Black Swan Rising

by Lee Carroll

  As she passed me on her way out, I could hear that her thoughts were still full of numbers: tallies of rent and electricity, food and phone bills. She was trying to figure out how long she could stretch out the money she’d gotten from the ring. There were no plans for a cruise in those calculations.

  Oberon came into the showroom as she left. For the first time since I’d met him—had it only been four days?—he looked tired. As he crossed the floor, I noticed that his skin was ashy, as if something had drained out of him when the light sylphs had been drained of their lives.

  He nodded to me when he reached me, but he spoke to the white-bearded jeweler behind me. “Hello, Noam. How’s business?”

  The dealer shrugged, holding his hands palms up to the sky. “Can’t complain. And if I did, what good would it do, eh? I’m buying more than I’m selling—never a good sign—but at least I’ve got the capital to weather the storm. Others aren’t so lucky.”

  “No, others haven’t been lucky at all.” Oberon looked around the showroom, then gestured for me to come closer to the counter. “Noam Erdmann, meet Garet James.”

  “Ah, the Watchtower. I thought it might be you.” He took the hand I’d extended to shake in both of his—they were cold and dry—bowed his head, and touched his lips—also cold and dry—to my knuckles. “It’s an honor to meet you.”

  “It’s an honor to meet you, Mr. Erdmann.”

  “Please, call me Noam.” He lifted his head and smiled at me. The gold tooth winked in the light, but his brown eyes retained a look of melancholy despite the smile. They were surrounded by deeply etched lines that looked like furrows in a dry field. Looking into them, I felt as if I were looking down into a deep well that went into the very bowels of the earth. Although he held my hand lightly, I could feel a current running from his fingers up into my arm, down into my body into the ground, right through the showroom floor and into the bedrock below the building. “Erdmann? Doesn’t that mean . . .”

  “ ‘A man of the earth,’ ” he said, letting my fingers drop and thumping his barrel-shaped chest with his right hand. “My people have mined the wealth of the earth for millennia.” Then he shrugged. “It’s a living. And speaking of living . . . we’ve all got to eat. Why don’t we get a bite while we talk?” He cocked his thumb toward the mezzanine where a kosher dairy restaurant overlooked the floor. “C’mon. There’s a waitress there who’s sweet on me. She’ll give us extra pickles and coleslaw.”

  He winked at me, slid off his stool, and came out from behind his counter. I was surprised to see that the top of his bald head barely came up to my shoulder. He wasn’t any taller than Becky, but he led us across the floor like a prince surveying his kingdom, waving and exchanging pleasantries as he went. Oberon might be king of the fairies, but this was clearly Noam Erdmann’s domain.

  “I get the Erdmann part,” I whispered to Oberon as we started up the stairs to the mezzanine, “but his first name . . . Noam sounds a lot like . . .”

  “G-n-o-m-e? Yes, that’s exactly what he is—an elemental who guards over the treasures and resources of the earth.”

  “And what power am I supposed to learn from him?” I asked, looking at the squat little man. Now that I thought of it, all he needed was a pointed cap to look like the statues people put in their gardens.

  Oberon turned to me at the top of the stairs. Noam was a few feet ahead of us enthusiastically greeting a buxom waitress with hair dyed the color of a ripe eggplant. “We’re going to ask him to ground you,” he said. “But at this point I’d be happy if you’d learn to choose your company better.” Oberon looked meaningfully at my neck—covered by a turtleneck sweater. Before I could ask him if Lol had told him about last night, he turned away to join Noam at a vinyl-upholstered booth with a view over the showroom. I sat next to Oberon, across from Noam, preferring to look into the jeweler’s sad brown eyes than to endure Oberon’s glowering gaze.

  “The blintzes are delicious,” Noam told me as the aubergine-haired waitress, whose name tag read sadie, brought us plastic cups full of lukewarm water. “And so is the borscht.”

  “Then that’s what I’ll have,” I told Sadie. “And a cup of hot tea.”

  “The lady has good taste,” Noam said, winking at me. “Make mine the same, but with a cream soda.”

  Oberon ordered chow mein—I had a feeling just to be contrary—and an iced tea.

  When Sadie had taken our orders, Noam turned back to face Oberon, his features becoming grave. “We heard about what happened last night up at the park. Is it true the sylphs were killed by Dee?”

  Oberon slid his eyes over to the Hasidic man eating soup at the counter, then toward an elderly couple in the booth behind us, and lifted his eyebrows. Noam nodded and took out a gray velvet pouch from his pocket. He untied the drawstrings and spilled the contents of the pouch into his broad, lined palm. A half dozen diamonds glittered against his weathered skin, along with an assortment of multicolored stones, some smooth, some cut. He selected a clear crystal lozenge and placed it in the middle of the table. I looked closer and saw that it was veined with feathery black lines branching out like miniature fern fronds.

  “Dendritic quartz,” I said. “One of my favorite stones.” I knew from my college gemology class that the fern design was made from iron trapped inside the rock when it was formed, but it always looked to me like a fossilized plant.

  “Yes, and very useful for privacy.” Noam lifted his water cup and poured a drop onto the stone while muttering a few guttural syllables. The stone sizzled, vibrated, spun twice counterclockwise, then came to a standstill. Nothing happened for a minute. Then, looking closer, I noticed that the worn linoleum table was covered with fine feathery lines branching out to the edges of the table. They didn’t stop there, but continued sprouting upward, covering our booth with a crystal dome supported by a tracery of black branches. I gasped at the beauty of it and heard the echo of my gasp rebound off the walls. I looked around the diner to see if anyone noticed the new addition to the décor, but the Hasidic man continued placidly eating his soup, the elderly couple picked at their omelets, and the waitresses gossiped by the kitchen window.

  “So you were going to say?” Noam asked, spilling the other stones back in the gray pouch.

  “Yes, what you heard was true. At least one hundred sylphs were killed. They appear to have died by drinking a fog that we think was sent by John Dee.”

  Noam Erdmann shook his head. His eyes looked heavier and sadder than before. “A tragedy. What kind of beast does a thing like that? Do you know how he moved the fog?”

  “I was hoping maybe you knew something. Your people spend a lot of time underground.”

  “Not so much anymore, at least not in the city. It’s gotten so crowded lately with all the work being done down there, from the building at Ground Zero to the new water tunnel and the Trans-Hudson Express train tunnel. You can barely hear yourself think belowground anymore. I go up to the Catskills on the weekends to get a little peace and quiet—most of my people have relocated up there year-round. There’s a bit of natural-gas drilling going on up there, unfortunately, but nothing too deafening so far.”

  “As to New York City, that leaves the tunnels free for Dee,” Oberon pointed out.

  “You’re right about that, but if I call my people back to the city to man the tunnels, how do we know they won’t be poisoned like the sylphs?”

  “We don’t, but someone has to keep an eye on the water tunnels. If Dee gets into them—” Oberon was interrupted by Sadie coming back with our orders. I wondered how she’d get the food through the dome, but the plates moved right through the crystal as if it weren’t there. When her lips moved, though, I couldn’t hear a word she said.

  Noam grinned at her and gave her a thumbs-up, then he turned back to Oberon. “Okay. I can get some workers to guard the Croton Reservoir, and the Independent subway lines down to midtown. But no one’s going to go below Fourteenth Street with you-know-who down at City Hall.”
r />   “Understandable. What about the IRT?”

  While the two men went back and forth over the best way to guard the city’s underground water tunnels and subways, I ate my borscht and blintzes. The borscht was bright red and vinegary, pink where the dollop of sour cream melted into it. The blintzes were crisp at the edges and filled with soft, sweet cheese. I ate every bit, then sat back to drink my tea from its plastic cup. The men had divided up most of underground Manhattan; there didn’t seem to be much for me to do, and no one had mentioned grounding me, whatever that entailed. I had a feeling it didn’t mean making me stay in my room for the duration of the battle with John Dee, although given the grim expressions on Oberon’s and Noam’s faces that didn’t sound like a bad idea.

  Finally Noam glanced up at me and then looked over at Oberon. “It’s pretty confusing down there. If she does have to battle Dee below the ground, she’ll need help finding her way.”

  Battle Dee below the ground? I didn’t like the sound of that. As scary as it had been to fly over the city, I’d prefer that to facing an adversary below street level where, aside from Dee’s minions, there might be giant rats and mutant cockroaches.

  “Um . . . I suppose you could give me a map,” I suggested.

  Noam smiled wryly and took out his gray pouch again. “I can do better than that, bubeleh.” He spilled out the stones into his hand. Maybe I was going to get a magic diamond, I thought, leaning forward to peer into Noam’s palm. The stone he picked out, though, wasn’t a diamond; it was gray and shiny and shaped like a teardrop.

  “Hematite,” I said. “The blood stone.”

  “Yes!” Noam crooned approvingly. He took my right hand in his left and dropped the stone into my palm. It felt heavier than it looked. “We call it the compass stone. It possesses both ferromagnetic and antiferromagnetic properties. Excellent for telling directions.”

  I felt something twitch in my hand and looked down to see the stone spinning. It came to a halt pointed toward the showroom floor. “It’s pointing north, isn’t it?” I asked. I nudged the stone with my finger until it pointed in the opposite direction. When I removed my finger, it swung around to face north again. “Cool! So I just carry this with me?”

  Noam shifted his melancholy gaze from my palm to Oberon. I glanced over at Oberon to see him nod once. Noam covered my hand, which he still held in his left hand, with his right hand and squeezed both of his hands around mine. It was like being caught in a vise. His short, squat fingers were as cold and rigid as steel. I thought he was going to break my hand. I could feel the hematite pressing into my palm like an arrow carved out of ice.

  “Hey!” I cried, trying to pull my hand away, but Oberon blocked my way out of the booth and I couldn’t have gotten my hand out of Noam’s grip even if he hadn’t. I looked desperately around the diner for someone to help me, but of course no one had heard my cry of pain. So I looked back at Noam, into those soulful brown eyes, to beg him to stop. His eyes were glassy with tears, but he only squeezed harder.

  “Sorry, bubeleh,” he said, and gave one final iron-gripped squeeze that sent an excruciating stab of pain into the palm of my hand that traveled up my whole arm and lodged in my chest. Then he released his grip and still cradling my throbbing hand in his, he bowed his head.

  If he kisses my hand, I’m going to slap him, I thought.

  But he only unclenched my fingers and blew into my palm. Looking down, I expected to find a mutilated stub, but my hand was whole and unharmed, the skin soft and white as if I’d just had a manicure; the only change was that something tear-shaped glowed under the skin of my palm. I lifted my hand to have a better look, and the tear shape moved under the skin, realigning itself to point north. As it moved, I felt my whole body—the blood in my veins, the hairs on my skin, the very atoms in my cells—shift with it, yearning toward north. Noam hadn’t only inserted the compass stone into my hand; he’d turned me into a compass as well.

  Angel of the Waters

  “Was that really necessary?” I asked Oberon out on the street. “Couldn’t we have gone over to Circuit City and bought a fracking GPS?”

  Oberon grabbed my hand and spun me around to face him. “Is that all you think this does? Give directions?”

  “No,” I said, pulling my hand back, “it also hurts like hell. My whole arm is numb. I can feel it here.” I thumped my hand over my heart.

  “Of course you feel it there.” Oberon leaned so close I could feel his breath in my face like an angry wind. “Your heart beats in sync with the gravitational pull of the tides and the rotation of the earth now. That’s what it means to be grounded. You could find your way through the Amazon jungle without a compass—”

  “Great. Only I live in New York City. North is that way.” I pointed straight up Fifth Avenue, but my arm twitched and shifted a few degrees to the left. “Okay, so the grid’s not perfect, but I’ve never needed a compass to get around. Well, maybe in Brooklyn . . .”

  “Where you’re going is a little more confusing—and dangerous—than Brooklyn,” he said, turning to walk north (well, northeast) up Fifth Avenue. Although I walked as fast as I could, I didn’t catch up with him until he hit a red light at Fifty-seventh Street.

  “You could have at least warned me,” I said while we waited for the light to turn.

  Oberon glared at the traffic light on Fifth and it abruptly changed from green to red, causing a line of taxis to screech to a halt. “Would that really have helped?” He glanced at me out of the corner of his eye as we crossed the street. “I find with patients that the anticipation of pain is often worse than the pain.”

  “So do you sneak up and surprise them with hypodermic needles?”

  “No,” he admitted, stopping and turning to face me. “They’d never trust me again.” He looked down at me, studying my face. “I’m sorry. You’re right. You deserve to know what’s coming. . . . It’s just that much of what I see is jumbled and confused. I’m not sure how much to tell you.”

  “You can see the future?” I was shocked as much by the fact that anything could still surprise me as by his answer. We were standing in front of the Bergdorf Goodman holiday windows. Oberon was framed against an arctic backdrop between a woman in a white evening dress playing an accordion and a white wolf in black tie playing a trombone. A white swan was flying toward the couple, bearing a page of sheet music in its beak. Oberon belonged to that world, not out here on the sidewalk apologizing to a mere mortal like me. For the first time since I’d met him, I saw the sadness in his eyes—the same melancholy that afflicted Noam Erdmann and that I had heard in the wind’s song last night. I recalled what he’d said to me in the underground passage below Puck’s. We may have once been a great people—there were those among us who were revered as gods. What did it feel like to have been a god once and now to stand on a busy street in Manhattan unnoticed by the crowds?

  “I see glimpses of the future, but it’s always changing. Whenever someone changes the path they’re on, their future changes.”

  “Can you see if I’ll be able to find Dee?” I asked.

  “No. I see you wandering in the dark. That’s why I wanted you to have the compass stone—to keep you from getting lost. But you’re right—I should have told you what was coming and given you a choice.”

  I raised my hand. The compass stone adjusted by shifting back to north. A stone was moving underneath my skin, but suddenly it didn’t hurt. It felt, rather, as though I had a small bird cradled in my palm, a homing pigeon that I could launch into the sky to lead me home.

  “Okay,” I said, looking back at Oberon. “You’re forgiven. But next time give me a heads-up, okay?”

  He grinned as broadly as the leering white wolf in the Christmas window. “Absolutely. I’ll start right now. You’d better answer your phone. Your friend Becky’s calling and she’s pretty upset.” As he turned to continue walking up Fifth, my cell phone rang. I retrieved it out of my bag and followed Oberon as I answered it.

  “Gar
et?!” Becky’s voice screeched. “Thank God! I’ve been calling you all morning, but I kept going to voice mail. Did you turn your phone off again?”

  “Um, no, I was in”—I looked to Oberon to see if he had any acceptable substitute for dendritic quartz dome of silence. He mouthed subway and took my elbow to keep me from tripping over the curb as we crossed Fifty-ninth Street—“the subway. Sorry. Is anything wrong? Is it my father?”

  “No, your dad’s fine. I stopped by earlier and he and Zach were happy as clams planning a show. No, it’s Jay. Did you talk to him last night?”

  “A little,” I admitted warily. I tried as much as possible to stay out of Jay and Becky’s fights. “He told me you had some creative differences about the direction the band’s going in.”

  “Going in?” Becky snorted. “The direction he wants to go in is backwards. If he had his way, we’d be playing balalaikas and recording on eight-track cassettes.”

  “Yeah, well, Jay’s a little old-fashioned. You know that.” I glanced over at Oberon and rolled my eyes to express exasperation with Jay and Becky. We had entered the park and were walking toward the zoo. We passed a street artist drawing on the sidewalk in multicolored chalk, a calypso band playing on steel drums, and a woman on stilts dressed up as the Empire State Building. It was a little hard focusing on Becky with so much going on around me.

  “It’s not just old-fashioned this time. He’s stuck in the past. It’s not healthy. I think he’s suffering from depression.”

  I moved the phone away from my mouth so Becky wouldn’t hear me sigh. Ever since she took AP psychology in our junior year of high school, she’d been an armchair analyst, dissecting the psyches of everyone around us. For some reason, the tendency worsened when she was under stress, as if she needed to control and catalog the neuroses of the rest of the world in order to keep herself under control. I listened to her list Jay’s symptoms—not sleeping (I didn’t know how any of them got any sleep with the performance schedule they kept up), avoiding friends (as far as I knew, Becky was the only friend he was avoiding), failure to maintain a romantic relationship (she could have said the same about me or herself)—with a growing sense of concern, but for her, not Jay. Just to be sure, though, I decided to cash in on my recent promise from Oberon.