The Shape of Rain

by Michael B. Koep

  “Was it something about her name?” Julia asks.

  “Her name, yes. And her face,” Corey answers without raising his head.

  “Lornensha is an Elliqui name, right?” Julia asks.

  “It is.” He pauses and looks into the fire for a few moments. “In a couple of centuries a Germanic tribe will have a different name with the same meaning—for the same person. For this person…”

  Lifting his gaze from the flames he tells them, “That name will be Geraldine.”

  From her satchel Geraldine of Leaves raises a dried leaf of deep green. She crushes it to pieces and then stirs the flakes into the steaming cup of water.

  The Mask Maker

  November 12, this year

  Venice, Italy

  5:21 am CEST

  The metal gridded door locks behind them and Fausto drops his keys into the front pocket of his dark green jumpsuit. All above is glowing like tarnished steel. Their breath steams in the cold.

  “Come, come, Astrid Finnley,” Fausto beckons. He starts down the pavement walkway, the high walls of the Salute on one side, the waters of the Adriatic on the other. “I have your books,” he chatters on in Italian. “I have seen you here before. I know about your work. Come, come!”

  They follow behind him. He keeps talking. Astrid feels her stomach cramping. She tries to remember the last time she had eaten. She watches Fausto’s strange gait. His short legs waddle more than walk. In his wake, Astrid thinks she smells leather, saw dust and perhaps oil based paint. His excited prattling continues, “I have been the janitor at the museum for almost twenty years… only three mornings a week… part-time. I have another, much more important job…”

  Her heart is still banging in her chest. The sights of Venice send her reeling into memories. She has spent months in this city. Most of that time was spent between the pages of books, peering into stone fissures, or seeking some new piece of evidence she could add to the massing puzzle of her research. Anything that could prove… make sense…provide some meaning. The last time she visited she received a phone call from her husband. His voice was sad. He said very little. He offered a list of bills, cancelations, meetings to be attended when she returned—and then ended with, “I’m moving out.” Astrid remembers listening to him as she watched a black gondola cross the canal below her hotel window. It was early morning, like now. It was overcast, like now. She remembers nodding to his requests and his decision to leave without feeling a single emotional flutter. Nothing. After she hung up the phone she stood watching the gondola as it disappeared around the corner of a building. A moment later she had imagined the small boat sinking. She had heard her voice saying, “The bow was empty. I turned and the bow was empty!” The sound of her voice had sent a shock of fear through her—then a face had appeared in the reflection of the window as if a stranger was standing in the room behind her. When she realized it was her own face, she had studied it, fascinated at how she did not quite recognize herself.

  Fausto leads them along the paved walkway, passed a football field to their right and moored luxury yachts to their left. “I remember when you and your team visited…” Graffiti stains the concrete perimeter walls. Astrid cannot read any of the fading, stylized words. They cross a bridge. A road opens to their left and Fausto turns into it, keeping his brisk pace, continuing to chatter. “And what chance that it is you that suddenly appears,” he says. Astrid and Marcel exchange a glance that is both amazed and slightly confused. Ahead, a maze of medieval structures rise around them. It is not long before Astrid feels lost as Fausto navigates them through a convergence of alleyways, across two more bridges and into a courtyard between two high towers. He talks all the way. But he talks so fast that neither Astrid nor Marcel can fully catch everything. However, two things are apparent: he knows about Astrid’s published works and is a fan—he has a conspiratorial interest in the mythic Itonalya.

  What chance, Astrid thinks.

  They pass jewelry shops, art galleries and wine grottos. They are the only ones awake, seemingly. “It is all connected… I knew it … I will show you…” There are no other walkers. Windows and doors are dark.

  When Fausto’s voice stops, his legs stop, too. His thick fingers dig into his front pocket and he produces a fistful of jangling keys. He picks through them, searching. “Here,” he whispers as he slides a key into the lock of a heavy wooden door. “Here is where I work. Where I live. Come, come.”

  He opens the door and steps aside for Astrid to pass. He then gestures for Marcel to follow.

  The room’s light is amber and warm. She is standing within a cavernous workshop. Like Fausto, it smells of leather, wood and paint. Benches of silver tools, hammers, stumps and brushes crisscross the wood floors. From the walls stare a thousand faces with black, empty eye sockets. Some have elongated noses, while others have crowns, or horns, or wings, or checkerboard cheeks. Cats and jesters hide in the corners. Regal, austere faces don the sun over one eye, the moon over the other —sable teardrops stain cheeks, tiny jewels cluster around eyes, monsters and deities, plague doctors and ivory skinned goddesses —grinning comedians, grimacing tragedians.

  “I am Fausto Boldrin,” he says. He opens his arms wide as if gesturing to the audience of faces. “I am The Mask Maker.”

  Fire Tending

  1010 A.D.

  The Realm of Wyn Avuqua

  “Dad?”

  A fingernail grazes along Loche’s forehead. With a swinging pull of vertigo, Loche’s consciousness surfaces from a deep sleep to see the face of Edwin. Joy gushes through his senses and he grabs the little boy and pulls him down hugging him tight. Edwin giggles and hugs his father back.

  “How do you feel?” Loche asks.

  “I’m hungry.”

  “I bet you are.” Loche studies the boy. He searches for the God hiding somewhere behind Edwin’s eyes. For the moment he senses nothing save the wide awake and curious face of his son.

  “Dad,” his little voice whispers as if in secret, “where do we go when we die?”

  “We go…” Loche starts, “we go to another place. Some call it Heaven.” There is a lilt in his answer—as if it were a question.

  “Will you be at Heaven when I go there?” Edwin asks.

  “Yes,” Loche says, “Yes, I will find you there.”

  “How do you know? How do you know you’ll find me?”

  “Because I am your Dad. I will always find you.”

  “I don’t want to go, Dad. I want to stay with you. With you and Mom.”

  “I know, Bug.”

  “If I go, will you come and find me?”

  “I will always come to find you.” Edwin’s questions roll stones into his stomach. A sudden fear drags like a nail down his back. “I won’t let anything happen to you, Bug. I’ve got you.”

  Loche sits up and looks around. A flat ashen light is seeping through the mouth of the cave. The fire has been cared for and it crackles, sending up long yellow flames. Outside, William, Vincale and Corey prepare the horses. The trees are indigo. The stream whispers. Julia and Lornensha are kneeling a few feet away, preparing what looks to be a much needed feast of dried meat, cheese and a cracker-like bread.

  Julia twists to Loche and says brightly, “How do you feel?” She hands Edwin an energy bar. Gratefully, he gnaws into it.

  There is no pain stabbing in Loche’s ear. His fingers search for the dried blood but they find only a ridge of a cut that is dry and already healing. The concoction Lornensha had him drink must have done its work in the night. He remembers little after he took a few sips.

  “I’m—” he starts, double checking, “I’m good, I think.”

  “Where are we, Dad?” Edwin asks.

  He looks at Edwin’s deep brown eyes and says, “I don’t know if I can really tell you for sure. We’re—”

  William’s voice sings out, “The realm of Wyn Avuqua, young Edwin! You have come to the land of Immortals with your father, your grandfather and—” he casts a quic
k look to Lornensha, pauses a beat as a desire to say more crosses his face, then adds, “and with very good friends.” Edwin leaps up and runs to William. As he holds the boy he says, “And with you, also, young master, I sense you bring behind your awareness something well beyond my ability to describe. The One accompanies you, it is true.” Edwin’s head raises up with a slightly confused expression while his jaw works a dense and juicy bite of a blueberry energy bar. The immortal levels his eyes with Edwin’s, just as George had at the Orathom Wis council in the Azores on the other side of the world, seemingly months ago. After a few seconds, William sighs and his broad grin breaks open. “But never mind that now. Are you quite ready for your sword lesson?”

  “Yes!” Edwin cries.

  “Breakfast first,” Julia says. Lornensha sets food on a plate woven from cedar boughs beside the fire. Edwin runs to it, sits and begins to carefully inspect the offering. He tastes the cheese. He thinks deeply about the flavors. His stare is ensconced in the fire. Julia sits beside Loche and offers similar fare.

  The meat is surprisingly tender, but salty. Gamey, too. The cheese is sharp, but light as a cloud. Loche tastes brine, citrus and cream. There is an instantaneous surge of energy as the food arrives in his belly. He hears himself quietly moan with pleasure. Lifting another chunk to his lips, he watches Lornensha. He traces the shape of her face. He then looks to William. The resemblance is uncanny. Even Edwin, now in a food trance staring at the snapping fire, carries similar facial architecture: thoughtful ovals, shapely lips, proud and high forehead. Loche attempts to recall his own visage—does he share the same nose, chin, smile?

  Lornensha eats in silence. She does not appear to notice the lingering stares from William, Julia and Loche.

  “We will indeed speak of this,” William says to Loche. “And by this, I mean the stunning reality of being in the presence of—” he nods to Lornensha. Lornensha takes no notice. “I dare say, such a discussion may require your expert psychological counsel.”

  The thrill of a laugh emanates somewhere deep in Loche’s abdomen, but he quells it and remains silent. His psychological expertise? A long-ago college lecture queues up in his head—a professor enters the classroom with the words, “Let’s talk about your mother…” and then he ticks down the evolutionary psychological chain from Freud’s Oedipus Complex to Harlow’s monkeys to the thousands of self-help bookshelf crowders exploring the relationship between mother and son. How, psychologically speaking, can any sense be made of William’s 600 years of life and the connection or disconnection to his mother, the effects of her death upon him and the supernatural torrent storming around them? There is nothing in Loche’s academic or experiential past that he can conjure to assist, assuage, understand. Another laugh gurgles somewhere deep, only this one has the character of lunacy and madness—for after all, add the staggering reality of meeting your mother three hundred years before you were born.

  It is not a laugh, it is a cry.

  As if by some divine mercy, Julia’s eyes draw Loche’s attention and suddenly the impossible is simple. She holds him for a few moments. All light, matter, a coil of cosmos spiral into a single, inescapable knowing as he falls into her fire-lit pupils. She gives a subtle nod to his little boy. Edwin is looking at his father. Loche looks at William. William studies Geraldine of Leaves as she tends the fire. The great grandmother presses a long branch into the flames and a thousand stars burst and sparkle heavenward.

  Across the Canal

  November 12, this year

  Venice, Italy

  6:00 am CEST

  Fausto leads them through the workshop and into a high ceilinged room, its wood floors aglow with an amber sheen, its walls an aged parchment yellow. Oil portrait paintings, framed photographs of family. “My beautiful daughter,” he points to a picture of a lovely dark haired woman holding a baby. Fausto stands beside her with glistening eyes. His beard is white. Shelves packed with a lifetime of trinkets, tools and the occasional spying mask surround them. At one end is a comfortable kitchen next to a living room. Beyond that in the shadows is what looks to be an office-like space with a desk, a wall dedicated to books and collage of papers and notes tacked to the wall.

  Fausto gestures to comfortable dining stools. He fills his kitchen countertop with a block of cheese, a plate of biscuits, a jar of Nutella and a container of yogurt. He makes coffee in a glass press. He shakes his head every few seconds and sighs, “Unbelievable.” He pours the coffee. He gestures at the food and says, “Eat, eat.”

  Astrid obeys. The biscuits are sweet and crunchy. The coffee is bitter and strong. She hears herself sigh. The caffeine rises to her senses and carves away the fog. While she momentarily allows herself to forget the danger, the freakish reality unfolding before her, their host begins again to prattle in excited Italian about bits and pieces of Astrid’s research and his own summations in comparison. He speaks fast, and though Astrid can follow a good portion of his chatter, the food has captured her primary focus.

  She also notes a collection of his hand made masks mounted on the wall, overlooking the dining area. Fausto’s artistry is unparalleled. In the center of the observing faces is a piece that lifts a chill from the base of her spine to the top of her head. She recognizes its shape, and its frightening purpose. The last time she saw this particular mask was on Yafarra’s bedchamber wall at Wyn Avuqua. Its elegant styling and unforgettable beauty make her think it could have been smuggled from the Avu Atheneum itself. It is Fausto’s attempt at an Ithicsazj, the death mask of Wyn Avuqua. A damn good attempt.

  When Fausto says, “It was then that Dr. Loche Newirth and Basil Fenn came to Venice that I started to make a connection,” that Astrid feels the crumb of a biscuit lodge in her throat and the trance of breakfast disappear. She coughs and presses her palm to the table. Recovering, she says, “What?”

  He says, “Dr. Loche Newirth and Basil Fenn. Basil Fenn the painter.”

  “Connection? What do you mean, connection?”

  “Did you not hear me?” Fausto asks, a little perturbed.

  “I’m sorry,” Astrid says, “My Italian is not what it once was.”

  The old man smiles, “It is okay. I have been told I speak a little too fast—and too much.” He leans in, “I’ve never met Dr. Newirth, but I have seen him. Twice. Once here in Venice. Once in Florence. At the Uffizi. That awful—horrible night…” Fausto looks down at his hands. A shadow tugging at him. “Basil Fenn shot himself that night, you know.”

  “You were there?” Marcel asks. “We heard about the terrorist attack, but what has that to do with Loche Newirth?” He looks at Astrid, “He is from our part of the country. He was wanted for murder.”

  Fausto nods. “Yes. I’ve read that.” He points to the dark end of the room where his desk sits. “But he is wanted for much more than that.”

  Astrid feels her forehead scrunch. “What do you mean?”

  Fausto again drops his gaze. His face seems to transform, as if he had quickly raised one of his masks to hide his fear. “I mean,” he says after a moment, “that Dr. Newirth is not simply a psychologist from the United States.”

  Marcel asks, “You said that you saw him in Florence, and then a second time—here in Venice. Where was that?”

  “Oh, just across the canal… two weeks ago, maybe.”

  “Across the canal?”

  “Yes,” Fausto says brightening, “he was a guest of my friend Albion Ravistelle.”

  “Albion Ravistelle, is your friend?” Astrid and Marcel say in chorus.

  “Yes. I have known him since I was quite young.” He pauses, seemingly weighing his guest’s current view of the matters at hand, “You do know, Mr. Ravistelle cannot age. He lives on and on. He is what you have written of extensively, Dr. Finnley: an Itonalya.” He shrugs—or shivers, Astrid cannot tell which, “Some have all the luck. I grew old, he stayed the same. Through all of your scholarly work, you must have met him. Yes?”

  Astrid shakes her head. In my dreams
, she thinks. He has been simply a face in two time-stained photographs—one at the turn of the nineteenth century, one shot likely from an iPhone. “No,” she replies. “We have not met.”

  “He is…” A finger drags along his mustache and down his short beard, “he is very powerful. He is one to be treated with respect.”

  “I see,” Astrid says.

  “And,” the mask maker says, “you are in luck. He is coming here at midday. He is coming for a mask.”

  Astrid feels her jaw drop. Dumbfounded she asks, “Why, Fausto, is he coming for a mask?”

  “Why, he’s hosting a masquerade ball, of course.”

  I Don’t Know

  1010 A.D.

  The Realm of Wyn Avuqua

  There are moments when it is difficult to tell if the sun has indeed risen. Grey, blurry light smears the world to a worn black and white photograph. Far away, lightening spears through the shoulders of slate grained clouds. A single crow caws from a hidden perch in the cedars. Vincale leads the company north, keeping their movement tucked into the trees. Every so often they cross into the open and follow a shallow tributary for a short distance and then climb back along the tree line. Hiding.

  If one speaks, the voice is instinctively hushed to a whisper. Every sound is like an alarm: the slosh and clop of the horses, the rush of water over stones, gentle gusts weaving through the comb of the evergreens.

  “Loche, do you know where you are?” William asks from a few feet behind.

  “We’re on the eastern slope above Upper Priest. We should be approaching the marshes, right?”

  “That is what it looks like to me,” Greenhame agrees, “though, I do not think that the marshes have become marshy yet. Perhaps in another two to three hundred years.”

  Loche had lost count of how many times he has hiked around his beloved Upper Priest Lake. Even now, a thousand years before his time, he is able to discern familiar sights: the ridge lines of hills and mountains to the South, the steep cliff faces across the valley, and even some massive boulders that were likely deposited here by some primeval glacier scraping its way from Montana to the Palouse three hundred miles westward. The northernmost shore of the upper lake, in Loche’s time, is a gateway to a quagmire of marshland and muddied pools of womb-like nutrients. Loche had once paddled his kayak into the metabolic labyrinth and followed a vein as far as he could until he became tangled in the walls of thick vines and decaying foliage. Later that evening he had written a short burst of verse trying to capture the essence of that fertile, embryonic network that feeds the lower lake: