The Fissure King

by Rachel Pollack

  "How long have you lived here?" he asked her.

  "Eighteen years. It was Sam's—my husband's—idea. To get our own place, I mean."

  Jack smiled. "He didn't want to live in his mother-in-law's house?"

  Sarah looked away a moment. "I told him it was our ancestral home or something like that. But he insisted, and to tell you the truth, Mr. Shade, I didn't really mind having my own home."

  "Yeah, and a whole mile from your mother. Sam must have loved that."

  She laughed. "He used to say that my mother didn't have apron strings, she had steel cables."

  "How long did he last?"

  "Julie was four."

  Inside, the house was a more up-to-date version of Margaret's, just as comfortable, just as anonymous, but with an Xbox hooked up to the TV, a couple of Impressionist posters, and a handful of teen gossip and sex magazines scattered around the gray carpeted floor. Looking at the magazines, and their owner, who sat cross-legged on a dark gray couch, fingers flying over her iPhone, Jack felt nostalgia stick a knife in him. He could see them so clearly, Layla screaming at their daughter to pick up her "trashy magazines," Genie rolling her eyes with that look that suggests all teenagers are prisoners of war.

  "Julie," Sarah said, "this is Mr. Shade."

  Julie didn't answer. Tall and thin, with long straight hair dyed black with pink highlights, she wore tight jeans tucked into black UGGs, and an open Gold River High hooded sweatshirt jacket over a pink top cut low to show off the skinny girl's brave attempt at push-up cleavage. She didn't look up.

  Sarah's face took on a harried cast that once again reminded Jack of Layla. Sarah went on, "Mr. Shade is here to help us find out where Grandma has gone."

  With a sigh, Julie looked Jack over as if he was auditioning to strip at her Sweet Sixteen party. "Yeah, I know," she said. "Jack Shade," she pronounced, in a tone that made his first name an obscenity her mother had always forbidden her to say. With a glance at his crotch she said, "Are you a private dick?"

  "No," Jack said. "I'm a Traveler."

  "Whatever." She started working her phone again.

  Sarah said, "Honey, can you think of anything that might help Mr. Shade—Jack—find out what's happened to Grandma?"

  Shrug. "He's the dick. Let him figure it out."

  "Please. It's important."

  "Why? Grandma's the damn Queen, isn't she? If she wants us to see her, she'll reveal herself."

  "This is your grandmother," Sarah said sharply. "And being Queen is important. Very important. I thought you understood that."

  Julie stood up now, even skinnier than Jack had thought. She raised her hands to the sides of her face, palms out, and wiggled her fingers as she rolled her eyes and made woo-woo noises. "Ooo, the Queen of Eyes." Abruptly, she dropped her arms. "I can't wait till it's my turn. I'll get to see geese shit in California, and fags screw in Philadelphia, and old men pissing themselves in the woods. Whoopee." She picked up her phone. "I'm going to my room. If Mr. Shady Dick wants to search me for clues, I'll be on my bed." For just a moment as Julie left the room, Ray appeared behind her, then flickered back out of existence, or at least out of sight.

  Sarah looked down at the floor. "I'm really sorry about that," she said.

  "Don't be," Jack said. "I have a teenage daughter myself." Had, he corrected himself, then immediately changed it back to have. Genie wasn't dead, she was just—out of reach. He tried to think smugly how even at her worst, his daughter had never been nearly as obnoxious as Julie Strand, but the thought of Genie was too painful. He brought his attention back to his client. "Can I look around the rest of the house?"

  Sarah tried to smile, with limited success. "Sure. Hopefully my daughter won't leap out and bite you."

  The house was a bit larger than it looked from the outside, with a dining area off the living room, three bedrooms, and two baths. A door in the hallway between the kitchen and the bedrooms led out to a simple cement patio with a wrought-iron table and chairs and the barbecue Jack had spotted from the driveway. Weren't they supposed to put a tarp over it? City boy, he told himself. Johnny Urban, knows the secret language of the Chrysler Building gargoyles, but not what you do with a barbecue in winter.

  He glanced in at what was obviously Sarah's bedroom, his eye falling on the framed photo of Julie graduating Middle School. Jack had one of those. He went on to the guest room, which didn't look like it saw much use, and the bathrooms, where he opened the medicine cabinets and examined the prescription bottles, finding nothing special. He didn't bother to knock on Julie's door, though he did stop and listen to her muttering something into her phone. When he couldn't make anything out, he shrugged and walked on.

  The fact is, Jack had no idea what he was doing. The best he could manage was to try and look professional so Sarah wouldn't lose confidence in him. He went back to the living room and kept a straight face as he said he had some "leads" he wanted to "follow up." Sarah was so desperate, she just nodded.

  Jesus, Jack thought as he drove away from 19 Holly Drive. What a disaster. What the hell did he know about leads? What would he do next, go down to sleazy dives by the waterfront and knock back a few shots while he asked pointed questions until a couple of goons roughed him up and took him to see Mr. Big? He almost turned around when he realized he'd forgotten to ask Sarah for a photo of her mother. But what exactly would he do with it if he had it? "Oh, for fuck's sake," he said out loud, and swung the Altima onto Route 17 East, heading back to the Thruway. If in fact the Queen had placed his card there so he would be the one to investigate if "something happened" to her, he sure as hell couldn't figure out why.

  He had just passed Goshen when something caught his eye. A billboard advertising one of those fake 1950s diners blocked most of the view toward the south, but he could still see a cone-shaped hill behind it, and at the top three pine trees, evenly spaced in a triangle. He grunted, then pulled off the road at the next exit, close enough that he could get out of the car and stare at the hill. Ray appeared alongside him, tail stiff, hair on his back standing up. Jack smiled down at the spirit fox. "Yeah, I see it," he said.

  The one thing Jack had said that was completely true was when he'd told Julie Strand that he was not a detective, he was a Traveler. Maybe he knew nothing about how to search for clues but he knew how to ask for help. He got back in the car and drove as close to the hill as he could, then parked on the side of the road.

  Up and down the country road Jack saw neat houses, a couple of anchored mobile homes, a small autobody shop, but right here, at the base of the hill, there were no signs of ownership. Only, the grass and weeds had obviously been cut, and the dirt and pebble path that snaked to the summit was clear of the rubbish and trash that tended to accumulate on unused property. As he walked to the top, Jack wondered if the land had passed from father to son for longer than anyone could remember, and every generation or two, someone would wonder why they never did anything with it. Or maybe it belonged to the town, and somehow any plans for a park, or offices, or senior housing just never went anywhere.

  At the top of the hill, Ray held out a paw, like a dog trained to shake hands, then vanished before Jack might take hold of it. Jack frowned. He'd never seen Ray do that before, but he knew why the fox had to leave. Jack needed to stand in the exact center of the triangle and anyone else present would distort that, even an NT, a Non-Tangible.

  One of the first things Anatolie had taught Jack was how to locate the center of an irregular plot of ground. Jack found the spot and nodded to each tree as if to a helper. Though they didn't look older than six or seven decades, the trees were probably old when the Seneca, or the Wampanoag, or the Mohegans first showed up here.

  He inhaled deeply, in search of a certain smell, and there it was, cinnamon and cloves. Travelers called the long-lost people who created such places "precursors," and the conical hills "Pics," precursor information c
enters. Pics varied from place to place, but there was always the aroma, as if Pics were part of an office Christmas party. Down below, the sky had appeared gray, streaked with muddy-looking clouds, but here the sun shone.

  For a moment, doubt stopped him. Was he really expecting to use an oracular hot spot to find the Queen of Eyes? If the Mother of all oracles had gone missing, how could he expect to find anything? But then he realized, he'd seen the Piss-Lion taxicab, he could still see Ray, and hadn't he spotted the trees?

  Jack lay down on the damp grass. Well, it wouldn't be the first time he'd have to wander around in wet clothes. As usual when on a case, Jack had slipped his black knife into the sheath at the back of his right boot. Now he pulled it out to set it on his belly. The carbon blade glowed slightly, as if excited. Jack placed his palms flat on the grass, closed his eyes, and breathed deeply. He became part of the ground, his head and limbs like roots or a mud bank. The smell of cinnamon and cloves filled his blood.

  Jack had no idea how much time passed before a slither on his belly brought him back to himself. When he opened his eyes, an albino snake, about two feet long, looked up at him from the middle of his chest. Jack reached for his knife.

  This next part was tricky. You were supposed to kill the snake, but years ago, when Eugenia was seven, Jack had made the mistake of bringing her along on a Snake Enactment. He'd told her to stay in the car, but what kid would listen when Daddy was doing something mysterious? So she peeked, and became hysterical when Jack cut open the snake (green and yellow that time), and wouldn't calm down until Jack promised he would never ever do that again.

  That was long ago, but for all Jack knew Genie could still watch him from the Forest. And besides, the one thing a Traveler must never do is break a vow. So now Jack looked at the snake, and said "I need a drop of your blood but that's all, I promise. Okay?" Ray appeared now and inclined his head towards the snake, as if to translate. The snake reared up and tilted back its head, as if to offer its neck.

  With the tip of the knife, Jack made a small incision. A thin sheen of green ichor oozed out, almost fluorescent against the rubbery white skin. As soon as Jack had pressed a drop onto his finger the wound closed up, dry even before the snake darted back into the grass.

  Jack stared at the bright green on his finger. Curiously, this particular bit of Traveler tech had leaked out to the outside world more than most, with anthropologists and folklorists going on about snake blood and "the language of birds." When Jack read these garbled accounts, he always got the impression this was supposed to be a glorious experience. Well, he thought as he placed the ichor on his tongue, they should try it.

  It wasn't pain, or nausea, it was just that the very thing all those writers thought was so great could drive you crazy. Voices. Voices everywhere, nearby, across the globe, maybe on other planets. Loud, soft, subtle, blaring, and all of them chirping, singing, honking, squawking, tweeting. All over the world, in the sky, the forests, on the roofs of buildings, the birds were talking. And Jack Shade could hear them all.

  He wanted to scream, to cover his ears, to yell at them to shut up. God, he thought, he'd forgotten how much he hated this. But all he could do was lie there, and wait. Sure enough, after a time it died down to a kind of background noise. Theoretically he could understand them all, that was the whole point, but in reality you had to wait for some single visitor to come talk to you in person.

  All those anthros and linguists have come up with all sorts of reasons for the high value attached to understanding bird speech. Birds make beautiful sounds (oh really, Jack thought, try discussing politics with a goose), birds fly up to heaven and come back with messages from the gods (why would the gods build heaven where it was cold all the time and you could hardly breathe?). The simple fact was that birds are just incessant gossips. They can't resist telling you things.

  More time passed, and then a large bird with brown feathers, a white chest, flattened head, and a crooked beak came and perched on Jack's chest. The claws hurt but he did his best to hide the pain. Birds could be very sensitive and fly off if he appeared to complain.

  Some Travelers prepared for these things. They studied bird books, they practiced calls, they even carried baggies of seed. Jack just, well, winged it. The bird stared at him and he wished, not the first time, that birds could blink. He said, "Umm, thanks for coming to talk to me."

  "Ach," the bird said, "it's not every day you get to speak with the great Johnny Shade."

  Wonderful, Jack thought. A sarcastic bird. To make things worse, it spoke with a thick accent of some kind. "Noot ivery dee," that sort of thing. "The honor is mine," Jack said.

  "How can I help you?" (Hoo kinna hoolp ya?)

  "The Queen of Eyes is missing," Jack said. "I'm trying to find her."

  The bird gave a shriek that made Jack want to cover his ears. The feathers stuck out in all directions, and for a moment, the creature lifted off his chest, only to dig deeper into his skin when it came down again. "We know, we know!" the bird said. "What d'you think everyone is talking about?" (Tawkin aboo.)

  "Well, can you help me?" Jack said. "Do you know where she is? I'm pretty sure she's alive, but that's it."

  "Aye, lost, lost. Think, Jackie. If Mother Nliana dinna wan' to be seen, d'ye think the whole clan could find her?"

  Shit, Jack thought, all that trouble and a ruined shirt for nothing. But then the bird said "But I know what can help you." (noo whut kin hoolp yuh.)

  Jack waited, then realized he was supposed to ask. "What?"

  "Yuh nid to find the nude owl."

  "I need to find what?"

  The bird tilted back its head in what Jack guessed was the avian version of rolling its eyes. "The nude owl!" it repeated.

  "I don't—oh! You mean the Know-It-All."

  "Ay," the bird said with a kind of long-suffering sigh that its advice had penetrated the fog in Jack's brain.

  The Know-It-All was a Knowledge elemental who lived in a homeless shelter, or else on the street, in New York. People thought of elementals as limited to the classic Fire, Water, Air, and Earth, but any discrete part of the world could generate its own elementals. There were politics elementals, sales elementals, talk-show elementals. But even though there were various knowledge elementals scattered across the world, there was only one Know-It-All. Or Nude Owl, as Jack was already starting to think of him. "Him" was really a term of convenience, for the Owl—the term somehow fit—wore so many layers of clothing, winter or summer, and talked so softly it was impossible to determine if "he" was male or female. Maybe those categories didn't apply to a Nude Owl.

  "Thank you," Jack said. "That was a wise suggestion."

  The bird fluttered its wings. "Tuuk lung enuuf," it said, then flew off. Jack stood up to watch it fly towards the weak November sun. Then he dusted himself off and headed back to his car, Ray loping alongside him.

  The Risen Spirit Shelter occupied a former furniture store on 11th Avenue north of 54th Street. A brown sectional couch, a Formica-topped dining table, and a skinny floor lamp without a shade stood scattered in the window, as if the remains of a defunct business. The place was glammed, of course, to prevent people from seeing what really went on inside, but props never hurt. The group in charge of the place, the AADE, or Association of Angels, Demons, and Elementals, consisted of second-level Powers ("derivatives," as some Travelers called them) who found themselves more or less stuck on Earth by nature, choice, or exile. In their proper realms, angels and demons would never meet, and neither would ever consort with elementals. Stuck in the Outer World, however, they had no choice but to work together. The most common complaint at AADE meetings—besides the constant bickering over the order of the words in the title—was how cluttered and complicated the human world had gotten. When some overwhelmed derivative just couldn't take it anymore, just lost it, like any over stressed human, he or she or it often found themselves at Risen Sp
irit.

  Oddly enough, the place was run by a human, a former venture capitalist named Andrew Martin. Martin had apparently realized the emptiness of his profession—some said the head of a company he raided had killed himself, others that his own company forced him out—and decided to "give back," or whatever the current buzz term might be. Right around that time, the AADE was having to admit that rotating the management of the shelter between the three constituencies just wasn't working. A simple rune-casting had led them to Andy Martin, who, like many corporate raiders, was a low-grade magus and could handle the culture shock of his new job.

  Jack returned the Altima to the hotel garage and took a taxi to 11th Avenue. He could have glammed an illegal parking spot, but why bother? He told the Sikh driver to let him out at the corner and waited till the cab had gone a block before he walked to the shelter. An unnecessary caution, but what the hell. As he approached the building, he noticed a woman sitting on the curb, muttering as she sorted through a pile of crumpled newspapers. She obviously belonged to New York's army of crazies. Slightly less obvious was the fact that she wasn't human. Her night-black skin might be construed as pure African, but what of the gold eyes—literally gold, smooth metal without any pupils? Or the hair that braided and unbraided of its own accord? Pedestrians averted their eyes but at some point a Natural would walk by. Naturals were raw Travelers, unschooled, and unknown even to themselves. They could cause a lot of trouble.

  Jack kneeled down beside her. Angel or demon, it was hard to tell when they got like that. "Hey," he said. She glanced at him, then returned to her papers. "I'm Jack."

  She smiled, or maybe grimaced, then said, in a high, thin voice, "I know. Everyone knows. You're Johnny Non."

  Great, Jack thought. Thanks, Societé. He made himself grin. "Yeah, that's me. What are you doing?"