by Laura Bickle
The old man stood over the woman and began to unbutton his shirt. He threw his shirt to the ground, began to unzip his pants. His skin was as pale as a salt lick, mottled with the stripes of a sunburn where his sleeves ended.
The raven squawked at the top of his lungs, but was ignored. Gathering his energy for another strafing run, he took two hops in toward the old man, talons scraping in the dirt.
The old man finished stripping off his clothes, glanced down at the woman, then dove into the water.
The raven peered through the dust at him, uncomprehending.
Swift as an eel, the naked figure paddled several circuits in the water. He began to sing, off-key and unintelligibly, splashing like a child to see the sun glitter on the droplets of water.
With trepidation, the raven picked up the shiny pendant and walked to the edge of the pool. The coyote remained where he’d fallen, tongue protruding from his mouth. The raven fluttered to the woman, lying on her back with her eyes closed. He pecked at the shirt button at her wrist, got no reaction. Summoning his courage, he hopped up to her chest, turned his head right and left to peer at her. The shiny necklace swung like a pendulum in his beak. As his talons clutched her collar, she made no move to shoo him away.
His beak held fast to the shiny. He wanted it, not just in the way birds love aluminum foil, gum wrappers, and bits of glass. This was beautiful, yet it was so much more than beautiful. The partitioned bits of his consciousness screamed that it was important.
He opened his beak and dropped the charm on the hollow of her throat. She didn’t even flinch. Not then and not even when the old man rose out of the water and splashed at the raven.
The raven shrieked and scuttled off. He fluttered several yards away, to the bough of a contorted pine tree.
From his perch, he could do nothing but watch.
Falling.
Petra braced herself for impact, feeling her gut tense and her hands splayed and thrusting out before her. The water engulfed her body with a muffled sucking sound. She clawed her way to the surface . . .
But the water was much deeper and darker than it appeared. She couldn’t distinguish up from down; air bubbles floated in all directions, giving no hint as to where the surface lay. Diffuse blue light shimmered from both above and below.
She thrashed, lungs burning. She struck out first in one direction, then another. Forcing herself to pause, she tried to float and have faith that the remaining air in her lungs would pull her to the surface. But she simply hung in space, unmoving, suspended. Her necklace drifted, glinting, before her.
This is a stupid way to die, Petra thought. She was a strong swimmer, and had spent years out in the middle of a treacherous ocean. And now a puny spring threatened to be her undoing.
And it was not as if she didn’t deserve to be undone. For all that had happened to poor Des, to die by fire in the ocean . . . this was no less than she truly deserved. That knowledge lay at the bottom of her chest like a stone.
Below, she spied a flicker of movement, a pale blur in the depths. She made out the shapes of what looked like paws swimming. The underside of a dog. Sig.
But that way felt like down. Like certain death.
She dove down, down. She reached for Sig, for the paws silently churning the water. Teeth claimed her sleeve, trying to drag her further under.
And she let it happen, let Sig haul her to the bottom . . . where she came back up with a gasp that scorched her lungs.
Sound came roaring back, foam and spray hissing at her. She struggled against Sig’s teeth and toenails, kicking and fighting to reach land.
Petra crashed up against a rock, hauled herself up on the shore. Sig disentangled himself from her sleeves and flopped, dripping, beside her.
Her breath was a thin whistle as she surveyed her surroundings. She’d been thoroughly prepared to grab Frankie by his collar and shake him for pushing her in.
But Frankie was gone. And this was not the land she’d left, the Eye of the Spirit with the scrub desert spreading around her.
Water lapped against her body in shallow waves. Her fingers dug into silt, recognizing bits of milk quartz and obsidian in a detached way. She’d washed up on some riverbank shore, far from where she’d fallen in. The mountains loomed closer, blotting out part of the blue sky, while sea oats conspired, whispering, in the distance. She could make out a cerulean line of ocean beyond.
Impossible. An impossible landscape. She had never been here, though bits and pieces of it seemed as familiar as a dream, one that mashed up fragments of memory, pressing them impossibly close together.
She dragged herself beyond the rocks, her clothes hanging heavy on her shoulders. Sig trotted behind her. She tugged off her boots to empty them, wincing at a pain in her arm. This place sure felt real.
She looked at her right arm, turning it over, expecting to find a scrape from the rocks across the handprint scar on her flesh. But the scar was missing. She ran her fingers over where it should be. There was only a fresh scratch from the rocks. Beneath it, her skin was smooth and pale, as if nothing had ever happened.
Sig lowered his head to the edge of the water to drink. Petra touched her fingers to her lips, remembering. She’d drunk the water from the pool, the water full of that filthy blue algae. And it had probably made her sick. This was likely a dream, a hallucination brought on by some noxious microbes.
That was the best-case scenario. The worst-case scenario was that she’d gotten sick, fallen in the pool, and what she was experiencing now were the last dismal firings of her neurons as her body drowned.
“Damn it, Frankie.” Her hands balled into fists around her shoelaces.
Sig yipped beside her, chewing at a toenail.
“You’re not real,” she told him. “You’re just a projection of my oxygen-starved brain cells. Or some kind of psychological hiccup.”
Sig wasn’t impressed. He finished gnawing his dewclaw, stood up, and shook water all over her.
Petra swore. But she had to admit, her brain was pretty good at rendering the details. It felt like muddy water and smelled exactly like wet dog.
She considered her options. “I could sit here and wait for the hallucination to fade,” she told Sig. Really, it was like talking to herself, so what did it matter?
Sig cocked his head attentively, like a good superego should.
“Death or the effect of the hallucinogenic algae wearing off. One or the other.” Petra squinted at the sky. Funny. It was daylight, but she couldn’t see the sun. So much for conventional navigation. “Though, I suppose that if I were dying, it would be over with quickly.”
Sig huffed.
“Don’t snort at me. I don’t believe in an afterlife.”
The coyote yawned.
“Great. Now, I’m arguing with myself.” Petra pinched the bridge of her nose. “This is giving me a helluva headache.”
Sig shook himself one more time, then took off, trotting down the muddy beach.
She gave him a dirty look he didn’t bother to turn around and see. “Now you’re leaving me?”
Sig flicked a speckled ear.
She gazed after him, at the staccato tracks he made in the silt.
But his were not the only tracks. There were footprints—large footprints from a man’s shoes—tracking before him. Sig trotted along in their wake, smudging the edges.
Damn. She wasn’t alone. Or maybe she was, and this was another psychological projection. She pulled on her waterlogged boots and clomped after Sig, kicking up thick clods of mud.
She followed him along the water’s edge. The river churned beside her, a surreal turquoise that must have come from the spring somehow. Her boots smacked in the muck, and she struggled to keep up with Sig. His light paws seemed to float on the mud, leaving small indentations rather than the deep ruts she left.
Up ahead, she could make out the silhouette of a man, walking toward the seashore.
“Hey!” Petra yelled.
He seemed not to hear her, or if he did, he didn’t acknowledge her. The man was dressed in a black coat, with grey hair tied over his shoulder. He followed the path of the river as it spilled out into the sea.
Petra followed, but she couldn’t catch up. She slogged along the edge of the river, where sea oats began to take root in paler sand. Sig slunk behind the oats and growled at the man.
“Where are we?” she yelled. “Who are you?”
The man didn’t turn. He walked down to the beach, where the river connected with the transparent water of a familiar ocean. Petra shaded her eyes. A plume of black smoke blossomed in the distance. The whitecaps were stained black with oil.
She finally reached the man, lungs burning from the exertion. Catching his sleeve, she forcibly turned him around. He looked at her, unblinking. His face was as deeply lined as a leaf, with brown eyes staring out at her.
She knew him.
She reached up to grasp his shoulders, shook him hard. A pendant identical to her own, the green lion devouring the sun, spilled from his open shirt collar.
“Dad,” she shouted over the din of the oily waves. “Dad, what are you doing here?”
She stared into his gold-flecked eyes, gripping his arms as if her hands were claws. As she watched, those gold flecks expanded, took over. His irises shone gold, and spidery legs of gold leaf crept into his skin, like a contagion.
“Dad! It’s me, Petra.”
But his gaze was vacant. The gold wound into his hair, twisted into his coat. It was hot, hot as molten metal. Petra tried to hold on to him, but the heat was too much. She released him and backed away as gold twitched through him. It crackled and buzzed like lightning.
Soon her father was completely rendered in gold. Like Midas, she thought, reaching out.
Where her fingers brushed his hand, a fissure formed. The crack splintered up his arm, like an earthquake.
“No . . .” she breathed, but was helpless to do anything but watch as the cracks ratcheted through the statue of her father, ripping into the gold flesh and gold bones. A finger, then an ear, fell to the sand.
She reached down to try to collect them. Perhaps she could gather the pieces, find some way help him . . .
But the image of her father shattered and exploded into gold splinters. Petra flinched, shielding her eyes with her arm.
He was gone. All that remained was a fine metallic dust and bits of weightless gold leaf on the sand, already scattered by waves and wind. She dug her fingers into it, choking back a sob.
“It’s not real,” she reminded herself, rocking back on her heels. Her hands were covered in glittering dust. She scraped her shaking hand through her hair. This was her imagination. It could not be real. Could not . . .
But if this was all in her head, what other terrible things could be here?
As if in answer, a hot wave enveloped her foot. She looked down to see something churning in the grease and the gold specks. Something living.
She reached down, trying to free herself. But something held her fast—a blackened hand.
She cried out, stumbling backward, trying to haul herself back along the sparkling beach. But the hand would not let go—it was hot and oily, and it singed the leather of her boot. She tried to pull it apart in the hissing seawater.
Another hand grasped her wrist, burning her. Petra cried out, feeling that familiar heat around her forearm, that smell of sizzling flesh.
A face emerged from the water. Charred black lips pulled back around white teeth, a shock of blond hair crowning raw flesh and sinew.
Petra stumbled forward, slamming to her elbow and one knee in the surf. For an instant, she thought that she might willingly go under, into the oily silence. And she felt she understood this place. That maybe there was a hell. An afterlife, and she was in it.
But she fought. The desire to live surged in her belly, and she struggled, shouting.
A shadow passed over her with a harsh caw. Black feathers flickered in her vision. And she realized that a raven had flown between her and the grasping oil. Not just one—more. Dozens. They swarmed in a cacophony, like black smoke, howling, forcing her and the creature that was and wasn’t Des apart.
She felt the grip on her wrist slacken, and she struggled with all her might. She pulled free, scrambled back on the beach, crab-like, away from the seething mass of black. Gratitude rose in her throat. The birds had saved her. The birds . . .
They plucked at the oil creature, devouring him, piece by piece. The only sound that came from the ruined lips was a soft hiss as it sank beneath the waves.
Chapter Eleven
The Sacred Androgyne
Petra felt warmth on her face.
Not the stinging heat of oil and fire, but a soft warmth, like sunshine.
She opened her eyes to see blue sky above her. The scar on her wrist was old and white and didn’t ache. Something shifted beside her, and she glanced down. Sig lay at her hip, kicking at her in his sleep.
She turned her head, spying the rocky edge of the pool. Her clothes were dry, and her face felt sunburned. Her head throbbed, like a bad hangover. She wondered how long she’d lain here; the sun was descending toward the mountains, kissing just the edge of them.
Struggling up to a sitting position, she howled, “Frankie!” The motion made her queasy. Something shiny dropped from her chest down into her lap—her lion charm. She clutched it, fingering the broken chain.
Frankie perched at the edge of the pool, crouching. His skin glistened, and he was naked. He poured water into one hand from the other, seemingly transfixed by the play of the tinted liquid as it spilled from palm to fingers.
Only . . . Frankie was a woman. Frankie’s breasts hung low over his chest, and he had an old woman’s hips. Even his face seemed softer as Petra saw Frankie for who he was.
“Frankie.” Petra stabbed her thumb at the pain in her temple, trying to rub it away. “What the hell?”
Frankie’s eyes were distant. “You went on a spirit journey.”
“Damn it. I don’t believe in that stuff.” She tried to sound certain. Something prickly was caught in her hair. She ran her fingers through the crusty dried mess and came up with a glossy black raven feather.
“Doesn’t matter if you believe. You went.”
“You didn’t tell me.” She felt confused and betrayed, but also a little awestruck. She turned the feather over in her hands.
Frankie shrugged. “You needed to go. And you weren’t alone.”
Sig rolled over, displaying his belly. His eyes were slightly crossed, and Petra worried about the effects of hallucinogenic algae on canines.
Frankie took another drink of the water. He didn’t fall over. He remained rooted in place like a tree that had grown at the edge of the spring for decades.
“To paraphrase Maria: Frankie, you’re drunk.”
Frankie snorted. “I’ve built up a tolerance to the water.”
“You’re naked, perched on the edge of the pool.” Petra wanted to say the obvious: And you’re a woman. But she restrained herself.
Frankie looked down at his arms, plucking at the liver-marked flesh like it was a suit with a stain on it. “Huh.”
“You gonna put some clothes on so we can go back to the house?”
“In a minute.” Frankie took another deep sip. Water trickled down his chin, between his breasts.
“It’s hungry,” he gurgled.
“Huh?”
Frankie rocked forward and backward on his heels. His gaze fell into the water, unfocused. “It’s hungry. The hungry ghost. Devouring.”
A figure stalked across the field. Maria. Her back was ramrod-straight in rage, and her hair flew about her like
a dark miasma. “Frankie!”
Frankie pretended not to hear her. Or maybe he really didn’t. He stared into the pool, at the blue algal bloom churning under the surface. “It’s hungry.”
Maria stomped up and snatched Frankie’s shirt from the rocks. “What happened?”
Petra instinctively scuttled back, away from Maria’s wrath. “I’m not sure. I drank out of the spring and . . . I don’t know.”
“Jesus. Look, I’m sorry. He does this sometimes. Thinks he’s a proper shaman. Even though he’s white as vinegar.”
“And a woman?”
Maria winced. “Yeah. That, too. He started out as Francine, married to one of my uncles. And then, when my uncle died, it’s like he took on his identity, literally stepped into his shoes. Something about needing to be a man to be a proper shaman.”
“The sacred androgyne,” Frankie mumbled. “Male and female. The alchemical marriage.”
Petra started at the mention of alchemy, but Maria had already reached him and was wrapping his shirt around his shoulders. He shrugged against her, pushing the shirt away like a two-year-old who didn’t want to be dressed.
“Frankie, damn it, where did you get the booze?” She turned to Petra in frustration. “I did a sweep of the house earlier today, thought I’d hit all of Frankie’s usual hiding places: the toilet tank, under the workbench in the basement, behind the oil cans in the garage, even the fucking mailbox, for Christ’s sake.”
“It’s not the alcohol. It’s the water,” Petra said. Sig leaned up close against her, just as wary of Maria’s anger as she was.
“Yeah. He says that. But I’ve drunk the water, and not a damn thing has happened.” Maria went in search of Frankie’s boots, tried to jam them on his feet.
Frankie stared at Petra, stared through her. In spite of herself, it made her shudder. Maybe in an earlier time he would have been a shaman. Today, he was just a drunk old man.
“The spirit of the bones is moving. Like the White Buffalo Woman.” His eyes glistened with tears. “Do you remember her?”