Skillful Death (32 page)

“Her what?” Jetsan asked. “I told you that I cared about an actual physical thing: a box. A single, actual box, and you tell me about her soul? Send her soul to the wind. I cared about the seal on that box. Take the soul. Give me back that paper seal.”

Tara’s aunt appeared in the doorway with her arms folded. When Jetsan finished his rant, she snapped her tongue and he walked quickly to her. She took Jetsan by the elbow and led him from the room.

Dom unwrapped his hand again and looked at the cut. It ran right down the line on his palm. When he opened his hand, the white edges of the cut pulled apart and a clear fluid seeped. He dabbed it with his handkerchief. Some spots of blood stained his new suit, but most of it soaked into the black lining of his pocket. Dom hoped he would get a chance soon to rinse it in cold water so he could keep his new suit clean. Dom rewrapped his hand and strained his ears to hear a woman’s wail coming from deep in the house.

Tara’s aunt appeared again in the doorway. Her arms were still folded.

“You’ll marry Tara as soon as possible,” she said.

“Yes,” Dom said. Happiness bloomed in his belly. He struggled to keep a smile from his face. It seemed impertinent to smile while she held such a grim expression.

“We’ll send a special messenger—one who knows how to travel through the snow—into the mountains with the box. When he returns, you’ll marry.”

“I’ll take the box,” Dom said. He wanted a heroic journey through the snowy passes to prove his worth. He wanted to return the box to Tara’s betrothed and claim his hold on her body, offering the other boy her boxed soul.

“No, you will not,” Tara’s aunt said. “You will not trudge off into the snow and die just so you can shirk your responsibility to my niece. You will stay here and earn enough money to pay for a proper ceremony. You will establish yourself in a legitimate house. You will prove yourself worthy of stealing her opportunity.”

“Yes,” Dom said. His chest swelled with his new mission. He would do all those things and more. He had won his right to the most beautiful body he had ever seen, and cleaved it from her immortal soul. Now he would provide for her with the magic from his hands.

F
ORBIDDEN
FROM
CONTACT
WITH
Tara until the messenger returned, Dom (Torma) threw himself into his work. He spent his days hustling through installations and his nights working to fabricate the parts he’d need the next day. He worked so hard that his palm would not heal, and he joined his pipes with his sweat and blood. While his hands worked, his mind wondered about Tara. Forgetting that he had fabricated the cleaving ceremony, Dom wondered about the personality of Tara’s new soul.

With word of his engagement spreading, his prestige grew. His monopoly on plumbing became an asset rather than a hindrance. He didn’t intend to raise his prices or demand payment up-front, but the market did those things anyway. The wealthiest households paid a premium to move up on his list, and Dom hired more men to help him.

Two of his protégés excelled, and he elevated them to apprentices. Dom (Torma) considered them extensions of himself. Their work was the perfect reflection of his own, yet he still checked every joint himself so he could guarantee the quality.

His customers celebrated his work. Each completed job led to three new requests. Dom’s ledger ran black. His supplier of pipes and fittings couldn’t keep up with his demand, so Dom attacked the problem in two ways. He developed his own foundry near the mine, where he could source coal, copper, and carbide. Word floated down the river that Dom had work for a casting designer, and a man arrived to apply for the job. As his factory took its first humble steps, Dom also sent word to the manufacturers who sold to the suppliers. He developed a direct relationship with those manufacturers. Through his correspondence, he intuited their secrets while he bought his parts directly from the source.

When the messenger returned from Tara’s mountainside village, Dom (Torma) sat at the throne of a burgeoning empire.
 

He and Tara married in a lavish winter ceremony and took residence in a beautiful house near the western circle. From their balcony, they could watch the evening performances of star-crossed lovers in the circle below. The same circle where they had gone on their first date. The same circle where Dom cleaved Tara’s soul from her body.

F
ORGET
CARD
TRICKS
AND
claims of paranormal activity. What I need now is a conversation with my boss. That’s not so easy though. He’s made it deliberately hard to get in touch with him.
 

 
As soon as the street magician mentioned a bald man, I knew who he was talking about. The height, age, and blue shirt were just the final nails in the coffin. My boss always has at least two angles on everything, but after all these years I was convinced that I was the only person he had looking into street magicians. My whole department seemed like a casual hobby. Why would he have two separate groups for a hobby?

I pack a light bag, close up the office, and head north.

I like to take 684 out of the city and then hit 84 in Connecticut. That takes me right to Hartford, where I can grab 91 and head straight north. It’s a long trip, but it’s better than spending six hours battling traffic to upstate New York and then cutting over. There’s something depressing about spending that long on the highway and never changing states. I like to mark my progress by crossing borders. The name Connecticut is based on a Native American word that means something like “long tidal river.”
 

Connecticut is nice to drive through as long as you’re not near the coast. It’s still a bit developed and paved, but there are some stretches with trees and hills to look at. This time of year, when every color is green, I love to crack the windows as I drive through Connecticut. After months in the city, there’s nothing like smelling all that green. Plus, it still has the undercurrent of exhaust, so I’m reminded of home.

The name Massachusetts is based on another Native American word which means something like “beside the blue hill.” Massachusetts is a nightmare. It doesn’t matter what time of year, or what time of day. It’s tempting to say the drivers in Mass are stupid, or crazy, or careless, but I believe all those things are wrong. I believe that the drivers of Massachusetts are financially incentivized by their state government to seek out and do harm to other drivers. Should a driver find the need to slow down for an accident, traffic signal, deer jumping across the road, whatever, they can be sure of one thing: there’s a driver whose mission is to collide with their vehicle.

Mass is the only state I know where commuters are encouraged to drive in the breakdown lanes. Imagine that! There’s a margin on the side of the highway built as a safe place for motorists having mechanical trouble, and the state is encouraging people to travel there. Granted, it’s only on certain roads. Granted, it’s only during certain times of the day, like rush hour. But once they opened that possibility, breakdown lanes everywhere become free game. They’re not just considered valid travel lanes, they’re used as high-speed express passing lanes by the first guy who feels that driving ten miles above the limit in the right lane is dangerously slow. He will pass you going one-hundred miles-per-hour on a chunk of road that’s nearly fifty-percent gravel, while giving you the finger.
 

Fortunately, I don’t have to spend long in Massachusetts. I take 91 straight through and the only real city I pass through is Springfield, which is barely a city. Where I’m from, they have a word for cities with less than two-hundred thousand people: adorable.

All that bad-mouthing aside, the landscape of Massachusetts is kinda pleasant. It would be even better if travelers could get a glimpse of it instead of spending loads of energy trying to avoid potholes in the highway.

Vermont—that state is aptly named. Vermont is French and means “green mountain.” All they have in Vermont is green mountains. As long as a car’s transmission and brakes are in good shape, it’s a great place to drive. I had to drive a van up there for my boss one time and by the time I got to the passes—twisty, windy roads that go straight up and over the mountains—I thought the thing was going to fall apart. It barely had enough steam to get up to the top, and then I barely had enough leg strength to hold the brake pedal down as I descended.

A driver can open the windows all the way, once they get up into those mountains.
 

I pull off the highway to get a tank of gas before I make my final assault on the mountains. I’m paranoid about getting stuck without gas. I’ve been up here enough times to know where the gas stations are, but still, they are few and far between.

I set the pump and wander inside.

“...each time. It’s really the best. You dig for it yourself, so you have that satisfaction, and commitment to it that you’re not going to understand unless you’ve experienced...” The clerk is lecturing the only person standing in front of the counter as I walk by.

The clerk has a multi-colored knit skullcap, a beard long enough for a rubber band, and hollow, haunted eyes. He gestures with hands that are thin and boney. Vermont has a strange cast of characters. They’re all incredibly liberal, but equally independent. Imagine hippy libertarians who want to contribute heavily to eradicate social injustice and inequality, but keep the government out of their bedrooms, and living rooms, and backyards. I’m not too political, so I don’t know if I’m slandering them properly. You probably have to go there yourself to understand.

I grab a bag of Cheetos, a soda, and a homemade vegan peanut butter cookie about the size of a frisbee. When I come back to the register, the conversation ends quickly between the clerk and his disciple.
 

“Are you the Toyota?” he asks me.

“Yes.”

“Please don’t leave it pumping when you come inside,” he says. “Sometimes they don’t shut off and then it spews gas all over the pavement.”

“You ought to get that looked at,” I say.

“Yeah, or you could just be, you know, responsible for your pump.”

“It’s your pump,” I say.

This could turn into a fight. The guy is probably right. I’m a big enough person to admit that. Nonetheless, I’m always on edge in Vermont. Great place, great scenery, really nice people, but it totally rubs me the wrong way when someone tells me how to be a better citizen. I would think he would have spotted the New York plates and just understood that. Maybe he did and he’s just looking for a fight. That idea calms me down a bit. I can respect someone who was busting my balls in the hopes of starting a fight.

He backs off anyway. It’s the Vermont way.

“Whatever. You could be a person, but whatever.”

“Exactly,” I say.
 

Before I cross over the passes into the real mountains, I have to follow a little stream north. The road twists and turns through the valley right beside the stream. This is one of the areas that was flooded out a few years ago when that hurricane went right through the middle of the state. I still see it everywhere. There are roads that used to go somewhere that are now just blocked off at the head. Most of the bridges over the stream look shiny and new. I even see some downed trees that weren’t in anyone’s way so they were just left there. It’s nice. It’s like nature did a clean sweep through here and everything started over.

Aside from trees and cows, what you see most of by the side of the road is solar panels. They’re tracking panels, using little motors to follow the sun. It’s funny—all through New England there are plenty of flat places with few trees and a clear view of the sun all day long. But most solar panels up here are in the mountains, where there’s always something blocking the sun. Like I said, hippy libertarians. I should ask the boss if they have some extreme tax incentive for solar power up here or something. I think Germany has that same type of deal.