Challenging Destiny #24: August 2007

by Crystalline Sphere Authors

  First thought she was a damned fool and made no secret of it. There she was, young, attractive and wealthy; the pick of all the available young men of the city were hers for dalliances or for life, and a position of power and wealth was hers for the taking at the helm of the family business. And she was going to throw it away. “For what?” he'd ask her. “For a few cushions on a stone bed. For a life in a cave. For delusions—you know they're delusions! It's all politics, that's all it is."

  Her mouth set in a thin line, she'd say, “It's not politics to me, First. I feel the Call. This is what I've always wanted. I don't want wealth, power and pretty young boys. I want truth and meaning."

  "Truth and meaning! You'll get drudgery and poverty, and you'll get tired of it pretty fast."

  "Well, maybe you would,” she'd said, the conviction in her voice much stronger than her feelings. “I don't expect anything else from a man twenty-two and still without a name of his own. Not that anyone's surprised, with the size of the chip on your shoulder."

  I do want truth and meaning, she thought, climbing up this interminable staircase. I don't know what they are, but I want them. Except that I have to know how to fly, and I don't; what made me think I could do this? Panic grabbed her. She began to shake and cry; their heavy breathing masked the sound, but she knew her tears were destroying what was left of her face powder. Some priestess. She breathed deeply. I won't cry. I've waited my whole life for this.

  At last they reached the broad platform at the summit of the pyramid, where the High Priestess stood waiting by a silver bowl on a pedestal, holding a feathered cloth. Freya walked to her, and the High Priestess washed her face and hands. At least now the last of the ruined face powder was gone. “May the Huntress bring you wings and glory."

  "Thank you.” Freya's voice shook only a little.

  From up here, the city seemed not only distant but vast, a sweltering mix of exhaust, horns, bicycles, shouts, the thrum of trains, the roar of trucks, the mansions and estates rising on hills to the north, and from horizon to horizon a jumble of streets, canals, houses, office buildings, schools, hospitals and temples—yet all somehow muted by distance.

  She looked at the crowd in the square outside the public gate behind the pyramid, so small from up here. So small. Like mice. She could see her family standing beside a table set with sponge cakes, ice wine and other delicacies. Beside her mother were her two younger brothers, Second and Third, stuffing their mouths with sponge cake and sneaking surreptitious sips of ice wine when her mother wasn't looking. On her other side, with his arms crossed over his chest and a rigid posture she could see clearly even from so far away, stood her elder brother First.

  The Temple's visible portion, the pyramid, was not one single building but two; as if it had been split in half at the widest point, and each segment moved about thirty feet apart. It was at this chasm between the buildings that initiates proved themselves by flying, and at which Freya now stood.

  It was sheer on the inside, unlike the rough outer face, both sides covered in mica and decorated in silver, which caught the sunlight and reflected it back a thousand fold. At the bottom was the deep black pool that reflected the light of the moon when full, and was used by the priestesses for scrying when not. This was her first glimpse of it; only priests and priestesses could visit this inner heart of the grand old temple.

  On the matching pavilion on the other side of the chasm stood the priests and priestesses waiting to welcome her into their ranks. They seemed impossibly far away. The breeze picked at her, blew through the folds in her robe and the feathers in her hair, and made her sway on her feet. The noise from the street reached her faintly. A street musician was playing a hymn, an old standard of sweet high dancing notes, picked out on a clarinet. She smiled.

  Bae lit a stick of incense, which the wind blew away, and began to chant: “Here is Freya, who has walked through the labyrinth and climbed the Temple today, to join our Order as priestess."

  The priests and priestesses on the other side of the chasm responded: “We see her."

  "She has served as an initiate for two years, and served well."

  "We know her."

  "Today she has been called by Her whom we serve, the Huntress, to serve her all the days of her life."

  "We hear it."

  Bae turned to face Freya. “Those who the Goddess loves can fly, as the moon does. Those who the Huntress loves can fly, as the hawks, the owls and eagles do. We will know that you have truly been Called to serve Her whom we serve, Freya, when you fly from here. If you have not been Called, then to be here and see the black pool below is blasphemy, punishable by death."

  Freya's heart began to pound so loudly in her chest that she could see the beads bouncing on the front of her dress. Her breath came fast and shallow; she felt dizzy. I was wrong, she wanted to say. I can't do this. I can't fly. Let me go down. The breeze came again, strengthened, and Freya felt sick.

  After a few minutes, her training took over, and she began to breathe deeply and cleanly; the panic lessened and she opened her eyes. Beyond the priests and priestesses flew a flock of gulls, calling to each other, dipping and rising, soaring and falling. Freya lost herself watching their dance. How easy it was for these favoured little creatures. Even insects could fly; a butterfly never stood at a precipice and wondered if the wind would bear it up or let it fall.

  "They just fly,” she said to no one.

  "They do,” said the High Priestess.

  "Everyone who ever stood here was Called."

  "Yes. Every one."

  "It wasn't the Goddess who let them fall.” She stared at the birds, and thought, She called me. The High Priestess smiled, and Bae squeezed her arm. Around her, the breeze picked up; her robe fluttered and pulled behind her. A shot of joy went through her like an electric shock. She edged herself forward until her toes curled around the stone.

  Lady Huntress, don't let me fall, she thought, and stretched her arms wide. Her heart pounded. Below her the street grew quieter and the hymn reached her more clearly. She thought of her time in the temple, of her fellow initiates and friends. She thought of the easy, comfortable life she would have lived if she had never joined; and then, how boring it had always seemed to her, and how awful, to be tethered to the earth. She thought of the moon, and of birds, and insects, and all the other things that rose and did not fall. She thought of the moon goddess. Lady, don't let me fall.

  As she stood there and prayed for success, she felt the breeze prick at her, almost like sand—gelid sand—something not quite solid, but close. It picked and pulled; she pushed into it, and it pushed back.

  Ah, she thought, and tipped forward, her muscles loose, her mind light. For a few moments she slowly fell, and then more slowly still, until she opened her eyes and saw the great black pool beneath her reflecting her shape—but then, as light as smoke, she began to rise. Like an arrow she shot upwards, and in a sudden ecstatic burst, she looped through the air. Behind her rose a loud cheer as she cleared the top of the pyramid.

  She flew.

  As she lighted on the other side, priests and priestesses clasped her arms and slapped her shoulders. The High Priestess set a priestess's cloak of blue and grey feathers over her robe, and someone pressed a glass of wine into her hand.

  "The ceremony is finished below,” the High Priestess said some time later, “In the chasm, by the pool.” Freya started for the stairs down. Bae laughed. “You don't have to climb,” she said.

  Freya grinned, and took three running strides to the chasm's edge, then out into space. She floated in it. Around her flew a dozen other priests and priestesses, all descending into the chasm. She laughed. The bright sun winked off the quartz like jewels.

  * * * *

  Andrea McDowell lives with her husband and daughter in the Toronto area and supports her fiction habit by working as an environmental officer for big government. She is relieved that the thousands of dollars carefully invested in novels and short-story collecti
ons and lit magazines have finally paid off in this, her first fiction sale.

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  Like Water in the Desert by Hayden Trenholm

  Max Anderson leaned against the swaying wall of the car and thought of home. He wondered if they would have enough to eat today. His stomach cramped. Max fingered the stale crust of bread in his jacket pocket. Not yet, he thought, not yet. Wait until the next town.

  He stretched out his legs and wriggled his toes. He felt the comfortable scratch of the five-dollar bill taped to his left foot. Not yet, he thought again. There had originally been three fives—the last of his wages when they laid him off at the mill. One had gone in Green River, Alabama, when the railway cops caught him sneaking onto a flat car on the way out of town. Max was good in a fight but there were three of them. They beat him so bad he couldn't lift his arms for a week. They stole the watch his grandfather, Frederich, had given him but didn't find the money. He'd holed up in the nearest jungle and spent the five on food and on drink to ease the pain in his ribs.

  The second had gone in New York, where he got a job in the kitchen of a fancy nightclub. Red Skelton was the headliner but Max never saw more than a minute of the show between washing dishes and hauling garbage into the alley behind the club. He made enough money to share a room and the club provided his supper. And he was in New York where the museums and libraries were free and you could walk in Central Park or go up to Harlem for cheap beer and music like he'd never heard before. But it was February and between the steam of the kitchen and the icy cold of the alleyway he caught pneumonia and the five dollars he'd saved for months went for medicine that didn't do any good.

  The memories weren't all bad. Mary, who worked at the club, had taken pity on him—or maybe more than pity. She had taken him in and nursed him back to health and when he was healthy taught him things about life he would never forget. He might have married her, too, but she was thirty-six and he was twenty-two and didn't know a good thing when he had it in his hands.

  She had cried and held him but didn't say a word or try to stop him. And he pretended he didn't owe her his life and that he didn't love her. To admit the truth would have ended his journeys and he wasn't ready to settle down. Not even in New York City. Not even with Mary.

  But he still thought about her at night. More than a year later and two thousand miles away, he still thought of her and didn't want anyone else. He wondered if he ever would.

  It was hot in the car, and the steady rhythm of the train throbbed through his back. Max's eyelids drooped, and anyone looking on might have thought he was asleep. But he never slept, not in boxcars. People who slept on boxcars sometimes didn't wake up. There were a million men riding the rails in 1933. Some of them were bound to be bad.

  He lay on his back in the heat and stretched his senses to the limit. The sound of the wheels clattering on the rails had changed. The faint echo that had dogged the train since it had rolled out of Denver was gone. It had descended from the mountains and was rolling through forest-cloaked hills toward Nevada. There were rumours of work there. Lots of it and no questions asked. If you had a strong back and a willing hand they didn't care if the law was after you or even if you'd come down from Canada, crossing the border like a cold north wind, without permission or regret.

  Max wanted work. Work that would feed him, not just his stomach but his soul. He wanted this depression to be over, wanted a return to the times when a man could make something of himself, through his own efforts, his own ingenuity.

  Another cramp grabbed at his belly. For now, he'd be satisfied with enough work to buy him breakfast.

  Think of something else.

  The sun had come out. Light flickered across his face through the slats in the far wall. Sleep crawled up his legs and over his shoulders.

  Max sat up and took a deep breath. The smell of cattle and dust made him sneeze.

  "Bless you,” The voice came from nowhere, like thunder in a clear evening sky.

  Max sprang to his feet and reached behind him for the shiv he kept hidden in his belt. The movement made his head spin and there was a shimmer in the air like heat rising off stone.

  "No need for that, young fella. I'm harmless enough."

  The voice came from the far end of the boxcar, where the sunlight didn't reach.

  "Who's there?” Max brandished the sharpened steel that served as both eating tool and weapon.

  "No one here but us chickens.” The man laughed. It was a good laugh. Comforting, reassuring. Max relaxed and his hand dropped to his side.

  A pile of straw and twigs and torn blanket stirred. It had not moved since Max had crawled aboard the train in Denver. It had seemed too small to hide a man. Appearances are deceiving. The man it hid was a giant.

  Well over six feet tall with broad shoulders and a barrel-chest, he looked like a boxer. His nose had been broken several times and his face was scarred but his smile was perfect and white. His chocolate-brown skin was weathered and creased but whether he was forty or sixty, Max couldn't tell.

  "George Matheson,” said the man. “A lot of people call me Buck but I prefer George."

  "Good trick,” he said. “I never knew you were there."

  "Maybe I wasn't,” said George. “Maybe I'm a witch."

  "Good thing I'm carrying a Bible, then."

  George laughed again, deep and throaty, rising right out of his belly.

  "You're quick,” he said. “You hungry too?"

  Max tried to look noncommittal but his stomach's growl betrayed him. “Yeah, a mite."

  "A mite over three days from the look of you."

  It was Max's turn to laugh. “Well, if you're offering I won't turn you down."

  George produced a satchel from the pile of rubbish that hadn't been big enough to hide a man.

  "What else you got in there,” asked Max, “an automobile?"

  "Sure. A Packard. But I prefer the ambiance of our present mode of transport."

  "It does have a certain atmosphere."

  "Yeah. Eau de bullshit."

  "You said it, brother."

  George opened the satchel and produced a hunk of hard cheese, a tin of salted pork and some dried apples. Max reached into his pocket and added the dried heel of bread to the larder. George grinned and pulled out a half-full bottle of wine.

  "I bet the Rockefellers aren't eating this well tonight,” said George.

  "They sure as hell won't enjoy it as much.” He handed George the shiv as a show of trust. “Here, you do the honours.” Max's mouth was watering but he made no move to touch the food until George had cut a hunk of cheese and meat for himself and had broken the bread in two. The big man filled his mouth and grunted at Max to dig in.

  "Don't eat too fast,” said George. “Your stomach might get scared."

  They ate in silence, passing the knife back and forth until George had had his fill. He nodded at Max to finish the pork and then handed him one of the apples.

  "I'll save mine for later. If you don't mind."

  George nodded and Max slipped the apple into his jacket pocket.

  "It's a wise man who sets up stores for lean times.” George took a swallow from the bottle and handed the last of it to Max to finish.

  "You going to work on the dam?"

  Max nodded. He felt oddly at ease. He didn't usually take to strangers but there was something different about George. He seemed so relaxed and self-assured, as if he were privy to secrets of which other men only dreamed.

  "What about you? You look like you'd be a mean man with a shovel."

  "Oh, I'd get mean all right if I had to work all day in the hot sun for a dollar a day and two plates of gruel."

  "Better than starving."

  "Some would say so. I got other work to do."

  Max bit back the words that sprang to his lips. He didn't want to look desperate.

  "Might be something in it for you.” George was looking at his hands, not meeting Max's eyes.

 
"Is it illegal?” Max had spent too many nights in jail for nothing to want to give the bulls a real reason for locking him up.

  "Not exactly. But it's dangerous."

  "And despite that it doesn't pay too well."

  "Did I say that?"

  "We are holding this conversation in a box car."

  "Sometimes what people do is a matter of necessity and sometimes a matter of choice. A man can do all right for himself in my line of work. And the work is important."

  "Important to who?"

  George didn't answer, only sat on his haunches looking at Max.

  "So what is this work?” asked Max.

  George leaned back and looked up. Max could not read the expression on his face.

  "It's a hard thing to name,” said George. “You might say I'm like Johnny Appleseed."

  "You plant trees?"

  "No. Not trees. Knowledge. And what oaks those acorns grow are mighty to behold."

  Silence descended, save for the steady clacking of steel on steel. Max felt the withered apple in his pocket and the lonely fin taped to the bottom of his foot. George said nothing, lying so still he could have been asleep. But Max knew he wasn't.

  The silence grew oppressive and when Max finally broke it, he could not raise his voice above a whisper.

  "What does a fellow have to do to get into this business?"

  George laughed again but now it did not sound so warm or friendly. Max wondered whom he was making a deal with and for what.

  * * * *

  Close to midnight, George spoke again. “This is where we get off."

  The train was moving fast. Max and George sat in the open door of the car watching the dark trees rush by. The sky was clear and stars blazed across the heavens like a field of glass.