Angel Falls

by Michael Paul Gonzalez

  “I can see where that might cause you some discomfort,” I said.

  Eve moved forward. She clutched a small plant with leaves so bright they were luminous. It blossomed in her hand, growing larger and more succulent until it burst into a water lily. She approached The Righteous and knelt before him, laying the flower down at his feet. He stooped to pick it up and brought it close to his face. The petals stretched towards the sky. The flower continued to blossom, row upon impossible row of petals, all of them different shades of white, light and platinum. Finally, the golden center of the flower emerged like a sunrise over arctic plains, blinding us all. The petals trembled once, then exploded upwards, spreading golden motes of pollen that drifted down slowly around us. Eve approached The Righteous again and knelt, reaching one hand for the flower in his hand, touching a dying petal with her index finger.

  “That was beautiful,” The Righteous whispered. “And everything beautiful dies. See?” He held the dog pelt towards her.

  “It’s done everything it was meant to do,” Eve said. “It’s still amazing to behold. And it has the potential to grow again.”

  The Righteous ate this all up, of course. A new bout of tears followed, with much knee-shaking and lip-trembling, and hugging and thanking. Honestly, he seemed like one of those annoying drunkards you see at parties that won’t stop telling you how much they appreciate you.

  Eve. Fucking show-off.

  “We’ll get your spear back. We have to,” I said. “We need your help to get across the bridge, we’re going to meet with the Monarch of Indigo.”

  “Follow her,” The Righteous said, motioning towards Eve. “Let no harm come to her.”

  Eve was at the trellis on the other side of the bridge, which was now somehow mere feet from us. We stepped onto the soil of the desert, one step closer to the Brink of Insanity and the gates of Heaven. The Righteous stood tall, his dead lily in one hand and the dog pelt in the other. I reached out to shake his hand, and he stared at it is if I had offered him yet another slimy catfish to hold.

  “I’ve done what I was meant to do,” his eyes welled up and a fresh bout of tears came. “Thank you, lady. Thank you!”

  Eve waved to The Righteous and turned to head off into the desert.

  “Yeah, thanks a lot, Eve. You’re a great help,” I called after her. “Righteous, we’re going to be headed back this way soon, I think. Can you leave the bridge here for a bit? Goliath, put the car down. Let’s drive.”

  Chapter Eight

  Monkey gunned the Cinquecento up a sandy embankment, bouncing us around the back of the car like popcorn.

  “We’re almost there,” Eve said. “That last row of cacti looked familiar. We should be passing a dead forest soon, and then we’ll be at the crossroads.”

  “And which way do we drive from there?” Monkey asked. “Tell me now, so I don’t have to slow down to make the turn.”

  “The crossroads is the destination. We’ll be getting out there to meet her.”

  “Well, you guys can stay in the car. It shouldn’t take me too long,” I said. I really didn’t want the Guardian of the Crossroads laying eyes on another female in my presence, because I knew it would get dramatic pretty quickly.

  “Monarch of Indigo, huh?” Monkey asked. “This must be the place.”

  A large expanse of dead and gnarled trees spread out before us. The road travelled a straight path into the heart of the forest, and then diverged at a small crossroads. There was a signpost, teetering in the breeze, most of its arms long since snapped off. At the corner of the road opposite the post was a small faded blue pup tent, with a crude drawing of a crown painted on the side.

  “Let’s go say hello,” Eve chirped.

  Goliath pulled himself through the sunroof, allowing a brief, merciful burst of fresh air into the car. I stuffed Lenny into my satchel and shouldered him as Monkey and Eve slowly made their way out behind the giant.

  There was an uncomfortable silence. The breeze created a low, hollow whistling in the tree branches, and the intersection came alive with whispers. The front of the pup tent began to billow fog, until our knees were shrouded in it. Soon, we were enveloped in a mist, and perception started to bend. The road forked in an infinite number of directions, and the signpost had grown more arms pointing off to various paths. A silhouette approached and stopped next to the signpost, its eyes glowing turquoise.

  It was a woman, hands folded in front of her chest, clutching a fan of gleaming platinum daggers. Her eyes brightened to solid blue, and matched the cobalt of her headgear. Her skin was iridescent and midnight-hued. She stood defiantly in front of us, as if her very presence was enough to ward us off.

  The Blue Woman raised her arms to her sides. “Who seeks an audience with the Ghost Queen?” she shouted.

  Monkey, Eve, and Goliath all took a step to the side, leaving me standing and smiling. The Blue Woman squinted at us, her eyes widening when they met mine. It took a moment for me to put all of my thoughts together to form a coherent greeting. “Hey, babe.”

  “Oh shit…Morningstar?” she whispered.

  “You know her?” Monkey asked.

  She raised her right hand, electricity sparking between the tips of her five knives.

  “He knows her,” Monkey said.

  “We’re prolly gonna need a shield, huh?” Goliath said.

  “Left mine in my other pants,” Monkey hissed. With a rusted pop , Goliath ripped the passenger door from the Cinquecento. “Oh, that’ll work,” Monkey groaned. “Make sure the window’s rolled up first.”

  The Ghost Queen became a blur as she spun and twirled, whipping knife after knife towards me. There were four sharp clangs of metal meeting metal followed by one softer knock, as if her knife had flown into the dirt.

  “Missed one,” Goliath said. His voice was weak. The handle of her last knife protruded from his forearm, and his skin was quickly turning a shade of pallid grey. He pawed at the handle a few times, trying to pull it out, but lacking the strength.

  Monkey leaned close to me and stage whispered, “Repeat after me: Baby, I meant to call you, but I’ve been busy.”

  “Can it, you two!” Eve said. She had lowered herself to one knee, keeping her eyes to the ground. Smart move. If you ever meet a being of great power and you’re in doubt as to how to present yourself, groveling and supplication are two very good choices.

  “Prince of Lies!” Hecate’s eyes were welling with tears, great milky rivers coursing with spirit energy. She reached into her robes and produced five more knives.

  “Geez, never heard that one before,” I murmured.

  “You earned the name! You…you…”

  Now, I’m not one to kiss and tell, but I’ve charmed my way through the doors of some very powerful goddesses and deities in my time. I’ve charmed my way into some other things of theirs as well, but suffice it to say that I was quite familiar with the woman standing before me.

  Hecate. Queen of Ghosts, the Blue Woman, the Mistress of Witches.[18] She’s less than a god, more than supernatural. She spent her youth as a traveling advocate for the dead, dallied for a while in guarding the crossroads of life/afterlife, but I talked her out of that. What a wild night that was, dancing on the cusp of Creation, beneath the stars on the border of what was and what was yet to be. I’m a sucker for romance. Just not relationships. So I may have said a few things that night that I didn’t really mean, eternal promises that I forgot the next morning. But I did it for the sake of that night and those moments, to make sure they were as perfect as they could be. Think she’d understand that?

  Hecate raised her other hand, the knives trembling between her fingers. “I will carve your lying oaths onto your flesh! You will wear the reminders of the promises you failed to keep!”

  She reared back to throw, and I, not having any other plan to fall back on, tried the best idea I’d heard. “Baby, I meant to come see you, but you know I get busy down here.”

  Hecate took a step forward and h
esitated. Her eyes switched colors, one green, the other purple. Two voices sprang from her throat, both speaking too fast to understand. She was having some kind of argument with herself.[19] Finally, her eyes matched on purple and she dropped the blades on the ground. “Not worth the effort anyway.”

  Goliath tottered a bit, slumping back against the car, crushing the hood. Eve rushed to his side and laid a hand on the hilt of the knife. She looked at Hecate with a mixture of fear and anger. “How do we stop this?”

  “You don’t. He should have chosen his friends better.”

  “He was an innocent bystander!”

  “There are no such things as mistakes and innocent bystanders. We are where we are and when we are at all times.”

  “Poets,” I whispered, rolling my eyes at Eve. ‘Stick to the reverence and she’ll talk to you.”

  “Goliath is going to die if we don’t,” Eve said.

  Hecate paused and raised an eyebrow at me. “Is she with you?” I hesitated as Hecate slid one hand beneath her cape. She’d shown ten knives since she came out to meet us, who knew how many more she was hiding?

  “ With him? Have you lost your mind, Catie?”

  “Woman, I would warn you about the tone of your voice and the company you keep,” Hecate said. “Catie is not in phase now. You shall address me properly and respectfully, for I know you not,” she paused. She gave me a cruel smile and withdrew a small pomegranate from the folds of her cape. It was as red as her eyes were blue, a startling contrast. “You and I are going to talk.”

  Goliath raised to one knee and pulled the knife from his forearm. No blood followed. He clutched tightly to his wrist, looked at Hecate, collapsed forward, and died.

  “What happened?” came Lenny’s muffled shout from inside the satchel. “What’s going on? I need to see!”

  Hecate didn’t slow her approach. She extended the pomegranate towards me.

  “Take the fruit before she pulls more knives out,” Monkey said.

  “Don’t take the fruit!” Lenny shouted.

  Eve was kneeling next to Goliath now. “I need to roll him over. Somebody help me!”

  “Sorry, Eve,” I said. “He’s pretty heavy, and very dead.”

  “How can you say that?” she shouted.

  “Busy,” I replied through clenched teeth.

  Hecate was directly in front of me, the pomegranate inches from my lips. I’m not sure how it would have affected me in my prime, but as one of the mere mortals on this grey plain, I couldn’t imagine it would be beneficial. She tapped the fruit against my lips once, then drew it back next to her face. Her eyes started doing their crazy color shift again.

  At green, she looked at me, eyes full of fear. “Don’t eat it, okay? Don’t. I’m working on fixing this, but you have to be careful!”

  At purple, “This is my heart. The fruit of my being. The nectar of my soul,” she extended her arm to her side and squeezed. Sweet red juice erupted from the fruit, an endless stream of arterial liquid pouring in puddles at her feet. “This is what remains. My soul. My essence. In the dirt. Because of you. You. You.”

  Great. Now I had to endure the bad revenge poetry of a demigoddess. And one who was having a multiple personality disorder breakdown to boot. The pools of red liquid at her feet began to churn and solidify, reaching tentacles and jagged, tooth- covered probes onto the ground around it. She was trying to call a demon.

  Monkey leapt forward. “Lady. O!” he shouted. Then he paused, scrambling for his next line. Hecate stopped squeezing and stemmed the tide of “soul nectar ”. The demon puddle began to shrink. Monkey scampered to her side and gently extended his hands, palms up. “May I, lady?”

  Hecate turned her gaze on him, tears still streaming down her cheeks. Monkey gently lifted what was left of the fruit from her hand and cradled it in his palm.

  “Such senseless destruction,” he said. “Would that I could gather the storm brewing in your eyes to quench this desert plain. Would that you could bring life back to the barren wastes. This is not your heart. ’Tis mine…”

  I had to bite the inside of my cheek to stifle a laugh. She may have seen us coming, but Monkey is a trickster from days of old. You can’t predict his moves, no matter how good you are.

  Monkey kissed the rind of the fruit and continued, one gooey seed stuck to his upper lip. “Luna, Lady of the Moon. Artemis, Huntress of the Plains, Hecate, Goddess of the Underworld, plant this seed in the fertile soil of my heart! Let me rain life upon it, let rebirth come, let the new phase begin…”

  “My God,” Hecate cooed. “You know my names. You’re beautiful.”

  “This fruit, these remains are merely the mirror reflecting our kindred souls, lady…”

  Hecate took his hand. “I want to show you my paintings.”

  “That sounds swell,” Monkey purred.

  “I’ve had so much inspiration,” she turned her icy gaze back to me briefly, “and so much time to express my inner feelings.”

  Monkey cast a derisive look at me and shook his head. “They think they know the universe like the back of their hands, yet can’t read the simplest signs writ on the heart.”

  Hecate spun on her heel with Monkey in tow. “Sit at the crossroads, Prince of Lies, I shall return.” With a wave of her hand, the copse of dead trees around the road grew and multiplied, knitting themselves together into an impenetrable circular wall. We wouldn’t be going anywhere for a while.

  Monkey looked back at Hecate, then turned to me so she couldn’t see his face. He rolled his eyes as if to tell me to get a move on. Hecate led him towards her small tent, and they became lost in the fog.

  “What the Hell was that all about?” Lenny asked.

  “I think Monkey’s crappy love poetry just saved us,” I replied. “Not all of us,” Eve whispered. She hadn’t moved from her spot kneeling over the fallen giant. Her hands were spread over Goliath’s heart. She shook so hard she was almost vibrating, as if she was trying to will life back into the Philistine. His finger moved, and the scrub grass surrounding Eve began to wilt and die. Strands of Eve’s hair began to turn grey at the tips, then white, the color slowly leaching out towards her scalp. Goliath’s hand twitched and raised before falling back to his side. “I can’t do it,” she cried. “It’s not working. He’s fading.”

  “He was already gone,” I answered.

  Eve closed her eyes and redoubled her efforts, and all that was left was to wait in the cold as the world died around us.

  Chapter Nine

  Eve remained poised over Goliath’s somewhat-less-lifeless body.

  “Give me to her,” came Lenny’s voice from the satchel. “I can help!”

  I tossed the bag towards Eve. “What did I ever do to her, anyway?”

  “Do you ever think about anyone other than yourself?” Eve kept one hand on Goliath’s chest and reached the other inside the bag, entwining her fingers in Lenny’s hair. Goliath began to shake violently. The ground dried and fissures cracked wide in the hardpan beneath him, rapidly spreading back towards the dead forest. When they reached the skeletal trees, a large section of ground crumbled and fell. Errant birds lighting on the branches suddenly lost their feathers and dropped like stones to the ground below. Eve was leeching life from anywhere she could.[20]

  Eve set Lenny’s head on Goliath’s chest. The giant appeared to perk up a little, turning a slightly-less-unhealthy shade of grey. Lenny’s eyes rolled back in his head. He began to sweat, the golden Holy Essence of Angels. After he’d dripped a sizable pool in the hollow of Goliath’s ribs, he gave up, looking at Eve. “We need something stronger.”

  Eve nodded. Her hand scrabbled in the dirt, retrieving Hecate’s dagger. “We need to pour divine blood over his heart.” She raised the knife above her head.

  “Now hold on there, Abraham,” I bellowed.[21]

  “We’re losing time!” Eve shouted.

  “What if he’s not quite dead? You’re going to stab him in the heart and pour liquid angel goo
p on his guts.”

  “He’s dead,” Lenny glurped.

  “There’s no life in him. I would know,” Eve said. “And we’re not pouring Lenny’s essence into him. We need something stronger .”

  Her teeth were clenched, her eyes wide. She was so feral, so desperate. Maybe I was just arguing so I could savor the vision. She raised the dagger again, steeling herself to plunge it down. She’d never killed so much as a worm. Eve was the Spring of Life. She didn’t have a stabby-gene in her body. I know because I saw the schematics when she was still “on the assembly line”.

  “We need divine blood,” Eve panted. “We mix it with Lenny’s essence and instantly deliver it into Goliath’s system by piercing his chest. Anything slower than that and it’s a waste of our time. We can bring him back. We owe it to him.”

  Lenny’s head was pale and green. He looked every bit the strung out junkie needing a fix. Eve joined in, her eyes pleading to stop the loss of life. The air was perfectly still around us, the very essence of time and the universe waiting for the balance to shift, for life to return to the giant or dissipate forever.

  “No!” I shouted.

  Tears rose in Eve’s eyes. “You selfish son of a—”

  “Oh, cut yourself then, Miss Goody-Two Shoes. You’re practically divine.”

  “Practically isn’t good enough,” Lenny churmed.

  “Then why isn’t your essence enough, O Angel?” I asked, folding my arms.

  Lenny’s head vibrated, his eyes nearly burning with Holy Fire. “WELL, I’M NOT QUITE MYSELF AT THE MOMENT, AM I? MY ESSENCE IS MY BLOOD. MY BLOOD IS IN MY HEAVENLY HEART, WHICH IS SOMEWHERE UNDER THE REMAINS OF YOUR FRONT DOOR!”

  “Oh. That,” I said. “Turn it down a notch, huh?” I ground a toe in the dirt. “How do you even know this will work? You practice stabbing little animals in your basement at night or something? This is really creepy, you know?”

  “I think he’s going to wet his pants,” Lenny whispered.

  I folded my arms. I looked at Eve. I’d lowered myself down another notch in her esteem, if that was possible. Yet another rung to climb to get in her good graces.