“What have you in these boxes?” He moved the torch to get a better view.
“Nothing that concerns you,” Albion said sharply.
The sentry caught the tone and returned in kind, “I lead this very company for His Excellency, and what travels on the road to his door is indeed my concern. Show me and we shan’t keep you—”
“No, I daresay you won’t keep us any longer,” Albion said through his teeth, unable to weather more. “You beef-witted, churlish knave. Move your shite-buggering rout from our path. Aye, me, the stench!”
“Say again,” John the sentry said—eyes widening and taking a step back. He gripped the hilt of his sword, “Why, you don’t know who you’re speaking to—”
“Forsooth! Would thou match wits with me you poxmarked codpiece? Hold your tongue. Speak no more to me, or the Bishop will know of our delay here. Did you not read his summons? He is ill and requires our remedies. P’haps you cannot read, you fear driven, bum-sniffing pawn.”
The boy sat up at these insults and looked around at the company that was now taking an interest—grimaces and frowns. Many began to gather toward the wagon.
Albion’s voice raised ever louder, “And all of you that bear the red sash, you dim-witted hedge-pigs—know now that three travelers—three healers—upon a wagon carrying medicine to his Excellency has been delayed by this rump-fed bag of bile.” He spat, “I would gladly step off of this cart and challenge each of you in turn, to pay the theft of my time, and his lengthened suffering. I doubt any here have the courage to face me without his fellows. Poor wretches, I know you work as one, fearful concoction of menace and fear. Individual thought is scarce in this brood of rump-feeders.”
A sudden terror tingled through William watching their dangerous guide’s rant. He recalled Albion’s words, “We are not to be trifled with…”
“Be it known, we do not condone your crusade. You are all out of God’s favor! Now, we are in haste. Open the way. Open the way ahead, or by God, each of you will feel the Bishop’s wrath.”
At Albion’s last threat, and to William’s amazement, several of the rioters stood aside and backed away to their shelters and fires. John and Jakes still remained at the wagon’s side.
William could see that Albion’s tirade had astonished Jakes. His mouth was agape and his face drew thinner with each insult—one eye on Albion, the other was trained somewhere unknown.
John the sentry was not as shocked, though some incredulity and faint admiration was in his face. There was also a disquieting confidence. He thought to offer one last challenge. “You do not condone our banner of Christ?” he hissed.
Albion leaned toward him with a glare of flame, and issued a harsh, breathy whisper, “I do not, slave. You are nothing but pain and murder. I am the remedy. I am the healer. Step away.”
The words smashed into John’s thoughts. Albion waited and watched him. The sentry visibly clutched for some response. For Albion, it was enough. He snapped the reign and held John’s eyes as the horses started forward. When Albion released the man and turned, William saw him crimp a smile back.
Angry faces tracked them. Albion muttered breathy Italian insults as they rode on, “Mortacci tua. Faccia a culo. Pezzo di merda.” Early evening had deepened. Campfires flickered in the trees. Long angled shadows loomed across the road. William turned and looked back.
John the sentry was standing where they left him. He seemed dazed. Then, as if waking from a dream, he called after them, “We are the ones doing the healing, apothecary! You’ll soon see that we are the hand of God. You will soon see!”
Sleeping In Thunder
September, 1982
Venice, Italy
It was unusual for her to doubt. But lately, at night, before sleep, or just as she woke, she was trembling. Is what I do, murder? What of the ancient tales that justify my actions? Is what I’ve done, wrong? Will I be forgiven? For Helen Craven, guilt had always been easy to handle. It was like an old friend. She didn’t know a life without it. But this new calling. The dictums. The discipline. The killing. Every few days the same tremors returned. Rest was getting more and more difficult. Now she was waking in the middle of the night to a whispering voice in her room. A thunder in her dreams.
Arrived. I have arrived.
But what place is this?
From glittered eyelids and her tight wrap of a skirt—the yearning for Jimmy Page—the look in his eyes as she tumbled back into the night to the street below—the look in his eyes when he learned that she could not die—her memory hurtles through seasons, to now, a trained assassin living in Italy, sheltered beneath the roof of Albion Ravistelle, and steeped in a culture that has maintained its identity since the dawn of mankind.
She learned quickly. How to maintain. To overcome. To arrive within her new life. She pictured a future with Albion and their child. In the end, he would reign and she would be at his side. She would be Queen.
It had been two years since Albion’s last letter—its closing words, I will return soon. She convinced herself as seasons repeated in his absence that two years wasn’t long. In the grand scheme, she thought, even half a century is a blink.
Helen spent most of her time now studying. Three times a week a professor named Dr. Bonin would visit and guide her through math and science courses—through Albion’s library of ancient history, literature and poetry. Philosophy and mythology. Corey Thomas would check in—often discovering her wearing the bejeweled mask, lying in the middle of Albion’s bedchamber surrounded by open volumes of books. A Zeppelin record pounding out in the background—a chrome coffee pot, and delicate cup and saucer. “Stay and have a listen to this, Corey,” she would say to him, then pronounce, “Ye mock me—but the power which brought ye here / Hath made you mine. Slaves, scoff not at my will! / The mind, the spirit, the Promethean spark—It’s one of Albion’s favorites, Manfred, by Lord Byron. Ever read that?” The following day it was Dante, then Homer, Cicero, Shelly, Petrarch—the list grew as the months marched by. Most of the time, Corey would nod. Occasionally, he would say, “Yes, I read it the year it came out.”
The large leather bound book that Albion left for her she had read cover to cover several times over. She turned its pages usually late at night when the storms in her dreams kept her awake.
The book, The Toele, contained the tales and histories of the Itonalya on Earth. The earliest forms of language from its telepathic beginnings to the creation of oral Elliqui. Of the ancient realm of Wyn Avuqua, the first war between the Itonalya and the Divine Host, and the plight and sorrow of the immortals and their banishment from the Hereafter. With each perusal she found more of herself. She was a part of all of this. A soldier. A guardian.
She couldn’t help but imagine flights of angels, their numbers choking out the sunlight—the gods in battle rage on high, and the Itonalya below, the Guardians of the Dream, their eyes skyward, spears raised, defying the impossible powers that bore down. A battle fought before there was memory.
But this war was to be rekindled, and she would be at its center. It would happen again. She would stand amid the ranks of immortals, her voice raising a challenge. She would slash and stab the god and the goddess. And at the host’s front—upon the mount, was her Albion. His sword raised and shouting into the thunder clap of God: “Back, ye baffled fiends! The hand of death is on me—but not yours!”
The Stepping
Within the portrait of Loche Newirth
The muses whisper with each wavering step.
Loche has now adjusted. At least, as far as one can mentally adjust to balancing on a bridge of severed floating heads on the ocean of death.
He wonders what Basil would think of such a predicament. He would probably shrug, offer a joint and say something about the big deep heavy. But to make matters even stranger, Loche had never met Basil. He had written him, but never met him. He considers that meeting Basil might feel akin to meeting Julia for the first time, another of his creations. Though, of course, he
met Julia on Earth, whatever that means. Will it be different meeting one’s brother (a character in a story that one has written) in the Hereafter? Loche’s foot sloshes down into the face of a god. It holds him up.
—You will know him when you see him, Loche, the boy says.
He staggers again. There is the physical sensation of wet, cold feet, a biting sea air clamoring down his collar, the pangs of hunger and thirst. But most of all, the shaky and anxious tremors of fear. Doubt and madness lurking in the corners of his thought.
—You’re not listening, the boy says.
What does he mean, this guide, leading him into kingdom come?
—Listen, you will hear…
Still he is able to walk, tottering from face to face, skull to skull. Who were these poor beings? What did they want? Why would they choose a fate that ends here?
Then, it is apparent. Stark and unforgiving. Loche stops, balances and lets the buoyancy hold him.
The muses whisper with each wavering step.
A series of visions come.
He sees what they’ve seen, feels what they have felt. A swirling vortex of hope and longing. Crushed moonlight upon broken brick and rubble—a bombed out village. War torn countryside and human forms bent and coughing, seeking refuge. Smoke choking the air. Corpses frozen at the roadside.
Loche wobbles to another stop—bodies piled for burning, blisters from long handled shovels, trenches harrowed for mass graves, the pop of firing squads over the bluff. We’re next.
Stagger and stop—Cancer. The hospital’s ventilation system hushes the room with an even breeze of synthetic cool. The weird, recycled air scent. Hanging tubes, stacked boxes of latex gloves, glass cylinders full of cotton swabs, locked drawers, metal trays with sharp stainless instruments—a woman beside the bed in tears. Tiny frightened eyes staring up from the pillow.
Tumble forward, stop—crystal and lace. The flavor of champagne and skin. Orgasm and vertigo. Flight and love.
Stumble backward, stop—the numbing pressure of the sky’s weight falls away. The quiet moment when the voices halt and the questions don’t matter. When thought is not measured in distance but in grins. When the only mystery of the night’s sky is lodged in the hope of seeing it again, and again.
What are these memories?
A pale light is rising. The boy ahead wears Edwin’s expression of wonder—as if his father had just pulled a coin from his ear.
—A thousand poems with each step, the boy says. That is why we come. That is why we die.
It’s In The Stars
November 6, this year
Venice, Italy
Corey Thomas squints at the cluster of splashed paint where the ceiling and the wall meet. “I don’t understand,” he says.
Julia’s mouth is agape, eyes wide with amazement. “How could he have known?”
“Known what, Julia? Please, we haven’t much time here. Explain.”
“You don’t see it?” Julia asks. Then she shakes her head. “No, of course you don’t. Of course not.” She points up to the direct center of the misted dots—as if directing Corey to follow her finger along a trail of mythic stars.
“There.” Her voice is bright. Confident. Filled with hope. “Right there. The single star. My father taught me all about the constellations—especially when I could not sleep at night. There was one star he would point to—always—a single star tucked within a pattern of other points. It blinks, ever so slightly—when I would find it, looking out of my window, I would drift off to sleep.”
Corey looks up. “All I see is paint, Julia.”
“Yes,” she agrees. “Paint. Random paint splashes coming from Basil’s work down here on the easels.”
“And you’re saying there’s a familiar pattern?”
Julia holds both hands over her mouth. She speaks through her fingers. “Not only a pattern—but my pattern. My constellation. My dad named it,” she laughs, “it’s silly, I know. He called it the Julia Constellation. I know those stars. I know that pattern.” She steps closer to the wall, her face tilted up. “And there is the one single star.” She bows her forehead against the cool wall, and adds, “And it is blinking.”
“I don’t see a blinking star,” Corey says.
Julia doesn’t respond. Instead, she backs away from the wall and studies the area surrounding the cluster. “How could he have done this? Spatters from his brush? It is unbelievable.”
Corey watches her. “All of Basil’s work carries an unbelievable trait, you know.”
She now sees The Big Dipper, the constellations of Scorpius, Gemini, Leo. There are systems. Spiraled galaxies. She notes a curious curve in their array, as if they are arcing toward a point, like a trajectory to a target. A line connecting dots. As her eyes lower she processes the half finished sketches, the photographs and hand scrawled notes. At the top, where the constellations seem to point, is a half finished sketch—a woman in a flowing robe carrying flowers.
“What do you make of this drawing?” Julia asks.
Corey steps forward. “Elpis. I immediately think of Elpis.”
“Elpis?”
“Yes. Do you recall the jar of Pandora? Pandora’s Box?” Julia nods, “Of course.”
“When Pandora opened the jar, all the spirits of evil escaped and spread across the earth. When she realized what was happening she rushed to close the lid and found that everything had fled the jar save Elpis. Elpis is the spirit of Hope.” He leans closer and scrutinizes the rough sketch. “Strangely, she looks a little like you.” Julia sees the resemblance. He tilts his head. “Didn’t you live in Hope? Hope, Idaho?”
“Yes.”
Just below Elpis the shower of paint droplets, like a cosmic path, leads to a photo—a page ripped from a magazine. It shows the pyramids at Giza Egypt at night. A canopy of stars is draped over the ancient structures. She follows the seemingly accidental paint spray as it falls into the photograph. It appears to point directly at the smallest of the pyramids. Tacked just below the pyramid is another image, that of another robed woman carrying a pitcher on her shoulder. Julia points at it and glances at Corey.
“That would be Hebe,” he tells her. “Greek goddess of youth.”
“And the pyramid?”
“Pyramid of Menkaure,” he says. “What are you seeing, Julia? This room is filled with a thousand photos of world mysteries and myths and, well, rock bands. Why do you linger here?”
“I am sure Albion and his advisors have studied everything in here—looking to learn anything they could—”
“Completely. Many times,” he agrees.
“Corey,” she says, pointing up to the cluster. “There is no way they could decipher this. Only I, or we, could—this must be a message for—for me. This can’t be a coincidence.”
“Tell me.”
“That’s my constellation.” She lowers her finger to the sketch of the woman. “Elpis, goddess of Hope? I am from Hope. Hope, Idaho. And Hebe, the goddess of youth? That’s what my name means.”
“Your name?”
“Yes,” she says. “The name Julia. It means youth.”
“And the pyramid?” His cell phone vibrates. He lifts it to his eyes and nods.
Julia shrugs. “Something must be there.”
“I don’t know, my dear. It sounds a little far fetched to me,” he says as he types a message.
“Tell me that when we get to the Giza Plateau,” she says.
The Note
November 6, this year
Venice, Italy
“I fucking hate that mustache,” Leonaie says.
“Dear, please,” Samuel says as they cross the wood slatted bridge. “You must keep your voice down. There are ears all around us.”
“Okay,” Leonaie nods, “But why are we here?” Her legs ache. Each step is an effort.
Samuel sighs. His eyes dart from the canal, to the walkway ahead, to the doors beyond. It is late afternoon. The buzzing from the waterway is noisy. His wrist aches.
“And the glasses, my, my, my. Sexy, that’s what I say. Whoa!”
“Miss Leonaie,” Samuel grins. “Enough. Enough.”
“Well, I love them. You look like someone else. Tell me, when I become immortal, will you still dress up for me? I do hope so. It will keep things interesting. Will I tire of the simple things? Truly, will I?” She turns to learn if there’s an answer. Samuel stops on the bridge. His hand grips the rail.
“I cannot answer that,” he says, his eyes wet, far away and distant. “I hope you will remember me. Remember that we have forever before us.”
“Tears?” she says. “Really, dear? You are sweet. Such a delicate soul. I’m sorry. I will always love you, my Samuel. Always.”
Samuel Lifeson, with his one hand, and prosthetic hand, turns her toward him. “Soon, Leonaie, the ladder will reach. The ladder will join us.”
“Good,” she says.
Samuel’s cell phone vibrates. He lifts it. A text from Corey Thomas.
West entrance. Angelo Catena will meet you. I will be there ASAP.
Samuel taps a quick response:
We are at the door. Remember, we’re in a hurry.
Samuel pulls Leonaie into his arms. He waits. His eyes drift to the doors just feet away.
“I wrote a note. Now, where is it?” Her hand rummages in the bag slung at her side. When she raises it, she holds a yellow Post It note up before Samuel’s eyes.
“You see?” she says, “I’m right here with you.”
The door opens. Dr. Catena motions for them to come.
Samuel’s eyes scan Leonaie’s note.
Venice today.
Kiss Samuel.
Become immortal.
And William says, be quick about it.
Leaves of Fire: Part Two of the Newirth Mythology Page 22