I turned, shoulders jerking back, and looked at the sky. It roiled overhead, the clouds thickening even as I watched, paralyzed by... what? Fear? Anger? Grief? I had meant to stop by Vassily's grave on the way to the airport, visit him one last time. That grave would be under surveillance, too. They'd use everything that was mine to try to find me: my house, my books, my familiar. Everything.
I shook, rendered speechless for several long minutes, until I was able to think straight. Then, I spoke. I didn’t really mean to. The words came out unbidden. "You have choice. You have the Wheel of Fortune."
My voice was guttural. It sounded nothing like Kutkha’s rustling hiss, this unseen, hidden inspiration. The Wheel of Fortune, a major arcana card in tarot, has a picture of a snake mounted on a wagon hub, biting its own tail. A beggar hangs from the bottom of the wheel, rising up, and a king holds on to the top of the wheel, riding down. In some decks, a sphinx watches over the scene, symbolic of the mystery. In other decks, it is the face of an androgyne, a unified, transcendental human being lifted above the vicissitudes of fate.
Make the world your castle, and you become king of the world. Make the world your cage, and you become a prisoner. Someone had told me that once, but I couldn’t remember who.
Brimming with petulant, useless rage, I tore one of the boxes in half, and starting notching sheets to fit them together for a roof of sorts before it started to rain. When it was done, the early morning sky was still as dark as night. I crawled into the box, reinforced with a slanted roof, and curled around my aching belly. Sleep rolled me under as soon as my head hit the makeshift pillow of folded coveralls and wool sweater.
The deep black inverted into white.
My mind’s eye was a forest where the trees resembled white coral, their trunks flushed silver and pink. Their leaves were shaped like arrowheads, formed around delicate stems which bent and flexed as if stretching. They were beautiful, their fractalline forms bent as if dancing to a slow melody. The warm air blew, murmuring with a low, soft, feminine voice, but I could not make out the words.
A million fragile beings drifted around me, blowing like plankton through the dense white undergrowth. The bracken – silver leaves dewed with milky stuff that dissolved into the wind before it ever hit the ground – multiplied as I watched. As the trembling, buoyant brittlestars that drifted past brushed their legs against the plants, both creature and plant reproduced from the contact. Droplets formed into tiny glass creatures that were carried away by the breeze. Seeds fell, and new translucent ferns sprung up from the prismatic soil.
Astounded, I lay a hand on the trunk of the nearest tree. It was warm and smooth and fleshy, and it shuddered with pleasure under my casual touch. I drew my hand back, startled, and looked down. I was shirtless, dressed in neat charcoal slacks and black leather gloves. The magic-suppressing sigil was there, burning orange under my skin. My feet did not quite touch the ground.
The White Land. Eden. The place Vincent Manelli had dreamed of… the place that Zarya said she’d come from.
I knew this place, as surely as I knew my own hands. The fragile creatures of the Garden were neither plants nor animals. They were neurons, nerves that were part of an enormous skin that stretched forever in a way that was so literal that it defied imagination. The knowledge was imparted to me. Eden was the skin of GOD itself.
As I stared in awe, the trees lifted their branches and opened up a path between them. I moved forward – floating, not walking – and the murmuring finally began to take a form.
Hound of my Sons and Daughters, sacred whore of Eden, listen. Listen to my story as it is spoken to you:
The Beginning has a Beginning, a middle, and an End.
A Mind, a Body, and a Breath.
The Beginning of the Beginning begins with Nothing.
NO thing.
NO substance.
By its very nature, this NO thing lacks any sort of overarching intelligence, any sense of awareness.
It has no mind.
It has no body.
As a vacuum, it has no breath.
It desiccates and abrades.
The universal solvent, removing and dissolving everything.
Well, almost everything… For you see, the NO thing cannot destroy itself.
However, it being the NO thing, it is driven to destroy itself... and this friction was the cause of Creation.
Under its own impetus, the NO thing would ripple, buckle, fold, and, importantly, bubble.
There within the inverted surface of such bubbles came into existence the conditions for something to form.
Here, where the NO thing inverted, the YESBeast was the inevitable result.
Here, the inversion of Blackness…
Became Light!
The path led uphill. As I drifted through the twitching ferns and delicate sap feeders, the voice – sometimes female, sometimes male, sometimes neither – continued to speak.
Listen while you have the ears to hear.
Life was born beneath a mirrored sky. There was no reason to mark Time... there was no injury, no sickness, no suffering, no death. No creature ate another creature there, save for our sisters, and theirs was ecstatic pleasure in their return to their Mothers and the Light!
The milk-like substance that collected on the leaves beaded on the hair of my forearms as I passed by. The plants breathed across me, their exhalations warm and perfumed, while something fluttered past my face and stuck. I turned my head to follow as more particles blew past. Soft, gray particles, like snow. Or ash.
We had no idea that there lay outside the shell of Eden an endless, hostile Void. That the Mirror of the sky turned back something, that the sky was also a defense. Until the Mirror broke. The sky cracked and something... something horrifying...
…Dripped from the hole onto the White Land.
And as I crested the hill, I smelled it. The blinding white above turned pink… and then red.
Beneath me was an endless spread of lake and forest, marred by a deep red glow. The sky had an exit wound. The glorious reflective dome was cracked, distorted by a red hole with a black center. It bled soldiers, streams of descending beings that boiled down to the forest in a black cloud. Wherever they landed, the white trees screamed. They threw their branches around their trunks like defending arms as the black, red and violet horde scythed through their mass.
The First War was not a war. The voice, distinctly feminine now, turned hard and strangely familiar. It was a slaughter.
I saw DOGs among their midst, the terrifying oily demons that incorporated any and all biomass into their forms and turned them into weapons. I saw things that looked like stingrays, and things that looked like shambling mouths with lances for limbs. There was no chance for the gentle trees, for their delicate inhabitants, for any of them. A rippling swathe of primordial life simply vanished, consumed by fire, tooth, and sword.
The First War was not a war. It was a rout. It came with the first star to ever light the Mirror of the Sky. It came when that star fell, screaming, to the White ground.
Never forget that when the Morphord appears, the skies scream.
Some say that it is GOD screaming as He descends, as once the whole of Eden screamed.
Others say it is the Manyshaped Himself screaming. Screaming from the pain of making the journey from the Out to the In. His road is his bloodstream, his vehicle his bones. Some say He must tunnel through his own heart to reach the inner I, and that this is why, when encountered, He is so cruel.
He and his get fell upon the forest of the Mothers... they fell upon the meadows and the glades... and they murdered us.
Beware the Red Star in the Morning… beware the time when the sky screams…
Since this time, they have begun the Third War, a War as old the ManLands which bore you. You will see the Star, HuMan Hound… he comes for you again.
The black engulfed me at the top of the hill. I woke up with a shout, drawing a sharp, sharp breath. But my feet were sti
ll not quite touching the ground.
At a table in a burned forest clearing sat a man with no eyes. He was tall, handsome, his long black hair bound in a silky ponytail down his back. He smiled at me, friendly, even warm. His cheekbones were streaked with black ichor that coagulated in his sockets, as empty and smooth as onyx.
“You look hungry,” he said. He had the voice of a conman, the soft Southern twang I associated with television evangelists or fix-it men. “Come sit down Alexi, my old friend. It’s been a long while since we played together.”
Chapter 6
On the table was a chessboard. The squares were black and white, the pieces white and blue on one side, black and violet on the other. He played black, of course.
“What the hell is this?” Even as I spoke, my bare feet settled to the ground, sinking into the soft wood ash that blew in swirling clouds through the skeletons of the trees that surrounded us. They were not the alien forms of the white trees, the trees of Eden. They were pine and fir, spruce and hemlock, the forest plants of the Siberian taiga. Dotted in the remains of the undergrowth were slim hexagonal columns. I recognized them as thunderstones. Sacred monuments to Perun, the Slavic god of storms, fire, fertility… and sacrifice.
“You sure got given a pretty good whack of vampire’s blood, pardner,” my host replied. “Seemed like a good time to catch you before you left. That blood gives the gift of foresight, you know. Leverage it right, and you’d be a rich man.”
I frowned. “I’m not your ‘pardner’. I’m not your anything. I have no idea who you are, or why we’re here. Who are you?”
The eyeless man pushed his head forward a little, fixing me with unblinking nothingness. He was still smiling. “What? Don’t remember your old buddy’s name?”
Under the frigid gravity of his stare, I did remember his name... But if I spoke it, it would unmake me.
“They call you the ManyShaped.” I exhaled thinly, nostrils clenching in, and joined him at the table. The wood was cool and hard against my thighs, the wind hot and smoky with the remains of the fire that had torn through the forest. I couldn’t remember how I’d arrived… but the chair and the tension felt very real. “The NO Thing.”
“Nothing? Do I look like ‘nothing’ to you? You just call me Patroclus. Mister P.” He smiled with teeth. They were gleaming white. "You like my little story?"
“That wasn’t your story,” I said, sourly.
“Sure it was. It’s the greatest story around, and I tell all the best stories. Always have. In fact, there wouldn’t be a story if it wasn’t for me.” Mister P – the name was as good as any other – motioned to the board. “I mean, look at this. Best chess board in the universe, I’d say. Only the best for you, Alexi. You played this growing up, but think about it: you can’t play chess without black and white, can you?”
I looked, studying the pieces. The white and blue pieces that I could make out were carved with near-perfect realism. Some of them were blurred out in my vision, while others stood out in sharp relief, bearing the features of people I remembered and people I had never met. The pawns were all individual. Two of them were small, fierce, beautiful men, their long hair frozen in flashes of ivory, swords and spears in their hands. Vassily stood with his arms crossed over his chest, a crook and flail in his hands. His piece was beside that of a large stranger, a man with clenched fists and one lifted knee, balanced like a fighter on his other foot. There were others, their faces and forms mostly indistinct. Crina was visible among them. Her piece had her crouched in a perfectly carved torn dress, an AK-47 braced against her shoulder.
The knights were weird tentacle creatures, something like an octopus mated to a plate of cooked spaghetti. The rooks were Gift Horses. The one on the left was Zarya, her eyes open and blazing blue. Her hand was extended, her finger pointed forward. The other rook was an older man I didn’t recognize, but whose aquiline, proud face transfixed me with a desire so intense and so powerful that for a moment, I thought I would choke. He held and aimed two revolvers, a preacher’s hat low over his face, a long coat frozen in elegant waves around his boots.
“What is this?” I whispered.
Mister P beamed like a proud father. “See? I told you. Only the best.”
The king was someone else I didn’t know. He was huge, bald, his face craggy with determination. He carried a flamethrower, and his expression was one of mingled joy and bloodlust. The queen piece… was me, prim and straight-backed, a knife raised up high in my hands, my ivory eyes downcast. I was looking down, as if preparing to strike a sacrifice on an unseen altar.
My opponent was playing with amorphous blocks. The features on them were unrecognizable. When I frowned, trying to make out their shapes, Mister P clicked his tongue.
“Now, now,” he chided. “No cheating. What’s your wager?”
“You leave, and I get something to eat.” I didn’t even hesitate. Even in the dream – and it had to be a dream – I was delirious for need of food.
“Suits me.” Mister P shrugged, suit jacket sighing across his upper arms. “But a man’s time is worth more than some chow, you know. Your move.”
It felt strange to be on the attack. I was still reeling from the scale of the victimization of Eden, and the moaning sky mocked me as we began, furiously focused over the board. I played the Vienna Opening, one of the most aggressive plays for white, a set of tactics I’d perfected in high school against Vassily. My opponent fell silent, barely considering his moves in response to mine. Finally, there were none left to make.
“Checkmate,” he finally said.
I laughed, a short, harsh sound of derision. “Liar. It’s a stalemate. You can’t move, and neither can I.”
Mister P’s brows twitched, though he didn’t frown. He was still smiling, though the corners of his mouth were unpleasantly twisted at the corners. When he spoke, the jolly Southern accent had faded into cool nothingness, clipped and formal. “We’ll see about that, won’t we? Go, then… enjoy the bounty your dead GOD so generously provides for you.”
“Even though it’s a draw?” My eyes narrowed.
“Sure. Man’s got to eat,” he said. “But I won’t leave. Ceteris paribus.”
All things being equal. I stood back, wary now. “I don’t want you in me.”
“Too bad, pardner.” The smile turned into a grin. “I’m in everyone you know. Bon appétit.”
Disquieted, I left the clearly, picking my way down the soft, fire-warmed path. I heard Patroclus sweep the pieces off the table… and heard them hit the ground, thumping as they fell. He threw the board next, his sounds of rage receding as I picked my way through the ashen path, out of the clearing, and into the woods. The wasteland stretched for what felt like a quarter of a mile or so before it began to green.
The laughter of crows led me to a rotted stump fence, just like the one at Bozya Akra. No… it was Bozya Akra. I recognized the shallow hillocks, the freshly turned-over earth covering Snappy Joe Grassia. Standing up from his grave was a single tree, a strange horsetail-like tree on which grew a lamb, dripping with nectar. Disconcerted, I approached. The lamb’s feet padded slowly in the air, as if it too were dreaming. It had to be a dream. I knew what this thing was: it was a Yeduah, The Vegetable Lamb of Tartary, something straight out of Jewish myth.
My stomach growled at the smell of meat and honey. Compulsively, I reached out and pulled it to my mouth. The lamb didn’t react as I bit into its flesh, more fruit than beast, and its meat parted under my teeth with an indescribable sweetness. I ate like a starving animal. It tasted like Zarya, like incense and honeysuckle and pure magic: a taste so familiar, so poignant, so powerful that it woke me up.
To the smell of rotten meat.
I was squatting in the middle of a cracked, wet road. There was a dead raccoon on the ground between my feet. The head was destroyed, mashed into the pavement. The rest of the animal was torn apart like a bag of trash, limbs splayed, guts tumbled across the ground. I was halfway through cramming hand
fuls of it into my mouth.
Dizzy, I looked up to see a group of young men staring at me from down the way. They had sticks and bats in their hands, and they were staring at me in abject confusion. I stared back, waiting for my stomach to turn. But it didn’t.
“Holy freakin’ shit, man.” One of the kids said.
I willed myself to feel ill. I strove for nausea, and found nothing except confusion and dawning distant horror as, mechanically, I continued to chew. The stench should have been overwhelming. The odor of rot was definitely present, but my body and brain interpreted the smell as meat. Food. The pain in my gut was gone. And I felt… okay. Not well, but stronger.
To my right was the Eee-Zee-Pawn. The sun was high overhead, but it was a cold, dim white disk through the rain. The boys had the look of looters. One of them, the largest, was carrying an empty duffel bag.
“Whatever you planning, you might just want to turn around and fuck right off,” I said. Speaking English for the first time in weeks, and as tired as I was, my accent was thick. The mouthful of raccoon didn’t help.
They didn’t move until I stood up, which made them shift back like a herd of frightened horses. I took a single step forward, lunging and stamping a foot. The one with the bag hitched his loose pants, and without a word, the group walked away into the rain.
I swallowed, and idly noticed that I still had very little sense of taste. That didn’t mean I could bear to turn myself back to the dead animal on the ground. I washed up as best I could outdoors, drank some trapped rainwater, and went back to my shelter. The queasiness didn’t really hit until I lay down again. No amount of water was able to chase the dulled taste of filth and rotten flesh. It burned a hole in my mouth the way that the sudden, crushing humiliation burned a hole through my soul.
Stained Glass: An Alexi Sokolsky Supernatural Thriller (Alexi Sokolsky: Hound of Eden Book 2) Page 5
