InkStains January (3 page)

The young mother opened her eyes. She climbed
shakily to her feet. She chased the thing carrying her baby down
the stairs and out onto the street.

There, the cop waited with his gun drawn.
“Enough,” he said, calling upon all his authority and courage and
bravado. He’d secretly hoped for a moment in which he might play
hero. His department-issued firearm felt warm and anxious in his
hand. The baby cried.

The thing that looked like a man and might
have been a god cocked his head and blinked his eye and, without
moving, snatched the gun from the cop’s hands, twisted the metal,
and dropped it to the street. He said, “You might hurt the
baby.”

The cop drew a second, non-standard firearm,
which he probably should not have carried, and fired one perfectly
placed shot between the eyes. The baby, still crying, was never in
danger.

Neither was the thing that might’ve been a
god. He absorbed the bullet, crushed the second gun and, with it,
the bones in the cop’s hands.

Then he walked away, into the street, and
into the path of an available taxi. The driver didn’t need language
to know not to touch the brakes.

The crash did more damage to the taxi than
the thing that looked like a man, but every bit of momentum in the
whole of the universe has consequences. The thing that might’ve
been a god dropped the baby.

This time, the young mother’s scream was more
desperate, more anguished, than any scream in the history of
screaming. The boys, also emerging from the apartment, added their
horrified gasps. The cop shouted the most heinous series of
expletives imaginable. The taxi driver cursed once in his native
tongue. It was the most appropriate word he had.

The dropped baby did not land on the steaming
hood of the taxi or the dark asphalt street or the cracked
sidewalk. The baby did not fall into the gutter. The thing that
look like a man and might have been a god moved with a god’s speed
and a god’s gentleness, to catch the baby as quickly as he had
dropped it.

For a moment, all was still. This rough
corner in a rough neighborhood on the outskirts of a rough city
fell preternaturally silent.

The thing that might’ve been a god kissed the
baby’s forehead, a blessing of a sort, and returned the baby to the
young mother’s arms. He said, “I truly meant to help.”

“
Help some other way,” she
said.

The thing dissolved into something less
solid, less real, and less visible. It slipped away, into the
shadows in the alley, away from streetlamps and moonlight. It went
away, and it was no longer bored.

It had done some damage. In the days that
followed, flowers bloomed in the gutter, the streetlamps at that
corner brightened, the cop found his picture on the front page of
the newspaper’s local section, the boys received scholarships for
colleges they hadn’t dreamt of applying to, the taxi driver met a
woman from Prague who spoke his language – and that woman was, in
fact, the young mother. Their romance, after all, was
inevitable.

As to the baby, who had benefited from a
scream more honest any it could have affected, became satisfied and
quiet and curious and quite capable. The baby grew up to be strong
and smart and daring. The baby grew up and discovered things,
changed things, created things – and ultimately, the baby grew up
to destroy things. The baby’s name was Adam, and Adam had a wicked
future in front of him.

6 January

Speed. Speed is important. If you can’t get
there swiftly, you might as well not go. On the ground, you need a
car – and it’s best to be limited by obstacles, whether still or
rolling, than by your own engine. If you haven’t got the horses,
get off the racetrack.

That red car there, with
its five gears and seven liters and twelve cylinders, with its six
hundred and something horses, is
fast
. It hugs the corners. It gets
you there. Your shadow will have to catch up in its own
time.

Go on, take a seat. Enjoy the leather in that
cockpit, grip the gear shift, grit your teeth. It’s not like you’ll
get another chance. Check the gauges, crank up a heavy blues beat,
and drop that thing into gear.

Don’t you love the smell of
rubber burning? A heavy kick on that gas now, this is no time to be
timid. You’re controlling a piece of art, modern art, man and
machine, style and substance.
You can go
faster than that
.

It’s open road ahead of you for a hundred
miles or more. The other cars, they’ll get out of your way. This is
real highway driving, babe. There ain’t a thing to slow you down.
Foot to the floor now. That’s it. Kick it up a gear. Make that
thing scream.

Sirens? Don’t be stupid.
You’re a god now, a god of speed, you don’t answer to flashing
lights. They can’t catch you. One ten, one twenty, one
thirty.
Faster
,
babe. You only live once.

Yeah, those are clouds
behind you, and they’re bringing rain, but you can outrace the
storm, you can leave the world behind. Speed. You’re pure energy.
One sixty. One seventy. Don’t get shy now. It’s only a bend in the
road. Don’t you like the way the tires grip the asphalt? That’s not
a lot of smoke.
You can go
faster
. It’s practically a straight
line.

One eighty. You’re getting brave. I like what
I see. I like the music of that engine and the heavy rhythm
pounding out of those speakers. Loud music always goes with speed.
One ninety. You’re pushing it now. Just a little more. Coax those
horses over the edge.

Helicopter? So what? It’s up in the air.
You’re on the ground, on the street, a flash of lightning, two
hundred miles per hour and they haven’t got a chance in Hell of
catching you. At least until you run out of gas.

Until then, drive it like you stole it, babe.
‘Cause after, you’re headed for a long slow stay in a cell.

7 January

They chased her into a dark dead-end alley.
Her name was Simone. When she turned to face her pursuers, an angry
mob, she grinned. There was nothing jovial about her expression. It
was pure hunger.

I’d warned them.

The mob was about a dozen deep, men mostly,
who might have convinced themselves they’d seen something. They
hadn’t. Not yet.

Simone crouched like a tigress. She said,
“Stop,” but they did not listen. She did not plead; it wasn’t her
life at risk. She drew a long, thin blade from the sheath on her
hip. She held it defensively. Poison gleamed on its edge.

They came at her anyway.

After she finished with them, when all that
remained were steaming corpses and a few final agonized moans, she
returned the knife to its home and spoke to me in the shadows.
“You’ve been following me.”

“
Watching, yes,” I
admitted.

“
You want to know if it’s
true, what they say about me.”

I would’ve smiled for her if I were capable.
“I know that it is.”

Another night, I had seen her talking with a
rat, stroking its head, giggling, certain they were alone.

Another night, I had seen her accept free
bread from the stingy baker. He’d slept every day and night since,
and slept still, though I didn’t think she knew this.

Another night, I’d seen her drink whiskey
from a bottomless bottle.

“
You want something,” she
said.

“
We all want
something.”

“
You’re not good at
enigmatic,” she told me.

I stepped out of the shadows so she could see
my scars. “I want justice.”

“
You seek vengeance,” she
said. “It’s not the same thing.”

“
It’s close
enough.”

“
You want my blessing?” she
asked.

“
I want your dagger and
your poison.”

She touched the blade sheathed at her hip.
“It acts swiftly.”

The mob had gone silent. I said, “I
know.”

She didn’t ask who had scarred me or how or
why. She didn’t ask if there had been another victim, perhaps a
mother, a daughter, a lover. She judged me by the expression in my
eyes and the determination in my voice. I was unwavering and
unafraid. She unhooked the sheath from her hip and handed it
over.

I drew the blade, sheath still in hand, and
examined the edge. She’d wiped it clean, but there were traces of
blood, and of course the poison.

“
Return it to me here,” she
said, “twenty-four hours from now.” The threat was implied. I
nodded. I left her to her shadows.

My plan had been simple. Twenty-four hours
later, precisely, I sat cross-legged in my bare room in the dark.
My boots were next to me, the knife and its sheath in front of me
on the ground.

Simone entered through the window behind me.
I only head her because she allowed it. I knew she would find me. I
knew she’d know my name and, by now, my story.

“
My blade is dry,” she
said. She hadn’t even retrieved it. “You failed to find your
justice.”

“
Justice moves at its own
speed,” I told her.

“
You couldn’t find
him.”

“
I didn’t look.”

She knelt in front of me, slid the knife from
its leather. The blade glinted. Though dry, it was still potent.
“Don’t feel bad,” she said. “Many who quest for vengeance find they
haven’t the stomach for it.”

“
He’s dead,” I told
her.

She raised an eyebrow. She put the knife in
its sheath. “How?”

I raised my hands before me, palms up,
fingers splayed. “I crushed his windpipe until he could breathe no
more.”

“
Then why the knife?” she
asked.

“
Comfort.”

She went out the way she entered. Twenty-four
hours later, in a spice shop, I met Simone again. She had bewitched
the shopkeeper; he would never put two coherent words together
again. She carried a basket full of garlic and rosemary and salt.
She said, “This is no coincidence.”

“
No.”

“
You court
death.”

“
You won’t kill me,” I told
her.

“
How can you be so
sure?”

I didn’t answer. I showed her my empty palms.
“Teach me.”

“
Blades?”

“
Secrets.”

“
Poisons?”

“
Spells.”

She put the knife in my belly. She whispered,
“I’ll teach you death.”

I kissed her. She’d come close enough. She’d
done it to herself. The touch of my lips on hers was brief, but it
was enough. She drew back. She cursed. She dropped the blade on the
floor.

“
I’d found my justice long
ago,” I told her, though it was not an explanation. “Now, it’s just
for money.”

She dropped to her knees. She foamed at the
mouth. My poisons, like hers, were swift. She tried to cast a
spell, but I’d taken that from her, as well.

My wound would heal. What’s one more scar?
And it hadn’t taken me long to devise a counter for her poison of
choice once I knew it.

Simone stopped breathing and her heart
stopped beating and she died. I went out to collect the bounty.

8 January

When a thousand little gods still walked the
earth, when humanity was young and the land fresh, before the ages
of silicon or iron or bronze, there was a youth in love.

Even then, when there was little worth
fighting for, when language was new and inept and inexact, there
were few things more worth fighting for than love.

The youth wrestled a bull until it had to
yield. The youth diverted the course of a river. The youth dug a
hole straight through the mountains with his bare hands.

The girl did not notice.

Let me tell you about the girl. You may have
heard of Helen, for whom a thousand ships were launched. You may be
familiar with Cleopatra. You might have seen filmic images of
Brigitte Bardot. But you have never seen beauty such as existed in
her face. There has never been so great a beauty.

She was smart. She knew all the stories. If
there had been books, she would have read them all. Until she saw
the shapes of unicorns and dragons in the clouds, no one saw
anything but cloud. She wore a piece of jade around her neck, which
she had found and fashioned herself; before then, no one had ever
made jewelry. She discovered salt on a breezy afternoon, discovered
pepper over a long weekend. Had there been weaving, she would have
woven. Had there been canvasses, she would have painted, and her
paintings would have been lost to the ravages of time but would
still, today, in just the memory of them, inspire artists across
the world. Had there been kings, she would’ve been the very
first.

A girl like that is not easily impressed. So
the youth appealed to the gods. Three of the gods heard and were
generous.

The first god gave the youth a net, with
which he could catch fish, and a knife, or something like a knife,
with which he could clean his catch. And this youth was first of
all mankind to catch a fish, prepare a fish – with some salt and
pepper – and serve fish grilled. He fed the village, if it could be
called a village at so early a time in history.

The girl ate the fish, and liked the fish,
and thanked the youth. But nothing changed.

The second god gave the youth a sack of
seeds, which he planted in a field, the first seeds ever to be
planted in all of time. Plants burst forth, first as stems and
vines and bushes, until overnight they blossomed in every color
imaginable, and many colors that, while we take them for granted
today, had never before existed.