The Shape of Rain

by Michael B. Koep

  “What of their leader—their summoner, Cynthia?”

  “She lives. Alas.” William answers frowning. “And it took much for me to flee and leave her breathing! But again, we must not alter what is to come, though it grieves me beyond words that Wyn Avuqua must fall. Cynthia will play a large role in the city’s demise. Had I slain her—such an act would cause a ripple in time larger than we should allow.”

  “And explosives in the middle ages won’t cause a ripple?” Loche asks rubbing his injured ear.

  “Oh, come now. What’s a few thunderous booms and some flashing light to a host of gods? Never you mind! They are gods, after all—though many of them are still coming to grips with the full reality.” He lets out a laugh, “And I cannot completely fathom what we are going through…” William allows the fire an opportunity to add to the discourse. It hisses and snaps.

  “And what are we doing here? I wonder. Oh yes, we have come in search of your brother Basil—the Painter. We have followed signs that have brought us back in time—to a place where the story has been seeded, you might say. We’ve come with the belief that Basil will show us how to stop the invasion of heaven. That he can somehow stop the thousand natural shocks from becoming the infinite natural shocks echoing in eternity.”

  William shakes his head slowly, “But you will not find Basil here. You do realize that?” A line of discomfort tugs at his expression. “Loche, you gave your brother a gun… and the two of you thought his death was the answer. It was not. It was not.” Anguish wets his eyes. He masters it quickly but cannot help his voice from quavering, “It never is.” Again, his fingertips search the hidden wound beneath his scarf, and he offers a sad smile of acceptance. His head shakes from side to side, “Basil is dead. But whatever the cause, and whatever the effect, we are slaves to our fate only if we choose.”

  The poet in Loche reflects over William’s last sentence. Whatever the paradox tangled between free will and predestination might look like to William, Loche’s image is suddenly clear. From out of his bag, Loche produces the Red Notebook and holds it up in the firelight.

  Julia slowly raises up and sits. William reaches to the spiraled book and touches the cover.

  “And there it is,” he whispers. “So it is true. You have again written.”

  Loche lowers the book to his lap.

  “And you do not know what is written within its pages?”

  Loche shakes his head.

  For a long time, William does not speak. His focus drifts from the shimmering flames to the red cardboard cover of the notebook and back again.

  Edwin’s right arm twitches. Loche caresses the boy’s forehead. Another spike of pain lances his inner ear. He winces. Julia is suddenly beside him, her arm drapes over his shoulder.

  “No one has read its pages?” William asks.

  “That is correct,” Loche answers.

  “Indeed, a gift! It is a gift that you have, Loche Newirth. When shall we unwrap this one, I wonder?”

  The Planter

  November 12, this year

  Venice, Italy

  5:13 am CEST

  “Maria Vergine!”

  Astrid notes immediately the Italian expression as it reaches her ears. It is a whispered cry of shock. A series of rapid breaths follow, and then, “Madonna! Oh, Santo Cielo!” But at the moment she hears the voice, she is stumbling forward. In mid stride she trips on an obstacle at her thigh. Marcel’s hand grips her shoulder. There is the sound of a frightened hiss. Another, “Maria Vergine!” She lunges for balance, but cannot recover. She tumbles forward. Marcel falls with her.

  Cold, hard stone and something like a ledge or a short stair meets her falling body. Thankfully, Marcel’s grip slows the descent and the two drop in a kind of controlled tumble.

  Above is a square frame of sky. A spray of starlight is scattered across it. The air tastes of morning. She is lying face up in a kind of courtyard. White marble pillars and Roman arches line her periphery. Sitting up she turns to see the reason she fell. It appears that the Dellithion omvide in Idaho dropped her and Marcel on the top of a—she studies it a moment, searching her vocabulary for the right word to describe the large stone basin in the direct center of the courtyard. Yes, she thinks, it is a big—planter. A planter. Maybe six feet in diameter, the stone bowl sprouts a kind of ivy and is crowned with a half circle of thin, rusted metal for the tendrils to climb.

  All the sensations and sights collide again with a fearful Italian whisper in the air.

  “Da dove sei venuto?”

  Astrid climbs to her feet and whirls around.

  With a broom handle outstretched like a spear, an elderly man wearing a dark green jumpsuit stands just inside the courtyard. He is short, with keen, piercing eyes. Salt and pepper hair. His body is poised to fight. In his face is both fear and wonder.

  “Da dove sei venuto?” he repeats sotto voce.

  Astrid’s quickly translates: “Where did you come from?” She blinks at how easy the words make sense—at how long it has been since she had spoken Italian.

  But, regardless of the vernacular, the answer would not be simple. To the old man, likely a custodian, (the embroidered white rectangle at his breast pocket reads: Fausto), Astrid raises both palms and says, “Stai calmo.” Stay calm. She grimaces. What will assist this poor fellow who just witnessed two people trip out of thin air? She tells him in Italian that it will be all right, that she and Marcel will not harm him, and that she can explain though she knows her claim is impossible.

  Marcel’s Italian chimes in beside her. Mirroring Astrid’s palms out gesture he tells the man that it will be okay—please be calm.

  Fausto’s wide eyes snap back and forth between the two strangers. He asks again, “Da dove sei venuto?”

  Astrid and Marcel look at each other. For some unknown reason, perhaps because no other explanation could suffice, Astrid turns, looks at the planter, points and answers Fausto, “There. We came from there.”

  The butt-end of the broom is still angled in defense. The old man’s attention is latched to the stone basin.

  “There?” he asks. His tone oddly curious.

  “Yes,” Astrid replies.

  “You came from there?”

  “Yes.”

  Fausto’s face lowers. Astrid’s focus follows. They are standing on a stone floor. A symmetric grid of white bricks lines out a square within a square. From corner to opposite corner, white bricks cut diagonally across the courtyard, crossing at the center—at the planter.

  “There?” Fausto’s tone is still hushed, but no longer alarmed. He lowers the broom and sets its bristles down on the floor. “I do not know what to say.”

  Marcel and Astrid lower their palms almost simultaneously.

  “I mean,” Fausto continues in Italian, “for a moment I thought you had broken into the museum.”

  “Museum?” Astrid says.

  Fausto nods. “Yes, Pinacoteca Manfrediniana. This is the museum at Santa Maria Della Sallute.”

  The courtyard registers. She and Marcel had both visited here. She, in fact, has been here at least five times on research trips. As she scans through the half-light, she recognizes the square, the balconies, inner ward—even the hum of boat traffic wafting over the walls from the Grand Canal a stone’s throw north. She knows this place. It was just this morning, or yestermorn, that she projected images of the basilica’s two high spires before the Washington Grant Board. She showed images of the Elliqui runes carved into the building’s foundation. They read: For the love of Man, we await the Poet, we await the Painter, Until then we shall destroy the plague of gods among us. Below the words were embossed symbols of the Eye of Thi and the four households of Wyn Avuqua, the Talons, Mind, Heart and Wings. The memory of her hand slipping into the bowled stone heart on the Avu Library floor sends a tingle through her fingers.

  What else could be waiting below the bricks they now stand upon? Glancing down at her feet and tracing the white grid of the square court, Ast
rid is struck by a sudden revelation. The painted lines resemble a graphed pyramid.

  Marcel says, “Yes. I see it, too.” He is studying the lines and the planter apex. “It must be still underground, except for the cap.”

  “Under our very noses,” Astrid agrees.

  Fausto watches them. His head tilts looking at Astrid. “I don’t believe it,” he says finally. “But I have always wanted to—wanted to believe. Sweet virgin Mary…”

  The ancient tales of the omvide passages—portals—the doorways the Itonalya used to step from continent to continent, country to country, exist. Astrid turns to the planter. She imagines the buried stones of a pyramid below her feet. Somewhere in her mind she still thinks it cannot be true. Even now. Even after crossing the ocean with three or four steps.

  Fausto’s appraisal of her continues. A slight smile grows on his face. To Astrid, his expression is akin to someone that has suddenly come to understand the answer to a difficult problem. Fausto then says, “The omvide is true. And you’re… you’re Professor Astrid Finnley. Something tells me that we should get you out of here!”

  Ruler With the Spear

  1010 A.D.

  The Realm of Wyn Avuqua

  “She is here,” Corey says as he enters the cave and lowers himself to his knees.

  William’s attention is still fixed on the Red Notebook. “A visitor?” he says.

  Corey nods. “A visitor, indeed.” Loche notes a peculiar tone in Corey’s voice. It carries a sentiment he cannot quite place.

  “And who might it be?” William asks turning toward the entrance. Outside, the silhouette of Vincale has been joined by a cloaked figure carrying a high, straight staff. “I sense from the chill in my skin that it is a Godrethion.” Curiosity floods his face as he shifts his body a little further to the side to get a better look. “Though, there is something…”

  “A bridger, true,” Corey answers. “Yet she is somehow separated from the unwholesome Godrethion brood we just left. That sort call her Lakewoman. Vincale tells me the Wyn Avuquain’s call her,” he pauses, “they call her Lornensha,” Corey waits another moment watching William closely. “It was she that grew the herbs that have provided young Edwin such a sound sleep.”

  William nods thoughtfully, “Lornensha, you say? An Elliqui name meaning ruler with the spear.”

  Corey studies William’s face. “That is correct.”

  Loche asks, “Has she come to wake Edwin?”

  “No,” Corey answers. “Edwin should wake any time now. And he will be quite all right and well rested. She has come at Vincale’s request. She has come to aid in your healing, Loche.” Corey gestures to Loche’s left ear and the various wounds he received from the Godrethion guards.

  “A healer?” William says. “A healer and a god? A rare thing. I’ve known only a few through these long years.”

  Corey turns to William with another expression that is difficult for Loche to read. He opens his mouth to speak but says nothing.

  William says, “One woman in particular—”

  “My friend, I—” Corey’s interruption dies. He stares at William for a few moments and says nothing more.

  Blinking, Loche sees text. A hundred or so lines stack behind closed lids. He sees his hand scribbling the name Corey Thomas. Sentences describe Corey’s long four-hundred plus year history, and many detail his enduring friendship with William Greenhame. Though Loche never wrote of how the two immortals met, he had outlined many adventures they shared prior to the events depicted in the Priest Lake Journal. These writings, likely in the hands of Albion Ravistelle at present, were scrawled into notebooks when Loche found time to write in his office tower in Sagle, Idaho.

  While watching the two maintain eye contact for a few seconds, Loche is reminded of their close bond—or at least the close bond he recalls crafting into their relationship with his words. Infused in their brief exchange are centuries of heartache, victories and losses, kinship and memories—memories well beyond the planting of Loche Newirth’s story seedlings. Though Loche may have written it—they lived it. Centuries. It occurs to Loche, What haven’t these two seen? What have they not experienced?

  “You must listen carefully, my friend,” Corey says to William, gently. “Though you’ve heard me say it already—and you, too, are quite cognizant of our actions in this place and time, but we must not alter—”

  “—alter what is to come, indeed.” William finishes.

  Corey reaches out and rests his hand upon William’s shoulder. William’s grin disappears.

  Another blink and Loche sees the text of a story he wrote involving Corey and William in New York City at the apex of prohibition, 1927. The two went in search of a man named Frank Valennte, a Cosa Nostra soldier under Salvatore Maranzano whose operation ran booze from the Canadian border into the city. As for Corey and William, such law breaking was just fine by them. However, Frank’s other activities included murder, extortion, prostitution and a list of atrocities he had perpetrated during World War I. Even those occupations, though despicable, were of no import to Corey and William. The real concern, of course: Frank Valennte was a bridging god on Earth. A particularly evil Godrethion at that. All told, to an Orathom Wis Itonalya, Frank’s business and his seraphic trespass sadly canceled out the glory of delivering spirits to New York’s speakeasies. Valennte’s sordid past also provided a certain job satisfaction to the assassins within both Corey and William: the darker the god, the greater pleasure in sending it back across the gulf.

  But the crux of Loche’s recollection of this story is not Frank Valennte, nor is it the bridger’s eventual death at William’s hand—instead, it had everything to do with the short part of the tale when William and Corey, at a speakeasy, had each finished their fourth Vesper Martini, and were ordering their fifth. Blurry and drunk, William shared with Corey his earliest memories of childhood; of his parents, Geraldine and Radulphus. He told of how his mother was murdered by the Bishop of London and his sentinel monk Cyrus, how William learned that he himself was an Itonalya, and of the meeting of Albion Ravistelle and the death of his father, Radulfus. William told the story brimming with tears, and Corey listened to his friend intently. The martinis intensified his empathy and compassion. When two yellow ribbons of lemon peel lay in the bottom of their empty conical glasses, the two cried together. A pair of drunk friends lamenting the circling seasons, the missing of loved ones, and the passing of joy to tragedy and back again. William had just ordered more drinks, when Frank Valennte entered the dimly lit speakeasy. The gangster was then not-so-cleverly dispatched by an incredibly drunk and emotional William Greenhame.

  And now, over a century later (or, given their current position in time, several centuries before—Loche shakes his head at the thought), the two immortals exchange a look filled with much more than Loche can read, or write. But he knows the real depth of their friendship. What haven’t they seen together? Loche considers again. What haven’t they encountered?

  With his hand still on William’s shoulder, Corey watches the visitor at the cave entrance. “This is something rather unexpected. When was the last time you heard me say that, William?” His forehead scrunches as if struggling to understand something. “I think you’ll agree this is a tricky one, but you must heed our mandate. We cannot alter—”

  William raises his hand and silences him. “The suspense is killing me. Won’t you end it?”

  “Very well.” Corey then stands and gestures to Vincale to enter. Vincale, in turn, bows to Lornensha. She quickly steps inside and into the ring of firelight. Her staff is in fact a tall spear with a leaf shaped head of tarnished, sharpened steel. Its tip glints in the orange light. When she throws back her cowl, woven coils of hair drop down, framing her pale, caring gaze. Loche is immediately struck by a sudden, puzzling familiarity: her elegant high cheekbones, deep brown irises and luminous expression of both curiosity and concern force Loche’s focus to slide from her to William and back again. Then he notices that Willia
m’s eyes are thrown open like lit windows.

  Lornensha does not speak, nor does she offer any gesture of greeting. Instead she sets her spear beside the fire and brings her face close to Loche’s. With a gentle touch, she nudges his chin to the side, inspecting his injured cheek and ear. Strangely, Loche does not feel uncomfortable with her proximity. She smells of pine and some sweet herb that Loche can only guess at.

  He hears William speak her name. “Lornensha.” But his inflection does not sound as if he is calling to her or asking for her to acknowledge him. His intonement denotes a kind of wonder, as if he is again considering the name’s origin to himself. “Lornensha,” he says again. Both Loche and the Lakewoman turn to him.

  William’s eyes are spilling long streams of tears as they flit, searching every feature upon the woman’s face. His mouth is slightly open. She stares back at him—a sad question shadowing her expression. “Lornensha,” he says, but this time his muttering quavers and ends with a whisper. His hand raises as if to caress the woman’s cheek, but he stops himself and withdraws it.

  Corey is suddenly kneeling beside William. “My friend…”

  William stands abruptly, strides quickly out of the cave and disappears into the dark.

  Corey bows his head. Lornensha watches William exit and then immediately returns to Loche’s wounds. A moment later she rummages in her satchel and produces a flagon and a pewter cup. Into it she pours what looks to be clear water. She places it on a stone adjacent to the glowing coals of the fire. Her hand reaches back into the green sackcloth satchel searching for something more.

  “What happened?” Julia asks.

  “I don’t understand, Corey,” Loche adds.

  “Nor do I. Nor could we ever understand such a thing,” he says quietly. “How we drift in circles…”