HebrewPunk
Page 13
Her face was white and beautiful, as always. But her eyes were dark and vacant, the eyes of the dead, and when I looked into them I saw only the abyss between worlds.
"Release her!" I said.
My tormentor laughed again. "At what price, Tzaddik? Would you sacrifice your life so she could live again? Or would you have me send her back to death?"
"She is already dead," I said. "And what you have there is only a pale and empty copy of the woman that was Billie Carleton. You could never bring her back – such a thing is beyond your power and mine. Listen to me, Chang!" I said. "And you, Manning. She is dead, gone, and you must let her be!"
Chang slowly shook his head. "I don’t think so," he said. "Why is it that I, the son of an ancient and powerful culture, am here in this city, in this place and time, treated like an animal? A menace? They call me a Dope Fiend, the Yellow Plague, when I am a man with a heart as good as any Englishman’s. But they would never let me and Billie be. And you could say the same for Manning, Tzaddik. Or indeed for you."
"You don’t understand," I said. "She is dead. Truly dead. This creature is preying on your desires for his own ends."
"Then so be it," Chang said with sudden anger. "I have made deals with worse and survived."
"Unlikely," I muttered.
And then, like in a nightmare one expects but dreads all the same, Billie spoke.
Her voice was flat, lacking the exuberance, the joy and excitement of her living days. It was the voice of a ghost, but a familiar one, and I knew what she would say before she said it.
"My box," she whispered, her dead eyes finding mine. "My golden snuffbox. Why did you take it?"
The Feng-Huang turned his eyes on me; there was malicious glee in their burning essence.
"What is she talking about?" Manning asked. "Billie, what do you mean?"
"She means," the Feng-Huang said, "that the Tzaddik is the one who removed her little box of poisons from her deathbed. Perhaps you’d care to ask him why?"
"Why, Tzaddik?" Manning said. There was real anguish in his voice, and I realised then, with a springing of hope, that he and Chang were not yet entirely under the Feng-Huang’s control, that he was waiting to see if he could use them without destroying their minds. And it gave me a chance.
"He gave me the pills," the thing that was once Billie Carleton said. "The pills I took, after the ball. They made me fast and happy and filled me with energy."
"What did you give her, you bastard?" Chang said, and I was aware of the knife in his hands moving towards my face.
I sighed. My fingers worried at the knot, loosening it. I had to hope talking would keep me away from the Feng-Huang’s ultimate purpose, at least temporarily.
"I gave her the pills she asked for," I said, suddenly weary. "I gave her everything she asked for."
"She didn’t die of the cocaine, did she," Manning said, and his knife, too, was rising towards me. "She died of the pills you gave her."
"I died," Billie said. Her empty eyes looked into mine. "I died for you."
"You never loved me," I said. "You never loved any of us."
The Feng-Huang moved. It was like mercury, heated up and sliding on pure glass, the movement inhuman and frightening. "Enough," he said. "Gentlemen, I have offered you a deal. For your love to live, an immortal must be sacrificed. Please don’t let me keep you from your job."
"Stop!" I said. The knot was nearly untied. Chang and Manning looked at me. Their eyes were still their own. I had hope. "Believe me. If there was a way to bring her back, I would gladly do whatever is needed to do so. But the dead must remain so. It is the law of nature. To undo it would be to destroy everything."
"He is lying!" the Feng-Huang said. "Kill him, mortals, and you will have your woman."
Would they do it? How much were they blaming me for? They raised their knives.
"Chang! Manning! Please!"
And then my hands were free. I raised them as the Feng-Huang howled, and I drew a symbol in the air. Chang and Manning blinked, looked around. When they saw Billie they both looked scared.
"Is that what you want?" I said. "A ghost? That is all she will ever be."
"No," Chang said. And again, "No!" And he moved the knife in an arc and sliced at the Feng-Huang’s throat.
"Chang!"
The Feng-Huang roared; he took hold of Chang and threw him in the air. Chang’s head hit a tombstone with a sickening sound, and he lay still.
"Go, Edgar!" I said. "Go!"
Manning moved slowly away, the knife held in front of him.
"This is between you and me, angel," I said. "The road between the spheres is open tonight, and I suggest you take it back to where you came from."
"You," the Feng-Huang said, "are going to die."
"I don’t think so," I said. While standing in the cemetery with my hands tied, my foot had been able to draw, again and again, a symbol in the ground. Now, I moved away from it.
On the ground where I had stood was a Star of David, etched deeply into the soil as if branded there. "Clay and magic," I said. "And the Tree of Life." There was a small leaf, half broken, embedded in the circle. I hoped it would work.
"What is this?" the Feng-Huang said. "This is nothing. Is that the best you can do?"
He didn’t wait for my answer. The clothes containing him drew and tore, and out of them grew the true darkness of the angel. It was a darkness such as encountered in an underground river that had never seen the sun, the darkness of the inside of snails, of the other side of the moon, of death. It grew, threatening to absorb me, to touch Chang’s unmoving body, to engulf Manning as he stood there, uncertain, the knife in one hand.
The earth shook.
It shook with the fury of an earthquake. The darkness that was the angel hovered above, suddenly unsure.
And from below the graves they rose: the beings I had glimpsed beneath the foundations of London, the buried, secretive giants.
They were creatures of clay, and yet the lifeblood of the Tree surged in them, the strongest I had ever seen or felt. They had arms like tree trunks, and as they rose out of the earth they took hold of the angel, the loa, the Feng-Huang, and held it.
It screamed.
It screamed for a long time as the great golems descended back into the earth; screams that could still be heard, echoing in my ears, from far below the ground.
"Tzaddik." It was Billie, and the voice was her own, that voice I had fallen in love with, the voice that commanded me and entreated me, and got me to supply her with the drugs that were to kill her.
I turned, and her eyes were once again her own, loving and happy and mischievous.
"I am sorry, Billie," I said. "I am so, so sorry."
"I know," she said, and she moved towards me, growing insubstantial as she did. "I know."
And then she kissed me. Her lips touched mine, for the longest second I can recall. And then she disappeared.
"Was it a dream?" Manning said.
We were sitting in the upstairs bar of the Princess Louise. There were only the three of us: the Jamaican, the Chinese, the Jew.
"No," I said. "Though I wish it was."
Chang returned to the table, carrying with him a tray with three more glasses of bourbon on it.
"Future generations will judge us," he said, and cut three lines of snow on the table. We each snorted one. "And perhaps, after all, they will not judge us, nor Billie, too harshly."
"I’ll drink to that," I said.
Authors Note:
I am indebted to Marek Kohn's nonfiction work, Dope Girls, for the historical background and characters. Anyone who would like to know the true and fascinating stories of Edgar Manning, Brilliant Chang, and Billie Carleton, or indeed the secret history of the London drug underground, should consider it essential reading.
Author Bio
Lavie Tidhar writes weird fiction. He grew up on a kibbutz in Israel and has lived in South Africa and the UK. Most recently he’s lived in the Banks island
s of Vanuatu, in the South Pacific, one of the most remote and isolated places on Earth. Lavie is the editor of the acclaimed The Apex Book of World SF. In mid-2010, his first mass-market novel, The Bookman, will be released by Angry Robot.
Lavie’s website is www.lavietidhar.co.uk.
Artist Bio
Melissa Gay pursued a BA degree in Studio Art at the University of the South, an MS degree in Biology from MiddleTennesseeStateUniversity, and a less-than-satisfying career in fine art before realizing that she had always wanted to be a fantasy illustrator. In 1998 she began to show and sell prints of fairy paintings at science fiction conventions, and she has been happy ever since. Her illustrations have appeared in role-playing games and supplements, lab manuals, herbals, comic books, newspapers, magazines, and more. She lives in Nashville, TN, with her husband and son.
Melissa maintains a website at melissagay.com.
About Laura Anne Gilman
Laura Anne Gilman is the author of the popular Retrievers series from Luna Books, which includes Staying Dead, Curse the Dark, Bring It On, BurningBridges, and the forthcoming Free Fall. She is also the author of more than thirty short stories publishing in a variety of magazines and anthologies, including Polyphony 6 and Realms of Fantasy.
Ms. Gilman lives in New England, where she also runs d.y.m.k. productions, an editorial services company. Read more about her work and a complete bibliography at lauraannegilman.net.
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