We approached the pond through tufts of long grass which bent over before us, heavy with dew—tiny beaded supplicants showing us the way. It was so peaceful there. I could hear each muffled rustle as we stepped. Ferns and bushes encroached on the water from all sides. They sprouted from the banks and reached with leafy arms over the surface, which sat motionless like glass. Wisps of fog moved lazily across it like smoke from a campfire while the evergreen forest stretched away in every direction. The water was no more than a few feet deep across most of its expanse, and I could see the bottom clearly, alternating between mud and rocks, both leached of color. The still reflections of the trees hung on the surface—a huddle of ghosts, rapt with anticipation. A rocky outcropping towered over the pond on one side. Below it, halfway to the middle, there was a hole in the pond’s stony floor—a submerged cave maybe two meters by five. It opened like a throat and disappeared at an angle as it narrowed. The sides were lined in bright green moss. I think it was the source: a spring or underground river.
He stopped me at the edge. “Do not disturb the water,” he warned in a whisper.
He motioned for me to kneel, and I did, and we stayed like that a long time. I didn’t mind—even though it was chilly and the dew soaked through my jeans. Every moment there was a respite from everything that was wrong with the world.
“There was a time,” he breathed, “I thought they all had gone.”
“Who?” I asked in an equally slight voice.
He was watching the water. I was watching his face. It was a nice face, not especially handsome or beautiful—in fact, it seemed a bit mournful and ponderous—but that’s what made it comforting. It was genuine. It was real.
“The worshipers of the One God called them monsters,” he explained softly, “and drove them from the dells and valleys. The philosophers called them curious and paid hunters to take their heads and fingers so they could be displayed in cabinets of wonder. The men of business clear-cut their homes, dammed their rivers, polluted their lakes and estuaries. The Masters shut and locked every door to their realms that could be found.”
He paused, as if listening for a silent approach.
“Our adversaries have their Nameless gods, great tentacled beasts that whisper to them through the flames. Once upon a time, we too had allies. The Others. The child-race. Woodfolk.”
He was quiet a long time. The distant echo of a calling bird broke the still air.
“I thought they had abandoned us.” He took a long breath and let it out with a single nod. “But I was wrong.”
He stood. I did the same, but he motioned for me to stay.
“What am I supposed to do?” I whispered.
“Wait until I am gone,” he said. “Wait until you can neither see nor hear me. Wait for the silence to return. Then, ask for forgiveness. Ask for guidance. Ask for help.”
He turned for the cabin and I sat back on the dewy grass. I could feel the moisture seep down my pant legs and into my socks. I was getting soaked in the water of that place. But I didn’t care. It was so peaceful. And beautiful. I could see why so many native peoples worshiped at springs and waterfalls. One can believe gods live within.
We had driven out of the city and through the night and the following day and another night. I remembered staring out the window, half awake and half asleep, as we passed mile after mile of lighted gas stations and dark farms and fields. I tried once to run into oncoming traffic. I even made it as far as the street, but the country road we followed was a poor arena for suicide, and the one approaching car merely stepped on its brakes and moved to the shoulder as I was pulled back to the car by Mr. Dench. There was a white-sided church at the far end of a wild lawn. Near the road, a letter had fallen from the church sign and some of the others had been moved about by weather such that it seemed to say Je suis Risen.
I was asleep when we finally stopped. Mr. Étranger woke me. The light was dim and the air cool. It was just before dawn. He was still wearing his smoky gray coat. He needed it now. It was cooler where we were. I sat up in the back of the car and looked for the others, but they were nowhere to be seen. I looked for the dagger. It was gone, too. And then I remembered, at some point he’d asked me if he could have it and I said yes. We ended our journey on a bare patch of earth at the rear of an A-frame cabin. Behind the car, a two-rut dirt road wound around a hill and disappeared into the fog. All around us the tips of the evergreens poked through the earth-bound clouds. It was beautiful. I felt myself beginning to ask where we were, but my tongue pulled back, unwilling to break the stillness. The air felt erect—balanced, teetering in pure potentiality like dominoes before a fall, as if the collapse of that place was ever immanent and might cause something wonderful to be. I dared not utter a harsh breath.
He pointed to the far side of the cabin and began to walk in silence. He led me around the house, past a rick of wood and down a shallow slope. And there was the pond, clear as glass.
A curse was on me. Ancient and powerful. It would destroy everything I loved. It would make sure I was witness to it. And then it would destroy me.
“I know I don’t deserve it,” I said softly in the silence. “Forgiveness.”
I ran my hands through the tufts of grass as if through the hair of a lover.
“I had so many opportunities to do things differently. I never should’ve left. I was frightened. Selfish.”
I should’ve at least tried.
“How can I ask for what I don’t deserve?” I asked the trees.
There was a soft splash on the water, like the leap of a fish. My eyes shot to it, but I couldn’t see anything. The pond was obscured by concentric waves that rolled slowly outward in all directions, like a clear note strummed from the string of a harp. I saw an upturned leaf, as green as the moss in the pond, curled at the edges and fluted at the tip, like a tiny wine pitcher. It floated from the center, bobbing on the surface as it was carried by the undulating water. Right toward me. As the little waves subsided, it stopped bobbing and turned back and forth on an invisible current. As it approached, I saw it carried something at its center: a single bead of water, glowing like ice in a winter’s dawn.
The leaf hit the grassy lip of the pond, bounced, and spun, and I lifted it. I looked around, as if asking permission, but I saw nothing. The disturbance on the surface had reached all corners of the pond and been reflected back. The ripples danced over each other like a miniature ensemble ballet.
I looked at the leaf. I looked at its shiny cargo. I tilted my head and let the drop fall on my tongue. It was cool and sweet, and I closed my eyes and felt it run down my throat. I lay on the wet grass clutching the leaf in my hand.
By the time I heard him trudging through the grass, the fog had lifted and the sun was halfway to its peak. Birds chirped.
“It won’t stop anything,” he called from some twenty feet back. “But with luck, the magic of this place will hold the curse at bay. Or slow it for a time.”
I sat up.
He moved toward me, hand outstretched. “I smashed your phone.”
I took it. “Yup,” I sighed. “You did.”
I felt the bent casing and ran a finger over the shattered screen. A piece of it came off in my hand. He’d done a very thorough job.
“If the curse cannot easily bring its tortures to you,” he said, “it will have to work harder. And that may give us purchase.”
He showed me another phone, someone else’s, maybe his. He’d smashed that as well.
He bowed deeply to the water with great respect.
“Where are we?” I asked in a whisper.
Judging from the hills and cooler temperature, I guessed mountains. I wanted it to be very, very far from everything, a place where not even a random stranger would wander.
“It’s better if you don’t know,” he said.
I nodded. I stood and looked at the pond. The disturbance had long since abated and I could once again see the cave that opened in the shadow of the rocky outcropping.
“But what is it?”
“Not what,” he breathed. “Who. I suspect she comes and goes these days, following the course of the underground river to and from the faraway lands. A door that was meant to be locked. They missed some, it seems. I suspect she checks in on us, from time to time.”
“She?” I looked to the moss-covered cave again.
“The lady of this place,” he said. “Come. We have bothered her enough.”
The cabin had no electricity and well water that had to be pumped by hand. The interior smelled of earth and campfire. There was a stag’s head hanging from the railing of the loft where we slept. Its antlers were huge and stretched over the main room. But it wasn’t scary. It seemed more like it was watching over us. Its eyes peered out over the water stoically. There was no TV or internet or phone service or anything—it was a big deal just to get a newspaper—which meant there wasn’t much to do, so I went exploring and took lots of hikes. Étranger said it was safe as long as I kept near the little lake. I was sure to follow his instructions. There were water birds nesting, including a pair of mated cranes. I spent hours watching them: from the bank, from the porch, through the front windows of the cabin. He was so attentive. He brought her fish and cleaned her feathers and she took each of his gifts and promised him great speckled eggs in return.
But it was chilly up there, especially in the mornings, and I hadn’t brought any clothes with me. I expected we’d go shopping or something but was told repeatedly I couldn’t leave. He seemed less worried about the curse than those who’d caused it. It felt so odd being the pawn around which an entire game was being played, yet having no sense of the players or even the rules by which you moved. I asked if they could find me, even at the cabin, but he said no. He said it was a holy place, before Columbus even, and their spells wouldn’t be able to penetrate it. But just to be sure, he took one of the side mirrors off the car and broke it. Then he put one piece each over the cabin’s doors, facing out, and over all of the windows, too.
Milan did my shopping for me. She and I talked a lot those days. She came back with some T-shirts and underwear and a big coat for me to wear on my walks. But the pickings were slim at the country store, and she knew it wasn’t my taste, so she also got a bunch of different iron-on patches and things so I could make it my own: a US Army logo, a muscle car, a tractor, some vintage candy brands, stars, a Christmas tree, a glittery number that said Rude Girl in pink and purple. It was also something to do, I guess. We did it together, she and I. I really liked her. I absolutely cried the day she came back with a sketchpad and colored pencils. I hadn’t asked for them—I hadn’t thought to—which meant she’d been listening to me, like actually listening, and that meant more than anything. Having a friend, I guess. Its own a kind of magic.
Mr. Dench was around, too. My silent guardian. Usually patrolling the woods. He wasn’t much for conversation, but I drew him a lot. He had a naivete to him. Unlike Etude, who wore himself on his sleeve, Mr. Dench had the mystery of a small child, where you’re never quite sure what he’s thinking, or even if he’s thinking at all. Turns out he doesn’t have a heart. Go figure.
Etude was also there—he never left—but he was busy with preparations. I sensed he needed to concentrate so I tried not to bother him. But we played board games some nights.
“Go fish,” he said.
We were sitting at the little table, just the chef and I, while the crickets chirped outside and the fire crackled under the hearth. He was staring intently at the playing cards in his hand. I had like ten times more than he did.
“You’re cheating somehow,” I accused. “With magic. I just haven’t figured it out yet.”
Believe it or not, I managed to make it through everything with the tarot deck intact, and it was just about the only genuine entertainment we had at the cabin—outside of a combo chess/checkers set that was missing a few pieces. Etude said in Europe, that’s mostly how the tarot was used, for play rather than divination. He taught me a bunch of new games. I sucked at all of them.
“I do not cheat,” he insisted.
“Yeah. You don’t brood either.”
I drew a card. Seven of Wands.
“Do you have any sevens?” he asked.
I groaned and handed him the one I just drew. He placed a book of four sevens on the table.
“You are so cheating!”
“You never answered my question,” he said as he readjusted the last few cards in his hand. “Why a phoenix?”
I lifted my shirt and looked at my tattoo. Honestly, I think I just wanted to make sure it was still there, that it hadn’t come to life at some point, as Fish suggested, and flown away. Nothing would have surprised me anymore.
“Because nothing can keep her down,” I said. “No matter what happens, she springs eternal. Like hope. She keeps reinventing herself.”
“Apt, given your situation.” He nodded toward my cards. “Your turn.”
“Do you have any fives?” I asked.
He shook his head. I sighed and drew another card. The Ace of Wands. I handed it to him before he even asked and he took it without looking.
Don’t ever play cards with a sorcerer.
Like, ever.
I set my cards face down on the table and sat back. “So, wait. What do you mean my situation?”
“A phoenix who rejected her dragon. A pole without a moment.”
“I didn’t reject him,” I said, thinking. “So what does that mean, like I’m like a free radical or something? A feminine ion?”
He made a face. “A fair analogy.”
“Someone told me my soul sparks.”
“It is an odd way to put it,” he said, still studying the cards in his hand.
“How would you put it?”
He saw my cards on the table. He set his down as well.
“Our ancestors noticed how the whole world, from the animals to the heavenly bodies, were split into opposing principles, pairs of opposites: day and night, water and land, plant and animal, male and female, sun and moon. Even modern physics suggests that is the very nature of the universe, that creation itself is carpeted in particles—spontaneous matter-antimatter pairs—that merge and separate, separate and merge in a continuous froth, and that if you combined everything with its opposite, you would reduce the universe to one. The cosmic equation.”
“You’re saying I’m part of a spontaneous pair.”
“Indeed. I suspect you have known this since you were very young.”
That got me, and I turned from the table.
“Have you ever been in love?” I asked. “I mean, like, really in love? Not the go-on-dates kind but the scary kind, where it feels like if you give in to it, you’ll lose yourself, your individuality, completely?”
He was silent a moment and wouldn’t look at me and I thought I’d committed some horrible breach of magical etiquette or something. When he finally spoke, his voice was very soft.
“From birth, I was trained to be the shaman of my village. The conclusion of that training began on my thirteenth birthday, when I was blindfolded and abandoned deep in the jungle, there to remain until I returned a man. Or not at all. The purpose was to discover—to know—the great source of life in whose service I would spend the rest of my days. As healer of my people. We called her Ixhua’ti. You might call her Gaia. Or Mother Nature.”
“You saw her?”
Etude looked down at his open, tattooed palms.
“I see her every day. As do you.” He held up his hands again. “She gave me these.”
I stared at the intricate designs. Like hieroglyphs made from Nazca lines.
“Wait.” The reality of his words hit me and I closed my eyes. “You’re telling me that you fell in love with the earth?”
He grew as wistful as me. “Alas. It was not meant to be.”
That made me sad, that they weren’t seeing each other anymore, the sorcerer and the earth-mother. If someone like him couldn’t make it work, how could any of the rest of us? But then, those days, everything made me sad. I thought about Lily a lot. And Silkie. I told Milan about him one day on our walk, about how we met. A child was lost.
“Silkie’s cousin.”
“Let me guess,” she said. “You found him.”
But of all my sadnesses those days by the lake, it was Kai who occupied my thoughts the most.
“The whole idea of being ‘made for’ someone is just stupid,” I announced to Milan while the two of us made dinner. “Everybody says they want a soul mate, but they don’t. Not really. They just want the euphoria of a new pairing. ‘Soul mate’ doesn’t even make any sense when you think about it. It means you don’t have a choice. How can that be? Shouldn’t love be a choice? Is it really all that special if you literally can’t not fall in love with that person?”
“Is that what you’re worried about? Losing yourself?”
I held my fingers under the running pump like I was washing them. It was cold.
“Your tragedy,” she said, “is that you met each other so young. Imagine if, by luck, you two had not been born in the same city but halfway around the world from each other and it took you decades to come together. There is something noble in struggle. You grew up with him there. You didn’t know life any other way, so your circumstance seemed like a trap rather than what it is.”
“And what is it?”
“A gift. Had you been anything but a child when you met him, I expect you would’ve seen that.”
We ate in silence. She always knew when to talk and when to let me be. After so much time together, I began to understand the truth about her.
She was very, very, very old.
“What if he says no?” I breathed in the dark later that night. We were lying in the loft trying to sleep. “What if I messed it up by leaving? What if I go back and he doesn’t want anything to do with me?”
“It’s possible,” she told me, her voice heavy with sleep. “Love entails risk. Always. But the alternative is not life. In your case, quite literally.”
Irfan was right. It didn’t matter what path I chose at the Watchtower. I had to die, just as Lily did. It was the only way to end the curse and protect everyone I love.
Really, really, really, really, really sucks though.
Etude told us all the plan one day, how we would do it, and I just sat at the table in silence. No one said anything. They waited probably twenty minutes for some kind of reaction from me.
“And it will work?” I asked.
There was a long quiet.
“Like, for real? You’re not talking in cyphers or metaphors or whatever?”
“Of course not,” he said, as if the implication was insulting.
“But.” I put a hand to my forehead. “I mean. How?”
He nodded to my side. “Because you are the phoenix.”
So, here’s how it goes. First I have to swallow something called a jewel of many colors, the big cut gem that Milan wears around her neck. It’s like the size of a walnut! Etude said it refracts the light of what can’t be seen. With it, he’ll be able to find me among all the other shades in the dark of the underworld. Then he has to perform the sacred marriage—at the end of which he stabs me in the heart.
Zoinks.
After I’m dead, he’ll drain every last drop of blood from my body and burn it away. With that, the curse will definitely be broken.
“Why blood?” I asked.
“Hebrews 9:22,” he said. “Everything is purified with blood, and without the shedding of blood there is no forgiveness of sins.”
He’ll cremate my body and bury the ashes in the place of my birth, sort of the reverse of how vampires have to lay in the soil in which they were buried. But that means they’ll have to take me to Hong Kong and sneak onto the hospital grounds somehow—him and Dench and Milan. Not that I’m worried. I get the sense they’ve done this kind of thing before. Lots of times.
Next the mixture has to sit for a couple days. Étranger says Jesus wasn’t wrong there. Then my new friend will don his mask and the bright feathered garb and take his drum and descend to the underworld, like the shamans of old. To do battle with Death, I guess.
Man, I wish I could see that.
Shit.
Maybe I will.
Anyway, while he’s down there, our friends up here will exhume the soil containing my ashes and seal it in a large urn, which represents the womb. The urn will be baked. He showed me a big old book with a bunch of pictures, like the pages I saw in Luke’s office.
“It recapitulates the vital heat of creation,” he said.
But this is the most dangerous part because the seal can’t be broken. If any part of it is cracked for whatever reason, the “humours” escape, and I’m lost for good.
He keeps telling me not to worry.
After that, their part is done, and that’s where it gets tricky. The urn has to be incubated, like an egg. Etude said that just means watched, looked after, for a full cycle of the moon—its death and rebirth, one turn of a woman’s womb, the life-creator. The kicker is, it can’t just be anybody sitting there. Even someone who loves me, like Mom and Dad. To pull me back, my soul has to be whole, which means it has to be joined with the other half of my spontaneous pair. The sun to my moon. The sky to my earth. The yang to my yin. The guy I’ve known since forever. The one with the very same birthday. The first one I kissed. The first one I slept with. The only one I ever really loved. The only one I left.
So.
Yeah.
I have no idea what he’s going to do when he reads this. But if he doesn’t totally flip, if he sits patiently by the urn and reads to me, or catches me up on all the stupid music he likes, I’ll have a totally new body. Etude says most of my memories will be there, but it might be spotty. He also said he’s not sure if the tattoo will come through. That’ll be new for him. We bet fifty bucks. I said it will because it’s part of me. I’m totally gonna win too, because karma. We played so many games at the cabin and he never let me win. Not even once!
So . . . that’s it, I guess. They’re kinda waiting on me now. Little bit nervous. It’s so crazy not knowing what’s going to happen in, like, an hour. But then, we never really do, do we? We just think we do—until something happens to wake us from the illusion: a car crash, news of cancer, a child’s first breath. Etude says that’s where Life is lived. Not respiration and metabolism. Not work and school and laundry and groceries. Not the long sleep of existence but where it shatters. Those few brief flashes where we’re awake to our own consciousness, like a too-bright light. That’s where the angels live, and the ones he called the Others. I think that’s where he lives, too.
But not me. I can barely stand it. I feel burnt down, like my mind is on fire, like someone turned the saturation of the world to 200%. It hurts my eyes to look. Knowing these moments could be my last, I sit catatonic with wonder. The slightest breath enchants me. The patient throb of my heart. The bend of the light through the pane. The bob of a branch as a bird alights. I want to draw it all, to reflect, if only in one image, that rapture I feel, the rapture of being alive. I think that’s all art is, really.
We never really know what’s going to happen next. Even when we think we do. So I guess we’ll see.
I guess we’ll see.
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