The Calyx Charm

by May Peterson

  I didn’t know who I hated. Whether it was Mio’s mystery lover, Mio himself, myself, Mamma—how could I know? This lurid envy sprang on me like a tiger, shredding the illusion of myself I had known.

  I wanted to run away too. And Mamma could never find out.

  She showed as much to me through our mindlink as I did to her. If she scented my thoughts about Mercurio, it wouldn’t take long for me to notice. What shone brighter than any other thing in her mental space now was the spite for this man, who Mio was protecting against her, who she could only see as having taken Mio away.

  But there was something else I felt in her, like the crack of cold air off ice.

  She was jealous too.

  I wanted out. Out of our mindlink, out of this house, out of this problem. How could I drag Mio back from something I was afraid to pursue myself? How could I have gone this long without realizing I was afraid to pursue it?

  Damn it to hell, Mercurio! Couldn’t you have given me just the tiniest bit of warning about this?

  Mio stood before me, slender, petite like Mamma, looking absurdly small in wrinkled pajamas and holding his hands up in front of his lover, staving Mamma away. Mamma and I saw him through the same eyes. Mamma’s envy was as thick as mine, and the only hope I had was that hers would be too dense for her to sense mine through. I needed time. Time to stop screaming inside, stop shaking, stop trying to run from how desperately this violence was taking me over while Mio’s safety was on the line. While Mamma was stoked and bright inside me like a lion wearing the skin of a housecat.

  It would be the end of the world if Mamma grasped my yearning for my best friend. If she had a chance to turn that hatred on Mercurio.

  The mere thought curdled my pulse.

  He doesn’t deserve to die, Mamma, I whispered through our mindlink like I might to a captor, begging for a weapon to be lowered. Had I ever felt captive by Mamma before, as many times as she’d been in my mind? She’d controlled me, used my body like a puppet, done so without my consent, without warning. Somehow, never before had it felt so flagrantly like a mockery of the closeness she and I’d had when I was young. The loudest urge within me now was to get her out of my psyche like a poison thorn could be pulled from flesh.

  He dies if I decide he dies. Her rage was at once brutally hot and cold. As in surprise, Mamma slowed down when she was angry, as if preparing to pounce on prey. But I want his mind first. I know enough about him to bring him to his knees.

  Mio watched in misery as she carried out her will, invading his lover’s spirit and wrenching his tormented body to the floor. Had I ever looked like that? I’d lost count of how many people I’d helped her dominate with sorcery. Had I appeared as soulless and mechanical as they did, like noncompliant marionettes, each time she’d controlled me?

  My jealousy was blanching into guilt, fear, a desire to touch Mio. To hold him and ask his forgiveness. A desire to find Mercurio. To do what I’d promised.

  I will come back.

  I lied so easily. Never had I trusted that I would return to him. Even if our attack on Casilio would be successful, this was still Mercurio’s father. It may not be possible to reunite with him after the fact. But I’d wanted to say that we could. Wanted to see the hope on his face, when he imagined a future we could share like we had our childhood days.

  Fuck me. I wanted to touch him too.

  I am going to keep you safe, Tibario. Mamma was rattling off some litany of threats to her new victim, Mio heaped in an inert pile on the floor, watching her radiate from my body like a cloud. I barely caught the words she spoke with my mouth, her inner voice was so sharp. I am going to put a stop to this. We are going to be a family again. None of you are going to leave me again. I will win. I will—

  This was the moment death slipped in.

  It rent like an icicle through my chest. All my strength had been turned to pushing Mamma out, diverting her gaze from within me, soothing her enraged will. In the next instant, as freezing pain split me in half, I was a child again. Grasping for her with everything I knew, heart and hands and mind clinging to the mother who had protected me.

  Tibario. Tibario, no, Tibario, TIBARIO—

  Mamma’s link was severed like a torn artery, as swift as if the calyx charm had closed me to her. But no violet light of Mercurio rose up to shield me now. This was only death. The last stinking seconds of pain before numbness took over.

  She was gone. I had held on to her with everything in my life, and she was gone.

  As my consciousness spiraled to a stop, it wasn’t Mamma that flashed through my mind.

  It was Mercurio. The sadness radiating from him like heat when I’d walked through his door. That seer’s look of mysterious knowing, as if he’d already been mourning my death before it fell. And in my mind, that mystery flamed from the crown of his head like the calyx charm in his youth, lighting up all the unseen spaces of the life I could have lived if I’d stayed with him.

  If I hadn’t been so gifted at lying. If I hadn’t built a lie so strong that even I hadn’t seen through it.

  The lie that I was not in love with him.

  Once before, death had hovered over my body, battering for a way in. When it had found purchase in my chest, Mercurio had reached across time to drive it back. Mercurio will save us. The legacy of the Honored Child, standing between me and otherwise certain doom.

  I grasped for it now, my heart heaving and ravenous and infantile, calling out for Mercurio without word or sound. Mamma was gone. I had anted every other happiness on a bet that she would win. Now, that lot of castaway dreams was all that appeared to matter.

  The calyx charm did not come again. If Mercurio was watching me crumble from the vantage of his seer’s percipience, he was unwilling or unable to redeem me.

  My memory was wet with the scent of dying violets as death dragged me under.

  * * *

  But what made my death truly funny was that I got better.

  You win some, you lose some, you die, you come back. Classic tale of love and loss, etc.

  The hours after my death ran together in a current of dreams. They didn’t feel like dreams. They felt like daggers, ripping me open with the shame and regret and fear that had built up through my life. It was as if every painful secret I had buried was rising up now to drown me. Mamma dealt in these things. Hidden guilt, swallowed emotion. I must have become good at hiding them from myself, as part of being the son of a sorcerer. Death laid them bare, and the regeneration of my body seemed to be rebuilding me out of pain.

  In these dreams, Mercurio stood over me. My body shifted like water, became a mewling cat, pawing and unable to speak. Mercurio radiated holy sorrow, bright purple like pressed flowers. His face shone with sad beauty, his hair falling over me like wisteria blossoms. He petted my feline coat and wept, saying goodbye to me. “I’ll miss you, Tibario. I wish you’d come back.”

  The death-dream pulsed like a fever. In the next instant, I was a man again, naked and aching under Mercurio’s gaze. I reached up, wrapped my arms around him, cried with him. His skin was like fire and water, cleansing and scalding and necessary.

  I kissed him, tasting his soft mouth, swelling gasps of desire and surprise. In all my days, I would never have expected that this would be the emotion my death unlocked in me: desire. Desire like lightning, sudden and blinding. And since it was a dream, Mercurio answered the desire. He joined me on the wet ground, kissing my naked limbs, hands everywhere, his tears of grief becoming joy.

  Then the dreams tossed like a sea, and I was surrounded by my family. They glared down at my naked body, heavy with the knowledge of what I’d done. Father’s face flashed by in beats, his shock and anger as he learned of my secret lusts. How unmanly he’d find me, so unfit to be his mafioso son. In love with a boy.

  Every memory of my father was stained with this fear. His hand enclosing me, him holdi
ng me as a young child, his pride at my accomplishments, his gentle affection. All of it had been for the son I was supposed to be. A fragile region within begged him to understand.

  Surely it could be forgiven, that I loved a boy as beautiful and tender as Mercurio. How could anyone not love him?

  Then Mamma’s face filled the void, her own wrath far more terrible. Because to her my crime would be worse. I was in love with the scion of House Benedetti. Enemy of everything we believed in.

  Shame was like skin, being peeled off my transformation. My entire being had been one great mass of shame. Shame that I loved Mercurio, and that I hadn’t had the courage to so much as admit it to myself.

  * * *

  My youngest memories went back to when I was two, and Mamma’s emotions had been like swaths of paint ornamenting her presence. We hadn’t been one mind, but it was like a river connected us, two ponds trading water. The whole surface of her thoughts and feelings had been visible in a quiet, belly-dwelling way. She could sense my impending moods, my tantrums, my hunger and sleep. I’d felt her waking up each day, felt the pleasure swirling by like ghostly fish as she watched the bay. We held minds just as we might hold hands, walking down the street on my way to school.

  It’d taken me years to understand that not every child was lucky enough to have a mindlink with their mamma. There had been nothing invasive about it, no probing or piercing of wills. It was merely a secret language she and I shared, like in-group jokes that no one else would get. I would think a funny thought at school, and open it for Mamma to receive, and get her laughter back.

  Ironically, what had showed me how strange and magical this was had been Mio. Like me, he’d been connected with her since birth. Mamma had awoken at night, already feeling his stirrings, and would say to Papa, “He is about to start crying in something like four minutes. And you can change his diaper. You’re welcome for the warning.”

  I’d floated atop soft, liquid days in which my baby brother, Mamma, and I communed in an innocence of blended consciousness. Mio and I playing in the sand, Mamma watching the sky, all silent as we braided together a daydream of adventure and freedom.

  It all faded as a matter of course, until one day before my first year of school was fully over, and it occurred to me I couldn’t feel her thoughts anymore. Only a dim presence at my back, like a heartbeat just close enough to notice without thinking. Eventually, that faded too.

  It was Papa who’d held me one night, when I was nearly six, and soothed me. “What’s happening to Mamma? I can’t even feel where she is anymore. I haven’t been able to in...”

  Embarrassment had surged through me to admit it. Mio still seemed to link with her. Papa said that was why Mio had been slow to speak. I had lost my inner connection to him too.

  Papa kissed my head, something he wouldn’t do when gathered with the lords. “Mamma is fine. Children and parents are supposed to grow apart, at least a little. You can’t borrow each other’s thoughts forever. Mamma always knew it would happen.”

  I hadn’t realized until he’d explained. The mindlink had been a surprise to her, but it had to be because Mamma was a witch. We didn’t know it then, but the strength of Mio’s link had been a sign of his magic to come.

  It was a long time before I knew that Mamma had also been sad when it had ended.

  Not being able to find her mood in my heart never stopped being strange. But I was learning how to be alone in my own head.

  At that age, one distinction seemed to rule them all: some people, like Mamma, Mio, and Mercurio, were connected to things bigger than them. Their minds were root systems, taking in the light and water of the world. Then there were people like me, alone. Singular.

  I wanted to be a witch. Not to be powerful or special, but so I could have that vastness around me in the dark of the night. Proof of an existence beyond the privacy of my own thoughts. I imagined dying inside my own head, forever separate from the world.

  The idea was catastrophically lonely.

  * * *

  The transformation made it difficult to trust my body. Days after being a giant cat for the first time, I couldn’t stop imagining it happening again. Was there a way to accept the immortality without the grim price of having your body ripped apart and then stitched back together? One minute I had been trying to get used to my paws and whiskers, the next it was like someone was squeezing me in a human-sized fruit press, juicing the Tibario back out of the catshape.

  Mamma had come to collect me days after my rebirth. It was all a sordid matter, with her rejecting Mio’s new autonomy. I shouldn’t have expected any different after her rage at his defection, but I did. I hoped we’d have some resemblance of a family remaining. No dice.

  I had to relearn how to sleep. Back home, Mamma set up a litter for me in the cellar. I’d told her, shaking, that I was afraid I was going to change again. The first time had been a wildfire of pain. How did these immortal fuckers handle this, month in and month out?

  But Mamma had stayed up with me all night, and then the following day, wiping my brow while I tossed and stroking my coat when I inevitably melted back into catshape. I’d lain in her lap and mewed, a pitiable sound of contrition. I swear I’ll be a good boy, Mamma. Just don’t make me change forms again. Surely there were boy-sized cats who wore suits and spoke in kitty handspeak. Just leave me as a feline, I’d hunt mice and manage my own hairballs.

  Humanshape proved just as inevitable, and hours later I was panting in a puddle of sweat. “Fuck me,” I breathed, sucking down water. “I hope I am not changing back and forth like this every time I try to sleep.”

  “We will master this.” Mamma petted my head, her maid Martina handing her a plate of food for me. “We will master this as we have always mastered our troubles. You will learn to wield the cat-soul’s gifts, and they will obey you.”

  I gulped, stared up at her. I was naked again except for a raft of blankets swaddling my middle. Was already so fucking sick of being in my birthday clothes. “Maybe with luck you’ll come back as something next and we can both be immortal.”

  “No can do.” She smirked. “Mages become dragon-souls, not moon-souls. Afraid I can’t join the parade anytime soon.”

  Ah. Right.

  Witches, as I understood, never came back to life. There was something different about them. While most folks would die normally and that would be that, there was always at least a chance that a noble spirit could deign to resurrect you, animal form and all. Not mages. Why they got dragons and no one else did, you can search me. But I gather it was not a thing to be envied, because all the other animals got to be immortal. Dragon-souls burned you from the inside out, changing you back into primal magic. And you didn’t have to die to become one. What made it happen was a mystery to me.

  The next challenge to sleep was that I kept waking up back in the Deep. If a more terrifying experience existed, I didn’t want to know what it was. I would simply open my eyes and be swimming in endless dark, the primal ether of spirits and ghosts. Then, as if falling through space, I’d pass a barrier of light and be back in our fucking cellar.

  The first few times it’d seemed like they were dreams, more of my death-fueled nightmares. Then I’d come out the other side of the light barrier in my room instead of in the cellar, covered in a sheen of some ethereal substance, my breath fast.

  I wasn’t dreaming. I was actually going back there somehow.

  Mamma was absurdly pleased. “This is the cat-soul’s virtue, the cat-step. I haven’t ever seen it before myself, and stories don’t place anyone who used it in Vermagna for generations. Cat-souls can endure the Deep like no others, and travel through it. You’re in luck, my boy.”

  My frown felt like it could break my face. “This is a horrible virtue. I want to trade it in for a better one. How can I do that?”

  Her laughter was like a barbed saw. “Die again?”

 
I didn’t laugh at that. Not because I thought it was poor taste—if anything it felt like good old Mamma again—but she seemed to take it thus. Her hand went to my arm. “Tibario. I was joking. I’m sorry.”

  That was something for the record books. Mamma, delicately apologetic.

  Before too long, I was going a full sleep without unconsciously cat-stepping back into the void. The memory of my death seemed to trigger the virtue, as if it responded to my instinctual panic. Closing my eyes and hugging arms around myself, I tried to do it on purpose.

  And ended up face down on the roof of our house. In broad daylight, baking down on my still-naked backside. Fuck.

  I’d lost count of the days before a sense of normal fell over me again. If normal would ever be the appropriate word to use again. Mamma hummed with an air of excitement, as if she were a master delighted to teach a pupil about his new skills. Had she been like this with Mio, when his magic awakened? Maybe it would be a way for us to be closer, now that we both had extraordinary powers to toss around.

  Closer. Yes. Now that I was able to wear clothes like an adult again and stay asleep for hours at a time, more complex matters were coming into view.

  Papa was nowhere in sight. He normally was busy during the day, and I was naturally falling into a nocturnal sleep rhythm. But I’d have expected him to hover around me like Mamma did, especially considering my recent death.

  And the problem of that death, and Mamma’s role in it, had not gone away.

  Mamma stayed up with me to eat lunch, or what would be her dinner. She seemed to be adapting to the nightlife surprisingly well, a spring in her step as if my resurrection gave her purpose. But that meant she was probably distracting herself from the crisis of our family falling apart.

  I sat across from the table, wearing only a dressing gown, and nursing a plate of offal. All the coffee in the world didn’t seem like enough to prepare me for this conversation. Mamma was absently sipping a glass of spirits and reading a paper.