Nightwise (6 page)

“Laytham, no!” Granny shouted. Her voice stopped me. “What do you think you are doing?” she asked calmly.

“I'm … the squirrel, Granny. I could feel it, it's dying. I gotta…”

“Help it?” Granny said. “How, darlin'? Poor thing is dying, Laytham. Everything living has got to die.”

“Why?” I said. My eyes were hot and welling with tears, my whole body was shaking, and my fists were at my sides clenching and unclenching. I could see the squirrel twitching and the snake crawling closer to it. “It ain't fair, Granny, he didn't do nothing to nobody, least all that mean old snake!”

Granny's eyes softened as the sobs shook me. She looked like she was going to come hold me, but then she tightened her grip on her mother's walking stick and the steel settled again behind her brown eyes.

“I know, darlin',” Granny said. “And you're right, it ain't fair one bit. Not even one drop of fair, but it is right, Laytham, and you need to learn the difference.

“Life has to be fragile for us to understand it, to not abuse it, to cherish it, and each other. Snake's just doing his job. Did you feel any mean in it, feel anything at all, darlin'?”

“It was hungry,” I said. “It's cold, up in its head, though, Granny, it's cold and scary.”

“That's 'cause it lives its life cold, honey,” Granny said. “It's made that way; it's not warm, like us. But that don't mean it's evil, it just means it's made to do what it does as best it can.”

“Kill,” I said. “It's made to kill, Granny? Why would God do that?”

“No, don't be puttin' this all on the Almighty,” Granny said, wagging a bony finger. “When you are tryin' to put together a puzzle, and you haven't seen the whole picture and you don't get all the pieces to finish it at once, it's easy to blame the puzzle maker. God puts the pieces here for us. We are pieces of the puzzle, Laytham, just like that squirrel, and that snake, but he also gave us the ability to put the pieces together any fool way we want, to build our own picture. But like any puzzle, it has to have boundaries to frame the picture.”

The squirrel shuddered one last time and was still. Granny pointed at the dead creature. “That,” she said, “is a boundary.”

“No,” I said. The anger welled up in me, anger at the puzzle maker, anger at the snake. It wasn't fair, and I didn't give a damn about how pretty the picture in the puzzle turned out. I remembered the state troopers and the men from the mine office calling on Ma and Granny to tell them Pa was gone. It was the same feeling, only mixed more then with paralyzing fear and sadness, confusion, and a feeling of powerlessness, smallness.

I grabbed my crooked little walking stick, jumped off the boulder, and ran shouting in rage toward the rattler and the dead squirrel. Granny was shouting too, but I couldn't hear what she was saying over the sound of my anger and the blood hammering in my ears. I stood on one side of the dead squirrel, and the coiled rattler was on the other. I swung widely and missed the snake with my stick. It struck too, but I didn't feel anything. I swung again, and this time landed a solid blow. The snake looped in pain and confusion. I hit it again and again and again. I felt Granny's hand on my shoulder.

“Laytham, honey, stop, the poor thing is dead.”

I did stop; I gulped at the air and looked at the snake. I had bashed in its head, and its body was still looping, mechanically. It was horrific: a biological robot trying to continue its function while its bloody, crumpled skull lolled lazily to one side, its broken jaws trying to open and close, to bite, to perform its function.

“Do you feel better now?” Granny asked. There was no malice in her voice, only concern.

I kept looking at the snake. And suddenly I understood the lesson I was supposed to take away from all of this, and the anger was stoked in me again.

“Yeah,” I said, “I do. But I ain't done yet.”

I knelt by the squirrel and I tried to slow my heartbeat, tried to calm myself. I had no idea what the hell I was doing and I had no names for the techniques I was trying to undertake. I did notice that, for some strange reason, my anger made me feel calm; it helped me focus. Everything slowed, expanded, merged, like it had under Granny's guidance. It was easier now. I knew it was possible and, therefore, I could do it again.

“Laytham Ballard, what are you getting into?” Granny asked. I ignored her and regarded the squirrel. It was cold, dark. The frenetic light that had filled it was gone. There was no difference between it and the dirt it lay upon. Dust to dust.

I knew what I needed to do. It came to me. At five years old, it came to me as easily as breathing. I dropped my bloody walking stick and picked up a sharp, thin stone. I raked it across my palm. The pain was as distant as Granny's protests. She was talking, but she wasn't stopping me, wasn't about to stop me, either. No one could stop me. No snake, no Wisdom, no God.

I squeezed my hand into a fist, and the blood swelled and leaked between my fingers and dripped onto the squirrel's body. The blood was fire—my anger, my life, my power. Mine. I felt the drops, was the drops. As they soaked into the dead animal's fur, each drop was an exploding sun, a dying star, life and death in its purest, most beautiful form. I drew a deep, powerful breath and then exhaled. The world exhaled through me. The squirrel's chest expanded then, contracted, in time to my breathing, again, again. I held my breath and the squirrel kept on breathing.

I stood. Everything was indistinct and bright and dreamlike. My head was swimming. I heard the world's heartbeat and it was my heartbeat. Sunlight flashed through the roof of trees, and a flock of black birds exploded into flight across the constellations of scintillating emerald light. I felt soft, strong hands hold me up and smelled talcum powder close to me.

“I got you, darlin',” Granny said. She led me back to the rock, and I lay back as she began to remove items from her satchel to mend my cut hand. The last thing I saw before my eyes closed was the squirrel scampering away back toward the tree.

It was getting dark by the time I was well enough to make the walk home. Granny and I descended the mountain quietly for a long time. Finally, I broke the silence.

“Granny, are you mad at me?” I asked.

Granny's hawklike profile softened in the growing shadow. “No, darlin', I'm not,” she said, and then laughed. “Always like to go the hard way, don't you, honey?”

I didn't reply. Granny stopped. She hugged me tightly and kissed me on the cheek.

“I love you with every breath left in this old body, Laytham. I brought you up here to try to teach you your first lessons as a Wisdom, and I'll be if you didn't end up teaching me.”

She checked the bandage on my hand as she continued. “What you did back there, Laytham, it's beyond me, beyond any worker I've ever seen. I've heard tell of it, but I've never seen anyone who could use, command, the power so fluidly, so instinctually. Do you understand what I'm saying to you, darlin'?”

“You're not mad, and I did good,” I replied with a smile.

Granny frowned, tightened the bandage, and stood with some help from her walking stick.

“I'm not mad, and I am very, very proud of you, Laytham, but there is something I was trying to teach you today and you didn't understand it, and now that I know you have the power that you do, I need you to try to understand. It's going to be even more hard now that you know what you can do, honey.

“Laytham, you must not ever, ever bring anything back like that again, darlin'. Never again. Do you understand me?”

“Why, Granny?” I asked. “I saved it, it's okay and it was dead. Why is that bad?”

“The world just ain't that simple, Laytham,” she said. “Everything has a balance, everything has a price, and some prices, baby boy, you can't afford the debt it brings.”

She nodded at my bandaged hand. “That cut will leave a scar, that scar will never heal. That is the price you pay for that act, and trust me, boy, you got off cheap.”

“I don't care,” I said, but I was a little freaked out that the cut on my hand would never fully heal. It was my first bite of mortality, and I have to admit it both terrified me and thrilled me.

“When a life ends, and the spirit passes, it is not our place to interfere with the Almighty and his plan,” Granny said, and began walking again. I followed and rubbed at my bandaged hand.

“Doctors save people all the time. Like on
Emergency!
on TV, Granny. They ain't interfering with the Almighty, are they?”

Granny sighed. “Dear Lord, we are all in so much trouble when you become a teenager. It's different, Laytham. This will be hard to understand for you, darlin', but the power, the gifts you have been given, they are not the same as what doctors do; it's better, it's outside of how things work. We are not part of the natural cycle of things, us Wisdoms. We have a responsibility that is hitched to that power.”

It did make sense to me, perfect sense. I had felt it when I first decided to do something about what happened to the squirrel. A sense that nothing was impossible and that I could do anything.

“So, us Wisdoms are like the Almighty, right, Granny?” I said.

Granny spun around. She moved quicker than I had ever seen her move before. She grabbed me by the shoulders hard, before her walking stick had even hit the ground, and had her face up in mine.

“Don't you ever,
ever
say that again!” she said, and shook me. I couldn't tell if she was angry or afraid. “Don't you
dare
think that. We are people, Laytham, just people. Our power is a cross, not a crown, you understand me, boy? We serve, we witness, and we protect. We don't rule. You think you're above common folk, you start thinkin' you're a god, and you will end your days in a place far, far worse than any hell you can imagine, son. You'll end up alone.”

She scared me, and I trembled and was quiet the rest of the trip home. As the mountain began to gently slope back into the familiar terrain of her gardens and my tire swing and the kitchen door's porch light, Granny stopped and turned to address me.

“Laytham, darlin', are you okay? Granny is sorry she got so upset, honey.”

She hugged me tight and I cried a little, and slowly I began to feel better, like I always did in Granny's arms, in Granny's love.

“It will make sense in time, darlin',” Granny said as she held me. “Granny will help you find your way.”

The cicadas hummed, nature's monks chanting in a hidden cant. I looked up, red eyed, from Granny's shoulder and saw the squirrel I had raised from the dead perched on Granny's cement birdbath, watching me. Its eyes were darker than the night.

 

FIVE

I woke to daylight clawing at my eyes through the broken window and the sound of sirens, car horns, and millions of human rats all going mad in too small a cage. There was also someone pounding relentlessly on Grinner's apartment door. It sounded like a sledgehammer.

I groaned as I got to my feet. My whole body ached from the beating Baldy had given me the night before. My face was sore, swollen, and cut, and my mouth tasted of copper and decay. I was only wearing my jeans, and someone had covered me with an old wool army blanket. I staggered out into the hall.

“What the hell?” I called out. The door opposite mine opened a little bit and a woman's face peeked out. She was lovely—long black hair and warm brown eyes. Her complexion was olive. And I saw a flash of skin ink on her bare upper right arm.

“It's for me,” the woman said in a voice with a strange accent. It was French mixed with something else. “His name is Roman, and he's here for me.”

“You don't sound like you want that,” I said.

“No,” she said, “I don't. It's kind of a long story.”

“You can tell me all about it after I send … um?” I said, jamming my thumb toward the front door.

“Roman,” she said, a ghost of a smile on her lips.

“Right, Roman. After I send Roman on a little holiday. Get it?”

The smile widened, though it was still guarded. “I do, actually,” she said.

The pounding continued, and I sighed.

“Be right back,” I said. “You just hang back. Any messages for Roman?”

“Tell him I want the pictures he owes me.”

“Pictures, right,” I said, and walked down the hall. I heard her door shut with a click behind me. I walked through Grinner's apartment. The lights were out, and I was pretty sure if Grinner or Christine was home, one of them would have dealt with the elephant trying to knock down their door by now. For one horrible second, I thought it might be Illuminati bagmen here to collect me, but I knew my white lighter working had been solid, better than solid. I had days before I needed to move on. No, Roman was the kind of pain in the ass I could very much handle.

I unlocked the door, which took a second because of the half dozen locks and bolts Grinner had installed. The pounding stopped as soon as I began.

Before the final lock was snapped and door opened, I placed my palm on my chest.

“Strenuorum quasi lapis,”
I said, and opened the door.

Roman looked exactly the way I expected him to. No, strike that, he was about 25 percent more Guido than I expected. He liked a little hair with his product, and his spray tan was so orange it made him look like an Oompa Loompa. His shirt was open to his navel, and there was enough bling around his neck to gold-plate the state of New Jersey. The only thing remotely interesting about him was the hand cannon he had in one of his massive fists that he had been using to pound on the door. Like I said, a rocket scientist.

“Where the fuck is she?” Roman said as he started to push past me into the apartment. I didn't budge. Literally. The big goombah tried to shove me out of the way with one hand, but he could not move me. He stopped and his mouth hung open in confusion. I smiled.