Broken, Bruised, and Brave

by L. A. Zoe

  “It must have been really hard for your mother,” Rhinegold said. “I can hardly imagine. When you have two wonderful twin little girls, and a troll takes one of them.”

  “Troll? What’re you talking about?”

  “In my world, a troll took your sister. You know, big ugly monsters.”

  Jagged lightning struck my heart with volcanic fury. Red light pressed my skull with undersea pressure, and I exploded.

  As I spoke, between words, I kicked him as hard as I could. “JaeSea’s dead, damn you! Dead! From a car accident. She’s. Not. In. Your. Fucking. Movie!”

  Rhinegold pulled away from me, but didn’t try to defend himself.

  I couldn’t stand the thought of him. His warmth. His energy. His arms around me. His love—nothing.

  “Get out! Sleep on the floor! No, me, I’ll sleep on the floor.” I rolled off the bed to my feet. I grabbed several blankets and pulled them off, and a pillow.

  “Heaven. Hell. I don’t know where she is,” I said. “Maybe nowhere, just dead and gone. But it wasn’t no fucking troll.”

  Chapter Forty

  Nice Day In the Park

  Rhinegold met Helena in the side parking lot of Riverside Park, close to the softball fields.

  As she stepped out of her green Prius, she looked good, despite the long black leather coat that masked her figure. It contrasted sharply with the bright white sunlight reflected by the surrounding acres of snow, that on the ball fields still unbroken.

  The nicest weather since early December. The temperature hovered close to freezing. After two months of zero and below, thirty degrees felt so warm she, like Rhinegold, didn’t even wear her hood. No wind. No clouds, just a clear sky to match Helena’s eyes. A yellow sun to match her hair.

  Helena pulled on a pair of black leather gloves—Italian, no doubt—and then took her black violin case out of the car, and joined Rhinegold.

  “This is the most unusual gig I’ve ever played,” she said. “Sure you wouldn’t rather listen in a condemned house?”

  “I have a special place in mind,” Rhinegold said, feeling the wry humor he realized she couldn’t understand. “A special place in the park, but farther in.”

  She took his arm, although the snow was frozen so hard and crusty she walked right on top of it. But he didn’t want her to slip and fall in her smooth soled flat shoes. The case squeaked slightly.

  “I haven’t been here for years,” Helena said. “I think I remember Father bringing us here a few times to play around, but only in the summer.”

  “Sorry it’s not a lot warmer,” Rhinegold said.

  “I resisted asking you when you called,” Helena said. “But now I can’t. Are you still with your little friend?”

  “SeeJai? Of course.”

  “Then what am I doing here?”

  “An experiment.”

  To see if how the weirwoods reacted to her playing. Maybe he misunderstood SeeJai. She looked so full of magic, but worked so hard at being practical and everyday.

  “Only you would call me playing a violin in the middle of the park an experiment.”

  “And you wouldn’t do it for anybody else but me, would you?”

  “You’ve got that right. I should charge you at least a hundred bucks.”

  “Is that what Father and Sybille paid you for the Valentine’s Day party?”

  “I took that gig for the food and drinks and publicity—and the shot at you.”

  Three out of four’s not bad, he thought, but didn’t say. He didn’t want to piss off another woman.

  “How’s Keara?” he asked, working hard to keep his voice sounding lighthearted.

  “Just fine. I told her about this, and she laughed and said you were crazy.”

  “Tell her I said hi.”

  They made their way into the undeveloped, woody part of Riverside Park.

  “My goodness,” Helena said. “I thought you’d at least want me in the bandstand. There’s nothing around us but trees. My teacher would have a fit.”

  “Just a few pieces,” Rhinegold said.

  “Thank goodness it’s a nice day out.”

  But as they walked further into the park, clouds returned to the sky, shading the sun, then blocking most of its light. The temperature dropped, and wind skirled through the trees, shaking ice-coated branches so they clattered like dice as the Fates shot craps.

  Helena pulled her hood up, and leaned closer to Rhinegold. “I sure spoke too soon.”

  By the time they reached the grove of oaks Rhinegold considered his weirwoods, the weather seemed like something beyond George Martin’s wall of ice. Black clouds roiled thick and threatening in the sky, bringing early-evening darkness. Hard icy winds cut through their thick coats. The wind-chill factor must have dropped way below zero, making him long for the proverbial witch’s tit.

  “Are you all right?” Rhinegold asked. “I didn’t see this in today’s weather prediction.”

  “Good thing I don’t need the sheet music,” Helena said. “Let me get it over with, then you owe me a big bowl of cheesy chili and a gallon of hot chocolate.”

  “Deal.”

  She unclicked the violin case, and took it and her bow out.

  She took her stance, bracing herself against the wind, and raised the violin to her chair. “You better appreciate this, Rhinegold.”

  “I do.”

  Helena handed him the violin case to hold, and slipped off her gloves.

  As they agreed, she played “La danse macabre” by Camille Saint-Saens. A slow, but intensely weird piece. On the night of All Hallow’s Eve the devil plays a fiddle to wake up the dead, and set them to dancing. Hauntingly melancholy.

  That ought to get a reaction from the Old Gods, if anything could.

  Within a minute or so, the snowflakes began falling. Lightly at first, then powdering them both with white splotches.

  Helena continued to play, and the wind blew at the direction of her dipping and swayings.

  It picked up speed, and swirled the thick snow falling, a sudden blizzard, drowning the world in white and shadow. Rhinegold could not see anything beyond the nearby grove of trees, or Helena, still playing the spooky music, a fuzzy shadow.

  The thick precipitation muffled the sound until Rhinegold could barely hear it, and then it changed. Subtly at first. Louder. Then faster.

  The wind lashed them with deadly chill, and still she played on. On and on.

  The noise sliced through Rhinegold’s eardrums like a saw through his intestines. Stop! he tried to shout, but no sound escaped his throat.

  Only a few violin notes escaped the howling of the air through the trees. They screamed like damned souls set loose from Hell.

  The snow continued to come down like dead stars falling out of the sky.

  Then he couldn’t see Helena, only hear random notes like angel screams.

  “Helena!” he shouted, then took a few steps toward her, fighting the wind as solid and implacable as the Mississippi flowing downriver.

  She still stood, still playing, bowing and twisting and working the bow as though possessed of some manic energy, the victim of a ferocious spell.

  If she heard him, she gave no sign, just kept playing.

  Like Satan in that old song by The Charlie Daniels Band, “The Devil Went Down to Georgia.” Fire blazed from her fingertips and demons hissed.

  As near as he could tell, she then played Mussorgsky’s “Night on Bald Mountain,” but with frantic, warped arm gestures, as though trying to stop the maelstrom of whirling snowflakes.

  Fast and eerie. Creepy, and a whirlwind of sounds blown to tatters in the middle of a hurricane.

  Snow caked her, covering her black leather coat with thick white from ankles to neck. Hiding all but a wisp of the yellow of her hair.

  Yet she kept playing, as though obsessed. Caught in a spell.

  Fighting the wind, Rhinegold worked his way closer to her.

  “Help!” she cried, croaking like a raven. “M
y hands … oh God!”

  He grabbed her shoulder. “Stop! It’s enough. Let’s go!”

  “My violin,” she said, panting. “My fingers … numb. Open the case, please, Rhinegold. Please.”

  Although he still wore thick gloves with fur on the inside, his fingers felt cold, nearly too stiff to move. Finally, he fumbled the catch open.

  Trying to shield the musical instrument with her body, Helena placed it and the bow into the case, and slammed it shut.

  Rhinegold had to reach into her pockets to pull out her gloves, and help them onto her fingers. Her skin turned pale blue as a robin’s egg. She held her arms across her chest, shivering out of control, one hand in each armpit.

  Rhinegold put his arm around her shoulders, and together they turned and walked back to the parking lot by the softball fields.

  As they left the weirwoods behind, the snow thinned, then stopped falling. The clouds brightened, and finally vanished, leaving the sky again blue, and the sun unobstructed.

  No longer shaking, Helena opened her violin case to brush off as much snow as she could from it and the inside of the case. But everything was dry.

  She placed it in the passenger front seat, then turned to Rhinegold.

  “I owe you chili and hot chocolate,” Rhinegold said.

  Helena looked around, calling his attention to the renewed near-warmth of the air temperature. The clear sky. The bright light.

  All that remained was the thick, moist snow still packed onto their winter coats.

  Then she glanced back into the park, toward the weirwoods, avoiding Rhinegold’s eyes. “I, er, just remembered, I agreed to meet Mother for drinks at the mall near our house.”

  Feeling a chill inside his spine that was more than just the cold weather, Rhinegold understood her desire to drive away—fast.

  “All right,” he said, and backed away as she got inside the Prius. “Thank you for coming,” he said. “I really do appreciate it. I sure didn’t count on the unusual weather.”

  “This park doesn’t like me, does it?” Helena said, then pulled away.

  The weirwoods and the Old Gods didn’t like her.

  He got the message. His destiny lay with SeeJai, not Helena.

  Chapter Forty-One

  SeeJai Meets Again With Greco and Ami

  There were three blocks of businesses between The Sunshine Garden and the bus stop where I caught the Cross Town Express heading for our neighborhood.

  Three blocks of early afternoon shoppers staring into the windows of Rachel’s Antique Shoppe and Baseview Art Haus. Lined up out the door of Ben and Jerry’s Ice Cream Store. Coming out of the Old Odin Cafe. The small store selling retro dresses and other costumes. The offices of The Cromwell Underground Times, the freebie alternative newspaper.

  A day that almost made winter worthwhile. Bright sunshine. Still, golden air. Enough warmth to trigger the tons of rock salt on the city streets to work, and turn the roads into ditches of dirty gray slush thrown up by passing tires.

  As Asian woman in long dreadlocks sat on a stool and played folk standards on an acoustic guitar.

  That’s why I felt safe enough without Rhinegold, who was off on his business. Working split shifts was a hassle. Lunch, then three or four hours off, then back for dinner. But it beat spending those hours prepping food for dinner, with no tips added to our meager per hour wages, because so few people ate during the afternoon. As the dinner rush tapered off, Arkady sent the preppers home first.

  I wanted to wait on tables and therefore collect tips, not grate carrots.

  Especially when I had so much to think about. Serving customers forced me to concentrate on the moment. Give me a knife and vegetables to chop with it, and I might cut off a fingertip.

  Lately, Rhinegold acted so strange, even more than before. Last night I returned to the bed, and we made love to move the universe, but we didn’t talk about the night before.

  JaeSea killed by trolls, the words still made me growl deep in my throat like a direwolf. No, no direwolves, except in that fantasy TV show he loved. I wanted to growl and rip out his throat with my fangs like a real wolf. Dangerous enough.

  Where were we—he and I—going?

  I wanted to save money, buy a car, enroll in school. Get a good job. Buy a house in a safe neighborhood. Maybe even raise a few kids, though I admit that seemed just too far away and unlikely to daydream about.

  And I wanted Rhinegold by my side.

  But he didn’t seem to want to go anywhere. Just patrol the dangerous streets of Cromwell, a self-appointed superhero, except he had no super powers, and no bat cave or costume either. He couldn’t even fly or climb up skyscraper walls.

  A golden knight without any armor, shiny or not. Just kung fu fists against a world full of Tec-9s.

  What would I do if the cops came one night to arrest him for assault? Or to ask me to identify his body?

  I’d watched enough police shows and movies on TV to know tension destroyed a lot of marriages in police departments. I could already identify with the worries of police spouses. And Rhinegold didn’t even have the protection of a uniform, the legal right to carry a firearm, the authority of a badge, and the ability to call in backup forces.

  So I didn’t notice, but wasn’t surprised, when Ami walked beside me, matching my pace stride for stride.

  “Look at them all,” Ami said, waving her arm at the many young people, probably students at nearby University of Kiowa all around us. “The fools think their boyfriends love them back.”

  “But you know better,” I said. She wouldn’t dare try to hurt me here, in daylight, around so many people. Would she?

  “Love’s a disease, jelly doughnut,” Ami said. She still wore her arm in orange spikes, but covered her scalp with a bright green knit cap as though preparing for St. Patrick’s Day, coming soon. Blue jeans, and a blue denim jacket suitable for warmer weather. To show she was so tough she didn’t need a full-thickness winter coat when the temperature was merely freezing. “It’s a trick men use to persuade women to sleep with them.”

  “So who’re all these lesbian couples I see in the news who want to get legally married?” I asked.

  On my other side, Greco spoke: “Better listen to her, SeeJai. I’m a man, I ought to know.”

  “Just because you never loved a woman.”

  “Hey, I love my mother,” Greco said. He wore his long black leather coat. A light brown fedora. His long black cape. “I paid off her house note and rehabbed the place. Now it’s worth more than the rest of the neighborhood all put together. I’d move her out but she won’t leave her friends. Took her off food stamps. Bought her a Cadillac CTS-V. And give her bingo playing money every day.”

  “How well do you treat your mother?” I asked Ami.

  Greco said, “I did fall in love, when I was fourteen. She was twelve. I didn’t even try to fuck her, though my friends laughed at me. Then she ran off with a twenty-one year old dude. He gave her HIV, then left town.”

  “Why?”

  “He owed a lot of money he couldn’t pay back, so I heard.”

  “No, I mean, why’d she leave you for him?”

  “You nuts? He had a gold tooth with a star in it. A Mercury Grand Marquis. A full-grown, man-sized dick. And plenty of crack.”

  “Sorry I asked. If you guys want me to go back to the Play Pen, I’ve got things to do this afternoon before I go back to work the dinner rush.”

  “We can’t give up, icing angel,” Ami said. “The finder’s fee’s too big.”

  “Look around. Find another girl you like.”

  “College girls have such bad attitudes,” Greco said.

  “Stuck up,” Ami agreed.

  “Happy to give it away until they learn it’s worth money, then they think it’s made of gold,” Greco said.

  “Or platinum,” Ami added.

  “My pussy’s plain old flesh and blood,” I said. “But it’s not for sale.”

  “Rent,” Greco said. “We’re
not human traffickers.”

  “You’re just letting the guy use you on a temporary basis,” Greco said.

  “Make you rich as hell,” Ami said. “Men come, then go. Women too when you get right down to it. Money’s your only true friend.”

  “And lover,” Greco said, sniffling. He pulled out a red handkerchief and wiped it.

  “But you have to have some first,” Ami said.

  “I’ve got a job,” I said. “An honest job.”

  “Keep it,” Greco said. “Ami and I talked it over. We decided we made a mistake including Rhinegold at the meeting. He’s your boyfriend, so of course he doesn’t want you accepting our little deal. He can’t match it. You sleep with a rich dude for five figures a month, and he’s less of a man.”

  “So just don’t tell him, pudding pie,” Ami said. “It’s only one night every two months or so. Make an excuse, and get away. Let Rhinegold think you’re living on your tips. We don’t care.”

  “Just don’t let him see your bank account statements,” Greco said.

  “What do I tell Rhinegold about seeing you two today?”

  “Nothing, gooey butter cake. We’re not looking for trouble, just lots of money.”

  Chapter Forty-Two

  Practicing Karate Kata

  Rhinegold moved the room’s furniture as close against the wall as possible, giving him the maximum space possible.

  “You sure you won’t drop me?” SeeJai asked.

  “Just hang on,” Rhinegold said.

  He stood just inside the entrance, wearing nothing but boxer shorts and a t-shirt. SeeJai sat on his shoulders, hooking her feet behind his back, fingers holding on to the tail of hair growing from his Mohawk. Her head nearly touched the high ceiling of the ancient room.

  The mid-afternoon sun streaming through the windows actually helped the overworked radiator keep the temperature warm. Maybe spring would arrive before August.

  As always, even though not currently an active student at the dojo, Rhinegold began kata practice with a symbolic bow of respect toward his teacher and his workout area.