Alexander C. Irvine

by A Scattering of Jades

  Archie felt behind him, unreasonably comforted when his hand fell on the hilt of Helen’s kitchen knife. The cloaked monster gazed intently at him and Archie stared back, paralyzed like a rabbit under the force of its steady hooded gaze. He hardly noticed the pain from his gashed chest, or the thin trickle of blood running down his stomach and under his hip.

  It’s memorizing me, Archie thought, and the mummy blinked under feathered eyebrows and looked from him to the knife. It knows me. It recognizes me.

  “Jesus, Mary and Joseph.”

  Royce and the squat dwarf Charlie stood at the head of the stairway, the braided cornstalks bunched between them as if they were about to throw a net. Royce’s eyes were huge, and Charlie was making some kind of whining noise deep in his throat. The creature turned its attention to the two Dead Rabbits, and Archie found that he could move again. He scuttled backward, away from the werewolf or werecat or whatever it was. It stood erect and he saw how wasted its frame still was, naked tendon and bone showing where desiccated skin had flaked away.

  The feathers of its cloak twitched in the still air and Archie felt a stirring in his left hand. He was clutching a penny-sized gold medallion with three feathers beaded onto it in a cluster. Its surface was worked in some sort of pattern, too faint to see in the dimness.

  A quiet crackle sounded in the tense stillness of the hall, and Archie saw that the corn the two Dead Rabbits held was growing. Thin white roots sprouted from the stalks’ dusty ends, and the leaves and stalks smoothed and swelled. The ears of corn grew fat, hanging pendulously from the braid as they ripened before his eyes. The dwarf jerked one arm up, but it was already tangled in the rejuvenated leaves. They wound around his wrists, preventing him from dropping the woven strand, and crawled up to his shoulders. Royce was entwined as well, the stalks binding his legs to the railing.

  Archie heard shouting from the street in front of the museum; the Rabbits stationed there sounded as if the same thing was happening to them.

  “Tonacatl, macehuales tonacatl,” the creature rumbled, its voice stronger now. Archie heard the words as our substance, the substance of men.

  It had reassumed a more human form, but its eyebrows were still crescents of tiny feathers, and patches of scale reflected moonlight from its forehead. The skin around its mouth and on the hand that had held the watchman’s heart shone a deep ebony as it looked out the window to the moon, murmuring words that echoed in Archie’s head. The feathers in his hand renewed their twitching.

  There was a series of plops as the swollen ears of corn dropped to the floor. Their shroud of leaves peeled back and tiny human figures wriggled out, their knobby skin mottled yellow and red and white. They swayed as if drunk, bumping into the railing and each other before collapsing into mounds of corn kernels at the feet of the entwined Rabbits. Royce and the Geek stared like sleepwalkers at the rejuvenated mummy.

  Archie registered another sound, a faint drumming of rain on the museum roof. Rain, on a night this cold? The mummy stood chanting to the moon as the sound slowly grew to a deafening crescendo, and then with a crash of shattering glass it was gone.

  And now the Lord of the Region of the Dead takes you . .

  you have gone to the dwelling place of the dead, the place of the unfleshed,

  the place where the journey ends, a place without a smoke-hole, a place without a vent.

  Never again shall you return,

  never again shall you make your way back.

  —Farewell to the dead, recorded by Sahagun

  Book II

  Atlcahualo, 2-Water—December 20, 1842

  Riley steen found himself in an irksome situation. It was difficult enough to gauge the matrix of influences governing the chacmool’s reanimation without the sudden intrusion of bloody Archie Prescott, and the mayhem echoing from the museum’s upper gallery indicated a plan come partially, perhaps completely, unstrung. He reached into his pocket and extracted a damp paper package. Unwrapping it, he inhaled the calming scent of myrrh: his own strain of roses, one he’d worked obsessively to cultivate. He’d intended to don this tiny bud as a modest celebration of the night’s accomplishments. Now, it seemed, he needed it to soothe himself. At least it had been clipped at the proper time, when the afternoon moon had risen to obscure the seeing powers of the huehueteotl, Tlaloc’s only rival in antiquity and devotion among the Mesoamerican civilizations that predated the Aztec empire. The Old God, He Who Gives Men Faces, had thrown the Rabbit at the moon, and the Tochtli’s mischievous revenge was to blind him whenever the sun and moon shared the sky.

  Steen hoped to avoid the Old God’s attention until the chacmool was safely in his grasp. The avatar of Tlaloc would certainly draw such attention, since one of the huehueteotl’s many incarnate aspects was Xiuhtecuhtli, Lord of Fire and Time—the opposed principle to Tlaloc, the god of earth and rain. The Old God was doubly difficult to understand because its nature was both male and female. Steen was in the habit of referring to the god using the masculine pronoun, as the Aztec priests had, but that habit could be dangerous. To ignore Ometeotl’s female aspects could result in fatal miscalculation, but the conflict inherent in the god’s duality made some simplification necessary. The one usual certainty when dealing with the huehueteotl was that the Tochtli interfered with its power. Unfortunately, the presence of the Rabbit brought its own tendency toward unpredictability, the kind of plan-corrupting chaos that had brought Archie Prescott to the American Museum tonight.

  Steen covered his right eye and looked up at the moon, which was streaked with thin bright clouds. Even through this cover, the Rabbit was clear tonight, as he’d expected. Also clear, though, were other portents whose meaning for the night’s endeavor was uncertain. There was fire in the moon, a flickering about the Rabbit that could only mean that Xiuhtecuhtli had been awakened by the events taking place in the museum. And this on a day sacred to Tlaloc, when the prominence of He Who Makes Things Grow should have had dominating influence. “Mitzayani in ilhuicatl,” he muttered—the heavens split asunder. Some vital piece of information was missing, and Steen had no idea how to begin pursuing it.

  He couldn’t be certain because of the damned clouds, but it looked like the Rabbit was holding a knife.

  Glass shattered somewhere in the museum, and thicker clouds blurred the Tochtli’s figure. Damn Lupita and her schemes, he thought. She had argued that using the mocihuaquetzqui to scar the child was the only way to lay the proper groundwork for the coming spring’s sacrifice. Steen had reluctantly agreed, knowing that the use of the fire sprites would draw Xiuhtecuhtli’s interest but hoping to maintain the integrity of his plans by closely guarding the girl until she was needed. It seemed now that Lupita’s devotion to Xiuhtecuhtli had corrupted the entire process from the beginning, opening the Old God’s eyes to Steen’s plan.

  And he hadn’t anticipated the girl’s escape, thinking her cowed by years of captivity. The fact that he hadn’t been able to locate her, despite his certainty that she was in New York, solidified Steen’s conviction that the huehueteotl, in one of its aspects, had taken an interest in his affairs. Killing the girl’s mother had proved to be the most damaging of Steen’s (or Lupita’s) errors; having died pregnant, she was no doubt a mocihuaquetzque herself now. Steen had given up smoking cigars since that thought occurred to him. He was never sure when a flame would acquire a life of its own.

  A slight teenager wearing the red piping of the Dead Rabbits ran down the alley from Ann Street, fear etched on his pockmarked face. A living cornstalk was wrapped around his right arm, sprouting a husk that dangled at his wrist. “Jesus, Mr. Steen,” he gasped. “It’s gone, it—”

  “What about the barriers?” Steen snapped, although the greenery adorning the youth’s sleeve answered the question for him. “Where did it go?”

  “Right through the bleedin’ windows—Christ!” The youth had raised his arm to indicate a direction and noticed the cornstalk. He ripped it from his sleeve, shredding the fabric, and flu
ng it away. Its torn end sprouted roots that sought purchase in the packed snow.

  “Dammit, boy, where did the chacmool go?” Steen realized he was crushing the rosebud in his fist. He relaxed the tension in his arm.

  The museum’s rear door banged open and Prescott appeared, his arms pinned by Royce McDougall and the hunchbacked carnival freak Steen knew only as the Geek. Like the frightened sentry, the two Rabbits were draped in snapped-off tendrils of cornstalk. Prescott’s coat was shredded and his shirtfront streaked with blood.

  “Mr. McDougall!” Steen forgot about the sentry and the fresh rosebud. “Did Mr. Prescott touch the chacmool?” Steen fervently hoped that Prescott’s injury was due to an altercation with the two Dead Rabbits. If he had been in physical contact with the chacmool, the consequences would be impossible to predict. Like the Tochtli, Nanahuatzin’s father was a wild card, a further intrusion of uncertainty into an already tenuous plan.

  “It touched him, that’s for damn certain,” Royce replied. “Nearly ripped his heart out like it did the watchman’s, but then it backed away. What the fuck is going on here, Steen?”

  “Complications, Mr. McDougall. We must be rid of Prescott at once.”

  Royce immediately nicked a knife from his sleeve, but Prescott reacted just as quickly, kicking Royce’s legs out from under him and nearly pulling free of the Geek as well. Steen reached into his coat for the small derringer he kept there, weighing the problems of an escaped Prescott against the consequences of killing him so near the site of the chacmool’s reanimation.

  Steen cursed and cocked the pistol as Prescott took another step, dragging the Geek with him. What sort of misfortune would that bring down, killing Nanahuatzin’s father? But then Royce lunged forward and buried his knife in the back of Prescott’s left thigh.

  Prescott shouted hoarsely and stumbled as his weight landed on the wounded leg. Royce leaped onto his back, another knife conjured from somewhere in his clothes, but Steen stopped him there.

  “Enough! Just hold him.” Steen repocketed the derringer. “We can’t do anything now. Too much has already happened here tonight.”

  Where else, then? Dockside would be appropriate. At least three establishments in the Fourth Ward featured concealed chutes for the disposal of deceased patrons. In addition, the brackish waters of the river would confuse the old gods’ sight.

  “Decide, Steen,” Royce growled. Prescott cried out again as the Rabbit jerked the knife out of his leg. “Shut up,” Royce said, holding the bloody blade alongside Prescott’s jaw.

  He looked to Steen again. “I want to be elsewhere when the police get a look inside.”

  “As do I, Mr. McDougall, but some forethought is required here.” Steen paused a moment longer, then made his decision. “In the wagon, all of you. We’ll take Mr. Prescott to the Old Brewery and conclude our business there.”

  The Brewery, located in the Five Points scarcely a block from Prescott’s former residence, would still be echoing from the events of seven years before. Those echoes, and the fact that it stood on a filled-in swamp, might help to occlude the vision of observers. Steen cast another quick glance at the moon. Certainly the night’s activities would be better brought off as secretively as possible, and the fact that the Brewery was home to New York’s most desperately wretched citizens would be of assistance as well—their constant misery would swallow Prescott’s more acute anguish like a thick fog swallowing the smoke from a gunshot.

  Or so he hoped.

  The decision made, Steen relaxed enough to unwrap the fresh rosebud again. He pulled it free from the slice of potato he used to keep the stem moist. “Mr. Prescott,” he said, affixing the fresh bloom to his lapel and inhaling its sepulchral scent, “kindly indulge my curiosity. Why were you here tonight?”

  To his surprise, Prescott laughed shortly. “I heard the mummy was a fraud,” he said.

  “Well, I hope your doubts have been sufficiently assuaged,” Steen said. “With any luck, I won’t have to convince everyone in the same fashion.”

  Royce hauled Prescott upright and shoved him toward the back of the wagon. The Geek was already inside. “I’m still curious,” Steen continued. “How does concern over the veracity of Mr. Barmum’s exhibit result in your skulking around back doors on a frigid midnight?”

  “Look, Steen,” Prescott said. “If you’re going to have Paddy here stick a knife in me again, I frankly don’t see why any of this matters. Why were you here with a dozen Dead Rabbits and a wagonload of dead corn? You know a hell of a lot more about this than I do.”

  Prescott’s bravado drained away as he tried to shift his weight. Grimacing, he said, “But since you ask, Bennett wanted me to have a look around.”

  “Ah. This is the latest episode in his feud with Mr. Barnum, then?” Steen found the explanation plausible, but the appearance of Archie Prescott of all people on this night was certainly an unlikely coincidence. If coincidence it was. Steen wondered how much, if anything, the man knew about his daughter.

  Best, he decided, to render the question irrelevant. “Into the wagon, Mr. Prescott. Bennett will have to wait another day for his scandal.”

  Royce and the Geek squatted at the back of the wagon, blocking the only exit. Relax, Archie told himself. If Steen really wanted to kill you, he would have.

  But was that true? Clearly Steen had planned carefully for this evening, and just as clearly those plans had gone disastrously wrong. Why did Steen seem so certain that Archie knew something about the mummy? And what the hell had happened in there? The thing had been set to gut him like it had the guard; then for some reason it had drawn back. Why?

  Archie shifted uncomfortably, wedged in among poles and boxes and bundles, puppets hung from the ceiling knocking against his head. The guard’s face, slack and impotent with terror, would not leave his mind. Archie wondered if he had looked the same when the creature had ripped open the front of his shirt and bent over him. The gashes it had left on his chest smarted as he moved around, but the bleeding had stopped. His leg, on the other hand …

  “Why didn’t the booger kill you?” Royce said suddenly.

  “I don’t know. You nearly did, though. I could be bleeding to death.”

  “Nah.” Royce seemed undisturbed. “Just a poke in the muscle. Perhaps later, though,” he said, and Archie heard the smile in the Rabbit’s voice.

  Later. Why were they waiting? We can’t do it here, Steen had said. But why—apart from the fact that murders took place there every day—would the Brewery be … safer?

  That was it. Steen thought Archie posed some danger to his plan. But again, why?

  Never mind, Archie decided. If he thinks I’m dangerous, so much the better. Pleading ignorance won’t help now.

  The knife was buried under belt, shirt, and coat. Royce would surely notice if he tried to reach it. And Archie had no other weapons except surprise.

  Acting before he could think better of it, Archie launched himself toward the back of the wagon, plowing into Royce and knocking him half out of the curtained doorway. He cocked his fist to throw a punch—but wait, no, something in that hand, mustn’t lose it—

  The moment of hesitation cost him. As Royce grappled at the curtains to stop his fall, the Geek caught Archie with a hammering roundhouse, smashing his head into the corner of an ironbound trunk. Pain exploded in Archie’s ear and he collapsed across the trunk, his feet scrabbling weakly on the floorboards. What’s in my hand? he wondered dazedly, his unfocused eyes barely registering the moon outside—

  And what fire burned in the moon? It couldn’t stay here under that moon; the Rabbit watched, and like an old woman the Rabbit was a gossip. It was weak despite the meal, and needed a place in the womb of earth to rest, away from the fire in the moon, away from the people and the stabbing light that swept across them like the Eye of the Old God itself. It stood and ran as fast as its wasted legs could carry it.

  A kick to his punctured thigh shocked Archie awake. “Not dead yet, are you?
” Royce’s face loomed above him, lit only by gaslight that leaked through the torn curtains.

  Seeing Archie’s eyes flutter open, Royce nodded. “Just as well. I don’t want Steen angry tonight. Although I don’t suppose it makes much difference to you, does it? And I’ll be frank: I haven’t got a desire to kill a man the booger passed over. Still, business is business.”

  Royce grinned and returned to his station at the rear of the wagon. In the pale wash of gaslight, his shadow swayed back and forth as the wagon rocked on its springs.

  “Shouldn’t be long in any event,” the Geek piped up, quacking a grotesque laugh.

  Archie found that he couldn’t fathom the joke. The thick cobwebs in his skull cocooned it, hid it away from him. He hurt in more places than he could count, and he had very little doubt that these were the last few minutes of his life—why then was the thing in his hand the only direction his mind would focus? Feathers, he felt feathers, tied together with some kind of cord. Beads bunched at the other end around a flat piece of metal like a coin, and was the coin moving somehow or was that his head?

  He was suddenly terribly afraid that he would drop it. Must hide it, he thought, knowing it would make no difference if— when—he died tonight. And a pocket wouldn’t do; it had to be next to his skin where he could feel it.

  Archie rolled over onto his side, bringing down a row of puppets whose strings he had tangled in his escape attempt. He curled into a fetal position and groaned more emphatically than was necessary. Feigning a struggle to disentangle himself from the web of strings, he thrust the beaded feather into his underpants, nestling it securely in his crotch. It might smell when—if—he recovered it, but it would be safe.

  “Our boy Archie’s feverish, Geek,” Royce observed. “Musta cracked him a good one.”