A Book Of Tongues (21 page)

Then the crack’s furthest finger opened up a smallish hole right
in the off-centre of this depression, through which — while they both
watched, with similar fascination — a dark tendril poked and furled,
coiling the way kudzu does, pumping with evil juice. A quarterbreath, and it had swelled cock-thick. A half-, and it bloomed big as
a big man’s wrist. Three breaths later, a young sapling.

Bark like unclean fur, leaves quill-sharp, pine-needles from a
giant’s Christmas wreath. The tree spread itself out above them, its
low-slung limbs hung with vines so heavy they reminded Rook of
nothing so much as serpents. But its fruit did shine: satin-silvery,
casting light down on the woman’s face as she stared upwards,
mouth open, wondering — a thin rain of glitter, spores heavy with
sleep, and dreams.

Open your mouth, little king; she teeters on the brink. We
must be careful how we steer her, if the right outcome is to be
obtained. Speak only the words I send you.

No help for it, then. At all.

“This tree — ” Rook began.

“Beautiful,” the woman agreed. “What do they call it?”
“
Yaxche
. Tree of Heaven. It’s a . . . calabash, I think. But that ain’t the point.”

“No.”

“Point is — you want to die. That’s why you came here, right?”

She looked down again, as if shamed — at her weeping dress-front, the mess between her thighs turning her hem to rust. Whispered,
mouth barely moving: “Yes.”

“Well, then . . . there you go.”

He pointed to the tree, which was already letting down a helpful
extra length of vine — close-plaited, easy to tie, hard to break. A
hangman’s rope.

“That’s a sin, though,” she said; more of a question than a
statement, going strictly by intonation. Like she was hoping he’d
try and talk her out of it.

Wasn’t as though that was a strict impossibility, either, it
suddenly struck Rook. Sure, the woman’d come out to Bewelcome
on her own, who knew how far. No food or water with her that he
could see, which meant — if he was to give in to a foolish impulse
of mercy — he’d have to waste most of the latest jolt he’d sucked
from Chess on healing her alone. But then he’d be so weak, even
if he did get her back to a place half-civilized, the citizens there’d
simply shoot him where he stood once the first of them put a name
to his notorious face. Scatter his brains, burn his body, atomize him
beyond even Lady Rainbow’s recall . . . if she didn’t kill him herself,
long before, for breaking faith with their subterranean compact.

You cannot save her, little king. As you know, in your bones.

No. And . . . yes.

We are complicit in this, husband, as in all things else. Is that
not the meaning of marriage?

Not really, not for everybody. But then —
I ain’t everybody
.

“What’s your name?” he asked the woman, on further impulse.

“Adaluz,” she replied, the terminal “zee” a faint “th” lisp — but
didn’t ask him his in return, as one might’ve thought only polite.
Then again, it probably wasn’t anything she particularly cared to
know, right at this very instant.

“Mexican, huh?” No reply. “Well, leave that by. You cleave still to
the Holy Roman Catholic faith, Adaluz?”

“. . . I did . . .”

“Yeah, ’course. But that was before God killed your child, right?
Or — let
you
kill it.”

She took the implication straight to the jaw, slap-hard, with
barely a flinch. Just kept her gaze locked fast to that half-born
noose, its tail already curling in on itself, forming an unslippable
knot for her convenience. Her mouth gave a twist, skewing a drawn
purse-string way that rendered her entire pretty face a badly sewn
mask.

Matthew
, 2:18,
Rook couldn’t stop himself from thinking.
In
Rama was there a voice heard, lamentation, and weeping, and great
mourning, Rachel weeping for her children, and would not be comforted,
because they are not.

“I can’t
reach
it,” was all sad Miss Ada said, at length, hopelessly.
“It’s . . . too high for me.”

“Well, I can help you with that, ma’am. I mean — I’m surely tall
enough to spot you a lift. Ain’t I?”

A long, wet sniff. Then, with her tear-blurred voice even softer
than her words’ slight Spanish tinge could make it — “You’re very
kind,
señor
.”

“Oh, no such thing, darlin’. No such thing.”

He went down on one knee in the salt, like he meant to propose,
and cupped his hands in a makeshift stirrup.
Step up, now, honey,
’fore you change your mind. Best to strike while the iron’s hot.

She did.

And then . . . stood there a second more with one foot up, one
foot down, like she couldn’t decide whether she wanted on or off
this dirt-bound ride, after all. Listened quiet, while Rook mouthed
the “hey, rube!” spiel his Lady dictated, from her sodden, death-stink home. How there was nothin’ to any fine degree wrong with
stretching your own neck, if the circumstances warranted. How this
tree was a gallows grown for Adaluz alone, to end her pain and see
her set up on high for all to gawk at, a new constellation of loss fixed
at the very apex of an empty black sky. No need to think it over,
since in Rainbow’s suicide paradise her child would be returned to
her, whole and grown, to live by her side forever —

“You’ll never want for anything again, either of you,” he told
her, throat dust-dry. “No hunger . . . no fear. Woman who dies of
childbirth, God smiles on her, something fierce. Her baby too. You’re
a pair of soldiers who went down fightin’, and there’s not much more
honourable than that.”

“No,” she said, eyes tight-shut, head shaking like palsy, like fever.
Like the only way she could keep herself from stopping was to turn
eyelids and brain inside-out, and slip into voluntary blindness like a
hangman’s all-too-welcome hood. “There isn’t, is there?”

Rook shook his head right back at her, even knowing full well she
couldn’t see him do it. It was that, or scream.

Adaluz reached up, face abruptly slick with tears, La Llorona
herself; the tree reached down to meet her halfway, wrapping itself
helpfully tight ’neath her chops. And when Rook let his clasp part at
last, she didn’t even struggle — just hung there, slack yet straining,
’til her own weight broke that throat-bone Rook knew so well, long
after midnight but longer still before dawn.

’Til her lips crept back, bruising blue, and her tongue ground
bloody between two uneven rows of small white teeth. ’Til a weak
little spurt of piss ran down her legs to splatter on the ground,
washing the profane circle even wider.

Oh, this
better
all be worth it, in the end,
Rook thought.
’Cause if it’s
not — by God,
all
gods, I deserve every damn thing I get.

Rook watched her sway to and fro a span, continent-slow — her
skin warm enough, yet, to mist just a bit, against the cold night
air — before laying the Smoking Mirror carefully on the wet ground
beneath her, so that her shadow crossed over it on the very next
swing, crossed and then
locked
to it, impossibly fast. With only the
key-in-lock
click
of an opening door as accompaniment, along with a
rumble that might be thunder, if thunder normally came from down
rather than up.

That Hell-deep crack, opening wider. Yawning to send a fresh
new wad of darkness sprout forth, lolling, a wet black tongue.

Say my name now, husband, while her heart’s precious blood
stays hot. Say it, out loud.

“I don’t
know
your name,” Rook snarled. But his mouth opened yet
one more time, and he heard the alien syllables spill out, burning his
throat the way bile does, when you vomit — a mouthful of foulness.
Bones boiled to burnt stock.

She
of the Rope

She
of the Traps

She
of the Snares

Lady
Rainbow

Suicide
Moon

Psychopomp
Mother

Eclipse’s Bride

Ix

Tab

Ix
Chel

Yx
Tabay
Tlaz
TleOtl
CoYoTl
axQhui
ChalCh
iuh
Tlicue

All of them, and none of them — or just the first. Or — maybe not.
Or —

The baroque chorale echo of it took Rook from inside, a tin
hornet’s nest shook hard and set ringing, hammering, buzzing,
poisonous-sweet and
painful
, shit,
so fucking painful. . . .

He fell to his knees, which was probably where she liked him
best. Pawed and beat at his own head like it was a nut he was
trying to crack, as the mirror winked open — a staring eye, a hole.
As it stretched itself to let a veritable snake-bag of new tresses
burst forth, geyser up the tree’s trunk and swarm down the rope,
cocooning Adaluz’s corpse in black: a silk-drop seed-pod, heavy and
full and
ripe
.

Only to tear itself open, thread by thread, and let her fall free
once more, hitting the ground beneath in a feral crouch — with such
impact
, the eclipse itself shattered, leaving the moon unscathed
and coldly shining once more above. Shining, the way her eyes —
and teeth — did, as she caught Rook by the chin and grinned, before
crushing his mouth to hers. Like brightly polished bone.

“Oh, little king,” she said, tearing at his buttons, pinning him
wide with her hard-muscled legs and screwing herself right down
on top of him, regardless of wounds or muck — not even pausing to
wipe the filth from her loins as she hiked her vehicle’s dress high,
naked and unafraid. “I’m cold, cold so long . . .
so
long. Warm me,
now.
Warm
me.”

I’ll do no such thing,
Rook wanted to say — meant to, anyhow.
Call
me
“
husband
”
all you want, don’t make it so. Don’t remember gettin’ fitted
for any ring with you, either, just ’cause we once had carnal knowledge of
each other in a
dream —

Far too late for such equivocations, though.

She pressed him down with both palms on his chest, punch-hard, like she aimed to leave bruises with her fingers — rode him the
way he’d seen Chess break horses which truly
were
three times his
size, with a sneer at the very idea of being trampled. He was glued
fast to her, every point of entry a brand-new orifice, ripped wide
and gasping. Behind them, the tree was already folding itself back to
the ground, dissolving into her unseen dragonfly-wing train — used
once and then discarded, with not even a shred of regret. Her hair
was in his mouth, waterfalling over his eyes in a septic blindfold —
arousing and dreadful, a charnel aphrodisiac.

Her cheek pressed to his, a strange little pit starting to open at
its very centre, twisting so sharp he could
feel
it form, without even
having to watch: a black spiral raw as a new tattoo, the colour of
decay. Her breath already in his lungs, incense-laden, hotter than a
furnace. To try not to breathe it would be to suffocate.

Horror and desire, too mixed by far to separate. She yanked his
own palm up to span her neck, collarbone to collarbone, arrogant
against possible treachery; he could’ve strangled her one-handed,
and she knew it. The same way she knew he never would.

“Call me Ixchel,
husband,
” she commanded. And ground his
sensitized skin against where the rope’s puffy burn bulged,
flaking — where what had once been poor Adaluz’s pulse fluttered
and skirled, flushing the damage brightly. Saying, “See, here:
I
have
let blood too, to show you my good faith. We match now, you and I.”

Not
your
blood to let,
Rook thought, eyes rolling back. But his scar
was tightening in sympathy — a vascular choir singing, red and salt,
washing him away, where no one but she could follow.

Oh, Chess is really gonna
kill
me, once he finds out. Though that’s only
if he does, and she don’t kill me first.

Fuck it, though.

Reverend Rook growled at his own hypocrisy, hard enough
to hurt, like every damn thing else about these supernatural
shenanigans. Then flipped them both, to at least give himself the
impression
of being on top — and let her have her way.

Later, clothes re-ordered, they stepped out together beneath the
salt-encrusted lintel of Love’s church, back into the moon’s harsh
purview. It shone down on Bewelcome, illimitable and pure, the same
way it once had on the dark-stained marble steps of Tenochtitlan,
and both of them cast stunted black shadows beneath its too-bright
light — though Rook’s did stretch far longer than Ixchel’s, to be sure.
And seemed far less divided.

“Thought that was just s’posed to be a way for us to
talk
,” he said.
She took a moment’s pause, before answering — stretched
luxuriantly, every joint cracking, and yawned wide, trying to taste
everything at once. “
Aaaah
, the
air
,” she murmured. Then: “We have
held congress a long time, one way or another, you and I. So I ask —
do you know what I want yet, little king?”

“I got some small notion. But I’d really rather hear
you
say it.”

She —
Ixchel
— nodded Adaluz’s head, black hair disordered and
enticing. “What I want is what I had. What
you
want is for what you
already have to last forever. You fear Hell, and rightly. I live there.
So you have seen.”

“Yes.”

“You know I speak truth, then. As all gods must.”

“Uh huh. If
that
’s even true — ’cause not havin’ met as many as you, I can’t really tell. You ain’t
my
God, lady. I don’t know you from
a hole in the ground.”