Changer (Athanor)

by Jane Lindskold

  In the morning, daughter fed and cautioned not to stray too far afield, the Changer assumes the form of a particularly magnificent raven. His beak is large, horny, and slightly curved. His plumage is black, but the light reveals highlights of green, blue, and even purple. With a wingspan in the area of four feet, an elegant wedge-shaped tail, and a bright eye, the raven knows himself the king of birds, bowing not even to the eagle or the hawk.

  Pleased, the Changer grasps his stash of bills in one clawed foot and launches into the sky, croaking farewell to his coyote daughter. A few flaps of his great, dark wings and he is en route to his hidden clothing and closer to the vengeance his inhuman heart craves.

  The e-mail message is anonymous: “You’re missing a story both sensational and true! Does the name Arthur Pendragon mean anything to you? He’s living right here in Albuquerque, reigning in secret for all to see.”

  Chris Kristopher, junior reporter for the Albuquerque Journal, runs a hand through his brown hair. He is about to delete the message when he glimpses another line farther down the screen: “If you don’t believe me, it’s your great mistake. Look up Pendragon Productions! That’s all it’ll take.”

  Chris sets a search program running and is rewarded when a webpage takes shape on his screen. Even in a commercial art form dominated by amateurs, this page is badly designed. Blurry photos are captioned in glaring turquoise. The text is presented in solid blocks of tiny print almost impossible to read. Hot links to other pages proliferate.

  The business of Pendragon Productions is listed as “outreach and support.” Arthur Pendragon is president, Edward Zagano vice president, Vera Tso secretary and treasurer. Each hot link connects to information about various government projects, some local, some statewide.

  Despite his initial reluctance, learning that there really is someone calling himself Arthur Pendragon trying, however ineffectually, to influence public opinion, awakens Chris’s journalistic fervor. He composes an e-mail message of his own.

  “Bill: Check out a business called Pendragon Productions…”

  2

  Go where he will, the wise man is at home,

  His hearth the earth—his hall the azure dome.

  —Ralph Waldo Emerson

  The Changer does not put particular care into crafting his human form, since he does not plan to use it more than this once. Instead, after studying the stolen clothing, he draws a basic human male design from his repertoire, alters it by adding a few inches of height and a bit of breadth to the chest, and dresses himself in his pilfered attire.

  No longer a wild creature, the Changer stands as a young man with medium-length sandy blond hair and light blue eyes. His complexion is fair, touched with freckles. About his eyes are faint lines as if from squinting at the sun. Since he could not steal shoes, the Changer compromises by toughening his feet. Placing his money in his pocket, he walks to the highway.

  As he trudges roughly north, he tries to thumb a ride from the passing vehicles. Either the thumb-out gesture has gone out of style since last he tried this, or humans have grown more cautious, but he walks three miles before a truck slows.

  After his ride drops him off in Mountainair, the Changer locates a general store. There he purchases a pair of sneakers, socks, a comb, jeans, a shirt, underclothing, a roll of tape, and an inexpensive wallet. The clerk is quite willing to throw in a medium-sized cardboard carton and a stack of old newspapers. Mountainair is not a large town, but it does include a garage alongside of which is a used-car lot.

  Dickering is not his favorite sport, but he has millennia of practice, so without exhausting quite all of his money, he purchases an elderly sedan.

  Now he has clothing, money, and transportation. He will speak with Martinez, gather up his daughter, and head into Albuquerque. He wonders what the orphan coyote will think of the city, wishes that he could explain more clearly what is happening. He shrugs. One problem at a time.

  He only stalls the car three times before he feels confident driving his purchase. After filling the gas tank, he heads back south toward the Martinez ranch. As the little sedan carries him effortlessly across lands he has traversed more laboriously on wings or pads, he reflects that, whatever else they have done, humans have mastered the art of transportation. The cost, needless to say, is isolation from their world.

  From the first time a human slung his leg up over some cooperative equine, thus freeing himself from the need to slog along on his own two feet, the faster and farther a human has traveled, the further he has traveled from knowing the land he traverses.

  The Changer doesn’t feel particularly judgmental about this. The car will make it possible for his daughter to exceed the limits of her four legs. That she may be unable to find her way home again is a minor concern since that home is inhospitable to an orphaned coyote pup.

  He debates visiting her first, then discards the notion. She will do well enough, and he will endanger her more if anyone sees him crossing the fields in human-form. Instead he revs the engine and heads for the Martinez ranch.

  Red hair, Sven decides, is a bit of a liability if one wishes to go unnoticed, especially if one wishes to go unnoticed in Santa Fe, where dark hair and tanned skin are the rule. Still, he has established this persona, and creating another would take more effort than he wants to invest. Besides… he’d hate to give up his snappy new wardrobe.

  Humming softly, he glances in the window of the Prima! gallery. He sees Lil inside, talking intently with a chunky woman with permed black hair. A customer. Good. With the bitch busy here, his meeting with Tommy should go quite well.

  And soon, hopefully soon, Lil will be gone for good.

  Leaving downtown, he redeems his rented Lumina from a parking garage and heads toward an exclusive gated community at the northern end of the city. He has no difficulty getting in, though the name he signs to the register is false. The license number the guard neatly jots down will do nothing more than cause confusion if anyone tries to check his trail.

  Sven likes that. Chuckling to himself, he parks the car a short walk from his destination. Then, eschewing the labeled trails, he crosses a decadently green lawn to a pair of attached town houses. Both of these, along with those to either side, belong to Lil and Tommy—privacy that appears to be public living. The rich can do such things with ease.

  Straightening his cream-colored raw-silk jacket, Sven presses the buzzer on the door of the left-hand town house.

  “Yeah?” The voice that answers is sleepy, but for all that sensually masculine.

  “Hello, Tommy. I’m the person who left a certain… present for you at the club last night.”

  There is a long pause, long enough that Sven wonders if Tommy has fallen asleep again.

  “Yeah?” The tones on the other side of the connection are more alert now. Sven can almost taste the tang of the cocaine that fuels them. “Well, hey! Come in, man.”

  The man who opens the door for Sven is belting a silk tapestry-print lounging robe about his waist, but that is as far as he goes in the direction of social graces. Sven doesn’t mind. His earliest memories of this man recall him draped in a leopard skin, dappled with fresh blood and red wine, his hair tousled, a wreath of vine leaves askew on his brow.

  Tommy’s last identity had possessed jet-black hair, pouting lips, and seductive blue eyes. With the aid of mass media, it had been his most successful persona since the earliest—and those had tended to end up both deified and violently dead.

  This time around the pouting lips and seductive eyes remain, but the build is lean, almost angular, height accented by a leonine mane of golden brown hair cut in a stylish shag. Although his official bio claims he is half-Native American, half-French, Tommy Thunderburst looks like nothing so much as the incarnation of rock n’ roll—and that he is.

  “Hi, Tommy,” Sven says, stepping past the man in the doorway, a bantam strutting beneath the leopard’s jaw. “Thanks for seeing me.”

  “Yeah, right, man.” Befuddled stil
l, Tommy closes the door and follows Sven into the living room.

  Remnants of a fire fill the kiva fireplace in one corner, cigarette ashes overflow several Indian pots around the room. Glasses half-filled with flat soda or stale fruit juice randomly decorate any available tabletop where the drinker had distractedly put them aside and forgotten their existence.

  The source of that distraction is even more evident than the mess. Sheet music is scattered on stands and the floor. Two acoustic guitars lean against a grand piano. A flute and a lyre rest atop the piano. Electronic gear is heaped in another corner. Through an open door, Sven spots enough recording equipment to make a major studio envious.

  Eyes sleepy no more, Tommy views the chaos, clearly aware of it for the first time.

  “Sorry about the mess, man. I didn’t expect company.”

  “No, don’t worry about it,” Sven says jovially. “I did drop by unannounced. Tell me, did you like my gift?”

  Tommy’s eyes narrow. “Maybe.”

  “Hey!” Sven warms his tones. “I’m not a narc, and I’m not from her either.”

  Neither of them need to clarify who the female in question is. Tommy’s lovers have been countless, but only one woman is a constant in his life.

  “She don’t care,” Tommy says bluntly.

  Without volition, he has strayed over to one of the guitars. He picks it up, sits on the edge of one of the chairs and starts strumming something atonal yet melodious. Sven feels himself being captivated by the music, shakes himself.

  “Tommy, I’m a big fan of your music.”

  “Ain’t had any out yet, bud.”

  “I’ve heard you in the clubs. You’re good. I think you’re going to be as big as Elvis…” He pauses, watches for some flicker of acknowledgment in the downturned gaze. “As big as Angus… as Orpheus.”

  The gaze that lifts from the guitar is no longer sleepy.

  “Who are you?”

  “A friend. One who knows what you can do, who is glad to know that you are walking among us once more and who wants to…”

  “Use me?”

  Sven arches his brow. “Hardly.”

  He lies easily. Deception is easier for him than truth. With truth he always feels he is giving something away. However, since no one gets something for nothing, he has made himself comfortable with the necessity for truthfulness from time to time. With Tommy, this time, there is no need for awkward truth.

  “No, Tommy, I’m just a fan. After your last ‘fall,’ I researched how you might avoid your… tendency toward excess?”

  He makes the last a question, as if he himself is less than certain what he means, although he knows precisely. Many athanor have patterns they live over and over again. For Tommy Thunderburst the pattern involves music, tragic love, drugs, and self-destruction.

  “Excess,” Tommy laughs bitterly. “Call it that, if you want.”

  “I have,” Sven continues cheerily, “taken advantage of modern chemistry. There are designer drugs that give highs unlike anything in wine or dope, but safe—non-addicting.”

  “That’s what they said about cocaine,” Tommy says, fingers working through a syncopated scale. “And about lots of other shit. And there are drug tests, now. Get you arrested. The days of wine and roses are gone, my red-haired kinsman.”

  “What,” Sven says, leaning forward, “if I gave you a charm that would protect you from all of that?”

  He quickly pulls out a dark purple stone carved into the shape of a thunderbird, lightning gripped in its claws. With anyone else, he would have teased longer, but, for anything except music, Tommy’s attention span is tragically short.

  “Cool,” Tommy says, taking the pendant from Sven’s hand.

  “It’s amethyst,” Sven explains, “long believed to be sovereign against the ills of intoxication. It’s also the birthstone for February and associated with the eighth hour of the day.”

  “Yeah?”

  “Yeah. And it’s also an emblem of deep, pure love.”

  “Cool.”

  “I’ve had it ensorcelled to protect against detrimental intoxication—whether from alcohol or drugs. It will also neutralize your bodily fluids so that you will pass drug checks.”

  “Wild!”

  “Do you want it?”

  Tommy doesn’t let go of the satin cord holding the pendant, but he looks suspicious.

  “What’s the price?”

  “Nothing. Just be my friend.”

  Tommy ties the cord around his neck. “Okay, friend.”

  He picks up the guitar again and begins playing. At first, he glances at Sven from time to time, as if seeking audience response. Then he clearly forgets all about him.

  Rising, Sven tiptoes from the room. With luck, Tommy will forget all about Sven’s visit until next time they meet. Well, with luck…

  And a little help from his friends.

  Almost as soon as the Changer turns his car into the Martinez’s dirt-and-gravel driveway, his arrival is heralded by the barking of several dogs. He does not need to be a coyote to know that they are saying: “Stranger, Boss! Stranger!”

  Prudently he rolls down the window so that the dogs can get a whiff of his scent. He has been told that no matter what shape he takes, there is a hint of wildness about him, a strange scent that identifies him as more than he seems. Although he cannot smell this himself, he has concluded that it may be an ancient defense mechanism, something that warns potential predators that he is dangerous.

  Two great dogs, one a shepherd mix, the other a mutt that looks like an unfortunate cross between a blue heeler and a coon hound, come baying up to the car. The shepherd looks as if he is about to plant his paws on the side of the car and learn what the interior acoustics will do to the sound of his bark, when suddenly he drops back onto his haunches.

  “Easy fellows,” the Changer says, opening the car’s door and getting out. “We don’t want any trouble.”

  The shepherd rolls over and shows his belly. The other dog is less submissive, but he sits and begins scratching vigorously behind one ear. Knowing that his apparent ease with their animals will help ingratiate him with the Martinezes, the Changer rubs the shepherd’s belly with the toe of his shoe, then bends to stroke the other mutt’s ear.

  Hearing the house’s back door open, he straightens. A woman in her late forties, her black hair untouched with grey, but her carriage slightly stooped, has stepped out onto the back step. She studies him with a confidence that tells him someone is close enough for her to call if he proves to be trouble.

  He takes a few steps in her direction, trailed by the now obedient dogs.

  “Mrs. Martinez?”

  “Yes.”

  There is a lilt to that single word that makes him suspect that her first language is Spanish.

  “I’d like to speak with your husband.”

  “My husband?”

  He is close enough to see the lines around her mouth and eyes and reestimates her age as perhaps twenty years older than he had first believed. So many women of Spanish or Indian descent do not grey at all until they are quite old.

  “Or perhaps your son,” he continues, “a tall man with dark hair cut short. He rides a bald-faced brown horse with a white stocking on its off hind leg. There was another man, younger, but enough like him to be his son. He rode a chestnut with four white stockings and a scar across its near shoulder.”

  She smiles, perhaps because he can better identify the horses than the men. Then she nods.

  “My son and his son. Why do you wish to see them?”

  “I want to discuss some business with them.”

  The Changer knows that on the surface he is an unlikely one to be coming to discuss business. His car and clothing do not telegraph money. He is too young, too fair to be a farmer. Idly, he wishes that he had taken more time crafting this human form. Had he looked like a cattleman or a horseman they might have believed him a potential buyer.

  Mrs. Martinez studies him a moment long
er, glances at the shepherd dog leaning against his leg, then nods.

  “My son is out in the cattle barn. Come into the kitchen and I will send someone for him.”

  “I can go myself and spare you the trouble.”

  “No, come in. There is hot coffee and some sopaipillas.”

  He accepts her hospitality, knowing that she does not want him out in the barns where he might see the wetbacks at work. Doubtless they are ready to hide if anyone official-seeming arrives, but his unprepossessing car might not have given warning.

  Admiring her prudence, he takes a seat at the kitchen table. This room is part of the oldest portion of the house. The walls are adobe, painted white and bordered with flowered tiles. The floor is dark brown tile, threaded with fine cracks from years of use, but as clean as if it had just been mopped.

  Another woman, this one also dark-haired and Hispanic, but plump with rosy cheeks, grants him a brilliant smile as she half turns from where she hovers over a kettle of hot oil.

  “Fresh sopas in a moment,” she says. “I am also Mrs. Martinez. You spoke with my husband’s mother just now.”

  The Changer notices that the older Mrs. Martinez has vanished. Through the lace-curtained window, he sees her marching across the yard to the barn. Mrs. Martinez the Younger nods toward the coffeepot.

  “Help yourself. There’s creamer and sugar next to it.”

  “Thanks,” he says, pouring a cup. “I don’t mean to impose.”

  “No imposition,” she says, dropping batter into the oil. “There’s always coffee, all day. We’re getting the sopas ready to stuff for dinner. I think we can spare you one.”

  Again she turns that brilliant smile on him. The Changer finds himself liking her for her easy hospitality. She must be an asset to her husband in more ways than just her domestic skills. Whatever else they are, the Martinez family does not seem to be made up of unpleasant people.

  He regrets this, for it will make his task more difficult, but the memory of his mate’s pelt hanging from the back of a saddle and his pups’ blood leaking from a sack makes him hard.