The Shape of Rain

by Michael B. Koep

  Having reached a rocky inlet, Helen stands and yanks the boy up, cradles him in her arms, and rushes toward a flat sand bar. She lays him down and kneels. Julia and Loche follow.

  “Edwin!” Helen shouts. The boy does not respond. She leans her ear to his mouth and nose, tips his head back, pinches his nostrils shut and breathes into his mouth. After two breaths, Helen reels and pulls her face and hands away. Her eyes dart toward Julia. Loche watches the two women connect through a fearful stare—an unspoken knowing.

  “What is it?” Loche shrieks. “What?”

  Helen shakes her head and attempts to lean toward her son and begin CPR. She is visibly shaking and fighting pain.

  “It’s Edwin! It’s the Rathinalya,” Julia whispers. She wraps her arms around herself and cowers into a ball. “It is Edwin. I can’t—I can’t. Oh Christ, I can’t—”

  Loche shoves Helen aside and begins CPR on his son. He breathes five times into the boy’s mouth, rises and begins chest compressions. Edwin’s face is blue and frozen in sleep. Strangely translucent. Loche watches for any sign of life. He thinks of the faceless boy god.

  He drops down and forces air into Edwin’s chest again. After the second breath, Edwin coughs. Water gurgles up. Loche rolls him to the side, letting the liquid flow out. A moment later he lifts the child into his arms and holds him close.

  Helen’s hands are holding her head, her eyes streaming with tears. “My sweet boy,” she cries. “What is happening?”

  Julia still has her arms wrapped around her midsection.

  “Loche,” Helen cries, “did you see the Eye?”

  He nods, ruefully.

  Helen looks to Julia. She, too, nods.

  “Dad,” Edwin mumbles, “I’m cold.” Loche leans the boy back so he can get a look at his face. “I’m cold.” The small boy lays the flat of his palm along his father’s cheek. Edwin’s eyes appear to swirl and glisten.

  Loche flinches. The image of the boy god from Basil’s Center haunts his sight. For a flash of an instant, Loche does not recognize his son.

  The boy smiles, untroubled. Calm.

  Tea

  November 11, this year

  Gonzaga University, Spokane, WA

  8:50am PST

  “Tea?” Professor Chad Molmer asks.

  Astrid does not answer. Her mind wontedly pings to the word tu and the Chinese character , both meaning tea. A drink first referenced in Chinese mythology nearly five thousand years ago, it is said to have been invented by the deity, Shennong, a particularly astute alchemist of medicinal plants as well as agricultural educator to humankind. Her mind tacks to a London tea room and a discussion with colleagues about cultural tea ceremonies around the world. Used as medicine, as an aesthetic centerpiece for social gatherings, as a way to wake the senses up after a long day, tea is the second most consumed drink after water. Even the Itonalya, Astrid muses, had their tea ceremonies.

  “Astrid?” Molmer asks. “Tea?”

  Astrid glares at him and remains silent.

  November’s final leaves tumble across the window. A grandfather clock ticks. Below a wall exhibiting awards and certifications is a chess board. Old, by the look of it. Her mind pings to the etymology of the game and she cannot help but think of the Wyn Avuquain game, Shtan—the earliest influence on the games Go and Chess. Molmer pours hot water into a dainty, pearl colored teacup for himself. The plink of the delicate china infuriates her.

  In the corner, she notes a man whose age she cannot determine. Somewhere between late fifty and mid seventy. Quite an age spread, she thinks—hard to tell—he appears spry despite the age that weighs around his eyes. He wears a black suit that fits his gaunt frame well. His legs are crossed. Something familiar about him, but she can’t quite figure out just what.

  Would either of you care for tea?

  “I am quite content,” the man says.

  “No,” Astrid says.

  “Very well.” He rounds his desk and sits. Piles of paperwork and books crowd for space. He clears a spot for his teacup and saucer. He takes a sip. A drop of cream clings to his beard.

  “So,” he says after a moment, “how did you gather so much material on a subject that has joined the ranks of Bigfoot and Area 51?”

  “You read it?” Astrid nods to her book on his desk.

  “Of course I did.”

  “Why ask then? It’s all there.”

  Molmer’s eyes tick to the manuscript, to the man behind her and then back to Astrid. “Not quite.”

  “Not quite?” Astrid repeats. “What is that supposed to mean?”

  “Professor Finnley,” Dr. Molmer’s voice is laced with humor, “please forgive my comments during your review. I can only imagine the disappointment and humiliation you must have felt while the board shredded your life’s work.”

  “One can’t count on capturing every reader,” Astrid says. She then adds with indignation, “After all, I’ve read one of your books, so I now know how you feel. Can’t win ‘em all.”

  Molmer smiles and looks into his tea. “Chair of the Philosophy department and thirty-five years teaching does not a popular author make.”

  “Nor does it give you any authority to judge the validity of my research,” Astrid almost spits, “and marshal my career to crucifixion.”

  Dr. Molmer sits up and places the cup onto its saucer. Another maddening plink. “I’m sorry, Astrid. I should tell you that I found your research to be captivating beyond measure. In fact, the work is teeming with merit.” Molmer is now leaning toward her and his face is earnest.

  Astrid watches him. The drop still dangling there. A flurry of wind presses the window.

  “You see, I was forced to put on an act during the review. In that formal setting it was best that the matter of Wyn Avuqua remain where it should: in legend, in myth,” he stifles a laugh.

  Astrid wonders at him. “What are you talking about?”

  Molmer nods to the man behind her. Astrid turns.

  The man’s hands are folded in his lap and his long legs are crossed. His short greying hair is neatly trimmed. Astrid rethinks his age. He looks younger than he did when she first entered the room.

  “Professor Finnley,” the man says, “it is a marvel that you’ve managed to put together such an impressive view into the past. Quite frankly, I’m stunned and wonder-filled as to how you did it.” He then shifts in his chair, and in a kind of aside to himself says, “though she’s missed the mark at many points—” he looks at her, “you’ve written things that, well,” he looks at Molmer, “should be impossible for anyone to know.”

  “Is that so?” Astrid says. “I don’t know what the two of you are trying to do, but today I’ve been told that everything I’ve presented is nonsense—my life’s work has been discredited and I no longer own it. So if you’ve got something to say before I go home and drink a bottle of wine, say it!”

  “Well, Astrid,” Molmer says gently, “you can remove money from your list of worries.”

  “Tell that to my mortgage company.”

  “Astrid,” Molmer continues, “I don’t think you’ll want to go home right now.” He shakes his head and sighs. “I’m afraid I am doing a very poor job at this apology.”

  “I’ll say.”

  “Astrid—” There is a knock on the door. Molmer says, “Yes?”

  The door opens and a dark haired man dressed in all black leans in. “The van is waiting,” he says.

  “Good,” Molmer says standing.

  “Van?” Astrid asks still sitting.

  Molmer reaches for his coat and pushes one arm into a sleeve. “You want funding, doctor? You’ve got funding. You want to own your work? Ownership is yours.” He pushes his other arm in, flips the collar up around his ears. “If you want validation beyond your wildest dreams—come with us.”

  Astrid watches Molmer move to the door. The man behind her stands to put on his overcoat.

  “Professor Molmer,” Astrid says, “you’ve failed to introduce—�
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  “Oh my word,” Dr. Molmer says. “My apologies, Professor Astrid Finnley, may I introduce an old friend from college and colleague, psychologist Dr. Marcus Rearden.”

  “A pleasure,” Rearden says.

  Eggs Benediction

  November 11, this year

  Terciera Island, Azores, Portugal

  2:25pm AZOT

  “The house buzzes, no?”

  George Eversman sets a small cup and saucer on the counter as Loche enters the kitchen. Bacon hisses in a skillet. A pot of water boils, quietly huffing steam. The windows are fogged. Loche sits. He smells the coffee. He can feel tears pressing upward from just below the surface.

  “Edwin warm now? Bug asleep?” George says.

  Loche’s answer is a slight nod. Confusion and uncertainty cloud his skull. “Yes. He is sleeping.”

  “My hands tingle,” George says. “The Rathinalya. First it came from the Eye rising in the water—now it comes from Edwin. Even when he is on the other side of the house, I feel his power. He okay, yes?”

  Another nod to some vague notion of okay.

  “Are you warming up?”

  “Trying.” Loche feels cold. He feels complete helplessness. “You wanted to see me?”

  “Busy day already, yes? Edwin… And Albion Ravistelle wants you dead? And wife Helen is his assassin? Sounds like a most unhappy marriage, yes?”

  Loche shivers at the thought of Edwin’s body disappearing into a black hole. “She could have killed me many times, I think.”

  “Yes, but now she say that you no longer wanted alive. Better dead?”

  “Because of my writing—I suppose I could potentially challenge Albion’s plans. But I can’t simply write him out of the story.” Text illuminates behind his lids when he blinks. As does a mirrored eye. “It appears that I must be near death, suffering or completely removed from reality to compose in a way that can change history—change the world.”

  George chuckles nudging a strip of bacon in the pan. “What most writers say. The usual excuses, yes?”

  Loche thinks of the Red Notebook. He shudders.

  “They tried once before, you know?” George says. “To stop the prophecy—to kill you—you and your brother. Your father, William, and Samuel Lifeson, and believe it or not, Albion Ravistelle save you. You children then.”

  Loche remembers writing in the Journal about the file box —provided by Albion Ravistelle in Venice, or does Loche recall reading through it? He squints. The memories mix. The car accident—assassination attempt. His entire life outlined and documented by a character he had created.

  “Helen we will watch closer now. Talan will go where she goes.” Loche recalls meeting Talan Adamsman before the siege of Mel Tiris. The huge man resembled several gangster film hit men: intimidating bulk, thick neck, dark eyebrows, a jaw forged to fracture fists. Scary. Very scary. “Talan will keep her from harming anyone.”

  “I do not think Helen would have killed me.”

  “No? Maybe no. He will watch her anyway. Much still ahead for wife, Helen. For mother, wife, Helen. Much.”

  George exhales a deep sigh. “And now,” his voice lowers to a solemn whisper, “Edwin—a god walks among us. A god sleeps a room away. God is here.”

  For Loche, no words come. He watches the leader of the Orathom Wis chop onions on a board. Flashes of Italy, Monterosso. A memory? Perhaps. Perhaps now. Seemingly, as each day passes, his written fiction, the events therein, become more like memory. His first meeting of the long-limbed, orange-haired George was in a kitchen. He was preparing fresh pesto. Loche’s mind battles between images. He sees his own hand scribbling out the affair—words on a page—then images of meeting George in Monterosso, the wood table with family photos in frames, the wine glasses, George’s eyes like bowls of amber-brown paint. He recalls the little girl, Elainya.

  “Well done,” George says. He gestures out the window to the cliffs beyond the field. “Saving your boy. Brave. Brave leaping into death and returning—bringing with you your son.”

  Loche does not answer. George adds, “But you and death have been becoming better acquainted over these last days, yes?”

  “What does this mean?” Loche asks. “What does this mean for my son?”

  George looks up and laughs. “What a question! What, indeed. I do not know… yet.” The edge of the bowl rings as he cracks another egg. “Tell me, Poet, what did you see at Mel Tiris, in the castle tower, in the paintings, the Orathom? You see Basil there?”

  “Yes.”

  “You see others there?”

  “I saw Samuel Lifeson’s face.” Loche flinches and tries to erase the image of the severed head at his feet. George frowns and sighs. “And the boy god was there again. Only this time, it felt as if Edwin and It were one and the same.”

  George’s odd grin stretches out across his face and he glances at Loche, “Now they are same, yes?”

  Tears rise. Between sobs Loche manages to get out, “What of my son? What does this mean for my son?”

  George’s smile disappears. He looks at the egg in his hand and then holds it up. “The Itonalya have a story about an egg—other peoples heard it, changed it, made it theirs. You might know the Hindu version. You know the tale?”

  Loche shakes his head.

  With his index finger on the tip and his thumb supporting the bottom of the oval, he holds it up to one eye. “Hindu say, like Itonalya, this egg—this egg is everything that is. Gods and stars, trees and bees, love and fear, man and sea, words and pictures. All existence. They call it Vishnu, but Itonalya call it Thi. Crazy, yes?

  “Mighty Thi wanted to tell stories, but It had no listeners. So, Thi broke, became two parts.” George tosses the egg to his other hand, cracks it open and slowly drools its contents into the bowl. “This part,” he swirls the yolk and white, “all spirit, all heaven, all god, all Orathom. All things we cannot see.” He raises the broken egg shell, “And this is earth, and flesh. The world of physical. You, me, all this, caught in between.” George then reaches for another from the carton. He lifts it again to his eye, “Edwin, I think, is egg. Both he and Thi unbroken. Inside him is god and man. He is everything that is. Just as a parent’s child should be, yes?” The rim of the bowl chimes again. “Your son is Thi. Thi is your son. Stupid crazy.” He tips the white and the yolk into the bowl and tosses the shell into the wastebasket. “Trouble for Edwin is that we, Orathom Wis, eat the gods.” He fires a quick scowl at Loche. “But not Edwin. Something different now. Something very different this time. So, I make afternoon breakfast and eat omelette instead.”

  He pours the egg batter into the hot pan. The two watch as the gold sizzles and thickens. Loche is suddenly hungry. It feels as if breakfast is the right meal for his internal clock.

  “Julia tells me she believes Basil calls her to Egypt. To Menkaure pyramid.”

  “Yes,” Loche says, recalling Julia’s story of what she found in Basil’s studio in Venice—some cryptic message of a paint splattered constellation, characters of Greek mythology tacked to the wall, leading to a photograph of the Menkaure pyramid on the Giza plateau. He shakes his head. Was it a message? Was it a warning?

  George flips the omelette into the air and catches it in the pan. It hisses and pops as he lowers it back to the stove. “And you—you see Basil at pyramid, too, yes? In painting?”

  “Yes,” he answers, “but the pyramid was different. I do not think it was Menkaure.”

  “Different?”

  “It was white. As if made of frosted glass—beside a lake. And there was a horrifying battle surrounding us.”

  The immortal’s face seems suddenly ancient and pained—and then shifts back. “Wyn Avuqua,” he whispers. “You saw streams of light stabbing from sky, yes? A city breaking?”

  Loche nods.

  “You saw the gods of Thi, the Godrethion destroy the Itonalya. You saw the fall of our only home.” A single tear forms and slips over his high cheekbones. “My home…”

 
“The Godrethion,” Loche says, his tone lost in thought.

  “Yes. The disloyal gods—summoned by Thi, Itself. The bridging spirits. Lawless gods. The true enemy of the Itonalya and the Orathom Wis. But you know this already, yes?”

  Loche sees the open Journal on the table in his Priest Lake Cabin. He sees the volumes of writings in what were once locked cabinets in his office tower. The name Godrethion flickers like a faraway light at dusk on the sea. These tiny lights seem to become more familiar as each new vexing day unfolds.

  George watches the eggs cook. His expression is troubled. “And now you go with Thi to Menkaure.” He whispers to himself, “Menkaure. Why Menkaure?”

  Corey Thomas enters the kitchen along with a man Loche recognizes as Athelstan, Loche’s protector and door warden at Mel Tiris. “Angofal.” He bows and rises before George. “There are thirty-five confirmed Orathom Wis still living. Twenty-seven living in remote locations have not yet reported in.”

  “News may not have reached them,” Athelstan says.

  George does not respond. Worry still darkens his face. “And our Samuel and William?”

  “They are gone,” Corey replies, his gaze falling to the floor.

  George inhales the grief. His chest rises, sorrow tugs, and he breathes out a sigh.

  “Menkaure,” George says to Loche, “is mystery. We do not know where it leads. Those that have crossed it, no return.” He laughs, “But maybe that will change. Maybe sometime we will learn. The changes in past change the times at hand.”

  “I don’t understand,” Loche says.

  “No mind,” he says, “we eat, then I talk with Edwin. After we talk, we leave here. We leave here and find Basil. We find Basil in Egypt at the pyramid.” George slides a spatula under the omelette and flips it, “Or the pyramid will take you to him.”

  “I don’t know what Basil can do. He didn’t seem to have any answers.”

  “Answers?” George says. “They do not exist. We don’t need answers. We must add to the story. Or take it away. I think you are being pulled to the beginning of the tale.”