Armin looked in something like disbelief—although he needed to be careful about such words now —at this creature both so majestic and so impossibly ironic. He shook his head.
“I don’t know, man. It’s like you don’t want people to believe in you.”
“People must do the right thing because it’s the right thing to do, Armin, not because they believe in some god. I am not here for people to believe in me. I have my own life to live, to begin with. Full-time godding is really not my thing at all. It was okay in the olden days. I was younger, then, full of hope. Smaller place. Fewer people. It was all fairly local and slow-paced. But now? No. I will teach them what I can, if they are willing to learn. More I cannot do for them. And it would serve no purpose if I could, trust me. People are not buildings. They are more like gardens. You can plant the seed, water it, tend it, but whether it grows or not…” Van shrugged.
Armin looked at him quizzically. He still could not get a grip at all on Van’s sardonic irony when he was delivering a joke with a seriously deadpan face or joking about something truly serious.
“Tell me something else, truly. Are you really immortal? Eternal?”
“I am one of the long seasons of this world, Armin. I come and go, begin and die, and back again, always the same. Always a bit different.”
“You will go? Die? When?”
Van smiled. “I think I can promise you that I will stick around for a while. For as long as you live, if you want me to. And when your time, comes, if you want, we can go through the gate together.”
“You would … die for me?”
“That is a very romantic way to put it for such a realistic young man. I would cross over with you. If you want.”
“I would like that,” said Armin softly, searching for Van’s hands again. “But listen,” he said, because his brain was whirring, in overdrive with questions, “how do you manage the paperwork? Birth certificates and inheritance taxes and, and…”
“Oh, that. Well, you know, I can put the fear of god into people. Literally. It’s not … nice. I try to avoid it, as a rule. But for a bureaucrat, I am always willing to make an exception.”
Armin melted into laughter again.
“Do you think it’s really true, then,” he asked after a minute, “my gateway? In Greenland?”
“Oh, I’m almost certain of it. There are gateways all over the place. Some of them are better guarded than others. Most of them are so thin that no human could squeeze through. But they are there, nonetheless, weaving and stitching all the worlds together. Even I don’t know the half of them. The elder is one of the great gates. Maybe the last one that is left now, on this earth. I must keep it safe, Armin.”
Armin frowned slightly, because all his life he had always, always, wanted to know things. He had always had to ask the hard questions.
“What’s on the other side, Van?”
“Let’s find out together when the time is right, shall we?” said Van gently and laid his forehead against Armin’s forehead, bowing low, and the prongs at the front of his antlers rested on top of Armin’s head for a moment, sending a shiver down his spine.
“What would happen if I just gave a peek? Shamanic journey, like?”
Van heaved a long sigh.
“You know when you asked me about Monet?”
“Yes? Oh shit, do you mean that…?”
“Yeah. He took a peek.”
Armin stood silent in Van’s arms as the night gathered around them.
“So how come he went over? Monet?” he asked after a long time, genuinely curious. “Did you take him there?”
“Er…” said Van, with a most un-godly, guilty look, like a dog that knows he’s been bad.
“You did?”
“Look, it was the sixties, okay? We all had these ideas—that human consciousness had reached a new level, or something. Anyway, we were a bit … imprudent.”
“By imprudent you mean stoned?”
“Yeah, that’s more or less what I mean.”
“A god can get stoned?”
“Oh, big time, honey.”
Armin succumbed to another fit of helpless laughter.
Van grimaced. “I am not proud of it, okay? It was his wish, he insisted, but I do feel responsible. I see to it he has a roof over his head and enough to eat and not too much to drink and as much paint as he can throw at a canvas. He’s as happy as he can ever be in this life, poor soul. But even so…”
Armin caressed his cheek, running his fingertips through that beard. Van seemed in need of comfort.
“You could go over,” Van said softly. “Shaman like. It’s been done before, of course. Many times. Every age needs a few true seers. But it’s always the toss of a coin, you know? You could do it and come back as right as rain, and very wise. Or you could come back with your mind unhinged and stuck between two worlds, unable to be part of either. There is no telling. My love. Listen. If it were that easy, don’t you think I would have let Allie through, or Meintje? Just for a peek? Just to say goodbye? Just to say I love you one last time? Just to know that they are all right? They all want to know. They all need to know. And I have to weigh it all. Their loss and their need eat at me, day and night, since the day humans learned how to grieve. And yet I must hold the door, Armin. Not for the dead. The dead need no door. The dead don’t need me. I must hold it for the living, Armin. This is your one life on this earth. And it’s worth living. This ravaged earth is still fair, Armin. And it would be my privilege to spend your lifetime here with you. Don’t put this life at risk, my love. Don’t ask me to let you through, not yet. If you ask me, I will have to decide, to say yes or no. Don’t put this burden on me, I beg you. Because I tell you, I couldn’t bear it if you became … damaged. Your time will come. The time to know the other side. And when it does, I swear, I promise, I’ll take you over myself. You need not fear. You need not cross alone. I’ll hold you in my arms, heart to heart, and we’ll go together.”
Armin caressed his cheeks again and kissed him, long and tenderly, because Van’s pain and his love cut him like a knife.
“Was he your lover? Monet?” he asked softly.
“No. More of a … seeker. Of truth. Much like you. Fearless.”
“Oh, yeah, me, the fearless one. I have basically been scared shitless by something or other ever since I stepped into this valley.”
“Well, a fear of unidentified and wild things is a healthy personality trait. Key to self-preservation, in fact. But in the end, most people fear the truth more than they fear the unknown. You don’t. You stared right into the gates of the Underworld and didn’t step back. Looked into the living face of a forgotten god and didn’t flinch or scream or go into denial. That makes you very special, Armin.”
He smiled again, finally, and Armin smiled back.
“Well,” he said eventually. “Okay. One thing.”
“What, my love?”
“You will quit smoking. Starting tomorrow. Understood?”
“What? What? Listen, child, I am immortal, okay? I am not going to be killed by nicotine!”
“No, but I might. Or Michel.”
“I always go into the garden to smoke when he’s around. I’ll open the windows, okay? Step out to the garden?”
“That is not the point,” said Armin sternly. “What sort of example are you giving Michel? Eh? And all those other kids? Maja and Sofia and Josefine? Eh? They look up to you. You put this … this charm on them, on us, and they adore you and look up to you, and what sort of example are you giving them? Prancing around smoking cigars. Cigars, for fuck’s sake. You want to educate this generation? Very well, you will start with quitting that shit.”
Van looked down and shuffled his feet, morosely.
“Okay.”
“What? I didn’t hear you.”
“I said okay. Fair point. As you say.”
Armin nodded happily. “Good,” he said.
“Insolent, self-satisfied pup,” muttered Van but with a rueful
grin that had Armin’s knees wobbling under him.
He hugged him tightly, sinking his face into Van’s neck, and felt Van’s hand resting on his head, stroking his hair lightly.
“My God,” he whispered, finally, simply overcome by awe. “My God.”
“You keep saying that,” said Van, smiling into his hair, caressing his neck gently.
Armin laughed a little. “Yeah, I do, don’t I?”
“Do you mean it?” asked Van very softly.
“Wh—? What?” Armin looked up into Van’s eyes, those liquid, infinite brown eyes, and they went through his soul like burning honey. “Yes. Yes I mean it. You are mine. You are, aren’t you?”
“I am. For this age of the world, I am. Body and soul.”
Armin hugged him again, as tight as he could, and Silvano or Cernunnos or whatever his name was, was as straight and hard and ancient as the roots of the earth. It was like hugging a great rugged tree or a pillar of stone. But then the god hugged him back, and with every fiber of his ancient, immortal being, he was also Van, his warm, breathing, infinitely tender human lover.
Armin rocked gently in Van’s arms and breathed in the air of the night, the silence of the wilderness out there, a silence pierced with a thousand living sounds, birds and bats, insects on the wing, branches and leaves, small burrowing creatures, the deep, harsh bark of a deer and the eerie scream of the disappointed vixen. And he opened his eyes and took in the gray-blue darkness of the forest, embroidered with black trees and diamond stars, and he thought, for a moment, that he could almost glimpse it, down at the bottom of the valley, the faint luminescent circle opening into that Other sky, lying in wait under the great old elder tree, that gate that he would walk through one day, hand in hand with his own god.
The End
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BONUS SAMPLE CHAPTER
WOMAN AS A FOREIGN LANGUAGE
Katherine Wyvern
Copyright © 2017
Nina
It’s 9:15 PM, and I am alone in my room. Alone and ugly, and clumsy as ever.
Awkward. That’s the word.
Lizzie’s old boots stand on a corner of my table, darkly gleaming among a ruin of disheveled old boxes. Alien, those boots, in this room. Black leather. High heels, buckles and laces. Sultry boots I’d never buy. I’d never dare. Never think I’d be worthy of them. But they are here now, like a promise, a challenge, a blessing, a gift from beyond the grave (her grave, God help us), a gift from beyond the world, from … where?
They sit there, alluring and accusing, like a question mark. Who are you? What are you? What do you want to be? Do you dare … to be?
I don’t know.
I constantly think of Julia, dream of Julia, every last shade of Julia, so much so that I almost think I know her, that I know who she is, and what it would be like to be loved by her.
But I don’t know what to make of me.
****
Why Julia would want me is a mystery anyway. The glitch in all my dreams. The false note that makes the whole music jangle.
Because Julia is … Julia is … she is … gorgeous. I sit here, dreaming of her, but she is not here. How could she? The thought of her inside this flat is grotesque, in any case. Her life is sparkle and glamor and music, and I … well.
I can weld. That’s something. But not much.
The first time I saw her, I thought I might fall over backwards. Now, every day, I feel that I will fall (forward) at her feet, flat on my chin like a bearskin, in deference to her beauty, but the first time I saw her, I thought I’d go down backwards. The lift’s door opened, I made to step out, and there she was, hard by the doors, waiting to step in, six feet tall and in the clouds.
Well, truth be told the first thing I ever saw of Julia was her boots. But in Julia’s case that is a good start.
I seldom look further up than my toes as I go about the world, so my eyes first locked on these boots, silvery, velvety, ankle-high boots with heels like skyscrapers. (I have never known anyone else who wears heels like those. And I have never seen Julia without heels. It’s like they are an integral part of her anatomy). Over the boots, black stockings over straight skinny legs that went on and on and on, and then this short, knitted dress, black and silver threads twisted together in a soft, crawling, sparkling darkness, narrowly framed by a long, unbuttoned black coat. And a grey scarf with silky fringes swaying down to her waist.
My eye had to travel a long, long way to get to the top of her. Lipstick, poppy red, a rose of a mouth, impeccably painted, slightly smaller than the true shape of her lips. And over that, under a mane of brown-blond hair, a long nose, and … eyes.
Julia’s eyes. Julia’s green, green eyes.
Deep-set eyes, but sharp enough to poke a hole in your soul.
Hard eyes, I thought, that day, although lately it seems to me there is mostly a sort of sadness to them.
By then my head was so far back that, had I fallen, it would have been backwards, back in the lift. And down to hell for all I cared.
****
There are boxes everywhere. I never knew Lizzie had so many clothes. Mostly I only ever saw her in faded slacks, stained with paint in a hundred different colors. If I were more of a party animal I might have seen her in her evening finery sometimes, but now I can only imagine her, or go through old pictures with John. She also had enough shoes to fill a shop. John gave everything to me after the funeral. We were the same size, Lizzie and I, and I could wear any of her things, but dear me, how would I ever look in these slinky, sparkly, elegant things? Like a sheep prancing around on two feet.
The idea was to sell the lot on eBay, given time. John has no leisure to do it, and he just wanted the stuff out of the house.
“I can’t bear to see them every time I open the wardrobe,” he said, and I understand.
So now everything is here, in my tiny room. There is no space for all this. I move around among piles of evening dresses gleaming with sequins, tight leggings, bejeweled scarves, and high heeled shoes and boots and sandals of every shape and color known to human kind. I’d need a walking aid to wear these. Like a tottering invalid, hanging on for dear life. There’s enough sparkly around here these days to charm a legion of magpies. Half the time I don’t know whether to giggle or cry. Truth is, I don’t have time to put them up on eBay either, and neither can I bear to throw everything away, so here I am, living cheek by jowl with Lizzie’s manifold glittery ghosts.
The black boots are the loudest ghost in the room. They never cease to chide and nag, and whisper their “What if… What if…”
The thing is, they are so lovely, that once I took them out of the box I could not bring myself to put them back in. They don’t want to be confined to the darkness. They want to bask in the light. Poor things, they came to the wrong place, but even so, I keep them on my table. They languish in the pale lamplight, like a houseplant in too dim a room. But it’s better than being in the box.
I know I cannot wear them. They have heels as tall as my palm. They are almost Julia-heels. Not quite, not even Lizzie could wear Julia-class heels, but almost.
I might fall off those heels and break my neck. How do women walk in these things? How does Julia do it? She walks like gravity was invented for someone else. Probably me.
I am all of the earth. A drab, slouching, house-bound kobold. I belong to the mine and the smithy. Julia is all of the air. A foot and a half closer to the sky than I am, that’s for sure.
Perhaps I should try on the black boots. They would propel me a good four inches up into that rarefied atmosphere where Julia has her being, and that much closer to Julia’s mesmerizing eyes. Until I fall, at least.
There always comes a fall, for those of us affected by the laws of gravity.
&nbs
p; ****
Julia
Julia locked the door of her flat quietly and walked down the hallway towards the lift, careful to step on the long, blue carpet that ran the length of the corridor. Not quite in the middle of the carpet, where it was most worn, but towards the edge, where some body was left to the old threadbare thing. It can be tricky to walk in tall heels down a plush carpet, but this old thing was not plush anymore. And she preferred to walk her heels quietly if she managed, in this building. Only last week the ratty old man two doors down had stuck his pinched ugly face out of the door to check her out when she passed. Minding one’s own business was not a popular pastime in this neighborhood.
Abbie was all right. A former beautician now turned door-to-door seller of cosmetic products, in this condominium (pandemonium, she called it, charmingly) Abbie counted as a woman of the world, and indeed there was something endearingly whorish about the easy way she had instantly introduced herself to Julia (and into her flat). It had taken Abbie less than a minute to figure Julia out, which was not bad. Some people never got ‘round to it at all (something Julia still found astonishing, in a very pleasant way), and those who did usually needed quite a bit longer than that. Julia had taken to Abbie, who was remarkably unprejudiced and liked to talk about people’s quirks, about cats, the mysteries of mascara and really good shoes, and loved to bake. Julia had a fondness for rare black teas, and the two of them had had many a good chat over tea and cake, even if Julia had to go easy on the cake, and Abbie looked like she liked gin rather more than tea.
It was not quite 7 o’clock, and it was pitch dark outside. Dark, rainy and cold. Julia was not especially fond of summer weather. The sun brought her freckles out like nobody’s business. She had had a boating holiday in Greece two years back with some friends (Julian’s idea, not hers) and came back home looking like the 101 Dalmatians, the whole fucking hundred and one of them together. Still, there was just so much winter that she could stomach. A good concealer will fix freckles, but nothing could fix the depressing feeling that had settled in her guts for the last few months.
The Elder Man Page 24