The Child Eater

by Rachel Pollack

  If she knew—if she had any idea—that Matyas had met such a person, she didn’t show it. When Matyas had first discovered this idea, that a High Prince had guided Joachim, he had wanted to run to Veil and find out if it could possibly be the same one. But he would have had to admit he’d hidden this experience for so long, and wouldn’t he have appeared ungrateful after everything she’d taught him? And something else. He didn’t want to share this knowledge, with Veil, with Horekh, with anyone. It was the only thing he had that was his alone. Now he said, “So the Kallistocha created it.”

  “No, no, you don’t understand. No one created the Tarot of Eternity. The Tarot of Eternity has always existed.”

  Matyas sat back. “What? That’s . . . that doesn’t make any sense. You mean the Creator made it? Along with the world?”

  She leaned forward to touch his hand. “Matyas, you know what I mean.”

  “No!”

  “Yes. The Creator used the pictures to create the world. They were not a history but a blueprint. When the Creator brought Herself out of nothingness, the Tarot of Eternity was waiting for Her.”

  “But I saw it! It’s just pictures!”

  “What you saw was a copy of a copy. And even then . . .” She did not need to remind him how he’d become lost in them.

  He said, “Did he know? The Kallistocha? About the spell?”

  She frowned. “No one really knows. Joachim himself had no answer.”

  “Then did Joachim discover it?”

  “No.” She sighed. “Florian was not Joachim’s only disciple. There was . . . another.” There was something sharp in the air as she said that, like a shadow with knives.

  Matyas said, “And this other disciple—he was the one who discovered the Spell of Extension?” What was it he’d read in Florian? Beware the Tree that seeks to flower forever.

  “Yes.”

  “What was his name?”

  “No one knows.”

  “What? Florian must have known.”

  “Matyas,” she said carefully, “have you never wondered how Florian died?”

  “Oh God,” Matyas said. “He killed her. Because she knew his name!”

  “It was more than that. He killed her, yes, but then he used her body to cast a Spell of Forgetting. He took his name out of memory, buried it under a great red rock where no one could ever discover it. It was the only way to ensure that neither Florian nor anyone else could ever block him from the Spell of Extension.”

  “Then what do we call him? Just ‘the other’?”

  She took a deep breath. “No. We call him the Child Eater.”

  Matyas jumped up and began to move about the room. He wanted to kick over her piles of books, smash her carvings, but he just couldn’t make himself do it. “This is wrong,” he said, not looking at her. “You’re wrong. You shouldn’t have kept this from me. It wasn’t right.”

  “Matyas,” she said, then stopped.

  What? he thought. What lie or trick was she about to try now? But instead of some elaborate speech, or the opposite, a cryptic reference that she refused to explain, Veil did something astonishing. She began to cry. It wasn’t loud, or gulping, the way Royja sometimes did, but there was no mistaking what filled her eyes. “You’re right,” she said softly. “Of course you’re right. I knew it was impossible. And unfair. I couldn’t help myself, I had to try.”

  “Try what? What was so important that you had to lie to me?”

  Her voice came even softer now, almost a whisper. “I wanted to protect you.”

  Matyas opened his mouth for some sharp, furious answer but nothing came. All he could say was, “Protect me from what?”

  “Oh, Matyas, watching you discover the wonders of Florian, even just your delight in simple spells, has brought back a joy I lost a very long time ago. I couldn’t bear to corrupt that.”

  “So you were protecting yourself. Not me.”

  She looked startled for just a second, then said, “Yes, perhaps that’s true.” She shook her head slightly and the thin white hair came alive for an instant then settled back around her frail shoulders. She said, “I told you that the Child Eater seals himself off with a Spell of Forgetting, and this is true. But that spell works so very well because people want to forget. People like Lukhanan, those who think magic is all about power and prestige—”

  “And money,” Matyas said with a slight smile.

  Veil nodded. “And money. They don’t want to know about something dark and fearful in the heart of existence. If there were no barrier against memory, they would build one as soon as possible.”

  “You didn’t forget.”

  “No.”

  “Are you saying I’m no better than Lukhanan?” He didn’t wait for an answer. Instead, he turned his back on her and marched to the window. He knew what he’d said was unfair but he didn’t care. Down below in the courtyard, the wizards and apprentices talked and argued and practiced as if nothing had happened that day.

  He shook his head and raised his eyes beyond the Academy, beyond even the city walls, out past the Winter Gate to a flat, rocky area dotted with stunted trees and wooden platforms. The City of the Dead, they called this place. The platforms, about seven feet high with steps up one end, ran some ten feet long and three feet wide. Stained with age and blood, the Offering Tables, as people called them, had stood there for hundreds, if not thousands, of years. Overhead, vultures circled and glided, waiting for funeral processions to march from the city, wailing and ringing bells as they brought dead bodies to lay out on the platforms. The vultures took the meat, the Offering Table took the blood and the family carried home the bones.

  At one time the whole area might have been busy, for people die all the time, but recently a young queen brought in from a land across the Southern Sea had introduced a new custom: burial. Now the nobility and the rich stored their dead underground, with stone monuments to impress future generations. It was only the poor and the old-fashioned who fed the vultures.

  Matyas stared out, narrowing and focusing his eyes until he saw them: a small handful of downcast people, only three or four in the traditional white robes of a funeral, and at their head a young woman in a ragged dress. She held that thing in her arms, the empty puppet that had once been her brother. Matyas could not imagine how hard that was, but Lahaylla kept her body straight, her head high even as she marched up the steps of the Offering Table.

  Matyas might have expected her to shroud the body in some beautiful fabric, if for no other reason than to conceal the missing head, but no, she laid him out exactly as he was when Matyas had showed him to her. She set him down without ceremony and immediately descended the steps to wait.

  The vultures circled, arced, moved closer—and then climbed up again. Three times they moved down toward what looked like a body, and each time they soared up again, confused. Finally they simply gave up and went back to their patterns in the sky. Only then did Lahaylla begin to wail and sway and hold her head in agony. Thankfully, she was too far away for Matyas to hear her.

  He turned around to stare at Veil. The old woman looked small and weak in her narrow chair. Matyas said, “I want to fly.”

  Veil shook her head. “I’ve told you—”

  “No more lies!” He stepped toward her and she stood up to face him.

  “Why do you always think I’m lying?”

  “Because you’re so good at it.”

  “The world has limits,” Veil said. “Structures. This is what Joachim and Florian created.”

  “And the other? He was there, too. Remember?”

  “Yes.”

  “Break the rules. Tell me the secret.”

  She sighed. “Matyas, do you see that black stone in the corner, by the stove? Bring it to me.”

  “What?” He looked where she said, and yes, there was a black rock, about twice the size of his foot, just past the stove where he’d cooked their meals every day for years. He remembered now that he’d seen it when he first arrived, and p
robably hundreds of times since then, but he appeared to have forgotten it. He said, “If I bring it to you, will you teach me to fly?”

  She shrugged. “We will see.”

  In two steps he was there. When he tried to scoop it up it wouldn’t move and he nearly pitched head first into the wall. He squinted at it. It was a trick, of course, like that climb up the stairway. He summoned all the spirits that hovered at the ends of his fingers to bring energy into his arms. He bent down and pulled so hard the veins in his neck threatened to break through his skin and send his blood flying in all directions. When it still wouldn’t move, he summoned the spirits who slept under the tower to wake up and push from below. Slowly he felt it stir, half an inch, an inch. Then he heard terrified shouts, from the courtyard, he thought, but when he listened, he realized they came from people all over the world. He dropped the stone and sent away his helpers. Exhausted, he had to lean against the wall to stand up.

  Veil said, “You see? How can you expect to perform miracles when you cannot pick up a single stone?”

  Matyas said, “That was the night sky. You crazy old woman, you wanted me to bring you the sky! What would have happened if I had done it?”

  When she smiled, flickers of light came through her skin. “Then maybe you wouldn’t need to fly.”

  Matyas launched himself toward the alcove where he’d slept for six years. He grabbed the box from under the bed, quickly checked to make sure everything was in it, then held it against his chest as he rushed past her toward the door. He left the suit of clothes she’d given him under the bed.

  “Matyas—” Veil said, but he didn’t stay to hear the rest. At the top of the stairs he hesitated, worried she might turn it back into celestial steps and he would never reach the ground. He didn’t care, he realized. He raced downward and thankfully they remained ordinary wood.

  Outside, in the bright courtyard, a few people looked curiously at him, and at the wooden box he clutched so tightly. Then they looked away again and returned to whatever important matters were moving them through the day.

  Chapter Twenty-Four

  JACK

  With the fear of the mythical Jessica Green hanging over him, Mr. Chandruhar did not try again to expel Simon. He did, however, send him home twice more, both times for fighting. Both times the principal greeted Jack with a defiant stare, arms crossed, certain that if necessary, he could summon witnesses to testify that it was Simon who hit first, Simon who had attacked some helpless innocent, Simon who was in fact the bully.

  Jack did not have the strength to argue. He knew, he believed, with all his heart that his son was not some kind of violent sociopath. Simon had never been one of those children who tortured the neighbor’s cat, who set fire to things. It agonized Jack that he had to even think of such things. Simon was a good boy. Until . . . until the troubles started, Simon had been a happy child. He’d had friends. Got good grades. Natural leader, isn’t that what the day-care woman had called him? What the hell had happened?

  Jack couldn’t believe that tearing up a stupid deck of cards could actually make his son sick. It made no sense. It had to be a symptom, not the cause. If Simon wasn’t already sick, he wouldn’t have reacted that way. Period. In fact—how could Simon have known? Jack kept going back to that moment when Carla called to say Simon had been taken ill. It was just after Jack destroyed the cards, certainly well before Simon came home and searched for them. So that proved it, right? Because if Simon didn’t even know what his father had done, that couldn’t have been what made him sick. So when Howard Porter asked Jack if he could think of anything, any incident, large or small, that might have thrown Simon into such a terrible decline, Jack could only shake his head, with a thoughtful expression molded on to his face, and say no, there was nothing.

  Sometimes, when he thought Simon was safely asleep—as if, Jack reminded himself, sleep could ever be safe for Simon Wisdom—Jack would go to his own bedroom and pick up the picture of Rebecca he kept on his dresser. There she was, in the park where they’d first met. Look at her, he thought. Smiling, bright, no sense of . . . You could look at this picture and almost believe his dad’s favorite slogan had finally come to life: more normal than normal. “Oh, Bec,” he whispered. Was it his fault? Had he ignored all the warning signs? Indulged her too much? Laughed away all the psychic talk—or worse, pretended to believe it, in some misguided attempt to support the woman he loved?

  If Jack had made Rebecca get some kind of treatment, maybe they could have . . . what? Stopped her trying to burn their infant son in the fireplace? When he thought of that night, he pressed Rebecca’s picture against his chest, as if he could not bear to look at her, but even less to let her go. He thought of that awful, sick message splashed in paint all across the living room wall. “Remember!” Did she really believe he’d forget?

  Howard Porter wanted to send Simon to specialists. More specialists. All they ever did was upset Simon even more. What was the point? he asked Howard. With a forced optimism, the good Dr. Porter explained that they would provide more information. Such as what? Jack asked, and Howard said the sudden onslaught of symptoms without any clear cause suggested the possibility of seizures.

  Jack stared at him, as if to say, That’s what you call good news? To which Howard said, all in a rush, yes, because if it was seizures, they might not be curable but there was treatment. Drugs. More drugs all the time. Better drugs. Hardly any side effects at all. Better and better, Jack thought bitterly, but agreed to let Simon undergo more tests.

  Simon, however, did not care for the idea. Expecting this, Jack had suggested sedation, but Howard pointed out that they were scanning Simon’s brain patterns. So Jack tried the age-old parental three-pronged attack: assurances of no danger or discomfort, firm commands and, of course, bribes. Oblivious, Simon thrashed so much on the table that they had to strap him down, like . . . like a lunatic, Jack thought. A screaming lunatic in a straitjacket. At any moment he felt ready to demand they stop this torture and release his boy. But with Howard Porter at his side, occasionally gripping his arm, as if to reassure him—or restrain him—Jack let it carry through to the end. By then, Simon had in fact stopped resisting. When at last they unstrapped him and Jack rushed forward to help him off the table, Simon said nothing. And continued to say nothing for three days.

  When the tests came back negative for epilepsy and any other signs of seizure, Howard insisted that this too was a positive step. “At least we’ve ruled something out,” he tried to say. Too exhausted to speak, Jack just hung up the phone.

  A month after the “MRI incident,” as Howard called it, Jack received a letter from a Dr. Frederick Reina. The letterhead said “Reina Institute for Pediatric Neuro-Psychiatry,” with an address in Wisconsin. “Dear Mr. Wisdom,” it began, “I hope you will forgive this unsolicited letter. My colleague Dr. Howard Porter and I were discussing cases recently at a conference, and he mentioned your son’s deeply troubling condition.”

  Anger surged in Jack that Howard would treat Simon as some kind of interesting study. Upstairs at that moment, Simon was sitting on his bed, just staring at a blank television, and Dr. Porter thinks it’s okay to chat to some stranger . . .

  He took a deep breath and allowed hope to push the anger aside. The letter went on to say that Dr. Reina had seen such cases before and had good results with an intensive treatment he had developed at his Institute. Then it listed Simon’s symptoms—the nightmares, the outbursts, the behavioral changes, even what Dr. Reina called “a fixation or terror of the paranormal.” Who is this guy? Jack wondered, for he was pretty sure he’d never discussed Simon’s “fixation” with Howard—or anyone, for that matter.

  The letter ended with the news that Reina was about to visit the area on personal business and might he come and examine Simon? No charge. If Dr. Reina, with Jack’s agreement, of course, decided that treatment might prove beneficial, they could discuss a plan. He went on, “I do not know, of course, of your financial circumstances, bu
t I have never turned away a child in pain for monetary reasons. Restoring your son to health is all that matters.”

  Jack didn’t know what to do. Something in him wanted to tear the letter into small pieces and call Howard Porter to scream at him. But maybe Dr. Reina could really do something. He called Howard and asked him about Reina.

  “I don’t know that much about him,” Howard confessed, “but he seems to know the field really well.”

  “You don’t know him but you told him all about Simon?”

  “Yes, it’s a little strange, I know. He just seemed to understand, and I found myself telling him. Maybe he can help. I’ve got to be honest with you, Jack—I’ve run out of ideas.”

  “Why didn’t you tell me about him?”

  “I’m not sure. I guess I was embarrassed I told him so much. I know your concern for privacy.”

  Jack paused, then said, “Did you tell him anything . . . anything about the paranormal?”

  “What? No. What are you—? Jack, please don’t tell me you’re going to some quack promising miracles.”

  “No, no,” Jack said, then, “you think I should do it? Let him examine Simon?”

  Jack could hear Howard take a breath before he said, “Yes. Yes, I do.”

  The letter listed a website, Reinainstitute.org. Jack called it up and saw photos of a large stone building in a woodland setting, more like an elegant estate than a hospital. It didn’t say much about Dr. Reina’s methods, but there were photos of smiling kids, and letters from grateful parents, and endorsements from prominent pediatricians, some of whom Jack had heard of from his own research. They mentioned the “slightly unorthodox” approach of what they called his “total immersion therapy,” but added that the results were “nothing short of phenomenal.”

  There was a video as well, a couple around Jack’s age sitting on a couch with a boy who looked a year or so younger than Simon. They talked with him a moment or two, just long enough to demonstrate how cheerful he was, how normal. When they asked him about Dr. Reina, the boy’s face lit up and he said, “Doctor Reina’s cool.” Then they sent him away and their whole manner changed. The woman began to cry and the man put his arm around her, then he started crying as well. They told how three years ago Eric had changed, apparently overnight. He pulled away from them and all his friends, he couldn’t sleep without screaming nightmares, he even became violent with other kids. And he started obsessing about . . . “strange ideas” was all his mother would say.