Return of the Trickster

by Eden Robinson

  This isn’t permanent, the little blob told him. Fucking relax. Don’t give the game away.

  Couldn’t you get the charm off me first?

  It took everything we had to get me here. I’ve got nothing left to move your charm.

  Okay, Jared told himself. Okay. So you’re here to help?

  All the futures say you’re going to bring her back.

  I can’t. I didn’t do it by myself the last time and the fireflies won’t help me. I thought Sofia would come, but she hasn’t.

  Fireflies?

  They say they’re super-aliens.

  The little blob radiated irritation. Remember what they told you.

  A tumble of memories, mashing together.

  Ah, they’re massless explorers from the universe the ogress is stuck in, the blob said. And you’re Anita Moody’s grandson.

  You know Gran?

  She’s notorious. She would date other Tricksters whenever Wee’git fucked around on her.

  Ew, Jared thought.

  When all the fighting calmed down, the human skin was torn and the coy wolves all began shouting about whose fault it was.

  When you bring Jwasins through, you’re both malleable.

  What’s malleable?

  Within the limitations of this universe’s physics, you can reassemble her into a different body with a caveat that you can’t cause her harm.

  What’s a caveat?

  The ogress is covered in protection spells. You won’t be able to harm her. You can’t kill her. You need to think of something that limits her but doesn’t hurt her and cause her protection to react.

  Okay. But what do I do?

  It’s amazing you tie your own shoelaces.

  Nice.

  Did you ever watch Ghostbusters?

  The theme song rattled through Jared’s head and the blob almost exploded with irritation.

  I’m his pituitary gland NOT a blob, the blob said. Stop fucking singing.

  Sorry.

  Do you remember when they were all supposed to clear their minds of thoughts, but one of them imagined the marshmallow guy?

  Yeah.

  I’m not saying you can turn her into a marshmallow guy. Got that? I’m saying it’s like that. You use your imagination to turn her into something that is to our benefit but doesn’t hurt her.

  Like what?

  Seriously, how are you Wee’git’s son?

  Just tell me what to do!

  Here we go, the little blob said.

  The crawling, toe-sucking sorcerer poked its head through the wall then slithered over to Jared, circling and circling the chair he was zip-tied to, thrilled at this turn of events. Mallory came in, skipping through the shouting coy wolves.

  “Hi, Puppy,” she said, ruffling his hair. “You’ve been bad, but I forgive you.”

  “Goody,” Jared said.

  “Don’t make me mad.”

  The coy wolves finally noticed Mallory and circled them both.

  “Cut on his mother until he brings Granny G back,” one of the men said.

  “It doesn’t work that way,” Jared said. “You can flay Mom dead and I can’t bring Georgina back without power and without making a connection to her.”

  “Still, it’s worth a try,” Mallory said. She blew him a kiss before she skipped to the back of the room, putting her hand in his mother’s hair and yanking her head back.

  “No,” Jared said. “No, no, get her away from Mom!”

  “You have that for power,” one of the coy wolves said, nudging the bear Trickster with its boot.

  Use the sorcerer, said the blob.

  No, Jared thought.

  We need him weaker. He’s her eyes and ears and we need him distracted.

  What?

  Things are afoot.

  The sorcerer circled him, chittering.

  Act whipped. Bring her through. Try, try, to use your imagination.

  “All right!” Jared said. “All right! Mallory, stop. Please.”

  More whipped than that.

  Once he gave himself permission to cry, he listened to himself grow increasingly pathetic.

  “All right,” the coy wolf said. “But if you try anything funny, she’s dying horribly.”

  Jared nodded, not trusting his voice.

  Good. They’re buying it. You don’t need to go to the other universe yourself to bring the ogress back. You just need to pull her through.

  Okay.

  Just a heads-up, though, the little blob said. This is going to kill me.

  Jared shook his head. I don’t want to do that.

  I’m ready to die, Jared. I’m tired of this half-life. If you fail, I don’t want to be stuck in a living grave.

  Jared looked at his mother. The things she would do to get him back if their places were reversed. Kill and die. Even if it meant joining with one of the last beings on Earth he ever wanted in his head.

  “I need…I need the sorcerer,” Jared said. “He’s been stealing power from me since I got back. I need everything he stole returned to me.”

  The sorcerer stopped wiggling around the floor.

  “Liar!” the sorcerer screamed. “Liar! Lies, lies, lies!”

  “Granny G?” the coy wolf said.

  They all looked upwards, shifting uneasily as the sorcerer made the house shake.

  After a long while of listening, the sorcerer said, “Everything will come back to me after?”

  “Everything,” the coy wolf said.

  The sorcerer crept over to Jared, tenderly stroking his shin. Then he reached up and ripped the charm away. Its mind was now in his, and he could see himself, all tasty and helpless in the chair. Gross bearish thing on the floor, but the Lady said they needed it, so the sorcerer drew from it, sucked it into himself and then let it flow into Jared, giving back what he’d stolen mixed with what the bear Trickster had left, memories of mountains and then summers with endless days, streams with salmon so thick you could walk across them like a carpet. Berries as sweet as sunlight.

  Yes, Georgina thought, yes.

  The sheer limitless power, the rush of feeding on Tricksters and then being able to mould the world to your wants, your needs, your whims. You swatted at the stupid fireflies that stung you like mosquitoes, driving you away from the ape men you’d been trying to chase. You were ready to put this rotten universe in your rear-view mirror.

  The shock of being attached to her again, the way she’d ripped his arms off and cracked his bones, sucking on the marrow, and then dug through his torso to nibble on his organs, carefully choosing them as though she was picking bonbons from a candy box.

  Oh, God, he thought.

  Yes, yes, you are a God. A Goddess. You will move through the world and people will fear you. You will have an army of coy wolves, and when the world ends, you’ll all leave and never die, never grow old, never be at anyone’s mercy ever, ever again.

  The little blob reached through dimensions, tugging the dewy thread that connected him to her, and dragged her through.

  The root of supernatural ability is simply the realization that all time exists simultaneously. Encoded memories so frayed you think they’re extinct, but they wait, coiled and unblinking, in your blood and your bones. When you shift out of our dimension, you run the risk of dispersion so profound even the memory of you is obliterated. Universes are stubbornly separate. You are the wet and pulsing distillation of stars, a house of light made bipedal and carbon-based, temporary and infinite. You are also the void.

  “Stop singing!” Georgina the ogress that had once been called Jwasins had screamed the last time Jared had been with her, her hands wrapping around his throat, throttling him like the brainless chicken she thought he was.

  Chicken, Jared thought.

  In the mi
ddle of the dining room, Georgina, sister of Wee’git, slid into their universe not as an ogress, but as a ten-foot-tall, snowy-white chicken. The coy wolves goggled. Jared felt the bear Trickster slide from life towards death, thinking Ha! as he went.

  Jared hacked and sneezed and vomited until the little blob oozed out of his nose and fell with a wet plop in his lap, then faded as the bear Trickster faded, a shadow growing faint and then blinking out of existence.

  The Chicken Ogress squawked and then flapped her wings, her rage choking all the satisfaction she’d been feeling. The coy wolves ducked her flapping wings.

  You think you’ve won, the Chicken Ogress thought. But I’ve eaten enough Tricksters that I too can transform. Come, my pack, loan me your power.

  None of the coy wolves moved. The sorcerer peeled off Jared’s shoe and his sock, and latched on to a toe like a baby to a breast.

  “You’re a…chicken,” one of the coy wolves said.

  I can turn myself back to an ogress. With your help.

  Jared could feel the power leaving him, could feel the drain like a sliced artery.

  I will never kill you, the sorcerer thought. You’re mine.

  “I can serve an ogress,” another one said. “That’s kinda cool. You know. But, um.”

  Unbelievers, Jwasins thought. You could have ruled at my side, you faithless beasts.

  The giant chicken stepped on the sorcerer, who squealed as she pecked out his heart. Lightning shot from his fingers and she pranced away, tipping her head back and swallowing the heart whole. He scurried for the shelter of a wall while Georgina, suffused with his power, transformed her wings to ogress arms on her chicken body. She punched through the wall where the sorcerer had vanished, catching him by the ankle, flinching as he sparked her in a desperate attempt to get away.

  “Bob!” Jared shouted.

  The coy wolves in human form dissolved. Their skins turned into mushy blobs and rolled away. The creatures twitched on the ground, whining, suddenly coy wolves again. The human skins they had been wearing shrank and shrank. The Tricksters’ newly re-formed organs rolled out the open door.

  Dark-red tentacles whipped, the suckers glowing in the dim light, and the coy wolves fled as Bob grabbed the sorcerer’s arm and yanked. The arm ripped loose and Bob shot up into the sky with it.

  Jared, Sarah said. We’re coming.

  The ogress is here, Jared warned.

  Mallory shrieked and collapsed to the floor, as his mother kicked her. Maggie wrapped her legs around Mallory’s neck. The otter gurgled into silence, trying to reach the knife strapped to her thigh.

  Georgina and the sorcerer broke through the wall in their battle, the cold of the night pouring into the room.

  Sarah! Jared thought, fighting the zip ties.

  Almost there.

  He rocked back and forth, then realized he could stand, hunched over, carrying the chair like a turtle shell. He waddled awkwardly to the wall. He slammed the chair over and over, willing it to break, increasingly desperate until it gave a satisfying crack and he shook himself free.

  Jared lurched towards his mom. He was halfway across the living room when he was pulled up short and dragged down, the coy wolves surrounding him, nipping at him. Jared tried to stand and they sank their teeth into his legs. He hit the floor again, punching and kicking desperately. A satisfied yipping and then he was dragged through the open front door. Gravel. Gravel driveway. He tried to get up, but one of them tore into his side and he screamed.

  “Bob!” Jared shouted. “Bob!”

  But Bob was hovering over the sorcerer, wriggling his tentacles.

  As his life ebbed from the bite to his side, it burned. He leaked life. He felt quick, furious bites and then he stopped moving. They sniffed him. One of them licked his face, letting him know that he was going to enjoy eating Jared’s tender cheeks, the soft muscle of his tongue. You ruined everything, the coy wolf thought. Now we’ll ruin you.

  A high, sweet whistle overhead made all the coy wolves pause. Then came another whistle, lower, more guttural. An acrid, dark-red cloud descended from the sky. The coy wolves sank their teeth into Jared’s arms and dragged him back towards the house.

  Sophia emerged from the cloud. Her hair was wild and her eyes stared but did not see. She wore blood, blood over all, all over, blood soaking her clothes so they were the colour of blood. All of the coy wolves’ heads exploded and their bodies fell limp.

  The red cloud covered them, and she stood over him, staring at nothing. She crouched down and touched his bloody side, then she put her hand inside him. He screamed, and his throat went raw with his scream, and all the time, all the time, all the time, he felt all the time coming to an end. She pulled her hand back and licked it.

  Sophia, he thought. Please.

  She leaned over as if she was going to kiss him good night and bit into the soft flesh between his shoulder and his neck, and she tore away skin and she crouched beside him, chewing as he gurgled to silence, waiting to die, waiting for the pain to end, ready for it to stop.

  Phil leaning over him. Time to cut the lazy glue! We’re going to meet again and we’re going to go fishing on the lake. It was just my time, kiddo.

  She tore another strip of flesh from his shoulder.

  His limbs leaden. Leaking past the point of no return.

  I still love you, he told her.

  The invisible birds whistled overhead. The fight raged on somewhere far away, the ogress roaring. Sophia Thing chewed. I don’t care.

  I suppose you don’t.

  You mean nothing.

  I’ll always be a part of you. Ha ha. Get it?

  The Thing didn’t care about puns. The Thing was endlessly hungry. Didn’t care that he was trying to make a joke, but then he felt Sophia remember the things he remembered, his Sophia, the woman who texted him from exotic ports of call, bored because her new husband’s Viagra wasn’t working.

  It hurt when you left, he thought.

  The Thing stopped chewing, and he felt Sophia’s irritation.

  It hurts now, getting eaten.

  The invisible birds went silent.

  But if anyone’s going to kill me, I don’t mind that it’s you, Sophia.

  Sophia took a breath, blinked. She spat out his blood and wiped it away with the back of her hand. Her regret was like knives, ripping her inside. He could feel her coming back to her body, afraid, and she laid her hands on his chest, sending power thrumming through his veins. He felt his wounds healing. He felt warmth. The red cloud surrounding them faded and they lay together in the cold looking up at the sky as a single star broke through the clouds. She raged, raged incoherently, but underneath he felt her grief, sour and metallic, and it wanted to drag her down like an anchor, and he wished he was strong enough to turn so he could hold her.

  Sophia touched him again—legs, side, shoulder—and the wounds closed enough that he could move.

  “Go,” she said. “Save your mother.”

  32

  I AM AS INEXORABLE AS THE WAVES

  Mom? Jared thought.

  Busy, she thought back, and he could feel his mother trying to choke Mallory to death between her thighs, concentrating hard on being the last fucking thing she saw, the girl stabbing her thigh with her stupid fucking dollar-store knife as Maggie tried to shove her bandaged stump down the ugly bitch’s shrieking maw.

  His mother’s other wrist was still zip-tied to the chair and Mallory was close to hitting some vital bits.

  Georgina had ogress legs now, attached to her big, soft chicken torso. The sorcerer was missing a leg now too, wriggling and spitting lightning alternately at Bob and the ogress. They fought in the open field beside the house where the Tricksters were clawing themselves from their living graves, dragging themselves towards the fight.

  A rusty minivan bumped past him along the gra
vel lane that led to the field. The Wild Man of the Woods crashed through the windshield before the van stopped, roaring as he ran towards the ogress. Others threw open the doors, hurling themselves into the ogress, who squawked as they brought her down, feathers flying, legs kicking the air and then going still.

  Jared ran for his mother, and found her still choking Mallory, who had gone limp. The knife was on the floor.

  “It’s okay,” Jared said. “It’s okay, Mom, she’s dead. Let her go.”

  She wouldn’t, though.

  Jared picked up the knife and cut his mom’s hand free. She grabbed the knife from him and started stabbing Mallory’s corpse. She started to cry as she stabbed, and then she screamed and shoved Mallory away.

  Outside, all went silent. Jared felt the futures with Jwasins in the world ending. He felt his cuts and bruises and bites healing as if they were time-lapsed, closing and forming scars. Felt Sophia’s wishes in the air.

  He went to the kitchen and found dishtowels that he used to soak up his mother’s blood.

  “We have to get you and Sophia to a hospital,” Jared said.

  She wrapped her arms around his neck. You came for me.

  Mommy and me, right?

  You’re such a Shithead.

  He felt Sarah’s fear as she stopped the minivan in the field near where Sophia was lying on the ground, and then their minds met. Jared turned, waiting for the moment when Sarah came through the door.

  EPILOGUE-ISH

  Sophia pays for Jared to go to a very expensive dry-out and then to rehab. She adopts him into her clan. He spends the remainder of the year in intensive trauma therapy.

  Afterwards, Jared lives in Sophia’s West Van home while he studies diagnostic medical sonography. When his magical powers recover enough, he brings Dent and Shu back into our universe. Shu is heartbroken that Eliza doesn’t want anything to do with her because Shu had cursed Eliza’s father (Dead Aiden) and got him killed. Jared finds Shu’s ensorcelled bones and breaks them, which ends her magical bondage, and lets Shu pass over to the Land of the Dead, where her mother is waiting for her. Dent tutors Jared and carries on watching Doctor Who, bonding with Crashpad, who is in the screenwriting programme at the Vancouver Film School. They develop a video game with the Starr brothers, which gets them invited to work at Microsoft.