“This is the place where Esmeribetheda saw the warriors in the sky,” the brown girl says. “That’s one of the parts of the story that the changelings are never taught. They’re taught that she was hanged and burned alive because she betrayed the ghul to the djinn, but the ghouls know that’s not the truth.”
“Where am I?” Emmie asks. “What are you talking about?”
“You’re only dreaming,” the brown girl says and smiles and kicks at the salty, frothy water. “But you’re in the wastes, near the battlegrounds. This place has other names, but I never learned them. Or I’ve forgotten them. Six of one, half dozen of the other. Either way, you’re at the end of the wastes, the wastes at the very end of this world. At least you’re not cold anymore.”
“No, now I’m hot,” Emmie says and sits down on the warm white sand. There’s a conch shell nearby, half-buried, and she picks it up and runs her fingers carefully along the sharp spines spaced out along the conch’s low spire.
“The Hindu people,” the girl says, taking a step towards shore, “they believe that Vishnu, the god of preservation, has a conch shell named Panchajanya, and they believe that Panchajanya represents all the living things that have ever arisen from the life-giving waters of the seas.”
“Are you from India?” Emmie asks. “Is that why your skin’s so dark?”
The girl doesn’t answer the question, but stares up at the cloudless blue-white sky instead. “There’s something terrible coming,” she says again.
“You told me that already.”
“This is one of the places where it began, after the changeling child Esmeribetheda was murdered. After the ghouls fought a great war with the djinn and were driven out of the wastes forever. This is the place where the warriors still battle in the sky to keep balance against the destruction of all creation. This is where the sea meets the sand, where the two are always struggling to expand their earthly empires.”
Emmie sets the conch shell back down. “There was a woman on a train,” she says. “A woman with the Seal of Solomon tattooed on one of her hands.”
The brown girl shakes her head and looks down at her wet feet. “We can’t talk about her. Not just yet. Later. Soon.”
“There’s no point to this, is there? You should just let me wake up.”
“I cannot stop you from waking, Emma Jean, but it’s not pointless. There are things you need to see.”
“Well, I don’t need to see sand,” Emmie tells her. “I’ve seen lots and lots of sand before.”
“It’s not the sand that’s important,” the brown girl says, and then Emmie’s floating again, or maybe this time she’s falling. There’s no way to be sure exactly which, but now there’s a lot more than sand. There are battles worse than anything she’s ever imagined, men and horses and bristling hairy creatures that walk like men, blood and fire and the screams of the dying. Swords and spears, arrows and axes, and hungry crows and jackals waiting for their share. There are vast maelstroms in the sky, whirling clouds like hurricanes of flame, and monsters perched at the edges of the maelstroms, monsters tearing one another apart, and Emmie wants to shut her eyes, but it doesn’t seem to make much difference. She is seeing these things, because the brown girl is showing them to her. The ruins of a city half-buried in the shifting dunes. The bed of a vanished lake, littered with the skeletons of water monsters. A girl tied to a tree and burned alive. The pages of a storybook, turned before Emmie’s eyes, turned behind her eyes, and whenever it gets too scary, she reminds herself that it’s only a dream, and she’ll probably forget most of it when she wakes up.
“Open your eyes,” the brown girl says, so Emmie does, and now she sees they’re sitting on the roof of her house on Angell Street, sitting side by side, and there are fat, wet flakes of snow falling from the blue-gray sky.
“That was ridiculous,” Emmie says and shivers. “None of that was real. You’re not real, and none of those things were real, either.”
“A long time ago,” the brown girl says, as if Emmie hasn’t said a word, “before you were born, Deacon Silvey was fighting a war, too. It wasn’t that sort of war, but he was still a soldier, after a fashion, and he fought demons and worse things than demons.”
“Bullshit,” Emmie says, just like Deacon would say it, and scowls at the brown girl. “Deacon used to work in liquor stores and laundries, and now he owns a used bookstore on Thayer Street. He was never in the army or the navy or anything.”
“That doesn’t matter. He was still a soldier. He didn’t want to be, but he was. He could see things, and so the policemen came to him, and he helped them catch murderers and rapists and thieves.”
Emmie stares at the girl, at her dark hair now tangled by the wind and speckled with melting snowflakes. If any of that were true, Deacon would have told her. Deacon’s told her lots of stories about before she was born, stories about when he lived in Atlanta and Birmingham, stories about her mother, whose name was Chance, and he’s never said anything at all about helping the police.
“You’re a liar,” she says. “None of that’s true.”
“Once, he helped them find a woman named Mary English,” the brown girl continues, undaunted, “a mule, a madwoman who worked for the Cuckoo, stealing babies to be hidden away in the dark places of the world and raised up by the ghouls. That day, he even saved a girl who should have become a changeling.”
“You’re full of it, and I’m cold, and I’m going to wake myself up now.”
“There’s not much time, and there are things you need to understand.”
“I need to wake up,” Emmie tells her and crosses her arms, trying to stay warm. “I’m gonna freeze to death up here.”
The brown girl sticks out her tongue and catches a snowflake. She nods her head and points northeast, to the place where the clouds are coming from. “His daughter will come for you, Emma Jean. She may be dying, and she may not live, but if she does, she’ll come for you, because you’re a part in this. And there will be others, men who mean you harm, who will kill you if they can, and you have to be ready for them.”
“Wake up,” Emmie says. She’s shut her eyes and is trying to think of nothing but her bed, her room, Doris Day on the CD player, the warmth inside the house. “Wake up, and forget all of this.”
“You met your mother on a train,” the girl says. “She gave the rest of her life to meet you just that one time. She gave her life to save you.”
“Wake up,” Emmie says, and she’s started crying all over again. The tears are freezing on her cheeks, and they clatter down the steep sides of the roof and break on the driveway. “Wake up now. Wake up now.”
“There’s a box,” the brown girl says. “A cardboard box beneath his bed. When you see that I’m telling you the truth, Emma Jean, you’ll know that you can’t stay here in this house anymore. Something terrible is coming.”
Emmie screams, opens her eyes and swings at the girl, both her hands clenched tightly into fists. The brown girl shrieks and breaks apart into a flock of robins and is swept away by the wind.
“Leave me alone!” Emmie screams after the fleeing birds.
All lost, lost, lost now…
“Just leave me alone,” she sobs, all the fight slipping quickly out of her, and the roof opens up like the maw of a hungry creature built of shingles and wood and nails, and it swallows her whole. She slides easily down its black gullet, and when Emmie remembers that the creature was only her house, she opens her eyes. And she’s lying in her bed again, and Deacon’s holding her. He smells like whiskey and cigarettes, and he’s smiling.
“Hey, kiddo,” he says. “You were having a bad dream. It’s okay. You were just having a bad dream, that’s all. How long have you been asleep up here? Do you know it’s snowing?”
“Yes,” she says, and Emmie starts to tell him about the brown girl and the endless desert beside the sea, the wars and flying high above the city, and then she remembers all the other things that the girl told her, all the crazy things she kn
ows aren’t true, but they’re still too frightening to think about. Too scary ever to say out loud, and then she’s crying again, crying awake and for real this time, and Deacon holds her and whispers soothing things until she stops.
By seven o’clock, there are two inches of snow blanketing Angell Street, and the house is quiet and still, the heavy, e it assumes whenever there’s snow. Sadie’s gone back to New York; she left while Emmie was asleep, and she told Deacon to tell Emmie that she was sorry she couldn’t stick around and say good-bye, but she didn’t want to miss her train. She promised to call later. And Deacon’s gone to the shop, because Jack’s sick or his car wouldn’t start or something like that. Emmie told him it was okay, that she would be fine alone, and he said there was a frozen dinner, fried chicken with peas and apple cobbler, and that’s what she should have for dinner. “You need something more than just a peanut-butter-and-jelly sandwich,” he said, and she promised him she’d eat the frozen dinner, even though she hates fried chicken.
She’s downstairs watching the snow fall through the tangerine light of the street lamps, watching as it hides the broad leaves of the rhododendrons growing beside the front porch. The leaves will freeze and begin to curl in on themselves by morning. It’s hard to tell where the yard ends and the sidewalk begins, where the sidewalk ends and the road begins. She halfheartedly contemplates getting bundled up and going outside, even though it’s after dark. Deacon didn’t say that she couldn’t, but, then again, she doesn’t really feel like playing in the snow.
I could find the place where the sidewalk meets the grass, Emmie thinks. I could find the place where the street begins. And she considers carefully marking them off with sticks or rocks. But the snow would only bury her markers, because the Weather Channel says there’ll be at least six more inches before morning. If the world out there is determined to erase all distinctions, she might as well let it. At least there are slushy, dark tire marks on the street, cars going one way or another; later, a truck will be along to salt the road. Emmie glances at the clock above the sofa. It’s seven twenty-three, and Deacon won’t be closing up the shop until nine, even though he was grumbling about how the snow would probably keep a lot of the customers away. She wanted to say, You never have any customers, anyway, but she didn’t. Sometimes someone comes in and buys a book, but mostly people don’t come in, and when they do, they usually walk about browsing and reading and leave without buying a thing. “It’s not a goddamn library,” Deacon says sometimes. “I can’t pay the bills with their curiosity.”
Emmie leans on the windowsill, resting her chin on her folded hands, wiggling in the chair so the legs squeak against the dingy hardwood floor. It seems pointless, but she wishes Deacon could have stayed home, or that Sadie hadn’t needed to rush back to Manhattan. The wind sweeps along Angell Street, making something like a dust devil from the fresh snow; Emmie hears someone coming down the stairs, and she turns to see who it is. But she already knows, because that’s what she’s really been doing all evening, sitting here waiting for the brown girl to come back.
“I never cared for the snow,” the girl says. She’s standing near the bottom of the stairs, looking at the television as though she’s never seen one before. “It was snowing when my mother died.”
“Your mother died, too?” Emmie asks, and of course the brown girl’s mother died, too. She had to have, because the brown girl is only some part of Emmie that’s decided it wants to be more than a part, that it wants to be a whole person.
“My father tried to save her, but the doctors couldn’t help, and he couldn’t help, either. It was the influenza, and she developed pneumonia. My mother was a powerful sorceress,” the girl says proudly.
“Sure,” Emmie says. “Every winter she rode about in the snow offering children hot drinks and Turkish Delight, and that’s how she caught her death of cold.”
“What’s Turkish Delight?” the girl asks.
“Don’t be stupid. If I know, then you know, too.”
The brown girl stares at the television a moment more, then glances back up the staircase. “You haven’t found the box yet, have you?” she asks.
“There isn’t any box,” Emmie tells her and turns back to the window. “You made that up. I mean, I made that up.”
The brown girl sighs and sits down on the stairs.
“I’m going to have to tell Deacon about you,” Emmie says. “I’m going to have to tell him, and he’s going to make me see a doctor or a psychiatrist or something.”
“I wish you’d believe me,” the girl says. “There’s so little time left.”
“I’m sorry that your mother died,” Emmie replies, then watches a big yellow SUV moving slowly down Angell Street, its headlights shining through the falling snow.
“My father made a blood sacrifice to Father Kraken and Mother Hydra, and he used his strongest magick and some herbs that had come all the way from Persia and China, but nothing could save her.”
“Who are Father Kraken and Mother Hydra supposed to be?” Emmie wonders aloud, trying to remember if she’s ever read a book where she saw those names. For a long moment, the girl on the stairs is silent, and when she answers she sounds both amazed and like maybe she feels sorry for Emmie for being such an ignoramus.
“Of all the changelings,” the girl says finally, “you may be the only one who would ever have cause to ask such a question. They are the Pillars of the Sea, Emma Jean, the Keepers of the Abyss, Mother and Father, destruction and conception and everything that lies anywhere in between. In the days of void and shadow, before the gods had grown weary of nothingness and pulled the land up from the sea—”
“I get the picture,” Emmie says. “God didn’t save your mother, but you still believe in him. It doesn’t matter to me. I’m an atheist.”
“An eight-year-old girl shouldn’t be an atheist.”
“Well, this one is,” Emmie says and looks over her shoulder at the brown girl, who’s staring at her between the banister rails. “Anyway, you could at least be consistent.”
“What are you talking about?” the brown girl asks and scrunches up her face.
“I mean, kraken is a Norwegian word, which is sometimes used to refer to the giant squid, Architeuthis, or to mythical sea monsters in general. But the Hydra, on the other hand, is a nine-headed monster that Hercules had to kill. Killing the Hydra was the second of the twelve labors of Hercules. So, what I mean is that you’re mixing Norse and Greek mythology, and that’s inconsistent and stupid. Now, if you’d said Mother Hydra and Father Poseidon, well, that might be a little less silly.”
The brown girl watches her for a moment, and Emmie can’t read much of anything in her chocolate eyes, if she’s insulted or angry or just confused. Then the brown girl shakes her head, the way one of Emmie’s teachers might shake his or her head if a student is being particularly dense, and she stands up again.
“The Keepers have many names among the tribes of men,” she says. “Names are only tools. Am I supposed to believe that you’re a figment of my imagination, because Silvey is derived from a Spanish name, Silva or Silvera, but Emma comes from Old German and Jean is French? Or because Jean is a man’s name—”
“That’s not the same thing at all,” Emmie says, her cheeks flushed, and she stands up so fast that she almost knocks the chair over. “You’re not very smart if you don’t see the difference.”
“But a little while ago you said I am you,” the brown girl reminds her, “so how can I be any less bright than you yourself?”
“Shut up,” Emmie says, because it’s a lot easier than trying to answer the girl’s question. As a barb, she adds, “Deacon says that religion is a crutch.”
“Why do you call him that?” the girl asks. “Why do you call him Deacon?”
“Because that’s his name.”
“Why don’t you call him Father or Daddy or—”
“Why don’t you mind your own business?” Emmie says, and the brown girl shrugs and stands up, straighte
ning her stockings and black dress.
“Maybe it’s because you know something, something you don’t want to admit.”
“That’s a lie,” Emmie tells her. “I call him Deacon because that’s what he wants me to call him, because it’s his name.”
“We’re wasting time we can’t afford to squander,” the brown girl says. “I was hoping you could find the box on your own, but you haven’t even tried.”
“I was busy. I was watching the snow.”
“I’ve never much liked the snow,” the brown girl says again. “My mother died when it was snowing.”
“I might be schizophrenic,” Emmie says, half to herself, and thinks about sitting back down in the chair. “If I’m hallucinating and having delusions and all, I might be schizophrenic.”
“Or it might be something else entirely. Maybe you’re like Deacon once was. Maybe you can see the things that other people can’t. You know, it’s a sad and unfortunate state of affairs that you have to live in a world where eight-year-olds refuse to believe in anything that they cannot touch or measure, and anyone who happens to see a thing that is invisible to most people is immediately branded a lunatic. Your stepmother still believes in magick.”
“Sadie’s a writer,” Emmie says, repeating something else she’s heard Deacon say. “Writers are different. They’re supposed to be weird.”
The wind is getting stronger, and it buffets the house on Angell Street and moans like a wounded animal as it slides around the corners.
“Come upstairs with me,” the brown girl says. “I need to show you something. We don’t have much time left.”
“What if I want to stay right here and watch the snow?”
“The snow will still be out there when we’re done.”
Emmie glances about the small living room, surprised at how very dark it’s gotten, the only light the shifting glow of the television set and the muted orange of the street lamps coming in through the windows. I should turn on a lamp, she thinks. What if Deacon comes home, and all the lights are out? He might think that something’s wrong.
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