“Something you can’t speculate about because you’re linear,” I murmured.
“Yes!” the boy shouted in an impassioned whoosh of cool air. “As annoying as it sometimes is, and as pissed off as it might make you, you just have to chill. Ananda gets it. Ananda is at peace. He’s not fighting it because he knows there is no point.”
“Something tells me it never even crossed his mind, actually.” I made a face and stamped my foot on the mat, “So I’m just supposed to keep on acting on my own intuition, allow him to remain silent, when he’s messing up his own dharma?”
“You can’t know that!” he yelled, fanning more salty seaweed smell my way. “God, I wish you could hear yourself the way I do!”
“Okay,” I opened my eyes and surrendered, hands in the air. He was right, there was no way in hell I could rely on Arthur and no reason why that should so offend me. I had already determined that I cared deeply for him in a way that I had never cared for any other person and could not go back on that. This was just the cost of doing business. Somehow, I had to come to terms. “But don’t tell me you haven’t at least tried to figure out how he does what he does. He seems to read minds, see the future, seems to feel bad about how his abilities affect us, but what is he doing, specifically?”
Deflated, Jinx looked away. “I don’t know. It seems like he can see the future, but I’m not sure he can. It’s in how he phrases it, you know. Nearest I can tell is that he is inferring multiple paths from a given point and that, when we act in certain ways, those other possibilities collapse and his vantage resets. But that would be happening all the time. It makes me wonder how many little safeties he’s set up, like the coagulant pack, that never turned out to be necessary. How many times did he do it and we never knew because, really, we never would?”
As I pondered it, I found myself crawling through my memory-web, looking for any behavioral anomalies that had stuck out at the time. He had done it often, had little gifts awaiting our needs, but I couldn’t come up with a single one that seemed extraneous. Then I remembered that many of my memories were not memories at all but visions I had had, possibilities that had never come true because of how I had acted. His time line, however non-linear, could not actually exist in my visions, so whatever was in my visions was not real for him or even possible for him to know about.
Only one even featured him: the vision of him rescuing me from Ursula’s men, the one in which he’d told me his name. I realized then that even though I had never needed the baby oil for my makeup, it had always been there, until it suddenly hadn’t anymore. It was the one thing that didn’t have another use, the one thing that had seemed out of place, and it had vanished just after I started staying there, just after Ursula had ended up in the morgue, about eighty years tardy. Then again, that vision was the first and only time I’d ever removed makeup in his company, since after the real altercation with Ursula I’d been in the hospital.
My skin suddenly covered in goose bumps; perhaps that was the one and only time my visions had trumped his experience of reality. At no other point had I surprised him.
Or it’s even worse than that and he was just leaving breadcrumbs.
“Okay,” I whispered. “I’m breathless with wonder. You want me to find out where they are?”
“Yes,” Jinx opened his door and got out. “I need a shower like you wouldn’t believe. I’m sticking to myself.” Before long, he was scrabbling over tiny dunes to the water’s edge, leaving me to my one-sided conversation.
I watched him run about, the waves lapping at his bare feet. It was such a strange image, an immortal child playing at the place where time seemed to stop, even as the universe kept time in sea foam. I had always loved the waves; I found them at once both depressing and restorative. A constant reminder of each passing second that never seemed to stop; it went on forever, and yet...it went on forever.
I wanted nothing more than to help humanity survive itself. I had accepted the mission. At the same time, I had to embrace death, be fearless in the face of it, and not see it with the bias of someone who’d once called it the ultimate enemy. A paradoxical position, yet it was impossible to succeed otherwise.
I was glad I had chosen this place to collect my thoughts and, for the umpteenth time that year, felt terrible for questioning Arthur’s wisdom.
Picking at the dried blood on my clothes, I thought, rather sheepishly, that if Arthur was so awesome, he would know I wanted to talk to him and would already be waiting to find me when, in fact, I was ready….
You don’t need to.
I couldn’t help but smile. “What, apologize?”
Yes.
In the distance, silhouetted in bright colors against the dark blue water, Jinx skipped a flat rock across the moon’s broken reflection.
I am sorry that you find me unhelpful.
It was just like him to be so compassionate as to deny me the privilege of apology, yet to believe I needed to hear such things from him. Mildly insulted, I sighed and reclined my chair. “It’s okay. You’re not unhelpful. I just wish….” But what did I wish? I had told him once that I didn’t want a teacher, but it was quite clear he could never be a peer. Why then was I so obsessed with the idea of him becoming one? “I just wish you could be the thing that fixes me.”
I could almost see that smile of his; my skin had already warmed.
That is a very erudite examination of your nascent character, my dear. Well done.
“Don’t patronize me, you jerk.” I closed my eyes and imagined him in some dirty hotel room, perhaps lying back on a dizzying pattern of red and pink flowers, shimmering in the sateen of polyester. “So I guess this means you’re already in tune with the events of the day?”
We are already checked into another place. I have used the card Jinx gave me. This morning, I will take Ananda to the library.
“I wondered why you gave him the map and he kept it. You already knew he’d have to find his way somewhere else.” I shook my head, almost in admiration. “Have any wise reflections to contribute, or is it all on my significantly less well-muscled shoulders?”
Perhaps. Do you know the story of Kali Ma?
I calmed completely, the childish, angry side of me appeased. It was story time again.
I could remember lying in his arms, comfortable in a profound way, listening to him draw comparisons to parrots and fruit and all those inane things that seemed so entirely pointless. “Nope, though the name sounds familiar.”
Kali is the Goddess of Change, the slayer of Demons, the consort of Shiva, Eater of Worlds.
“Epic. I like her already.”
It is said that she was called forth in battle, to slay an unstoppable foe: Raktabija, the demon from whom each drop of blood spilt is as a seed.
Inexplicably I shuddered. “As in the Hydra sense? From one cut neck two heads spring up?”
As in, he replied. Kali stormed the battlefield, adorned in skulls and tiger skin, eyes flashing red, emaciated and born to a thirst like no other. She sucked the blood of her enemy and consumed his many blood-clones. She drank the battlefield dry and danced on the dead in ecstasy.
I shifted uncomfortably. “Okay, no longer so fond of her.”
She sounded a bit too much like Ursula.
I could imagine him chuckling. Alas, her lover Shiva was among the bodies. She did not notice in her frenzy and danced right over him.
“I get the hint, Arthur.”
Listen carefully and keep this in your thoughts. His voice stopped her. The sound of his cries halted her dance and ended the war. When she saw what she had done, she was inconsolable, for she had never meant to so demean him. In contrition, she opened her great mouth and showed her tongue. Do you know why?
“Are you sure she was sad about stepping on him, because I definitely stuck my tongue out at Howard more than once, along with my middle finger.”
The tongue is a symbol, Lilith. To some it is the representation of the life force, to others it is a threat.
You decide which is meant.
I thought of the box of tongues again. It was certain that Mr. Dark Spot meant those as a threat, but if Kali’s tongue was her weapon, then leaving it vulnerable could be considered a show of respect, a surrendering of arms. The monsters in Karl’s cellar had been docile enough, once one got beyond their initial defense of horror, and the first thing they had chewed off was their own tongues. Perhaps that was some form of acquiescence, not a gesture of misery. It could even be why I found them so receptive; they had vowed to listen, not to speak.
With a nod, I decided I did like Kali.
There are many other versions, because Hinduism uniquely absorbs new tales as often as possible, considering them to be further illustrations of divine meaning.
“That certainly explains why there are so many gods.”
And why the Buddha is an avatar of Vishnu.
“It’s weird when you talk in third person.”
He acknowledged the joke but pressed ahead. In one tale of Kali’s dance, it is not the grown Shiva that halts her destruction. It is the infant Shiva. He cries out and distracts her. Disarmed, she stoops, takes up the child, and feeds him. Thus, to many, Kali is the Great Mother, the mistress of fury and wrath, but the purest force for revolution.
“I knew I liked her.”
I could just picture it. A wide plain of scattered corpses, a burning skyline filled with wailing. She would tread on them like a hurricane, dash them to pieces in triumph, scatter them like the dust they were, until the cry tore through her, hit her in a way nothing else could. At her core, she was a mother and he, the little baby who was really her love, required only a small thing from her. After all, was she not fattened on the blood of the enemy, full to the brim, never to miss the tiny bit he took? I could see her shift the skulls away from her breast, lift his little head to it. I could see her face, now fleshy and red, fall calmly around a contented smile. I could see it all as if he drew it for me, that perfect image of womanhood.
You are a force to be reckoned with, my dear. The events of the day show this to be true.
I stirred, seeing the face of the man I had killed in my strange and sudden lapse of reason. I could also see Petula, cradled in my arms, murmuring that I was safe.
Remember to listen for the cries.
“Which ones?”
Ah, and now you see it. I suppose it is all relative, isn’t it? To help one, another must be sacrificed, until the world and we are great enough to sustain all, indefinitely.
“Desperate times,” I murmured.
It is up to you. Not me. I am transient, Lilith, and sometime soon…. He stopped, and for a moment I was afraid.
“What?”
Things will not always be as they are now. Know this and trust in your own judgment. I certainly do.
“Until I stomp over the top of you,” I laughed, but there was a gurgle of sadness in it. Tears were close at hand. I pushed my fingers into my eye sockets.
You are a product of this world and it will tell you all you need to know to do what must be done. You are what you need to be.
“Again, how do you know that?”
I know you, Lilith. You give me all I need.
Confused, uncertain, miserable, I let his words stand.
“We’ll be on our way soon. The girl who was watching us isn’t doing it anymore.”
Stay safe.
“Bye.”
I will see you soon. I will even draw Jinx a nice, hot bath.
“See, you are helpful.”
He vanished like fog, leaving a fuzzy place in my head that buzzed like an electrical storm. Just for good measure, though, I stuck out my tongue.
Chapter 7
Bridges
At the new hotel, I parked the car and watched as Jinx slithered out of the passenger seat toward the concrete staircase, as if his legs didn’t work properly. His body listed forward and to one side, and his hands, those sure, quick, little jabbing marvels, trembled slightly. I could tell he was still recovering and that the promise of the tub was one he was trusting in completely. To see him that way was sobering.
I had lost many people in my life, so many that when I had met Arthur, not a single aspect of existence had managed to hold my attention. Finding out there were immortals in the world had been, in many ways, the beginning of joy, of excitement, of my life. It wasn’t all just misery and hard lessons, because there was a way to cheat. Except that that way was not yet complete. If Jinx could be hurt, then there was still work left to be done.
I didn’t move to follow him; I felt like I’d been chugging cough syrup. I sat with this displacement and wondered. If the Sangha could uncover a way to prolong their existences on this earth, could someone else come along and perfect the thought? Maybe someone like me?
When Jinx saw I wasn’t behind him, he turned his weary eyes to the windshield and gave me a concerned, questioning, and coaxing glance, all twisted together like a warm pretzel. I smiled back at him and nudged my chin at the door which now stood ajar.
Go, I thought at him, I need to be alone.
Arthur and Ananda were probably still locked in their perpetual game of Go, a permanent non-struggle for a sportsmanlike dominance neither of them really cared about, or what Jinx called “Steven King’s take on a Milton Bradley commercial.” I could see each tiny movement that never varied, Ananda’s repose, his cousin’s beautiful but unearthly stare, and knew that the last thing I wanted was to be anywhere near them.
I waved Jinx away. At last he gave up with a knowing smile. His path toward immortality had been to contemplate the universal truths of mathematics alone with a ream of parchment and an inkwell. If I wanted to be alone, I could count on him. There were just some species of immortal that preferred to roll solo.
I let out a great sigh and felt my body melt forward and against the steering column, my forehead pressed to noon, my hands slipping from ten and two. I tried to line up all the facts like helpful little plastic soldiers I could knock over in an orderly fashion and feel as if I had conquered my own fears, negativity, sadness, but everything seemed intangible. Many of the facts hadn’t necessarily even occurred and, to my addled brain, melted together like Petula’s dampened pictures.
I knew I could alleviate it all by simply looking for the anonymous abomination myself and figuring out what made her tick, but I recoiled from the idea. As much as she seemed to need my help, I could not but hesitate. It wasn’t just because the last time someone had seemed to need me, it turned out I’d had it hopelessly backward. It was because of my vision of her, because of the way her body had seemed to snap and break apart, only to stay mobile, like some kind of horrible clockwork doll that had to be wound up by existential terror and rage. They turned the little key and she devolved, cracked into pieces and wrenched from their hands, outpaced even me, only to seek out death, her red eyes reflecting something I thought I recognized.
That was it really. It wasn’t the fact that she was new and different; it was that she was hollow, empty like they’d strapped her down, taken a metal instrument, and scraped out her soul. I had seen that blind, stricken stare only once before, in the eyes of my grandmother the day after my grandfather fell down in our front yard and didn’t get up again. It was the semblance of ultimate loss, a face that cared about nothing, could find reason in nothing, reached for nothing as if it were the only way out of an existence that had already ended.
Tears came to my eyes and stung worse than any chemical irritant. If I looked for her, if I dared to carelessly dredge the murky depths of her mind, I might see exactly what slimy incident had made her young face look like that, and I wasn’t sure I wanted to. Some bodies should remain hidden, some fences unclimbed, some paths unwalked.
It was a million times worse to live through than it could ever be to witness.
“Selfish of me. And pathetic.”
Had I always been this weak? When Eva died, I cried only a couple times. When I killed Ursula in her nightclub, I joked
about it. When my friends had been in danger and I a prisoner, I’d been flippant and naive. Anything to ignore the terrible fear in the back of my mind of the void. But feelings don’t just dissolve. In fact, feeling itself is an act of release. Until you feel them, those thoughts just swarm and gnaw at your brain like a colony of mold, weakening you even further.
I had to stare down my fears.
But like all great leaps in character it was not so much a leap as a fall. As I sat in the car, my forehead conforming to the pattern of the steering wheel cover, I relived the vision again and again. Each avenue had been explored and I had even gone much farther. I had spoken to the watcher, rid us of her informing intrusion at least for now, sized up our enemy, and made it impossible for them to lead the weird stranger to her gallows. I had done everything that needed to be done, except for the one thing I should have done from the beginning.
My fingers came to life and marched to my pocket, retrieved my phone, and set it in its cradle on the dash. I turned the key. The car beeped, Bluetooth connection established. Without even lifting my head, I pushed a button with my chin and said, “Call, Matt.”
The woman’s voice echoed mine, but sounded rather dispassionate about the whole thing.
The phone rang only once. When he answered, I could tell he already knew it was me. There would be none of that needless small talk—thank God for caller ID. We could slip back into the cadence we’d quitted so recently, and I could wrap his voice around me like a nice, old blanket.
“Hey there, Ninja Girl,” he said with a smile in his words and a gentle sigh. “What you been doin’?”
I tried to quip back like the ripcord I was but failed. My voice caught. I fought with it for a moment and finally managed to speak. He waited patiently.
“I miss you guys,” I said quietly.
I could tell by his breathing that he could hear the pain in my voice. “Immortal road trip not what it was cracked up to be?”
The One We Feed Page 9