by Kelli Kimble
“Because I would have been guilty of murder?”
“No, though that is a fair point. Because an Anubian who takes life before they are of age to inherit their traits won’t ever gain their traits. Not even if they find their mate and fulfill their destiny.”
“Mr. Anu. Do you know how crazy that sounds? How crazy you sound?”
“How else would I have known to approach the school building? I have no reason to go there. I’d already left and was halfway home, the same as most of the other spectators. I turned back when I heard Gary’s soul.”
“Our entire altercation couldn’t have taken more than five minutes,” I said. “You expect me to believe you got back to the school from that distance and found us in less than five minutes?”
“No. I could feel his soul waning, even a half-hour before it happened. I’m a god, Miss Hond. Time means little to me. It is solely a human construct for ordering life.” He glanced over at me. “Have you eaten today? You look a little peaked.”
I sighed. “No. I didn’t have an appetite at lunch.”
Mr. Anu drove us to the diner. “Come on, then. We’ll have a snack.”
Politeness and hunger overrode my desire to argue. We went inside and he ordered two slices of pie, a cup of coffee, and a glass of milk before we even sat down. The waitress nodded and we went to a booth.
“Iris.”
My eyes met his. For a moment, I saw something there that comforted me. But I felt compelled to turn aside.
“I know you still don’t believe me.”
I shook my head. It would be rude to outright say that I didn’t.
“What if I could show you something? Something physical?”
The waitress brought over my milk and poured Mr. Anu’s coffee. Mr. Anu paused and looked up at her.
“How’s it going, honey?” she asked him.
“Very well, thank you, Miss Waterson.”
“And who’s this? Your daughter?”
“No. May I present Miss Hond. She’s assisting me with some tasks around my farm.”
The waitress’s eyes narrowed as she looked me up and down. “I’ll get you that pie now.” She hurried behind the counter.
“What could you possibly show me?”
“You shall see.”
* * *
It turned out to be a wooden box. When we returned to the farm, he brought it to the table. It was ornate, with tiles and jewels embedded in the surface. The edges and corners were a beautiful gold. Sitting on top of it was a statue of a dog. It was black, so black that it seemed to suck the light from the kitchen and become even blacker. It was lying prostrate on its haunches, its forepaws extended, with an upright and alert head. Its ears stood straight up, the way a Doberman’s might, and its eyes and the insides of its ears were inlaid with gold.
Goosebumps raised on my arms. The dog. It looked like . . .
“Open it.”
I wiped my palm on my skirt and reached for the box. My hand was shaking, and I tried to smooth my motion. But it only got worse. Did I want to know what was in the box?
Yes. I did.
It was true that the Anubian story grated on me. But it fascinated me, too. Why not look inside the box, if I’d been invited to?
I lifted the lid. It was lighter than I’d expected it to be, and I set it aside on the kitchen table with care. I had to stand so that I could gain enough perspective to look down into the box. It contained a pair of gleaming metal knives with curved blades, several rods in varying sizes that resembled crochet hooks, a wooden bowl with a fluted lip along one edge, and a cup that looked to be made of bone or ivory. It was all nestled in a bed of a rough-spun fabric.
“What is this stuff?”
“These are my tools. For mummification.”
I stepped backward involuntarily, tripping over my chair. Mr. Anu steadied me with an outstretched hand. As usual, his touch smoothed over my emotions.
“I have not used these tools for centuries. I keep them only to remind me what my purpose once was. I don't ever expect to use them again.” He withdrew one of the hooks. It was made of metal formed into a long skinny handle, with the metal turning back towards itself only at the tip. He ran his fingers over it.
Mummification tools? Come on. Curiosity got the better of me. I moved closer.
“Yeah? What’s that tool for?”
“Extracting brains.”
I snorted. “It looks like an oversized crochet hook.”
“You pushed this into the head cavity through the deceased's nostrils.” He made a jabbing motion into the air with the hook, then twisted it and pulled it back towards himself.
“Ew.”
“Yes, it wasn’t a tidy process. But sacred. Necessary.”
“Did it work?”
“Aren’t your modern archeologists still finding mummies?”
“Not that. Wasn’t the purpose of mummification for infinite life?”
“No. It was more to ensure an afterlife of ease.”
“Did it?”
He set the hook on the table and took out the remaining items. “No. Like most things, the afterlife is what you make of it. Those who can’t understand such a concept are the ones to suffer.” He withdrew the fabric. “Ah, here is what I was looking for.”
He withdrew another object and placed it on the table. It was black, and, like the dog on the lid, it became blacker the longer I looked at it. One side of it had a slightly rounded edge, and the other edges had a rough texture. It smelled faintly of saltwater, incense, and mildew. He knelt before it, then kissed it and spoke a few words in a foreign language.
“This is a sacred text. I have had it for as long as I can remember. It describes my duties and future.”
“It’s a book?”
He inclined his head. “If I open it before you, it will prove to you what I am. What you are. Do you desire me to open the text?”
The moment stretched out from me. Was I sure that Mr. Anu was crazy? There was no other logical explanation for it. He couldn’t be a god. I wasn’t descended from a god. There was nothing special about me.
Except that you knocked a boy nearly twice your size to the ground and beat him unconscious.
“Open it.”
He lifted one edge of the cover. From somewhere, there was a breathy sigh. Was it him? I leaned in closer. The first page had a picture of a man with a dog-like head, black. He had dark-colored skin, defined but lean muscles, and copper-colored bracelets with a blue inlay were at his wrists and upper arms. A necklace or collar of the same material covered most of his chest, and he wore a white skirt-like garment.
“That’s me,” he said. He traced a finger near the edge of the picture. It was hand-illustrated; the brush marks were apparent. “I was in my youth. Before I married or had children.”
“I thought this book was always with you.”
“It was. I recall, as a child, looking at this picture and not being able to imagine a time when I’d reach this maturity. Now those thoughts seem petty.” He turned the page. Columns and columns of strange symbols marked it.
“What’s that?”
“It was our writing system. You call them hieroglyphs.”
“What does it say?”
“That’s not important.” He inserted his finger between the pages towards the back of the book. “You agree this book is ancient, correct?”
“It looks pretty old. Smells old, too.”
He opened to where his finger was, but flattened his palm over the page, hiding what was there.
“This text tells of my future, as I said. I knew that one day I would walk the Earth restlessly and that I’d establish a human family. I knew that I would grow weary of my grief after Joanna’s death and that I’d wish to be productive once more. And I knew who would help me. I knew it would be you many years ago. I was only waiting to find you.” He slid his hand away, revealing another engraving. This time it featured a girl.
It was a stylized girl, dressed as I o
ften do, in a pencil skirt, a blouse, short socks, and loafers. Her hair was a nondescript brown and drawn into a ponytail. Her facial features were generic.
“She looks like me,” I said, laughing. She could be any woman with brown hair, dressed in the current fashion.
“Miss Hond, don’t be obtuse. It is you.”
“How? That’s ridiculous.”
“This cartouche says it’s you.” He pointed to a set of symbols beneath the image, captured together inside a vertical oval with a horizontal line at the bottom. There were five symbols, though one of them repeated. “Here are the letters of your first name. –I-R-I-S.” He touched each symbol in turn.
“The last one looks like a dog,” I said. “How is that me?”
“You’ve never learned the etymology of your surname? What does the word ‘Hond’ sound like to you?”
My stomach flipped upside down. “Hound?”
“Yes. The Dutch word for ‘dog’, I believe. Every Anubian has a surname that draws a root back to ‘wolf’ or ‘dog’. It is traditional.”
My knees were weak, and I felt my way back into my chair.
“Here. I shall write it on a piece of paper for you. If you don’t believe me, you take it somewhere and have it translated.”
“Translated? Who would translate it for me?”
“I imagine your local library could assist. Or a museum. Surely there are scholars somewhere that still know how to read our ancient texts.” He scratched the symbols onto some paper and pushed it towards me. “Take it.”
I folded it and put it in my pocket.
“I can read more of the text to you if you like.” He turned back a page. “You will be offered the good fortune to acquire a property in a mountainous land across the sea. You will raise crops and stock there, and you will meet the first of your children destined to assist you.” He glanced at me. “That’s a reference to you. I always thought it would be your mate. But I knew from the moment you arrived on the farm what it meant.”
My stomach flip-flopped again, and then I belched an acrid pie-scented air pocket out. Mr. Anu wrinkled his nose.
“I’m sorry,” I said. “I think I’m going to be sick.” I scrambled to his bathroom and threw open the toilet lid, just in time to heave the pie back out into the world. Mr. Anu lingered at the doorway.
“Is there anything that I can get you?”
“How about some sanity?”
He handed me a moistened towel. I wiped my mouth and flushed the toilet.
“I know this is a lot to take in,” he said.
I pushed past him and stalked back to the kitchen. A new resolve hardened my spine. “What about this mate you keep talking about? Who is he?” I went to turn the page, but Mr. Anu caught my wrist.
“Please do not touch the text.”
“Is there a picture of him, too?”
“Yes, though his name is not given. Even so, I cannot reveal his image to you.”
“Why not?”
“You must meet of your own accord.”
“It doesn’t matter. After last week, every eligible boy in all of Salvation will stay away from me. I couldn’t meet him now even if I wanted to.”
“You’d be surprised.”
He drove me home, and, though I hadn’t done even a small amount of work, he still held out my payment as I was getting out of the truck.
I shook my head. “No. You can’t pay me for sifting through your memory box.”
“If I don’t pay you, your parents will become suspicious.”
“Don’t you want to tell them what they are?”
“They are beyond the time when I can reach them.”
I took the money.
I started for the front door, but curiosity about the vandalism led me up the driveway towards the garage. One of Mother’s prized monogrammed sheets was hanging from the side of the house, tied at the top two corners to nails protruding from the wooden siding.
Nobody seemed to be watching, and I pulled the sheet to the side.
There might have been more, but I could only see the words ‘Dixie bitch.’
I yanked my hand away. The sheet fell back into place.
Mother’s voice drifted out through the kitchen window.
“I really wish you could have fixed it, Clark.”
“What would you have me do? The only place in town to buy paint is the hardware store. The old goat insisted they had nothing that would suit the purpose.”
“Clark,” her voice was soft. “What will we do?”
I didn’t want to hear anymore. I entered through the front door and made plenty of noise, so they’d stop talking.
Mother came out of the kitchen, wiping her hands on her apron. It was such a normal motion; something I’d seen her do a thousand times. She always hitched the fabric just so, over her palm and around to the knuckles of her right hand before dropping the fabric and smoothing it.
“Iris, you’re home.”
I held up the money Mr. Anu had given me. “Four more dollars,” I said. My smile felt fake, weak. But Mother smiled back.
“Oh, honey. That’s delightful.”
All at once, it was too much to bear. I rushed to her, wrapping my arms around her waist as I had when I was far smaller and had skinned a knee or lost a favorite toy. My back hunched and sobs came. Words that had no form in language were running out of my mouth, deformed by the tears and the contortions of my stretched-wide lips. Mother smoothed a hand over my hair.
“Shh, darling. Everything will be alright.”
Would it?
“Here, now,” Daddy came into the room. “What’s this all about?”
I wanted to pour out all of the emotions bottled up. I wanted to tell him that I hadn’t meant to hurt Gary, that Mr. Anu had put strange thoughts in my head, that I’d seen the graffiti and it was burned into my vision. But words wouldn’t come.
I cried so long and so hard that Daddy carried me up to bed. Mother stripped me to my underthings and tucked me in, while downstairs Daddy talked in urgent tones to someone on the phone. I was still crying when the doctor he’d called arrived.
He came into my room, bringing an antiseptic scent that burned my nostrils. He set a bag on my bed efficiently and began checking my vital signs. His motions were mechanical as if he’d done it many times, or he was only pretending to check the vital signs of a life-sized doll.
“She’s had a shock, all right,” the doctor said. He snapped his bag shut and moved to leave the room.
“Aren’t you going to do something for her?” Mother said, stepping into his path. She was holding one end of her apron string in her hand and worrying it. “And did you see the bruises on her arms? How is she supposed to rest?”
The doctor’s lip curled. “I’d say the boy she put in the hospital is a lot worse off. Would you like to know how much rest he’s getting? I had to visit him this morning. He’s not even recognizable as human.”
“Oh,” Mother drew back from him.
Daddy made a sound in the back of his throat. He sometimes made it when he was angry, but I’d never noticed before how much it sounded like a dog growling.
“I’m going to need you to leave, now,” he said to the doctor.
The doctor wasn’t cowed in the least. “With pleasure.” He stalked around Mother. Daddy shadowed him, and they disappeared down the steps.
“I’m so sorry you heard that, Iris.” Mother sat on the edge of the bed and smoothed my hair. She produced a clean hankie from her apron pocket and wiped my eyes. She stayed there with me until I cried myself to sleep.
* * *
Mother put a plate of eggs in front of me.
“Are you sure you’re feeling well enough to go to school?” she fussed over me, picking non-existent lint from my sleeve and smoothing an errant hair.
“I’m fine, Mother. I just needed a good night’s sleep, is all.”
“I was thinking about your bruises. Are those from . . . the other night? From Gary?”
>
I brushed at the spot on my left upper arm absently. It was covered by my sweater. It felt like a stain that I had to hide from others. “Yes.”
She paced away from me, and when she turned, her expression was controlled. “You need to show those bruises to the sheriff. Your father says he thinks you weren’t injured.”
“I wasn’t.” I tucked my chin and stared at my plate. The eggs no longer looked appealing. I didn’t want to think about how bruises were nothing compared to what I’d done to Gary.
Daddy came in and began unfolding the paper. The words between Mother and I hung in the air, but he didn’t notice. He shook it open as Mother served him coffee.
My mouth went dry. The front page of the newspaper featured a photo of a smiling Gary, with a headline stating that the beloved football player had been brutally attacked and beaten.
“Clark,” Mother said, snatching it away from him. She crumpled it and threw it in the garbage pail.
“What are you doing? I was reading that,” he said. His eyes went to the cupboard where she keeps the whiskey. “Have you already indulged?”
“Heavens, no. You should’ve looked at it before you brought it in here.” She shifted her eyes to me and back to him. He opened his mouth — probably to object — but she stopped him. “We’ll talk about it la-a-ter.” She said the last word with three syllables, and Daddy caught something in her meaning.
“Right. Iris. Almost ready for school?” He turned towards me and chugged his coffee. “I’m ready whenever you are.”
“I’ll get my things,” I said.
“You haven’t even touched your eggs,” Mother said, following me to the stairs. “And are you sure you want to go to school today?”
I didn’t want to go to school. I wanted to go to college, and this was a step I had to endure to get there. “Yes, Mother,” I said. I went to my room and collected my school bag. When I got back downstairs, they were talking in hushed voices.
“You said the sheriff didn’t think she was injured. If he knew of her injuries . . .”