Rupert Wong and the Ends of the Earth

by Cassandra Khaw

  Below us, the dog makes a whuffling snort, halfway to a human laugh.

  “I wasn’t a very good student.” I shrug, trying not to seem too self-conscious, distracted by the clamor of Gatwick. It’s more cramped here than I’d have expected. Not that I’ve been to many airports. Not for legal reasons, at least. But the contrast is difficult to ignore. Unlike KLIA, Gatwick feels like a pit stop rather than a destination; noisy and utilitarian. “People here look a bit… pink.”

  “It’s the national color.”

  I can’t tell if he’s serious.

  “His name’s Cerberus, by the way.” Orpheus wafts airily over the rim of the table. The dog thumps against the table as he scuttles onto his feet, head sliding into view, eyes still a reproachful brimstone-gold. “You have to know who Cerberus is.”

  “I just met—oooooh. Oh. Hm. Yeah. I know who he is. Hello, Cerberus. Please don’t eat me.” I lean away, fighting the urge to go into a fetal position. The dog laughs again and there’s a look in his eyes that says one day, it’d eat me alive. “Why doesn’t he have more heads, though?”

  Orpheus clicks his tongue, a headmaster noise, sharp with disdain. “Because it would scare the normal people, wouldn’t it?”

  “Hrm. Yes. I suppose.” I rub the back of my skull, pushing a fingertip into the top of my spine. “Sorry. It’s the jetlag. It wasn’t exactly the best flight. I—I should shut up. Quit while you’re ahead and all that.”

  A glacial silence envelops our small table. Boy and dog glare, expressions somewhere between incredulity and indignity.

  “Yes,” Orpheus deadpans. “Ahead.”

  Energy glissades through the air, synesthetic, sea-salt and clean grass, a taste and a smell and a sensation. It’s old magic, precise as an operatic solo. Reality peels back, and glamour recedes to reveal—

  Oh.

  Oh, that’s awkward.

  Orpheus is a literal head on the seat of his wheelchair, the stump of his throat putrid, purple-blotched. A tangle of nerves worm from beneath the flaps of his skin, knotting in the wheels, crawling over the armrests. I suspect that’s how he moves around but I’m not going to ask because frankly, I think I’ve hit my daily foot-in-mouth quota.

  As for Cerberus, the only thing I have to say about him is: eep.

  “If I openly confess to being an idiot, would that help to make things less awkward?”

  “Mr. Wong, has anyone told you that you talk entirely too much?”

  “Funny you should say that.”

  “Shut. Up.”

  “Shutting up now.”

  The illusion reasserts itself and Orpheus levels another smile, taut and cold. “Are there subways in Malaysia?”

  Flummoxed by the change of topic, I bob my head. “Yes?”

  “Good,” He scribbles onto a scrap of receipt, slides it across the table. “Here’s the address. You can get there on your own.”

  CHAPTER SEVEN

  AS IT TURNS out, elevators are serious business in the London underground. They’re not mere conveniences, expected variables in the infrastructure, a service to the slothful. They’re always there for a reason.

  I wheeze up and down stairs, broken and dispirited, too many hours from the memory of sleep; ravenous, constipated, whittled to the bone, a husk of a man, no more human than the pipes and the tiles and the scream of the trains.

  “Sorry. Do you mind not sitting on the stairs?” A portly woman taps me on the shoulder, moments after I crumple onto a step. I look up into her wide face, framed by corkscrew curls, think about my answer, and say:

  “Yes. Yes, I mind a lot.”

  Disapproving glances follow me to the next station. I ignore them. There are bigger problems to deal with. Twice, I take the wrong line, find myself halfway to something called the Tobacco Docks, and then Kensington, before finally being turned around and pointed in the current direction. (You’re wondering why my sense of direction is so terrible, ang moh, but I’m about to get there.)

  ‘The dead’ is a phrase that gets bantered around a lot and often, and the image that it evokes is one replete with diaphanous apparitions, poltergeists; things that go boo in the night. But the dead aren’t always in high-definition. For the most part, London’s deceased lack faces; a miasma of ambiguous silhouettes, drifting through commuters, forever drifting towards home, too old, too forgotten to hold onto any self.

  Here and there, I catch glimpses of younger deaths: wide-open mouths, shocked eyes, jellied viscera trickling down crushed skeletons. I keep my head down, pretend ignorance as they whisper endlessly, repeating the histories of their demises.

  Eventually, after a few false starts and a non-violent altercation with an incontinent corgi, I find Croydon, and step out into the omnipresent drizzle.

  The borough proves a surprise: grittier, more ethnic than the rest of London’s been, closer to Kuala Lumpur than the intersection in Canada Water, but at the same time, also much shorter. And colder, but that I expected. The absence of skyscrapers, however, has me completely perplexed. There’s something bizarrely scenic about London, almost like they stole buildings from the Harry Potter movies and staggered office blocks in between, just for variety, a peculiarity that permeates even this part of town.

  Filing away the observation, I pull my hoodie tighter about my shoulders, the chill pushing against my bones like a cat, and scan the road for an accommodating face. No one official; I’ve had enough of that for the time being. The businesspeople seem too harried, and the women too purposeful. A pair of men, slickly dressed in bargain-bin suits, the fabric worn and the ties slightly askew, look up at my confused approach. They smile like sharks, eyes black, dead. One lifts a handful of crumpled fliers with unnecessary enthusiasm, mouth straining even wider, and I babble an objection before scampering away. I throw a quick glance back as I hustle around a corner: they’re still watching, mannequin-still, heads cocked at perfect right angles.

  Mental note: avoid this part of town.

  Serendipity distracts from all fevered contemplations of the strange encounter, however. My trajectory puts me into earshot of a gaggle of smoking teenagers loitering just outside of the station, twee uniforms balanced by a shared look of insouciance.

  “Hi.”

  They stare.

  “Do you know where”—I uncrumple the sweat-stained, balled-up wad of disintegrating paper and frown at the mosaic of ink—“Peregrine Yard Mews is?”

  “He actually mewled!” A convulsion of giggling escapes an Asian girl to infect her peers, where it develops into a full-blown epidemic.

  Damp, dog-tired, and filled with despair, I blink: “Excuse me?”

  “Sorry. My mate ’ere’s got a fing for cats and accents,” one of the boys replies, gangly and brown-skinned, hair impressively circular. His body language suggests considerable standing in the adolescent social hierarchy. “Wot can I ’elp you with?”

  “Yeah, um. I need to get to Peregrine Yard Mews?”

  “Ooh. Rough neighbourhood, that one. I s’ppose you do look like you’re from ends.” He looks me over, before jutting his chin at an intersection. “It’s not far. Walkable, if you’re feeling up to it. Tram could get you ha’fway there, but it’d add ten minutes—actually, you got Citymapper? Signal?”

  “I—”

  “Oy, guys! What’s the best route?”

  Phones are brandished in unison, battered clamshells and sequin-sheathed iPhones, a Samsung cozied into the spine of a Totoro, and suddenly, everyone’s frantically thumbing through their devices. No one’s invited me under their overhang yet, but I suppose that might be asking too much. Their patois shifts, accents deepening, quickening. I register about four words in twelve, just enough to understand that they’re not simply toying with me, although at least a few seem unreasonably amused at my predicament.

  Finally:

  “It’s pretty easy,” declares their beaming spokesperson.

  It isn’t. I listen and nod at the fusillade of instructions. No one seems w
illing to let him speak in peace, interjecting whenever possible, introducing food recommendations, words of caution, advice on how best to save another two minutes, every remark leading the argument onto a new tangent entirely.

  The wind drags ribbons of cold water across the street. Above, the clouds clot asphalt-black. I sigh. I’ve gone from soggy to squelching in my sneakers. “Actually, I think I’d just try to find—”

  “Mate! Stop!” The afroed boy grabs me by the wrist. I tense, and my household of tattoo-spirits stir, a susurrus of power that licks across the youth’s skin. He flinches away. “What was—”

  “Static.” I rub my arm, slide the sleeve over my bony wrist. “What were you saying?”

  “Yeah.” He stares at me, cagey, eyes narrowed. He knows something happened. His flesh knows it. His bones know it. His lizard brain, frothing with terror, knows it. But his tongue and his thoughts? They’ve lost the language for that subcutaneous dread. “Anyway. Hope you find wha’ you’re looking for.”

  Nod and smile. Nod and smile. I retreat, take a corner, plunge into a ripple of people, freshly discharged from the train lines, all power-walking in the wrong direction, and zip in front of an encroaching bus to emerge into slightly ramshackle suburbia.

  The walk doesn’t take long, at least not compared with the voyage here. Thirty minutes later, I’m in the courtyard of an oppressively functional building complex. There’s no art to the three-flat arrangement, no suggestion of a legacy built on unethically acquired tea. It is brown brick and gray concrete, pure practical geometry; a place to exist, rather than to showcase alongside mentions of six-figure incomes.

  A geriatric woman, possibly Russian, white-haired and armed in floral print, a headscarf tied under her chin, glares at me from the stoop. “Who you?”

  I gawk at her, bewildered but mostly impressed. I’ve never seen anyone smoke so aggressively. It’s as though the cigarette is a grievous affront, a thing to be attacked, to be fellated into sobbing penitence.

  Her eyes slit. “Who you?” she repeats

  “My name’s Rupert, I was wondering—”

  “Wrong flats. Get out.”

  “But—”

  “Out.”

  I grapple the Asian instinct to obey matriarchal authority, and force myself a step forward. “Lady—”

  “Out!” Suddenly, she’s on her feet and charging at me, screeching wildly, arms flapping with unreasonable zeal.

  I backpedal, surprised. I’ve seen a lot of shit over the years, argued semantics with nightmares beyond labelling, defused rallies of demonic fetuses, but I’ve never, ever had to contend with an outraged grandmother. Do I run away? Do I brace for a hard pinch? I—

  “Alina.” A cold, bored voice cuts through the pandemonium. “Sit.”

  She sits. She actually sits. The old battleaxe drops to an unmistakably canine squat, palms on the pavement, head raised, manner attentive.

  “Heel.”

  I avert my gaze as the babushka prances away, inexplicably embarrassed, and look up at the woman slouched against a doorframe. I almost swallow my tongue. Power oozes from her. Not the raw stuff of any old god, but militarized, locked and loaded and cocked at my sense of autonomy.

  She pushes her will on me, and I push back. “I’m guessing you’re one of the Greek—”

  A dismissive sniff. “This is incorrect.”

  “Excuse me?”

  She scratches the old woman beneath her chin before easing herself forward, dragging her godhead like a cloak of lies. The air shimmerswhere she touches it. She’s beautiful, of course, but it isn’t a concrete beauty, nothing nailed into marrow and meat, but a shifting glamour cycling subtly between every definition of the idea. Certain features hold true, however. The brown curls, freefalling over muscled shoulders; the maple-gold eyes; the slinking, serpentine walk. Contrary to Disney, it seems, the Greek Pantheon isn’t cobbled from Aryan idolatry, but a more Mediterranean stock.

  “You’re not on your knees.”

  “No.” Bizarrely, I find myself feeling somewhat sheepish. Her tone is accusatory, more petulant than righteously aggrieved, and weirdly more distressing for that reason. I fight the urge to pat her head, despite the six inches she has on me in sandals. “I’m not.”

  “Kneel.” Another shudder of deific energy.

  “No.”

  “Kneel.” This time, it’s a snarl, a whipcrack; the metaphorical gun fires, and I feel the impact. I feel her will unfurl, chittering locust-loud. Bow. Beg. Bear worship to the altar of her being.

  The tattoo-spirits gobble the payload up before Diyu’s wards even begin to itch.

  “What—”

  “Long story, but it starts with ‘I belong to another pantheon entirely,’ and from what I can tell, to people above your paygrade.” I start forward again, a hand extended, ready to nudge the goddess aside if that’s what it takes to get through the door.

  Her eyes burn gold. “How dare you?”

  “Ananke. He is a guest.”

  We both turn. The new arrival is another woman, earthier, more voluptuous, hips and curves and softness. Tiny flowers are threaded through the expanse of her hair, which she keeps in complex braids. There’s a humanity in her that’s absent in her counterpart, manifested in the wrinkles indenting her eyes, her mouth.

  “Demeter—” The sound that Ananke makes isn’t anything a human throat should produce.

  “Do you want to explain to the others why we’ll be short a chef, then? He’s been invited, Ananke. Leave him be.” Demeter fixes me with an evaluating stare, mouth puckering. “Though you’re a bit thin, aren’t you? Unusual for a cook.”

  Click. Epiphany A into Slot B, tagged with a nervous chuckle: this is Demeter, goddess of agriculture and maternal affairs. Ostensibly sweet, but you can never tell with these icons of fertility, what with their affection for ritual sacrifice. Ananke, though, I can’t place. I keep silent as she storms back into the building. A hint of scales glimmers across the skin of her back before she is swallowed by the gloom.

  Demeter tuts loudly. “Sorry. Ananke can be so shrewish, sometimes. She still expects everyone to bend their knee to her, but that’s just—” She crouches down, corrects the placement of the old Russian woman’s scarf, strokes the back of a hand across the dessicated cheek. It’d all be quite sweet, if the unfortunate senior weren’t still on all fours. “Anyway. Don’t judge us for the actions of our predecessors. The primordials are not as well socialized.”

  “Uh-huh.” I gulp, steady myself, close the distance between us and hold out a hand in greeting.

  She stares at my outstretched digits, silent, a smile coagulating. Finally, she rises, fabric billowing across plump limbs, more obedient to aesthetics than physics, as if moved by a non-existent breeze. In all fairness, as an exhibition of power, it’s far less gauche than the norm.

  “Demeter.” She holds out a supple palm, fingers slightly crooked.

  I stare back, conflicted. What’s proper protocol? After some deliberation, I go with excessive obsequiousness; slavish respect is rarely out of vogue. I dip forward, press a kiss to the ball of her wrist, half-bowing, half-something, a bending of the knees that might, in certain circles, be construed as a curtsey. The ridiculousness elicits a warm laugh, one that soon transcends into sensation, and it washes over me and it is—not sticky equatorial heat, but something continental, laced with a breeze that tastes of the sea. Summer. Smell of the harvest and human sweat, the—

  “Lady.” Her name aches in my chest, a benediction. But reverence quickly gives way to shock when the realization hits, the knowledge that I’ve been surprised into exaltation. It hooks into my gut, drags out the words, hoarse: “Lady, what are you doing?”

  “Sorry about that. It’s… automatic, sometimes. Like breathing.” Demeter’s contrition would almost be believable if it weren’t for that smile, hanging like a corpse from the trees. She withdraws her hand, pivots to enter the flat, gazing over the bridge of a shoulder. “Come. We’ll make it
up to you.”

  I bite down the impulse to explain that isn’t the point; that an apology, especially one so flippant, is hardly compensation. She shouldn’t have done that. At least, I don’t think so. Doubt dogs me as I pad along behind Demeter. The inside of the building is musty, damp, white halogen casting hard shadows across a space that isn’t so much dilapidated as it is old, worn gray by generations of living.

  A light strobes as we pass underneath, a warning. Smells tendril from behind closed doors. Marijuana. Tobacco-smoke, six different brands, clove and menthol intertwining. Indian food, unctuously rich, not spiced in the way I remember, not pungent with chilli oil, but still enticing. And underneath that, old beer and human urine, underpinning the acrid, decade-deep stink of cleaning bleach.

  Human smells, all of it. Nothing supernatural whatsoever.

  “We keep a low profile,” Demeter remarks, as though she’s been reading my thoughts on a board. “Life has not been easy for us in this country.”

  I don’t reply, my attention focused inward; an auction is begun, a channel for negotiation opened. Room on the wet curve of a ventricle for whichever demon is willing to take on the Greek gods. Bob—his name is not actually Bob, but call a demon a duck and you bring him to your level—wins, of course, committing the entirety of his self to the effort, and I wince as he seeps through muscle fibers and abdominal cavity to write himself on cardiovascular tissue.

  I breathe, feel his teeth behind mine, feel his power compound the wards that I knit under every intake of air. Rudimentary safeguards, sure, but still another layer of protection, another minute I can use to buy an excuse out of whatever hell might visit. Bob strains against my skin, stitches his essence through my cells, laces himself in tight. I feel him grin. I might regret this one day, but that supposes I get another day.

  If Demeter notices any of it, she says nothing.

  We skip the mold-spangled elevator, rust crusting its hinges, and walk up several flights of stairs instead. The floor that we turn off is indistinguishable from its peers, maybe even rattier. Demeter supplies no further conversation, just strolls up to a door and raps on the wood. (Her knuckles don’t actually come into contact with the wood. My eyes water, even as visual cortices argue with the sliver of cerebrum familiar with everything eldritch; the world writhing between two interpretations of material truth.)