOMEN AND CHILDREN—ME FIRST!

  She wanted to believe him. Needed desperately not to be the only one left.
r />   “So what are you doing?” she asked.

  “Hiding.”

  “Hiding?” Consuela said in disbelief. “How?”

  “Very, very well.” Wish smiled as he said it. “T can’t see me.”

  She was certain that Wish had lost his mind. The tree trunk was hardly any cover at all.

  “Listen, Wish . . .”

  He grew angry. “No, Bones, I mean it!”

  The air rippled and tore, forced open with the blackened, pitted point of a sword. One, two boots later, and Tender sauntered through.

  Wish cowered, silent and scared. Consuela turned to see the real face of Tender—animate, alive, and malevolent.

  He smiled.

  “Bones,” Tender said lovingly. “You’re out.”

  “Tender,” she murmured. “Jason . . .”

  “Don’t!” Tender slashed the air as if his hand were the sword. The Flow curdled and burned as his gesture passed. “Don’t make it worse for yourself than it already is,” he said, cocking his head to one side. “Where’s V?” he asked. “Hung in your closet like a cloak?” His eyes glittered, grin widening. “Maybe a robe that you can sleep with, curled up against your skin?”

  Consuela tried to ignore him. Fear prickled her spine and ground in her molars. She was all too aware of the smear of shadow in her hand.

  Tender swung the sword casually. “Where’s Wish?” he asked.

  She’d checked to see that he was safe, jerking her head back, too late—horribly, far too late. Tender raised his sword, hot and hiss-popping.

  “He’s here?” Tender laughed, following the tilt of her face. He marched into the thin copse where Wish squatted, undetected. The skinny boy squeezed his eyes and mouth shut as Tender passed.

  “Well done! I didn’t think you had it in you, Abe,” Tender called out as he walked. “I mean I knew you were a coward, but I didn’t think you were so good at it.” He tapped the sword out like a blind cane, touching this tree and that.

  Consuela didn’t meet Wish’s eyes; she didn’t want to give him away again. Tender really couldn’t see him there. She had to distract him, somehow.

  She took a deep breath. “Sissy . . .”

  “Oh, please.” Tender sneered. He spared her a glance that was one word: disappointed. “‘Avenge me’ is just a pretty way of committing murder and asking someone else to take the fall. Are you really that stupid?” He stalked the trees. “Maybe you are. You should have taken me up on my offer and gotten out, Bones, and left the Flow to me. You would’ve never missed it. It would have been just a bad dream.”

  Silenced, she willed that there was one wish left for her—that Wish would break off his tooth and she’d come up with something to save them all. That miracles could occur. That Tender would not find his friend. That they would somehow all escape. That they would win in the end and that she wouldn’t be alone. And maybe V would come back in the nick of time . . .

  But this wasn’t the time for wishful thinking.

  Exasperated, Tender stopped by the fence, straightened, and sighed.

  “Okay, have it your way,” he said with a shrug. “I know in your rabbit heart there beats the fantasy of a knight.” Tender taunted the air, but his eyes were trained on Consuela. “Let’s see if you can stand by and watch as I smash Bones to bits.”

  Consuela started backing away as Tender strode purposefully toward her. He gave a couple of strong swipes with the blade that split the air with a wood-chipper moan. He kept coming, gaining speed.

  “’S not like Sissy’s,” he warned under his breath. “I knew you were there, Wish; somewhere outside the door. Did you hear her scream? Did you hear her die? I know you couldn’t bear to see it, so close your eyes, buddy, because this one’s full screen!”

  It was chilling the way Tender came at her while talking to somebody else. She hadn’t a skin, hadn’t a power, and raising her arm bones in defense only excited him more. His chest expanded, his round nostrils flared wide. He was coming too fast! Too fast! He had to slow down, give her time . . .

  Tender gripped the hilt in both hands like a baseball bat. He spoke over his shoulder.

  “Funny thing is, I have no idea what’ll happen when this hits.” He said it so simply, like a boy with a pipe bomb at school—curious to see what would happen because whatever the consequences, it would be interesting.

  His shoulders shifted. She shrank back.

  Tender sensed Wish coming as the thinner boy whirled into view, branch in hand. It looked as if Wish had planned to club him from behind. But Tender turned and casually smashed the sword pommel into Wish’s face.

  Blood exploded, sending Wish backward, spitting out swearwords and teeth. Hands clapped against his nose, Wish bubbled and gagged.

  “There you are,” Tender said gently. “I had a choice, you know, whether to knock out your teeth or cut off your thumbs. Either way, no more wishes for you.”

  “No’ mah wish,” Wish spat thickly.

  Tender mocked him by cupping a hand to his ear. “What’s that?”

  “No’ MAH wish!” Wish’s eyes sparked tears and daggers. He shouted, “Yourz!”

  It registered in Tender’s face, a flip book of thoughts/ emotions/memories shuffled in his eyes; the final page settled dark and foreboding under his low, black brows.

  “See, now you’ve made me mad.”

  Tender spun the sword in his hand and advanced on Wish, who scrambled, stumbling, prone.

  “Tender! No!” Consuela wrapped herself around Tender’s back in a crow’s cage of limbs. Her jawbone clamped into the pit of his shoulder, her fingers dug into his pale throat. He stumbled under her unexpected weight, but it wasn’t enough to trap his arms.

  Tender laughed. Wish grimaced, missing both front teeth, his pink tongue splashed with runny blood. Consuela squeezed Tender harder, yanking her radii under his chin. Gagging, Tender grabbed the top of her skull, holding his sword out like a game of keep-away.

  “Want me to snap your neck?” he hissed. “That’s not what I want, but I’ll do it, I swear.”

  She didn’t care. At that moment she knew it wasn’t Wish’s turn to die.

  Let me save you, the past whispered.

  But those words were meant for her.

  Tender let go of his weapon, smacking both hands against her parietal lobe, braced to pop her skull from her spine over the crux of his shoulder. She knew it was coming as she clawed his neck, using his jaw as a hinge, digging her sharp fingertips in. Consuela didn’t have the strength. She couldn’t stop him.

  Wish rushed forward, a frontal assault, which Tender welcomed with surprising largesse, snatching the buried hilt backhanded and cleaving the sword through the air.

  The blade caught Wish in his side, momentum digging it deep.

  Wish squealed. Consuela fell. Tender coughed.

  There was a moment where everything stopped, frozen and silent, as the Flow wobbled like gelatin back into place.

  Time bubbled, popped, and started anew.

  Stumbling erect, dragging the blade, Tender held his throat and croaked, “Done.” Parting a phantom curtain, he plunged into the Flowing darkness. Gone.

  Consuela scrabbled through the dirt to where Wish lay bleeding, the edges of rib poking out with some pinkish, wet ballooning pooling over his jeans. He clawed at his mouth with spastic fingers. She knew what he was trying to do. Consuela felt for his hand, but he slapped it away. His one act of defiance might have brought her to tears, but she felt nothing but numb denial.

  “Give me my wish,” she whispered hotly, propping his head on her hand. “I can wish you safe! I can wish that none of this happened!”

  He tried to laugh, his eyes rolling, his tongue wagging blind. “Heh. Doez’n’ work like tha’.” Wish’s head lolled dangerously. He tapped his eyetooth with one quivering digit. “Break it. Blease.”

  Consuela didn’t hesitate. She cinched the tiny fang in her pincher grip. Snapped it. Wish groaned nasally and cupped his quivering hand. She
placed the tooth in his palm.

  “He wished . . . no’ t’ be so aware of everything all th’ time.” Wish’s eyes crinkled as he dry-laughed and winced. “So I made m’self one o’ th’ everything, righ’? Can’t see you, then. Invizzible. To him.” He poked his wobbling finger at her, like he had rheumatoid arthritis. Not like he was really dying in her arms. “Only t’ him.”

  Wish tried to sit up, but failed, eyes bright.

  “Tender’s wish . . .” he said. “I give i’ to you.”

  She stared as he struggled to lift his head. Pursing his lips, he blew a stuttering breath flecked with spittle and blood. The tiny tooth in his palm dissolved into dust, taking off as a tiny, white cricket flitting erratically with the sound of cellophane. She watched as it disappeared into the tall grass.

  When she looked down, Wish was dead.

  chapter sixteen

  “Man collaborates actively in defending universal order, which is always being threatened by chaos. And when it collapses he must create a new one, this time his own.”

  —OCTAVIO PAZ

  He wasn’t running. There was no need to run. There were only the two of them left, after all.

  Tender stood in the vast, unwoven Flow, muted flashes and slipstream rainbows moving sluggishly through the fog. He stirred a patch with the tip of his boot as if trying halfheartedly to unearth a coin stuck in the dirt. His sword was gone, sheathed somewhere.

  Consuela crept forward, her bones sinking into the Flow, unheard and unseen and miraculously unfelt. Wish’s cloak of invisibility wafted over her as firm and whole as any skin. She wore it like armor, but was otherwise unarmed. She planned to rend Tender apart with her bare hands, if necessary.

  Where was his sword?

  She’d tracked him here and it needed to end. Here. Now.

  She stood right in front of him—invisible, ineffable—glaring hatefully at him.

  This was it. She shook imperceptibly, her fingertips buzzing. Tender stared at his boot while she willed herself to do something terrible.