by Sean Stewart
The hunchbacked god stooped and picked up an empty shell from the beach. Its fragile walls had been broken at many points by the sea. He held it to the moonlight, then let it drop. “At the height of Rome, they say, there was a dwarf whose only job was to ride beside the Emperor in every procession and revue, and whisper one thing in the imperial ear: ‘You will die, you will die, you, too, shall die.’ It comes to us all,” Momus said. “Even to me, perhaps, although not for a long time yet.” He waved back at the Carnival behind them. “Jane keeps one Galveston, I another, and the Recluse watches the door between the two.”
Sloane knelt in the wet sand. “I beg you.”
Momus pulled her up. “You’ll ruin your dress.” He sighed. “Tell me your wish, and I will see what I can do for the daughter of my consort.”
“I just can’t stand to see her die.” Sloane couldn’t stop herself from crying, tears spilling out of her and no way to stop them. “Will you help me?”
The sea broke and hushed, broke and hushed like the slow beating of the world’s heart. “I will,” Momus said.
Chapter Four
THE APOTHECARY
MOMUS showed Sloane back to the Carnival entrance on Seawall Boulevard. The very presence of the god was so overpowering it was all she could do not to faint, but she willed herself to look him in the eye, bit her lip until it ached, bobbed her head and even managed a curtsey when he bowed to take his leave. Then the door closed behind him and she fell against it, head spinning, her cheek pressed against the warm wood just under the silver letters of the slogan. It Just Doesn’t Get Any Better Than This!
There were no lights, no sound of music playing. She was back in Galveston, her Galveston, where magic was not allowed. All the good and cautious folk were inside, with charms against the full moon hung on their doors and windows. Sloane stared at her city like a drunken hawk, dizzy and exultant. “Ha!” she yelled. The shout echoed back at her. A fierce grin spread across her face. She had done it. Sloane, dull dutiful Sloane—she had risked her sanity, she had braved the Carnival, she had saved her mother’s life. Her mother would not die, and Sloane would not be entombed in the awful business of running Galveston. Elation rose through her, bubbles of it popping and fizzing in her blood. So this is what it feels like to be brave! Like a champagne drunk—lovely, but not something you want to do very often.
Sloane staggered across Seawall Boulevard and hurried down the street. The first few blocks of Broadway were a desolate part of town, too close to the Carnival for decent people to live. Giant Victorian houses stood untenanted, their heads caved in by live-oak limbs. Many of them had been scavenged down to the skeleton, looted for firewood and metal fittings.
Sloane was having problems seeing, and her heartbeat was all wrong, as if the rhythm of the breaking sea had got inside her and messed it up. But she couldn’t stop grinning and despite herself she started to run. She imagined herself sweeping into Ashton Villa. The last few guests would still be there, staring at Jane Gardner dumbfounded as she rose from her wheelchair. Jim Ford would be goggle-eyed and Randall Denton would begin a lazy round of applause as the Grand Duchess of Momus did the impossible and walked across the room. She would call for a servant and demand tea, then say, “To hell with tea!” and grip a flute of champagne with fingers that against all hope could feel again. Jane Gardner’s rational mind would have no explanation for her recovery. It would be a miracle.
And then Sloane would stride into the Gold Room and everyone would look at her. Odessa would be the first to understand, and then everyone else, one by one, and last of all her mother would look across the room at Sloane and realize that her daughter had risked everything to save—
A shadow detached itself from a lamppost as Sloane ran by and stuck out its foot. She fell, smacking the pavement with her face. Her whole body froze for a split second, and then the pain hit like a shock wave, blinding her.
When she could think again there was a man crouching over her. He smelled of shrimp and motor oil and beer. “Hey, sweet thing, why the hurry?” A hand lingered on her shoulder. Blood slipped down the side of her face, soaking into the parched roadway. Even though the sun had gone down hours before, the asphalt still held the day’s heat. It burned against her cheek.
There was blood in her mouth. She blinked, trying to see. Another pair of hands grabbed her ankles and jerked her roughly to the side of the road, scraping her face again. “Get her in the house,” said the man by her head. He hooked his hands under her arms and lifted her up. She screamed. The men dropped her, and her head smacked into the pavement again.
She groaned and someone slapped her hard on her bloody cheek. The first man was squatting on her chest, driving the breath out of her. He grabbed a handful of her hair and jerked her head up. She felt cold metal against her throat. “One more like that,” he hissed, “and I’ll cut you a new pussy. Got it?”
“Hey!” someone shouted suspiciously from down the block.
The man with the knife jumped up. “Mind your own fucking business,” he yelled.
Heavy footsteps began to hurry toward them. Sloane struggled to lift her head, but the moon got in her eyes. She had a confused impression of a big man with a club lumbering toward them.
Sloane’s attacker held his knife out in front of him. “I ain’t joking, man. Keep moving.”
The big man slowed to a walk, glancing down at Sloane where she lay in the road. From where Sloane was lying he looked gigantic, six and half feet if he was an inch, and square as the big refrigerator in Jim Ford’s kitchen. Three hundred pounds easy. What she thought was a club turned out to be a homemade flounder gaff, a baseball bat with a giant nail sticking out of one end. He hefted the gaff, letting it smack into his enormous hand with a meaty thunk. “You better be packing some serious firepower, son, and you better be able to get to it quick, ’cause I’m fixing to open a hole in you big enough to step through, you little jack shit.”
The man holding Sloane’s ankles dropped her and bolted.
“I’ll give you a count of three. One, two, th—”
“Fuck you,” said the man with the knife. Then he, too, turned and raced down the street.
The big man sighed gustily and squatted down in the road beside her. He smelled of seawater and sweat and beer. “You’re all right,” he said. “Can you move your head?” She shook it back and forth. He chuckled. “No? How ’bout your fingers and toes?” She wiggled them. “How many fingers?” he said, sticking his hand in front of her face.
Lots, she tried to say, but the words wouldn’t come out right. His fingers were square and thick and smelled of fish. She gurgled a little. More blood seeped out of her mouth.
“Well, stunned or drunk, I reckon, but I don’t think your neck’s broke or anything. You fill out that dress all right. I’ll give you that,” he muttered. “They say more than a handful’s a waste, but damn. And I got big hands.” He eased one massive arm around her waist. “Okay, cupcake, up we go.” He picked her up as easily as if she had been a cat and slung her over his back. His massive shoulder felt wider than her waist. “Ah, hell,” he muttered. He headed back the way he had come, bent over, and retrieved a sack. “No point wasting a good night’s work.” A moment later Sloane found herself face-to-face with a bag full of stinking flounder. The bag jerked and twitched as the big man walked; Sloane would have sworn some of the fish inside weren’t quite dead.
It occurred to Sloane that the big man hadn’t asked her her name or where he should take her. He might be just another rapist, dragging her somewhere out of sight to have his way with her. If so, she was in serious trouble. Nobody was going to rescue her from this giant. She tried to scream, but she had no breath, slung over his shoulder, and her “Help!” came out a whisper.
He chuckled. “Don’t you worry, doll. Ol’ Ham’s got the cure for what ails you.” He brought her and the sack of fish to a small house about two blocks away. He climbed up the front steps, pulled open the screen door, and banged on the wo
oden one behind it with a fist the size of a cantaloupe. “Josh!”
He had tilted her closer to upright in the act of knocking. As suddenly as she could, Sloane slashed at his face with her fingernails. She meant to gouge at his eyes but at the last instant she flinched and raked his cheek instead. “Hey! Goddamn,” the big man roared. Sloane tried to twist away, but he jerked her off his back, grabbed her arms and pinned them to her sides, and forced her down, smacking her knees painfully against the porch. “Cut that out, you silly bitch!”
Stairs creaked. “Ham? What the hell?”
“Goddamn drunk skirt here just tried to poke out my eye! Shit. I’m bleeding.”
“I have money,” Sloane gasped. “I can pay you.” Her cheek was stinging fiercely, and her head was pounding. “I know important people.”
The other man, the one called Josh, opened his front door. “She probably thinks you’re going to rape her,” he said.
The big man froze. An instant later he jerked his hands off Sloane as if she were on fire. “Hey. You got the wrong idea, lady. Me and Josh are the good guys, swear to God.”
Sloane knelt on the porch. Her head hurt, and she was dizzy and she felt like throwing up.
“You don’t have to come in,” said Josh, from the doorway of his house. “But I know a little first aid, and you look like you could use it.”
“I’ll…” Sloane struggled to her feet. “I’ll be okay,” she said, trying to find the porch stairs. Then she fell down.
Ham caught her. This time he picked her up as if carrying a fairy princess and crept inside, ducking his head to keep from bumping the ceiling, which was festooned with hanks of drying nettle and seaweed, and ropes of garlic and peppers. Josh’s house was un-airconditioned and horribly hot. It stank of turpentine and sulfur, and the yeasty odor of fermenting rice beer.
A gas lamp came on, hissing softly. “Okay,” Josh said. “Put her on the exam table.” Sloane felt warm vinyl under her back. Someone put a cushion under her feet. The small man was standing over her. “I’m going to take a look at you. Don’t be afraid.”
“She can still move her fingers and toes. Two old boys was fixing to take advantage of her when I come back from Rachel’s trailer with the rest of my catch.”
“I don’t smell any liquor. On her, that is.”
Ham laughed.
The small man’s fingers touched behind her ear and on the point of her chin as he turned her face. She blinked against the gaslight. His hands were hard and smelled of sulfur and chili peppers. He pulled her eyes wide open. “She’s in shock. Pupils dilated. Grab a blanket from my room, would you?”
“You the boss, boss.” The big man moved away, his absence suddenly emptying the front room.
Sloane’s cheek and forehead were a lace of rough fire. She could taste gravel and blood in her mouth. Her eyes closed. When she forced them open she saw the one called Josh looking at her, like a man this time, not a doctor. His eyes flicked guiltily away from hers. The flame of the gas lamp flickered and trembled, making her dizzier and dizzier until she fell into it.
WHEN she came to there was a blanket snugged around her. She was lying on a doctor’s examination table. The old vinyl surface creaked as she blinked and tried to look around. The house was cramped and cluttered; the front room only had space for a couple of chairs and the exam table on one side, a narrow corridor, and a long counter that ran the length of the other side. A stainless steel mixing bowl full of dried leaves and the head of a golf club sat on the counter. Behind it were rows and rows of shelves stocked with plastic Robitussin bottles and blue glass Vick’s Vapo-Rub jars and Altoids Peppermint tins, plastic pop bottles with the labels scrubbed off, coarse cotton bags and beer bottles with wax plugs to seal them. Roots and leaves hung floating in jars of oil and alcohol, and animal parts, too; she was sure she saw chicken livers, fish, a plastic bottle full of rattlesnake rattles, and something that looked like a jar full of tongues.
“Ham, this is Sloane Gardner. You rescued the Grand Duchess’s daughter.”
“Are you shitting me, Josh?”
Sloane closed her eyes, fighting the urge to throw up. Her shoulder ached. She was beginning to warm up under the blankets. The house was warm and dim and full of strange thick smells. “Pharmacy,” she murmured.
“Used to be,” said the man named Josh. “Now it’s just a witch doctor’s hut.”
“Frontier medicine,” Ham said. “Apothecary shop.”
“Apothecary shop.” Josh squatted next to the head of the exam table, holding a mug. “Drink this, if you can. It’s warm broth with something to help fight the shock.”
He was young, with a bony face. Reserved. He wasn’t really tiny except in comparison to his enormous friend, whom Sloane could hear lumbering about somewhere out of view. The reek of yeast was very strong, and it came to Sloane that the apothecary must ferment rice beer or palm whiskey here in his house. She struggled to sit up. The apothecary put an arm behind her back to support her. She sipped at the broth. Something in it left a bitter, woody aftertaste. “Sorry to cause trouble,” she said.
The small man took out a pocket watch and put his fingers lightly on her wrist. They settled; moved; settled. He took her pulse. “No trouble.” His eyes met hers.
Sloane finished the broth and lay back on the exam table. Movement caught her eye. A tree roach the length of her thumb was crawling toward her feet. The apothecary didn’t notice it. “How did you recognize me?” Sloane asked. “Have we met?”
“Everyone knows Jane Gardner’s daughter.” There was something odd and flat in his voice. “I’m Joshua Cane,” he said.
She shrugged helplessly. “I’m sorry. Should I know you?”
The lines around his mouth and eyes tightened. He looked away.
He’s angry about something. He’s also attracted to me, Sloane realized, surprised. But why?…Well, a pear-shaped woman in a bloody dress—what’s not to like? As Sloane stared at the apothecary a faint connection completed itself in the back of her mind. “But didn’t I know you, once? When we were young?” She saw in his dour face that she was right. If you were a girl, she thought, you would have learned to smile when you were uncomfortable, instead of looking as if you had been weaned on a pickle. “Yes, I remember now. You knew things, back then.”
“Josh knows a thing or two now,” Ham rumbled. He was leaning against the pharmacy counter, patting his scratched cheek with a damp rag. “Lucky for you. No bedside manner at all, but Josh is smart and he’ll do the right thing by you.”
“You told Ladybird Trube once that all the seashells on the beach were fossils,” Sloane said. She thought of Ladybird, flushed and drinking, lost somewhere in the fairgrounds. Or maybe by now she was somewhere in the city, in that other Galveston where it was Mardi Gras forever, sipping champagne in the Bishop’s Palace, or dancing in the Gold Room of another, slightly different Ashton Villa, where the ghost of Bettie Brown played ragtime tunes on her famous square piano.
“Did I?” Joshua’s face grew less dour. “Yes, that’s true. The island has rolled back toward the mainland over the last ten thousand years. The shells we find on the west beach today were actually laid down when that area was part of the Bay.” He stopped. “I thought you didn’t remember.”
“I didn’t at first.” She looked again at the tiny, mildewing house, crowded with plants and stinking of fermenting rice beer. “What happened?”
“We lost our luck.” He looked at her. “But I guess you folks have, too, haven’t you? I’m sorry about your mother.”
You don’t have to be now, Sloane thought, with a brief return of her earlier elation. But it was never smart to anger the gods by being presumptuous, and she wasn’t going to say, out loud, that her mother was well until she had seen the evidence with her own eyes.
The apothecary turned to his friend. “Ham, walk over to Ashton Villa, would you? Tell the Duchess her daughter is quite safe but could use a carriage to get home.”
“Will do
, Josh.” Ham stooped to get through the doorway. Where he passed, drying bunches of sage and garlic swung lazily from the ceiling. The apothecary must use them to make his medicines, of course. Ham looked from Sloane to his buddy and back, and then gave what he probably thought was a sly wink. “You kids be good now!” he said, and then he tramped heavily down the squeaking porch stairs.
“I’m sorry about Ham,” Josh said stiffly. “He’s…”
“I’m not offended,” Sloane said. Appalled, possibly. As if she were likely to roll around on the mildewed carpets, squashing a helpless roach and a doodlebug or two in the throes of lust for some down-on-his-luck pharmacist. She suppressed the image with a shudder and wondered when she would stop noticing the awful smell of fermenting rice beer.
“I’m sorry I can’t offer you better accommodations,” Josh said, even more stiffly.
Oops. Apparently she wasn’t censoring her expressions with her usual skill. “To tell you the truth, I was so busy being grateful I hadn’t noticed the accommodations.” Thank God the rest of the world was not like Momus’s realm, where you could only speak the truth.
“I’m sure you must be looking forward to getting home,” Josh said.
Sloane broke into a smile, sending a sharp twinge of pain through her bruised cheek. “Ouch. Yes, I am.” Well, her triumphant return wouldn’t be quite the entrance she had imagined, but in a way this might be better. A few cuts and bruises would make her look even more like a brave heroine who had endured great hardships to win back her mother’s life. After the first round of champagne, she thought, I’ll have one of the housemaids draw me a bath. Her mother had been implacable on the subject of frivolous baths, demanding that Ashton Villa conserve water irreproachably for the duration of the drought. But surely after a night like this, even she would agree that Sloane deserved to take as long and lingering a bath as she wanted.
Sloane got her elbows under her and gingerly sat up on the exam table. The nausea in her stomach was easing and she felt less drowsy, although her face still ached and her shoulder was beginning to throb where she had fallen on it. She winced.
