The Children of Old Leech: A Tribute to the Carnivorous Cosmos of Laird Barron (25 page)

“My wife, Maia.” Old Mallard turns her like an inanimate object. “She will be gone soon. Tonight.”

Her eyes flick open, vibrantly alive. Such vivid green, Bay can’t believe she’s dying.

Old Mallard turns to Bay. “You’re almost ready. But first…” He extends an open palm, offering a white flower petal, dry and powdery as Maia’s face. “From Chile, in the Andes where I was initiated to the Six-Sided Circle. The wise have utilized it for millennia, perhaps eons. There hidden, sight turned inward, they shrug off our culture’s pallid temptations for ancient truths. Such is only attainable…” He looks down, as if remembering. “…through deep time.”

Bay accepts the flower, places it on his tongue.

Old Mallard’s smile is so subtle, almost not a smile. “Tolstoy again,
The Death of Ivan Ilyich
. ‘He sought his former accustomed fear of death and did not find it. Where is it? What death? There was no fear because there was no death. In place of death there was light.’”

He bends, lifts Maia as if she weighs nothing.

“Come.” He carries his wife in his arms.

10.

Bay follows quietly, mind reeling in a way distinct from the afternoon’s ecstasy trip. His vision brightens, even in the dark stairwells.

They pass Earthwide, the main floor, and continue down.

A room hexagonal like the others, but smaller. Dark stone floors. Around the perimeter, six classical statues, white marble figures.

“Subterrain,” Minerva whispers.

Old Mallard places Maia, face uncovered, on a granite platform. He mutters words, like an incantation. Rhyme, poetic meter.

Time speeds past, a blur of obscure ceremony. From hallucination into clarity, back again.

Is it still night? Fear tickles the back of Bay’s mind. What does Old Mallard want, and Minerva? It was her idea Petersson invite him. Now she leans against him, clutches his shoulder, his hand. So much is uncertain. Bay keeps expecting Old Mallard to reveal some surprise, or Maia to spring the joke. To sit up, laughing.

They’re all looking at him. Even Maia’s green eyes.

“The long view means watching many shorter lives end.” Old Mallard’s voice is steady, grave. He lifts his wife again. “Soon Maia will go. There will be no laughing.”

“Down,” Minerva whispers.

Bay follows through another doorway, hidden until it’s seen.

11.

Strange atmosphere, basement smell. Floor of dusty, hard-packed earth, walls grown with fungus or ferment. Bay doesn’t remember the bottommost level’s name until Minerva speaks it.

“Blackshard.”

Here, no artistic wonders to rival Lightpulse’s Witkin and Bacon. None of Attainment’s otherworldly sounds, Subterrain’s statues. Colored lights shine on twelve books, ancient black leather, each displayed within locked glass cases.

Bay recalls the story Petersson told. Is this a burial chamber for ten previous wives?

“Nine,” Old Mallard says. “Maia is ninth.” He pulls back the cloth to fully reveal her body. Her face, hands and feet are perfectly white, strangely chalky, but the rest of her body is pink and vital, decades younger than Bay guessed.

“Her breasts, still round as the earth,” Old Mallard says, “soft as clouds.” Lightly he touches her nipple. The skin hardens. “You see, and her sex, still pink and moist.” Gently, reverently, he touches the cleft between her legs. “Why should she die? Because she accepts this end. Cancer beckons, she follows.”

Maia lets out a breath. Bay jumps, startled, then realizes it’s an ordinary sigh.

“Teaching the Six-Sided Circle must wait. Maia won’t last, nor the others. I offer this, to prepare you for what comes.” Old Mallard’s voice deepens. “The existence of
huitzitzili
is cyclical, like a tree. Vibrant and motile in summer, in winter motionless, shed of adornment. Waiting through cold for rebirth.”

“What is?” Bay asks, breathless.

“
Huitzitzili
, the hummingbird. It defies physics, gravity, death. In winter it attaches to a tree trunk, remains frozen there, dry and featherless, lacking heartbeat. Spring thaw, it twitches to life, regrows feathers. It flies again, blue and weightless, a tiny god.”

Minerva nods.

“I’m sorry for Maia,” Bay says. “But what does this mean to me? And you, and Minerva?”

“I’m telling you there’s no need to ride the train to the end of the line.” He looks down, covers his wife in her wrap. “I will lie down with Maia, and others. I’ll take from them, then wake strengthened.”

“Even if that’s possible, you can’t live like that,” Bay protests. “Always borrowing. There are only so many people…”

Old Mallard raises an eyebrow. “Such consumables are never in short supply.” He bends, lifts Maia.

“Where next?” Bay asks. “We’re at the bottom.”

Minerva approaches his side, cautious, as if afraid he might spook.

“There’s another, deeper, unnamed,” Old Mallard says. “There had to be six.”

12.

Through a curtain, down a sloping dirt ramp. Bay imagines the bottommost room a circle. Eyes adjust, discern flat walls. Six sides.

The floor slopes to a central pit, wider and shallower than a grave, moist soil crawling with worms. Five bodies are arrayed around the hollow, skin seething ink-black. All lie twitching, sweaty and open-eyed, life stories rewritten in creeping lines of ink.

This nameless room, so different from the rest. No art, no music or books. Just dying bodies and damp earth.

Old Mallard places Maia among the firedancing’s fallen. She makes the sixth.

He turns, brushes Minerva’s mouth with his thumb, then grasps Bay’s elbow. “I’ll take their deaths. I’ll return. Distilled and clarified.”

Bay realizes others are present, watching. Shrouded in black, they blend into walls. Bay recognizes the humming, throaty intonations, reminiscent of the music upstairs.

Old Mallard takes his place beside Maia.

Bay’s mind spins, uncertain what he’s seeing, what he’s been offered. Membership in some circle? A creative life, empowered by agelessness. He can’t imagine. The dead-end he fled already seems far away. Memory of Annie’s face, the words in her note. All of it, another man’s problem.

The tomb chills, the singing fades. The watchers vanish.

All that remains is the quiet stillness of death.

“Clarified,” Bay whispers, sifting hints.

The emptiness of his life gives him freedom. If he found another Annie, he’d forget himself.

Minerva takes one step toward the bodies, then turns to Bay. He hopes she’ll explain. She cut Petersson away, freed herself to enable her own pursuits. She knows how to live, unencumbered. Perfect, weightless freedom.

Bay remembers falling, stuck in black pitch. Extended anticipation of death. The agony of perpetual imminence.

Minerva’s hand reaches.

Not a relationship beginning. Something else.

She glances to where her guardian lies clarifying in the shallow pit, then to Bay.

Her hand opens, reaching for his open shirt, grasping for his wound. Black lines on her palm elongate. Streaks of ink form vines and leaves, black fruit, wild faces. New forms creep outward, spreading to cover his chest, his arms.

Hot skin trembles. The bones of her hand reflect his heartbeat.

The Golden Stars at Night

Allyson Bird

H
er name was Rawlie. She chose the name, obviously not at her birth but later—not gender specific and that empowered her for a good reason. She’d need to be strong. Rawlie had seen the world change. Sitting on the stile near the stream bank amongst the manuka trees she tied her brown hair back and shielded her grey eyes from the winter sun. It was still strong. All year round they had to be wary of it in New Zealand. It wasn’t uncommon for many newcomers to fold with the heat and humidity. She was the first to rise too—just a quarter hour before the others but with enough time to grab a mug of coffee and wrap up warm against the cold. The mountains were visible today, still tipped with snow and rosy in the dawn light. Some days were better than others. The worst days started with her father sending a couple of ranch hands down to the main gate. They would wave a rifle in the air. Nobody set a foot on Campbell land without prior permission.

The day on the station would be a long one and she was always the first to go to bed each evening—exhausted from trying to be as good as or rather better than others. That was what she wanted. What she needed was to stay alive, eat, sleep and fuck. Her mind nowadays was closed off pretty much—kept apart from most others in some cosmic shadow of itself. She wondered what lay in—within the darkness whilst she tried to sleep. Not really of this world perhaps? Or a forgotten part of it? They seemed ever closer now.

Rawlie could shear two hundred sheep in a day, not bad as she wasn’t greatly built and had small hands. But, she had determination, and that was what was needed. She was twenty-three, had been briefly married to a man long gone, and had an apprentice to look after named Mysel. He was five years her junior and was her responsibility. She had to keep him out of trouble and make sure he worked well. They were in fact bonded, not married—more like brother and sister but with less falling out, not that they didn’t now and again when one or the other had too much to drink. Mysel liked his beer, and Rawlie loved her wine. Her father thought she would marry again but Rawlie didn’t want that.

Recently there had been the storms. The two great and one lesser one—within a few months of each other. She recalled the first storm. The wooden chicken shed didn’t stand a chance. The wind howled over the mountain, and smashed it to pieces, and the chickens sought refuge in a hollow in the far paddock. Rawlie had joked about the wailing banshee who had flown down as if to sweep the land clean of lies and corruption as well as the chicken shed. Rawlie didn’t refer to her as the banshee for a long time after that. It seemed too familiar—too accurate.

The dreams came with the storms as the wind whipped the grass into waves along the paddock. A violent gust broke the large branch off the Old Man Pine in the paddock—the one which pointed directly west. The last dream she had was half remembered but there had been a man it. His face was unfamiliar. He nodded and said it had never been done before but then after a moment or two said yes—it had been. It was as if some magician had found the formulae. He had perfected the art again against an azure blue backdrop and golden stars at night. The stars inverted. Alien. Not like the ones in the northern hemisphere. Rawlie felt like an Alice and had tumbled into the South Pacific. And had been forgotten—legs and arms not fitting the house. She was an alien Alice on a torrid blue planet too small for her. And many could lose their heads when she fell. The rabbit was always looking at his watch, also. The dream made her wince and smile in turn.

An hour before the second storm which struck up out of nowhere there was the man again but not in dream this time. She saw him in the distance. Was it the same man—she wasn’t sure? Halfway up the hill and sitting on a boulder. She had binoculars but couldn’t quite see his face. The second storm was lesser than the first. But still lethal. She supposed the chickens dead this time. The arch of steel that formed the bulk of the chicken shed was torn from its mooring and flew across the field and hit a mound of soil. That sent the steel hurtling by her window. If she had gone to see to the chickens, which she had been thinking about doing a few minutes earlier, the steel would have taken her head off. Clean off. The chickens survived again.

After the storm she had gone with Mysel to the beach. The waves with still a rage of seaweed within began untangling in the foam. You could not swim in that sea. No way forward there. Poison in the sea. Way too wild. And the blue crab, a claw waving, as it fell into the tumbling wave. Waving good bye? A cry for help? Or come and join me?

That storm reminded her again she was only there by the tolerance of nature or something else. That could change.

There came a few days of calm. Nothing from dreams now—only no sleep and the grass shimmering in the darkness. During the day she saw the dark figure against the dry grass on the hillside.

In her own room at night she played Bowie loud. “Everyone Says ‘Hi’” was put on repeat. It had been filed under “intermittent” in her collection. She smiled at that. She played OMD too with their rendition of “Pandora’s Box” to the film of Louise Brooks playing the part of Lulu in THAT film. Rawlie felt the desperation at times but she tried to ground herself in her farm work and teach Mysel—the ever eager Mysel who soaked up stories like a sponge.

A brown parcel secured with string was left at the main gate of the ranch for her. Within was a leather-bound notebook and a silver pen with her name on it. She scribbled to see if the pen still worked—on the brown paper. The black ink. It always had to be black and not the blue. Another parcel arrived—this time with three books within.

Alberto Manguel.
A History of Reading
.

T. S. Elliot.
The Waste Land
.

Ovid.
Metamorphoses
.