The Fissure King

by Rachel Pollack

  When Jack stepped up to the rope, alone, the guard narrowed his eyes at him and said, "You know this is supposed to be for kids, right?"

  "I know," Jack said in what he hoped was a wholesome tone. "I won't go in for long. I used to bring my daughter here and I miss her."

  The guard made a noise. "What'd she do, run away? Find friends her own age?"

  She killed her mother and was sucked into the land of the dead. "She was taken from me."

  "Oh, Jesus," the guard said, "sorry. Go on, take as long as you like."

  "Thanks," Jack said, trying to sound like one divorce victim to another. Ray vanished as Jack passed the rope line.

  The doorway was large, out of proportion to the rest of the cottage, but even so, at six-foot-one, Jack had to bend slightly to go inside. The rustic look continued indoors, with plastic walls made to look like logs, more fake cobwebs and a large plastic spider around a misshapen window, a small distressed rocking chair behind a spinning wheel with a shiny gold spindle—real gold, Jack knew, you needed gold somewhere in the room for an enactment to work—a black iron oven, open to reveal fake flames, and against the back wall a short, narrow bed with a multicolored quilt, as if waiting for Goldilocks.

  In the center stood the main attraction, a triangular iron table with three life-size dolls seated around it, a classic hook-nosed witch dressed all in black, and a boy and girl in bright peasant clothes. The artist who'd painted the children's faces had captured a dual quality of excitement and terror, the source of people's love of fairy tales, the union of the cortex and the amygdala. Plastic mugs made to look like crockery stood in front of the children, along with plates of plastic cookies. A small iron cauldron squatted on the table in front of the witch.

  The child dolls sat frozen but the witch showed some minimal animatronic life signs. She cackled, and the head turned stiffly through an arc of about sixty degrees, and her right hand stirred the cauldron with a wooden spoon. Jack stared at the witch. It was just a toy, he thought, and yet his arm nearly spasmed as he reached for the knife in his boot. Just a doll. The cackle sounded shrill in his ears as he held the knife with his arm extended all the way out so he could swing with maximum force. Jack had never done this but he knew the rule, you had to lop off the Guardian's head in one stroke or the way would refuse to open. He took a deep breath, thinking of Genie and the creaky voice she would use when she pretended to speak for the Barbie doll she'd dressed as a witch. He stiffened his arm.

  A high, soft voice to his left said, "Would you like some tea, Mr. Shade?"

  Jack grunted and spun around. It wasn't the witch, it was the girl. The doll had come alive and was stirring the thick, dark liquid in her mug with the golden spindle. No, not really alive, for the face stayed plastic, and the hand remained stiff as she held up the mug. In that same gentle voice, with a hint of a German accent, the doll said, "My auntie made it herself. She's ever so good at brews. Aren't you, Auntie?" She looked at the witch, who just cackled and stirred the cauldron.

  Jack said, "You know what I came here to do, don't you?"

  The plastic head tilted forward and the eyes looked down with either resignation or modesty. "Yes, of course," she whispered. "But we don't need to become monsters. We can still be nice, can't we?" Abruptly cheerful again, she lifted her head and smiled as she once more held up the mug. "Here," she said, "drink this and I promise not to run away."

  Jack doubted very much she could get out of the chair, let alone leave the cottage. He took the mug in his right hand, the knife still in his left. He sniffed it, of course, and did not pick up any poisons, physical or otherwise. "Once you learn how to see," Anatolie had told him long ago, "I'll teach you how to smell." He took a sip.

  Bitter and sharp at the same time, it cut into his tongue and the roof of his mouth. He began to feel dizzy, confused. He set down the mug to grab ahold of the triangular table alongside the boy doll. He said, "I didn't—there was no—"

  "Nasty smell? I told you Auntie was good, didn't I? Dear, dear Mr. Shade, you always think you know everything. But how can you become an Owl if you never want to get naked? And how can you see until you find the Queen?"

  Jack tried to raise the knife. "I can still—"

  The doll whispered, "It's not necessary, Mr. Shade. Not this time. You don't have to be the killer. You can just rest."

  As if commanded, Jack glanced over at the cheerful bed, so inviting, so calm. He thought he was a bear, but maybe he was nothing more than Goldilocks. But when he lay down, his feet stuck out over the edge of the bed. Somehow this felt comforting. He glanced over at the table and saw that the witch and the boy had vanished, and the girl herself had changed. In her place sat a perfectly carved lifesize wooden figure of a woman, impossibly old, the face so covered lines it might have been a map of all the Worlds laid one on top of another.

  "The Ancient Doll," Jack whispered, and then he couldn't help himself, he said a prayer. He knew who she was. All Travelers knew of her, but very few ever saw her. The Doll was a puppet avatar of The Bride of the Earth, who sustains all life, and to see the Bride in any form was a gift beyond all merit. "Thank you," Jack managed to say, and then he closed his eyes and fell asleep.

  He woke, groggily, to a chorus of birds, hundreds, and the first thought that came to him was that the snake blood must have worn off, he couldn't understand a word. Genie's fault, he decided, a single drop just wasn't enough. This seemed funny, somehow, or maybe just the thought of his daughter made him happy. He felt drowsy, and he almost fell asleep again. Instead, he shook his head to clear it, an action that banished the birds, as if they'd been lodged in his skull. He managed to stand up and looked around.

  The dolls were gone, and the table, but the chairs remained, as if set up for a triangular séance. The cottage seemed brighter somehow, more substantial. He glanced back at the bed, half-expecting to see it had remade itself, but no, the sheets were rumpled, the blankets half on the floor.

  He was stalling. There was only one thing to do, and that was to go look. So he took a breath, ducked his head, and stepped outside. And there she was.

  "Hello, John," the Queen of Eyes said. "I thought you might come."

  Dressed in loose jeans, a light-blue cotton sweater with the sleeves half rolled up, and low sneakers with white socks, she sat in an old-fashioned wooden lawn chair, the kind with a fan-shaped back made of wooden slats and armrests wide enough to accommodate a glass of lemonade and a dish of ice cream. A second chair stood to her right. The Toy Store was gone, of course, and so was November. Behind the cottage stood a group of trees that got denser the more you stared into them. Jack was glad he didn't have to go searching in those woods.

  If what lay in back of the cottage appeared impenetrable, the front offered as wide a vista as could be found in any brochure advertising a country holiday. The cottage perched on a flower-strewn hill, which sloped gently down to a wide, bright river, and beyond that layers of mountains, the nearest ones gentle and green, with larger, darker peaks rearing up behind them like their nasty big brothers.

  "Thought I might?" Jack said. "Didn't you see it?"

  She smiled slightly, and it was definitely Margaret, not any of the visions he'd seen that night on the Secret Beach. Her hair looked a bit longer than in the photos Sarah had shown him, as if she'd recently decided to let it grow. She said, "I try not to see myself too much. It can be rather frustrating. But please, sit down."

  Jack turned the empty chair to face her more directly and kept his eyes on her as he sat down. He said, "Still, you must have known I would come looking for you. You put my card up so your daughter would find it."

  The Queen—Margaret—frowned a moment, then said softly, "I'm sorry, John. That wasn't me."

  A tingling moved up Jack's spine. "Someone did it," he said, "with some kind of working to make Sarah think she'd seen it there for years." Margaret didn't answer. "If it w
asn't you, and you didn't see it, why did you think I might come?"

  "Well, obviously because if I needed to find someone I would go to John Shade. You are quite good, you know."

  Jack didn't answer at first, then said, "Where is this place?"

  She waved a hand, then said, "Just somewhere to get away."

  He glanced out at the view. "Very nice," he said, and was about to turn back when he noticed something about twenty feet from where they were sitting. If he glanced at it casually it looked just like any other mix of dirt and grass and weeds, but if he stared at it—at first he discovered he could see every rough edge of every blade of grass, the exact contours of each nubble of dirt. But if he looked a bit longer it changed. He could see images, scenes, people. A man in a hotel room weeping silently as he watched his sleeping son. A woman in Chicago clutching a homemade Ancestor Bundle as she tried to summon a spirit she had read about in a book. A dog whimpering, confused, outside a tornado-flattened house. Child soldiers marching, terrified, on a shabby presidential palace and its rows of shiny guns. On and on it went, until all Jack could do was squeeze shut his eyes and pray for it to stop. And so it did. When he dared to look again, the hill had come back, pleasant and dull.

  He said, "How can you stand it?"

  She shrugged. "You learn. My first days were rather difficult but it's the same for every Queen. And my mother had helped prepare me in the weeks before her death."

  "You know it was your daughter who sent me. However she got my card." Margaret didn't answer. "If you wanted to get away—or whatever the hell you're doing—why didn't you just tell her?"

  "It's hard to explain, John. Please believe me that I am truly sorry for any suffering I might cause Sarah or Julie. Or you, for that matter."

  Jack laughed. "I'm not suffering. I'm just pissed off. I feel like I'm being used, but I'm not sure how." The Queen didn't answer. "Shit," Jack said, and leaned back against the chair. "I saw the Ancient Doll before."

  "Oh, really?"

  Jack couldn't tell if her surprise was genuine. He said, "That wasn't you, was it?"

  She laughed. "I'm not that old, Mr. Shade."

  "But you change. I know, I saw you on the beach."

  "Well. That was something of a special occasion. But I assure you, however I might appear, I am definitely human. It's a rule. The Queen must always be fully human. No hybrids. And the Doll—well, the Bride of the Earth is one of the Great Powers." When he didn't answer she said, "She's the one who brings you your third soul every Saturday."

  Jack nodded. He knew the theory, though he couldn't say he ever felt it. Everyone possesses two souls all the time, physical and mental. Without them, we couldn't function. At midnight on Friday, when it turns into Saturday, we get what some call a spirit soul. As far as Jack was concerned, all that that meant was there were certain incantations and enactments you could only do on a Saturday. "That's very interesting," he said. "But tell me something. Why are you here? Why now, and why didn't you tell Sarah?"

  Without looking at him, the Queen said, "I needed some time away."

  "Really? You could have taken the family to Disney World. November's a good time for that."

  "I needed to spend some time with my daughter."

  "Your daughter? She's the one who's worried sick over you."

  "Not Sarah."

  Jack frowned. "Julie? She doesn't seem to care much about anything that doesn't come on a five-inch screen."

  "No, Jack. Not Julie."

  "Then what—" He stopped, felt his jaw drop and closed it. "The girl on the beach," he said. "That was your daughter?" The Queen looked at him but said nothing. "Does Sarah know?"

  Margaret shook her head. "It was before Sarah, before my marriage. I was quite young, actually. My turn at youthful rebellion. We all have them, the Nliana girls' reaction to all that responsibility. Well, all except Sarah. But I suspect Julie will make up for her mother's mildness."

  "But wait—if you had this other girl first, won't she become Queen? After you, I mean."

  "I told you, Jack, the Queen of Eyes must always be fully human."

  It took him a moment, then he laughed. "Wow. You had an affair with a Power?"

  Margaret allowed a slight smile to lift the right side of her mouth. "I was not always so . . . comfortable-looking."

  "I'll bet," Jack said. "Which one?" Her smile widened a little but she said nothing. Jack had the sudden thought he might have made a mistake about the Owl's gender. He said, "It wasn't the Know-It-All, was it?"

  She laughed. "Good lord, what an idea. No, John, it was definitely not the Owl, nude or otherwise."

  Behind them, from the door of the cottage, a man's voice said, "What a jolly scene. Little Jack Riding Hood and Grandma. I guess that means it's time for the Wolf."

  Jack jumped up; the Queen rose more slowly. "Andy?" Jack said. "What the hell are you doing here?"

  Andrew Martin had ditched his frayed work clothes for what looked like a designer suit, dark blue with a double-breasted jacket, a light blue silk shirt, and a yellow tie with thin red stripes. Italian handmade shoes had replaced his sneakers, and his hair looked freshly cut and gelled. When he spoke, his voice sounded different as well, sharper, more in control, the bland Midwestern tones replaced by a trace of an accent Jack couldn't quite place.

  Andy said, "I followed your scent, of course. Oh, it was a bit difficult at the end there, all those children with their misformed psyches blurring the trail. But the tracer held, and, well, here we are."

  Jack's mind raced over his time in the shelter. Ever since William Barlow and that damned glass of water he'd automatically scanned any touch, any gifts he accepted, anything he ate or drank during a case. He said, "You didn't plant anything on me. Not when you touched me, and not in the coffee."

  "Oh, nothing physical. I knew you'd be too good for that. But do you recall when poor homesick Jeremy opened his wings?"

  "Yes, and you told him house rules and he closed them."

  "Well, yes, rules are indeed rules. But it was the wings that did it. They formed a rather elegant configuration that settled on you like a very fine psychic coat. I confess I'd worked with Jeremy for several days to get that right."

  Jack had to fight the urge to brush himself off. He was about to ask what this was all about when suddenly he understood. For it was at that moment that he recognized "Andrew Martin's" accent. It was French. He remembered the Owl telling him that people who change their names usually choose something close to the original. And he thought of that odd thing "Andy" had said, not, "I woke up one morning," but, "I woke up in the morning." It was the expression used by initiates in the Societé de Matin, the Society of the Morning, an organization whose chief officers took its name as their own.

  Jack said, "You're André Matin. The Society's former Deputy Head of Operations."

  André inclined his head. "Bravo, Jean Oui. You deserve your reputation."

  "So all that crap about being a vulture capitalist and discovering the emptiness of it all was just a cover story. You were running the shelter as punishment. The Society loaned you out like an indentured servant after you tried to knock down the Old Man of the Woods."

  André shrugged theatrically. "Oh, it wasn't so bad, Jean. The shelter gave me time to plan. And form alliances."

  "Plan what? Alliances with whom?" Jack waved a hand at the hillside, the cottage. "What's this all about?"

  "The Queen, of course. What else? I just needed to find her, which of course you did. Merci."

  Jack stared at him, then laughed. "You think Mariq Nliana is going to form an alliance with you?" But when he glanced at Margaret he saw her face had become stone still. His voice hardly a whisper, he said, "Oh no."

  "Not her, of course," André Matin said. "Her successor." And then he raised his hand and a gun appeared in it.

  As a rul
e, Travelers do not deal much with guns. In the places they go, and the situations they face, guns don't often work very well. This one, Jack thought, shouldn't work at all here. But Matin apparently believed in it, and so did the Queen. He noticed designs painted or carved on the barrel, sigils and signatures, marks of summoning, and he realized the gun itself was keeping open the channels back to the everyday world of cause and effect. A world where bullets could kill a middle-aged woman whose daughter had sold out to a psychopath.

  He said to Margaret, "So that's why you didn't tell anyone where you were going. You must have seen what was happening. And that's why Sarah was so desperate to find you." As he talked, his hand moved down his leg toward his knife. The knife was bound to him and would rise into his hand. He just needed to distract André. He said, "She couldn't send her boyfriend after you as long as you were out of the world. So she hired me. Margaret, I am sorry, I am so—"

  He threw the knife the instant it came into his fingers. It was a good throw, right at Matin's throat. But Matin was shielded, and the knife swerved and ended up stuck in the cottage wall, alongside the door. Jack had guessed that might happen. He had to try.

  As if the throw hadn't even occurred, the Queen said to Jack, "No, John, you did exactly what you needed to do. There is no blame."

  André Matin said, "There. You see? She forgives you. You're a lucky man, Jean Oui." And then he shot the Queen of Eyes three times, twice in the chest and once in her face.

  "Margaret!" Jack screamed, and lunged to grab her body as it thrashed in the air. Blood and tissue splashed him but he took no notice. He set her down and tried to hit Matin with something, a spell, an energy burst, a word of power. Useless. He might have been a bee stinging a statue. He fell to his knees, gasping.

  Matin stopped in the doorway of the cottage. "You've served me well here, Jean Oui, so I will give you a small word of advice. The doorway is still open but not for long. I suggest you leave her and go back."