InkStains January (7 page)

He didn’t simply take time off from work and
go. First, he verified that the ticket was real; it was, though the
airline refused to say who had paid for it. He checked the money,
too, with one of those anti-counterfeit pens from the office supply
store.

Whoever had written the letter had him
intrigued. He got the time off, fished out his passport from its
barely-seen hiding place, and crossed the Atlantic.

He didn’t know what to do or where to go when
he landed at Charles de Gaulle, but he didn’t have to worry. A
chauffer in a crisp suit and sunglasses carried a placard with his
name on it.

The chauffer either didn’t
speak English or pretended not to, and Don’s knowledge of French
language didn’t go far past
croissant
. They drove mostly in
silence, Don in the backseat watching the scenery.

After a while, they reached the city, which
was bigger than Don expected, but just as French. He saw many
postcard-ready side streets but nothing he recognized – no tower,
no church – before stopping in front of a rather regular looking
building.

A woman greeted Don at the door. She was
dressed very businesslike and wore her hair in a tight bun, but she
was young and spoke English smoothly, albeit with a gorgeous
accent. “Jean will handle your bags, if you’d like to come with
me.”

“
Did you send me the
letter?” he asked.

“
No.” She held open the
door for him. “If you please.”

Don entered the lobby, in which there were
couches, a rack of pamphlets and maps, and a counter. The girl at
the counter didn’t look up, and Don’s guide walked right by
her.

“
In Paris,” she said, “we
have the best food in the world, and you have dinner reservations
already made, but you didn’t come all this way for escargot, did
you?”

“
Actually,” Don admitted,
“I’m not sure why I came all this way.”

In a tiny alcove, there was a single elevator
door. They got on and went down to the basement, to a long hall
with insufficient lights, but Don’s guide seemed not to notice.
They passed several opens doors revealing laundry facilities,
storage, and canned goods, as well as several closed doors. At one
of these, she took a key from her pocket, pulled the door open, and
motioned Don inside.

She didn’t follow. Rather, she shut and
locked the door, leaving Don in a conference room. A dozen chairs
surrounded the table, but only one was occupied.

The woman there was older, matronly, with
something of a scowl permanently etched onto her features. She got
to her feet and tried to smile. “Sit.”

Don sat. He purposefully passed the nearest
chair, but didn’t quite travel half the table’s length.

“
Thank you for coming on
such short notice.”

Don didn’t respond, but she seemed to wait
for him to do so. He said, “Thank you.”

She shook her head. “You won’t be thanking me
when we are done. Call me Isador.”

“
Is that not your name?”
Don asked.

“
No.”

He shrugged. “Okay, then, Isador. You got me
here. What for?”

She tried to smile again. Someone should tell
her not to bother. She said, “You’re the last descendant, since my
husband died. It’s all yours.”

“
I don’t know what you
mean.”

“
My daughter – you’ve
already met her, Jolene – she is my daughter, not his. I have no
other children. He had no other, except one.”

“
Not me.”

“
No. Your
mother.”

Don didn’t know what to say, so he said,
“Oh.”

“
You see what I mean,
then?”

“
I think so.”

“
It all goes to you,
then.”

Don’t stomach twisted. He wasn’t sure of what
to expect, though of course he’d always wished for a rich uncle.
“What goes to me?”

“
The piano. The wine.
What’s left of the money. The key.” This, she placed on the
conference table before her, on top of a manila envelope that had
already been there. “And of course,” she added, pushing her chair
back and standing again, “what it unlocks.”

She walked around the table, away from Don,
and went to the door, where she paused. “Take your time,” she said,
knocking twice on the door. It opened immediately. “Jolene will be
here when you’re ready. You’ll be wanting to sample our
dining.”

They locked Don in, alone with an envelope
and a key.

He waited a respectable amount of time before
going to the end of the table and opening the envelope. The papers
inside included a picture of a two hundred year old piano and
details about its heritage; a listing of forty-two bottles of wine;
and financial papers indicating a balance of almost five thousand
Euros – which was not a substantial sum. He saw where his airline
ticket and cash had been withdrawn, and a room paid for, presumably
upstairs from here.

That left only the key, for which there was
no paperwork, no deed, no indication of what it unlocked. It was
old and heavy, not like any key Don has ever used. He returned all
the papers to the envelope and pocketed the key.

When he knocked on the door, there was a
brief delay before Jolene opened it. Isador, whoever she was, had
gone.

“
Dinner?” Jolene
asked.

“
What does the key open?”
he asked.

“
Trust me,” she said,
“you’ll want to eat first.”

They left the hotel and walked to a cozy
little restaurant where the staff ignored him and conversed only
with Jolene, but the food was incredibly delicious, the best Don
had ever had. The sauce was impossible, the wine a perfect
compliment.

He tried several times to learn either the
name of his grandfather or the purpose of the key, but Jolene kept
the conversation light and utterly meaningless. She paid with a
card. He wondered, albeit briefly, if shed used his money.

“
Now,” Jolene said,
standing, “shall we reveal your kingdom?”

They took a taxi to a grungy part of the
city, where the shops had already closed and were protected by
cages and gates, where the graffiti was crude and rarely artistic.
The streets were mostly barren and mostly dark, and the
streetlights virtually useless.

They stopped at a doorway tucked quietly
between two shops that weren’t closed just for the night. The paint
was peeling off the door and the jamb, but it looked solid and
heavy. An old padlock held it shut.

Don didn’t need any prompting. He took a deep
breath of air, uncertain if the quality inside would be even worse,
and used the key.

He pushed the door open onto a dark, narrow
set of stairs. Jolene came up behind him. At the top, to one side,
there was another door, this one unlocked.

He fumbled for a light switch but didn’t find
it. Jolene stepped in behind him and flipped the switch. A single
bare bulb struggled to bring shadows into the room. It failed to
provide much by way of light; it just made the gloom easier to
see.

The gloom – and the dolls. Dozens. No –
hundreds, with porcelain faces and glass eyes and dresses from
which all the color had drained. Don scanned the room, seeing
nothing else. The dolls sat on shelves and on tables and on the
floor. Many were stacked tightly against each other, while others
seemed to have been given more space. Many had human hair, or
something near enough.

They stared vacantly, all of them, at Don and
the door. They were quiet. Unnaturally still. The shadows blanketed
them. There was a window, but it had been blacked out.

Don stared for a long time, though he didn’t
move. Jolene, beside him, said nothing. In the harsh absence of
light, the dolls seemed to be in a constant state of motion just
outside his peripheral vision.

Some were newer than others. A few seemed
incredibly old. Some stood stiffly against the wall. Others sat
quietly. Some had fallen over or flopped to one side.

“
My grandfather was a doll
maker,” Don said.

“
From a long line of doll
makers,” Jolene told him.

“
You couldn’t tell me
this?”

“
It seemed important to
show you the vastness of your empire.”

“
It’s not much of an
empire,” Don said.

“
No,” Jolene admitted. “But
it’s all yours.” She left the room, descended the stairs, not
waiting for Don to follow. She went out the door, leaving Don alone
in a cramped room stuffed with oddly life-like effigies in a dark,
abandoned corner of Paris. He walked through the room, picking up a
doll here or there, marveling at the bits that made them appear
unreal.

Eventually, he sat in the middle of his
empire of dolls and cried. He cried for the grandfather he never
knew, for the dreams he’d lost, childhood fantasies, the life he’d
wanted and the life he had, and he cried because his grand Parisian
inheritance would change none of that.

When he left the room, Jolene was waiting
outside with a taxi. She hugged him like a distant cousin. They
went back to the hotel. Don carried one of the dolls with him.

17 January

The spirits drift, mostly without a sound,
across fields and between trees and around the corners of the
highest mountains. They whisper to each other. They tell stories,
and re-tell those stories to strangers, other spirits, higher and
lesser creatures, anyone who might listen.

The spirits drift like smoke, shifting and
dissipating, ever in a state of transformation.

Sometimes, one of the spirits will take on a
more substantial form, often out of boredom or curiosity, sometimes
with a mind toward justice, once in an age for beauty.

Such a thing happened, the mist taking flesh,
under the light of a crescent moon – a feat of unbelievable
strength and will – after sensing a beautiful thing and coming
closer to see the young man bathing in the river.

The mist took a feminine shape, although she
never completely shed her ethereal aspect. She approached the man
at the river.

“
I am but a dream,” she
said to him, which is as truthful as a spirit can be.

“
I have had dreams,” the
man said, emerging from the river, “but I have never seen one such
as you.” He dried himself and dressed, never taking his eyes from
her. “You must be cold,” he said.

“
I do not feel the cold,”
the spirit said.

“
Are you hungry? Tired?
Lost?”

“
None of these
things.”

He smiled and touched her cheek gently. “Ah,
but you are not in love. I can see the spirit in you. It is not
your way.”

“
You know the truth of me,”
the spirit admitted. “I came closer to...”

She didn’t finish what she meant to say. The
man shushed her and spoke in a whisper. “I know why you’re here. To
give yourself to me. And I accept.”

For the man was a magician, and recognizing
the spirit, he bound her to him. “Until death,” he said, meaning
hers, “or love.”

This made her afraid. She protested. “But I
can know neither.”

“
Then you’ll be my servant
a long, long time.”

The magician was something of a wicked man,
though he had no grand intentions. He made her steal for him,
sometimes gold and sometimes bread. He made her open locks. He made
her poison an innkeeper who had tried to cheat him. He made her
hide him in shadows when others intended him harm.

He also made her feed a beggar girl. He made
her protect a gypsy falsely accused of giving false prophecy. He
made her learn to dance. He made her deliver justice upon the head
of an unjust judge.

The magician grew old, but the spirit knew
nothing of age. He told his stories of heroes and romance and
trickery. She gave him stories of ancient feuds and unsolvable
puzzles and sharp-tongued fiends.

They travelled frequently, walking from town
to town, making friends and enemies, none of which would be for
life, never staying much longer than a fortnight.

One foggy evening, between towns, as the rain
came down in slow, lazy drops the size of your thumb, they were
ambushed by bandits. Almost immediately, one stabbed the spirit in
the back. His sword burst out between her breasts. She leaked mist
into the fog. The magician, enraged, killed the lot of them, eleven
in all, saving the swordsman for last. The things he did to that
would-be murderer before he finally died defy description.

The magician did his best to heal the spirit,
but she could not be saved. On the ground, in the magician’s arms,
she shed a single ethereal tear like a diamond and said, “But I
cannot die.”

“
But you are dying,” the
magician said. He also cried.

She lifted a weak hand to his cheek. “You are
not wounded.”

“
You are,” he said. “It is
the same.”

She smiled and said, “I believe you.”

Two impossible things happened that night.
The magician, understanding neither, and indeed understanding much
less than that, took a room in the next village and locked himself
inside it.

For days, the magician never emerged from his
room, until finally the innkeeper had the door broken open. The
magician was found dead, petrified, a statue of solid mist and
diamond tears. His room became a shrine, and the innkeeper a rich
man.

18 January

It was a classic romance, by some
definition.

The boy met the girl in their teens. They
went out a few times, ran away to different colleges, lost each
other’s numbers.