by Ramy Vance
Going through his briefcase of celestial treasures, he puts in the Eye of Dionysus for the first time since arriving on Earth.
Dionysus was the god of revelry. He was also an insecure drunk whose greatest fear was that the other gods only pretended to enjoy his lavish parties. So he created the lens to ensure that when they cried out in pleasure, it was sincere. Genuine.
When Enoch looks at the world around him through these lenses, he sees humans’ true emotions. And this one truly is enjoying her meal.
Looking at himself through the awkward mirror of the metal napkin dispenser, he takes a bite.
He sees no joy in the reflection.
He also sees no disdain.
In truth, he sees no emotion at all.
Is that possible? Humans are contradictions of emotion and logic. And yet his feelings are deeply hampered.
Why?
More importantly, how?
↔
His investigation takes months, but eventually Enoch is able to trace it back to the events of the day the gods left.
It seems that his goal to die was achieved after all. He did die, if only to be brought back by whichever angel entered his chambers. In that second, his soul left his body, but his departure was too late to follow the gods.
And since his savior (not that the mysterious angel saved him at all—more like condemned him) removed him from Heaven, well, it seems that his soul could not follow.
A soul cannot be destroyed. Even the combined powers of all the gods could not do it. So Enoch knows his soul exists, but has no idea where it could be. After all, what does a soul do when it is expelled from one plane of existence into nothing?
It finds another place to exist.
This poses a dilemma for Enoch, for if he is to join the gods, he must not only find them, find a way to them … he must also find his soul in order to reach them.
Finally understanding the full extent of his problem, he stands, leaving his food uneaten.
Self-Helping Your Goodbyes
The crowd followed us to the airport, a slow procession of Others parading through he street of Okinawa in the middle of the night. It took us almost three hours to get there, and every time I wanted to speed up by, you know, calling an Uber, Aldie reminded me of two things:
One, the private plane section of the airport opened at dawn, so hurrying didn’t really matter.
And two: that crowd behind us needed this. They needed the walk, the time to contemplate all that had happened. Time to meditate on their purpose as mortals.
The trouble was, I was also doing some contemplating, and I hated it. I didn’t want to be in my head anymore. Evil thoughts swam in its treacherous waters. Thoughts that included regret over not killing Oche. He was a powerful enemy, one that I could have gotten rid of.
So, I did what I always do when I’m stuck in my head. I thought out loud. “I should have killed him.”
“Perhaps.”
“Get out of my head.”
“Never,” Aldie said with a wink. “But go on. What else are you thinking?”
“OK,” I said, figuring that if I was going to be stuck in these thoughts, I might as well have company. “I’m thinking that the GoneGods know he deserved it, if for no other reason than because of what he did to Deirdre. She might be OK, but she only survived because of … well, you. But that was luck. And luck isn’t something you can count on in the GoneGod World.”
“Perhaps. But then again, perhaps luck and fate and destiny were not lost just because the gods took their magic.”
“Spare me the self-help, new-agey crap, will you?”
“Again—never,” he chuckled.
“I can feel it,” I said, looking at my hands, which only an hour ago wanted to kill a prone angel. “I can feel the monster within me. It’s still there and it wants out. It wants to be a part of me again. And what’s worrying is that I want it, too. I never had any doubts when it was a part of me. I knew exactly what to do at any given moment. Granted, those moments were filled with guzzling blood and hedonistic bliss … but they were moments when no uncertainty muddled what I needed to do next.”
My brow must have been furrowed with the anguish of the thought, because Aldie, who knew me better than perhaps I knew myself, said, “When I told you that your past blinds you to your future, I was not only speaking of the demon. I was also speaking about the angel.”
“What angel?” I said.
“The angel who hunted you for all those years. The angel you eventually killed, but who never truly died.”
“Humph, my father and his damned Divine Cherubs.”
“That angel hunted you long after you had fully embraced the demon. Even when we were together, years after your father had died, I felt his presence always with us. Embrace the demon, but also embrace the angel within.”
“Again—new age, self-help garbage.”
“If I had said that to any of them, perhaps. But for you it is quite literal. A demon was a part of you … but so was an angel, of sorts. You will never truly be complete until you embrace both.”
“Sometimes I hate you,” I said with a chuckle. “Check that. A lot of the time I hate you.”
“But now isn’t one of those moments,” he said.
“Yeah … now isn’t one of those moments.”
↔
We got to the airport just before dawn and had to wait thirty frustrating minutes until the first of the staff showed up. He looked confused. Aldie’s plane was barely big enough for four people; there were hundreds. But we explained that they were sending us off and the attendant, impressed that we had so many friends, did not let them in.
It was time for Aldie to say goodbye to his adoring fans, something he did in true Aldie fashion. He turned to the lumbering crowd who, in the last two hours, had sacrificed a bit of their time to heal a stranger and thrown themselves into a fight against one hell of an angel. These were the GoneGod World’s lost, but as I stared out at the crowd of kitsune, alps and vodniks, dwarves, wondjinas, and pixies, the hodge-podge of Others who had travelled from all over the world to try to better themselves, in their ill-fitting clothes and with their confused looks, I knew I was standing before this world’s elite.
An elite who wouldn’t be given a chance to shine. There was no time; humans expected them to come ready to fit in and ready to accept their second-class status. Since these folks wouldn’t do either, well, let’s just say if I had a Magic 8-Ball, it would read: Outcome looks bleak.
But whereas I was sure of their bleak future, Aldie hadn’t gotten the memo.
“Here’s the good news. The GoneGod World is inhospitable, unforgiving. Mean. As the humans say: it fucking sucks. And what’s more, the indigenous population sees us as unwanted guests. Refugees who should pack up and go home. They know we can’t, and they don’t care.”
“How is that good news?” I thought, perhaps a bit too loud, because I completely interrupted the flow of Aldie’s … ahem … rousing speech.
“It is good news, because now we have a chance to prove ourselves. But more importantly, we have a chance to be ourselves. For when the gods allowed us to roam Heaven and Hell, Nirvana and Yomi, Valhalla and Helheim, Elysium and Tartarus, they gave us a home that was ready-made, complete to the specifications of our needs.
“We were children, coddled by gods who ultimately did not really care about us. As proof, they left. But they did not abandon us, for they sent us here to finally prove who we are. What we are … For here we are not creatures of myths and legend. Here we are living, breathing, caring people who share one common goal. We are trying to shape this world not in the image of the heavens we once belonged to, but into a new heaven. A messy, confusing heaven. A heaven that was created for all.”
Aldie lifted his hands into the air, and as he did, a flurry of hands, talons, claws and hooves began clapping wildly. “Go forth,” Aldie called over the resounding crowd. “Go forth and claim this world. Rebuild your heaven. Find your ho
me.”
And with that, the crowd’s frenzy worked itself up into an absolute manic state of hooting, howling, yelping and cheering. In the 1960s, I was at The Ed Sullivan Show when The Beatles made their first U.S. television appearance, and I was at Woodstock (at least at the night concerts), so I’ve seen a crowd worked up into unified joy and hope. What Aldie did here was no different.
These Others had hope. More than hope. As long as they carried his words, they had a real chance. Not something I thought possible from a self-help guru, but here we were.
To say I was impressed would have been understating it. I was awed by Aldie and his ability to help. So much so, I could forgive him his tricks. But then he had to go and ruin it by opening his stupid elven mouth. “Don’t forget to sign up to our mailing list. Bonus prize: a free seminar on Empowering the Giant Within.”
“Yuck.”
“What?” he asked. Then, shaking his head. “Never mind. My plane and Paradise Lot await.”
The Boy Who Cried Hyena and the Boy Who Didn’t Answer
Aldie’s private plane was surprisingly cramped for such a high-ticket item. Four chairs and a cockpit, with a wee bit of space in the back for luggage. I looked around the tiny cabin, muttering to myself, “Thank the GoneGods I’m tiny.”
“What was that, princess? Unhappy with your accommodations? You should try hitching a ride with that valkyrie. She was giving you googly eyes and—”
“No, no … I’m sorry. I don’t mean to sound ungrateful. It’s just that, I don’t know, you’ve always been Mr. Lavish. I guess I was expecting more.”
“The self-help biz doesn’t pay as much as you’d think.”
“But you have so many fans.”
“And most of them can only afford to attend through our scholarship programs, which essentially provides free admission. Then there’s booking the theater, the flyers, promos. The only reason I could afford this event was because some strange benefactor paid for everything but my time.”
“Enoch, drawing you in.”
“Indeed. If I had known that torture was part of the package, I might have negotiated for a retainer.”
“And this plane?”
“A gift from a gnome. He’s a mechanic in New Jersey, and this old bucket was abandoned long ago. He fixed it up, made it sky worthy and gifted it to me so that I could do what I do.”
As he spoke, Deirdre ambled past him, choosing one of the seats. She sat in exhaustion, fumbling with her seatbelt as she did.
She may have been fully healed, but she was still out of it. A changeling warrior needs nature and sunlight to truly heal from any battle, and I knew we needed to get her a mud bath as soon as possible.
Aldie went to help her, guiding the clip in.
“Thank you Son of Leeq.”
“Ahhh, you’ve heard of my father,” Aldie said as he finished strapping her in.
“Of course. Every fae has.”
“Then you’ve heard of me?”
Deirdre nodded.
“And …”
“And …” Deirdre paused, choosing her next words carefully. “I have learned that legend and truth are not good traveling companions.”
“Well said, changeling warrior.” Aldie crossed both fists over his chest, a typical fae salute. Of course, it didn’t help that it looked exactly like the salute Black Panther did when greeting a fellow Wakandian, but who was I to critique thousands of years of tradition?
Egya put his head on Deirdre’s lap and the two of them sat together, waiting for the plane to take off.
“So,” I said, cutting into the awkward silence that fell over the cabin, “where’s the pilot?”
Aldie shot me one of those devilish smiles of his … the one he used when he had a real treat in mind. “Why, my dear, you’re looking at him.”
↔
“By the GoneGods, no,” I said.
“What do you mean, no?”
“I mean no. You’re the pilot? Do you even have a license?”
Aldie gave me an indignant look before meandering to the cockpit. “Of course.” Then he muttered, “The human at the licensing office told me I was very charming when she printed one out for me. Didn’t even bother to ask for proof that I’d completed flying school or anything …”
“What?”
As he sat down, he said, “Calm down and strap yourself in. Or don’t … The truth is, if this plane crashes a seatbelt isn’t going to do a damn thing for you.”
I expected Aldie to click a few buttons, flip some switches … You know, the kind of thing you saw in the movies. But he didn’t. Instead, he pulled out a clipboard and started writing some things down before pulling out a friggin’ compass (and by compass, I mean those medieval devices that help you draw a perfect circle).
“What are you doing?”
“Charting our course,” he said without looking up.
I looked at my watch. “How long will that take?”
Aldie looked up at me with genuine confusion. “Kat, you are the human. You know you can’t just get in a plane and take off. There are procedures, protocol and whatever ‘P’ words you humans have to slow things down.” He stuck his face back into his clipboard. “For a species that’s mortal, you sure have cultivated a lot of ways of wasting time. Now if you don’t mind.”
“Argh.” I sat down in a huff and tried to summon every ounce of patience I had as I counted the hours before Enoch would resume his hunt. Just when I was about to lose my friggin’ mind, Aldie clicked a few buttons and I heard a monstrous roar as the engines fired to life. Miracle of miracles—that didn’t take too long.
↔
Turns out we weren’t going to be defeated by ‘P’ words. It was the ‘B’ in bureaucracy that was going to kill us.
We taxied to the runway, where we sat for hours before we got permission to fly. It seems that airports are real sticklers for booking a take-off time. But that time wasn’t completely wasted; I spent half of it watching the seconds tick by as our truce with Enoch was being gradually consumed by airport red-tape. The paranoid monster within me began to wonder if the delay was Enoch’s doing.
I mean, he was pretty savvy, but an Other using human red-tape against us made him positively unbeatable. I shook my head. No way an ex-angel who had spent centuries completely detached from the human world could be that cunning … could he?
The other half of our wait was spent with Aldie sitting crossed-legged on the floor as he spoke to Egya. I couldn’t hear what they were saying, but their eyes were locked as Aldie massaged his jaw. Every time I tried to ask what was going on, Aldie would shush me. And Egya would growl in that way dogs did when telling you to back off.
I took the hint and sat in one of the chairs, trying to distract myself from what was to come.
The problem with distracting yourself … it never works. Especially when you don’t have your iPad with Legally Blonde pre-loaded on it. So, my mind replayed everything that had happened in the last six months. The fights, my mom showing up, the Soul Jar … Enoch’s obsession with me. I also replayed a strange conversation I had had with an ex-vampire by the name of Lizile. It had happened when my mom showed up and used me to retrieve the Amulet of Souol.
We had traveled to her cabin, where she agreed to give me half of the amulet in exchange for a private chat. My mother had protested, but in the end, it was the only way to get it. And in that conversation, that strange vampire told me something I had dismissed as the ramblings of someone clearly suffering from mortal madness.
She had said I would be instrumental in the war between humans and Others. A war that, according to her, was inevitable.
But there was no war. Not yet, at least. And if you took her words in the context of what the Fates had shown Enoch, there never would be. The world would end before we got a chance to end it for ourselves.
Still, I couldn’t shake the feeling that both Enoch and Lizile were right. What if there was a war, and what if that war involved meeting some of th
e gods? After all, if they left, they could come back.
And since they both had a hard-on for me (well, Enoch at least. Lizile had whatever the female equivalent of a hard-on was … a clit-on, maybe?), then perhaps I was at the center of something bigger.
I shook my head. Look at you, Kat. Such a ridiculously huge ego. You’re just a human girl with a shit-ton of bad luck. Once this Soul Jar is delivered to Michael, you can go back to Montreal and finally be the normal girl you want to be.
Normal. What does that even mean? Classes, studying … boys.
Oh, boys. Like Justin. My heart skipped a beat when I thought of him and all the crap I did to him. He was probably sitting in Montreal, worried that I’d never return. I should call.
Stupid brain, won’t let me relax. If I wasn’t fretting over the fate of the world, I was fretting over the fate of my relationship.
“Aldie,” I said.
“Shuuush.”
“Do you have a phone?”
Without looking up, he nodded toward the back of the plane, where a briefcase sat.
“In the case?” I asked.
With a subtle nod, he returned to his humming.
↔
In the briefcase sat an old iPhone 5 without a password. I dialed Justin’s number and as it rang, I said, “I’ll pay you back for the long distance call.”
One ring, then two. And as the phone buzzed, I prayed that he didn’t answer. I prayed that it would go to voicemail so I could hang up and feel good about having made an effort to reach out.
It wasn’t my fault if he didn’t pick up, right? It takes two to tango and all that.
But I knew the real reason I was calling was because of what Enoch had shown me in that crystal ball. Justin with someone else—someone not me. A peek into the future, he’d said. And I’d thought it was all a bunch of baloney, but here I was, calling Justin anyway.