“I said you looked old. The fact is, loose skin fits you well. It moves unpredictably, and it’s thin enough to match your reception of criticism. You are not my owner, Maren. I always told you if I… strayed.”
“Only because I always knew.” Maren slowed, feeling the full weight of her bag. “May we do this later?”
“Yes, let’s. You’ve done a plum job of being sour. Cured me of a potion I didn’t drink. I’m off. Name a place. We’ll do brunch.”
“When?”
“Soon, what with the bounty and your decline. If you won’t take the gift, at least take,” Uriah flapped her hands, “seventy years off? We might be seen, and I have standards. Ugh—I can’t comprehend how you stand it.”
“Stand what? Life’s usual progression? I won’t waste the gift,” Maren said. “Not again.”
“You can’t waste what you never use.”
“The greatest powers are used least often,” Maren shot back. “I am stealing that line, but I can’t recall from whom. Hecksbesen, I’d guess. Do you truly not see the potential in every infant?”
“Oh, but I do. Visit a clinic, Maren. Go to the center; see the unwanted pulled-out in pieces. Or wait to find an infant tossed into a dumpster, blue and bawling. Newborns don’t have artificial hormones or vaccines, and they taste… isn’t it worth it to be young?”
“And take the same opportunity from another?”
Uriah Lee’s eyes glimmered with something Maren was worried she recognized. Far better that Uriah depart. Better they remain angry. Better they flirt and fake and smile at careful lines to repress anything real. Better for both of them.
Uriah appeared to reach the same conclusion, replying in an accent, her nose in the air. “You would steal a line but refuse the gift?”
“What others do is their affair. I prefer not to affirm their decision by stealing scraps. I fear the gift may be a theft of a higher kind than we were told,” Maren said.
“It’s not stealing. You’re too cautious. Think what good you’d do if you were young again,” Uriah purred, tracing a long, manicured nail along a line on the side of Maren’s bulbous, broken-veined nose.
“Age brings awareness. Efficiency. Wisdom. It is not enough to be an old soul—the body must follow.”
“Your knuckles name you a liar. Age brings suffering. Nothing more.”
“I have attempted to… I am aware of the gift, obviously. It has hounded me. It’s an addiction. Can be. It’s impossible to see it when you’re consuming with regularity, but if you stand back… Uriah, fast for a few years. The eternal suffering for another lessens our ache for but a blink. The cost is too high.”
Uriah opened her mouth, but Maren waved a liver-spotted arm.
“You are about to say that an eternity of anything presumes a place to endure it. I will keep my own council on that, and you will keep yours. This I do know: the gift can be extended. I have not harvested for longer than any sister would call possible.”
“Obviously,” Uriah said. “You’d crack your pelvis if you tried a vigorous activity. I can’t imagine what would happen if you entered the throes of a proper orga—”
“—What compels you to stay, Uriah? Not a pull, and not a failed potion. I have much to do. Go wash your face. You look like a flower-child skipping to her first Mardi Gras.”
Uriah Lee squealed, teeth flashing. “At last, a compliment! You should see me under ultraviolet. You should see me under a sheet, too—you’d rethink this foolish reluctance to… freshen your image.”
“A sheet is a poor costume.”
“You know damn well what I mean.”
“I do. You were always alluring,” Maren admitted. “Few are the unattractive among the children of the gods.”
“Fewer are the living left from them.”
“There is always balance. I am testing my balance now. Have patience with me, Uriah. I am paying my way. I want out of my present installments before I assume further debt.”
“What, from the gift? Who told you there are limits? You’ll be ruined by waiting. It is the weak and the widowed who are taken first,” Uriah Lee breathed. “Always them. Always. You remember. You know. You are being a knothead and calling it an iron will.”
“I am right, and I call it that.” Maren stopped walking, partly because Uriah had, and partly because she did not want to arrive at her destination screaming at her companion—a good portion of stealth would be forfeit.
“You think you’re right. None of the sisters denies your… faith. But be in balance, as you said. Return to me. Be strong-limbed. Strong to match your unbending mind.”
“Why?”
“Why not? Why… this?” Uriah retorted, circling Maren’s face. “We can be as we were, lying on a riverbank. A jug of wine, a short-bladed knife, a slab of cheese, our clothes drying on branches…”
Uriah Lee arched an eyebrow, but her voice trailed off with a forlorn note Maren had hoped to avoid.
Maren stared into the darkness, turning her thoughts to the past, avoiding thoughts involving Uriah, or trying to. “You are correct in this: too many were taken. If they were not weak, they were seen as so. It came to the same end.”
“Yup.”
Maren stood straighter, joints cracking as a sudden rage filled her. “I’d like to see any man try me today—thin or not, old or no. From ambush or a running start, should they presume to take me—” Yellow flecks of distant memory flit on the surface of Maren’s anger-glassed eyes.
“Be calm, my love. Hear me. You didn’t meet my sister, but you know of her. Even the mortals still speak her name. You are not alone in anger. I watched him watch her. I was a child, and watching was all I could do. I saw her forced. She was accused of complicity; of inciting lust.”
“Uriah, you don’t need to—”
“—She was made into a monster. Being a monster, she was then slain like one. Her death was celebrated through the known world. I swore it then and now: never again. Never to me. I’d rather be a monster than be weak. Life is short for us immortals. Our list of enemies is unending. It’s the reason we must stay strong,” Uriah urged, a coarseness of emotion in her voice.
“It’s all the more reason to remain as I am, you mean.” Maren plucked at her shapeless blouse. “Hear your own assessment. I incite no such fiery urges—not as I appear now. My recent years were spent in my work, not satiating my loins. I quit smoking. Four hundred years of pipe and paper. I think of that more than I do the gift.”
“That buys you a few… there must be another way.”
Maren looked at her neon shoes. “Why, Uriah? You are young in form. What new spell have you concocted? What new potion have you made? Can you even replicate a known recipe? I don’t have my sword with me, and I’d like to hear why I would need it. What must I face that will require a weapon greater than my mind?”
“Do what you want, you rotten biddy. I’m going to keep carrying a legendary blade that can—”
“—Because you must! I could do the same—but what would you do with the free hand? Mine will be filled with death and defense. I can see you holding a half-emptied bottle! A blade takes practice, aye—you have that—but a sword alone is… Uriah, the world has laughed at you for thousands of years. You are the girl of opium dens and massage parlors, of ale houses and mansions by the sea!”
“That’s not…” Uriah bit her lip. “I thought you would be glad to see me.”
“I thought the same!” Maren shouted. A light went on in a window, and she lowered her voice. “I am glad to see you, Uriah, but in my memories you are less of a double edge. I stand by what I’ve always said: our craft requires no more than the materials that bring it to being. That, and the endless study to make whatever is wanted. You can’t see it, for you have never truly tried. Surrounding yourself exclusively in youth and beauty degrades the art. Limits it. Let yourself waste away. Delight in loss: you’ll thrive creatively in ways you—”
“—Yeah, not happening. By the black dogs, you a
re impossible,” Uriah said, her eyes roving. “The bounty. Has nothing come after you yet?”
“Nothing of note,” Maren said, working not to blink.
“Liar,” Uriah said. “Well, you’re not dead. I’d ask if you want to borrow my blade, but then I’d be helpless.”
“I didn’t say—”
“Like hell you didn’t. I can tell when I’m not wanted. It is a hard lesson to recall, though I’ve learned it repeatedly and exclusively from you.”
“Here she goes again,” Maren said, turning her head, only to be reminded that Bessie was a skeleton in her bag, and wouldn’t caw and confirm from her shoulder.
“Yes, here I go.” Uriah put a fingertip to a spike of her hair. “You’re right. Why do it again? We did a crap job of avoiding us.”
“I was thinking the same,” Maren said. “I don’t know why I can’t just be… how has the holiday gone?”
“I’d enjoyed myself quite a lot, actually—and then I heard that you were…” Uriah pinched at her hair. “Sorry. Reset. I went to a haunted house. Good times.”
“What, here? Apparitions are one of the few things I’ve never been able to confir—”
“—It’s fake,” Uriah clarified. “I paid to go through, I was cheated, and so I stayed.”
“Stayed?”
“You need to get out more. Let me put it in terms you might understand: I handed a cheesy scarecrow enough money to purchase fifty albums at a yard sale. In return, I walked through a series of plywood passageways with a toilet-paper mummy, a bored nurse torturing a man in traction, a vampire in a coffin and a tuxedo, and a green-faced witch mixing a kettle of dry ice.”
“No refunds?”
“I didn’t ask. It was just down the street from a high school dance, and the students were beginning to—I was thrown-out, you see. Bunch of stupid rules: no alcohol, and nobody over the… they asked for my age. Anyone who tries that red punch will be punched indeed.”
“Poison?”
“Worse, if you’re young… a laxative. Quite powerful. By now, anyone who went to the well is wishing for a plug to keep their lower organs on the inside. It’ll go viral.”
“How vindictive,” Maren said. “Good for you.”
“I was miffed about the age thing. A mite tipsy, too. Anyway, the haunted house fared the same way. Closed early. A stink bomb was brewed in the cauldron.”
“Do I know the recipe?”
“You could guess. It’s killer. I used exergonic indole, tamandua glands, a rotted durian fruit, and a dash of Carolina Reaper dust.”
“That’s as good as anything I’d have thought to make. How many dead?”
“None, I think… a couple went down in the stampede, but that’s on them; I didn’t see anything worse than a seizure. It could go worse at the school, if dehydration… some students might work their way into the morgue.”
“Sounds like a lawsuit,” Maren said carefully.
“This isn’t working.”
“No, it’s not. I do appreciate you coming, Uriah. About the bounty. I don’t know who else would have come. To warn me, I should say.”
“Seemed like the right thing to do,” Uriah said. “I should have sent… not Kate. I could have tried to send one of those… but you say I never get them right, and—”
“—I’m not better than you,” Maren said, her voice somewhat strangled.
“Yes you are.”
“You don’t believe that. We have a different approach. Who can say which works best? I envy your ability to… but I can’t. I’ve tried.”
“Tried what?”
“To live in the moment. To experience without question. I’ve tried expressly not to care, and I simply can’t. Not for long. It is a defect.”
“You’re bragging.”
“I assure you, I am not bragging. I know what I’m good at, but there are many things at which you are superior. If I try devil-may-care, I paint myself into a corner. But you can just… jump over it. Like magic,” Maren said, showing a twist of amusement she tried not to let turn bitter.
“You used to talk of circles,” Uriah said. “Mostly circles of salt, but… I should have said cycles. I remember you used to say that… you said: anything that can bite its own tail, will.”
“I say a lot of nonsense—ask anyone. I probably stole that from Hecksbesen, too; she was mad for silly sayings.”
“Poor Bessie. I don’t usually see spirits, but I’ve caught her twice on your shoulder.”
“Ah,” Maren said. “Thought I was imagining that.”
“Anyway, that saying about biting your tail stuck with me. For the longest time, I thought you meant… it sounded like a stupid thing to say, frankly.”
“Nonsense tends to be on that border.”
“My point is, I remembered it long after we… I’d dream it. Went on for years. Then I awoke, and there it was—the meaning I’d missed.”
“Does it have a meaning?”
“You said it! At that same instant, I was to my buttocks in wet sand; half-drowned by the tide. I recalled something else you said: about me not giving a damn.”
“I take it all back about potions and… you should drink more, and more often. I dislike anyone remembering so many thousands of years of my—”
“—Hush. That second thought was, maybe I don’t care. I was freezing, and tired, and hungover, and stuck in the sand, and I thought… I could have just waited for the tide to do its thing, you know?”
Maren nodded. “I have yet to settle on which death I’d like less: fire or water.”
“Will you stop? So I’m lying there, at my bottom—on my bottom—and it hit me. Whenever I get that low, it’s not… not bedrock. It’s a membrane. There’s something else—lower than low.”
“The tail?”
“Yes. If I wait long enough, I’ll break through the membrane that looks like the bottom, and I’ll care so much that… it’s the other end of your circle. Whenever I try to quit, that lifts me up.”
“Thrilled I could be motivational,” Maren said, a hint of dryness unavoidable. “My observations match yours, but from the other end: whenever you get close to caring, you bounce in the other direction, hard and fast.”
“You’re not listening to a word I—brunch. You don’t want my blade, and I can see why. You need a hand on your cane.”
Maren huffed. “With which I would remain more dangerous than you and your rusty needle.”
“It’s not rusty.”
“Allow an old woman her verbal latitude. It is clumsy to say that you carry a cupreous splinter.”
“It’s not—ugh! Why didn’t they call me? I could use a bounty, and after five minutes with you, I’m more than willing to run you through. The talk’s loud; must be quite the windfall. I could go on a cruise for a year.”
“Let’s do Suhur’s,” Maren said. “For brunch.”
“Eww, fruit? I want chicken and waffles.”
“And I want the colon of a teenager. Brunch is a compromise by its definition. Do you hanker for The Pudong, then? Deering Point? Jiaozi Kaigansen’s? La Madfouna? Lutzke’s Noshery?”
“Half of those don’t even serve breakfast,” Uriah said. “More are a continent away, and all are posh. You won’t show in pearls and gloves.”
“Depends on the gloves. I use a boarskin pair at the forge. How about this? Brie quesadillas, pickles fried in butter, salted caramel bacon, and plantain flapjacks with a rambutan compote. I have the means.”
“That’s… why didn’t you start with that?”
“Forgot I can cook,” Maren said. “Besides, we are less likely to throttle one another in a more established eatery. Nor do you know where I live, which is another way to say the same thing.”
“Whatever. Let’s just—fine, Suhur’s. I’ll smuggle a brownie.”
Maren glanced at the tiny purse with skepticism. “Not in one piece, you won’t. I’ll scrub my pans. Sunday? Ten?”
“In the morning?”
“You we
re the… you said brunch. I can start at ten and serve at two. Two in the morning, for all I care.”
“Deal,” Uriah said, thrust-out her hand in a gesture that was intended to be jaunty, was not, and caused Uriah to pull her hand back as though burned.
“Ten,” Maren said.
“Sunday. Have something send me an address. Toodles—I have my tricks to get in, and you obviously want to be alone. Do try not to die. If you do get yourself killed, remember you said no to my rusty needle.”
“I can live with that,” Maren said, but Uriah’s experience with disappearing was unsurpassed… as she’d just proven again.
17
When she was certain her winding route had left her alone, Maren shifted the carton of oversized eggs to her left hand, dipping her right into the bowling purse.
She bounced the pouch of tachyderms in her free hand. Her mind had not entirely freed itself from the thought of a troll—should one be guarding the tiny park, she would be ready.
The public area was deserted except for a pair of youths entwined under a tree. These Maren left to their necking—they needed the practice, from what she could see.
A bouncy castle flopped in flaccid surrender at the park’s center, disrupted currents breathing through the plaza among the rings of unimaginative half-mansions.
The castle seemed to know it was a fraud, but, had its blatting compressor been active, Maren would have been sorely tempted to give it a jump. As it was, the chance to bounce and misbehave was offset by the guarantee that she would wallow in dew-slick vinyl until rescued.
A group of costumed children boiled from a minivan, giggling and pushing. The egg carton shifted in Maren’s hand. She stepped behind a growth of cholla, tracking the spiraling route of the driver, a woman with blackened cheeks and a stub of cigar to match her determined expression. Maren’s knees protested at standing, though less than they had while moving.
As with the clown and unicorn party, the group appeared destined for the largest house of its kind, which was lit as though to banish darkness: a looping scene from an animated short projected onto a two-story brick wall as safe-spooky noises emanated from a large room that flashed with false lightning.
All Hallows Page 22
